10 ms·

It really feels like the modern world should be able to expose dictatorships and their propaganda machines much easier than in the past. Is this an example of t

by xrd 7y ago

It really feels like the modern world should be able to expose dictatorships and their propaganda machines much easier than in the past. Is this an example of that truth coming out and destroying a corrupt state, or just the loss of oil revenues? I always believed Tim O'Reilly's statements that sunlight is the best disinfectant but it seems like the propaganda machines are faster than the truth. Maybe "a lie is halfway around the world before the truth has its pants on" is more "truthful." My mom visited this place last year and she talked about the marble palaces.

wmf 7y ago
It sounds like everyone has known all along what was going on there. But who's going to do anything about it? All their money comes from Russia and China who don't give a shit.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- tmtempaccount 7y ago
  I wish someone gave shit. Situation in the country is so bad that, over 2mln people left abroad to support their family. Sick people go to Turkey, India to have proper treatment. The ones who can't afford dies or survives. Government only sends students to "approved universities" which is overly expensive for average turkmens. (latest news)
davidw 7y ago
> "a lie is halfway around the world before the truth has its pants on" I also like the version of this known as the 'bullshit asymmetry principle': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit#Bullshit_asymmetry_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit#Bullshit_asymmetry_pr...
Sniffnoy 7y ago
Minor note, the phrase "sunlight is the best disinfectant" is due to Louis Brandeis. (Although, according to this webpage[0], it's paraphrasing an earlier statement by James Bryce.) [0] https://aroberts.us/2015/03/01/where-brandeis-got-sunlight-is-the-best-disinfectant/ https://aroberts.us/2015/03/01/where-brandeis-got-sunlight-i...
pjc50 7y ago
It went the other way: corrupt dictatorships started buying advertising, politicians, and media in the West. To the point that half the population now no longer know which way is up. The Telegraph, who employ the Prime Minister, managed to get a push poll claiming over 50% support for suspending democracy in the UK.
- Aperocky 7y ago
  From my point of view the Jedi are evil!
- inflatableDodo 7y ago
  >managed to get a push poll claiming over 50% support for suspending democracy in the UK. Also, they didn't, they are just lying about that - https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2019/08/no-most-voters-don-t-back-prorogation-parliament-make-no-deal-brexit https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2019/08/no-mo...
  - SuddsMcDuff 7y ago
    One garbage publication with an agenda criticizing another garbage publication with an agenda.
    - benj111 7y ago
      I'll add another 'garbage publication' to tip the balance if it makes you feel better? https://www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2019/08/13/psychological-warfare-over-no-deal-masks-a-strategic-vulnera https://www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2019/08/13/psychological-wa...
      - SuddsMcDuff 7y ago
        Why would it make me feel better? Why are my feelings even a relevent topic here? There is absolutely no shortage of grandstanding in both camps. Since you care about my feelings you might like to know that the thing that upsets me most is the almost complete lack of rational debate surrounding this issue. If you could link to a non-partisan, fact based article designed to actually impart information and enable people to make up their own minds, rather than an article designed solely to sway opinion, that might make me feel better.
oh_sigh 7y ago
Exposing Arkadag and his propaganda will do absolutely zero to affect change in Turkmenistan. People don't follow him because they are lied to - people follow him because, as a general rule, for a little person it is almost always a safer, more lucrative decision to be on the strongman's side than against him. The situation within Turkmenistan has been well reported on for 10+ years. It's not like the outside world couldn't know what was happening inside Turkmenistan.
- dmix 7y ago
  If you're smart and able leader as a citizen in that country you have three options: 1) leave to a better country (easy), 2) fight the system politically (really difficult), 3) ignore your morals and engage in graft directly as a politician or indirectly via enriching yourself via connections/bribes in gov as a private enterprise (semi-difficult since you're still competing with all of the less smart people who are smooth talkers or have entrenched/hereditary influence) or 4) violent revolutionary behaviour (almost impossible outside of external situations like war or regional conflict which can create the anarchy/power vacuums necessary for this to work). 1) and 3) are the biggest hurdles for these countries since most people never even try and just live their life. 3) is often the only path to any change as it continually generates new power players, while greasing the existing wheels as to not stop their momentum, and it's entirely possibly incrementally lesser evil people could take this route. Especially as education improve and economic difficulties create pressure on old broken systems/models which the next grafter might be less inclined to continue. So if it's not going to be from the inside then it's only going to be external pressure - by other countries. Most foreign countries couldn't be bothered by a small, non-economically or militarily (state or Guerrilla) important country so few would make much of a risk intervening locally. Plus most of the surrounding countries in that region are very tolerant of dictators, so there will likely be more of the opposite pressure in the other direction, even if the west did care enough to counter it. Then there's the whole immoral nature and high risk of backfiring of foreigners bumbling into a country without understanding local culture, glossing over the power of smaller ethnic tribes (unexpected if you're used to stable democratic government power), or often not building enough trust to legitimate offer the long-term commitment changing-seeking locals need to not face persecution later (as we repeatedly have seen in the Middle East and Africa for the last century). It's a very difficult problem. A power vacuum after such a 'collapse' could work in their benefit. It could also just result in a worse situation depending on a whole bunch of circumstances. But it's still a better opportunity than hoping some smart guy tries to change the system from within, without getting chewed up and spat out first.
vkou 7y ago
