President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and President Donald J. Trump at a meeting in 2017. Photo / AP
After marinating in conspiracy theories and Donald J. Trump's Russia stance, some online discourse about Vladimir Putin has grown more complimentary.
The day before Russia invaded Ukraine, former President Donald Trump called the wartime strategy of President Vladimir Putin of Russia "pretty smart." His remarks were posted on YouTube, Twitter and messaging app Telegram, where they were viewed more than 1.3 million times.
Right-wing commentators including Candace Owens, Stew Peters and Joe Oltmann also jumped into the fray online with posts that were favourable to Putin and that rationalised his actions against Ukraine. "I'll stand on the side of Russia right now," Oltmann, a conservative podcaster, said on his show this week.
And in Telegram groups like "The Patriot Voice" and Facebook groups including "Texas for Donald Trump 2020," members criticised President Joe Biden's handling of the conflict and expressed support for Russia, with some saying they trusted Putin more than Biden.
The online conversations reflect how pro-Russia sentiment has increasingly penetrated Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, right-wing podcasts, messaging apps like Telegram and some conservative media. As Russia attacked Ukraine this week, those views spread, infusing the online discourse over the war with sympathy — and even approval — for the aggressor.
The positive Russia rhetoric is an extension of the culture wars and grievance politics that have animated the right in the United States in the past few years. In some of these circles, Putin carries a strongman appeal, viewed as someone who gets his way and does not let political correctness stop him.
"Putin embodies the strength that Trump pretended to have," said Emerson Brooking, a resident senior fellow for the Atlantic Council who studies digital platforms. "For these individuals, Putin's actions aren't a tragedy; they're a fantasy fulfilled."
Support for Putin and Russia is now being expressed online in a jumble of facts, observations and opinions, sometimes entwined with lies. In recent days, commenters have complimented Putin and falsely accused NATO of violating nonexistent territorial agreements with Russia, which they said justified the Russian president's declaration of war on Ukraine, according to a review of posts by The New York Times.
Others have spread convoluted conspiracy theories about the war that are tinged with a pro-Russia sheen. In one popular lie circulating online, Putin and Trump are working together on the war. Another falsehood involves the idea that the war is about taking down a cabal of global elites over sex trafficking.
In all, pro-Russian narratives on English-language social media, cable TV, print and online outlets soared by 2,580 per cent in the past week compared with the first week of February, according to an analysis by media insights company Zignal Labs. Those mentions cropped up 5,740 times in the past week, up from 214 in the first week of February, Zignal said.
The narratives have flourished in dozens of Telegram channels, Facebook groups and pages, and thousands of tweets, according to the Times' review. Some of the Telegram channels have more than 160,000 subscribers, while the Facebook groups and pages have up to 1.9 million followers.
(It is difficult to be precise on the scope of pro-Russian narratives on social media and online forums because bots and organised campaigns make them difficult to track.)
The pro-Russia sentiment is a stark departure from during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union was viewed by many Americans as a foe. In recent years, that attitude shifted, partly helped along by interference from Russia. Before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Kremlin-backed groups used social networks like Facebook to inflame American voters, creating more divisions and resistance to political correctness.
After Trump was elected, he often appeared favourable to — and even admiring of — Putin. That seeded a more positive view of Putin among Trump's supporters, misinformation researchers said.
"Putin has invested heavily in sowing discord" and found an ally in Trump, said Melissa Ryan, CEO of Card Strategies, a consulting firm that researches disinformation. "Anyone who studies disinformation or the far-right has seen the influence of Putin's investment take hold."
At the same time, conspiracy theories spread online that deeply polarised Americans. One was the QAnon movement, which falsely posits that Democrats are Satan-worshipping child traffickers who are part of an elite cabal trying to control the world.
The Russia-Ukraine war is now being viewed by some Americans through the lens of conspiracy theories, misinformation researchers said. Roughly 41 million Americans believe in the QAnon conspiracy theory, according to a survey released Thursday from the Public Religion Research Institute. This week, some QAnon followers said online that Putin's invasion of Ukraine was simply the next phase in a global war against the sex traffickers.
Lisa Kaplan, founder of Alethea Group, a company that helps fight online misinformation, said the pro-Russia rhetoric was potentially harmful because it could "further legitimise false or misleading claims" about the Ukraine conflict "in the eyes of the American people."
Not all online discourse is pro-Russia, and Putin's actions have been condemned by conservative social media users, mainstream commentators and Republican politicians, even as some have criticised how Biden has handled the conflict.
"Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine is reckless and evil," Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, said in a statement on Twitter on Thursday.
My statement on Russia's invasion of Ukraine: pic.twitter.com/EWa0i6I74Q
— Kevin McCarthy (@GOPLeader) February 24, 2022
On Tuesday, Representative Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., who was censured recently by the Republican Party for participating in the committee investigating the January 6 insurrection, criticized House Republicans for attacking Biden, tweeting that it "feeds into Putin's narrative."
But those with a pro-Russia stance have gotten louder online. Before the invasion, the Gateway Pundit, a far-right website, published a story listing "fun facts" about Russia and Ukraine, including the Russian talking points that are being used as justification for an invasion. The article spread in Facebook groups that support Trump, reaching up to 565,100 followers, according to data from CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned analytics tool.
On a podcast Wednesday, Steve Bannon, Trump's former adviser, also praised Putin as "anti-woke." He suggested the Ukrainian conflict was "not our fight."
After Russia's attack began, some online users explained Putin's motives by blending them with conspiracy theories about Covid-19. One Twitter account named War Clandestine declared that Putin was targeting biolabs in Ukraine that were operated by the United States. The idea was made more believable, the author said, because of the conspiracy theory that the United States engineered Covid-19 at a lab in Wuhan, China.
Pro-America influencers like Mikel Crump and John Basham, who have a combined following of 99,200, amplified the thread. Twitter later suspended the War Clandestine account, plus a second one by the same user for trying to evade the ban, but people continued posting screen recordings of the thread online.
Twitter said that the accounts by the user were permanently suspended for violating its abusive behaviour policy and that it was monitoring for emerging narratives that violate its rules. Crump and Basham did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Some pro-Russia commentators insisted they were right. Many blamed Biden, dredging up old conspiracy theories about his son, Hunter, and Hunter's employment at a Ukrainian gas company when Joe Biden was vice president and engaged in diplomatic efforts with the country. There was no evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens, but conservatives seized on the narrative during the 2020 election.
When reached for comment, Oltmann, the conservative podcaster, said, "You really have no idea about Ukraine. People support Russia because you did not do the right thing when it came to the fraud and corruption of Biden. I pray for the people in Ukraine but equally pray the people who facilitated the evil communist agenda in the US are held accountable."
In an email, Owens, the conservative talk show host, also said the Russia-Ukraine war was Biden's fault. "Ukrainians are dying because of the Biden family's criminal connections and insistence on stoking conflict in the region," she said.
The growing appreciation for Putin was captured in recent polling from the Economist and YouGov, which showed he was viewed more favourably by Republicans than Biden. Another recent poll from Yahoo News and YouGov found that 62 per cent of Republicans believed Putin was a "stronger leader" than Biden.
That sentiment was echoed in an informal poll online Wednesday, when a QAnon influencer asked followers in "The Patriot Voice" group on Telegram if they trusted Putin. Nearly everyone who responded to the question said the same thing: yes.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Davey Alba and Stuart A. Thompson
Photographs by: Brendan Hoffman
© 2022 THE NEW YORK TIMES
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