Agitprop is a term that melds “agitation” and “propoganda,” and was coined in the early Soviet Union. Communication was designed not to inform people, but to move them toward a desired political outcome.
In an interview, JD Vance was confronted for sharing the false story that Haitians were eating people’s pets, and he defended his actions by saying that it was important to get people to take action to eliminate the cultural threat posed by immigrants, even if it was based on misinformation. The outcome was not to inform, but to whip up anti-immigrant sentiment.
Agitprop reduces complex situations to emotionally compelling narratives. It’s hard to motivate people without keeping the narratives simple and emotionally charged. People lose interest if it’s not immediately clear what the point is. Agitprop tells us who the villains are, who the heroes are, and paints a world of victims and oppressors, patriots and traitors, insiders and outsiders, and believers and enemies. People prefer moral clarity to uncertainty and ambiguity.
Agitprop builds group identity by letting people believe:
- We are the good people.
- We know what’s really happening.
- Others are deceived or malicious.
Agitprop may be used by anyone who wants to drive a specific behavior:
- voting
- donating
- protesting
- enlisting
- boycotting
- reporting on enemies
- demonstrating loyalty
Success is measured by the behavioral or attitudinal change of the group, not by whether the information is true or not. And agitprop doesn’t have to lie to be effective. Instead, it can:
- emphasize some facts over others
- omit parts of the story
- choose emotionally charged but outlying examples
- repeat memorable stories
- frame events in a particular way
If you’ve ever watched side by side news coverage of the same story by two different outlets (that have a different political spin), you will probably have seen this. Agitprop is especially pervasive today due to social media, podcasts, memes, YouTube or TikTok content, and partisan news. You can identify it by its hallmarks:
- Strong emotional language
- Clear heroes & villains
- Little or no acknowledgement of uncertainty
- Appeals to identity rather than evidence
- Repeated, familiar slogans
- Heavy reliance on anecdotes without the context of data
- Calls for immediate action
- Dismissal of opposing views as illegitimate or evil rather than mistaken
If more than one of these is present, you may be looking at agitprop. When my mother-in-law died, we noticed that she was receiving multiple texts per day requesting donations and calling her to action RIGHT NOW to stop Trump. The same types of messages were being received in similar amounts by other seniors who had clicked other links than she did.
When you look at that description, though, you might also recognize that agitprop isn’t just a political thing. The LDS church used Bonneville Communication’s “Heartsell” as a method to create emotional content to compel and convert people to the faith. It was described as
“…a very special process… to stimulate response… It is not just to reach the mind but to touch the heart and make people want to respond.”
The missionary program also uses emotional pleas to invite behavioral change that orients someone positively toward the church: prayer, reading scriptures, church attendance, identifying feelings of peace or inspiration as evidence of the church’s truthfulness
A key difference between these approaches and agitprop is that they are designed to inspire individual conversion not to mobilize groups of people to take action. There is overlap in that conversion to the church also includes tithing donations, some communal efforts and expanded political influence of the church, but these are not the direct aims of Heartsell or missionary work. So why is there so much overlap?
All successful communal movements (religions, corporations, political groups) involve the same psychological tools:
- A compelling narrative “This is how the world works.”
- An emotional experience “This feels meaningful and important.”
- A social community “These are my people.”
The distinguishing factors are
- The accuracy of the claims made
- How open they are to questioning and criticism
- How disconfirming evidence is handled
- Whether participants can freely leave
- Whether persuasion respects personal autonomy
If you look at the political groups, you can walk through each of these 5 questions to determine for yourself how trustworthy they are and whether or not they are groups you would want to join. When it comes to the church, individuals make those same types of evaluations.
- Do you see the church using agitprop? What about during Prop 8 and other anti-LGBTQ efforts?
- When you look at the three psychological tools, how does the LDS church stack up to you (compelling narrative, emotional experience, social community)?
