Meet Jenna Abrams, A Completely Fake Russian Troll Farm Product Who Infiltrated The American Mainstream
How good is Russia at trolling the US? Welp, meet Jenna Abrams. Jenna is a twitter account referenced and quoted and included in HUNDREDS of articles in the US; Jenna engaged in thousands of arguments online; Jenna triggered tens of thousands with hot takes on everything from Kim Kardashian to slavery and segregation; And, oh yeah, Jenna is completely fake!
Jenna Abrams was 100% made up by a Russian “troll farm” to fuck with America’s public conversation. It’s not this cute chick…
…but rather just a bunch of dudes with computers in St. Petersburg fucking with our shit.
A report on The Daily Beast titled “Jenna Abrams, Russia’s Clown Troll Princess, Duped The Mainstream Media And The World” details more precisely who/what Jenna was.
Her account was the creation of employees at the Internet Research Agency, or the Russian government-funded “troll farm,” in St. Petersburg.
Jenna Abrams, the freewheeling American blogger who believed in a return to segregation and said that many of America’s problems stemmed from PC culture run amok, did not exist.
…
Her account was the creation of employees at the Internet Research Agency, or the Russian government-funded “troll farm,” in St. Petersburg.
Abrams would tweet things like:
“To those people, who hate the Confederate flag. Did you know that the flag and the war wasn’t about slavery, it was all about money”
And get into it with very real, very experienced, and very duped people.
Even Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia and an expert in Russian propaganda, got into a number of Twitter spats with Abrams. McFaul responded to Abrams’ posts in 10 separate months between February of 2015 and August of 2016.
Before they knew the account was run by paid disinformation agents, Abrams’ ahistorical slavery revisionism irked journalists and historians alike.
And invoked very serious responses that garnered very serious traction.
Al Letson, the host of the Center for Investigative Reporting’s Reveal podcast, received over 65,000 retweets and 153,000 likes when he refuted Abrams’ incorrect Civil War claim.
“It’s much easier to say the Civil War was about money, when your ancestors weren’t the currency,” said Letson, whose tweet is still pinned to the top of his Twitter page.
Historian Kevin Kruse’s quote-tweet of Abrams accrued over 41,000 retweets.
“No, the Civil War was about slavery,” he wrote. “Sincerely, Historians.”
Trolling is of course very funny. It makes people mad online and making people mad online is great. However, Jenna’s whole body of work, and the knowledge that it all came from a Russian operation obviously in possession of more Jennas, is where things get very concerning.
As the article notes, Jenna became significantly more political as last year’s election neared, revealing her most prioritized mission:
But in the run-up to Election Day, Abrams’ account, and the people who were in control of it, became much more political.
In September 2016, Abrams wrote a now-removed Medium post titled “Why do we need to get back to segregation.”
“Humanity has gone full circle. Never mind how many activists of any color died to get rid of segregation, and fought for inclusion, black people want it back. 100% free people made their choice, and their choice is segregation,” Abrams wrote.
She also posted a summary of former FBI Director James Comey’s public testimony, writing “Comey admitted Hillary is a liar,” plus a picture of black and green olives, mocking the Black Lives Matter movement. CNN subsequently picked up the photo.
The Russians have gone and will continue to go to great lengths to fuck with us. This is, full disclosure, actually scary.