> It really feels like the modern world should be able to expose dictatorships and their propaganda machines much easier than in the past. We can't even figure out the difference between fact and blatantly false propaganda in free nations, where you're not going to be killed or imprisoned for talking about uncomfortable truths. What makes you think that people in nations that don't take such freedoms for granted are going to be any successful at this? The fact is that when it comes to the marketplace of ideas, lies have no difficulty winning. Whether or not the truth prevails is a complete toss-up, that has more to do with the charisma of the participants, or worse - which version of reality serves the listener better.
JauntTrooper 7y ago
If you really think about it, sunlight is a terrible disinfectant.
- derefr 7y ago
  Eh, I dunno. Sunlight (UV radiation, mostly) kills a great amount of simple life. Admittedly, complex life (where even bacteria are "complex life", having things like cell walls and the ability to survive dehydration without DNA degradation) has mostly adapted to protect itself against the UVA and UVB found in regular sunlight. But UVC (i.e. "sunlight from areas around holes in the ozone layer") is still pretty effective: http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2018/06/uv-light-cleaning-shown-cut-superbugs-hospital-wide http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2018/06/uv-light-...
  - TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
    I believe the parent comment was trying to point out that, as a result of being in the goldilocks zone the Earth is completely infected with life.
- conistonwater 7y ago
  Do you think maybe the phrase comes from a time before widely available disinfectants? Like before water purification plants?
  - danharaj 7y ago
    Disinfectants were widely available for a very long time, and often used in effective if not optimal ways even without the understanding of germ theory.
matthewmcg 7y ago
I’ve usually seen the phrase attributed to Louis Brandeis in a 1914 book. He wrote of disclosure-based securities regulation: “sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.”
sb057 7y ago
I think it's more of a case that no one gives a shit about some former Soviet wasteland in the middle of Asia that will never affect them (as far as they know, at least).
moksly 7y ago
Haven’t we become a lot less apt at exposing manipulation? There isn’t a history of what you see in your social media feed or in your search results, and there is no record of who paid for it to look the way it did on that particular day. Facebook and others offer a view into the total advertising spending, but not on what or to whom. So while it’s probably better than nothing, it’s really far from being transparent. I’m not into the field of communication or advertising, but I know from our own communications benchmarking that Social Media campaigns work better than almost anything. We use it to raise awareness on his feeding ducks with bread is a terrible idea, but you could be using it for anything really. Advertising has certainly always been damaging to society, but in 2019 it’s now also the strongest political weapon of anyone with money and interest, and it seems to be leas transparent than ever before. Maybe it only seems that way because I’m not old enough to know what it was like 50 years ago. But I do know that we don’t currently have the tools to out it to the sunlight, because the records and the data behind it are locked away.
roenxi 7y ago
> It really feels like the modern world should be able to expose dictatorships and their propaganda machines much easier than in the past. It is easier, but you might not have realised just how bad the situation was in the past. In the grand old days, propaganda machines were orders of magnitude harder to detect and challenge. Consider how much we know about what is going on inside China in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Tibet, etc, etc. Compare that to the old Soviet sytem where an academic could stand up on stage, say "This communism seems like a good idea" and be taken seriously. I mean, even today, the American press on the left and right are both clearly running what are basically propaganda operations for the major parties. The easy availability of transcripts, raw recordings, etc, allow an interested denizen in a foreign country to peer behind the veil in a way that they couldn't 50 years ago.
emilsedgh 7y ago
Coming from a dictatorship country (Iran), my personal understanding is not that dictatorships are not "exposed". At least in my case it seemed that everybody knows whats going on. It's just that there are socio-economics in place that keep the balance of power, somehow, despite the fact that everyone is completely aware of the situation.
- trilila 7y ago
  It’s almost as if members of the society support dictatorships, making governments a reflection of those societies. I am originally from a former communist society and 30 years after communism fell people still vote strongmen in power.
  - emilsedgh 7y ago
    Absolutely. After all these years, a humongous chunk of Iranian society would be more than happy to have another King/Leader/Dictator who is on the same page with them "right now", not understanding that the whole concept of a single person holding power is flawed, not the current policies of the current dictator.
    - anovikov 7y ago
      Maybe it's wrong for civilized nations and OK for not so civilized? Also, Iran is nowhere like a dictatorship. Mr Ahmadinejad who was labelled as a dictator by the west, just lost an election one day. Can a dictator possibly ever lose an election? As for the Ayatollah, they aren't really politicians. More like Kings in the constitutional monarchies or say Japanese emperor - a figure of authority who has a big weight in taking decisions, but not an everyday ruler.
      - msoad 7y ago
        President doesn’t hold much power in Iran. It’s the supreme leader that has all the power and has been in power since the previous supreme leader died.
      - 7y ago
MaxBarraclough 7y ago
> It really feels like the modern world should be able to expose dictatorships and their propaganda machines much easier than in the past. Interesting timing. The most recent Last Week Tonight episode covers the Turkmenistan dictatorship.
- tmtempaccount 7y ago
  Lately, I started to see a lot of activities on anti-government media. It barely existed in the country. Azatlyk was the only one. Western media picked up (HBO, newspapers),number of social media pro and anti government "trolls" increased. First time after the independence of Turkmenistan - singers, actors (the only influential people after president) talked about politics on social media channels (instagram, twitter). All of them had strikingly similarly outlined pro-government speech on "fake death of president".
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

