How does a person understand what happened in the 2016 election? Read and read and read and read and then make up your mind. I tried to be as unbiased as possible though it is impossible for anyone to be completely bias-free. My background in technology data analysis for over 30 years has given me an advantage to be less swayed by personal leanings and sympathies. I felt failed by the media and that nobody was laying out the patterns, the motives and tying it together into a cohesive picture. If I had not spent many scores of hours looking into the available information there is no way I would have gotten my own “Big Picture”.
Most people have a hard time going down a path of gathering data, analyzing it, drawing conclusions, testing conclusions, etc. We do much better with a story and this is really a great story and could be a wonderfully entertaining novel! Here is your abridged version.
For me, the chaos and craziness started fitting a pattern that made sense on many levels and I gained comfort in understanding events that before seemed disconnected. We had been lulled to sleep because Putin was very careful to hide his tracks and both the conservative and liberal media did not put together a Big Picture to explain the Why, Where, How story and subsequently for lots of people all the disparate information became mostly noise. The Trump election has brought much out into the open that wasn’t apparent before.
In summary, the Russian game was to use liberal hating, evangelical beliefs, gun loving, muslim-hate/fearing, and nationalism to create a solid base for Trump. This is where Bannon and his ideological symbiosis with the Russian, Alexander Dugin fine-tuned the message that would resonate with this group. Then the Russian GRU (intelligence and KGB successor) hacked the Dems, fed the info to Wikileaks, then used cyberwarfare bots to disseminate and amplify the info by creating thousands of fake twitter and facebook accounts. The NRA and other Pub PACS got somewhere between $30–60 funneled in from Russian oligarchs who operate under Putin’s direction. That money was used for political ads in the US.
The Russian system of turning public opinion in democratic governments had been developed over decades and used all over Europe with the Brexit campaign one notable success. The Trump election is the crowning accomplishment so far. They are going to continue sowing massive distrust in our government so people will someday accept an autocratic rule here. The current campaign is to cause people to distrust the very institutions (CIA and FBI) that protect us from foreign adversaries like Russia. The NRA is putting out a pro-Russia message even though Russia’s gun laws are hugely restrictive compared to ours.
Truly, this is one of the best stories of my lifetime. And, because it is real and not a work of fiction makes it even more compelling. We are all players in this and part of the drama by choosing what we believe and whether we join in to help the Russians succeed by amplifying these beliefs and policies that Trump and some Pubs pols/pundits are rolling out. Or, do we realize how this system of public opinion manipulation is affecting us and causing us to support policies and people who are dragging the country towards a bad end and decide to change our own rhetoric and beliefs.
Apologies up front for this not being a tidy and perfectly footnoted post. I am trying to present a Big Picture of how I see this all tied together based on the information found so far.
So, even though it will be easy to quibble with pieces of this, I believe, the Big Picture idea of Russian GRU, Wikileaks, NRA, Evangelical, Bannon, and Dugin connections to create an ideology, articulate and disseminate the ideology, and the tactical methods for manipulating public opinion to be pretty solid.
At this point, how can one not believe the Russians had significant involvement trying to sway US public opinion? The only question is whether Trump was involved directly or an innocent bystander.
Edit 8.20.2020 The US Senate released its’ 5th and final report on Russian meddling in the 2016 election. The bipartisan verdict is in and Yes — the Russians interfered in the election beyond any doubt.
Supporting notes and links to background information:
1. There is an ideological kinship between Bannon and others on the right with the Russian philosopher, Alexander Dugin. In a nutshell, that philosophy is nationalistic and fascist. These links provide the background to understand the basics of who Dugin is and why it matters to know what he is about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Dugin and https://www.thenation.com/article/is-steve-bannon-trumps-link-to-putin-and-the-european-far-right/
2. Pence is connected to the Russians through his pro-family/anti LGBT and evangelical beliefs. See http://time.com/4776717/mike-pence-russian-cleric-hilarion-alfeyev/
3. Five generals have resigned from Trump’s administration over foreign policy disagreements with Trump and Russian entanglements issues. http://fortune.com/2018/12/20/trump-mattis-resignation-letter-my-generals-flynn-kelly-mcmaster/
4. Key Trump confidants have already plead guilty to Russian involvement and then lying about it. Some made millions of dollars from being lobbyists for the Russians.