- It’s easy enough to be skeptical of the opposing argument’s agitprop. Are you skeptical of agitprop that confirm your pre-existing beliefs? Can you think of an example?
Discuss.
Wheat & Tares 
No, I wouldn’t use the word agitprop in connection with the church — the original and historical uses of the word don’t fit. I might use words like marketing, advertising, persuasion.
ji, for a more general term, how about “emotional manipulation”?
One thing we run into all the time — without really noticing — is the soundtracks they play in stores (to get you to shop a little more energetically) and restaurants (to get you to eat, eat quick, then get out so we can put another customer at your table). When was the last time you were in a store *without* a soundtrack playing? Or a truly quiet restaurant? What a relaxing experience that would be.
Then notice how the Church uses soundtracks to emotionally manipulate the audience. In videos. In hymns. It’s not to get people riled up, like agitprop. It’s to soothe and render the listener more open (vulnerable?) to the accompanying narrative or message. There is nothing particularly nefarious about the practice — it’s no different than how stores think carefully about the soundtracks they play to support their goal (sell more stuff). But it does highlight the extent to which LDS messaging strategy relies on emotional tools rather than rational persuasion or even spiritual engagement. [And it has not always been this way, only for the last forty years or so.]
“Families Are Forever”
I notice in my own Facebook feed that I get conflicting agitprop from my different interests. When you get the propaganda from both sides, you can start to see the distortions and blind spots. For example, right now I have been getting both very happy announcements and other very angry announcements about killing 90% of Bears Ears and Staircase national monuments. I appreciate nature, and that means I like to both get out and enjoy it and want to protect it from wanton destruction. So, my hobby of ATVing is oh so happy about “trail access.” Those posts show our Utah politicians as heroes. On the other hand, my love of nature and not wanting it destroyed by mining, over grazing, and trampling by hoards of people and my love of our National Parks is leading to some very upset posts where those same Utah politicians are horrid villains who want to sell the land to the highest bidder. It would be funny it is wasn’t so disgusting. Neither side is willing to admit there is a balance between public access and protecting it from human destruction. They forget we *had* some trail access in their zeal to keep the trails open and that opening it up to mining or the current over grazing from cattle will also close the trails as well as destroying the fragile desert environment. Rather than working together for the balance needed, they make enemies and rile people up. I mean, let’s be honest, sometimes places need to be protected from too much human activity like ATVing. If we want our grandchildren to be able to enjoy ATVing in the desert, we have to make sure we don’t destroy that very desert. We just should not kill the very things we love by abusing them. Neither should we hide them away in a protective box.
Messaging from church leaders feels more like a response to fear. I don’t believe fear is intentionally being used to manipulate members; in nearly every case I think the church leader worldview is colored by actual fears that they genuinely feel. I think there’s a lot of overlap between fear and anger, they’re both survival mechanisms. I’ll spare everyone the Yoda quote.
I’m not commenting on whether those fears are justified or valid, only that much of the messaging is rooted in fear.
The accuracy of the claims made – “It’s not a lie if you believe it.” -George Costanza. It’s impossible for me to know whether someone is speaking in good faith. In the political realm I think most of it is performative and in bad faith. In church I think most of it is in good faith. Again, not commenting on whether the claims are valid. I just can’t get a good pulse on motivations.
How open they are to questioning and criticism – In the context of church? That book is sealed. The sealed portion. I cannot read it. In reality church leaders are going to get criticism, nowadays even criticism from active membership (hurray progress!). They still don’t like it and will coach members to not engage in it. The squeaky wheel gets the grease and church leaders prefer that the wheels of progress be rusted to the point where they don’t move at all.
How disconfirming evidence is handled – We know the answer to this one too, don’t we? It’s anti-Mormon (it isn’t). It was never taught (it was). Don’t take counsel from it whatever you do. It depends upon what the meaning of the word “principal ancestors” is.
