Mike Lee's War With Internet Cartoon Dogs
Credit: Ken Cedeno-Pool/Getty Images/Twitter
September 26, 2023

So last week Senator Mike Lee of Utah put up a poll on Twitter, asking if Congress should send an additional $100 BILLION to Ukraine over the next 14 months. His braindead followers quickly took his poll up to around 95% for NO. But then something wonderful happened. Shit-posting, Twitter-trolling NAFO accounts began flooding his poll and turned the results around on their head to where YES won.

Mike Lee was pissed off.

3.6 million views later, Lee closed his poll, having finally figured out what was going on. He didn't like it one little bit.

NAFO, or North Atlantic Fellas Organization, "is an Internet meme and social media movement dedicated to countering Russian propaganda and disinformation about the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine." Primarily, information warfare to counter Russian or Russian sympathizers, like the useless Senator from Utah.

Lee continued that someone must be paying them, unable to grasp the concept that thousands, probably tens of thousands of people around the world enjoy taking the piss out of people like Mike Lee who support Russia against Ukraine (Mike Lee would deny that, but it's true). All keyboard warriors, doing their bit to counter Russian disinformation. Pay is low ($0) but you do get your own cute Shiba Inu dog emoji.

The back and forth continued for several days between Mike Lee and NAFO, with hundreds of funny and unprintable memes flooding his Twitter timeline.

Lee then linked to a Kremlin-backed website that was created to spread Russian disinformation. Lee's new poll was even more offensive than his previous one.

Mediaite would note:

Lee then included a link to an October 2022 article titled, “Meet the spooks, mercs and chickenhawk politicos enlisting as NAFO trolls.” The article, written by Alexander Rubinstein, refers to the Russian invasion of Ukraine as “NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine” and derisively refers to the “anti-Russia hardliners in Washington DC.” Rubinstein, naturally, previously worked for the Russian state-controlled propaganda outlet RT. The Grayzone, founded and edited by Max Blumenthal, also has a long history of defending dictators and downplaying human rights abuses in Syria, China, and Venezuela.

A sitting U.S. Senator pushing overt Russian propaganda, and not for the first time. Ronald Reagan would roll over in his grave. Other conservatives recoiled.

And if you go to the hashtag, "Who funds #NAFO?", you'll find literally thousands of ordinary people posting their photos and basically telling Mike Lee to fuck off. And he should.

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