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Red Scares and Orange Mobilizations: A Critical Anthropological Perspective on the Russian Hacking Scandal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2017

Julie Hemment
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Abstract

This essay considers the Russian hacking controversy, which has been a prominent theme of the US Presidential election season. Tracking the context and contours of the scandal, I consider some of the anxieties, phobias and cultural logics that animate it (both in Russia and the US) and reflect on the dynamics that drive it.

Type
Critical Forum: Russian Influence in 2016 US Presidential Election
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 76 , Supplement S1 , August 2017 , pp. S66 - S80
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 2017 

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References

1. Cultural Anthropology's “Hot Spots,” https://culanth.org/conversations/4-hot-spots, (last accessed May 2, 2017), is a valuable online site where anthropologists share their insights and provocations on current events. Recent forums include “The Rise of Trumpism” and “Crisis of Liberalism.” See also the special American Ethnologist Forum, “The 2016 Brexit Referendum and Trump election,” which explores the “liberalism in crisis” narrative from diverse perspectives, webpage with links to individual articles at http://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/hub/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1548-1425/?t=recent#anchor-feed (last accessed May 12, 2017).

2. Another dimension of the “crisis” anthropologists draw attention to is that it exposes the complacency of liberal elites and their blindness to the contradictions of the (neo)liberal order. In their contribution to the American Ethnologist forum, Jonathan Rosa and Yarimar Bonilla examine how colonial and racial legacies shaped perceptions of the election. Whereas for some Trump's victory marked a moment of disturbing rupture, for others it rearticulates existing (racialized) power relations. See “Deprovincializing Trump, Decolonizing Diversity and Unsettling Anthropology,” American Ethnologist 44, No. 2 (May 2017): 1–8 Google Scholar, at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/amet.12468/epdf (last accessed May 16, 2017).

3. The mural and its internet circulation attracted a lot of media commentary. See Adam Taylor, “The Putin-Trump Kiss being Shared around the World,” Washington Post May 13, 2016, at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/05/13/the-putin-trump-kiss-being-shared-around-the-world/?utm_term=.e8927a599499 (last accessed April 16, 2017).

4. For example Keith Olbermann's inflammatory statements of December 2016: “We are at war with Russia,” Olbermann said. “Or perhaps more correctly, we have lost a war with Russia without a battle. We are no longer a sovereign nation, we are no longer a democracy, we are no longer a free people—we are the victims of a bloodless coup,” at http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/keith-olbermann-blasts-traitors-protecting-trump-we-are-victims-bloodless-coup (last accessed May 2, 2017).

5. Adrian Chen, “The Propaganda about Russian Propaganda,” The New Yorker, December 1, 2016, at http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-propaganda-about-russian-propaganda (last accessed May 2, 2017).

6. Glenn Greenwald, speaking on Democracy Now, January 6, 2017, at https://www.democracynow.org/2017/1/6/glenn_greenwald_democrats_eager_to_blame (last accessed May 3, 2017).

7. Florida Democratic representative Alcee Hastings couched his decision not to attend the presidential inauguration (in solidarity with Rep. Lewis and in protest against Trump's demeaning tweets about him) in these terms: “President-elect Trump has made it clear that when given the choice, he stands with Vladimir Putin. I choose to stand with Rep. John Lewis, and every American that expects our President to serve with compassion and humility,” at http://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/1/17/1621581/-Rep-says-no-to-inauguration-saying-Trump-stands-with-Putin-I-choose-to-stand-with-John-Lewis (last accessed May 3, 2017).

8. Paul Carden, “Is Skepticism Treason?” The Nation, January 3, 2017 at https://www.thenation.com/article/is-skepticism-treason/ (last accessed May 3, 2017).

9. Paul Robinson, “The One Thing Trump is Right About,” Centre for International Policy Studies, January 20, 2017, available online at http://www.cips-cepi.ca/2017/01/20/one-thing-trump-is-right-about/ (last accessed May 3, 2017).

10. “PONARS Eurasia Discusses: The depiction of Russia at the Women's Marches,” January 30, 2017. See in particular posts by Marlene Laruelle, Valerie Sperling, and Regina Smyth. Accessed February 7, 2017. http://www.ponarseurasia.org/article/ponars-eurasia-discusses-depiction-russia-womens-marches-photos.

11. Smyth reports that some protestors, misunderstanding the Russian language text of some posters, began chanting “USA” and “This is America.” The issue was resolved when the Russian-language sign bearers flipped their posters around to reveal English language slogans critical of Trump.

