Feb 18, 2018
“Deep down, the US, with its space, its technological refinement, its bluff good conscience, even in those spaces which it opens up for simulation, is the only remaining primitive society.”
Jean Baudrillard, America, 1989
There is only one question that I want answered about the Russian interference in the 2016 American election following the indictments Friday: How much of Donald Trump’s campaign was a simulation?
First, this question comes as a result of a few personal experiences:
One — I followed the Trump campaign for an international newspaper that acted in a similar fashion as a Russian troll farm, but was, admittedly, legal. I monitored the campaign from afar in a news office that had little to no on-the-ground reporting. They did not have the means or desire to do what larger news organizations built up for decades and centuries as bastions of the “free press” that have now turned into national institutions. This newspaper supported Trump under the guise of a family-friendly, anti-communist, reactionary point of view, and filtered many of the misleading narratives generated by bots and hackers into the spine of their coverage of the election season.
Two — Even though this was my first election campaign and full-time political reporting job, my oh-so-amateur eyes could detect that there was something amiss in the apparatus of the campaign. And by “amiss” I mean there was no apparatus supporting the candidate. There were shady individuals that acted as the public faces of the campaign on nightly news. There were events and rallies. There were slogans and promises. All the superficial signs and signifiers that denote a campaign: Presidential Candidate. Check. Money. Check. An easily digestible message. Check. But, as I found out, nobody from the campaign answered my phone calls. Nobody was reachable. The layer of fabric that was missing from what we normally associate with a presidential campaign was a layer of human political activism that even the most naive, amateur and deluded journalist associates with an intelligent and rational design.
In the most recent indictments by Special Counsel Bob Mueller, the argument is clear: in place of that rational and intelligent design were hired Russian trolls that created bots that simulated an on-the-ground presidential campaign. The simulation was not only influential on the American political landscape, but manipulated and created the appearance of success for Trump in support of his election.
Simulating Success
At the center of the conspiracy by the Russian troll farms is the simulation of success and this lines up with a reading of Baudrillard and the limitlessness of simulation in wide open spaces — in this case — the internet. For Baudrillard, there lies the institutions that passes along and reinforces the simulation until the simulation is indecipherable from the real. In this instance, the low hanging fruit is the institution of media, which passed around fake and simulated information, and cemented its real influence beyond the manufactured image of substantial political activism.
However, the most glaring and striking thing that the success of this operation showcases, is how much trust that Americans rely on and trust online activism as a shortcut to informed decisions. If American pride in freedom itself is illogical, worthless, and frivolous, it’s instead the knowledge that people perceive themselves having that freedom that intoxicates and reinforces the enticing simulation. The fact that information can be coming from anywhere at anytime and that, with minor manipulations, is mouth-watering in its repetition until the simulation is made real.
In this case, those truths and so-called freedoms were, in fact, vulnerabilities. These troll farms manufactured political activism. They used readily available corporate entities to complete the simulation. They helped to run a campaign without leaving their office space. I know it’s possible — everyone in shitty journalism should know its possible — because I’ve been in newsrooms for content farms, and there’s not much difference between the content farms that are legally created to pump out propaganda for newspapers and online blogs and the troll farms described in the indictment.
Complicit in making them vulnerabilities were the institutions and businesses who threw their faith into blind capitalistic enterprise while simultaneously praising the possibilities of wide open spaces of the internet’s reach. In those open spaces, the land of freedom opens up and lets in the faces of simulation, and the primitive masks of deception enter the primitive society and with a country who cares not for truth or substance, but for power, wealth, and expediency to both.
Russian Bots
Thus enters the “Russian Bots” who created and maintained the “troll farms.” These bots were not necessarily a “negative influence” or “illegal conspiracy” but rather the product of capitalistic need. Simulation of power is at the center of the heart of an internet culture that thrives on the perceived reach of your product and brand.
My first dealing with “bots” goes back ten years (2008), when I was in a musical project that was considering ways to break into the market, and one of the options was purchasing likes on Facebook to accrue the simulation of success. This was commonplace and legal, I was told, and it made our brand look more attractive to prospective record companies and booking agencies. The bots were, of course, from a Russian agency who had turned little known music projects that started in their mothers’ basements and turned into touring acts just by purchasing popularity.
Since then, the influence of bots has been in the background up until and leading into election season. After years of successfully making the American internet a marketplace for their limited interest in simulation, moved its misleading projections the bots moved from internet-based marketplaces of the young entrepreneur to the society-driving enterprises that make up the machina of political candidates, political parties, and, yes, elections. Their trial run in the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula formulated a blueprint later used for the purpose of reversing sanctions imposed for that very annexation by influencing the American presidential election.
Make no mistake, this is not a retrospective analysis, but rather a clear and present simulation. Russian “bots” are still at work and they exist as a negative void of power on Facebook, on Twitter, on Youtube comment sections, and on forums, simulating partisanship and endorsing chaos. They are still there if you know where to look because the American political and constitutional landscape permits these types of simulation in the name of freedom with a capital F. These bots are continuously meddling in the national discourse by simulating partisanship, stealing and simulating the identities of “real” Americans, and then disseminating unlawfully created political propaganda as a means to exert influence on a foreign country.
In the most recent school shooting, Russian bots have continued to support the position of the president and the NRA that endorses his agenda through the continuation and expansion of faux-political activism. As many have already noted, these bots sow discord in the name of activism, and reduce talking points and political agendas to the conflicts that they engender and narratives that they inhabit.
Freedom of the Press
An overarching thematic reminder highlighted by the latest indictment by Mueller is the amount that a “freedom of the press” and extreme bi-partisanship enables the spread of disinformation and props up the origins of simulation. I’ve witnessed this first hand, as American jobs in the media have gone from being meaningful truth tellers, to havens of yellow journalists in search of advertisement-driving clicks, to propaganda farms of foreign interests, with media blurring the line between all three.
The liberal institutions and media outlets that call for more cyber-security are missing the point. Cyber-security is not enforceable on political activists without it appearing as a partisan hack job. Former President Obama found that out when faced with the question of whether or not to take action on Russia for their cyber threats during the campaign, and the Trump administration and its allies are continuing to call the indictment of these Russians as the byproduct of partisanship.
If political campaigns can merely be the appearance of political campaigns, then what is politics but the corruption of an easily penetrable Real? What, then, is the point of campaigning in an election? What is the point of covering these campaigns? Where does political power generate, if not from ideas, but from the primitiveness of American idealism that lets simulation inhabit the wide open spaces of the American deserts and highways of information?
These indictments by Mueller are not merely an indictment of 13 Russians and a cooperating American witness, but it’s an indictment of the institutions that continue to couch and give validation (knowingly or unknowingly) to the simulated narratives of political activism that got Donald Trump elected. However, it’s yet to be known, how much of his campaign was in fact, merely the superficial gloss of simulated capitalistic success that every American has been taught to strive towards.
