对于欧洲人而言，如今的美国发挥着某种有用的功能：作为反面教材，告诉你哪些运行社会的方式是不可取的。美国已经表明它多么容易陷入富豪统治，或让国家分裂成两个敌对的部落。现在，它提供了又一个警示：如何通过把问题党派化而让俄罗斯的干涉得手。从大多数共和党人的表现看，问题好像不是俄罗斯插手了2016年选举，而在于联邦调查局(FBI)对这件事的处理。
Russia now has big ambitions for Europe. In the Italian elections on March 4, if you add up the predicted votes of the pro-Kremlin Five Star Movement and the Northern League, plus Vladimir Putin’s chum Silvio Berlusconi, you get to about 58 per cent. Possibly too late, officials around Europe are frantically building defences against Kremlin meddling.
如今俄罗斯对欧洲有很大的野心。在意大利3月4日的选举中，如果你把亲克里姆林宫的“五星运动”(Five Star Movement)和北方联盟(Northern League)的预测选票加在一起，然后再加上弗拉基米尔•普京(Vladimir Putin)的密友西尔维奥•贝卢斯科尼(Silvio Berlusconi)，你会得到58%左右的得票率。可能为时已晚，但欧洲各国的官员正疯狂建立防范措施来抵御克里姆林宫的干预。
People who warn about Russian disinformation are often accused of hysteria, so I’ll start with some caveats. True, Russia wasn’t the biggest factor in the US election. True, the US (like the UK) has an oversupply of homegrown fake news that dwarfs the quantity made in Russia. True, Hillary Clinton was a bad candidate. True, liberals need to understand the popular anger that Donald Trump embodies.
对俄罗斯造谣发出警告的人往往被指责为歇斯底里，因此我先作一些说明。没错，俄罗斯并不是影响美国大选的最大因素。没错，美国(就像英国一样)国内自生的假新闻泛滥，使得俄罗斯假新闻在数量上相形见绌。没错，希拉里•克林顿(Hillary Clinton)是个不理想的候选人。没错，自由派人士需要理解唐纳德•特朗普(Donald Trump)所代表的民众愤怒。
Still, given that Trump’s winning margin was 77,744 votes spread over three states, it’s plausible that Russia’s hack of Democratic emails — broadcast by the useful idiots of WikiLeaks and mainstream journalists — made the difference. Even if it didn’t, any election-meddling by a hostile power is a serious matter.
尽管如此，鉴于特朗普凭借三个州总共77744票的微弱优势胜出，俄罗斯对民主党电子邮件发起的黑客攻击——被维基解密(WikiLeaks)的有用傻瓜和主流媒体新闻从业人员广为宣传——有可能起到了关键作用。即使这些攻击没有带来任何差别，一个敌对大国干预选举的任何行为都是严重问题。
Putin’s Kremlin began focusing on disinformation in 2008, after losing the international “information war” over its invasion of Georgia. It scaled up disinformation in 2014, during its proxy war in Ukraine. In 2016, it increased its targeting of western countries. A regime that once feared social media has now mastered it. Russia has found disinformation a cheaper and arguably more effective route to influence than sending in tanks or making foreign investments.
在输掉了围绕俄罗斯入侵格鲁吉亚的国际“信息战”后，普京领导的克里姆林宫从2008年开始关注造谣。2014年，在其发动乌克兰代理战争期间，俄罗斯扩大了造谣规模。2016年，俄罗斯开始更多地针对西方国家。一个曾经害怕社交媒体的政权如今成为操弄社交媒体的高手。俄罗斯发现，相比出动坦克或进行对外投资，造谣可以更便宜地施加影响力，可以说也更有效。
Broadly, the Kremlin aims to split the EU and Nato. A quick way to do this is to bolster populist movements such as Brexit or Five Star. So every time there’s a terrorist attack in Europe, pro-Kremlin media, Russian diplomats and trolls spread conspiracy theories that it was an inside job by the host government. Some other favoured storylines: George Soros masterminded the refugee influx; Nato is scheming to invade Russia; the west is lying about Russian doping and wars, and is blaming all its problems on Russia.
总的来说，克里姆林宫的目标是分裂欧盟(EU)和北约(Nato)。捷径之一是支持英国退欧或“五星运动”等民粹主义运动。因此，每当欧洲发生恐怖袭击后，亲克里姆林宫的媒体、俄罗斯外交官和喷子就会散布阴谋论，称这是所在国政府贼喊捉贼。他们偏爱的其他情节包括：乔治•索罗斯(George Soros)一手策划了难民涌入;北约密谋入侵俄罗斯;西方在俄罗斯参与战争和俄罗斯运动员使用兴奋剂的问题上撒谎，并把自己的所有问题都赖在俄罗斯头上。
The Russians constantly adapt their disinformation, depending on what works where. In Nordic countries, the Kremlin-controlled Sputnik media flopped and soon closed, but trolls on social media had success in intimidating Nordics, who weren’t used to their brand of verbal aggression. Georgians are told that the EU wants to turn them into gay people or paedophiles. But targeting can be micro too: Nato soldiers in Lithuania and their spouses get text messages from Russia, as do Ukrainian soldiers fighting Russian separatists.
