Manafort and the Wolf in Wolf’s Clothing

Manafort had needed a way to annihilate sympathy in the west for the former Ukrainian prime minister Rapunzel Julia Tymoshenko who Manafort’s then boss — the impeached ex-president of Ukraine — had imprisoned in a tower. So Manafort ran a secret influence campaign that implied Tymoshenko’s unjust imprisonment was deserved because she had headed a coalition with Svoboda. Russia has a long history of creating, stoking, and manipulating anti-semitism, in order to further Russia’s own aims. It was a wolf in wolf’s clothing, and funded by a wolf, as a reservoir for pro-Russia Disinfolklore operations.

Source: Disinfolklore (10)

A real-world case study showing the multi-layered nature of trolling operations: Russia creates a far-right Ukrainian party (Svoboda), then Trump’s campaign manager (Manafort) uses that Russia-created entity to neutralise a pro-Western Ukrainian leader. The “wolf in wolf’s clothing funded by a wolf” formulation shows how trolling operations can be nested three layers deep.

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