Watch out for attempts to divide progressives on social media (including DU) [View all]

[jmbar2]

Malign entities were very active in helping tRump win the 2016 election by fomenting divisions between Americans on social media. It is likely to be happening again.

I am seeing on a variety of media, posts that try to stir up antagonism between generations, targeting younger generations to resent boomers. There's a lot of that on Reddit right now. It comes in waves.

Shit-stirrers may be engaging in well-known propaganda technique called "Reflexive Control" to try to create a generational split on the left ahead of elections.

The end goal for these efforts is to trigger emotional reactions and drive people to ideological extremes, making it nearly impossible to build a consensus. The Russians also hope those who are not driven to extreme positions will throw up their hands in frustration and check out. The result is political paralysis.

Here's a notional example: Suppose you and a neighbor agree that your property taxes are too high, but disagree on issues related to sensitive topics like race relations or immigration. You start seeing online memes focusing on extreme views on these topics. Those memes evoke strong reactions, painting the issue as a battle between two extremes. You begin thinking of your neighbor based on this false dichotomy. The neighbor becomes one of “them” rather than a person with whom you had some commonality. After all, it's difficult to agree on most anything when you and your neighbor view each other as racist or anti-American.

...

Their focus is to gin people up to be against one another regardless of their identity or political beliefs. That's why Russia tries to infiltrate groups of both Black Lives Matter and white nationalists online.

https://www.rand.org/blog/2020/07/how-you-can-fight-russias-plans-to-troll-americans.html

We have one raging thread already on DU today that is pretty suspect. Please read the article above. It explains how such infighting weakens us.

We need a strong coalition of all generations of progressives to fight the attempts to destroy democracy, both from within our borders, and from outside.