The Digital Era Will Prompt Revolutions – as 

Did the Print Era

BY NICK LICATA

APRIL 24, 2024

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Photo by Gilles Lambert

The breakthrough technologies of the printing press and data digitization allow the masses to access information. That flood of new information crumbled the legitimacy of the established political orders.

Will great powers fall again due to the greater information flow in the new digital media era?

Over 500 years have separated the invention of the Guttenberg Press and the creation of digital data. Each begat substantial social and political upheavals. Those changes could come sooner since the speed and breadth of the digital era’s impact dwarfs that of the printing press.

The spread of mechanical, printed information, from its inception in 1440, took 70 years to embolden challenges to the power of kings, elites, and the Catholic Church. In 1977, when computers became accessible to the public, digitized information took less than 30 years to create a robust Artificial Intelligence (AI) and social media on the Internet.

Authoritarian governments weaponized it to manipulate democratic governments’ elections, while the Internet’s social media facilitated domestic rebellions against autocratic governments.

Two societal conditions make the digital era more threatening to all governments:  how each era’s culture measures time and their literacy level.

The Culture of Time

The sense of time was different at the start of each information era. Medieval Europe was an agrarian society, with 80 to 90 percent of the population tied to the seasons for growing crops or raising livestock. Time was measured in months, not days, hours, or minutes, as is the twenty-first century.

Watches were invented during the Renaissance after the printing press. Nevertheless, they were primarily decorative ornaments that could be wrong by several hours a day, so accurate timekeeping was of very minor importance.

The printing revolution did not speed up time but worked within the Medieval understanding of time. The digital revolution is an essential commodity in the modern sense of time. The importance of news about politics or economics is determined by how timely it is.

The printing era occurred when there was more time to read and think about what was read. Social movements and politics moved at a slower pace than now.

The digital era is speeding up the production, distribution, and consumption of information, including news, to meet popular demands. It sets a high expectation that those demands will be met quickly, and nations are under pressure to meet them. As a result, there is a greater urgency to consume information and find solutions in the digital era than in the printing era.

Social media platforms like X and Facebook do not deliver long tracts explaining the conditions and causes behind what made something newsworthy. That information cannot be summarized in a tweet, which may or may not be accurate.

Readers begin to expect to have information delivered quickly and easily understood. Conclusions are then more straightforward to reach, regardless of scant information.

Rumors provide misinformation when they innocently pass on incorrect information. They distribute disinformation when they are used with the intent to push the instigator’s agenda through unverifiable facts.

Consider that rumors travel faster than thoughtful analysis. They point to victims and offenders with unreliable anecdotal information. They make for captivating narratives, which then are woven into conspiracies to explain reality.

This trend negatively impacts democracies because citizens are responsible for appointing their leaders based on being informed voters. Receiving half the truth or a distorted truth leads to poorly informed choices about how a democratic government should function.

Manipulating digital information allows Russia and China to weaken American democracy to benefit their foreign policies. Their strategy is to spread disinformation to cause confusion and distrust of our institutions, as described in How Russia and China Pursue a Soft Regime Change in America.

Authoritative governments are not as vulnerable as democracies to disinformation campaigns. They feed their citizens a consistent line of censured domestic information and filter foreign-generated internet news.

China, Russia, Iran, and other autocratic governments recognize that information on the internet can quickly foment powerful political movements that threaten their authority.

They do not want to experience what happened to Iran in 2019, when protests at peaceful gatherings spread to 21 cities within hours, as videos of the protest circulated online. The government forcibly shut them down, only to see 25,000 protestors gather months later, calling for the overthrow of the government and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Iran finally blocked the sharing of information showing the protests and the deaths of hundreds of protesters on social media platforms—their solution: foisting a near-total internet blackout of around six days.
The second condition that separates the printing and digital eras is the extent of a population’s literacy.

