In August 2018, Spanish authorities uncovered a plot by anti-Brexit campaigners to assassinate leading Brexiteer and now favorite to be Britain’s next prime minister, Boris Johnson. The effort employed scores of accounts posting in at least six languages on platforms including Facebook and Twitter, as well as multiple other blogging sites and forums. The aim was to “divide, discredit, and distract” Western countries by planting false information about topics ranging from alleged British meddling in the 2018 U.S. midterm elections to Irish paramilitary involvement in the poisoning of a former Russian spy in England last year.
