> Just picture a reasonably proximate scenario: It’s the winter of 2020, and Donald Trump—having lost reelection by a margin closer than expected—is in full att

> Just picture a reasonably proximate scenario: It’s the winter of 2020, and Donald Trump—having lost reelection by a margin closer than expected—is in full attack mode, whipping up stories of runaway voter fraud. Local protest groups coalesce around Facebook posts assailing liberals, murderous “illegals,” feminists. (This is basically what happened in France last year with the “anger groups” that birthed the yellow vest protests.) Pizzagate-style conspiracy theories race through these groups, inflaming their more extreme members. Add a population that is, unlike those of France and Nigeria, armed to the teeth, and the picture gets pretty dark. Wow, that's poetic. I can practically feel the hate emitting from my screen. I thought Mother Jones just said they had a problem with fake-news three paragraphs up. And then they decide to speculate about the future in which a bunch of wackadoo right-wingers are running around gun-murdering people because they didn't like the election results, full-on civil war (instigated by the Republican voters, no doubt, that's what we chose to run with in this article). Sure, conservatives probably aren't reading MJ, but I don't understand how anyone feels comfortable with caricaturing people to this extent. > This is no hypothetical. It’s precisely what Vladimir Putin’s minions, and the Trump campaign and its allies, did in 2016. And why not? Facebook showed them the way, dispatching staffers to campaigns to make sure they knew how to get exactly the messages they wanted in front of exactly the people most susceptible. By the way, if you follow through the links on this one, Facebook also dispatched staffers to Clinton's campaign. But it definitely sounds more sinister to compare Trump to Putin than Trump to Clinton.