取决于实际效果，俄罗斯人不断因地制宜，变着花样造谣。在北欧国家，克里姆林宫控制的“俄罗斯卫星网”(Sputnik)媒体遭遇惨败，很快关闭，但社交媒体上的喷子成功地吓住了北欧人，后者不习惯他们那种言语攻击。格鲁吉亚人被告知，欧盟想把他们变成同性恋或恋童癖。但目标也可能是个体：驻立陶宛的北约官兵及其配偶收到了来自俄罗斯的短信息，同俄罗斯支持的分离主义者作战的乌克兰军人也是如此。
Angela Merkel has displaced Hillary Clinton as the chief target of Russian disinformation, especially in central Europe, where suspicion of Germany is easy to arouse. Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic each host dozens of pro-Kremlin media outlets. Many Balts get their news from Russian-language media, and the two million or so Russian speakers in Germany are also deluged with Kremlin propaganda. In Greece, Kremlin-linked oligarchs own stakes in local media.
安格拉•默克尔(Angela Merkel)已取代希拉里•克林顿，成为俄罗斯造谣的主要目标，尤其是在很容易引发对德国疑虑的中欧。匈牙利、波兰和捷克都有数十家亲克里姆林宫的媒体。许多波罗的海地区的居民从俄语媒体获取信息，而德国200万左右使用俄语的人士也面对克里姆林宫的宣传洪流。在希腊，与克里姆林宫有关联的寡头们持有当地媒体的股份。
Pro-Kremlin public figures across Europe (and Russia keeps lists) can amplify Russian messages. Take France’s Front National, which borrowed €9.4m from the Kremlin-linked First Czech Russian Bank in 2014 while Russia was annexing Crimea. During last spring’s French elections, pro-Front National Twitter accounts that spread certain rumours — such as Emmanuel Macron being gay — were also the most likely to spread Russian disinformation, says Alexandre Alaphilippe of EU Disinfolab, an NGO. Similarly, Five Star’s network of websites and social-media accounts takes many items from “Kremlin-controlled media”, reports the Atlantic Council.
欧洲各地亲克里姆林宫的公众人物(俄罗斯保持着名单)可以放大俄罗斯发出的各类消息。例如，2014年法国国民阵线(Front National)从第一捷克俄罗斯银行(First Czech-Russian Bank)——该行与克里姆林宫有关联——借得940万欧元，而当时俄罗斯正在吞并克里米亚。非政府组织EU Disinfolab的亚历山大•阿拉菲利普(Alexandre Alaphilippe)表示，去年春天法国大选期间，散布某些谣言(如埃马纽埃尔•马克龙(Emmanuel Macron)是同性恋)的亲国民阵线的Twitter账号也极有可能在散播俄罗斯的造谣。另据大西洋理事会(Atlantic Council)报告，“五星运动”掌控的网站和社交媒体账户网络有很多消息取自“克里姆林宫控制的媒体”。
All this activity creates the psychologically important belief that pro-Kremlin views are more widely shared by the general public than they are. And fake-news items create distrust of all media. This damages a European information ecosphere that, for now, remains healthier than the US’s: most people in most of western Europe still trust public broadcasters. (That’s why the Kremlin aims to persuade Britons that the BBC lies.)
所有这些活动产生了重要的心理认同，即亲克里姆林宫的观点被更广泛的公众所接受，而实际并非如此。同时虚假新闻报道使人们对所有媒体都产生了不信任。这损害了眼下仍比美国健康的欧洲信息生态圈：多数西欧国家的大部分人仍信任公共广播机构。(这就是为什么克里姆林宫力求说服英国人相信BBC说谎。)
What can European governments do? Warn people to be sceptical of what they read on social media or certain websites, recommends Stephan Lewandowsky, psychologist at Bristol University. Use big data to track which groups of people are susceptible to pro-Kremlin messaging, and reach them first, advises Michel Rademaker of the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies. And he urges mainstream media not to repeat Kremlin narratives, not even to refute them.
欧洲各国政府能做些什么呢?布里斯托大学(Bristol University)心理学家斯蒂芬•莱万多夫斯基(Stephan Lewandowsky)建议，要提醒人们对社交媒体或某些网站上的内容保持怀疑态度。海牙战略研究中心(Hague Centre for Strategic Studies)的米歇尔•拉德马克(Michel Rademaker)建议，利用大数据来追踪哪些人群易受亲克里姆林宫信息的影响，然后抢先接触他们。他还敦促主流媒体不要重复克里姆林宫的叙事，甚至不去反驳它们。
The European Commission’s East StratCom task force has about six staffers (three of them full-timers) countering Russian disinformation. That’s not many. The Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency in St Petersburg — a “troll factory” where paid trolls dream up constant news stories — just trebled its workspace to 12,000 square metres.
欧盟委员会(European Commission)的东方战略通信司令部工作组(East StratCom Task Force)有大概6名工作人员(其中三人是全职)负责反击俄罗斯的造谣。这实在太少了。在圣彼得堡，与克里姆林宫有关联的“互联网研究机构”(Internet Research Agency)——一家由职业喷子不断编造新闻的“喷子工场”——刚刚将其办公空间扩大了两倍，至1.2万平方米。
