I am running a bit late today as I have a painting contractor at my house and things are in a bit of disarray. (Kind of like in the whole country.) There are many news stories bubbling around these days, but one caught my cynical eye yesterday. The headline in the New York Times was: “Transgender Girls in Sports: G.O.P. Pushes New Front in Culture War”. The thing that I found most interesting in this article was the assertion that this ‘issue’ seemingly came out of nowhere. “ Lawmakers in a growing number of Republican-led states are advancing and passing bills to bar transgender athletes in girls’ sports, a culture clash that seems to have come out of nowhere”1 It struck me that this looks like a perfect opening for a classic Russian disinformation campaign aimed at inflaming divisions and creating an ‘issue’ to drive a wedge between groups of American voters.
I know there are currently bills in the Montana state legislature that are addressing this transgender ‘issue.’ And the fact is there are similar bills in several other states including South Dakota, Arkansas, and Mississippi with more likely to join the parade. So, I asked myself how could this become an ‘issue’ where there appears to be a coordinated effort across several Republican led states to enact similar bills?
After all, these laws are not widely popular. Remember the ‘bathroom bill’ in North Carolina which led to a sports boycott of the state and cost the state millions of dollars in revenue which led to conservatives to pull back on similar efforts across the country. And yet, here we are again. The fact is, there are relatively few transgender athletes and the NCAA already has policies in place to deal with this situation. The N.C.A.A. requires athletes who are transitioning to female to be on testosterone suppression treatment for a year before they can compete on a women’s team.1
“Limiting the rights of transgender people is an issue that has resonance with an increasingly small share of the overall population. A new study by the Public Religion Research Institute reported that only 7 percent of Americans were “completely against” pro-L.G.B.T.Q. policies. But it is a vocal group intent on showing that it can flex its power in the Republican Party.”1
At about the same time I read this article, I downloaded and was reviewing a report put out by the Global Engagement Center of the U.S. State Department entitled, “Pillars of Russia’s Disinformation and Propaganda Ecosystem.” This report states that the five basic pillars of the Russian system to interfere with politics around the world are:
- Official Government Communications
- State-Funded Global Messaging
- Cultivation of Proxy Sources
- Weaponization of Social Media
- Cyber-Enabled Disinformation
If you look at ‘4’ and ‘5’ above, a typical scenario would be to either latch on to an existing relatively minor ‘issue’ and start fanning the flames through social media to make it a big issue and/or start propagating disinformation relative to this ‘issue’. In the above case of transgender athletes, it is easy to envision how Russian trolls could latch on to something like this and start infiltrating conservative organizations (unknowingly) to help build some momentum behind this. This is the danger when there is a small, but vocal and passionate, minority who become so myopic about a ‘cause celebre’ that the end justifies the means – even if that means is falling subject to unwitting assistance from Russian propaganda trolls.
No one should be so naïve to think that the Russians are not right in the middle of all of the divisive issues facing America today – social justice, transgender and gay rights, immigration, climate change, COVID vaccine safety, etc. All you have to do is read the report cited in this post put out by our own State Department to have an appreciation of the extent of Russian interference in America politics and the lengths they will go to create division with America and between America and its allies.
Do I have conclusive proof that this whole transgender ‘issue’ that seemingly came out of nowhere is being amplified by Russian influencers? The short answer is no. However, after reading the State Department report, I would be very surprised if the little old Russian trolls aren’t having a heyday continuing to help fan the flames of division. Putin is continuing to laugh his ass off.
He’s probably building a new nuclear submarine base across from Alaska in the Bering Sea and we are so busy arguing about which bathroom someone can use that we don’t even notice. Maybe that’s the idea!