by xrd 7y ago

wmf 7y ago

It sounds like everyone has known all along what was going on there. But who's going to do anything about it? All their money comes from Russia and China who don't give a shit.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
tmtempaccount 7y ago
I wish someone gave shit. Situation in the country is so bad that, over 2mln people left abroad to support their family. Sick people go to Turkey, India to have proper treatment. The ones who can't afford dies or survives. Government only sends students to "approved universities" which is overly expensive for average turkmens. (latest news)

davidw 7y ago

> "a lie is halfway around the world before the truth has its pants on" I also like the version of this known as the 'bullshit asymmetry principle': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit#Bullshit_asymmetry_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit#Bullshit_asymmetry_pr...

Sniffnoy 7y ago

Minor note, the phrase "sunlight is the best disinfectant" is due to Louis Brandeis. (Although, according to this webpage[0], it's paraphrasing an earlier statement by James Bryce.) [0] https://aroberts.us/2015/03/01/where-brandeis-got-sunlight-is-the-best-disinfectant/ https://aroberts.us/2015/03/01/where-brandeis-got-sunlight-i...

pjc50 7y ago

It went the other way: corrupt dictatorships started buying advertising, politicians, and media in the West. To the point that half the population now no longer know which way is up. The Telegraph, who employ the Prime Minister, managed to get a push poll claiming over 50% support for suspending democracy in the UK.

Aperocky 7y ago
From my point of view the Jedi are evil!
inflatableDodo 7y ago
>managed to get a push poll claiming over 50% support for suspending democracy in the UK. Also, they didn't, they are just lying about that - https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2019/08/no-most-voters-don-t-back-prorogation-parliament-make-no-deal-brexit https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2019/08/no-mo...
- SuddsMcDuff 7y ago
  One garbage publication with an agenda criticizing another garbage publication with an agenda.
  - benj111 7y ago
    I'll add another 'garbage publication' to tip the balance if it makes you feel better? https://www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2019/08/13/psychological-warfare-over-no-deal-masks-a-strategic-vulnera https://www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2019/08/13/psychological-wa...
    - SuddsMcDuff 7y ago
      Why would it make me feel better? Why are my feelings even a relevent topic here? There is absolutely no shortage of grandstanding in both camps. Since you care about my feelings you might like to know that the thing that upsets me most is the almost complete lack of rational debate surrounding this issue. If you could link to a non-partisan, fact based article designed to actually impart information and enable people to make up their own minds, rather than an article designed solely to sway opinion, that might make me feel better.

