One Instagram account targeting voters on the right, for instance, implied that Black Lives Matter activists were assassinating police officers. This highlights a problem that Lilliana Mason, a University of Maryland political scientist, said had left American democracy dangerously vulnerable. The claims pushed in Russian posts demonstrate, precisely because they are so implausible, how rapidly that norm is weakening. But the Russians entered a political scene already defined by the parties’ weakness and inability to control their own field. It is a self-perpetuating cycle, one that Russian meddling may have only sped up a bit but that remains almost entirely American-driven.

Source: New York Times February 18, 2018 22:30 UTC