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Russian and Chinese Bots Fueling Online ‘Violence’ After Charlie Kirk Shooting
(www.thedailybeast.com)
this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2025
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Fediverse vs Disinformation
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Pointing out, debunking, and spreading awareness about state- and company-sponsored astroturfing on Lemmy and elsewhere. This includes social media manipulation, propaganda, and disinformation campaigns, among others.
Propaganda and disinformation are a big problem on the internet, and the Fediverse is no exception.
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Love being called a Russian bot for a brand new reason every 3 months.
Maybe stop saying the exact things the Russian bots are saying?
I don't at all think that every single person (or even most of them) that thinks shooting right-wing politicians is a good idea, is a Russian bot. But definitely I think you should rethink what you believe and closely and calmly read up on what the people who disagree with you think about it, if you're so similar to the literal Russian bots that people are prone to confusing you for one.
The people I "disagree with" already want to send people like me to camps? They are already sending some citizens to countries they have literally never been to. We are past the point where simple words will do.
?
I meant listen to people like this. I definitely didn't mean listen to the MAGA people, no.
Ohhh. Yeah I still disagree with Sanders but I wish I belived the world he thinks could exist could. Unfortunately it seems like political violence has been the only way things have changed throughout history and it seems like it will continue to be that way.
The fuck?
I literally cannot think of a single one of those (or any other issue) where the resolution would have come sooner or better, if the side supporting it had been shooting random leaders on the other side. Sometimes violence is involved, sure, but literally every time I can think of assassination coming into the picture, it was being done by the bad guys, and it made things worse.
Edit: Actually, I thought of two: In reconstruction in the US, and in postwar Germany, I think in hindsight it would have been better if they'd killed more of the political leaders. The difference there is that it was settled on a mass scale first, and then, we're just implementing the will of the majority faction in an already deadly-mass-violence situation. If you're in the minority faction (unable to get your will enacted through the democratic process because 40% of the country supports fascism for example), and you start randomly killing leaders to try to make it your way even so, you're gonna have a bad time. Win or lose, you're not going to get to a destination I want to go to.
None of those happen at all. They never happen without the "threat of force"
Whether implied or actually used. All power flows forth from the threat of force. If the threat of force doesn't exist then there is no reason for bad actors to negotiate at all. They can just roll over anyone they want.
The absence of the Threat of Force is why protest in this country doesn't work. Because those in power know that its toothless. Look to Europe and Asia. To South America. When people protest there the politicians perk up because they know that the protest isn't the end. It's the prelude to God only knows what. Riots. Fires. Farmers dumping tens of thousands of pounds of manure on parliament. Etcetera. Their protest isn't toothless. They have not been taught since birth that "violence is always wrong". They will burn shit. They won't start with burning shit. But that is invariably a potential outcome if protest is ignored.
Completely agree with more or less all of that. In particular:
Yes, we should definitely be doing more of that. And, I think it is particularly interesting that most of the suspicious accounts I observed on Lemmy during the beginning of the "No Kings" protests were super against the idea of getting organized and going out in the streets as a prelude and preparation for things like that. They were saying things like that particular protests were a "false flag," extensively nail biting about the unsafe nature of getting out to protest, that they were going to sit this one out, stuff of that nature.
I wonder why they were so against organized vigorous disobedience, and now they're so in favor of random sudden violence against leaders. Almost as if one leads to much different outcomes than the other, and they're trying to mold things specifically towards one of the outcomes and not the other.
Well, if you assume any action wherein someone loses and someone wins is violence... sure. Economic sanctions? Violence. Political action? Violence. Organized non-violent protest? Better believe that's violence.
There are some people who only respond to violence because they act with violence... but by no means is that the only thing any bad actor ever does.
And yet they have to keep doing it. Over and over and over. Almost like it doesn't actually fix things, just look at France. They've been through six republics and they still haven't had lasting positive momentum. They've had violent protests almost non-stop about just about every issue there's been in the last decade or more... and yet things haven't really been fixed. The people in power still do what they think is best, often to the benefit of themselves and the detriment of the rest of the populace.
Even if violence can promote change... it doesn't promote solutions.
You have to be at the negotiating table to form a solution. And you can't get there without violence. Implicit or exercised. You need it to reqch the negotiating table and you need it to back your play.
If you aren't at the table. You're on the menu.
I mean... the abolition of slavery may be a bad choice on your part. Here in America there was a ton of violence on that aspect, and I argue we'd have had a lot less heartache if the confederate officers were treated like the traitors they were.