Whether participants can freely leave – Members of the church certainly are free to leave. Most do. I’m in a limbo state with church attendance right now so my comment reflects that experience. Church culture is weird in that the messaging appears to be, “Please come back but don’t let the dividing curtain hit you on the butt on your way out.”
Whether persuasion respects personal autonomy – Personal autonomy for a church where I don’t even get to decide which ward I attend. Personal autonomy in a church that respects no boundaries. Personal autonomy in a church where they tell every ward worldwide what they’ll be fasting for and what lesson they’re going to have on fifth Sunday. Personal autonomy in the church is an absolute joke. Everything is correlated to the nth degree.
I would be very interested in the input of anyone who was personally involved in Prop 8 efforts in CA. That was an expressly political activity, one that many church members did not align with initially, but one in which the church held meetings to persuade / coerce members to take personal actions in the community to oppose gay marriage–phone trees, door knocking, some really time intensive politicking. That’s a pretty big ask for anyone. While it worked, it also kind of backfired, or that’s what it looks like to me. It didn’t paint the church in a very favorable light, except among other right wing groups. I didn’t live in CA, so I don’t know what tactics were used in the meetings, although I do know some people who were so turned off by the whole thing that they left the church. A few years later, there was a Prop 102 in AZ trying to accomplish the same thing (at the state level as with CA), and there was no grassroots effort that I could see. I only saw one church member (the bishop) who put a Prop 102 sign in his yard, and naive me thought “Oh, how embarrassing for him. I bet they pushed him to do that because he’s in leadership.” I was wrong about that, as later he turned out to be a very staunch Trump supporter and probably held very bigoted views about LGBTQ people. I never assumed that of anyone until they revealed it to be so. He made a lot of problematic comments across a gamut of topics over the years. But he also was a big fan of Mountain Meadows Massacre and read other complex Mormon histories.
In my ward in Utah, the Bishop called some people out of the congregation to attend a “special” meeting after the sacrament meeting that same day. I was not called upon. I found out later it was because of Prop 8 and being part of phone banks to call people in CA about voting no. I don’t know if it happened or not but two families in our ward immediately left the church, and later another family, and my own family.
Hawkgrrrl
I was personally involved in Prop 8 campaign (much,much less less than Prop 22. In fact, my wife who use to be political, was asked to head up the local No on 8 campaign. She declined for personal reasons and we instead got local idiots.)
Mostly I put up a No on 8 sign in our yard. Several times, as it keep being stolen by fine honest Christians.
Now I knew my parents were going to vote yes and donate money, but hoped not. They had done so for Prop 22. A Yes on 22 sign was prominently on their front yard. When they went on vacation, and I came over to water the plants, it would rankle me to walk past it. It still rankles me. But if they were entitled to their viewpoints, than damn it so was I. And I and my long term fiancee campaigned hard.
So years later, when the Church was at it again voiding out my civil rights and reducing my marriage to nothing, can’t say I was happy. So I knew the sign and donation were coming. But when on a phone call with my parents, when I expressed concern about my mothers cold, she proudly told me it was from going out in the rain to campaign for 8.(like it was a badge of honor) That was it, I was done. I hung up the phone mid-sentence. (To give my Dad credit, he was in the background going– No,no,no. Don’t say that.) I cut off all contact and mailed in my resignation papers.
So that’s my Prop 8 story.
I was in northern CA during prop 8. My family and others in the ward were asked to host strategy meetings in our homes; members were also called in by ward and stake leaders and asked to donate; there were sign-ups for protests, which were enthusiastically supported by most members of my ward, and lawn signs were also available for anyone who wanted them.
I was against prop 8 and my husband was for it, so we did none of the above. The deal was that if he donated for it, I would donate the same amount against it, and the same idea applied to yard signs or any other politicking.
There were frequent talks and prayers in church about how people who didn’t support it should lose their temple recommends and/or were risking their eternal salvation. Groups in the ward were constantly organizing and protesting was a big social activity. Since it wasn’t a secret that I opposed it, we were thankfully left out of the loop on a lot of these things, but there was a social cost for both of us (which pained my husband, but I was already on my way out at that point).