5. The NRA accepted $30–60M from Russian oligarchs. https://www.politico.com/story/2018/04/11/nra-russia-money-guns-516804
6. A Russian oligarch with ties to the Russian mob and wanted in Spain for laundering Russian mob money gave money to Trump’s inaugural committee.https://www.businessinsider.com/fbi-obtains-alexander-torshin-wiretaps-from-spanish-police-2018-5 Finally, someone in the Trump administration disinvited Torshin to a meeting in 2017 after the Spanish indicted him. But, Trump Jr and Torshin are connected through the NRA.
7. Putin has been using cyber warfare in Spain, UK, US, France, Sweden, Lithuania, Latvia, Germany, Estonia and more to create populist movements exactly like Trump has done in the US.
8. What is the end-game? To get people to believe that government is so corrupt the only answer is autocracy. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2016-12-05/how-democracies-fall-apart
9. Southern white males were targeted in the beginning because of a tie between Christian values, guns (NRA), and Muslim-hating. See note 1 below for more detail
10. Russian hackers, wikileaks, Bannon, Cambridge Analytica all worked together under Trump and Bannon’s direction to mind-game the US public with the target audience white/NRA Supporters/Christain/Muslim-hating&fearing/anti-immigration or some combination thereof.
note 1
During the 2012 elections, Torshin came to Nashville accompanied by Preston to observe voting and the election process. This is noteworthy because the American electoral process is well known around the world, but the street-level mechanics are also the most vulnerable. Any intelligence officer or surrogate would want to see it at the retail level to understand how money, politics, and influence affect votes.
Guns and religious evangelism run closely together in the United States. Most evangelicals are southern and rural. They view guns as a God-given right. Torshin was also active in the Russian Orthodox church’s outreach to the United States. He founded an international humanitarian organization, called Saint Sabbas the Presanctified, dedicated to preserving Christian shrines in Muslim-dominated Kosovo and Metohija (Western Kosovo). He was awarded a medal by the Serbian Orthodox Church, the Order of Holy King Milutin. That the two most powerful white Christian organizations in the US were brought to see Moscow’s point of view would make for the basis of an unstoppable political bloc.
Torshin would set out with his 28-year-old assistant Maria Butina. According to Time magazine, when Torshin recruited the lovely young woman she was a furniture salesperson in Siberia but moved to Moscow in 2011 to set up a pro-gun-rights group called Right to Bear Arms. This was the same time Torshin was publishing a pamphlet called “Guns Don’t Kill. People Kill.”
Butina captured the hearts of American gun enthusiasts in provocative photos. In them she presented sultry photos of herself with Saiga combat shotguns, holding Makarov pistols and standing over a dead boar. In 2013, they reached out to David Keene and other pro-gun enthusiasts and invited them to come to an annual meeting in Moscow. According to the Washington Post, the founder of the US Second Amendment Foundation, Alan Gottlieb, and his wife attended this annual meeting in Russia. They said that Torshin and Butina presented them with gifts specific to their individual interests.24 In April 2015, Butina and Torshin were invited to tour NRA headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia. They both attended the NRA National Convention and were introduced to Wisconsin Governor and presidential candidate Scott Walker.
The ties to Donald Trump took a leap when MSNBC reported that Torshin sat with Donald Trump Jr. at the NRA convention during Donald Trump Sr.’s speech. Junior, along with his brother Eric, fancied themselves as big trophy hunters. Donald Jr. was an enthusiast of large caliber guns. Torshin told Bloomberg News he had a “friendly exchange with Trump [Jr.].” The Russian connections with the Trump campaign grew.
In July 2015, a month after Donald Trump announced his candidacy for president, at the FreedomFest conference in Las Vegas, Maria Butina was the first to publicly ask Trump about US-Russia relations. “If you are to be president what is your foreign politics [especially in] the relationships with my country and do you want to continue the politics of sanctions that are damaging both [economies]?” His response was, “I know Putin, and I’ll tell you what, we get along with Putin.” She quickly tweeted in Russian: “Asked US presidential candidate Donald Trump about the position with respect to Russia. Trump talks about the easing of sanctions.” Soon after that, the NRA donated as much as $30 million to Trump — triple the amount it gave Mitt Romney.
More Supporting Links.
