It’s true. But let me preface by saying it is unlikely that I have any Russian DNA in me, I have never been to Russia, and I have only met two Russians in my life. I worked with one in a service job in Los Angeles, and I had memorable conversation with a lyft driver who was Russian also in LA. Both of them seemed like fine people. But over the course of 2016, I decided to join the ranks of Russian trolls to attack America’s democracy. I did so because I learned in 2016 that American democracy is a sham. It’s an illusion. It certainly doesn’t exist now, and it may have never existed. It’s a theater put on by politicians to cover-up their manipulations and exploitation. Now let me backtrack and tell the story of how I decided to become a Russian troll.
For most of my life, I have found the news excruciatingly boring, petty, irrelevant, convoluted, and not worth my time. Something always rubbed me the wrong way about the smug, suit-wearing heads, arguing topics I knew little about. If I read the paper, it was always the sports section. I learned of the important topics growing up like presidential elections, 9/11, Iraq’s WMDs, the financial meltdown, Occupy, and Obama’s rise to power mostly second hand from friends and family who watched the news. I thought Obama was going to be a savior. But midway through Obama’s presidency, when Guantanamo was still in operation, the Middle East conflicts had spill over into Syria and Libya, and Hilary Clinton seemed like the only Democrat option for ’16, I became worried. Obama was supposedly the progressive choice next to her in ‘08, but things seemed to be getting worse under his tenure. I knew my time of remaining blissfully ignorant of politics was coming to a close.
Through a few documentaries, I began to learn of the bigger picture behind some of these previously mentioned news stories, and I was shocked. How could no one from the Bush administration get punished for faulty intelligence that led to the death of millions? Why was the Bin Laden family flown out of the US after being guests at the White House on 9/11? Why wasn’t the administration ever pressed to release the tapes that supposedly show a plane crashing into the pentagon? Why wasn’t the news making a bigger deal about the defense contract profits Cheney made in the Iraq war through Halliburton? Where was the proof the Gadalffi, and Assad were terrorists? How could a supposedly free press full of brilliant investigative journalists ignore these stories when a young weed-smoking, acid-eating hippy just awakening in his political consciousness could recognize these as massive scandals worthy of the front page? Then Bernie Sanders came along.
To any social person who gleaned the news from social interactions, Bernie must have seemed like the clear favorite, but to anyone who got their news from mainstream sources, Hilary was the clear and obvious choice, and Bernie was a sideshow. For a glorious few months there was a strong unity among Bernie supporters, and we all agreed he wasn’t receiving fair news coverage. Through social media, we networked and shared the snippets of coverage Bernie did receive. I found, however, that the best coverage on Bernie was coming from independent journalists and an online news agency call RT or Russia Today. Looking at the rally crowd sizes, the excitement Bernie was generating, and the number of donations that came in, the mainstream narrative that reported Hilary as the shoo-in choice seemed extremely false. But when I shared links from independent journalists and RT that were proving in real time how the vote was actually being rigged, I found myself on quite an island. Not one of my Bernie friends would go there with me. Even when Wikileaks dropped the DNC leaks right before the convention, and it was proven that the primary were definitely rigged by the democrat establishment (among other huge scandals the leaks revealed), I found myself the only one who refused to jump on the Hilary bandwagon to defeat Trump. I was heartbroken.
Heartbroken is a loaded term, but I stand by that line. Here’s why I say that. In the middle of the primaries, I was forced to choice between two options that became apparent. I was either going to trust people without credentials who were speaking their truth with no platform but the internet and their own research and convictions, or trust the credentialed media with all its checks and balances that was supposed to prevent fake news from being published. Everyone seemed to agree the New York Times was a foremost authority on current events, but from the independent journalists I began to follow, it didn’t seem that way anymore. I knew a lot of people would question my sanity if I labeled the NYT as fake news. I internally debated the conflicting motivations separating journalists like Caitlin Johnstone, Debbie Lusignan, Eva Bartlett, and Jimmy Dore who delivered news with either no compensation or completely donation-based pay next to journalists who worked for the mainstream motivated keep their jobs. It seemed a no-brainer to anyone who got Bernie’s message. Some of the things my favorite independent journalists suggested sounded rather crazy to me at the time. But the passion and conviction that I always had found missing from the mainstream was there. Why would they expose themselves to such ridicule in this manner to spread lies. It didn’t make sense. During this time I had become ensconced in the Game of Thrones series and Tyrion Lannister made a quote that still sticks with me, “I trust the eyes of an honest man over something everyone knows.” My decision had been made. I would give up the appearance of respectability and believe people not corporations. Seeing everyone else go the other way was heartbreaking. To me they were choosing the path of empowering the corporations, and dis-empowering the individual. Had Bernie’s message of taking on the establishment been completely missed by his supporters? I went from believe change was imminent to change was impossible. It was heartbreaking.
