Douglas Alexander, the shadow foreign secretary, unsuccessfully urged Miliband to go on the attack over Cameron's use of the SNP to sow division in the UK.
The victims of phone hacking, where relationships were destroyed by the apparent betrayal of confidences, experienced the same kind of corruption that is inflicted on debate by the troll factories' capacity to sow mistrust and foster polarisation.
A recent report on Russia's "weaponisation of information" published by the Institute of Modern Russia, a New York-based think tank run by the son of former oligarch and Putin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, argued that the Kremlin is wielding outlets like Sputnik News to not just persuade, but also to "sow confusion via conspiracy theories and proliferate falsehoods".
Several times in the election campaign Farage complained about a group of "trade union-funded activists" being bussed in to his target seat to sow "hatred and resentment, and they're inciting vandalism and public disorder".
Cameron doesn't need their affection, he just needs to sow anxiety about a fragile economy slipping through inept Labour fingers.
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Yet the west has all but given up on reducing his ability to sow chaos and death.
"Whatever the intention, the timing of this speech has played into the hands of those who wish to sow seeds of division and hatred".
The Heartland Institute has become more visible, and the George Marshall Institute a bit less, but the overall picture continues: these groups continue to dismiss or disparage the science, attack scientists, and sow doubt.
But they could re-establish a grip on large parts of the south and east of the country, give succour to al-Qaeda, and sow the seeds for a new civil war.None of those outcomes is remotely in the West's interests.
EVERY year the average sow and her piglets produce 9.2 tonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalent through the methane emissions from their effluent.
