[brabel]

Wild guess: they could because the best way to make people more conservative is to make liberals look more and more extreme. These things go in cycles, when the pendulum shifts too far to the left or to the right, it tends to swiftly move back the other way, and so the cycle continues.

Example: the far right tries to depict the left as degenerates who want to make all children gay just because they support introducing LGBT+ friendly material to the school education. I'm sure some people buy that and hence become more inclined to reject the left, as who wants to "force" children to become homosexual, or transgender, right?!

Now, whether China/Russia are doing it or not, I have no idea, and I suspect no one here does. But even if they do, I have trouble seeing how they would be more capable than Europe and the US, who clearly also try pretty hard to promote their own values elsewhere, so they can hardly complain about others doing it.

[t0lo]

Russia actually works both sides to become more heated. During the 2016 election they created facebook groups for pro and anti abortion groups and organised them to be in the same city at the same time.

I think they're also trying to break the wests spirit in terms of faith in democracy and the state of the world right now for policy and political/military advantage. In my eyes the US is currently one big foreign infleunce experiment right now via facebook

[brabel]

What would Russia gain from a US that is split and lack of faith in democracy? I don't doubt you're right, I just don't see what's the motivation here?

It's not like the USA will stop interfering with the world if they succeed, which I suppose may be their motivation? To the contrary, a messed up USA is incredibly dangerous. It could end up in the hands of extremists (well, it kind of already did before) who have no qualms starting a war against Russia, which would be completely devastating for Russia (maybe also for the USA, but from Russia's point of view, that wouldn't matter much).

The media makes it look like Russia is some teenager hooligan in the world stage, doing destructive things without motivation just for the sake of it, which just doesn't make sense to me at all.