Chris Ketcham: Clowns to the Left of Me, Fascists to the Right

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. The role of Russia in our country's increasing polarization is underappreciated

https://faculty.washington.edu/kstarbi/examining-trolls-polarization.pdf
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00963402.2025.2488676
https://theconversation.com/i-investigated-millions-of-tweets-from-the-kremlins-troll-factory-and-discovered-classic-propaganda-techniques-reimagined-for-the-social-media-age-237712

The polarization is not exactly new, but, then, neither are efforts by Russia/The Soviet Union to encourage it.
Protecting the environment/climate (or not) is just one more issue for them to exploit.
https://grist.org/article/russian-trolls-shared-some-truly-terrible-climate-change-memes/
https://www.climateinformationwatch.org/post/the-emerging-problem-of-climate-trolls

At the recent invitation-only inauguration, the news told us that there were tech billionaires present! The aspect which seems to have been missed is that these billionaires included the CEO’s of the major social media firms’ the same guys who decided to let a certain former president back on their platforms after banning him "for life.”

You see, his playbook, strangely similar to Russia’s, is to foment division, and key to that effort is “social media."