The extent and depth of literacy

Access to information is much greater today than during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

Minimal literacy never rose above 30% before 1500, and it took 200 years for the printing press to raise Europe’s literacy rate to 48%. Since books were the primary source of information, the audience was severely limited to the social elite of nobility or wealthy gentry who owned them.

Still, for the 10% of the European population that lived in cities and were literate, the printed word led to the development of pamphlets. Briefer than books and focused on just one issue, they punctured papal infallibility and the divine rule of monarchs.

Martin Luther, a professor of moral theology, printed his Ninety-five Theses in 1517. These condemned the Roman Catholic Church and ignited the Protestant Reformation against the Pope. In France, so many insurrectionary pamphlets supported the Reformation that government edicts prohibited them.

The printing press overturned the Roman Catholic Church’s thousand-year political domination in Europe, but it took decades and spread over a hundred years.

Long-established political hierarchies also crumbled due to the efforts of print media.
Pamphlets’ influence was potent in the 18^th Century. Two contributed to the overthrow of the French monarchy and a successful revolt against Britain, the greatest power in Europe: Jean–Jacques Rousseau’s pamphlet, On the Social Contract or Principles of Political Right in 1762, and Thomas Paine’s Common Sense in 1776.

Pamphlets are comparable to social media’s present danger to governments by empowering individuals to proliferate news through the internet that exposes their faults, weaknesses, and corruption.

Although the Internet became functional in 1983, less than 2% of the world’s population used it before the World Wide Web (WWW) was opened to the public in 1991. Sixteen years later, 65% of the world’s population uses the Internet for instant information, entertainment, news, and social interactions.

Consequently, literacy is no longer confined to just reading material; it extends to learning through observing videos on social media. With citizens of every country on the Internet, Digital information has greater power to inform and influence people’s beliefs than the printed press ever did.

The digital age is seeing autocracies and democracies globally challenged from outside and inside their boundaries within a fraction of the time the printed press did so on just one continent.

A democratic government’s role in the digital age is to keep information accessible to everyone. The challenge for democracies is avoiding having the internet become a weapon to destroy democracies that make open access to information possible.

A path forward is to teach each generation that citizenship should protect individuals’ freedoms and the community’s welfare, as described in Citizenship—Bridging Individualism & Community to Sustain our Democracy. If we act as thoughtful, responsible citizens, the digital age can strengthen democratic governance, not threaten it.

Nick Licata is author of Becoming A Citizen Activist, and has served 5 terms on the Seattle City Council, named progressive municipal official of the year by The Nation, and is founding board chair of Local Progress, a national network of 1,000 progressive municipal officials.

Moscow Attack: The Popularisation of Far-Right Conspiracy Theories in Mainstream Media

By Joshua Bowes

23rd April 2024

In Insights


Introduction

In the immediate aftermath of the 22 March attack on Moscow’s Crocus City Hall, social media was replete with misinformation, including conspiracy theories surrounding the affiliations of the perpetrators. Despite the terror cell Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) claiming responsibility for the mass shooting in a statement made to their Telegram and multimedia news outlet Amaq, users on 4chan and Instagram pointed to alternative culprits. In comments left on social media posts, users allude to fringe conspiracy theories popularised on 4chan, which posit that the United States and Israel are the real perpetrators of the attack, using the Islamic State as a shadowy force to carry out an orchestrated geopolitical agenda under the guise of terrorism. The idea that the CIA and Mossad either collaborated with ISKP or provided material support to the group spread from 4chan’s ‘politically incorrect’ (‘/pol/) community to mainstream social media platforms, making the pervasiveness of far-right misinformation visible to millions.

This Insight will show how social media users have made conspiratorial claims about the role of Israel and the United States in the violent attack at Crocus City Hall that killed more than 130 people.

