The Bernie Sanders Campaign Faced A Fake News Tsunami. Where Did It Come From?

[still_one]

WASHINGTON ― Last June, John Mattes started noticing something coursing like a virus through the Facebook page he helped administer for Bernie Sanders fans in San Diego. People with no apparent ties to California were friending the page and sharing links from unfamiliar sites full of anti-Hillary Clinton propaganda.

The stories they posted weren’t the normal complaints he was used to seeing as the Vermont senator and the former secretary of state fought out the Democratic presidential primary. These stories alleged that Clinton had murdered her political opponents and used body doubles.

Mattes, 66, had been a television reporter and Senate investigator in previous lives. He put his expertise in unmasking fraudsters to work. At first, he suspected that the sites were created by the old Clinton haters from the ‘90s ― what Hillary Clinton had dubbed “the vast right-wing conspiracy.”

But when Mattes started tracking down the sites’ domain registrations, the trail led to Macedonia and Albania. In mid-September, he emailed a few of his private investigator friends with a list of the sites. “Very creepy and i do not think Koch brothers,” he wrote.
........

By late October, Mattes said he’d traced 40 percent of the domain registrations for the fake news sites he saw popping up on pro-Sanders pages back to Eastern Europe. Others appeared to be based in Panama and the U.S., or were untraceable. He wondered, “Am I the only person that sees all this crap floating through these Bernie pages?”

He wasn’t. Bernie supporters across the country had been noticing dubious websites and posters linked back to Eastern Europe long before Mattes did ― and even before The Washington Post reported in mid-June that Russian government hackers had stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee. They had been warning each other that something weird was going on, posting troll alerts and compiling lists of fake news sites.

.........

In San Diego, Mattes was intrigued by a Facebook user named “Oliver Mitov” whom he saw constantly posting anti-Clinton propaganda.


Mattes first noticed Mitov posting in his Facebook group in September. But when he searched the page’s archives, he found that Mitov had been in the group since late July. He soon realized there wasn’t just one Mitov but four. Three had Sanders as their profile picture. Two had the same single Facebook friend, while a third had no Facebook friends. The fourth appeared to be a middle-aged man with 19 Facebook friends, including that one friend the other Mitovs had in common.

All combined, the four Mitovs had joined more than two dozen pro-Sanders groups around the U.S., including Latinos for Bernie Sanders, Oregon for Bernie Sanders 2016 and Pennsylvania Progressives for Bernie Sanders. Together, those groups had hundreds of thousands of members.

The Mitov posts would have been explosive if they’d been true. In one Aug. 4 post to Mattes’ page, Mitov wrote, “This is a story you won’t see on Fox/CNN or the other Mainstream media!” He then linked to a post claiming falsely that Clinton had “made a small fortune by arming ISIS.” On Sept. 25, he posted on several pro-Sanders pages a link promising game-changing information: “NEW LEAK: Here is Who Ordered Hillary To Leave The 4 Men In Benghazi!” The link went to a fake news site called usapoliticsnow.com.

The aim of Mitov’s activity seemed pretty obvious to Mattes: to depress the number of Sanders supporters who voted for Clinton in November.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-fake-news-russia_us_58c34d97e4b0ed71826cdb36?63g&

[Jonny Appleseed]

1. ...yeah, Bernie's campaign was the one done in by fake news...

Jesus when will this obsession end? People on the left don't even fall for fake news at a marginally impactful rate. I don't see people still talking about Ted Cruz you know?

[KittyWampus]

4. That's not what the article says. Not at all. It's about Sanders FB pages getting trolled

with anti-Hillary bots in Macedonia.

[WhiteTara]

7. It does sort of make it sound like Bernie

is the victim. He got used, but she got trolled.

[Fast Walker 52]

65. they changed the headline-- original was misleading

except damn, now they changed it back. I checked it earlier and it was ""Russian Trolls Fooled Sanders Voters With Anti-Clinton Fake News", which is much more accurate.

This is still the preview I have for FB: "Russian Trolls Fooled Sanders Voters With Anti-Clinton Fake News"

[JudyM]

39. Where is the evidence for your 2nd statement, please. And what specific "obsession" are you

bemoaning?

Ripping an OP that reports an important factual investigation

[BainsBane]

56. Read the article

Good grief.

[pkdu]

2. Yep - I'll guarantee it happened on Stein sites too. It needs to all come out. nt

[calimary]

23. You talking about the Jill Stein who was seated at the same Vladimir Putin banquet table

as Michael Flynn was? We've seen all the photos of him sitting there. The angle that shows him also shows her from behind, because she's seated across the table, more-or-less facing him. But there IS a photo that shows her turning around to look either to the side or behind her, and it's clearly Jill Stein.

