Andrew Fox
Well, here we are again. Bit of a familiar pattern by now. We now know for certain that Israel didn’t drop 2000lb bombs on a refugee camp. Doesn’t matter: 1. Something happens in Gaza. 2. Hamas-supporting bot farms and super-spreaders flood social media with appalling photos/videos (real or not? Who knows? Usually a wild exaggeration of the truth) attached to a fake narrative. 3. Ordinary people take up fake narrative. Horrible photos/videos go viral. 4. International media runs the fake narrative without proper journalistic checks. Celebrities and politicians comment on the fake narrative before they’re in full possession of the facts. 5. IDF issue a rebuttal, but it’s too late as the fake narrative has already taken hold. 6. Protests on Western streets to put pressure on policy makers. Hamas are absolute masters at this. Palestinians do, of course, have the unusually huge advantage of decades of KGB information operations aimed at the Western political left, from Arafat/PLO days. They’re pushing at an open door. This is a good model of the pathway a disinformation strategy needs to counter.