Some of the shine on the disinformation industry has gone dull in recent years, as many misinformation experts having been caught trafficking in misinformation themselves, or exposed for their ties to intelligence agencies. This should not come as a shock.
It’s a basic tenet of “mirror politics” and practitioners of propaganda to accuse others of the very same actions they plan to commit.
In late 2018, the New York Times and Washington Post reported on a leaked document discussing a secret project by Democratic Party operatives that falsely accused Republican candidate Roy Moore of support by Russians, while he was running in a tight race for the Senate in Alabama. The scheme linked the Moore campaign to thousands of Russian accounts on Twitter and drew national media attention.
“We orchestrated an elaborate ‘false flag’ operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet,” the New York Times reportedthat the leaked documents stated.