4chan’s Reaction to Moscow Attack

In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, 4chan’s ‘politically incorrect’ board was flooded with discussion threads pertaining to the details of the attack. Many of these posts included speculation about the authenticity of ISKP’s claim of responsibility, which was reported on mainstream media pages. In one of these 4chan discussion threads, one comment made by a 4channer at 8:44pm on 22 March, just hours after the attack, reads: “I’m inclined to believe it was ISIS, they do work for mossad/cia, that’s a proven fact. Of course they’d use their muslim puppets to carry out attacks in Russia, who fought against them in Syria” (Figure 1). While this user acknowledges the reality of Islamic State’s involvement in the attack, they assert that the U.S. and Israel are undoubtedly behind the attack, weaponizing the Islamic State’s distaste for Russia as a means of dealing a blow to the Kremlin. Another comment, posted in the early hours of 23 March, reads: “Yes I think Jews want to lure Russia into another mijahideen war…just like they want US democrats to do…Enough of pandering to these evil Jews…we won’t defend these spoiled rotten Jews into yet another war on the Middle East.” Riddled with antisemitic rhetoric, what this user is trying to convey is that America and Israel are warmongering nations seeking to spark a regional Middle Eastern conflict for the purposes of enriching a unified military-industrial complex, further empowering the U.S. and Israel financially.

Figure 1. 4chan users on ‘/pol’ share their conspiratorial views that the Moscow attack was carried out by Mossad and the CIA.

A third post, starting a new thread and accompanied by an image of a female Israeli soldier, reads: “Are there normies who still don’t believe they are a CIA/Mossad plant?” This user also writes that Islamic State “hasn’t done anything in years” and that they have suddenly appeared to carry out a “terrorist attack against a country they have nothing against” (Figure 2). Implying that the Islamic State would not be able to abruptly re-materialize to carry out such an egregiously violent attack, this user attempts to show that the group is funded and armed by the CIA and Mossad, the United States’ and Israel’s intelligence agencies, respectively. Islamic State has conducted many attacks in recent years within Iran, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, but these attacks have not been as widely publicised as the Crocus City Hall attack. This 4channer also employs the commonly used 4chan term ‘normie.’ A ‘normie’ is a term used to describe a non-4channer perceived to be mainstream and unaware of such apparently obvious conspiratorial claims. A fourth comment reads “ISIS is just the CIA/Mossad sock puppet for terrorist attacks. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that church and mosque shooting/bombings happen all the time but if it’s a synagogue it’s stopped. How convenient.” This remark is indicative of the conspiracy that because Islamic State and its affiliate groups do not seem to be interested in attacking Israel or a diaspora of Jews despite calling for such violence, the group must be aided and backed by a powerful group of elitist Jews in cooperation with Mossad and the CIA.


Figure 2. 4chan users insinuate that ISIS is a puppet of the CIA and Mossad.

The Transmission of Fringe Conspiracy Theories to Mainstream Social Media Platforms

As outlined above, in the immediate hours following the attack, 4channers were incredibly active online, quick to share an assortment of ideas pitting the Islamic State as an extension of a joint US-Israel government operation to attack Russia. However, these ideas have appeared to have spread to more mainstream social media platforms like Instagram, where conspiratorial claims soared in popularity in the days following the attack, amassing hundreds of likes. One comment, left on ABC News’ post sharing ISIS’ claim of responsibility, reads ‘ISIS?… yea okey,” accompanied with numerous laughing emojis (Figure 3). This comment had 122 likes at the time of screenshot and had numerous comments agreeing with the sarcastic implication that the attack was not carried out by ISIS, as reported. One reply, with 20 likes, reads: “ISIS = CIA, From now on, CIA operations will be carried out under the name of ISIS in different countries.” This comment epitomises the conspiratorial belief that ISIS is a weapon of the CIA used to augment power and a means of legitimising government and military action. Another comment on ABC’s post reads “So it was America?” and had 97 likes at the time of study. A third, reads “ISIS = Israel Usa” had 183 likes and 19 replies. Another reads ‘ISISrael” with 97 likes.


