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And that's how the public is duped into voting for incompetent corrupt, but manly!, politicians who promise they'll put things back in order!! Seed rage and you

And that's how the public is duped into voting for incompetent corrupt, but manly!, politicians who promise they'll put things back in order!! Seed rage and you'll get politicians like Orban (Hungary), Bolsonaro (Brazil, on his way to power), and Trump. All Putin lookalikes who have their own oligarchies (call them friends) and everyone else is f*ed poor. And that is how nations/systems fail.

chrisco255 8y ago
Kind of laughable to think that Trump is the oligarchist. What did that make Clinton, with her decades of American power and connections? By the way, I'm not sure that Russian propaganda had a sizable impact on the American election. From what I remember of the 2016 election, we were discussing Trump 24/7 because of one outrageous Tweet, debate, rally, or press conference after another. Another point the article makes is that both pro-Trump and anti-Trump propaganda was run by Russia. My guess is that Russia is either trying to sow the seeds of discord, or trying to test the waters to see how much influence they can garner. I definitely don't like it either way, and this sort of thing can obviously get worse from here, but it would seem to me that the biggest message is that a divided America might be an easier target for Russian disruption down the line.
- mmjaa 8y ago
  Yeah, if we could harness the energy that Americans' use to run away and hide from Clinton's history, we'd have world peace, probably. /s Does nobody remember the wars this woman started, in her reach for power? Are we really going to ignore the victims of her involvement in American foreign policy? This is the danger of the whole "mah Russian Trolls!" narrative - the trolls might actually be telling the truth about a few things (i.e. America really is run by a hidden oligarchy of families networked throughout the military-industrial-pharmaceutical complex), and .. because "mah Russia!", we end up reinforcing the very actors who need to be eradicated from the scene. This is very dodgy territory. I can only hope that the average citizens' heavy dependence on "being told what to think by an authoritarian figure on TV" is going to be weaned as this proceeds ..
  - seivarden 8y ago
    No, the average citizen's heavy dependence will just shift to "being told what to think by a viral video on YouTube". That's what we're seeing here, by the way.
    - mmjaa 8y ago
      What I'm seeing is "authority fatigue". Nobody really trusts their authority's views any more. And I think that's a good thing, personally. Not sure that I'd agree that Youtube is the best source of it, but yeah - its high time the Western world learned to think for itself, anyway. Maybe this is progress?
      - iamben 8y ago
        Except the western world (or a large part of) will never think for itself. They just replace one voice with another that seems more credible and removes the need to think and analyse. Thinking is hard. Getting your 'facts' from the guy with 200k subscribers (he must be legit, right?) on YouTube. That's easy. Politics, science (I mean, go look at people talking about chemtrails or flat earth), whatever. There was a paper about this that made the front page of HN a few weeks back. Was a good read if you can find it. I'm with you though. It's all a bit of a mess. Perhaps politicians have always been such self serving, blowhard scumbags - but until the internet and quick, global discussion was so ubiquitous we just didn't notice en mass.
cabraca 8y ago
you did not get trump because of putin alone, you got trump because hillary did a poor job. insulting voters that elected and reelected obama as "basket of deplorables" and "nazis" was shit. accepting leacked cnn questions from dona brazil was shit. booting bernie sanders was shit. instead of attacking his policies the democrats just shouted racist, sexist, homophob and xenophobe over and over again. dont get me wrong, i'm against trump. but you have to accept hillary f*ed up big time.
- pencilcode 8y ago
  She did but she's no longer the issue. And in voting against Hillary, people voted for Trump, a worse alternative - morally corrupt. People fight over whether Hillary was really corrupt or not, with Trump that's not the issue. We know he's a compulsive liar, exaggerator, we know that he's mean and petty and vain and that all he cares about are his name/brand and how many millions he has in his bank account. This is not a guy who'll fight for the masses, me or you, this a guy who'll fight to keep himself and his friends rich and makes no apologies for that. So not being a Clinton but being a Trump is not better, it's so much worse. It's the same in Brasil, voting against PT, Bolsonaro might be president, but he's so much worse. Despite absolutely hating someone you still have to keep your eyes open to what the alternatives are and if they're worse or better. Or you might end up with someone that'll make you more worse off.
  - chrisco255 8y ago
    https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2016/11/08/how-bill-house-hillary-clinton-made-240-million-how-much-earnings-rich-white/#620c61467a16 https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2016/11/08/how-bil... The Clintons are super rich, $240 million net worth, despite a life of "public service". I wonder how that works out? It's like Robin Williams said, "Politicians are like babies, they should be changed frequently...and for the same reason." It was high time the Clinton dynasty ended.
    - lawlessone 8y ago
      Trump is allegedly richer so if we're going with the "wealth = corrupt" attack here then Trump was still a worse choice than Clinton. >Clinton dynasty ended. 2 people isn't a dynasty.
xc1001 8y ago
That's a small part of the divisive propaganda. In our industry - software - the divisive money comes from U.S. corporations looking to sell ads and get cheap labor from all over the planet. And in some cases destroying open source is a welcome side effect.
tomp 8y ago
The problem is, there's plenty of equivalent "propaganda" promoted by the actual Western institutions... James Damore, Rosetta Tshirt accident, Tim Hunt firing, A Rape On Campus, anti-fa, conservatives being blocked on Twitter... Even "manspreading" is a Western feminist idea, it's not like Russians "invented" it.
tumetab1 8y ago
No. Bolsonare is the expected outcome with or without the Internet.