12. My phrasing here was prompted by a point Masha Gessen made in her recent public talk, “The Trump-Putin Connect: What We Imagine and Why,” Amherst College, January 26, 2017. When it manifests in Europe, populism does not surprise. When it emerges in the US, we look around to say “who did this to us,” rather than exploring the domestic factors that may have prompted it (e.g. the impact of the neoliberal economic policies advanced by both parties, the failures of the Democratic Party to take peoples’ economic and social anxieties seriously, or to look beyond the beltway).

13. In am indebted to an article by Fred Weir for drawing my attention to this particular publication: “Twenty years ago, Russians loved the US. Where did it all go wrong?” Christian Science Monitor, January 10, 2017, at http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2017/0110/Twenty-years-ago-Russians-loved-the-US.-Where-did-it-all-go-wrong (last accessed May 3, 2017). Sean Guillory's recent article provides a nuanced account of the processes via which this took place, the ties between Russian and American actors that enabled it and the disenchantment many Russians feel about the “shitocracy” it engendered. Guillory, “Dermokratiya, USA,” Jacobin, March 13, 2017, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/03/russia-us-clinton-boris-yeltsin-elections-interference-trump/ (last accessed May 3, 2017).

14. As of the time of writing, the intelligence agencies that assert these claims have not released evidence. Recent accounts reveal cybersecurity to be a highly uncertain forensic science, often deployed for ideological reasons; meanwhile, “the cyber attribution business” is a highly profitable industry. See Yasha Levine, “The Russians Hacked America,” The Baffler, No. 34, at https://thebaffler.com/salvos/from-russia-with-panic-levine (last accessed April 15, 2017).

15. Office of the Director of National Intelligence, “Intelligence Community Assessment: Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections,” declassified version, January 6, 2017, available online at https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf (last accessed May 3, 2017).

16. The report describes the activities of RT (formerly Russia Today) in detail, including its critical reporting of US-based contestation and social protest (Occupy, anti-fracking movements), its hosting of third-party US presidential candidate debates, and its social media footprint.

17. Some have noted that the DNI uncritically reports RT’s own inflated claims about its viewership and impact numbers. See Ellen Mickiewicz, “Contestation about the DNI report,” in Johnson's List #6, 2017, January 7, 2017 at http://russialist.org/ellen-mickiewicz-rt/; Masha Gessen, “Russia, Trump & Flawed Intelligence,” New York Review of Books, January 9, 2017, at http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/01/09/russia-trump-election-flawed-intelligence/ (last accessed May 3, 2017).

18. DNI report, “Assessing Russian Activities,” 7.

19. See for example Max Fischer, who uses the framing of Russia's “New Dark Arts” in his article, “Russian Hackers find Ready Bullhorns in the Media,” New York Times, January 8 2017, at https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/08/world/europe/russian-hackers-find-ready-bullhorns-in-the-media.html?_r=0 (last accessed May 3, 2017).

20. Jacob Siegel, “Is America Ready for Meme Warfare?” Motherboard, January 31, 2017, accessed February 8, 2017, https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/meme-warfare.

21. Elizabeth Dunn and M. S. Bobick make the point that Putin's satirical use of the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) doctrine embraced by the UN “eviscerates” the moral and legal arguments used by western states to justify international intervention, see Dunn, Elizabeth Cullen and Bobick, Michael S.. “The Empire Strikes Back: War without War and Occupation without Occupation in the Russian Sphere of Influence,” in American Ethnologist 41, no. 3 (August 2014): 405–13Google Scholar; see also Alexei Yurchak, “Little Green Men: Russia, Ukraine and post-Soviet Sovereignty,” Anthropoliteia, March 31, 2014, at https://anthropoliteia.net/2014/03/31/little-green-men-russia-ukraine-and-post-soviet-sovereignty/ (last accessed May 3, 2017).

22. Between 2006 and 2011, I undertook ethnographic research on Russia's state-run youth projects. See Hemment, Julie, Youth Politics in Putin's Russia: Producing Patriots and Entrepreneurs (Bloomington, 2015)Google Scholar; Hemment, Julie, “Nashi, Youth Voluntarism, and Potemkin NGOs: Making Sense of Civil Society in post-Soviet Russia,” in Slavic Review 71, no. 2 (Summer 2012): 234–60Google Scholar.

23. This is Nashi’s phrasing; Nashi conferences held special sessions devoted to this topic.

24. See Graeme Robertson and Samuel Greene, “State-Mobilized Contention: The Creation of Novo-Rossiya,” paper delivered to the International Conference on State Mobilized Contention: The State-Protest Movement Nexus, Hong-Kong, January 12, 2017, at http://www.socsc.hku.hk/smc/pdf/2017/pp_6.pdf (last accessed May 3, 2017).

