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All first world foreign entities attempt to influence the electoral process of other nation states - wouldn't a better approach by the EU be to discuss this rea

All first world foreign entities attempt to influence the electoral process of other nation states - wouldn't a better approach by the EU be to discuss this reality and solutions than just accusing 'Russia' of this while being holier than thou?

lord_ring_11 8y ago
So ture. How many govts have been toppled in recent times through military action. I think surprise is that it is happening first time to west without direct military action. Last time govt was toppeled in west was French govt in WW2.
- imbokodo 8y ago
  Actually the last time the French government was toppled was in 1958. The communists had become the largest party, and French officers, unhappy with decolonization, especially in Algeria, seized Corsica and planned to invade Metropolitan France in Operation Resurrection.
- pjc50 8y ago
  Carnation revolution in Portugal?
threeseed 8y ago
Please provide evidence of this. There is widespread, documented evidence of Russian interference in the US and French elections as well as Brexit. Which when you throw in state sponsored doping demonstrates a pattern for “not following the rules”. And I don’t see why that even if what you say is true why Russian interference can’t be investigated also. Countries can do more than one thing at once.
- harshreality 8y ago
  You're genuinely unaware that the U.S. has done the same thing for decades? https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/17/sunday-review/russia-isnt-the-only-one-meddling-in-elections-we-do-it-too.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/17/sunday-review/russia-isnt... One point the NYT briefly tries to make — which is all I'm addressing in the rest of this comment — is that the U.S. in (very) recent years has mainly interfered to support more democratic candidates, and oppose more authoritarian candidates. And Russia, NYT claims, interferes to support totalitarian candidates and sow chaos. Implying subtly that Trump couldn't possibly be anything other than a strong-man or chaos candidate. That there couldn't possibly be any legitimate democracy-respecting reasons to support him over Hillary (campaign donor influence apparently is perfectly democratic, when it's your candidate receiving the donations aka bribes). Trump may be many things: A nationalist, a pathological liar, in need of a fitness regime and a better diet, and a not very nice person (by most accounts)... but I have not seen any attempt by him to subvert democracy or separation of powers. I have not seen him act particularly chaotically, either. (Weren't Democrats afraid he would start a nuclear war the second he got the nuclear football?) To the extent he's a horrible president, that's the fault of the 2-party system and his catastrophically awful opposing candidate. So, The NYT basically says, yeah, the U.S. interfered in a lot of elections, but recently we've been doing it for the good of democracy. Russia, meanwhile, interferes to the detriment of democracy. First, that doesn't change the fact that it's intervention, and intervention itself is anti-democratic. If another country wants to democratically elect a strong man, that's not so good, but do other democratic countries have a right to interfere? Maybe the populations of those countries understand something intuitively about their politics that we don't, and the candidate that looks more authoritarian is really the better of two evils? Second, when we have interfered — in Libya, in Iraq, in Syria — and it turns out that the "democratic" "freedom fighter" opponents of the existing strong-man leader are terrorists or aligned with terrorists, or the country simply devolves into chaos and faction warfare in the absence of that more totalitarian leader, what then? Is interference justified to support a more freedom-loving candidate when we have no idea (or we know perfectly well, but don't care) that the country is not currently viable as a more open democracy, and needs either a totalitarian ruler or to go through the cleansing fire of a long civil war to cement the concept and importance of democracy in the people's minds?
  - freeflight 8y ago
    A lot of US interference is way less visible and often quite entrenched in established structures. In Germany, US NGO's hold a lot of influence, especially on news media. [0] In 2014 the political satire show "Neues aus der Anstalt" made these connections a topic of one of their shows, showing links between organizations, people, and political players. Which resulted in them getting sued, by one of the people on their chart, and being forced to take the video down. 3 years later a German court ruled nothing about the video was wrong, so it wouldn't even have been needed to take down. But taken down it was and the whole topic quickly buried under other themes, like the Syrian civil war and the resulting refugee crisis. Finding any English language sources on this is extremely difficult, and even a lot of the German sources often delve off into the far too deep ends of conspiracy theories with this. So it's not an easy topic to explore. [0] https://denkeselbst.wordpress.com/category/das-netz/ https://denkeselbst.wordpress.com/category/das-netz/
  - gandhium 8y ago
    From your link: > “It’s not just apples and oranges,” said Kenneth Wollack, president of the National Democratic Institute. “It’s comparing someone who delivers lifesaving medicine to someone who brings deadly poison.” I think this is right description for comparing US and Russian attempts.
