This was the MO/Strategy of the Russian troll farms.
The idea is pretty simple: By imitating "normal Americans" and then espousing radical and extreme ideas, they were convincing real normal americans that those radical and extreme ideas were "normal american" ideas.
The idea was to drive people farther towards their fringe elements. If you were left of center, they wanted you to see prejudice, sexism and racism in everything and everyone. Right of center, they wanted you to see America "under attack from all sides" by Muslims, Liberals, whatever. If you're black, they wanted to convince you the problem is white people. If you're white, they wanted to convince you the problem was black people. They wanted to create more extremists, thereby destabalizing the nation.
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