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Tulsi Gabbard is a Russian Asset. According to Mrs Clinton, and the New Knowledge network of information-war experts. But New Knowledge has previously been caught framing people as Russian Assets before. Why should we believe them?
Most people are susceptible to confirmation bias. This human weakness is heavily exploited by evil people who aim to control public opinion. Especially during campaign seasons, when they work extra hard to trick us into voting against our own interests. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/science-choice/201504/what-is-confirmation-bias
Confirmation bias is what made some people take one look at this article and proclaim, "I knew it!" Even though the article itself totally failed to prove that Tulsi has Moscow's support in Russian media. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/russia-s-propaganda-machine-discovers-2020-democratic-candidate-tulsi-gabbard-n964261
Confirmation bias is what made some totally ignore real math & conclude that the numbers show Tulsi as the favorite of the Russians, even though she's mentioned a LOT less than others, and Bernie Sanders is actually who gets the most praise from them. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/russian-web-trolls-boo-biden-often-boost-gabbard-report-finds-n1085216
Confirmation bias is also what made some scan the above headline and believe that there actually are "trolls" promoting Tulsi online, even though the article itself says that they cannot attribute accounts who support Tulsi online to the Kremlin or Russia.
Even when shown facts that should disprove their belief, people who have adopted confirmation bias are not easily swayed. They explain it away, or come up with something else... "But what about this? And that?" https://www.britannica.com/science/cognitive-dissonance
Dealing with people like this is frustrating for most Tulsi supporters. We come armed with facts. Facts to disprove this, that, and the other thing. We have facts that disprove their long laundry lists of dirty lies... but we very rarely breakthrough to these people.
Here's the thing... most who spread the lies online KNOW they're lying. No matter how often we confront them, they keep repeating their lies. Some are probably there just to keep us busy playing wack-a-lie, instead of promoting Tulsi.
The number one reason why the spell of confirmation bias can't be broken by facts, is because those beliefs were never fact-based to begin with.
Some people just want an excuse to hate her. We will never get them to change their minds. But some people are genuinely afraid of putting a Russian Asset in the White House... the latter are people who we actually *can* reach.
One of the very first influence Ops I tracked was the Ebola Chan Meme that Andrew Anglin's Daily Stormer Trolls launched. This was, as far as my research shows, the very first Meme War. https://girlygrrrl.com/patient-zero/
What are people who afraid of Russian influence most afraid of? And how do we inoculate those fears? Real world inoculations. That's what we need to be thinking about.
We need to fight harder for secure elections. https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/5147/text
We need to fight harder for laws that protect us from foreign influence. https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/530
We need to fight harder for laws that prohibit news outlets from spreading propaganda, and for them to tell us the whole truth. https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/4401?s=1&r=182
And here's something else we can do. We can start asking the candidates if they will submit to a DOD security clearance check. This is not required by law. But neither is their having to show us their taxes, and we've insisted on it anyway. Are the candidates willing to do this?
The other thing we can do to fight the propaganda, is use military countermeasure tactics: Publicly confront the lies, and publicly expose the liars.
Key is: PUBLICLY. It has to be done in a way that the whole public can see. The journalists must be exposed as liars for the whole of America to see.