25. Significantly, former Nashi activists have played a key role in this new informational strategy. See Julie Fedor and Rolf Fredheim, “‘We Need More Clips about Putin, and Lots of Them:’ Russia's State-Commissioned Online Visual Culture,” in Nationalities Papers, published online March 2, 2017: 1–21, at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00905992.2016.1266608 (last accessed May 3, 2017).

26. Eliot Borenstein has traced the morphing contours of conspiracy theories in Russia. See for example his Plots against Russia blog and book-in-progress, at http://plotsagainstrussia.org/read-me/ (last accessed May 3, 2017).

27. Alexei Yurchak defines stiob as a distinctive mode of satire, or ironic aesthetic that emerged in the discursive and ideological context of late socialism, see his Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More (Princeton, 2005)Google Scholar.

28. My phrasing here is taken from Yanni Kotsonis and Kenneth Pinnow, “Obama and the US Miscalculation on Russia,” NYU Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia, January 23, 2017, at http://jordanrussiacenter.org/news/obama-us-miscalculation-russia/#.WJjX_oXU5Rl (last accessed January 30, 2017).

29. Tom Batchelor, “Vladimir Putin Invited Children of 35 US Diplomats to the Kremlin for Christmas in Latest Barack Obama Jibe,” The Independent, January 4, 2017, at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-putin-president-invite-35-us-diplomats-kremlin-christmas-barack-obama-sanction-russian-a7509301.html (last accessed February 7, 2017). Putin's invitation echoes Nashi’s 2006 campaign, “A Holiday Returned,” which brought gift-bearing youth in Santa suits to meet with Moscow-based veterans, symbolically returning the New Year's holiday they'd been deprived of by the German “fascists” in 1945 (see Hemment, Youth Politics in Putin's Russia).

30. See Julie Hemment, “Parody, PC, and Sexy Spies: Gendered Bite-Back in Russia and Beyond?” paper delivered to the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association, Minneapolis, November 19, 2016.

31. Here, I'm drawing on Jodi Dean's observation about liberal complicity in Trumpism and how liberal enjoyment (their enjoyment of their outrage and disdain for Trump supporters) fueled Trump's success and assisted his campaign. Jodi Dean, “Donald Trump is the Most Honest Candidate in American Politics Today,” in In These Times, August 12, 2015, at http://inthesetimes.com/article/18309/donald-trump-republican-president (last accessed February 6, 2017).

32. On April 1 the Russian Foreign Ministry posted a new automated answering message on its official Facebook page (in Russian and English): “To use the services of Russian hackers, press 2; to request election interference, press 3.” Like Anna Chapman's performances, this spoof excited a great deal of interest amongst US-based journalists and some confusion as well, as RT gleefully reported. See “Press 2 if Hackers Needed: Russian FM April Fools Voicemail Leaves US Media Unamused,” at https://www.rt.com/news/383098-russia-foreign-ministry-spoof-hackers/ (last accessed May 15, 2017).

33. A recent New York Times article by Charles Sykes reveals how the hacking scandal intersects with and fuels the domestic anti-liberal agenda. Conservative talk-show host Rush Limbough commended Trump's controversial firing of FBI Director James Comey and his reception of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, describing it as an “epic trolling” of liberals. “If Liberals Hate Him, Trump Must Be Doing Something Right,” New York Times, May 12, 2017, at https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/12/opinion/sunday/if-liberals-hate-him-then-trump-must-be-doing-something-right.html?_r=0 (last accessed May 15, 2017).

34. Ilya Budraitskis, “Neither Moscow, nor NATO: Notes on the NATO Summit and the Anti-war Summit in Warsaw,” July 15, 2016, at http://www.criticatac.ro/lefteast/neither-moscow-nor-nato-notes-on-the-nato-summit-and-the-antiwar-counter-summit-in-warsaw/ (last accessed May 4, 2017).

35. Michael M. J. Fischer, “First Responses: A To-Do List,” The Rise of Trumpism Hotspots, January 18, 2017, at https://culanth.org/fieldsights/1034-first-responses-a-to-do-list (last accessed May 4, 2017).

36. In her recent New Yorker piece, Emily Nussbaum discusses the role humor has played in the presidential election, and how distinctive modes of satire functioned, changing their properties as they have spread beyond the narrow, marginal far-right circles within which they used to flourish. See Emily Nussbaum, “How Jokes Won the Election,” The New Yorker, January 23, 2017, at http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/23/how-jokes-won-the-election (last accessed May 4, 2017).

37. Nadezda Azhgikhina, “It's Not Too Late for an Honest Russian-American Dialogue,” The Nation, January 17, 2017, at https://www.thenation.com/article/its-not-too-late-for-an-honest-russian-american-dialogue/ (last accessed February 4, 2017).