by: XHABIR DERALLA
“One of the main tasks of a party troll is to switch theses, to manipulate and lie as much as possible. When this doesn’t succeed, it’s important to cause commotion”.
This tweet of mine drew considerable attention, and even reached the top tweets of the biggest news aggregator in our country time.mk. I am not much of a Twitter person, and I don’t even use Facebook very often (I don’t have time), so I was surprised by the popularity of such an ordinary statement made about the trolls that is a result of my many years of experience with the agitprop machinery of the radical nationalists and those who are on the “bumper of the crime”, as leader of MVRO Mickoski said about himself.
Almost every day, for years, literally an entire “factory” of party trolls is being mobilized to attack me with the most repulsive possible expressions. The same goes for these days too. They have moved the “front” also to Facebook, where various characters write long and no less disgusting lies about me. Lie after lie. They are certainly adding this to their many years of attempts to denigrate me in all possible ways, personally, on the basis of my affiliation, undoubtedly… Allow me to describe their machinery through just several tweets of mine. You can read theirs if you want (there are links), but here I wouldn’t want to get myself dirty by citing theirs.
Their machinery is not by far naïve. If one looks at those several tweets back on my Twitter profile, several tweets will be noticed to which the party trolls have paid special attention. Hence, there is one tweet: “So that’s why the spokesperson of the vmro’s too is exclaiming Long live Zoran Zoran! Well, even the head of the vmro’s himself said that he is the only one on the bumper of the crime. #ЈасноКакоДен“(Clear as day).
It’s interesting how even tweets that are benign and small political jokes are welcomed with hatred. Humorous political witticism has been characteristic for every society since the beginning of time to now, certainly, except for countries captured by criminals, Stalinists or fascists (well, they are the same). Although to some it may not seem so, but the way that the agitprop machinery of radicals and criminal installations in politics functions is a serious indicator of how they would act if they were to come to power (I received a suggestion from a reader that it’s better to call them installations than structures).
Another tweet caused much nervousness: “I want a leaders meeting! No, I don’t! I do! No! I do! I want a leaders meeting so that I don’t want a leaders meeting! I don’t want a leaders meeting… He loves me… He loves me not… Le loves me… No… He loves me… I want him to love me… Nobody loves me! And look at just how pretty and smart I am! Buaaaa!” An avalanche of hate speech followed. This prompted me to write: “You don’t even have to mention them by name. They are immediately recognized and babble and babble…”, and I added the hashtag #НаБраникот (On the bumper). It seems that this pulled the last straw of the anger of the troll factory, so they attacked with all their forces the tweet mentioned at the beginning of this text. I just replied shortly: “An entire factory has gathered in one place. #ВистинатаБоли“ (The truth hurts).
There is no end to the “ingeniousness”. My tweet also found itself on the “information” (read: fake news factories) content of some internet media. I tweeted: “Sweethearts. Entire media outlets (if they can be called that, but can’t) are dealing with my tweets. All right, let them do something”. Party trolls on the bumper of crime… That’s what you get when even the spokesperson of MVRO exclaims “Long live Zoran Zaev” … The truth hurts… are the additional messages I turned into hashtags. And I didn’t deal to much with them. “May these louts and idiots drown in their own excrement” I said to myself. And I distanced myself from the poisoned well of the simple-mindedness just a few minutes after that.
Indeed, all this together didn’t take up more than a few minutes of my time. It’s not a challenge for me, nor do I find it entertaining, especially when I know that the small Twitter community truly is kidnapped by anonymized trolls behind which stand well-known criminal characters from the Macedonian political scene. I was laughing when these days my sources from the “white illegal building” of the richest party in Europe (with a multimillion debt and frozen assets) once again confirmed for me that lots of money are used for their pursuits, a lot of time and whole teams of people, with technical (know-how) assistance from abroad, you know which abroad. Come on! Why would they need that? – some might ask. The answer is not completely obvious, but is also not difficult.
The tweets and Facebook posts are food for the media network that is united around the operations for preventing justice for the criminals of the regime of the one from Budapest. They are part of the campaigns that have the purpose of preventing processes for improving the relations between our country and the neighbouring countries. They are always here to promote the radical “dead-Shqiptar-good-Shqiptar” doctrine. They are the enemies of the West and with all their forces are trying to prevent the Euro-Atlantic integration processes. In short, they are the army that is fighting against everything that the term – Macedonian strategic interests implies. And who call themselves Macedonian patriots, which is the funniest.
Nevertheless, their action is not naïve. With that continuous clatter of disgusting and vulgar hate speech and continuous contamination with fake news and disinformation, trust in the institutions is undermined and literally every success in society and the state, even the smallest, is relativized in this time of distress caused by the pandemic and hybrid war that is being led throughout the world.
The good news is that they are constantly experiencing defeats. Difficult defeats. Their efforts in which millions of euros have been invested are of no worth. All those suspicious transfers are of no worth, like those from Budapest via Ljubljana to TV Alfa, Kurir, Republika, Lider in 2018, which were revealed by investigative journalists. So far, only this has been discovered, who knows how much more there is to discover.
It will probably become even more fun when some hero-iness appears in the investigative bodies and discovers and opens the black little notebooks with numbers and codes. On top of all that was the recent “hot slap” that arrived in the form of the study “Mapping Fake News and Disinformation in the Western Balkans and Identifying Ways to Effectively Counter Them” that was published by the European Parliament. After such a blow, it would be dignified for them to lower their heads and try to quietly get out through the service exit of the uncritical public and porous justice. But, when there is no dignity, that’s it.
What remains is to conclude that all they have left are the millions of euros, black money, which they are pouring in the media. Millions that are bursting like soap bubbles, from just a few tweets and texts.
It’s no wonder they are loud, but it is a wonder how they manage to be so disgusting. There must be something in the character as well.
Original link to the mentioned study: Mapping Fake News and Disinformation in the Western Balkans.
translation: N. Cvetkovska
