With Election Day fast approaching, disinformation efforts are everywhere. A Russian disinformation network has promoted false claims of sexual abuse by Kamala Harris’ running mate, Tim Walz, Wired reports. Foreign adversaries’ election efforts are “more active now than ever before,” says the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The U.S. intelligence community “expects that foreign influence efforts will increase leading up to Election Day,” according to a memo issued Monday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

We are used to viewing propaganda and disinformation through one lens: the far right. Stories surrounding this topic often focus on the alt-right movement that gained popularity in 2016, along with Russian efforts to fuel the rise of Donald Trump. That was by far the most pressing danger America faced online and beyond at the time.

But things have changed in the past eight years. Or rather, they have evolved.

Disinformation and online propaganda are skills that have now been perfected and adopted around the world by fascist and far-right governments. This means that we no longer have to deal only with Russia or the far right. What we are dealing with is extensive, all-encompassing and aimed at all of us. We are facing an online propaganda crisis the likes of which we have never seen before.

As Russia has expanded its influence operations since 2016, the internet has become an influence battlefield. One in which permeating global opinion, sowing discord and chaos, and promoting antidemocratic thinking in democracies have become tactics in a larger strategy by world powers to weaken their enemies, strengthen themselves, and transform the landscape in which future physical battlefields could ever take place.

Far-right movements are inherently oppositional and driven by maximalist ideologies, meaning that while they share certain characteristics – such as nationalism, xenophobia and anti-globalism – their goals and strategies often clash. At their core, far-right movements are not a monolith, but a web of conflicting and collaborating entities, each using propaganda to advance its own specific agenda while simultaneously combating both liberal democracies and rival authoritarian movements.

For example, far-right movements in the US focus strongly on anti-immigration and Christian nationalism, while the far-right in Iran manifests itself through theocratic authoritarianism and anti-Israel rhetoric. These differences in ideology mean that far-right propaganda in the US differs vastly from far-right narratives in Iran or Russia, despite their shared opposition to liberal democracy.

Iran, for example, targets both the American left and right. U.S. intelligence agencies and researchers say hackers linked to the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have targeted both presidential campaigns. An Iranian influence operation has created fake news sites that appear to be based in the US. One site published op-eds such as “Why Harris’s Stance On Palestine Cost Her My Vote,” which were intended to create more internal divisions among the left, while another site was intended to appear as a right-wing news outlet based in Georgia. and spreading anti-Harris propaganda. By using AI software, they have been able to increase the reach and productivity of their propaganda. Unlike Russia, which often focuses on specific political outcomes, Iran’s primary goal is to promote internal divisions and erode trust in American democratic institutions as a whole.

At the other end of the spectrum is Israel. According to The New York Times and Haaretz, Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs paid for an influence campaign targeting both lawmakers and young progressives to increase support for the war in Gaza. The campaign created sites to spread Islamophobia by focusing on the role of Muslims in the slave trade in East Africa and to increase discord around protests on college campuses by labeling some campuses as “safe” or “unsafe.”

More broadly, Israel’s information war is in line with other far-right movements that spread propaganda that aligns with their position. The far-right Polish publication Visegrad 24 has spent the entire Gaza war promoting Israel’s position, including collaborations with some of the most outspoken pro-Israel influencers. Visegrad 24, which has some ties to the Polish government, also exists as an anti-Russian propaganda outlet.

Similar operations by other countries and movements have been discovered, from China to Venezuela and North Korea. What this essentially means is that these countries are at war with each other, and we are all potential victims. When they can convince us to turn against each other or spread anti-democratic sentiments, we become their digital allies and help achieve their goals of destroying trust in democracy and increasing their global power. You only have to see how some white nationalists have successfully positioned themselves as pro-Palestinian to see how successful these movements can become.

With the news that Russia has used some of America’s biggest far-right influencers to spread propaganda, we can see how extensive and effective these operations have now become among the biggest players. All this means that we must arm ourselves with digital media literacy and constant vigilance about the information we collect online. Being liberal, progressive or centrist no longer protects anyone from disinformation. We are all both soldiers and targets on the digital battlefield.