[pkdu]

26. Yes that Jill Stein...and this one..

?1464780640

Listening to Putin speak at RT celebration

?1464780652

With Pushkov - Russian Foreign Minister

[JI7]

29. Jill Stein was/is a Putin Troll also

[ismnotwasm]

3. It was disgusting

[sheshe2]

5. K&R

[yardwork]

6. We saw exactly this on DU.

The article title is a bit misleading. The article is about how Bernie sites faced a tsunami of fake news about Hillary Clinton, after Clinton was chosen as the nominee.

But Smollon had a hard time convincing other Bernie supporters that they were being played. “No one cared,” Smollon said. “At that point, you were a Hillary shill. It was like an echo chamber of anger.”

[wysi]

50. This site was overrun with it

And nothing was done until it was too late.

[ehrnst]

51. Yep - the fake news was aimed at Bernie supporters, and so many took the bait. (nt)

[applegrove]

8. I was saying some of the anti-hillary posts were not true Bernie supporters. I said they were paid.

They probably were.

[Beartracks]

11. Keeping the Bernie and Hillary camps at eachother's throats was just...

.. a bonus of this scheme. Or maybe it was, in fact, anticipated.

=============================

[applegrove]

17. Oh the trouble makers were doing a practice run on feminism and racism as beta tests

of how to stoke anger. Don't know if they were exactly the same groups though. But right after Obama won in 2012 people were manipulating the du to their own ends.

[TransitJohn]

22. And a lot of the anti-Bernie posts, to this day, on this site are paid, too.

It is good to keep things in perspective. The internet is a weird place.

[applegrove]

25. I do not see the same level of propaganda directed at Bernie than was

directed at Hillary during the nomination race. On the whole people like Bernie.

[JI7]

28. it was anti hillary propaganda directed at Sanders supporters

[applegrove]

30. Which resulted in many real Bernie supporters jumping in and slurring Hillary with the same false

ideas. I was here. I saw it.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

44. That's bullshit.

That fake news was so over the top no duers spread that shit. Maybe a few flash in the pan trolls, but MIRT took those out almost immediately.

There was no one here claiming Hillary ordered the Benghazi deaths or any of that other over the top crazy shit.

[stevenleser]

48. That's demonstrably untrue. Many DUers bought & spread it. JPR folks

are still spreading many of those same memes and they are former DUers. Most of the then DUers who did this are now exclusively at JPR.

They are angry at those of here for not buying all that nonsense about Hillary. They are angry at Skinner and EARLG for not allowing them to spread that nonsense here.

There was no criticism of Hillary that the JPR folks who were erstwhile DUers didn't buy. You even saw whitewater and Vince foster garbage recycled from that crowd.

* - Note I am not specifically speaking of Benghazi here, but of generic over the top crazy attacks against Hillary.

[mercuryblues]

52. I remember one

trying to shame and blame HRC for Apartheid.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

72. Sorry, can't type.

My irony meter blew up and I have shards of glass in my eyes. Thanks a bunch.

It's my own fault. I should have disabled it but I didn't think someone who called her the worst person on the planet in '08 would respond to this.

[stevenleser]

78. Whataboutism won't help your wrong contention be right. Almost a nice try. nt

[fun n serious]

53. Oh Yes there was.

Many many DU'ers did.

[msanthrope]

82. Um....one highly-respected DUer peddled the shit that Bill Clinton was a pedophile.

Why? Because he rode on Jeffrey Epstien's plane.

No shit.

[yardwork]

84. As a person who cohosted with you, I strongly disagree.

That's all I'll say.

[kcr]

90. Wrong.

Oh, so so wrong. DU was thick with it, just like everywhere on the internet.

[stevenleser]

79. Please direct us to who would pay for anti-Bernie posts. I'll save you the trouble

no one would pay for that.

[uponit7771]

36. +1

[brer cat]

9. K&R

[Beartracks]

10. Makes sense. If you were working to elect Trump, you'd certainly want...

... "to depress the number of Sanders supporters who voted for Clinton in November."



========================

[uponit7771]

37. +1

[butdiduvote]

12. The truth needs to come out.

The Bernie fans who allowed themselves to be manipulated need to face reality so it doesn't happen again and to vindicate those of us who put up with their abuse online.

