Logo

Logo

Mueller’s indictment

The Kremlin, historically the bedrock of Soviet-style Communism, has demonstrated that democracy is much too easy to trivialise, and even…

Mueller’s indictment

Former FBI Director Robert Mueller (Photo: FBI.gov/IANS)

The Kremlin, historically the bedrock of Soviet-style Communism, has demonstrated that democracy is much too easy to trivialise, and even in the fountain-head of this praxis of governance. The shock and awe over the US Special Counsel, Robert Mueller’s indictment must rest on the fact that the Russians, pre-eminently Vladimir Putin, found it so simple to influence the US presidential election in November 2016.

Equally, the world must give it to the libertarian engagement that so resounding an exposure has been possible after all… without an essay towards airbrushing the heart of the matter behind Donald Trump’s victory and Hillary Clinton’s defeat. Ergo, the dumbing down exercise by the occupant of the White House holds no water.

It is now pretty obvious that the Russians did what they could to get Trump elected. Not that the contours of the trans-Atlantic intervention were not known, most particularly after the FBI’s disclosure some months ago. Less known, however, were the details of the meddling which entailed two former Cold War warriors acting as partners in the renewal of America’s tryst with democracy. Both Russian and American history will record this meddling as a quirky twist of international relations, if ever there was one.

Advertisement

Chiefly, the 37 pages of Mueller’s indictment contain a meticulous account of the workings of a professional propaganda or lobbying organisation. The “Internet Research Agency” in St Petersburg, generally referred to as the Russian “troll factory”, spent its multimillion-dollar budget on much more than simple trolling. Women operatives were sent around the US to gather intelligence and to establish contact with social and political activists. They were advised by the American political activists to target what they call the “purple swing states”.

It was a remarkably calibrated intervention, no less incisive than the Mueller exercise. The indictment claims there were 80 full-time employees working on social media accounts, all pretending to be US citizens. In St Petersburg, they worked shifts that were designed to simulate time-zones in the continental US and even observed American public holidays. They concentrated on Facebook, where they set up groups with names designed to exploit the divisions in US society.

It thus comes about that “United Muslims of America” and “The Army of Jesus” were both Russian front organisations. The real shock of the Mueller indictment is not that the Russians exploited huge weaknesses in the American political system, but that the weaknesses existed and are now so easy and relatively cheap for anyone to exploit. The Kremlin’s intervention ~ embedded in the use of the social media ~ was more deep-rooted than what the world had hitherto imagined. That said, the indictment has once again failed to nail Trump. Was it really necessary for Putin’s Russia to go on overkill against Ms Clinton? No, not really!

Advertisement