"Propping up extremist groups with fascist tendencies"

During testimony on Capitol Hill on 10 April 2018, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged — for the first time — that it is “entirely possible” there’s a connection between Facebook users who had their data taken by psychographics firm Cambridge Analytica and content generated by the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency (IRA)...

...In March 2018, Malcolm Nance, a retired naval counterintelligence officer, author and frequent television commentator on national security issues, tells us he has long believed Cambridge Analytica provided a “data bridge” between Russian intelligence and WikiLeaks, a document dumping site founded by embattled Australian national Julian Assange that played a key role in the 2016 election cycle by leaking hacked e-mails belonging to the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign, starting in summer of that year.

In November 2017, Cambridge Analytica executive Alexander Nix confirmed that he had reached out to Assange to see if he would share some of the hacked emails with the company. Assange claimed he had turned the request down...

...Nance said he believes Cambridge Analytica’s story won’t end with the 2016 election, and that it was only one chapter in a long game with the end goal of crumbling Western liberal democracies from the inside out by propping up extremist groups with fascist tendencies, and turning citizens against each other.

Of course, "entirely possible" doesn't equal "confirmed" and Malcolm Nance's beliefs may be mistaken. Although these possibilities aren't just clogging up the conspiracy theory drain of the Internet, but are being given space on the respected fact-checking site Snopes, so maybe we (and hopefully any actual conspirators) should start worrying.

It certainly makes Farage's assignation with Assange for alleged "journalistic purposes" look even more intriguing. Especially since Farage still hasn't, to my knowledge, published any journalism resulting from that fascinating encounter.