chrisco255 8y ago

Kind of laughable to think that Trump is the oligarchist. What did that make Clinton, with her decades of American power and connections? By the way, I'm not sure that Russian propaganda had a sizable impact on the American election. From what I remember of the 2016 election, we were discussing Trump 24/7 because of one outrageous Tweet, debate, rally, or press conference after another. Another point the article makes is that both pro-Trump and anti-Trump propaganda was run by Russia. My guess is that Russia is either trying to sow the seeds of discord, or trying to test the waters to see how much influence they can garner. I definitely don't like it either way, and this sort of thing can obviously get worse from here, but it would seem to me that the biggest message is that a divided America might be an easier target for Russian disruption down the line.

mmjaa 8y ago
Yeah, if we could harness the energy that Americans' use to run away and hide from Clinton's history, we'd have world peace, probably. /s Does nobody remember the wars this woman started, in her reach for power? Are we really going to ignore the victims of her involvement in American foreign policy? This is the danger of the whole "mah Russian Trolls!" narrative - the trolls might actually be telling the truth about a few things (i.e. America really is run by a hidden oligarchy of families networked throughout the military-industrial-pharmaceutical complex), and .. because "mah Russia!", we end up reinforcing the very actors who need to be eradicated from the scene. This is very dodgy territory. I can only hope that the average citizens' heavy dependence on "being told what to think by an authoritarian figure on TV" is going to be weaned as this proceeds ..
- seivarden 8y ago
  No, the average citizen's heavy dependence will just shift to "being told what to think by a viral video on YouTube". That's what we're seeing here, by the way.
  - mmjaa 8y ago
    What I'm seeing is "authority fatigue". Nobody really trusts their authority's views any more. And I think that's a good thing, personally. Not sure that I'd agree that Youtube is the best source of it, but yeah - its high time the Western world learned to think for itself, anyway. Maybe this is progress?
    - iamben 8y ago
      Except the western world (or a large part of) will never think for itself. They just replace one voice with another that seems more credible and removes the need to think and analyse. Thinking is hard. Getting your 'facts' from the guy with 200k subscribers (he must be legit, right?) on YouTube. That's easy. Politics, science (I mean, go look at people talking about chemtrails or flat earth), whatever. There was a paper about this that made the front page of HN a few weeks back. Was a good read if you can find it. I'm with you though. It's all a bit of a mess. Perhaps politicians have always been such self serving, blowhard scumbags - but until the internet and quick, global discussion was so ubiquitous we just didn't notice en mass.

cabraca 8y ago

you did not get trump because of putin alone, you got trump because hillary did a poor job. insulting voters that elected and reelected obama as "basket of deplorables" and "nazis" was shit. accepting leacked cnn questions from dona brazil was shit. booting bernie sanders was shit. instead of attacking his policies the democrats just shouted racist, sexist, homophob and xenophobe over and over again. dont get me wrong, i'm against trump. but you have to accept hillary f*ed up big time.

pencilcode 8y ago
She did but she's no longer the issue. And in voting against Hillary, people voted for Trump, a worse alternative - morally corrupt. People fight over whether Hillary was really corrupt or not, with Trump that's not the issue. We know he's a compulsive liar, exaggerator, we know that he's mean and petty and vain and that all he cares about are his name/brand and how many millions he has in his bank account. This is not a guy who'll fight for the masses, me or you, this a guy who'll fight to keep himself and his friends rich and makes no apologies for that. So not being a Clinton but being a Trump is not better, it's so much worse. It's the same in Brasil, voting against PT, Bolsonaro might be president, but he's so much worse. Despite absolutely hating someone you still have to keep your eyes open to what the alternatives are and if they're worse or better. Or you might end up with someone that'll make you more worse off.
- chrisco255 8y ago
  https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2016/11/08/how-bill-house-hillary-clinton-made-240-million-how-much-earnings-rich-white/#620c61467a16 https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2016/11/08/how-bil... The Clintons are super rich, $240 million net worth, despite a life of "public service". I wonder how that works out? It's like Robin Williams said, "Politicians are like babies, they should be changed frequently...and for the same reason." It was high time the Clinton dynasty ended.
  - lawlessone 8y ago
    Trump is allegedly richer so if we're going with the "wealth = corrupt" attack here then Trump was still a worse choice than Clinton. >Clinton dynasty ended. 2 people isn't a dynasty.

xc1001 8y ago

That's a small part of the divisive propaganda. In our industry - software - the divisive money comes from U.S. corporations looking to sell ads and get cheap labor from all over the planet. And in some cases destroying open source is a welcome side effect.

tomp 8y ago

The problem is, there's plenty of equivalent "propaganda" promoted by the actual Western institutions... James Damore, Rosetta Tshirt accident, Tim Hunt firing, A Rape On Campus, anti-fa, conservatives being blocked on Twitter... Even "manspreading" is a Western feminist idea, it's not like Russians "invented" it.

tumetab1 8y ago

No. Bolsonare is the expected outcome with or without the Internet.