Amidst recent farmer rallies, Rome’s intelligence identified pro-Kremlin social media attempts to falsely connect them to sanctions on Russia. “It’s a clumsy attempt”, says Undersecretary Mantovano during the presentation of the 2023 Security Intelligence Policy Report
Problem is that for every Russian bot to entice such topics there was ten coneervative and far right politicians happy to jump on the bandwagon and ten thousand voters to toss away all actual issues for that.
You cannot turn a population into a certain direction, if it doesnt want to be turned that way.
I think populations will not turn on a dime, but persistent nudging will most definately change the direction.
Fringe groups are more succeptible to the influence (the correct target audience is carefully selected) and the fringe groups are used to shift the Overton window.