[cstanleytech]

21. I saw plenty of abuse coming from both sides here on the DU and the Bernie and Hillary forums

were rife with the shit which is why I rarely posted in them and the hosts did little to reign it in.

[JudyM]

40. Not just in past tense here, either.

[cstanleytech]

71. Aye, its why I still avoid them because as I said the hosts dont really do anything to reign it in

and instead the groups are a festering sewer of "but x said x and is so horrible" or "it's all x's fault".

[Ligyron]

45. Absolutely.

Discord among Dems are to someone's benefit. Someone in Russia and the WH maybe?

[stevenleser]

80. That's another whataboutism response that avoids the issue of the election that gave us Trump and

how some Bernie supporters were deluded by Russian engineered agitprop into either sitting home or voting Trump or Stein.

[NCTraveler]

13. They must not have seen what happened to aclinton over the last thirty years.

When someone dreams of a narrative and starts writing.

[Docreed2003]

14. Wonder what the DU handles were???

[Starry Messenger]

15. Sad that people lapped that stuff up like gospel.

[BadgerMom]

16. K and R

Putin put Stein in the race. Putin had Wikileaks drop innocuous emails on our willing-to-be-fooled media. Putin sharpened intra-Dem ill will. That Russian is not the manly man he wants us to believe. Hillary scared the s**t outta that wimp.

[betsuni]

18. K&R

[SHRED]

19. God Damn you fucking Russians for sowing discord...

...in our party.

And God Damn the criminal GOP for cheering it on.

[calimary]

24. They sure did.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/420262/republicans-should-help-bernie-sanders-weaken-hillary-myra-adams

Scheming manipulative bastards. That's one of the things they were aiming for - to sow lots of discord within our party.

[JudyM]

42. Plenty of discord continues to be sown here. We can't put it behind us if some keep ripping it open.

[msanthrope]

27. God damn the ones who couldn't put that aside and unite behind the nominee. nt

[JI7]

31. many of them are the same ones who shit on Obama during his presidency

[msanthrope]

32. Yes....the concern trolling of the President was merely a racist precedent

of the sexism to come. And some of those posters think they can just slip back here, unnoticed.

[FailureToCommunicate]

20. K & R

[oberliner]

33. Interesting point in this article: Those pro-Bernie people who pointed this out were shunned

Accused of being Hillary shills and removed from Bernie groups.

Even if they had been working for Bernie for months or longer.

[msanthrope]

35. Yes they were. nt

[stevenleser]

49. JI7 above is a prime example of someone who at one point said, wait a minute

this is all over the top stuff directed at Hillary, and he received a ton of abuse from his erstwhile proBernie compadres. There were others. Cali eventually couldn't stomach all the crazy attacks at Hillary and said enough. She was bundled off of JPR for her troubles.

[Tom Rinaldo]

54. True, but she then got derailed here also

Even though she was openly advocating support for Hillary. This is her status here now, ...

"Account status: Flagged for review"

...as it has been since well before the election

I tried "asking the admins"about why Cali was locked in seemingly permanent limbo but got no reply. Same thing for Armstead last time I looked, who also bucked the anti-Hillary tide at JPR after being suspended from posting here, and never allowed back on DU far as I know. He too was never kicked off DU, just put into suspended animation for all time forward.

[stevenleser]

81. Yes but we don't know why. We know why she was bundled off JPR and attacked by other Bernie fans. nt

[Fast Walker 52]

66. exactly... I saw this in action myself to a lesser degree

of course, we had a pretty nasty primary fight here on DU, and a lot of Sanders people call Hillary people shills and so forth. Got a bit ugly.

[seaglass]

34. Some of them are still delusional. Look at what Tim Canova tweeted

today, embarrassing for him:

Link to tweet

And JPR again posted that Bernie endorsed Hillary because she had him beat up though it appears they deleted it after getting lots of agreement. These people are fucked in the head. Is it possible for them to grow out of this or will they always be this demented?

[BainsBane]

57. Sour grapes.

[Talk Is Cheap]

38. Sanders supporters are way tuned-in to be fooled by fake news...

This story itself is a means to divide democrats.

There is nothing of value in posts like these except to disrupt.

[JudyM]

41. Disagree. It's reporting a factual investigation. It may raise discomfort but we ought to be able

to see the whole picture, whatever it is.

[BainsBane]

58. Have you seen JPR?

Some of this stuff is still accepted as fact by many Sanders supporters.

[Talk Is Cheap]

61. No, I don't go to JPR...

And what 'stuff' are you referring to that is 'still accepted by many Sanders supporters'?

