This month Drexel University placed George Ciccariello-Maher, a political-science professor with a history of controversial tweets, on leave after he faced increasing threats based on the posts. On Friday the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education uncovered an interesting detail of the controversy, reporting that a Twitter account run by a Russian troll farm helped one of the professor’s most controversial tweets go viral, helping to ramp up the pressure to condemn the professor.
In December 2016, Mr. Ciccariello-Maher posted “All I Want for Christmas Is White Genocide” on Twitter, prompting an outcry. One of the accounts to share the tweet was “Tennessee GOP,” which shared a screenshot of the tweet that drew 2,100 retweets, and reached mainstream news-media outlets. The Tennessee GOP account, masquerading as run by the state’s Republican Party, was actually operated by the Internet Research Agency, a “troll farm” linked to the Russian government.
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