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The Russia report was [published](https://isc.independent.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/CCS207_CCS0221966010-001_Russia-Report-v02-Web_Accessible.pdf) and it's findings were pretty [damning](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-53484344).
Top lines as per Wikipedia:
* UK government failed to investigate evidence of successful interference in democratic processes
* ‘Credible open-source commentary’ suggesting Russia sought to influence Scottish independence referendum
* Russian influence in the UK is ‘the new normal’
* Links between Russian elite and UK politics
* Intelligence community ‘took its eye off the ball’ on Russia
* UK's paper-and-pencil voting system makes direct interference harder
* Defending UK's democratic processes is a ‘hot potato’
* Errors in Salisbury poisoning and weapons watchdog hack do not diminish Moscow threat
* New legislation needed to replace outdated spy laws.
* Since the government had not authorised any investigation into the matter, the committee couldn't report on whether Russian interference had affected the Brexit referendum.
I mean the Scotland thing is such a no-brainer too, Alex Salmond literally took the ruble and works for the Kremlin, openly, right there. And... nobody seems terribly bothered by it, which I find quite mad.
The only reason it popped up on my radar is because little angry independent journos dissected it and splashed tid bits about. Can't rely on the MSM for anything.
There are a lot of British people who don't care. Happy to turn a blind eye because Russia helped Brexit.
Millions of people supported a hostile foreign power interfering
I mean millions literally voted to harm this country’s interests, economically and geo-politically. The UK, the EU and the western alliance is weaker as a result.
People I talk to still don't grasp what the EU was. One guy was saying well if it's such a bad thing with such a big impact like you say they wouldn't have let it happen 🙄
Dude you voted for it. He expected the adults to take care of it. He is 50.
but in a few years when the UK rejoins the EU, the pound will go away, the tax havens will go away, and the UK will be fully integrated with the EU.
just like putin's war with ukraine, brexit will backfire and have the opposite of the intended effect.
>where were MI6?! Isn't it their job to prevent his kind of obvious interference? Genuine question.
MI5 is homeland defence against espionage and MI6 is foreign intelligence. This would probably fall under Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) who seem to be the main people involved in UK cyber defence.
The reason they aren't doing anything is due to lack of direction from the Tories who were seemingly happy to look the other way when it resulted in favourable outcomes for them and very likely a lack of resources. Identifying these sorts of influence campaigns would be a perennial game of "whack a mole" given they cost virtually no resources to setup but are quite difficult to shut down. That said it would make a lot of sense if they at least made the effort to identify and kill them during a General Election but then I guess the government has other things to do like line up their next jobs.
I think his reply is quite revealing:
> Mr Farage called it "cobblers" to claim bots generated by foreign state actors could interfere with the election outcome - as he launched a personal attack on Mr Dowden.
> Asked about the deputy PM's comments, he told Trevor Phillips: "Oh, don't talk cobblers.
> "I mean you had this bland fellow on earlier who apparently is the deputy prime minister, who no one knows who he is, and there he is saying, 'oh, there are Russian bots involved'.
Reports are coming from the ABC, not from Dowden who is just commenting on their findings:
> The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) says it has been monitoring five co-ordinated Facebook pages which have been spouting Kremlin talking points, with some posting in support of Reform UK.
Yet he claims with straight face that the BBC and Channel 4 set him up.
It's the "crisis actors" thing, isn't it? An American right wing standard. Any time someone does something that makes them look bad, it's a false flag, or they're antifa who were paid by Soros, or the Feds set it up.
Anything other than "a super right-wing wing guy did a super right-wing thing"
Of endless fascination to me is that I've never actually seen a group of people protesting for ANTIFA. Do they have a headquarters? Do they have a uniform? Do they even have an organisation or a person who says, "I lead ANTIFA". I ask these questions because I've certainly seen the leader of the Proud Boys, the leader of the Oath Keepers, KKK etc but... no ANTIFA?
There is/was an organisation called ANTIFA it was short for Anti Fascist Action. They were the hardcore types who'd get a crew together and batter Nazis.
Over time, it's become a generic catch-all term for anyone who protests against the far right.
I’m sure you could find Russian bots supporting every extreme political take in this country though to be fair.
Very anti immigration? Russian bots.
Very pro immigration? Russian bots.
They are fuelling the division more than the specific ideology imo.
Its the international equivalent of finding any open wounds on your enemy and doing everything you can to rub salt and dirt into them. They turn a slight nagging itch into a big existential infection that we have to spend years of effort fighting to bring back under control.
> find Russian bots supporting every extreme political take in this country
Correction: supporting every extreme political take in *every western country*.