To make matters worse, when I came out to say I was going to vote for Jill Stein, I was accused of casual misogyny and white privilege by people close to me. This wasn't a huge deal, but it bothered me that these people were not responding to the content of my post, and instead they choose to attack me. It didn’t take much research to prove many scandals about Hilary that presented a choice quite different from the social justice queen her supporters made her out to be. But no one would look past what was presented by the mainstream media. With the news media giving a daily narrative to keep the democrat base from abandoning ship through fear-inducing reports, I knew that countering that narrative at every turn was necessary. My friends and family were not going to receive the proper context on stories from the mainstream news. It was up to me to present the missing context.
I do not think the New York Times, NPR, PBS, ect., are “fake news.” The trick is the context they choice to include and ignore in their reporting. The story of how Russia hacked the election illustrates this point perfectly. For a year and a half now I have watched the mainstream media produce so-called bombshell after bombshell alleging Russian interference. And if I did not receive the proper context that the mainstream media strategically leaves out, I would probably think Russia had indeed interfered in our election. But each one of these bombshells has come up short, and in each one, the independent journalists I go to have filled me in with the missing information. Among the worst of these misleading stories involved The Atlantic using a Julian Assange quote from an email exchange between the Wikileaks founder and Donald Trump Jr. They chopped a quote mid-sentence which completely changed the meaning, “If we publish them (referring to Donald Trump’s tax returns which was the basis for the exchange between these two parties. A detail completely ignored in the report.) it will dramatically improve the perception of our impartiality,” Wikileaks explained. “That means that the vast amount of stuff that we are publishing on Clinton will have much higher impact, because it won’t be perceived as coming from a ‘pro-Trump’ ‘pro-Russia’ source.” But that period was not supposed to be there. Instead the sentence in that exchange continued with a comma followed by, “which the Clinton campaign is constantly slandering us with.” It doesn’t take much thinking to see the difference here. But the army of mainstream media source ran with the story, from CNN and NBC, to PBS and NPR, every mainstream news organization commented the story, and soon all the Russiagaters thought this was the smoking gun proof that Julian Assange was a Russian agent. It was not. It was journalistic malpractice.
I would need to turn this story into a full length book to include every episode of misleading journalism in the timeline of Russiagate, which I don’t wish to do. But even the very line that repeats every time I occasionally tune into NPR about "Russian election interference" seems misleading. But I’m just going to run with it. If election interference includes publishing factual evidence about one of the politicians, as all the mainstream media has alleged time after time, and the only ones who have done so are Russian troll, as all the mainstream media sources continue to insinuate, then I guess I’m guilty of being one of those terrifying boogey-man Trolls from Russia. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAH!
I don’t know how many people have stories similar to mine about becoming Russian trolls in 2016, despite being born and bred Americans. But I know there are thousands of us who came to the same conclusions after investing time and effort into the Bernie Sanders campaign, and getting burned by the DNC’s rigged electoral process. And despite Bernie Sanders not challenging the rigged primary, I will be forever thankful to him for running because it connected me to so many brilliant journalists and thinkers across this country I would have never known existed. Since 2016, I have laughed and cried listening to the wonderful interviews and analysis from the host of independent journalists I have followed. I donate to a few. And I promise to continue interfering with the American oligarchs’ selection process, by shedding light on the context the mainstream media leaves out in the narratives that are used to build support for America’s continued imperialism worldwide. If that makes me a Russian Troll, I embrace the label whole-heartedly.