Ah, the grand old art of making people hate one another.  It’s as easy as telling Group A that Group B think they’re a bunch of lowbrows who wouldn’t know culture if it came up and bit them on their mass-market jeans.  Then you flip the script and inform Group B that Group A look down on them with the kind of disdain usually reserved for unflushed toilets.  Don’t even try to use logic; we’re dealing in the commodity of raw, unrefined emotions here.  Groups C, D, and E may also get involved, depending on the size of the conspiracy theory you’re spinning.  You can stir the pot or set the whole kitchen on fire.

Why make people hate one another?  Well, it’s either because you’re the type of person who believes that “divide and conquer” is a great strategy for a Tuesday afternoon, or you’re nursing a grudge against society so big that it needs its own ZIP code.  Sure, real conspiracies are out there, playing hide and seek.  But why not toss a few faux conspiracies into the mix?  It’s like adding a little glitter to the dust — distracts the eye while the real dirt gets swept under the rug.

Now let’s take Marxist ideology for a spin.  This is a conspiracy theory on steroids, jazzed up with academic jargon.  It’s a long and winding tale of how, since Adam and Eve decided to binge on a fruit diet, the rich have been conspiring against the poor, inventing such devious instruments of oppression as gods and religion, private property, family, the rule of law, and that pesky thing called morality.  Modern remixes include gender, race, ethnicity, and even flipping the bird at different species, climate, and the environment.

What’s the endgame?  You chop up society into neat little groups — A, B, C, and so on.  Feed them a steady diet of bile to turn them against one another, with each faction glaring suspiciously at their neighbors, as if everyone’s scheming to pilfer the biggest slice of the communal pie.  And then, with a flourish, you step in as the hero, promising to turn off this horror show if — and only if — they hand you the keys to the kingdom.  Classic.

The good old USSR wielded a playbook of divisive tactics so cunning, it could’ve made Machiavelli blush.  They weren’t just the masters of the “us vs. them” narrative; they were the grand puppeteers, pulling strings from the IRA to FARC to the PLO.  Every terrorist mob and communist outfit — the original “hate groups” — was their marionette.  When hate and violence around the world reached the boiling point, they’d point the finger at capitalist societies and say, “Look, they started it!”

Putin’s Russia not only inherited this delightful bag of tricks from the USSR, but also gave it a tech-savvy makeover.  Behold the infamous “troll factory“ in St. Petersburg, a veritable hive of digital discord, with subsidiaries in Venezuela and other client states in various geographical regions.  Picture hundreds of thousands of inflammatory social media posts, in every language under the sun, all crafted to whip up a frenzy of hate.  To land a gig at that illustrious establishment, you must be able to pretend you’re someone you’re not and cook up the juiciest, most divisive tales you can think of.

Remember the 2016 presidential elections?  Those trolls were like party-crashers on all social media platforms, posing alternatively as Trump- and as Hillary-supporters, with a mission to paint each side as so utterly ridiculous, so thoroughly despicable, that hate seemed like the only logical response.  And let’s not forget the cherry on top — the largest and most active BLM page on Facebook, also a Russian troll production.  If you thought they called it a day after the election, guess again.  These guys are the Energizer bunnies of social strife.

The internet and social media once seemed like places where everyone would hold hands in digital harmony.  But that utopian dream machine quickly devolved into a creepy masquerade, where everyone is invited, but nobody knows who’s behind the mask.  Take Quora.com, for instance. It used to be this cozy global campfire where anyone could toss in a question, and the rest of the world huddled around to offer answers. — a digital kumbaya moment, providing hours of delightful, informative banter.  Ah, the good old days.

Enter Russian trolls, the ever-enthusiastic interlopers in our global conversation.  They are paid to turn even the most innocuous platforms into battlegrounds by planting fake stories and allegations that could start a bar fight in a monastery.  They pit whites against blacks, women against men, Europeans against Americans, Christians against atheists, Hispanics against English-speakers, homo against hetero, and everyone against the Jews.  It’s like a twisted game of societal Jenga, where the aim is to pull out the right block and watch everything collapse.

For example, there is one user named “Siayox,” with a profile picture right out of Central Casting for “Hipster You’d Least Like to Have a Beer With.”  This supposedly English-speaking dude describes himself — using his original spelling and grammar — as “Writer, and proud white-man who care about science and logic.  With out white-men you wont able enjoy around fancy and save places.”