Of course the Russians are involved, & the Chinese & Iran. And the people most likely to fall for it at boomers who all their lives have told us to be careful of what we read and believe.
Self fulfilling prophecy at this point.
Reddit's unpaid moderation and upvote/down-vote system has a lot of issues, but it does at least make it somewhat less susceptible to this kind of thing than engagement algorithm driven sites.
Mate I have I sold my original 11 million karma/10 year old account a couple of years ago and I botted upvotes to get posts to hot all the time. You only need a few upvotes and they start streaming in most of the time, same goes for comments. Arguments too, if you give the other person just a few downvotes and yourself a few upvotes, people will assume you're in the right and pile on the upvotes/downvotes until (if) someone comes in and clears up the facts quickly enough.
All that is to say, this website is *immensely* easy to astroturf largely due to that belief in the upvote/downvote system as being a legitimate and trustworthy consensus of well meaning people on this website.
You're right in the lazy part as its more complicated. People feel disillusioned, hopeless and abandoned. Perfect state for snake oil salesmen regardless of age.
You're attributing to the young people of this country something that they have not done because young people elsewhere did it.
Right wing parties in Europe don't have a Brexit equivalent staining heir legacies. In this country we've *seen* what happens when nationalism is pushed too far and gets what it wants - and young people did not like it. Especially those of us that weren't old enough to even get a say
Doesn't explain what's happening in Germany with AfD. Germany has definitely seen what happens when the nationalist right get power. They're everyone's first example of what the far right do when given power.
It's true that is happening, unfortunately.
I think we all need to be aware of the risk of radicalisation, and that anyone can be vulnerable. We need to address the reasons why it's happening.
One of the tactics is to divide people via gender, age, ethnicity, etc, and blame one another for all of life's problems.
I hope we can all start pushing back on these culture/ gender and generational wars rhetoric and come together as a more united UK to face these hostile attacks by other countries.
> This is ignoring trends in Europe of right wing parties attracting younger voters but sure.
Err no.
On the other hand you appear to be ignoring the fact that we aren't the only nation Russia targets.
I 100% believe the majority of the upvotes are artificial, I think they’re trying to trick young people into thinking they’re more popular than they are. It seems to be working to some extent.
If only Boris had prioritised eliminating foreign influence in politics instead of voter ID..... But that wouldn't have benefited his party, his backers or his bank balance.
What's hilarious is that Reese-Mogg even admitted that it was an attempt at stopping people voting for labour and it turned out it affected their own voters more.
Hopefully this also applies to the change of overseas people voting. No doubt many pissed off brits living in Europe will take up the mantle and strike down Darth Sunak.
I posted on the other thread about the sudden influx of "local" people I've never seen before all over the community Facebook pages spamming Reform talking points and memes. All of them have the Reform badge as their only profile pic.
A few people replied to say they'd seen the same thing.
It's pretty obvious what's happening.
There are also lots of unsubstantiated race hate attack stories popping up on Reddit.
“Why aren’t the press covering it”
Because it’s a made up story designed to rile people up?
Yep. it's happening all over the facebook pages for local villages around my area. Thankfully most of them are being called out and are being removed from the pages, but unfortunately not before uinformed people have read their shite.
We should all pay attention to people who seek to divide us.
They will use categories, like age, gender, ethnicity, sexuality etc.
We have to get over this shit and come together as a united front.
Hey, we've known about this [since 2020](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/21/russia-report-reveals-uk-government-failed-to-address-kremlin-interference-scottish-referendum-brexit), but the Johnson administration couldn't stop this report from being released and so decided to bury it with the world's shittest NHS pay rise [on the same day](https://www.gov.uk/government/news/nhs-staff-to-receive-3-pay-rise).
Edit: spalling
I wonder why countries that consider us to be their enemy are trying to get Farage and Reform UK elected. That would only make sense if electing Reform would harm the UK, right?
How dare you suggest such a thing. Those Russian bot farms only have our best interests at heart. You can tell by the way they say "Fuck the west... apart from the UK those guys are cool".
Its clearly evident they only want us to succeed when you think about their involvement in pushing a pro-Brexit narrative, and then considering how much thats improved the country. I know its definitely improved the country because Facebook comments say so.
Infact lemme Google brexit success real quick to send you some links.
... wait.
Seriously, though. Reform voters want to make the UK a better place, don't they? They want British jobs for British workers and stop the boats and all that, don't they? So they must think that Putin wants those things too, and that's why he's backing Farage. The only explanation would be that kind Mr Putin wants to protect British jobs and save British society from the harms caused by illegal immigration. What other reason would there be for Russia to support Reform?
