Russia paid millions to American right-wingers who promote Russia-friendly narratives, according to indictment

Foreign influence brings out our worst tendencies and makes them seem normal, says Julian Zelizer .

Zelizer: Russian influence operations don’t really aim to convince skeptical people that something false is real.

They aim to give people already inclined to support Russia ’s position, Zelizer says.

He says best defense against foreign influence is healthy domestic politics.

In Pew survey, 49 percent of Republicans said the U.S. was not helping Ukraine enough.

Julian Zelizer : By September 2022 , the numbers had flipped, with Republicans ' most popular answer being that we were helping Ukraine “too much” Zelizer says.

He says the flip-flop was caused by influence of influential right-wing figures such as Tucker Carlson , Elon Musk , David Sacks , and Sen. Mike Lee , who pushed Russia -friendly narratives.

Websites and independent media figures may be warier of getting involved with this sort of thing in the first place. However, while the U.S. government can expose specific influence operations, there remains a large swath of the American right that sees Putin ’s Russia as an ally against the “real” enemy—the broadly defined Left —and is eager to believe Russian propaganda as long as it’s negative about Americans they don’t like. That’s a harder problem..