- batteryhorse 8y ago
  Only a complete fool believes that Russia was able to influence the US elections with a few thousand dollars worth of Twitter ads. The Russian narrative exists to create a distraction in the form of an external enemy for the establishment. It is a completely ridiculous narrative for anyone that has a brain. Obama interfered with the Brexit vote when he told the Brits that if they voted for Brexit, they would need to go to the back of the queue.
  - evgen 8y ago
    Only a complete fool believes that it was only a few thousand dollars worth of Twitter ads, or that Russian interference is some sort of fake bogeyman created to distract people. The threat is real and part of the threat are willing accomplices such as yourself.
    - freeflight 8y ago
      > The threat is real and part of the threat are willing accomplices such as yourself. You realize this kind of behavior, accusing others of being traitors for doubting your narrative, is textbook propaganda behavior? It's also really odd behavior considering you didn't even back up your first claim, saying "there's more than only Twitter ads" without saying what "more" adds literally nothing to the discussion. Nobody is doubting that "Russian interference" exists, what many people are doubting is how much influence it actually had on Trump being elected or Trump's daily business in general. Because the narrative that Russia is to blame for everything from Brexit, Trump getting elected to the resurgence of nationalist sentiments is just that: A narrative designed to build the perfect bogeyman. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsehood_in_War-Time#Summary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsehood_in_War-Time#Summary
      - Udik 8y ago
        Thanks for the Wikipedia link. I'll post here a portion of the page because I think it's incredibly insightful: > Anne Morelli has summarized and systematized the contents of Ponsonby's classic in "ten commandments of propaganda": 1- We do not want war. 2- The opposite party alone is guilty of war. 3- The enemy is the face of the devil. 4- We defend a noble cause, not our own interest. 5- The enemy systematically commits cruelties; our mishaps are involuntary. 6- The enemy uses forbidden weapons. 7- We suffer small losses, those of the enemy are enormous. 8- Artists and intellectuals back our cause. 9- Our cause is sacred. 10- All who doubt our propaganda, are traitors.
- rascul 8y ago
  Could you provide sources for your widespread and documented evidence?
  - viraptor 8y ago
    Google: "study Twitter accounts propaganda news". Start digging. There's a lot of secondary news and primary sources from independent researchers. There are patterns of how tweets travel between groups of popular accounts. There are known rings of accounts which are excited in Russian about Crimea one month and then in French about Macron the next month. There are groups of accounts constantly replying with Russia praise 9-5 Moscow time. As much as I hate the "do your research" response, there are so many articles already out there, I don't even know where to start and not seem arbitrarily selective.
    - rascul 8y ago
      At this point there have been so many claims of election interference with nothing to prove it so I have no qualms about simply dismissing yours unless you deem it worthwhile to back up your claims. I'm not doubting that they interfered, I just haven't seen any evidence of it and you haven't helped at all.
      - viraptor 8y ago
        Ok, let's play then Either news agencies don't influence elections or fake "news accounts" did: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-05/how-the-kremlin-tried-to-pose-as-american-news-sites-on-twitter https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-05/how-the-k... Some review of IRA-run accounts featured in popular news outlets: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323703483_The_Twitter_exploit_How_Russian_propaganda_infiltrated_US_news https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323703483_The_Twitt... Either celebrities don't influence elections, or IRA accounts like ten_gop did: https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2017/10/19/how-ann-coulter-nicki-minaj-and-other-celebrities-unwittingly-spread-the-work-of-russian-operatives.html https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2017/10/19/how-ann-coulte... More detailed story of a specific post-election hashtag: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/02/04/trump-twitter-russians-release-the-memo-216935 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/02/04/trump-twi... And of course there's the cozy bear / Dutch agency episode, confirming the source of some documents releases to wikileaks: https://nos.nl/nieuwsuur/artikel/2213767-dutch-intelligence-first-to-alert-u-s-about-russian-hack-of-democratic-party.html https://nos.nl/nieuwsuur/artikel/2213767-dutch-intelligence-... Each story is present it a few places - sourced mixed to reduce bias. We may never know what was the scale of the influence, so that's the debatable part. But unless someone claims that popular social media accounts have no influence over the results, they agree that IRA did play a part. You could also speculate that IRA is not led by silly people eager to waste government money for internet LOLs. If their efforts were not effective, why do they continue that for years?