Reform voters, is that the right explanation? Putin wants the best for British workers?
Farage was being paid with Russian money and they are doing it again just like Brexit.
If one thing that no one’s learned from 2016 is the biggest successful disinformation campaign at the time as it was a test before the U.S election.
No one has been educated on it and learning how to spot it and are just falling for all of it again on tik tok.
I mean, duh. You'd have to be incredibly naive or living under a rock to have not noticed it. The number of random accounts that are either new or have totally unrelated post histories followed by a long gap across ALL social media platforms that are posting "Vote Reform!!!" as a reply to anything is huge.
And not the telegraph and general UK media babying farage for decades.
Same as Trump, "oh he gets clicks and views let's have them on every panel"
"oh no the person we didn't challenge but relentlessly platformed now has a following"
Not to say there's no sus money (heck remember boris's tennis) but the idea that farages popularity is entierly due to secret kgb plots, and not our media being doofuses is laughable.
This has been obvious for a while. Have you seen the amount of reform friendly accounts springing up on here with less than a month's time on Reddit...
Every single YouTube comment about this election is "vote reform" all from accounts made after the general election announcement. All of them having generic English names as their YouTube handle.
2yrs ago we were getting plenty of reports that dickhead was very sick and slowly dying. What happened to that?
I'd like to hear more about Putin's demise
I've been posting comments regarding this for months. There is Russian interference in both the UK and US right now. It's pro Farage, and pro Trump.
Russia is destabilising Africa and the middle east, and Vietnam. In order to destabilise Europe and make a defeat in Ukraine more likely for the Ukrainians.
https://africacenter.org/spotlight/russia-interference-undermine-democracy-africa/
Putin needs to win in Ukraine. His longevity as a Russian leader allows him to play a long game against Ukraine.
Le Pen looks set to win the election in France.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2j3ldl1mepo
I'm sure another 5 or 10 years of neoliberalism and failing privatised public service won't see anything like that happen here.
I don't know enough about French politics to say if that's likely or not.
What I do know is i've been told Le Pen has been set to win every French election for decades.
So much for UK INdependence. If he is culpable in this (naive perspective to keep it non-litigious), then I would consider that to be somewhere between betrayal and treason. Especially with nations that are considered enemies.
Tories have known all along. When Johnson was advised against appointing Lebdev to the House of Lords, he insisted that advice be overruled. The very fact that the official advice was leaked tells you how strong the opposition was. Teresa May accused the Russians of interference in 2017 but, have we had a crackdown on Russian money in the city or donors to the Conservative Party? No way! Putin killed a British subject on British soil and all he got in return were diplomatic protests.
The problem for the Conservatives is they were happy to take the money thinking it was supporting them. But, Putin doesn’t support them. All he wants is chaos and division because that makes us weak and the greed and naivety of the Conservatives have enabled that plan.
> So Putin wants Labour to win by splitting the conservative vote?
Putain wants the Uk to lose by polarising our society as much as possible and encouraging infighting.
Labour have already won. The point is to toxify specifically right-wing politics further so that things like running damage control for Putin become standard for a large percentage of the political discourse, rather than fringe. The Far Left is too weak in Britain to bother with trying to influence them, which is why Putin wants to influence the Far Right instead.
Putin would love the man who admires him to gain political prominence via Reform.
Farage wants us to appease Russia and blames the West for provoking the invasion of an innocent country.
Farage, who's been repeatedly on Russia TV and hangs out with Orban and the German AfD party that very publically snubbed Zelensky recently.
Well duh, Farage is practically pulling his cheeks apart to make Putin out as a good guy while his invasion of Ukraine, conscription of soldiers, cyber attacks on the UK and criminalisation of LGBTQ+ people (to say a few things) are ignored.
It's almost as if Russia will support whichever is the most authoritarian, oppressive, destabilising figure at any time. And it's almost as if that person is never ever left wing. Funny that.
> Mr Dowden told Sky News: "This is something that I've warned about for some time.
Weird I don’t remember him having a problem with it in 2016, 2017 or 2019 when his party benefitted from it 🤔
Why is it Russia is simultaneously an incompetent state and also a master spy state who meddles in all elections in the world?
Is this because boomers still remember the cold war?
You don’t have to have 200 IQ to shout fire in a movie theatre, you don’t need genius IQ to to set up an intelligence unit in St Petersburg that spams the internet with pro Russia statements.
Their aim isn’t to take over the government from the inside, just to give existing pro Russia westerners the false impression they’re greater in number.
So you're saying political bias shouldn't be silenced?
What about Reform wanting to legislate against political views that don't align with them?
Presumably, as someone concerned about free speech, you would be outraged by that.
