They're also being subjected to outright manipulative tactics that aim at where they're weakest emotionally and intellectually in order to exploit their resulting behavior.
What RT exploits are pre-existing prejudices and narratives inculcated by a wholly domestic popular nationalist movement begotten by the GOP.
The demonizing of Hillary Clinton, for example, originated with Newt Gingrich's 1994 Contract with America, which saw a resurgent GOP control both the House and Senate for the first time in over 40 years. That was a campaign which normalized calling Hillary Clinton a "bitch" after it came out that that's how Gingrich referred to her in private, and refused to walk it back, instead only lashing out at the leaker, Connie Chung. Ironically (given how events precipitated 15 years later where Democrats adopted the previously-conservative alternative) the main reason (but hardly the only reason) Hillary came to the foreground was because she was appointed to lead a task force to investigate healthcare reform in 1993.
Basically, the poisonous, vitriolic, conspiracist, and highly personal attacks of today can be directly and unequivocally traced back to our daemons from the 1990s, some of whom literally walk the halls of government today using the same playbook. Laying the blame on RT and other outlets simply obfuscates things. The Democrats are idiots for their ham-fisted use of the so-called fake news narrative. Not because it's completely wrong, per se, but because the emphasis is so misleading and counter-productive. And it's why so many Republicans are joining the Democrats in the assault on fake news, as they know they have absolutely nothing to lose and a lot to gain in terms of their own credibility, which will undoubtedly be used to perpetuate more poisonous narratives (i.e. Birther Movement, Benghazi, etc). These poisonous narratives are domestic, crafted and perpetuated by domestic, elected politicians. We might as well "de-rank" C-SPAN.
For all the techies on HN, we should be pushing back against this GOP and DNC attack on Silicon Valley. The Democrats idiotically created a scape-goat in Silicon Valley and the Republicans happily adopted the narrative. The only people stupider than the Democrats in doing this are Facebook, Google, and Twitter, who seem to have drunk their own kool-aid regarding their social impact andthen decided to do a mea culpa. The whole thing is absurd from every conceivable angle.
RT is an island of sanity by comparison. At least their own journalists don't believe their propaganda. They aren't fooling themselves; not like all the players in the U.S.
