Russian troll farm launched racist campaign to convince conservatives black people hate Christmas
More Propaganda attacks coming from Russian intelligence agencies:Russian troll farm last year launched a new campaign to stoke racial divisions in the United States by making it look as though African-Americans had turned against the celebration of Christmas.
The Daily Beast reports that website BlackMattersUS, which was hosted by a Russian troll farm in St. Petersburg, last holiday season started promoting merchandise that is purportedly targeted toward black people, but seems intended to convince white people — and Fox News — that black people hate Christmas. The website has since been shut down after being identified as a Russian troll site.
Included among the merchandise was a T-shirt that reads “black X-mas only” that features a Christmas stocking filled with a gun; a traditional Christmas sweater that has the caption “Thug Life” on it; and a shirt that says, “Say no! To ho-ho-ho.”
Although the over-the-top shirts were unlikely to succeed in creating significant racial strife in the United States, the Daily Beast notes that it’s only a tiny part of Russia’s campaign to sow division in the country.
https://www.rawstory.com/2017/10/russian-troll-farm-launched-racist-campaign-to-convince-conservatives-black-people-hate-christmas/
= new reply since forum marked as read
to getting it.
These sites weren't created to influence black voters AND they didn't to any significant extent.
They were created to influence those white voters who, both consciously and subconsciously, fear black people (Think, Sandra Bullock character in the movie "Crash"
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I have yet to meet anyone who took "BlackMattersUS" seriously or believed that its creators were anything other than: (a) white; or, (b) bought. For black voters, their material was almost laughable from the language that looked like it came straight out of some "How to talk like a person of color" manual to the way it would leap from legitimate complaints (e.g., near-total silence on repealing the 1996 Criminal Justice Act, the AEDPA, and Welfare Reform) to absurd right wing Trumpisms about Secretary Clinton.
The sad thing is that it worked and it worked across party lines with otherwise good Democrats being willing to accept/tolerate anti-BLM, "blacks need to be patient and stop blocking our interstates," anti-Kaepernick, etc. rhetoric that IMHO every one of us should be condemning.