The grammatical horror show aside, he poses alternatively as a black boy, a white woman, or a Germanic neo-Nazi, with questions meant to incite anger and contempt.  These queries also serve as a place for fellow trolls to spew fake tales of oppression and hurl insults while masquerading as members of various ethnic and religious groups.

What’s the telltale sign of the Russian connection?  Amid the posts meant to demoralize Western societies, there’s a recurring theme, a narrative that is as subtle as a sledgehammer and about as nuanced.  Of all the world conflicts, and out of the 195 recognized countries in the world, these supposed “Americans” and “Europeans” chose to focus on Ukraine, praising the Russian invasion and branding the dispossessed Ukrainian refugees as “racist Nazis.”

Below is a shortened list of Siayox’s greatest hits.  The full roster is here — a reminder that in the world of online manipulation, nothing is as it seems, and the person behind the keyboard could be anyone, anywhere — churning out discord like it’s going out of style.

• I’m a black kid. Do white people hate me?
• I’m white and I definitely believe that Cleopatra was African American. Why do we get angry about this?
• Why don’t women just go back to the kitchen?
• I’m a black man. I believe that Richard III was an African American. Why are white people denying this?
• I’m white and I dont like Jewish people. Am I racist?
• I’m black and I wonder when will we get our reparations from white people?
• I’m a black girl and I believe that Richard III was African American. Why do British people deny this if they have evidence supporting this claim?
• Why do people say that there’s no Nazi and racism in Ukraine while my self as a black person living in Ukraine faced the most disgusting treatments you can ever imagine as a human?
• Why are many anti-Nazi and non-white countries siding with Russia against “racists” in Ukraine? Why is that? Is it true that Ukrainians are Nazis?
• As a white Ukrainian refugee, I don’t want to live with blacks. Do you think that the British government should deport them into their countries?
• I’m a Ukrainian refugee but I don’t want to be around blacks and other inferior ones. Does that make me racist?
• I’m a white supremacist and support Ukraine. What is wrong with that?
• Is it appropriate to leave my fourteen-year-old daughter alone with her black stepfather when I go out?
• I’m a white woman and I’m so sorry, but why do I feel so disgusted when I see someone of another race?
• I’m a white boy and I feel some kind of superiority over my black mates in school. Where is this coming from?
• Why do people still deny white superiority with all actual scientific evidences around them?
• I’m proud being Germanic, man, gentle, and white. Does that offend other races?

This is just one troll.  There are many more in this circus, where the clowns change masks faster than a chameleon on a kaleidoscope.  Some have a better command of English than others, but all of them tend to switch their race, sex, age, or political views depending on the topic.  Now he’s a conservative grandpa lamenting women in the military, and moments later he’s a woke college feminist blaming all historical atrocities on white males.

The same spectacle unfolds on Facebook, X-Twitter, and other platforms.  Some trolls pose as “crazy liberals,” others as “angry conservatives.”  Spotting these shape-shifters isn’t always easy, especially when they occasionally echo your own thoughts.  A surge of blinding anger upon reading a post is usually a red flag.  These posts are crafted to dehumanize, to stir the pot of hatred with a big, invisible spoon.  It helps to check their profiles before sharing their musings.  Unfortunately, there’s no silver bullet for trolls — even if there were, they’d change their pattern, and we’d be left guessing again.

Reading this article may not turn you into a troll-resistant superhero, but it should at least boost your immunity.  The next time you see trolls singing your tune, remember that they’re not in your fan club.  Their mission is to weaken and split us apart as a nation.  If they can’t be as good as us, they’d settle for dragging us down to their level.  And yes, this is a real conspiracy — not to be confused with the fake ones, often spread by the same trolls.

For an ultimate piece of advice, let’s time-travel to pre-internet Tibet and consult Milarepa, a 12th-century yogi who lived without a smartphone or social media.  He warned not to be like the dog that chases every stick thrown its way.  Instead, be more like a lion, who goes after the thrower.  In the world of trolls, being a lion means seeing through the charade and refusing to play the game.  Don’t get caught up in every provocation, but focus on the source and understand the intent.  Nobody throws a stick at a lion twice.

Image: David King via Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.