Samantha Bee is quick to point out that Donald Trump did not create racism or the alt-right, mostly because it didn’t automatically declare bankruptcy. But Trump has certainly done his best to appeal to people who seem to identify as alt-right and has now become the choice for the group to enter the mainstream. Retweeting conspiracy theories and fake statistics seemed to be Trump’s way in and now he’s speaking the language, at least to an extent, with Breitbart’s Steve Bannon helping to lead Trump into the fray — at least when that fray isn’t located in Russia or something.
Bee runs down the laundry list of members, how they’ve organized with their own official logo that seems to want to avoid the older symbols some of their members have used in the past, and how they aren’t afraid to reach out and harass people they don’t agree with. If it was just internet harassment, that’d be nothing, but some of it seems to move off the web and into real life.
On top of that, it seems that a lot of the memes and stories that make their way around online might be due to an effort from the Russian government to actually meddle with the election. At least that’s what two of the reported trolls working for the Kremlin say when they sit down with Bee. One-third of pro-Trump internet traffic online is apparently coming from Russian trolls, with the two that sit down claiming to have dozens of accounts across sites like Facebook, Twitter, The Wall Street Journal, and more. Not to mention, some of the opinions are true and they believe it is a common good. That remains to be seen, but folks are very lazy and will believe plenty of random things.
I do like that shirt, though.
(Via Full Frontal)