[Thread] 1/ Donald Trump has retweeted @HeshmatAlavi - an account believed to be operated by a number of people working for the MEK - Mojahedin-e-Khalq, a cultish opposition group -many of whom are based in Albania https://theintercept.com/2019/06/09/heshmat-alavi-fake-iran-mek/

2/ I thought I'd analyse Heshmat's followers. Simply because followers are usually indicative of a target audience, especially if that account is designed for propaganda. It would give us some insight into who promotes his tweets, but more importantly, which community is being

3/ 'nudged'. So I downloaded all 67000 of Heshmat's followers and conducted a corpus analysis of their biographies. E.g. what do they have in common, what are the most salient communities for example.

4/ The corpus analysis revealed that the most common biographical term of Alavi's followers are the Make America Great Again community/pro-Trump community/Qanon crowd. The top term was 'MAGA', followed by Trump, followed by 'Keep America Great' (KAG)

5/ In fact as you can, most of the top search term relate to terms associated with the right. Qanon, WWG1WGA, etc. In fact, about 27% of Alavi's followers have one of the aforementioned terms in their biography. This raises a number of interesting questions.

6/ Firstly, let's assume all those MAGA accounts are genuine people with real accounts. Then who really is Alavi representing? If the MEK are proposing regime change, then are a large proportion of the people supporting it Americans who really need not be consulted on the issue

7/ If we still assume those MAGA followers of Alavi are all real people, then what is the function of Alavi's account. Do they follow Alavi organically or were they given a steer by influencers (and now Trump) that Alavi is a 'legitimate' voice. Why is that so many follow him?

8/ In the large Twitterverse of Iranian commentators is Alavi disproportionately & organically favoured by Trump supporters? Surely it is more accurate that Alavi's views have been endorsed as an 'on message' person whose opinions can be repeated by these MAGA accounts

9/ Another, more realistic assumption is that the online MAGA community is an amorphous combination of legitimate Trump fans and suspicious accounts. Suspicious accounts facilitate the promotion of Alavi's message within the organic community in order to spread MEK propaganda.

10/ Now we know that the state department has funded anti-Iran (current regime) trolls to attack people online, so it is not a stretch to imagine that there is potential here for some sort of similar disinformation operation https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/06/04/state-department-has-been-funding-trolls-im-one-their-targets/

11/ I've also done a few threads on right wing 'MAGA' Twitter accounts supporting the Restart movement in IRan https://twitter.com/marcowenjones/status/1170431576288780288 Also they were highly prevalent retweeting Pompeo's Farsi tweet (erm why?) https://twitter.com/marcowenjones/status/1198236443337867264

12/ I just find it strange that this community of accounts have been so dominant on hashtags ranging from Brexit, to promoting Tulsi Gabbard, to regime change in Iran. It smacks of co-ordination. Whether it's inauthentic or not is difficult to tell, although I'd wager much is

13/ Anyway. To sum up. Does @HeshmatAlavi exist to represent Iranians, or does he exist to steer a certain community of Americans to aligning themselves will a prescribed hawkish foreign policy towards Iran? I'd wager the latter. Also, to what extent is this support

14/ for Alavi's, from his followers, genuine. Is it genuine vox pops, or astroturfing - providing the illusion of public opinion to legitimise Trump's foreign policy positions. Fundamentally, on what basis is it fair to make a normative assumption that such Twitter activity is

15/ real and organic. At what point does it become more logical to be naturally distrustful of thousands of accounts with no way of confirming their identity. And this doesn't apply to MAGA, but so many of us. It's not just a post truth world, but a post trust world. - Fin

Addendum for the inevitable trolls here: It is possible, and ok to oppose both the vision MEK have for Iran and the current Iranian-Regime. I will assume anyone into binary politics is naive, ignorant, an ideologue, or a troll.