It’s no secret that Russia’s trolls, hackers, and spies are pulling for Donald Trump in 2020—just like they famously did at the last election. But Moscow’s propaganda-peddlers aren’t just pushing MAGA memes and Biden disinfo—they’re also attempting to infiltrate left-wing sites.
The Russian trolls’ private chat logs and emails, reviewed by The Daily Beast, show they tried to get their American contributors to write for Jacobin, a leading socialist outlet; recruited from Truthout, a left-leaning nonprofit news site; and tried to buy their way onto the website of the long-pedigreed liberal outlet In These Times.
None of the outlets showed any interest in content from the Russians or their shady business offers. But the outreach by “PeaceData,” a facade of a publishing operation linked to the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency and built up by American freelancers, demonstrates the ecumenical approach the Russians are taking to pollute the information ecosystem. So how did these Russian trolls try to expand their reach to legitimate left-wing media outlets and what does it show about how well they understand the American media landscape?
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Chat logs with the IRA-linked operators behind the fake PeaceData website—recently booted off social media by Facebook—show that Russian personas tried to get their unwitting contributors to place articles in at least three legitimate left-leaning publications.
Trolls masquerading as PeaceData editors asked contributors to publish articles written for the site at other outlets “with the note that it was from us.” One unsuspecting PeaceData contributor, who asked to remain anonymous, told The Daily Beast that PeaceData’s “Alex Lacusta” asked for suggestions about outlets the contributor thought would be good to place articles.
In other cases, PeaceData trolls had more specific suggestions.
Social(ist) media: “We have an idea. We want to try and appear on websites like Jacobin and In These Times,” ‘Ionatan,’ a PeaceData troll masquerading as an editor, wrote to an American contributor in August. “They’re accepting submission although we need to write a specific articles [sic] to please them,” Ionatan wrote.
Jacobin, a socialist magazine founded in 2010, has emerged as one of the more prominent and unapologetic leftist outlets and a major backer of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ candidacy. The magazine could be “tricky” to get into, Ionatan wrote. “They are against establishment [sic] both Democratic and Republican. The piece that would be interesting for them is a criticism of Harris for example.”
PeaceData’s speculation that Jacobin was tough to get into proved accurate—a submission to Jacobin from a PeaceData contributor critiquing Kamala Harris’s record on disability rights received no response.
Pay-to-play: The Daily Beast was unable to find any evidence that PeaceData contributors pitched In These Times, as Ionatan suggested. So the IRA tried to buy its way in, according to an email reviewed by The Daily Beast.
After describing PeaceData as a site devoted to exposing “war crimes and corruption,” ‘Bernadett Plaschil’ wrote that her site was “looking for the opportunity to publish some of our future or existing articles on your site. How much would it cost?"
Plaschil couldn’t even be bothered to do some basic homework on their target. The pitch was addressed to a generic “In These Times team” and sent to the submissions email rather than crafted towards a specific editor.
The pitch displayed not just laziness but a glaring ignorance about how the legitimate American media ecosystem worked. Not so hot, for a Russian team charged with gaming it. In These Times, like just about any other reputable news site, doesn’t accept payment from outsiders to run random articles. In These Times editors paid the pitch no mind and never responded.
Pick-me-ups: The IRA also targeted one left-of-center site as a recruiting trough. When freelance writer Jacinda Chan, a disabled California journalist targeted by PeaceData, asked ‘Ionatan’ why he had reached out to her to contribute to the site, Ionatan said it was because of an article she’d written for Truthout—something she’d highlighted on her LinkedIn account. “It's one of the publications we're aspiring to be in the future,” Ionatan wrote.
Jack Delaney, another PeaceData contributor tricked into writing for the site, wrote in a Guardian opinion piece that the personas approached him shortly after a piece he wrote for TruthOut had gone viral and that he “assumed this was how [he] was discovered.”
Why though? It’s hard to determine what the IRA was hoping to achieve with its fumbling attempts to place articles in legitimate, established left-wing outlets.
At first glance, it appears as though the troll factory was trying to remix an operation straight out of its previous playbook. In early 2016 Russian military intelligence, known as the GRU, set up a fake persona in the name of Alice Donovan, a purported freelancer who placed pro-Russian articles at left-wing websites. “Donovan” went on a year-long publishing spree that saw articles tout Kremlin talking points at outlets like Veterans Today, CounterPunch, and MintPressNews and flag the leaked fruits of the GRU’s hacking campaign against Democrats.
Ionatan floated his plan to republish PeaceData content at other outlets with the explanation that it would help “spread this piece to the larger audience.” In that sense, the effort appeared to be a pretty transparent attempt at leveraging existing left-wing media as amplifiers for Kremlin messages.
But it’s hard to see what, if any, impact their campaign could’ve had. PeaceData had just a handful of contributors, very few of whom are known to have pitched the outlets targeted by editorial personas. Ionatan’s editorial advice to contributors included instructions to fashion their pitches to outlets like Jacobin to essentially repeat the editorial line—criticism of Biden, Harris and Trump—already established by more prominent voices on their site.
PeaceData’s instructions to link back to the site’s URL suggests that there may have been an additional or alternative goal in encouraging extra-curricular publishing: legitimacy through search engine optimization. Linking back to PeaceData’s website in their biographies at other sites, as the trolls requested of their contributors, would help improve PeaceData’s ranking its web searches and make it seem like a more established, legitimate site to readers.
Both ends against each other: One thing is clearer about Russian disinformation efforts: they’re sticking to the 2016 strategy of trying to work both sides of the ideological spectrum. In 2016, Moscow clearly preferred Trump but worked to rile up both left and right with confederate memes and fake Black activists in an attempt to play on longstanding political divisions and sow distrust of America’s information ecosystem generally.
Back again for another attempt in 2020, Russia’s disinformation strategy seems more feeble than their previous attempt but still consistent. In addition to their failed left-wing media outreach, they’ve also flanked right by hyping Rudy Giuliani’s various Ukraine conspiracies.
