Russia is amplifying conspiracy theories about the L.A. protests

Russia is exploiting and amplifying online conspiracy theories about the immigration protests in Los Angeles, experts say.

Protests against immigration raids in Los Angeles have triggered a flood of falsehoods and conspiracy theories online, and Russia has sought to exploit and amplify them, experts say.

Russian media and pro-Russian voices have embraced right-wing conspiracy theories about the protests, including one that alleged the Mexican government was encouraging the demonstrations against President Donald Trump’s immigration policies. Mexico has strongly rejected the accusation — which was repeated by Trump’s chief of homeland security — as utterly false.

The episode illustrates how foreign adversaries are taking advantage of genuine divisions among Americans, a tried-and-true strategy in information warfare, analysts say. Right-wing American voices online are pushing the idea that the protests in Los Angeles are not what they appear and that a secret, leftist cabal tied to Democratic politicians and the billionaire philanthropist George Soros is orchestrating unrest, experts said.

“We are following a playbook that we’ve followed many times before. We’re seeing a lot of the same tropes, even a lot of the same exact conspiracy theories that we’ve seen circulate around previous protests,” said Darren Linvill, a professor at Clemson University who studies social media disinformation. There were echoes of how falsehoods spread during the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, he said.

“People are, as they tend to do on social media, believing the messages that they’re inclined to believe,” Linvill said. “And influencers are taking advantage of that, oftentimes with false or sort of purposefully misleading content.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/russia-amplifying-conspiracy-theories-l-protests-rcna212652


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