[BainsBane]

63. That the primary was stolen from Bernie

The DWS email thing came from the Russians. They planted emails on Wikileaks and changed and removed dates on them to make it appear they were written earlier than they were. All of that was designed to undermine support for Clinton by convincing Sanders supporters Bernie was robbed of the nomination.

That was THE most central component of that aspect of Russian propaganda because it worked to promote Trump by reducing voters for Clinton.

[Talk Is Cheap]

64. Well, the DNC did...

...put their 'thumbs on the scale' for Clinton...

But this is all ancient history...what do we do to win some elections?

[BainsBane]

67. Case in point.

Emails in May and June expressing frustration that the candidate who already lost had not dropped out is not "thumbs on the scale", but the Russians convinced his supporters it swung the primary. I see comments on Twitter all the time insisting the nomination was stolen from Bernie. That is the success of Russian propaganda.

The Russians are adept at convincing people what that want to believe. That is how they convinced some Sanders supporters to work against Clinton. It's also why they paid Jill Stein through RT. It was all part of an effort to undermine democracy and usher in white nationalism under Trump in order to weaken liberal alliances between the US and Europe, just as they are doing not now throughout Europe by promoting national front parties there.

Kurt Eichenwald wrote about this in Nov, but many refuse to be examine the evidence. The Russians thumbs were far more powerful and pervasive than the impotent DNC.
http://www.newsweek.com/myths-cost-democrats-presidential-election-521044

[betsuni]

73. I'm bookmarking the OP so I can reference this comment.

Next time (probably in the next ten minutes) I see the mindless repetition of propaganda about stolen primaries.

[BainsBane]

75. You don't have to look far

It's astounding how some have willfully misread the article to cast Clinton and the Democatic majority as villains. Even now, they promote precisely what the article describes. Their egos come before the will of the majority of the electorate. They have no intention of changing, and that is why democracy is failing. When so many lack the intellectual and moral strength to look at evidence or consider information that challenges them in any way, democracy cannot survive.

[LenaBaby61]

76. Happy that my closest Bernie friends ....

Are not like those who are deluded. Some have told me that they've severed ties with their Bernie friends/voters who they tell me that STILL as of 2017, they spew the "Hillary/DWS cheated Bernie out of the nomination," or the "Hillary was more flawed than tRump," or the "Bernie would have destroyed tRump: beaten him by a landslide" or the "Hillary's just as bad if not worse than tRump" memes to them

These friends of friends really don't understand that minus the Comey fiasco, sexism, 30 years of kaka flung up against a wall against Hillary, Bernie would have faced the same voter GOP driven over the top voter disenfranchisement, voter suppression, crosschecking, $2 Billion dollars worth of free air time, and nazi bannon-fueled anti-Jewish, and foul opposition research that Hillary did. Those polling places in NC would have been closed if Bernie were the Dem nominee of course. He'd have also faced the same interference from russia as Hillary did as well. tRumputin, bannon et al were not going to play nice with Bernie. I've come to the conclusion that NO Dem was going to win the presidency due to all of the MESS that went on with tRumputin, the ruskies, voter disenfranchisement, racism etc. Dems BETTER worry about if they'll be able to vote in 2016 and in 2020. I don't trust a tRumputin Doj and especially don't trust a kkk AG sessions to protect Dem voting rights at all. The voting machines are old, have no paper trail and we know voter suppression will be off the chain this next time around.

The ruskies WILL probably be "invited" to cyber-hack and worse into our elections AGAIN by tRumputin. Who knows what role WikiLeaks will have in our elections moving forward? WILL our own intelligence agencies be able to protect us against ruskie cyber-attacks?

[stevenleser]

87. The millions more who voted for Hillary in the primary had nothing to do with the DNC

You can keep up the fantasy that the DNC had an effect on who won the primary, the BS "thumbs on the scale" meme, but you will continue to run into the problem that millions more voted for Hillary than Bernie, and the DNC had nothing to do with that.

[Talk Is Cheap]

89. Well, it really is to bad that....

Clinton lost the election to a piece of shit like Trump...meaning, all of America lost...

[stevenleser]

91. Agreed, but she faced two different kinds of election fraud and still won the popular vote.

Absent two bizarre kinds of interference, the Comey announcement when he knew there was nothing there that was actionable, and the Trump campaign collusion with Russia who colluded with Wikileaks to try to damage Democrats in general and Hillary in particular, Hillary wins the election.

[Talk Is Cheap]

92. Absolutely correct...

It's always somebody or something else that causes Dems to lose elections...