Violence was the response from the people who decided they didn't want to abolish slavery. It was already well on its way by the time the south seceded.
There was quite a bit of violence before the Civil War committed by the abolition movement, too.
I was talking about a specific thing which didn't exactly include the civil war: Specifically the idea of randomly assassinating leaders who represent the "evil" faction (from whoever's point of view), anonymously from out of the crowd. Mass violence as a way of implementing the will of the majority, once the other outlets for implementing it have failed, is a whole other story.
I also agree with you about violence against confederates after the war was over. Read my edit, I realized it and added that as a specific category where we could have used more of that, yes.
How do you define the term political violence? Genuinely asking because I think we might be speaking past eachother if you don't consider the civil war, and a lot of the civil rights movements to be examples without political violence.
I was very specific about what I was talking about. Search in these comments for "assassination" and "shooting" to see when I discussed it precisely.
I'm not trying to talk about "political violence" in the abstract, specifically because it can mean different things to different people, and I don't see the point in getting tangled up in definitions. So in that sense maybe we're talking past each other. You said "political violence," but instead of dealing with that topic in the abstract, I narrowed it down to the specific Charlie Kirk incident, and then talked in specifics about what types of things I do and don't support. You can search for "will of the majority" to see me talking positively about some things that it sounds like you might define as political violence.
Protests are the threat of violence. People complain about them being ineffective but they are just too small then.
Most of the important social change throughout history has been done by slow constant effort of people being organized and persistent, not violent.
The change didn't come from violence, it came from the actions of people in the wake of violence.
That's why you use complex words :)
Show me a Russian bot on Lemmy. I, and I'm sure plenty of instance admins would love to know what they look like.
I could be banned from this community if I did. That's the way they set up the rules for it.
You're not squirming out of this so easily. If you have seen a Russian bot, dm me the evidence. Ill post it.
I DMed you an example of one of the accounts posting constantly about US politics, and then one day using non-US currency punctuation in their numbers. That in itself isn't all that weird, obviously, but then someone asked them the fairly obvious question of, wait, hang on, where are you from? If you're not from the US (which looking at your numbers you clearly are not), then why do you post constantly about US politics? And, of course, the particular take they had on politics was exactly the same bizarre "all anti-Democrats all the time" opinion set that a lot of these accounts tend to have.
Anyway, when asked about the punctuation, they professed total confusion about the question, made a weird comment about symbols on their calculator, accused people of being super weird for thinking anything was strange about the non-American style they used for money, got hostile, and refused to engage anymore. Basically their answer was 100% bizarre. That part of it is a pretty strong indication that they're a foreign influence operation, although of course I have no idea whether that means "Russian," and it's impossible to really be sure.
They've long since been banned for other sins, but that was the one that really stuck out to me as actual evidence. Most of the time, it's impossible to tell the difference between an influence operation and just someone with a particular set of genuine opinions. They're only really obvious when they fuck up like that or something, which doesn't happen all that often.
There you go, no squirming required.
Whether that poster is American or not, they're quite obviously not a bot. But accusing people who are critical of America's bipartisan support for genocide of just being a foreigner is a little too mask-off.
I had a feeling you would wildly misconstrue lol
I was and still am very welcoming of people who are critical of America's bipartisan support for genocide. I'm one of them. People who wanted to make the genocide ten times worse (and have now succeeded), by letting someone into power who wants to turn what was already a catastrophe into something much, much darker, probably the end of Gaza and maybe the end of the West Bank depending, I was opposed to.
People who were willing to sacrifice Gaza by letting Trump come into office, for whatever reasons of their own, and disguise it behind a tissue-thin veneer of care for Palestinians and accuse other people of some kind of wild weirdness any time someone calls them out on it, I was definitely opposed to. Also, not to mention sacrificing progress on the climate, safety for anyone inside the US who's not a citizen, free elections, all kinds of things which are now in horrible danger.
Anyway, this account clearly wasn't American and was still agitating tirelessly for a particular outcome in American politics which was guaranteed to make things much, much, much worse for Palestinians. If you want to say that they're not literally a bot, and I haven't proven that they're Russian, then sure. Fair. IDK why you would immediately react though by making excuses for this user or pretending that my complaint was something absolutely wholly different from what my complaint was, if you cared about Palestinians.
Its not misconstruing to point out you original claim, Russian bots, isn't what you are trying to prove, foreign-funded pro-republican posters.
But the notion that the poster is pro-republican is the core issue here.