Figure 3. Instagram users speculate as to the role of ISIS in carrying out the Moscow attack

A lesser-known Instagram page named ‘Project_Knowledge,’ known for frequently sharing fringe political conspiracy theories, also made a post not long after the attack made headlines. While the page’s post itself merely provided the authentic details of the attack, a multitude of comments alluded to potential involvement from the US and Israel. One of the top comments on this post acquired over 600 likes at the time of study, and reads “CIA have entered the chat.” Another comment reads “Israel! Secret Intelligence Service” (Figure 4). A third, with over 130 likes, reads “Ahhh yes the CIA at it again.” Other comments, with dozens of likes, read ‘Does this look similar to US state funded events to anyone else? Or just me?” and “Classic Israeli mossad.” Another comment reads “We all know isis was created by the cia and they are a part of the American democracy y’all so dull and blind.” A final comment pits blame on the US and expresses weariness over Russia’s retaliation, reading “US escalating matters…great. Putin will retaliate.”


Figure 4. Conspiratorial comments alluding to the role of the US and Israel have acquired hundreds of likes on Instagram.

Accelerationism Gone Mainstream

Given the evidence, the fringe conspiracy theory that the Moscow gun attack was carried out by an actor or actors other than ISIS has gone mainstream, amplified in the comments sections of social media posts with large collections of likes and support. The sentiment that the United States, Israel and any other government is implicitly involved in the carrying out of terrorism is a level of scepticism characteristic of the far- and alt-right on 4chan but also reflective of the radical accelerationist view that a shadowy force of globalist Jews controls the world.

Accelerationists posit that in order to displace the vindictive agenda of these globalist figureheads, a complete upheaval of society is required. While the remarks studied in this Insight do not directly call for such a societal dismantling, they are a nod to a broader conspiratorial worldview that those who are in power use geopolitical conflicts and violence for the funding of the military-industrial complex. In other words, in the case of the Moscow attack, conspiracy theorists suggest that ISKP was employed by the US and Israel as an instrument for dealing a blow to Putin. By funding and arming ISKP, the CIA and Mossad have financial incentives and can simultaneously legitimise the use of violent force against an adversarial leader. Russia’s war in Ukraine legitimises a Western-led attack on Russia. Those engaged in such a conspiratorial worldview suggest that because of the perceived clear and obvious involvement of the US and Israel in the carrying out of terrorism, society must be overrun to rid the world of such an all-powerful group of globalist Jews.

Conclusion

The discourse and ideas disseminated on 4chan’s ‘/pol’ are indicative of the forum’s broader pervasion of fringe and extreme views. The popularisation of politically-oriented conspiratorial views on mainstream media is not a new phenomenon; the prevalence of mis- and dis-information surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic from 2020 onwards is reflective of this trend. For reasons that should be tackled in future all-encompassing research, the transmission of extremist views from fringe online message boards to globally popular social media platforms like Instagram is representative of the porousness of the Internet. As evidenced in this research, comments alluding to the involvement of Israel and the United States in the perpetration of the Moscow attack have acquired lots of online support in the form of likes. Beyond the mere liking of this content are more dangerous implications. The procurement of hundreds, sometimes thousands, of likes on conspiratorial comments and remarks reinforces the algorithmic output of Instagram content to continue to be conspiratorial in nature. In other words, when conspiratorial comments receive likes, they rise to the top of the comment section, meaning they become more visible to all users across the globe who are shown the post in their feed. Users’ continuous support of conspiratorial ideas procreates such discourse, in a way, because they become more prominent the more likes they receive. As such, the saturation of such staunchly fringe speculative social media comments on mainstream media outlets like ABC News is alarming. In terms of practical recommendations, it is imperative that mainstream tech companies cater their algorithms to protect free speech but also to verify political claims. When conspiratorial ideas are so easy to see and interact with, the threshold for radicalization is very low. Even the smallest amount of mis- and disinformation has the potential to push a fringe individual into a violent act. Algorithms should be capable of detecting rampant falsities to protect impressionable persons, including youth and children, from spilling over into real-world violence. Events of political dissent, like that of the accelerationist 6 January 2021 incursion of the United States Capitol building, began with online discourse similar to that studied here. As such, the seeds of violent accelerationism continue to be sowed online. The conspiracies shared in this research have the potential to catalyse real-world violence against the perceived enemy: the CIA, Mossad and the globalist force of Jews puppeteering global conflict for financial gain.