[nikibatts]

60. And i do not believe Hillary was a "terrible" candidate but she was painted as one.

Tell a like often enough and it becomes reality for many.

[stevenleser]

85. There were two kinds of election fraud perpetrated against her and she still won the popular vote

I regard Comey's revelations of the investigation at the last minute when he knew there was likely nothing to it as election fraud.

I also regard the Trump campaign colluding with the Russians and Russian intelligence as election fraud.

So two kinds of election fraud against her and she still won the popular vote.

I wonder how many others would fare so well in a similar circumstance.

[LiberalLovinLug]

43. Kick and Rec

I wish some of the ardent Hillary supporters in here would acknowledge that most every Bernie supporter, followed his lead and voted for Hillary. Some unknowingly quote some Putin worker in Albania and scream about how all Bernie supporters are assholes. JPR is or was rife with Putins Trumpster army, you can tell by the George Soros is taking over the world posts. They couldn't get away with it so much in here. Shutting DU down on election day proves that.

But some in here have fallen for Putins troll army just as hard as die-in-the-wool Trump supporters. They assume the worst and fell for the false meme that Sanders supporters were the ones gleefully spreading the fake news against her. When it was Sanders that didn't even want to bring up her emails because it deflected away from the issues. Sanders supporters were supporters of his ideas, his ideals, his platform of socially responsible democracy. We were not interested in propagating fake news scandals against Hillary. If Putins trolls infiltrated our sites and polluted it like this, that is not our fault. Picking out one or two posts by these trolls and then come prancing back to DU to quote them and announce that this is an example of a typical Sanders supporter was and is infuriatingly disingenuous.

[warmfeet]

46. Indeed.

I supported Bernie originally, but when he lost the nomination I chose to vote for Hillary in the general election. I know many people in the same situation.

[Leith]

47. Yup

me, for another example. I've heard all sorts of goofy-ass stories about HRC since she was the First Lady of Arkansas. I wasn't about to start believing them in 2016.

[BainsBane]

59. Two things

You are absolutely right that most Bernie people voted for Hillary

Some Sanders supporters did spread the propaganda. The point of the Russians planting it was for it to be spread. If it were just a few people with no shares or likes, it wouldn't have kept turning up on so many FB pages.

Some of that stuff is still believed to be fact: most importantly that the primary was stolen. That was crucial to convincing some not to vote for the Dem nominee.

[lapucelle]

77. I worked with former Sanders' voters who volunteered

for Hillary during the general election PA ground game. It was a pretty heavy commitment (we were traveling on weekends from NY for a couple of months) and they were reliably and enthusiastically there week after week.

I posted about it a few times before the election as an FYI to both sides.

I did feel, however, that younger voters unfamiliar with the breadth, scope, and depth of Hillary's commitment, service, and record were subject to manipulation by a narrative that was being stoked by far from honest brokers.

[Kimchijeon]

55. K&R

[4bucksagallon]

62. Huh who would have known?

"The first tidal wave of spam was mostly anti-Bernie, Pearce recalled, posted by Clinton backers."

"In trying to wade through the flood of fake news, Sanders supporters had some serious trust issues. There was good reason to be skeptical of Clinton and the WikiLeaks dump of DNC emails was real, after all..."

Bernie would have been a great President now we're stuck with an Orange Buffoon.

[BainsBane]

74. You worked hard to avoid the point of the article

Dishonestly takng quotes out of context to reaffirm what you want to be true rather than what the article says. That is precisely the quality Russians relied on in spreading propaganda, whose targets became became all too eager accomplishes.

[stevenleser]

83. Lots of folks don't want to take responsibility for being duped by Russian engineered agitprop.

In a way I can understand.

Who wants to admit to themselves they are partially responsible for Trump being elected because they were dumb enough to fall for nonsense hook line and sinker?

[BainsBane]

86. If they don't face it

They can't learn from it. But then they don't want to learn.

[brooklynite]

88. If Bernie had been nominated, the "fake news" would have been replaced by REAL oppo...

Sanders would have had a very hard time winning a national election. The rust-belt Democrats that were feeling anxious were not going to be amenable to single-payer health care and free college tuition.

[Dopers_Greed]

70. I noticed this during the election

Russian bots and fake accounts would repost anti-DNC articles like clockwork on social media.

They were so easy to spot; they'd all have Sanders cover photos, have 0 friends, and post nothing but political memes and clickbait.

Worst part is, IT WORKED! A lot of my "progressive" friends would re-share these articles saying "I'M NEVER VOTING FOR HILARY...FUCK THE DNC".