After the Fall: Being American in the World We've Made

by Ben Rhodes

Compared to the battles of Russia’s past, the actual fighting in Eastern Ukraine was a small endeavor affecting mainly the people there and the few thousand Russians sent furtively across Ukraine’s borders. But there was something brutal and infectious about the propaganda that went along with it. I noticed it at the time. In memes that anticipated American conspiracy theories like QAnon, Russia’s enemies were cast as pedophiles, sexual deviants, and diabolical criminals. This ability to manipulate and mobilize the national psyche while keeping the stakes relatively low represented a breakthrough for Putin, making easy use of America’s unregulated and sensationalizing social media networks. “People are happy to be violent in the social networks,” Maria said. “In that space, there has been rhetorical violence in Russia for the last ten years, through the discourse of hate on social networks.”