Joshua Bowes is a Research Associate with futures think tank South Asia Foresight Network (SAFN) in Washington, D.C, focusing on South Asian security challenges. His research primarily covers synergetic thinking, militancy, armed conflict and extremism.

TikTok Exposed Youth to Genocide in Gaza — Is That Why Electeds Want It Banned?

Vocal proponents of a TikTok ban are among the top recipients of donations from the pro-Israeli lobby group AIPAC.

By Derek Seidman

April 12, 2024

Source: Truthout


On March 13, the U.S. House of Representatives approved the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act by an overwhelming 352 to 65 margin. If legislated, it would ban the hugely popular TikTok social media app in the U.S., where it has 150 million users — unless its owner, the Chinese tech company ByteDance, sells off TikTok within six months to a buyer not “controlled” by a “foreign adversary.” The U.S. Senate could take up the TikTok bill soon, and President Joe Biden has said he’ll sign it into law.

While U.S. geopolitical and economic competition with China is the underlying driver of the ongoing attacks on TikTok, another factor has emerged: its role in spreading news about the plight of Palestinians amid Israel’s monthslong assault on Gaza that has killed over 33,000 people and wounded over 76,000. Key backers of the TikTok ban have, with little evidence, openly criticized the app for being “anti-Israel.”

Truthout spoke to several tech experts and Palestinian organizers about the TikTok bill. They stressed that social media platforms have offered Palestinians the ability to document and share their stories with mass audiences across the world. For younger people in particular who sympathize with Palestinians, apps like TikTok have been ways to gather news and spread information. All this comes even as social media platforms — TikTok included — have been accused of flagging and repressing pro-Palestinian content.

“For so long, a Palestinian narrative has been censored in the mainstream media,” says Sandra Tamari, a Palestinian organizer and the executive director of Adalah Justice Project, a Palestinian-led advocacy organization based in the U.S. Now, amid horrific violence, “it’s Palestinians in Gaza narrating their story.”
The Forces Behind the TikTok Ban

The effort to ban TikTok in the U.S. is not new. Former President Donald Trump, amid years of anti-Chinese racist baiting, issued an executive order in August 2020 to ban “any transaction by any person” in the U.S. with TikTok owner ByteDance. The order invoked the “spread in the United States of mobile applications developed and owned by companies in the People’s Republic of China” as a “national emergency.” Ultimately, a federal judge blocked Trump’s TikTok ban in December 2020.

Paris Marx, author and host of the popular “Tech Won’t Save Us” podcast, told Truthout that U.S. efforts for global dominance over China in the tech sector are driving the attacks on TikTok as well as other measures, including blocking Huawei telecom technologies and restricting Chinese access to U.S. chip technology.

All this amounts to “a broader approach by the U.S. government to try to restrict the Chinese tech sector” and “reduce its access to international markets and ability to compete with U.S. tech companies,” says Marx. The TikTok ban, says Marx, is part of a broader effort to protect U.S. corporations against “Chinese competitors that, in some cases, are matching or even out-innovating some of the things that American tech companies are doing.”

Marx says alarmist narratives about China accessing Americans’ user data through TikTok or the Chinese Communist Party manipulating algorithms are “based on falsehoods or are inaccurate,” with “very little reporting to suggest any of that is true.” The spread of pro-Palestinian content on TikTok, says Marx, is now being used “as a justification to keep pushing this agenda forward.”

“There’s this idea that exists in the minds of some American lawmakers that China is puppeteering the algorithms and showing people content that goes against American interests,” Marx said.

