NEWSWATCH: “The Baltic Elves Taking on Pro-Russian Trolls; What at first looked like as a social media grudge match could be a precursor to invasion, war, and resistance in the Baltics” – TheDailyBeast.com

Map of Baltics and Environs, Including Kaliningrad

Mindaugas is an unassuming, thirtysomething advertising agency director by day … ferocious cyber-warrior by night. He started a phenomenon … in Lithuania … countering Kremlin propaganda and disinformation …. ‘We needed to call our group something. … we were fighting trolls. … I said, “Let’s be elves.”‘

There were 20 or 30 at first, when the trolls began … leaving nasty comments about the Lithuanian government and society, usually pegged to a hatred of NATO, the European Union and … the United States. Since then, elves have proliferated into the hundreds. … scattered about neighboring Latvia and Estonia … even … as far north as Finland. ….

* * *

Facebook is where … skirmishes take place … mortal combat is reserved for … comment sections of Lithuanian news articles, where … trolls loose a constant drizzle of falsehoods and complaints … to construct an alternate reality version of life in this Baltic country …. Rather than a thriving and patriotic post-Soviet success story, which it is, the image the trolls cultivate is that of a demoralized and angry society whose people are ready for regime change … through internal democratic mechanisms or through ‘liberation’ by a friendly neighboring army.

Click here for “The Baltic Elves Taking on Pro-Russian Trolls;
What at first looked like as a social media grudge match could be a precursor to invasion, war, and resistance in the Baltics” – TheDailyBeast.com

Comment