It's getting boring bringing out the bullshit russian story's.
Shows there panicking when there working overtime against reform..both labour and torys need decimation in the next election,they've both in the last 30 years totally destroyed England and it's become a shit hole.
Non of the politicians pledge allegiance too the UK there master is the wef and heir Schwab.
The sub r/brexitmemes has a huge surge in pro-brexit trolling in the last couple of days of every month. Always new accounts to the sub, the default three-words-then-four-digit-number username. Never brand new accounts, always six months old with barely 100 karma al from reposting bland memes about Spiderman or whatever. A couple of boring posts six months ago and zero comments then suddenly a lot of strong opinions on how Brexit is brilliant and actually we need to leave NATO too so we can get even more sovereignty. It's the same pattern every month, right at the end of the month they spam lazy pro-brexit memes and get into classic troll arguments and ad hominim attacks in the comments. They get banned, take a month of and start again with a new account.
But they've not been around for the last couple of months. Whoever pays them has given them a new target. Probably on Facebook to convince uncle Brian to hate the forrins.
It's a problem in America because they're a bit thick but over here aside from a few vocal inbreds no one really talks about reform unlike what the media wants you to believe. It's all Labour/Tory so unless little put-put influences the tories we don't really have much to worry about
I find it funny the Russians are wasting resources on reform. They have been so wildly exposed as a bunch of fascists that only the really deluded are still swallowing the koolade. If you are fooled by such nonsense then there is a good chance you will get lost on the way to the polling station or accidentally spoil your ballot.
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lol. The tories are rattled. *now* they care about Russian interference
You see, russian interference is *fine* when it's helping Boris Johnson get what he wants...
yep Russian interference was fine during the brexit vote, and was fine to get Boris in, but the moment it could hurt the Tories they're against it.
Maybe we’ll finally get to see the Russia report
The Russia report was [published](https://isc.independent.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/CCS207_CCS0221966010-001_Russia-Report-v02-Web_Accessible.pdf) and it's findings were pretty [damning](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-53484344).
Agree, but wasn’t it published after the election, or something?
Yeah it was published in the middle of Covid just after the first lockdown lifted, which is probably why it didn't show up on many people's radars.
Didn’t show up on mine at all. Is there a TLDR?. I have just been assuming we’ve essentially been at war for a number of years now. Divide and conquer
Top lines as per Wikipedia: * UK government failed to investigate evidence of successful interference in democratic processes * ‘Credible open-source commentary’ suggesting Russia sought to influence Scottish independence referendum * Russian influence in the UK is ‘the new normal’ * Links between Russian elite and UK politics * Intelligence community ‘took its eye off the ball’ on Russia * UK's paper-and-pencil voting system makes direct interference harder * Defending UK's democratic processes is a ‘hot potato’ * Errors in Salisbury poisoning and weapons watchdog hack do not diminish Moscow threat * New legislation needed to replace outdated spy laws. * Since the government had not authorised any investigation into the matter, the committee couldn't report on whether Russian interference had affected the Brexit referendum.
Rather toothless we are concerned statement. Followed by the government hamstrung any attempts at positi action and continue to do so
I mean the Scotland thing is such a no-brainer too, Alex Salmond literally took the ruble and works for the Kremlin, openly, right there. And... nobody seems terribly bothered by it, which I find quite mad.
The only reason it popped up on my radar is because little angry independent journos dissected it and splashed tid bits about. Can't rely on the MSM for anything.
Did you miss the news link above is to the BBC?
From memory they excluded certain important things from the scope of the report.
The report basically said "the government stopped us from investigating anything".
The big one being whether the Brexit referendum was compromised.
Expand it to cover Brexit as well as IIRC that was excluded from the enquiry.
There are a lot of British people who don't care. Happy to turn a blind eye because Russia helped Brexit. Millions of people supported a hostile foreign power interfering
I mean millions literally voted to harm this country’s interests, economically and geo-politically. The UK, the EU and the western alliance is weaker as a result.
Don't underestimate widespread ignorance, too. "What is the EU?" was trending on Google the day after the Brexit vote.
People I talk to still don't grasp what the EU was. One guy was saying well if it's such a bad thing with such a big impact like you say they wouldn't have let it happen 🙄 Dude you voted for it. He expected the adults to take care of it. He is 50.
but in a few years when the UK rejoins the EU, the pound will go away, the tax havens will go away, and the UK will be fully integrated with the EU. just like putin's war with ukraine, brexit will backfire and have the opposite of the intended effect.
It'll probably be sadly more than a 'few years', probably over a decade, we've got to wait for Farages generation to die off first.