In recent months, numerous politicians and Zionist groups have expressed alarm over TikTok, alleging that it has an anti-Israel bias and conflating that with antisemitism. Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-New Jersey), cosponsor of the TikTok bill, posted on social media that “China-owned TikTok has been pushing antisemitic, anti-Israel, anti-American, and pro-Hamas content” and “is a propaganda machine to influence Americans.” Other members of Congress — such as Josh Hawley (R-Missouri), Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Illinois), Ritchie Torres (D-New York), Marco Rubio (R-Florida) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee) — have made similar statements supporting the TikTok ban.

In claiming that TikTok is fueling “anti-Israel” and “pro-Hamas” content, elected officials are aligned with major Zionist organizations. Last fall, Jonathan Greenblatt, president of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), was recorded saying, “we really have a TikTok problem, a Gen-Z problem,” and groups like the Jewish Federations of North America and the Republican Jewish Coalition have applauded the TikTok ban.

Notably, some of the most vocal proponents of the TikTok ban — like Gottheimer, Torres and Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wisconsin), who sponsored the TikTok bill — are among the top recipients of donations from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), though AIPAC has not made any statements about the TikTok bill.
“A Site of Struggle”

The popularity of pro-Palestinian context on TikTok and other social media platforms isn’t explained by the manipulation of technology, Marx said, but rather the underlying political reality of opposition to Israel’s assault on Gaza.

“Young people have much more empathy and compassion for what is happening in Palestine and in Gaza than lawmakers and many people in the media do,” Marx said, and they’re “sharing the stories that are coming out of Gaza across social media, whether it’s TikTok or [X, formerly known as] Twitter or Instagram.”

Tamari notes that if antisemitism was a driving concern, backers of the TikTok ban would focus on X, which studies show is a hotbed of anti-Jewish conspiracies. X owner Elon Musk regularly attacks George Soros, a common target for coded antisemitism by the far right, and Musk’s recent endorsement of a clearly antisemitic X post provoked outrage. Notably, the ADL’s Greenblatt faced backlash when, just days after the antisemitic post, he praised Musk and his decision to ban phrases like “decolonization” and “from the river to the sea” from X.

The real concern over TikTok, says Tamari, is that it has allowed Palestinian voices to reach a mass audience. “People are hearing directly from Palestinians, and this is not something that they can censor,” she says. “They don’t have control over TikTok. It’s not owned by a U.S. company. It’s not beholden to U.S. interests.”

A 2021 study from an MIT computer science professor found that an “anti-Palestinian bias persisted disproportionately” across 33,000 New York Times articles. One scholar found that “less than 2 percent of the nearly 2,500 opinion pieces that discussed Palestinians since 1970” published in The New York Times “were actually written by Palestinians.”

Tamari notes that Palestinian journalists like Motaz Azaiza, Bisan Owda and Plestia Alaqad have broken through traditional media blackouts with their social media accounts. “They can turn the camera around and show the devastation,” she said. “They can talk to people and bring those stories directly to an American public, without editors that are saying no.”

Tamari says Adalah Justice Project’s social media accounts, including TikTok, have grown substantially during Israel’s war on Gaza. “We think that’s a very important site of struggle for narrative,” she said. “People are hungry for news and hungry to understand the context of why we’re here.”

Iman Abid-Thompson, director of advocacy and organizing at U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, which provides resources and strategic support to the U.S.-based Palestine solidarity movement, says that her organization established a TikTok account a few months ago, particularly to reach younger people.

“You can’t talk about TikTok without talking about Gen Z,” said Abid-Thompson. “Younger people have turned to TikTok in a new way over the last couple of years, and we wanted to ensure that we, as an organization, had a voice there.” The Pew Research Center reports that 32 percent of U.S. adults from 18 to 29 years old “regularly get news from TikTok.”

