DOJ: Russia Aimed Propaganda at Gamers, Minorities to Swing 2024 Election

The documents amusement that the orchestrators of the run targeted existing divisions wrong US society, utilizing racist stereotypes and far-right conspiracies to people supporters of erstwhile President Donald Trump.

​​"They are acrophobic of losing the American mode of beingness and the ‘American dream,’” Gambashidze writes successful 1 papers outlining his “guerilla media” plan. “It is these sentiments that should beryllium exploited successful the people of an accusation run in/for the United States.”

The aforesaid papers is afloat of racist and conspiratorial claims including that Republicans are “victims of favoritism of radical of color.” It adds that achromatic mediate people radical are being discriminated against with precocious ostentation and rising prices, portion “unemployed radical of colour extremity up being privileged groups of the population.”

And the extremity of the campaign, from the beginning, was crystal clear: “To unafraid triumph for [Donald Trump],” Gambashidze wrote successful the Good Old USA Project readying document.

The ‘Good Old USA’ program openly admits that “none of the important American politicians tin beryllium considered pro-Russian oregon pro-Putin,” and truthful alternatively than absorption its efforts connected trying to person radical that Russia is great, the program called for promoting the thought that the US should beryllium focusing its resources little connected Ukraine and much connected home issues, specified arsenic rising ostentation and precocious state prices.

“It makes consciousness for Russia to enactment a maximum effort to guarantee that the Republican Party’s constituent of presumption (first and foremost, the sentiment of Trump supporters) wins implicit the US nationalist opinion,” the Good Old USA Project readying papers reads. “This includes provisions connected bid successful Ukraine successful speech for territories, the request to absorption connected the problems of the US economy, returning troops location from each implicit the world, etc.”

As good arsenic getting Trump elected, the campaign’s secondary goals included expanding the percent of Americans who judge the US is doing excessively overmuch to assistance Ukraine to 51 percent, and reducing the percent of Americans who person assurance successful President Joe Biden down to 29 percent.

The program lists a assortment of audiences the run specifically wants to target, including residents of plaything states, American Jews, “US citizens of Hispanic descent,” and the “community of American gamers, users of Reddit and representation boards, specified arsenic 4chan.”

The papers describes this class of gamers and chat country users arsenic the "backbone of the right-wing trends successful the US conception of the Internet.” In caller months, the Trump run has embraced galore of the most influential figures wrong these communities, including galore who share profoundly misogynistic rhetoric connected a regular basis.

To dispersed their narrative, the program called for the instauration of YouTube channels that shared pro-Trump contented arsenic good arsenic different viral videos (“music, humor, beauteous girls etc,” according to the documents) successful bid to look astatine the apical of hunt results for “US elections.”

Meanwhile, Gambashidze and his colleagues utilized Facebook, Twitter and Reddit to make assemblage groups of Trump supporters, with 1 illustration sanction fixed arsenic “Alabama for America the Great.” The papers besides reveals that the Russians planned to usage Reddit arsenic a vector to disseminate their propaganda arsenic it is simply a level “free from antiauthoritarian censorship.”