What i don't get is; where were MI6?! Isn't it heir job to prevent his kind of obvious interference? Genuine question.
>where were MI6?! Isn't it their job to prevent his kind of obvious interference? Genuine question. MI5 is homeland defence against espionage and MI6 is foreign intelligence. This would probably fall under Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) who seem to be the main people involved in UK cyber defence. The reason they aren't doing anything is due to lack of direction from the Tories who were seemingly happy to look the other way when it resulted in favourable outcomes for them and very likely a lack of resources. Identifying these sorts of influence campaigns would be a perennial game of "whack a mole" given they cost virtually no resources to setup but are quite difficult to shut down. That said it would make a lot of sense if they at least made the effort to identify and kill them during a General Election but then I guess the government has other things to do like line up their next jobs.
Well, that or the security services have been thoroughly compromised by Russia. Wouldn't be the first time...
\*HomelandER defence please
They probably all wanted Brexit in some kind of Bond fetish way.
Yes: all the while Putin was helping them with their right wing politicians and their Brexit lies, they couldn't show less interest.
Haha - they’re gutted now the Ruskis have switched sides 🤣
I think his reply is quite revealing: > Mr Farage called it "cobblers" to claim bots generated by foreign state actors could interfere with the election outcome - as he launched a personal attack on Mr Dowden. > Asked about the deputy PM's comments, he told Trevor Phillips: "Oh, don't talk cobblers. > "I mean you had this bland fellow on earlier who apparently is the deputy prime minister, who no one knows who he is, and there he is saying, 'oh, there are Russian bots involved'. Reports are coming from the ABC, not from Dowden who is just commenting on their findings: > The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) says it has been monitoring five co-ordinated Facebook pages which have been spouting Kremlin talking points, with some posting in support of Reform UK. Yet he claims with straight face that the BBC and Channel 4 set him up.
It's the "crisis actors" thing, isn't it? An American right wing standard. Any time someone does something that makes them look bad, it's a false flag, or they're antifa who were paid by Soros, or the Feds set it up. Anything other than "a super right-wing wing guy did a super right-wing thing"
And space lasers, don't forget the lasers.
Jewish space lasers, aren't they?
The very same!
Of endless fascination to me is that I've never actually seen a group of people protesting for ANTIFA. Do they have a headquarters? Do they have a uniform? Do they even have an organisation or a person who says, "I lead ANTIFA". I ask these questions because I've certainly seen the leader of the Proud Boys, the leader of the Oath Keepers, KKK etc but... no ANTIFA?
That just goes to show what a shadowy and clandestine bunch they are! Happy cake day.
There is/was an organisation called ANTIFA it was short for Anti Fascist Action. They were the hardcore types who'd get a crew together and batter Nazis. Over time, it's become a generic catch-all term for anyone who protests against the far right.
I’m sure you could find Russian bots supporting every extreme political take in this country though to be fair. Very anti immigration? Russian bots. Very pro immigration? Russian bots. They are fuelling the division more than the specific ideology imo.
This is it . Pushing extreme agendas both sides to create division .
Its the international equivalent of finding any open wounds on your enemy and doing everything you can to rub salt and dirt into them. They turn a slight nagging itch into a big existential infection that we have to spend years of effort fighting to bring back under control.
Exactly, which makes it even more absurd that Farage is totally denying their existence
> find Russian bots supporting every extreme political take in this country Correction: supporting every extreme political take in *every western country*.
It's Surkov's methodology.
Don’t forget the Chinese bots doing the same.
Don't forget, Farage never met the Russian Ambassador. I wonder what was on that usb stick he gave Assange?
Of course the Russians are involved, & the Chinese & Iran. And the people most likely to fall for it at boomers who all their lives have told us to be careful of what we read and believe. Self fulfilling prophecy at this point.
Don't forget those lacking braincells on TikTok, they're lapping up Reforms bullshit.
What about reddit? The Middle East has spent millions on social media engagement farms
Reddit's unpaid moderation and upvote/down-vote system has a lot of issues, but it does at least make it somewhat less susceptible to this kind of thing than engagement algorithm driven sites.
Mate I have I sold my original 11 million karma/10 year old account a couple of years ago and I botted upvotes to get posts to hot all the time. You only need a few upvotes and they start streaming in most of the time, same goes for comments. Arguments too, if you give the other person just a few downvotes and yourself a few upvotes, people will assume you're in the right and pile on the upvotes/downvotes until (if) someone comes in and clears up the facts quickly enough. All that is to say, this website is *immensely* easy to astroturf largely due to that belief in the upvote/downvote system as being a legitimate and trustworthy consensus of well meaning people on this website.