Abid-Thompson says that “the issue of Palestine is really prominent” among Gen Z, which is now using TikTok and other social media to highlight and oppose the genocide in Gaza. Polls show criticism of Israel and sympathy with Palestinians steadily increased among younger people well before the current war in Gaza.
“A Double-Edged Sword”

However, even as pro-Palestinian content breaks through to a mass audience over TikTok, Abid-Thompson stresses that the social media is a “double-edged sword,” with repression, censorship and surveillance of pro-Palestinian voices and content. “TikTok is a really great platform for folks to share their insights and perspectives on, but people have been repressed on it for using hashtag Gaza or hashtag Rafah,” she said. “We saw the same thing happen on Instagram and [X].”

A December 2023 Human Rights Watch report notes, “Meta’s policies and practices have been silencing voices in support of Palestine and Palestinian human rights” during the war on Gaza, and the group documented “over 1,050 takedowns and other suppression of content” on Instagram and Facebook. Another February 2024 report also found that “Palestinian and pro-Palestinian voices have been censored and suppressed across Meta’s platforms.”

Reporting from Al Jazeera and Vice has suggested that censorship and flagging of pro-Palestinian content also occurs on TikTok. Abid-Thompson says she posted a TikTok video with an image of a man carrying his dead son that was flagged for violence. “You have Israeli soldiers who post images of themselves in demolished homes, and they’re holding up lingerie of people that they’ve killed, and those images never get flagged for TikTok,” she said. “Yet on the other hand, we’re trying to post images of bulldozed homes or massacres or genocide, and our videos are getting flagged.”

A February 2024 New York Times investigation documented videos posted on social media by Israeli soldiers that show them “vandalizing local shops and school classrooms, making derogatory comments about Palestinians, bulldozing what appear to be civilian areas and calling for the building of Israeli settlements in Gaza.” TikTok only removed such videos after the Times contacted them; Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, did not respond.

Studies also show that social media platforms ignore Islamophobic content. A 2022 report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that “Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube collectively fail to act on 89% of posts containing anti-Muslim hatred and Islamophobia” even after these were reported to moderators.

Despite challenges, Tamari stresses the importance of continuing to post about what’s happening in Palestine. “We’re nearly six months into this genocide, and we should use every tool that we have,” says Tamari. “Continue to post and continue to engage with posts that raise the issues that are facing the people of Gaza. We can’t be deterred.”

Ultimately, says Abid-Thompson, the TikTok ban is an intentional derailment and distraction from the conversation we really need to be focusing on: achieving a permanent and total ceasefire and an end to the genocide in Palestine.

OPINION: Time to Tell Russians They Are No Longer Safe

Russia relies heavily on propaganda and disinformation. In the wake of the ISIS attack in Moscow, the West should use the truth to let Russians know how Putin has failed them.

By Jason Jay Smart
By Ivana Stradner
April 13, 2024

A family watches a TV broadcast of Russian President Vladimir Putin's annual state of the nation address in Moscow on February 29, 2024.

 (Photo by Yuri KADOBNOV / AFP)

Russia has launched a propaganda crusade to cynically argue that even though the Islamic State-Khorasan (ISIS-K) took credit for the recent Moscow concert hall terror attack, it was actually Ukraine, with its American and British overlords, behind the death of 137 Russian citizens in the audience that day.

On April 9, the Russian Investigative Committee found a link between the terrorists who attacked Crocus City Hall and Ukrainian security services. And last week, Russia’s Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev confirmed that the terror attack could be traced to Ukrainian special services and reminded the Russians that “the Kyiv regime is not independent and is fully controlled by the United States.” Why is the Kremlin so keen to argue that it was not ISIS but Ukraine plotting the carnage in Moscow?

Aside from wishing to gin-up greater support for the invasion of Ukraine, which has caused nearly half-a-million Russian casualties and turned the world’s largest country into a pariah state, the Kremlin legitimately fears that the terror attack in Moscow could beg an uncomfortable question among Russians: Why are we fighting in Ukraine if we cannot even protect ourselves at home?