An acquaintance whose husband was a stake president also mentioned that non-supporters should lose their temple recommends. She told me that the pressure on stake presidents was intense; there was a phone call from upper church leadership telling them that prop 8 HAD to pass.
I wasn’t on the inside of this by any stretch, but I cannot overstate how strongly it was pushed by the church. It was truly appalling.
I was also in California during the whole Prop 8 thing, right in the middle of grad school and sharing an office with a friend who was expecting her first child with her wife. The friend happened to have a sister who had at one point been a member of the church and still loosely affiliated. Up until Prop 8, my relationship to the church was uncomplicated: I was proud of being a Mormon. I was nuanced even at that point, but Prop 8 totally altered my relationship to the institutional church. Going to church in the lead-up to the elections was -awful-. And I was working in Primary, so I was spared much of the worst of it. But there was pressure, constantly, to sign up for canvasing, for putting signs in your yard. There was this bizarre gleeful vibe too, “Finally our hands are untied and we can say the quiet part out loud!” That definitely came from the top, but it was embraced by many of the masses. I remember that I finally signed up to drive people to polls on election day because I felt that everybody had the right to vote, even if they weren’t going to be voting like me, but they didn’t end up needing drivers and then they asked me to canvas. Hard no. I didn’t shout about my lack of support, but I didn’t make a secret of it either. Plenty of people in my ward then knew or guessed I was a no. To my local leadership’s credit, there was never even a whisper of “let’s call her in/take away her recommend.”
I remember visiting the ward I was raised in (also in California) during a fifth Sunday and listening to a man I love and respect talk about the importance of his own family as though my friend’s marriage were somehow a threat to it. I had to leave. My relationship both to the church and to my Mormon identity was changed forever. And while I was inclined to be empathetic and understanding of people who left anyway, after 2008 I have nothing but respect. There are good reasons to go. I sometimes wonder if I shouldn’t have.
We lived in NorCal during both prop 22 and prop 8. At the time, I was ambivalent about Prop 8. My wife was conflicted. She wanted to support the church, but had gay friends. I remember a “fireside” after church where there was strong pressure to contribute, even though the leader in charge said participation was voluntary. Business owners were pressured for big donations. The rest of us were asked to make phone calls. I was traveling a lot so I didn’t have to participate. My wife acquiesced to make phone calls and HATED it. She thought it was doing more harm than good for the church.
Business owners who donated lost customers and clients. I tried to keep my church membership low profile at work.
My perception is that there was a whole lot of virtue signaling by many members, but a majority were deeply uncomfortable with how it all went down would have preferred to have been left out of it regardless if they supported Prop 8 or not.
I
I lived in Orange County during both Prop 22 and Prop 8. Orange County, at the time, was a bastion of conservative power. OC is in the Newport Beach Temple district and our willingness to participate vigorously in Prop 8 was tied to whether or not we would get a temple in our area. Wealthy people were called into Bishop’s offices and asked to make large donations. A special fireside was held at the Stake Center next to where the temple would be built and several lower level general authorities were there as a presentation was made as to why getting this passed was a must. That effort consumed everything. It made a lot of us very uncomfortable and I think was the catalyst for 3 of our 4 children leaving the church.
So the Church pressured California members twice to go all political in support anti-gay marriage propositions in California, alienating a lot of left-leaning members, some of whom left the Church over this. But leadership won’t say a peep about Trump and MAGA for fear of alienating right-leaning members who might leave the Church.
So the claim that the Church is non-political is plainly false — they just label any political cause they want to support as “a moral issue.” And the claim the Church is politically neutral is also false — they almost always favor and cater to right-leaning members, while ignoring or even criticizing left-leaning members. They really have lost their way. Who wants to be part of a MAGAfied Church led by leaders who (albeit reluctantly, perhaps) cater to a MAGA membership? Because that’s all that’s going to be left soon, a bunch of MAGA Mormons who listen to MAGA politicians and Fox News more than they listen to LDS leaders.
