When Russians at the Internet Research Agency interfered in U.S. politics, they created false online personas and fake political groups to amplify divisive messages that already had a homegrown American audience. It's not too far from what some U.S. political consultants are doing themselves.
Take Sally Albright, a
Democratic Party communications consultant who backed presidential candidate
Hillary Clinton in 2016. Unsurprisingly, Albright is vocally opposed to President
Donald Trump and a big supporter of the resistance to his administration. She is also one of the loudest, most divisive voices attacking Sen.
Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Clinton's onetime Democratic primary opponent, and his left-wing supporters.
Well after the primary, Albright continues to claim that Sanders is a fraud, a liar, racist and corrupt, among many other things. In one instance she declared that the policy idea of free college, as promoted by Sanders,
was racist. This provoked Sanders supporters to argue back.
Trevor, a Sanders supporter who declined to provide his last name for fear of being doxxed, but goes by
@likingonline on Twitter, noticed a strange pattern of behavior when Albright responded to him. Her tweets addressing him were rapidly retweeted by the same series of accounts. This created a barrage of notifications making it look as though there was an avalanche of opposition to everything he said.