lord_ring_11 8y ago

So ture. How many govts have been toppled in recent times through military action. I think surprise is that it is happening first time to west without direct military action. Last time govt was toppeled in west was French govt in WW2.

imbokodo 8y ago
Actually the last time the French government was toppled was in 1958. The communists had become the largest party, and French officers, unhappy with decolonization, especially in Algeria, seized Corsica and planned to invade Metropolitan France in Operation Resurrection.
pjc50 8y ago
Carnation revolution in Portugal?

threeseed 8y ago

Please provide evidence of this. There is widespread, documented evidence of Russian interference in the US and French elections as well as Brexit. Which when you throw in state sponsored doping demonstrates a pattern for “not following the rules”. And I don’t see why that even if what you say is true why Russian interference can’t be investigated also. Countries can do more than one thing at once.

harshreality 8y ago
You're genuinely unaware that the U.S. has done the same thing for decades? https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/17/sunday-review/russia-isnt-the-only-one-meddling-in-elections-we-do-it-too.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/17/sunday-review/russia-isnt... One point the NYT briefly tries to make — which is all I'm addressing in the rest of this comment — is that the U.S. in (very) recent years has mainly interfered to support more democratic candidates, and oppose more authoritarian candidates. And Russia, NYT claims, interferes to support totalitarian candidates and sow chaos. Implying subtly that Trump couldn't possibly be anything other than a strong-man or chaos candidate. That there couldn't possibly be any legitimate democracy-respecting reasons to support him over Hillary (campaign donor influence apparently is perfectly democratic, when it's your candidate receiving the donations aka bribes). Trump may be many things: A nationalist, a pathological liar, in need of a fitness regime and a better diet, and a not very nice person (by most accounts)... but I have not seen any attempt by him to subvert democracy or separation of powers. I have not seen him act particularly chaotically, either. (Weren't Democrats afraid he would start a nuclear war the second he got the nuclear football?) To the extent he's a horrible president, that's the fault of the 2-party system and his catastrophically awful opposing candidate. So, The NYT basically says, yeah, the U.S. interfered in a lot of elections, but recently we've been doing it for the good of democracy. Russia, meanwhile, interferes to the detriment of democracy. First, that doesn't change the fact that it's intervention, and intervention itself is anti-democratic. If another country wants to democratically elect a strong man, that's not so good, but do other democratic countries have a right to interfere? Maybe the populations of those countries understand something intuitively about their politics that we don't, and the candidate that looks more authoritarian is really the better of two evils? Second, when we have interfered — in Libya, in Iraq, in Syria — and it turns out that the "democratic" "freedom fighter" opponents of the existing strong-man leader are terrorists or aligned with terrorists, or the country simply devolves into chaos and faction warfare in the absence of that more totalitarian leader, what then? Is interference justified to support a more freedom-loving candidate when we have no idea (or we know perfectly well, but don't care) that the country is not currently viable as a more open democracy, and needs either a totalitarian ruler or to go through the cleansing fire of a long civil war to cement the concept and importance of democracy in the people's minds?
- freeflight 8y ago
  A lot of US interference is way less visible and often quite entrenched in established structures. In Germany, US NGO's hold a lot of influence, especially on news media. [0] In 2014 the political satire show "Neues aus der Anstalt" made these connections a topic of one of their shows, showing links between organizations, people, and political players. Which resulted in them getting sued, by one of the people on their chart, and being forced to take the video down. 3 years later a German court ruled nothing about the video was wrong, so it wouldn't even have been needed to take down. But taken down it was and the whole topic quickly buried under other themes, like the Syrian civil war and the resulting refugee crisis. Finding any English language sources on this is extremely difficult, and even a lot of the German sources often delve off into the far too deep ends of conspiracy theories with this. So it's not an easy topic to explore. [0] https://denkeselbst.wordpress.com/category/das-netz/ https://denkeselbst.wordpress.com/category/das-netz/
- gandhium 8y ago
  From your link: > “It’s not just apples and oranges,” said Kenneth Wollack, president of the National Democratic Institute. “It’s comparing someone who delivers lifesaving medicine to someone who brings deadly poison.” I think this is right description for comparing US and Russian attempts.
batteryhorse 8y ago