Things were similar during the ERA with the talks against it and some pressure for donating to the cause of defeating it in the states that had not ratified it early. As it got down to the last few states needed to pass, there was pressure to make phone calls, and known feminists like me were left of of the loop, which I was thankful for. But they took buss loads of women to conventions and demonstrations. Open opposition within the church was silenced after Sonia Johnson was excommunicated for openly opposing it and organizing other Mormon women to fight it. I mostly kept my mouth shut and my head down. I was already a doubting Mormon but with a TBM husband, I just went inactive when I could not stand things.
The church was opposed to civil rights for blacks, but I don’t think they knew how to organize opposition and run a political campaign then. Or maybe they knew they didn’t have the political clout to throw their weight around. Or maybe I am too young to remember what the church was doing. As far as organizing politically to fight it. But there were talks against it. Mostly they focused on no interracial marriage or even close friendships because that led to interracial marriage. But it was also said several times that if laws passed to make discrimination against blacks illegal that it would *destroy* the church—as if it would take away their religious freedom. And it was over the top talk about how catastrophic it would be. And Benson openly said it was a communist plot to destroy the US and the one true church because they were anti religion as well as anti US and democracy. And it was implied that Mormons were the church they most wanted to destroy. So, there was quite a bit of agitprop about it—but don’t try to find anything like that in old conference talks because it has been carefully erased by the church. But as a teen, I stomped out of church during a fast and brag….i mean testimony meeting because our favorite old John Bircher got up and gave a 20 tirade as his testimony about how civil rights was a commie plot and blacks were communists. Well, actually, I stomped out at 20 minutes but my brothers said he ran out of steam about 2 minutes after I left and walked the 2 miles home. After I got married and left Utah,(71-78) I really do not remember any of the fight for civil rights or the church’s opposition, because I was busy trying to survive hard pregnancies and in Europe (listening to Radio Free Europe because we were behind the Iron curtain in West Berlin and they really simplified news out of the USA) so, what I remember is 1960s.
So, the church has a history of agitprop going back into David O. McKay
Anonymous’ claim that the Newport Beach Temple construction was dependent on Prop 8 efforts doesn’t make sense, as the Newport Beach Temple was announced in 2001 and dedicated in 2005 while Prop 8 was in 2008. I assume they meant to say Prop 22, which was in March 2000 and is thereby plausibly connected.
Another Prop 8 survivor here. Even though I was TBM back then, I look back on that moment as a very strange time to be Mormon. There was certainly agitprop-type rhetoric swirling around CA LDS spaces then, some of which was being promulgated through official channels from SLC, and other messaging originating from local leaders and overzealous individual members, and it wasn’t always apparent which was which. We heard urgent warnings about the “fabric of society unraveling” if same-sex marriage was legalized, which sometimes escalated into end-times doom and gloom. We saw protests outside of the temples. Many church meetings were punctuated with urgent pleadings for support, in both time and money, the sort of thing I had never seen happen in church before or since. In the months leading up to that election, F&T meetings opened with stern warnings from the bishop to “keep it short and spiritual, and stay away from politics” if we chose to bear testimony. Even so, some members managed to get veiled political rhetoric across the pulpit. I also knew of some LDS individuals and families who were vocally opposed to Prop 8, but they didn’t stick around much longer.
You see, California Mormons have long had a sense of superiority over their Jello Belt counterparts (and I can say this as a California native myself) because we viewed ourselves as being on the front lines of the culture wars, who make significant social sacrifices to be Latter-day Saints, while viewing Utah/Idaho/Arizona Mormons as lazy and less spiritually dedicated because they take their Church membership/identity for granted, and don’t experience social costs for it. SLC Church leadership knew this, and built their campaigns around it. “Any major social change in America happens in California first,” we were frequently told, and we believed it and proudly mobilized for the cause, regardless of the cost. It turned out to be a pyrrhic victory for the Church, which may explain why they are much more circumspect about involvement in political issues now. And, as it turns out, in the years since, legalized gay marriage ended up having no negative effects on the nation’s moral fabric. Other, more dangerous political/ideological movements certainly have, though, and Church leaders have done nothing to take a stand against that.
