>>5051763
Dems involved in Alabama scandal used "muh Russia" to justify dirty tricks
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It's becoming pretty clear at this point that DEM operative Mikey Dickerson of AET (American Enterprise Technologies) was at the center of the Alabama election fuckery in 2017, although he outsourced all the actual projects to several other groups and individuals: Dry Alabama (Matt Osborne), Dialectica (Joohn Choe), TOVO Labs (David Goldstein plus 2; see tovolabs.com) and New Knowledge (Morgan/Diresta). Also threw in a couple others--NYT reporter Scott Shane and a "colleague" of donor Reid Dickerson (maybe Dmitri Mehlhorn)--plus a commentary from Rush Limbaugh.
[1] Matt Osborne (Dry Alabama): Believes disinfo tactics should be illegal, but defends their use in the meantime: "If you don't do it, you're fighting with one hand tied behint your back. You have a moral imperative to do this--to do whatever it takes." [This from a guy who wrote an article imagining how great it would be to torture Rush Limbaugh; see >>5023297 ]
[2] Joohn Choe (Dialectica): High-IQ radical who despises the President, embraces the Alliance for Securing Democracy, and is immersed in "muh Russia" paradigm.. True believer type who sees salvation in community action. In Alabama, Dialectica used 80 memes to attract people to "the political party represented by th[ese] meme[s]." Not sure what that means& he doesn't explain. No regrets about Alabama but don't know whether he's ever really been asked. See also >>5011570 PB.
[3] TOVO Labs justifies its manipulations on the basis that Brexiteers, Cambridge Analytica & Donald Trump did much worse, "aggresively utiliz[ing] stolen data, advanced technology,....micro-messaging, and dynamic targeting to effect real differences in...critical elections."
[4] Renee Diresta (NK) is a slick but tightly-would operative. She won't talk about the Alabama debacle and says Russian interference is a proven fact; see >>5034415 PB. But when she describes the techniques the Russians use, they sound just like NK's tactics in Project Birmingham.
[5] Jonathon Morgan (NK) claims he did nothing wrong: "I did not participate in any campaign to influence the public." @jonathonmorgan, 5:17am, 12-27-18. But the NK website talks a lot about how social media manipulation, fake reviews, and disinfo "hurts your reputation". And the whole premise of developing Hamilton68 was to track the online activity of Russian bots (although this is likely a complete fabrication). See also >>4383975.
[6] Scott Shane thinks that NK did do something wrong: "They have been so vocal against what the Russians did in 2016. To be caught doing it themselves is...pretty devastating." But he doesn't think that he (Shane) was wrong not to tell his readers what ''he'' knew: that Mikey Dickerson, who hired NK, fully intended that this disinfo project should throw the election to the Dems. Shane told Buzzfeed that "it wasn't necessary to disclose" what he knew to the public in his articles. But he didn't really explain why.
[7] A "colleague of Reid Hoffman" [Dmitrie Mehlhorn?] said the purpose of his investments [in projects like Birmingham] was to "strengthen American Democracy."
None of these "black ops" Dems seem very apologetic. Most think that the GOP and the Russians use dirty tricks, so why shouldn't they?''' [They would do it anyway but need a cover.]
[8] Rush Limbaugh cuts thru all the BS. He knows a lot about disinfo campaigns, because he was that target of a vicious campaign by Matt Osborne a decade ago (see >>4861734 PB.) Rush on Alabama:"They engaged in an operation made to look like the Russians were meddling and tampering in the election. It was a Democrat, leftist-run plot that was made to look like the Russians did it. It was a test as much as anything else....Who's to say that all of this Russian meddling from the get-go hasn't been run by the Democrats right out of the DNC?"