I Apparently Reblogged From Russia Propagandists

downtroddendeity:

copperbadge:

bienenalster:

paxpinnae:

So, I too received the “We’re not mad you reblogged Russian propagandists, we’re just disappointed” email from Tumblr. As per @copperbadge​‘s suggestion, I searched for the posts by typing the usernames into “paxpinnae.tumblr.com/search/RussianTrollGoesHere” (Note that you have to have Tumblr search enabled in your profile to do this, but that’s a quick fix.)

Now, I’ve deleted all the posts, because better safe than inadvertently complicit in undermining American democracy, but for those who are interested, this is the quality content the Russian IRA was putting out:

• That post with the Google results showing the Obamas as the President and First Lady and saying “reblog this it’s the last day they’re true.”
• A post bitching about how Howard the Duck might be getting a(nother) Marvel movie before Kamala Khan, America Chavez, or Miles Morales saying “When Marvel would rather make a movie about a duck than a person of color.”
• A post with a Twitter screenshot of a guy saying feminists don’t have loving dads and getting dragged for it.
• A post about Imran Yousef, the marine vet bouncer at Pulse in Orlando who helped save people, which actually was a twofor on Russian trolls, with one reblogging the other to give an assist.
• That post about Hillary Clinton’s interview where she says she keeps hot sauce in her back, which the troll framed as “admitting to pandering to black people.”
• A post promoting Solomon’s Shield, an app that will give you your rights during a traffic stop and help you livestream the stop to Facebook and urging me to “OMG STOP POLICE BRUTALITY!!!!!”
• A post about some A+ queer moments from Betty & Veronica with the caption “heteros explain this” that I’m actually really mad about deleting because it was GR8.
• A post with a bumper sticker reading “Proud Parent of a Child who has Resisted His Teachers’ Attempts to Break His Spirit and Bend Him to the Will of His Corporate Masters” which I am also really mad that I had to delete.

There are a few trends I noticed as I went through the posts that I want to take a moment to highlight, for the sake of my own critical thinking skills as well as others’:

• Most of these posts seemed to come from a standard Tumblr left-wing point of view… BUT:
• Most of them ALSO promoted a defeatist attitude toward our current systems and cultures. “Why is no one talking about Imran Yousef?” “You know why.” “Just admit you don’t want equality for all”
• The fundamental goal of the Russian propaganda machine is to undermine Americans’ faith in our political and cultural institutions. If everything is inherently terrible, how can we fix it? If both sides are equally bad and corrupt, then it’s better just to give up on government and try to live as best we can.

Which is an interesting take, but a few counterpoints:

• No.
• Fuck that. 
• American democracy has many problems, but the solution isn’t to give up; it’s to fight harder.
• Change is slow and hard and yes, involves compromise, and doing a few things that you don’t like in the short term, and talking to people who you personally disagree with, and that’s okay! If you continually subject everything to a rigid test of moral purity, the world will always fail you, but if you approach things with an attitude that even people with whom you disagree can have valid points, you might find something good. 
• (I’m still mad about how good that Betty & Veronica post was. I mean, I know it was probably intended to undercut American culture somehow, but that thing was AMAZING.)

Part of the real punch to the guts here is that:

1) The things they point out aren’t *wrong*. We ARE a racist society. We ARE a a sexist society. We ARE a deeply hetero-normative society. Insert a justice problem, and it probably applies.

2) It’s super easy to agree with and promote the defeatist attitude because these are giant systemic problems it’s super easy to feel defeated by.

3)  I fully expect to be hoodwinked by more such accounts in the future. Just look at how tumblr people and people of a certain age talk all fatalistic about the future, how we make our depression and low expectations for our lives into jokes. You can try to be more aware about WHO you’re reblogging, but you’re gonna make a mistake on that someday, not cause you’re an idiot, but cause it’s just that hard not to.

So what to do about it?

Do like Pax and use the tips from @copperbadge to delete the posts you’ve reblogged. Then, in the future, if you see a post that, per @paxpinnae‘s comments, takes a defeatist stance towards a real problem, by all means, reblog it. But add to the post – add a call to action. If it’s about trans bathroom bills, include a form letter for your state reps. Do something similar if it’s about lack of representation in the media – why not send emails to movie studios saying we want Miles Morales and Kamala Khan cause they’re fucking rad as hell and could totally bring in Black Panther $$$. If it’s about police brutality against black people, link to BLM fundraisers.

That way, you’re being civically engaged. You roll your eyes and feel sad about the ways in which our world is shit, but then you do something about it, even IF it seems small and useless. It’s still something, and then you’re maybe – hopefully – perhaps inspiring someone else to take incremental action along with you. And bonus, you’re undermining some asshole’s attempt to undermine you, so if nothing else, you’re getting spite points.

And that’s my thought. Time to do some research and gather rebloggable resources so I can do my best to put my money where my mouth is here.

I did not plan to mire myself this deeply in this whole event when I made An Humorous Post about being in league with Russian agitators, but it has led to some really awesome analysis that I wanted to share with everyone, so this is well worth reading. Thanks for tagging me, guys! 

Incidentally, here’s a bit of HTML you can use to search your blog for these. I’m not deleting the ones I commented on, but when I searched I found 6 posts from 6 different blogs that I’d reblogged:

• A photoset of Overwatch dog cosplay, taken from a cosplayer on Twitter and Instagram. (Here it is at the source, so you can have a well-dressed shibe before you continue reading this post.)
• Twitter screencap of an article about Hollywood having a bad summer and blaming it on RottenTomatoes, with a tweet in response saying they’d do better if they hired more diverse creators.
• Twitter screencap of people being pissed off at the fatphobic advertising for an upcoming animated movie. (Looking it up on IMDB, I discovered that the actress named in the tweet was not informed about this ad campaign and was appalled when she found out, and the ads were quickly pulled and the studio apologized.)
• A story about two girls who were suspended from school because one of them gave the other one her asthma inhaler when she was having trouble breathing. The headline and pictures are taken from a clickbait-y news site’s version of the story, and it’s spun as a race thing, which there’s no indication of in the story. (Like, I mean, it could be, but it could also just be really zealous rule-enforcement because the school district doesn’t want to be liable for kids sharing prescription medication.)
• This fucking post, which I hate with a passion.
• This post about the artist who did a famous portrait of Dwight Eisenhower, falsely claiming she was never credited. Note @jumpingjacktrash’s extremely salient commentary: “it feels to me like these posts that claim black artists in history were
  less respected than they actually were achieves the opposite of their
  intent. it belittles the artists rather than inspiring people to give
  them more credit. and it’s pretty demoralizing, isn’t it, to paint a
  picture of obscurity and disrespect as the only think black artists have
  ever achieved?” yeah, uh, turns out that’s exactly what they were aiming for.

Almost all of this content was reposted, mostly from Twitter. We’ve got a post clearly made to reel in followers with the combo of “cute animal” + “popular fandom”, some fairly reasonable commentary that happens to dovetail well with the message of “everyone is out to get you and no one respects you,” rage-clickbait that’s presented as being about race when there’s no special indication it is, anti-intellectual reframing of a college student’s cool science project as a Decadent Evil of Capitalism, and malicious erasure of a black artist’s legacy to feed into a narrative of hopelessness.

They did a really good job blending in. I would never have guessed any of these was someone deliberately spinning a narrative if I didn’t know already know, and where they do distort things, it’s within the bounds of plausibility, not something where you can clearly say “this person had to be a deliberate and malicious liar.”