MCLC: 50-centers attack Murong Xuecun (1)

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: pjmooney <pjmooney at me.com>
Subject: 50-centers attack Murong Xuecun (1)
***********************************************************

Source: IYouPort (8/29/14): https://iyouport.com/reviews/archives/524

On the Smear Campaign Against a Dissident Writer

On Monday, August 25, an article titled “the Life of Murong Xuecun
<http://blog.wenxuecity.com/myblog/66831/201408/23774.html>” was retweeted
nearly a thousand times by more than a hundred twitter accounts. The
article, using vulgar language, describes Murong as a traitor, liar,
cheater, child molester and domestic abuser.

Upon investigation, it is found that most of those twitter accounts that
retweeted the article were registered in 2014. The majority of them were
registered in July and August. The accounts’ average number of followers
is about ten. Some have zero followers. A further investigation on seven
of those tweets about Murong found that the seven tweets were retweeted
more than 800 times by only 160 twitter accounts. This means that on
average, the same message was retweeted by each account for more than five
times.

Clearly, it was an organized smear campaign against Murong. But why?

Columnist Su Xinghe
<http://hk.on.cc/cn/bkn/cnt/commentary/20140828/bkncn-20140828000317345-082
8_05411_001.html> believes this must have something to do with Murong’s
oppositional stance towards the Chinese Communist regime. In May, Murong
published an op-ed 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/23/opinion/23iht-edmurong23.html> in the
New York Times in which he protested the arrest of human rights lawyer Pu
Zhiqiang and others and announced his intention to turn himself in upon
his return to China. In response to this statement of surrender, he was
later summoned by Beijing police.

Smear campaigns of similar kind have appeared before. Victims were usually
well-known political dissidents,  including Ai Weiwei, Hu Jia and Wen
Yunchao. In order to defame these dissidents’ characters and create
pressure on them and their families, numerous libelous articles about
their private lives have been written and widely circulated on the
Internet.

Su 
<http://hk.on.cc/cn/bkn/cnt/commentary/20140828/bkncn-20140828000317345-082
8_05411_001.html> comments:

The Chinese authorities have deployed a large amount of resources and
roguish tactics to persecute a dissident. In this increasingly connected
world, however, it will become more and more difficult for the authorities
to deceive people.


Columnist Xiang Xiaokai
<http://hk.on.cc/cn/bkn/cnt/commentary/20140828/bkncn-20140828000317175-082
8_05411_001.html> believes the twitter smear campaign against Murong could
also be a precursor of larger scale cyber attacks.

From the perspective of engineering management, before launching a large
scale cyber attack, in order to secure the success of the attack, there
are usually many decentralized and small scale tests being carried out.
Because these tests are small in scale, they usually don’t attract much
public attention.