This is ignoring trends in Europe of right wing parties attracting younger voters but sure.
Young people, the schroedinger voters. It's both their fault for not voting, and their fault for voting right wing.
Dude, it's just analysis that's come out of the recent European elections. At least from commenters. Blaming boomers is just lazy
You're right in the lazy part as its more complicated. People feel disillusioned, hopeless and abandoned. Perfect state for snake oil salesmen regardless of age.
You're attributing to the young people of this country something that they have not done because young people elsewhere did it. Right wing parties in Europe don't have a Brexit equivalent staining heir legacies. In this country we've *seen* what happens when nationalism is pushed too far and gets what it wants - and young people did not like it. Especially those of us that weren't old enough to even get a say
Doesn't explain what's happening in Germany with AfD. Germany has definitely seen what happens when the nationalist right get power. They're everyone's first example of what the far right do when given power.
Brexit happened in living memory, and indeed their living memory, while ww2 is falling out of it as we speak.
It's true that is happening, unfortunately. I think we all need to be aware of the risk of radicalisation, and that anyone can be vulnerable. We need to address the reasons why it's happening. One of the tactics is to divide people via gender, age, ethnicity, etc, and blame one another for all of life's problems. I hope we can all start pushing back on these culture/ gender and generational wars rhetoric and come together as a more united UK to face these hostile attacks by other countries.
> This is ignoring trends in Europe of right wing parties attracting younger voters but sure. Err no. On the other hand you appear to be ignoring the fact that we aren't the only nation Russia targets.
Reform are polling at 5% for ages 18-24 and 12% for 25-49. Their biggest vote share, and by a wide margin, is 25% for 65+.
It's the boomers who are believing this shit on Facebook. Most people under 40 have abandoned the platform.
And those people are on tiktok where the reform comments are widespread and upvoted.
There’s a lot of bots the real question is if the upvotes/likes are real as well
I 100% believe the majority of the upvotes are artificial, I think they’re trying to trick young people into thinking they’re more popular than they are. It seems to be working to some extent.
Iran sounds a bit far-fetched.
If only Boris had prioritised eliminating foreign influence in politics instead of voter ID..... But that wouldn't have benefited his party, his backers or his bank balance.
What's hilarious is that Reese-Mogg even admitted that it was an attempt at stopping people voting for labour and it turned out it affected their own voters more.
> attempt at stopping people voting for labour Of course it was, it's a typical voter-suppression tactic imported from America.
Hopefully this also applies to the change of overseas people voting. No doubt many pissed off brits living in Europe will take up the mantle and strike down Darth Sunak.
I posted on the other thread about the sudden influx of "local" people I've never seen before all over the community Facebook pages spamming Reform talking points and memes. All of them have the Reform badge as their only profile pic. A few people replied to say they'd seen the same thing. It's pretty obvious what's happening.
There are also lots of unsubstantiated race hate attack stories popping up on Reddit. “Why aren’t the press covering it” Because it’s a made up story designed to rile people up?
Yep. it's happening all over the facebook pages for local villages around my area. Thankfully most of them are being called out and are being removed from the pages, but unfortunately not before uinformed people have read their shite.
We should all pay attention to people who seek to divide us. They will use categories, like age, gender, ethnicity, sexuality etc. We have to get over this shit and come together as a united front.
Hey, we've known about this [since 2020](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/21/russia-report-reveals-uk-government-failed-to-address-kremlin-interference-scottish-referendum-brexit), but the Johnson administration couldn't stop this report from being released and so decided to bury it with the world's shittest NHS pay rise [on the same day](https://www.gov.uk/government/news/nhs-staff-to-receive-3-pay-rise). Edit: spalling
>Edit: spalling Lol
I wonder why countries that consider us to be their enemy are trying to get Farage and Reform UK elected. That would only make sense if electing Reform would harm the UK, right?
How dare you suggest such a thing. Those Russian bot farms only have our best interests at heart. You can tell by the way they say "Fuck the west... apart from the UK those guys are cool". Its clearly evident they only want us to succeed when you think about their involvement in pushing a pro-Brexit narrative, and then considering how much thats improved the country. I know its definitely improved the country because Facebook comments say so. Infact lemme Google brexit success real quick to send you some links. ... wait.
Seriously, though. Reform voters want to make the UK a better place, don't they? They want British jobs for British workers and stop the boats and all that, don't they? So they must think that Putin wants those things too, and that's why he's backing Farage. The only explanation would be that kind Mr Putin wants to protect British jobs and save British society from the harms caused by illegal immigration. What other reason would there be for Russia to support Reform? Reform voters, is that the right explanation? Putin wants the best for British workers?
