Armies of Kremlin and Iran bots aimed at attempting to destroy MAGA: report
Russia and Iran are targeting the Make America Great Again movement and trying to 'destabilize the right from within,' according to a new report.
Both rogue states are using tens of thousands of social media bots to amplify untrue voices and opinions 'masquerading as MAGA loyalists,' to cause chaos and confusion and question US leadership, The Post has learned.
The bots are automated software applications that mimic human activity on social media.
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They are used to amplify real-life influencers who post untrue 'false flag' narratives designed to discredit President Donald Trump and his conservative stalwarts, according to a bombshell new report from the Network Contagion Research Institute, a politically neutral nonprofit who study extremism on the web.
5 The same foreign playbook that undid the Democratic party is trying to destroy MAGA from within, according to a new NCRI report.
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'If you talk to Republicans right now, more than 80 percent of them support the war against Iran. But if you go on Twitter you get the sense that there is a civil war raging.
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'This is exactly the purpose of the psychological operation — to destabilize people's perceptions of institutions that are supposed to protect us,' said an NCRI analyst.
The bots make it look like extreme posters have tons more support than they actually have, which helps to persuade other real life viewers that what they are posting is legitimate.
The bots use innocuous, average names and have profiles which make them appear as average Americans.
NCRI says after domestic attacks, including the Uvalde school shooting, Matthew Crooks assassination attempt on Donald Trump and the murder of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington DC in May it has noticed an alarming trend of a 'false flag reflex'.
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'Within minutes of initial reports [the events are recast] as evidence of hidden conspiratorial plots, obscuring the true motives and perpetrators.
'In the days following these crises, Kremlin-affiliated propagandists and Iranian state-linked media are able to rapidly inject narratives that are taken up by MAGA-impostor influencers, who then inject them into MAGA-branded spaces,' the report notes.
5 Noctis Draven, who is a regular consultant for Kremlin media, spread the 'false flag' story about the murder of two Israeli staffers in an attempt to push a conspiracy theory that Israel was behind the deaths.
Network Contagion Research Institute
5 Evidence from a Network Contagion Research Institute's report showing bots spreading misinformation calling real events 'false flags'
Network Contagion Research Institute
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The group points to Draven Noctis, a real person and US veteran who frequently contributes to Russian state media, and has a potential reach of 2.4 million with more than 180,000 followers on X.
'It's so expensive in the US and Canada that even refugees can't understand how we make it,' he says in a 2024 TikTok post while describing the US as a 'slave system' designed to impoverish its own citizens.
'We are free range humans in an open-air prison of taxes and bulls–t distractions and we think it's completely normal,' he continues.
In an earlier post on EurAsia Daily, a Kremlin propaganda outlet, he is shown in military uniform urging Ukrainian soldiers to defect to Russia. The message is written in Cyrillic alphabet, propaganda which is then republished by bots.
5 Jackson Hinkle, a social media influencer, spreads anti-Western conspiracies to his more than three million X followers.
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The 'false flag' narrative surrounding the murder of two Israeli embassy staffers in May – absurdly attempting to claim the man charged with the shooting was, in fact, working on behalf of Israel – was another case in point, the nonprofit says.
'Foreign-linked seeders, such as Noctis, inject crisis narratives within minutes of breaking news. Their content is then mass-republished by clusters of inauthentic accounts, according to the NCRI report. 'Domestic personalities with large but unstable followings – [such as noted trolls like] Jackson Hinkle supply a veneer of grassroots legitimacy, completing an 'asset-adjacency' model in which fringe US influencers ride the same engagement farms that propel Kremlin messaging,' the NCRI report says.
Between May 1 and June 10, NCRI recorded 675,000 posts on X referencing 'false flag' and drawing nearly four million interactions, according to the report, adding activity spiked in two sharp bursts: on May 24 after the embassy shooting and on June 3 after the firebombing of a Jewish demonstration in Boulder.
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5 X user Red Pill Media claims to be based in the US, but was found to originate in Karachi, Pakistan.
Eyal Yakoby/ Red Pill Media/ X
'False-flag allegations occupy a privileged corner of Russian hybrid-warfare doctrine: a ready-made, easily adaptable alibi that flips blame, muddies attribution, and buys time for diplomatic misdirection,' the report says.
For instance, a tweet from 'Red Pill Media,' which identifies itself as 'exposing Zionist terrorism' and has nearly 81,000 followers on its X account claims to be based in the US, but another user recently revealed that the account belongs to Abdul Abbas in Karachi, Pakistan.
Working through firebrand right wing social media influencers, Kremlin-affiliated propagandists also conducted 'a coordinated assault' against Trump, according to the report.
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'It's a combination of an artificial voice with a real voice,' said an analyst with NCRI. 'It destroyed the Democratic party and now they are going after MAGA.'
The network is quick to jump on and twist almost any story in the news cycle, and have recently trained their sights on President Trump, NCRI says.
'The network's goals extend beyond crisis exploitation,' the report says. 'After leveraging the false-flag frame to pose as MAGA loyalists, the same actors pivoted to accuse Donald Trump of pedophilia and to disseminate Iranian state leaks portraying IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) as an Israeli proxy.'
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