The purpose of screaming about ghoulish shit the dems do isn't to pretend the republicans won't do the same shit, its to pressure the dems to stop doing that shit so they have a shot in hell at winning. By the end of October, dem insiders were saying the protesters were electorally irrelevant and the kids would forget and go home and vote dem by November and people like you were demanding we pledge to vote dem unconditionally instead of helping pressure the dems to do the only thing that would have allowed them to win.
Nothing you or I can say makes genocide, means testing, and rolling over for republicans/adopting their framing and policies popular among potential dem voters.
Every time you say "well republicans also do x/y/z", you help the DNC maintain the delusion they can win on dogshit policy that only their donors like.
So then you sort of implied that OBVIOUSLY I hadn't seen any Russian bots and was just squirming.
So then I said, well, here's a poster who is pretty clearly a foreign influence operation of some kind, in my opinion, but you can draw your own conclusions.
And then you said that OBVIOUSLY I'm just against anyone who is critical of America's bipartisan support for genocide, and the whole thing about the calculator and the actual point of my post was just a distraction I guess.
When I addressed that you moved to saying OBVIOUSLY the purpose of this non American person "screaming about the ghoulish shit the dems do" is just to help the Democrats win the election by changing their messaging, because the DNC reads Lemmy I guess? And you know that that was this person's motivation?
There is a pretty good video which talks about this argumentation strategy. It's never just "Hey show me an example of a Russian bot" "Here's an example, it doesn't completely fit what you asked for but it's what I've got" "Yeah that doesn't exactly fit, I thought you said Russian bots" "Tru dat" (fin). It always has to morph into some new argument in every message, and it always has to be part of a prepackaged talking point ("I'm just trying to help the Democrats" "Oh I guess you think ANYONE who's anti-genocide is a Russian bot" are both things I've seen a bunch of times before. The first one doesn't even apply here, since I think ostensibly we were talking about why this other person was airing these particular views, which you would have no idea about why they would say it, or what the "purpose" was. Anyway, and so on.)
I asked for a Russian bot. When what you gave me wasn't a bot and undetermined whether Russian, I didn't say "thats not a bot, you're wrong", I accepted what you actually meant, 'malicious foreigners, presumably paid, to post arguments and news that supports republicans by showing the dems actions and words' and responded accordingly.
and specifically and explicitly said
blaming literally everything happening anywhere in the world on Democrats and also never shutting up about it and refusing to engage with the objective fact that the Republicans would be catastrophically worse in literally every way
claimed I accuse anyone who opposes genocide of being a bot even though a quick search for 'I don't at all think' or 'just someone with a particular set of genuine opinions' will show me saying literally the exact opposite of that, and emphasizing the reasons why I thought this particular person was an influence operation which had not a lot to do with their opinions except in passing
Fixed some parts for you. I hope there are still some Gazans alive by the time your grand strategy to fix American Israel policy comes back for the next round in the next election. I think it is more likely than not that they'll all be dead. Good job, Patrick, we saved Palestine.
The people to your left accept republicans are worse, that is why we are trying to make the only alternative stop doing the things that put republicans in power. You refuse to engage with the fact that "this one election is too import, we have to shut up and pretend this electorally moronic strategy of being 99% republicans can win." is how we keep getting republicans.
The only way we could have stopped the genocide in Gaza was to stop the dems from bombing them while telling their own base to eat shit, beating the politically activated college students they depend on for a ground game, and maintaining and expanding ICE so they wouldn't lose.
https://quokk.au/comment/877314
How about all the "Democrats are equally as bad as Republicans" bots and the "Genocide Joe" bots?
I bet you saw a lot of those.
You know, the ones who made sure the Democrats didn't get enough votes to win against someone as dumb as Trump?
Show me one, an actual bot. Nearly any instance admin would be happy to ban them.
Though if you meant "malicious foreigners are the reason people were saying genocide is bad and the dems need to stop it or they will lose", we can have that discussion instead.
Exactly what a Russian bot would say
So of course, I had to check your comment history and, though it's evident you are not trying to be a social saboteur, your manner can be quite abrasive or even arrogant at times and thus seem like a provocateur.
So if that's part of your schtick, I guess you might as well just get used to the accusations now and then.
It's the new shill.
Weird info to volunteer
It's really easy to make shitlibs accuse you of being a Russian bot. Attack their argument from the left.
That's all it takes.
ShItLiB
Are you trying to do a SpongeBob meme thing?
Because you're failing if so.
I'm trying to say that people who use that term are idiots
Ah. Ok. Thank you.
So do you prefer centrist or moderate to shitlib? I'm all about using people's preferred synonyms whenever possible.
I'm not concerned with what morons say or do anymore