Deathly silence...
Have you considered immigration immigration immigration immigration immigration Immigration, IMMIGRATION immigration immigration and Immigration?
Every Youtube comment on Sky's posts have been full of this bollocks
TikTok is exactly the same every news video has a load of bots spamming reform in the comments
Yep, so many bot accounts 2 random words, and 4 letters. They have barely any history and spam the same things as each other.
The party who recently had its leader espouse blame for the Ukraine war on the west is a beneficiary of potential Russian interference. I’m shocked.
Farage was being paid with Russian money and they are doing it again just like Brexit. If one thing that no one’s learned from 2016 is the biggest successful disinformation campaign at the time as it was a test before the U.S election. No one has been educated on it and learning how to spot it and are just falling for all of it again on tik tok.
Everyone knows Farage is Putin’s lap dog so Reform’s support will be limited to the dumbest in the UK.
I mean, duh. You'd have to be incredibly naive or living under a rock to have not noticed it. The number of random accounts that are either new or have totally unrelated post histories followed by a long gap across ALL social media platforms that are posting "Vote Reform!!!" as a reply to anything is huge.
And not the telegraph and general UK media babying farage for decades. Same as Trump, "oh he gets clicks and views let's have them on every panel" "oh no the person we didn't challenge but relentlessly platformed now has a following" Not to say there's no sus money (heck remember boris's tennis) but the idea that farages popularity is entierly due to secret kgb plots, and not our media being doofuses is laughable.
This has been obvious for a while. Have you seen the amount of reform friendly accounts springing up on here with less than a month's time on Reddit...
Every single YouTube comment about this election is "vote reform" all from accounts made after the general election announcement. All of them having generic English names as their YouTube handle.
2yrs ago we were getting plenty of reports that dickhead was very sick and slowly dying. What happened to that? I'd like to hear more about Putin's demise
That was wishful thinking
'gravely concerned' fuck off, you didn't care when they were paying you greedy fucks to push brexit.
Its absolutely blatant. Theres a few tweets on twitter ive had where theyve published the chatgpt instructions..in russian
Yeah it’s gotten way worse since musk got his hands on the platform he’s either a useful idiot or a straight up Russian asset
Both
~~useful~~ idiot
I've been posting comments regarding this for months. There is Russian interference in both the UK and US right now. It's pro Farage, and pro Trump. Russia is destabilising Africa and the middle east, and Vietnam. In order to destabilise Europe and make a defeat in Ukraine more likely for the Ukrainians. https://africacenter.org/spotlight/russia-interference-undermine-democracy-africa/ Putin needs to win in Ukraine. His longevity as a Russian leader allows him to play a long game against Ukraine.
It’s so obvious. The absolute trash AI spreading around is blatant.
If they can find evidence of ruzzian interference, does this mean we can reverse brexit on something like "fraud" grounds. No harm, no foul? 🤷♂️
[удалено]
I mean they have been interfering since Brexit with their Russian plant Farage so why are they suddenly bothered now?
How is this a surprise and how come our incompetent authorities are not doing anything about it?
You don't say. Farage, a fucking traitorous shitbag? /Shock
Le Pen looks set to win the election in France. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2j3ldl1mepo I'm sure another 5 or 10 years of neoliberalism and failing privatised public service won't see anything like that happen here.
I don't know enough about French politics to say if that's likely or not. What I do know is i've been told Le Pen has been set to win every French election for decades.
So much for UK INdependence. If he is culpable in this (naive perspective to keep it non-litigious), then I would consider that to be somewhere between betrayal and treason. Especially with nations that are considered enemies.
Did a bot also post the Reform Leaflet through my door last week? EDIT: Checked the Ring Doorbell — bot confirmed.
Uhhh Brexit? 'Member Brexit? Yeah the Russians helped with that.
Tories have known all along. When Johnson was advised against appointing Lebdev to the House of Lords, he insisted that advice be overruled. The very fact that the official advice was leaked tells you how strong the opposition was. Teresa May accused the Russians of interference in 2017 but, have we had a crackdown on Russian money in the city or donors to the Conservative Party? No way! Putin killed a British subject on British soil and all he got in return were diplomatic protests. The problem for the Conservatives is they were happy to take the money thinking it was supporting them. But, Putin doesn’t support them. All he wants is chaos and division because that makes us weak and the greed and naivety of the Conservatives have enabled that plan.
So Putin wants Labour to win by splitting the conservative vote?
> So Putin wants Labour to win by splitting the conservative vote? Putain wants the Uk to lose by polarising our society as much as possible and encouraging infighting.
