Why People Defend Dictators Online

There’s anti-government protests in Hong Kong, Venezuela, and Russia. The civil war in Syria rages on and, thanks to Twitter, VK, Facebook, anyone can share their opinion about world events. Elements of both the left and right say that any anti-government protest in one of America’s rivals is a CIA plot and dictators such as Bashar Al Assad are good, actually.

Is this information warfare or just shitposting? Here to help us figure that out is Idrees Ahmad. Ahmad is Lecturer in Digital Journalism at the University of Stirling and a contributing editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, Vice, and The Atlantic.

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