All-in active recommend holding member here (then and now), albeit unshy about being liminal/nuanced. Was living in the mid-atlantic (east coast) during the Prop8 thing, and oddly, it wasn’t much of an issue here that i can remember. It was in the news, and I remember thinking: wow I’m glad I’m not a California saint being asked to donate or canvas or man the phone banks, smh. But it didn’t really reach geographically out here in an intrusive way, or perhaps I ignored it or missed it somehow.
Let me pass along two other observations, however.
First, in 2006 or so (so predating the Prop8 campaign, but postdating Prop22, timeline wise), I was in graduate school in the midwest, and there was a groundswell effort to ask local ward members to support an email protest campaign against the then-new HBO show “Big Love” (starring Bill Paxton and others). At the time, it seemed like a reasonable position to take — my recollection was that there was a forthcoming episode that dramatized the temple endowment or sealing, and was going to be fairly accurate… and remember, this is during the era before church communication about the temple opened up more, as it has now. So I believe both my wife and I dutifully sent the email per the instructions, voicing an objection to the portrayal of sacred things etc. But I remember this was a bit of a turning point for me, because the act of doing eventually kinda bothered me. The supposedly-offending episode hadn’t even aired yet (so all the protest was being made in anticipation of the episode, but no one knew what the episode would actually portray yet, so it was all based on rumor). In addition, the suggested “boilerplate” email text articulated a generalized objection to the entire premise of the TV series, claiming that it would confuse nonmormons by suggesting that mainline church members practiced or condoned polygamy. (Similar to the current church lawsuit rationale against Mormon Stories.) So that was the suggested script, and my recollection is that my wife and I both sent emails at the request of someone in our ward (a relief society sister, but not the RS president nor anyone in the bishopric). This whole thing ended up bothering me after the fact, because I later watched some episodes of the show while traveling (this was a pre-streaming era, we weren’t HBO subscribers, but business travel meant hotels with HBO)… and several things became crystal clear after simply watching a few episodes of the show itself:
1. There was ZERO plausible confusion about the “orthodoxy” of polygamy. Indeed the entire premise of the show was that Paxton’s character was a renegade/Jeffs FLDS sect polygamist but was a small business owner posing as a mainline LDS member in the chamber-of-commerce halls and deseret-gym-locker-room contexts of SLC, mostly trying to advance his business by buddying up with LDS business owners and politicians etc. via “passing” as mainline LDS. His fundamentalism and polygamy was this big secret. And this was one of the key core narrative tensions of the show! The distinction was explained and portrayed thoroughly and clearly. (Another core tension was the tension between the sister wives.) In other words, after watching only one episode, it was obvious that LDS members’ hypothetical objections to the show (articulated in the boilerplate email script i had complicitly sent) based upon the show “fuzzing the line” between FLDS and LDS, was entirely and utterly baseless.
2. Within the fictional context of the show, the mainline SLC LDS regular church members were portrayed as the “mainstream”/mainstreet characters in polite society, the normies. The focus was on the FLDS Paxton clan, living in three neighboring houses, and doing it clandestinely right under the noses of their regular Mormon neighbors. I never stuck with the show, which meant i never even saw the supposedly offending temple ceremony episode, but in general I found the show to be entirely different than the whisper/scare campaign from within the church suggested, with the distinction between LDS and FLDS being crystal clear (and core to the show’s tension), and the Mormon characters being portrayed as the community pillar/normie folks. So why the fuss?