Putin rose to the presidency on the pledge that he alone could keep Russia stable and safe. As a result, the perception that Russia has been left vulnerable because of the Ukraine war undermines Putin’s leadership, now is requiring yet another round of mobilization of soldiers for the bloody quagmire which is increasingly causing disquiet in the public.

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On March 7, the US Embassy in Russia cautioned that there were reports that “extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow, to include concerts…” to which Russian citizens have not forgotten Putin’s cocky response to the unheeded warning: He rejected it as a “provocation,” precipitating Russian intelligence’s disastrous failure to avert the attack.

Like a Ponzi scheme veering towards collapse, the deceptional conspiracies that Putin espouses are becoming too hard to swallow. Putin senses that his regime, for the first time in over two decades, is in a position of weakness, hustling to get ahead of the ISIS-narrative and its associated implications of Moscow’s failures to protect its citizens. However, unlike earlier cover-ups and manipulations, the events in Moscow have already been seared into the minds of Russians.

With nowhere to back-peddle, Putin attempts to affirm: “This atrocity may be just a link in a whole series of attempts by those who have been at war with our country since 2014 with the hands of the neo-Nazi Kyiv regime” – “Nazi” being a preferred Kremlin pseudonym for “Ukrainians” – based on the bizarre and illogical reasoning that since Ukraine, terrorists, and Nazis are bad – the words can be interchangeable.

Russia is not a stranger to Islamic terrorism being committed on its soil and they know that Putin’s involvement in Syria combined with his ties to the Taliban do not sit well with ISIS. So, for Russian citizens, it was readily believable when ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack, releasing details of how it was planned and videos to back up their claims. However, seeking to now link Moscow attack to Nazis and Ukraine, is perhaps a bridge too far.

Undeterred, Alexander Bortnikov, the Director of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), stated that “the US, Britain, and Ukraine are behind the terrorist attack in Crocus City Hall.” He concluded that “the action was prepared both by the radical Islamists themselves and, of course, facilitated by Western special services, and Ukraine’s special services themselves have a direct connection to this,” aligning with Nikolai Patrushev’s “Ukraine, of course,” when a reporter asked the Secretary of Russian’s Security Council whether it was ISIS or Ukraine behind the attack.

The Kremlin, through its control of the information space in Russia, uses communication as a weapon. However, Moscow’s lies in disinforming its citizens about the terror act’s “connections” to Ukraine is making the system unstable. That is why it is time to tip the balance to the side of truth by running information operations, in Russia, to give Russians a real view of how their dictator’s poor leadership has damaged their national security.

Discrediting Moscow’s claims regarding the terror meshes brilliantly with stoking concern in Russian society that perhaps Putin is no longer a guarantor of peace – but rather a catalyst for putting their very lives into jeopardy: Perhaps Russia would be better off without Putin?

The Kremlin has spent decades spewing deceptions at home and abroad. The US must set the record straight.

The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.

Jason Jay Smart, Ph.D., is a political adviser who has lived and worked in Ukraine, Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Latin America. Due to his work with the democratic opposition to Pres. Vladimir Putin, Smart was persona non grata, for life, by Russia in 2010. His websites can be found at www.JasonJaySmart.com / www.AmericanPoliticalServices.com / fb.com/jasonjaysmart / Twitter: @OfficeJJSmart

Ivana Stradner
Dr. Ivana Stradner is a Special Correspondent for KyivPost focusing on Russia’s information security. Ivana serves as an advisor to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and she is a Jeane Kirkpatrick Visiting Research Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington where her work centers on Russia’s security strategies and military doctrines related to information operations. Given the divergence between the American and Russian militaries’ understandings of cybersecurity, her work examines both the psychological and technical aspects of Russian information security. Ivana also analyzes Russian influence in international organizations; she is currently focusing on UN efforts to regulate information security and the UN Cybercrime Treaty. Ivana worked as a visiting scholar at Harvard University and a lecturer for a variety of universities, including the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.