Have the Russians come to play in Lancaster County politics?
As cloak-and-daggery as that may sound, that’s the conclusion reached by the Southern Poverty Law Center on Wednesday in a freshly released article that, through several degrees of separation, linked the just-closed “Lancaster Patriot” politics blog to a Lancaster man who runs web-based outlets called Russia Insider, Russian Faith and Truth to Power.
If all the reported connections bear out, it serves as a fresh and local example of the kind of social media manipulation that was such a center of concern in the 2016 election cycle, and a reminder that people need to be extra-vigilant about where their news is coming from, who is producing it, and what their mission is.
Lancaster Online first reported last month that Lancaster Patriot was edited by Norman “Trey” Garrison, a man SPLC’s Hatewatch blog described Wednesday as “a 51-year-old Holocaust-mocking, Twitter troll who for years embodied the online persona “Spectre” while podcasting for the white nationalist organization The Right Stuff.”
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