In an interview with an independent Russian TV station, a former Internet Research Agency employee referred to as "Maksim" says bosses forced him and his coworkers to watch the Netflix show "House of Cards" to learn about U.S. politics.
It was part of a documented “strategy” in the English language department to fully understand how the American political system works. "It was necessary to know all the main problems of the United States of America. Tax problems, the problem of gays, sexual minorities, weapons,” he said.
Internet Research Agency, a Kremlin-linked troll farm in St. Petersburg, opened 470 fake Facebook accounts and spent $100,000 on 3000 ads between 2015 and 2017 trying to influence the 2016 U.S. election. "Maksim" belonged to a department assigned to pretend to be Americans posting comments on news articles.
From Yahoo News:
“The main message is: Are not you, my American brothers, tired of the Clintons? How many have they already been?” Maksim says, adding that he and his colleagues were told to emphasize the Clintons’ past “corruption scandals.”
But more broadly, the instructions given to employees of the English language department were to stoke discontent about the U.S. government and the Obama administration in particular. “We had a goal to set up the Americans against their own government,” he says. “To cause unrest, cause discontent [and] lower [President] Obama’s rating.”
"Maksim" added there was one subject higher-ups instructed employees to avoid:
“Neither Russia nor Putin could be mentioned,” he said. “Because the Americans do not talk about it. They, in fact, do not care about Russia and Putin.”
Russian trolls were schooled on ‘House of Cards’ (Yahoo News)