The answer to that question is potentially multifaceted but also quite obvious. Throw a history of persecution, a “persecution mentality” mindset, and the pearl-clutching prospect of dramatized temple ordinances being aired on a TV show, and you have an easy recipe for an agitprop campaign. Viola.
What’s striking about this little anecdote, however, is something i think is a bit different than the way commenters have been talking about Prop8 here, so far. Whereas Prop8 was a clear top-down effort, to the best of my understanding, the “Big Love” email protest effort was much more grassroots and ground-up. There was never anything about it that was discussed over the pulpit, and i suspect it just arose from Mormon “email chain” and facebook connections. I could be wrong, but I *believe* the entire thing was genuine grassroots and arose from within the church ranks somewhere, rather than originating in the COB.
So this might be an aspect of agitprop that hasn’t yet been explored here…. that it doesn’t have to be promulgated authoritatively from those holding institutional power. Rather, it can arise somewhat ground-up and proliferate even without authoritative stamps of approval. That seems kind of interesting, and my sense is that church membership can tend to embrace that kind of thing, culturally (perhaps the same way membership seems avid and vulnerable about multi-level-marketing schemes). Perhaps it can even get embraced more readily than the more quasi-formal version of agitprop like the Prop8 example. Not sure.
It brings to mind something that happened after the Big Love timeframe but pre-Prop8: PBS did a two part miniseries called “The Mormons”, and there was a lot of anticipation in our local mid-Atlantic church membership about the four hours of coverage. President Hinckley was interviewed, as was Oaks, Holland, Packer, and Marlin Jensen. Other LDS intellectuals/historians were interviewed, as well as some former members wo did discuss some controversial topics. But we watched it all with great interest, and thought it was excellently done and quite even-handed. But I’ll never forget showing up to a fast and testimony meeting right after the PBS special had aired, and being surprised by a stalwart ward member sharing that the series had shaken his testimony but he was so grateful to retain that testimony even in the face of persecution. Or something similar to that vibe. And I thought: what is he talking about? The PBS special wasn’t anti-mormon at all. It didn’t shy away from asking a few tough questions, but it was quite measured and featured some great interview footage from church leaders, and I certainly thought, on balance, the special was great/honest/fair publicity for the church, all in all. But my fellow congregant saw it as an attack on the church. Fascinating.
BlueRidgeMormon’s comment that agitprop does not always come from the top is a good point. Some of the stuff to get Trump elected was traced to Russia. It was supposedly from Americans just commenting on the internet, but when IP addresses were actually tracked to find out where they originated, they were Russian and hired by that government to flood the American social media with what looked like good grassroots American citizens giving him full support. Some of the rumors and conspiracy theories going around actually originated with these Russian sites. I just finished reading some of the junk labeled as originating in Russia when Margery Taylor Green gave a speech repeating several of them as gospel truth. She repeated obviously questionable stuff like that Ukraine started the war and the Haitians are eating pet cats and dogs. Yup, she was spouting Russian propaganda and was too stupid the check her sources. One of the articles on this said that one internet discussion found that almost half the ”commenters” were actually Russian AI bots. So, never argue with someone on line as you may well be arguing with a Russian AI bot.
So, agitprop can come from a foreign country and support American political candidates.
So many decent humans resigned their membership due to prop 8 including my children. It was a hatefest.
Hawkgrrrl: I lived through the Prop 8 time in California. There was intense pressure to get it passed – including a visit from D. Todd Christopherson to our stake warning us of the calamities to come if it didn’t pass. Bishops were instructed to place Prop 8 signs in their yards. I was trying to show (or maybe “earn”) my “worthiness” in those days and unwisely chose to follow the leaders by canvassing, protesting, placing a sign in my front yard, and contributing money, all as evidence that I would follow the Lord’s leaders, even when my gut was telling me no. I wish I could take those actions back, but since I can’t, I at least recognize that I learned from that experience to not override my instincts to follow a leader. Of course later the Church denied applying pressure to the members in California, but characterized the efforts as natural grass-roots efforts that arose on their own.