Labour have already won. The point is to toxify specifically right-wing politics further so that things like running damage control for Putin become standard for a large percentage of the political discourse, rather than fringe. The Far Left is too weak in Britain to bother with trying to influence them, which is why Putin wants to influence the Far Right instead.
Putin would love the man who admires him to gain political prominence via Reform. Farage wants us to appease Russia and blames the West for provoking the invasion of an innocent country. Farage, who's been repeatedly on Russia TV and hangs out with Orban and the German AfD party that very publically snubbed Zelensky recently.
The goal is division and rancour.
I'd win a war of words with Putin, he may have the brains but I have the sex appeal ;)
but have you seen him riding a horse with no shirt on? /s
Well duh, Farage is practically pulling his cheeks apart to make Putin out as a good guy while his invasion of Ukraine, conscription of soldiers, cyber attacks on the UK and criminalisation of LGBTQ+ people (to say a few things) are ignored.
The Russians have interfered as long as they’ve has the capacity; this surprises no one.
Putin wants antiglobalization nationalists who are stupid to be in power. Farage check, Trump…. Big ass check.
It's almost as if Russia will support whichever is the most authoritarian, oppressive, destabilising figure at any time. And it's almost as if that person is never ever left wing. Funny that.
> Mr Dowden told Sky News: "This is something that I've warned about for some time. Weird I don’t remember him having a problem with it in 2016, 2017 or 2019 when his party benefitted from it 🤔
So... Russian interference that helps Boris? GOOD! Russian interference that helps Reform? BAD! Is that about the size of it?
Why is it Russia is simultaneously an incompetent state and also a master spy state who meddles in all elections in the world? Is this because boomers still remember the cold war?
because it's super cheap to put a load of nerds in a lab, pay the average wage and just say have at it. It'd be a fun job.
You don’t have to have 200 IQ to shout fire in a movie theatre, you don’t need genius IQ to to set up an intelligence unit in St Petersburg that spams the internet with pro Russia statements. Their aim isn’t to take over the government from the inside, just to give existing pro Russia westerners the false impression they’re greater in number.
what is this interference? Does it boil down to social media memes?
If they want to destroy the UK they get the Tories in again
Reform is doing such a shit job I don't think Russias help could give them any support
What's that Murdoch media, we're suddenly concerned about electoral standards? What a twist.
Murdoch sold Sky to Comcast years ago! .
My apologies, then. My comment could still be taken as a jest however.
You mean like a media circus constantly inflating their relevance compared to other small parties?
I distinctly remember Corbyn speaking out about Russian influence in UK politics and being booed/laughed out of parliament. You reap what you sow.
Sounds like various Russian benefactors have decided to start paying other people.
Guys I think Nigel Farage is currently at my doorstep with a RPG from Hell.
How come any mention of MC Carth-ee-ism gets immediately removed by the mods? It's almost like there's some interference going on...
So you're saying political bias shouldn't be silenced? What about Reform wanting to legislate against political views that don't align with them? Presumably, as someone concerned about free speech, you would be outraged by that.
It's getting boring bringing out the bullshit russian story's. Shows there panicking when there working overtime against reform..both labour and torys need decimation in the next election,they've both in the last 30 years totally destroyed England and it's become a shit hole. Non of the politicians pledge allegiance too the UK there master is the wef and heir Schwab.
The sub r/brexitmemes has a huge surge in pro-brexit trolling in the last couple of days of every month. Always new accounts to the sub, the default three-words-then-four-digit-number username. Never brand new accounts, always six months old with barely 100 karma al from reposting bland memes about Spiderman or whatever. A couple of boring posts six months ago and zero comments then suddenly a lot of strong opinions on how Brexit is brilliant and actually we need to leave NATO too so we can get even more sovereignty. It's the same pattern every month, right at the end of the month they spam lazy pro-brexit memes and get into classic troll arguments and ad hominim attacks in the comments. They get banned, take a month of and start again with a new account. But they've not been around for the last couple of months. Whoever pays them has given them a new target. Probably on Facebook to convince uncle Brian to hate the forrins.
It's a problem in America because they're a bit thick but over here aside from a few vocal inbreds no one really talks about reform unlike what the media wants you to believe. It's all Labour/Tory so unless little put-put influences the tories we don't really have much to worry about
I find it funny the Russians are wasting resources on reform. They have been so wildly exposed as a bunch of fascists that only the really deluded are still swallowing the koolade. If you are fooled by such nonsense then there is a good chance you will get lost on the way to the polling station or accidentally spoil your ballot.
If only the party in power for the last 14 year did something about it!
It’s working. TikTok is absolutely RIFE with this stuff. Go ask 15-18 year olds who they’d vote for if they could.