Could we be living in a conspiracy nightmare that makes USA Network’s Mr. Robot look normal? Perhaps. Since Trump began his initial campaign in 2015, the tensions in the United States have dramatically risen. Nazi’s and white nationalists have been given massive platforms and hate has taken a massive toll on American politics.
But how did we get here? We’ve commonly pointed out Trump’s rhetoric and disturbing acts of racism, sexism, bigotry, etc. as strategic propaganda to rally white, uneducated voters and mask fascism as a faulty form of disenfranchisement. And while that is abundantly true, its so much more complex than that. Russia interfered with this election whether people want to believe that or not. But nobody likes to talk about how. The capitalizing of radicalized right wing conspiracy theories propelled Trump to a massive following.
And he hasn’t done it alone. Breitbart, Alex Jones, Mark Dice, etc. are all ammunition to the Trump administration and its constant usage of fallacies and tone deaf rhetoric in an attempt to push forward his agenda and philosophy. That is why twitter has been so huge for Trump. Divisive language getting passed around quickly and efficiently, thousands at a time. It is modern propaganda at its finest.
But is it legitimized? After Trump retweeted a self-proclaimed “black pro Trump conservative,” that ended up being a stock image, he might have accidentally opened the door for the American people to witness a conspiracy bigger than all of us: Twitter Bots.
Twitter Bots are fake social media accounts operated by a third party with a strategic purpose (following someone, commenting, retweeting, etc.). And after watching the past season of Showtime’s Homeland, I couldn’t help but check it out myself. And I was shocked. I saw a lot of bots. Not the ones that show up on websites that tell you how many fake followers you have, but ones that parody people all while interacting with specific content. And I know I’m not alone. To me, that’s concerning. If you are luring a following towards your content and towards nationalism and hatred through twitter bots, you are actively imposing a level of propaganda so complex that it derived from a fictional television show.
The idea of Twitter bots isn’t radical either. It can truly go a long way towards making up incoming businesses successful. But when its used for means of political gain, Twitter needs to take affirmative action to investigate and delete any spam accounts that follow this pattern because the more we ignore concerning things like this, the more divided this country becomes and the more Trump and Russia succeed.