Only a complete fool believes that Russia was able to influence the US elections with a few thousand dollars worth of Twitter ads. The Russian narrative exists to create a distraction in the form of an external enemy for the establishment. It is a completely ridiculous narrative for anyone that has a brain. Obama interfered with the Brexit vote when he told the Brits that if they voted for Brexit, they would need to go to the back of the queue.
- evgen 8y ago
  Only a complete fool believes that it was only a few thousand dollars worth of Twitter ads, or that Russian interference is some sort of fake bogeyman created to distract people. The threat is real and part of the threat are willing accomplices such as yourself.
  - freeflight 8y ago
    > The threat is real and part of the threat are willing accomplices such as yourself. You realize this kind of behavior, accusing others of being traitors for doubting your narrative, is textbook propaganda behavior? It's also really odd behavior considering you didn't even back up your first claim, saying "there's more than only Twitter ads" without saying what "more" adds literally nothing to the discussion. Nobody is doubting that "Russian interference" exists, what many people are doubting is how much influence it actually had on Trump being elected or Trump's daily business in general. Because the narrative that Russia is to blame for everything from Brexit, Trump getting elected to the resurgence of nationalist sentiments is just that: A narrative designed to build the perfect bogeyman. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsehood_in_War-Time#Summary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsehood_in_War-Time#Summary
    - Udik 8y ago
      Thanks for the Wikipedia link. I'll post here a portion of the page because I think it's incredibly insightful: > Anne Morelli has summarized and systematized the contents of Ponsonby's classic in "ten commandments of propaganda": 1- We do not want war. 2- The opposite party alone is guilty of war. 3- The enemy is the face of the devil. 4- We defend a noble cause, not our own interest. 5- The enemy systematically commits cruelties; our mishaps are involuntary. 6- The enemy uses forbidden weapons. 7- We suffer small losses, those of the enemy are enormous. 8- Artists and intellectuals back our cause. 9- Our cause is sacred. 10- All who doubt our propaganda, are traitors.
rascul 8y ago
Could you provide sources for your widespread and documented evidence?
- viraptor 8y ago
  Google: "study Twitter accounts propaganda news". Start digging. There's a lot of secondary news and primary sources from independent researchers. There are patterns of how tweets travel between groups of popular accounts. There are known rings of accounts which are excited in Russian about Crimea one month and then in French about Macron the next month. There are groups of accounts constantly replying with Russia praise 9-5 Moscow time. As much as I hate the "do your research" response, there are so many articles already out there, I don't even know where to start and not seem arbitrarily selective.
  - rascul 8y ago
    At this point there have been so many claims of election interference with nothing to prove it so I have no qualms about simply dismissing yours unless you deem it worthwhile to back up your claims. I'm not doubting that they interfered, I just haven't seen any evidence of it and you haven't helped at all.
    - viraptor 8y ago
      Ok, let's play then Either news agencies don't influence elections or fake "news accounts" did: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-05/how-the-kremlin-tried-to-pose-as-american-news-sites-on-twitter https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-05/how-the-k... Some review of IRA-run accounts featured in popular news outlets: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323703483_The_Twitter_exploit_How_Russian_propaganda_infiltrated_US_news https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323703483_The_Twitt... Either celebrities don't influence elections, or IRA accounts like ten_gop did: https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2017/10/19/how-ann-coulter-nicki-minaj-and-other-celebrities-unwittingly-spread-the-work-of-russian-operatives.html https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2017/10/19/how-ann-coulte... More detailed story of a specific post-election hashtag: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/02/04/trump-twitter-russians-release-the-memo-216935 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/02/04/trump-twi... And of course there's the cozy bear / Dutch agency episode, confirming the source of some documents releases to wikileaks: https://nos.nl/nieuwsuur/artikel/2213767-dutch-intelligence-first-to-alert-u-s-about-russian-hack-of-democratic-party.html https://nos.nl/nieuwsuur/artikel/2213767-dutch-intelligence-... Each story is present it a few places - sourced mixed to reduce bias. We may never know what was the scale of the influence, so that's the debatable part. But unless someone claims that popular social media accounts have no influence over the results, they agree that IRA did play a part. You could also speculate that IRA is not led by silly people eager to waste government money for internet LOLs. If their efforts were not effective, why do they continue that for years?