OPINION 

Is it just a coincidence that college campuses across the country are all erupting at the same time … with the same message?

All these demonstrations have a commonality: college kids on social media.

But . . . who is creating the messages of hate?

For an answer, look at the troll farms. They are the new weapons in the new war.

They spread disinformation that divides and erodes our national will.

A troll farm is an organized group of individuals who use online platforms, including for instance, Facebook.

Russian troll farms focus on finding areas of social friction, particularly in the United States, and then amplifying them.

The goal is to have everyone at each other’s throats, weakening the social cohesion making a functioning democracy possible.

The number of troll farms is surprising.

We don’t know exactly how many of them are in operation, but by some estimates, there could be as many as 10,000.

The smallest troll farm might have one or two people and the larger ones in Russia employ as in the range of 1000 people.

Purportedly, one of the most famous, the Internet Research Agency (IRA) out of St. Petersburg, employs psychologists, sociologists, graphic designers, data analysts, information technologists, translators, and cultural experts.

Allegedly, they’re all there to foster dissension in Russia’s free world opponents.

Reportedly, the IRA operate 24 hours a day and in all time zones.

A lot of the $1.3 billion dollars Russia spends on information warfare goes to fund troll farms.

Let’s take a case example of troll farms manipulating public opinion.

The recently passed $61 billion in aid to Ukraine could theoretically have been passed half a year earlier. The politicians who opposed aid were almost certainly influenced by their constituents’ belief that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy persecutes Christians.

How was Russia able to make so many voting Americans believe that we should withhold all aid to Ukraine?

David Glancy, Professor of Strategy and Statecraft at Washington’s prestigious Institute of World Politics, knows how the process works.

"The most effective disinformation," he begins, "has three elements. First, it needs to have a kernel of truth. In this case, the kernel of truth is that Zelenskyy has shut down churches in Ukraine."

Secondly, it needs to include something the target audience finds congenial, something they’d like to believe. "For many people in the West idea that the Russian Church is a bulwark against Western decadence has a great deal of appeal," Glancy points out.

The third element of an effective disinformation campaign is that it contains something false. In this case, people hearing that Zelenskyy closed churches get the impression that Zelenskyy was going after all churches.

In fact, he only closed the few Russian Orthodox churches operating in Ukraine, and he closed them because they were spy centers actively aiding the Russian invaders. Other churches in Ukraine are flourishing. I know this because in three trips to Ukraine, I visited roughly 20 churches and saw how crowded and vibrant they were.

The troll farms have gone full bore on spreading misinformation about Zelenskyy’s supposed persecution of Christians.

According to a paper in the MIT Technology Review, in October 2019, all 15 of the top pages targeting Christian Americans, were being run by troll farms outside the U.S. The Russians used these and other social media platforms for spreading misinformation about Zelensky.

It would be typical of the trolls who participated in spreading the story to have been on their social media sites for a decade, developing fake identities, investing the time and resources to appear credible.

For example, someone goes to check out a troll who goes by the name of Peter Anderson. The person checking will find that Anderson has a following of thousands on LinkedIn, and an impressive and convincing website.

He’s worked on this identity for years.

When "Anderson" posts an anti-Zelensky message, 20 other trolls are likely to post replies supporting what Anderson just posted.

A reply post from one of them would typically amplify the message. "My cousin lives in Kyiv, and she was just arrested for being a Christian," a new post might say. Then another troll might jump in with, "It’s not just your cousin! My brother works at Kyiv’s Lukyanivka Prison. He’s not supposed to talk about it, but he told me there are more than 1200 Christians being held there right now!"

The posts are pure misinformation, but a person on the particular news site is likely to feel that the information must be true because so many others have validated it. And besides, they’ve known Peter Anderson for years, and he’s like an old friend.

The trolls can be brilliantly convincing.

Cybercrime expert Monica Pearson points out that, "These trolls aren’t street thugs. They’re people with PhDs."

If you’re surprised at how rancorous discourse is in the United States, whether it’s students at Colombia, or building the wall on our Southern border, or debating about Biden and Trump, keep this in mind: There are people in St. Petersburg who are working night and day to make this so.

Mitzi Perdue is a businesswoman, author, and anti-human trafficking advocate. She holds a bachelor of arts degree, with honors, from Harvard University and a master's degree from George Washington University. She is a past president of American Agri-Women, and was a U.S. delegate to the UN Conference on Women in Nairobi. Currently, she hosts "The Pen and the Planet" on EarthxTV. Mitzi founded the anti-trafficking organization, Win This Fight.