oh_sigh 7y ago

Exposing Arkadag and his propaganda will do absolutely zero to affect change in Turkmenistan. People don't follow him because they are lied to - people follow him because, as a general rule, for a little person it is almost always a safer, more lucrative decision to be on the strongman's side than against him. The situation within Turkmenistan has been well reported on for 10+ years. It's not like the outside world couldn't know what was happening inside Turkmenistan.

dmix 7y ago
If you're smart and able leader as a citizen in that country you have three options: 1) leave to a better country (easy), 2) fight the system politically (really difficult), 3) ignore your morals and engage in graft directly as a politician or indirectly via enriching yourself via connections/bribes in gov as a private enterprise (semi-difficult since you're still competing with all of the less smart people who are smooth talkers or have entrenched/hereditary influence) or 4) violent revolutionary behaviour (almost impossible outside of external situations like war or regional conflict which can create the anarchy/power vacuums necessary for this to work). 1) and 3) are the biggest hurdles for these countries since most people never even try and just live their life. 3) is often the only path to any change as it continually generates new power players, while greasing the existing wheels as to not stop their momentum, and it's entirely possibly incrementally lesser evil people could take this route. Especially as education improve and economic difficulties create pressure on old broken systems/models which the next grafter might be less inclined to continue. So if it's not going to be from the inside then it's only going to be external pressure - by other countries. Most foreign countries couldn't be bothered by a small, non-economically or militarily (state or Guerrilla) important country so few would make much of a risk intervening locally. Plus most of the surrounding countries in that region are very tolerant of dictators, so there will likely be more of the opposite pressure in the other direction, even if the west did care enough to counter it. Then there's the whole immoral nature and high risk of backfiring of foreigners bumbling into a country without understanding local culture, glossing over the power of smaller ethnic tribes (unexpected if you're used to stable democratic government power), or often not building enough trust to legitimate offer the long-term commitment changing-seeking locals need to not face persecution later (as we repeatedly have seen in the Middle East and Africa for the last century). It's a very difficult problem. A power vacuum after such a 'collapse' could work in their benefit. It could also just result in a worse situation depending on a whole bunch of circumstances. But it's still a better opportunity than hoping some smart guy tries to change the system from within, without getting chewed up and spat out first.

vkou 7y ago

> It really feels like the modern world should be able to expose dictatorships and their propaganda machines much easier than in the past. We can't even figure out the difference between fact and blatantly false propaganda in free nations, where you're not going to be killed or imprisoned for talking about uncomfortable truths. What makes you think that people in nations that don't take such freedoms for granted are going to be any successful at this? The fact is that when it comes to the marketplace of ideas, lies have no difficulty winning. Whether or not the truth prevails is a complete toss-up, that has more to do with the charisma of the participants, or worse - which version of reality serves the listener better.

JauntTrooper 7y ago

If you really think about it, sunlight is a terrible disinfectant.

derefr 7y ago
Eh, I dunno. Sunlight (UV radiation, mostly) kills a great amount of simple life. Admittedly, complex life (where even bacteria are "complex life", having things like cell walls and the ability to survive dehydration without DNA degradation) has mostly adapted to protect itself against the UVA and UVB found in regular sunlight. But UVC (i.e. "sunlight from areas around holes in the ozone layer") is still pretty effective: http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2018/06/uv-light-cleaning-shown-cut-superbugs-hospital-wide http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2018/06/uv-light-...
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
  I believe the parent comment was trying to point out that, as a result of being in the goldilocks zone the Earth is completely infected with life.
conistonwater 7y ago
Do you think maybe the phrase comes from a time before widely available disinfectants? Like before water purification plants?
- danharaj 7y ago
  Disinfectants were widely available for a very long time, and often used in effective if not optimal ways even without the understanding of germ theory.

matthewmcg 7y ago

I’ve usually seen the phrase attributed to Louis Brandeis in a 1914 book. He wrote of disclosure-based securities regulation: “sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.”

sb057 7y ago

I think it's more of a case that no one gives a shit about some former Soviet wasteland in the middle of Asia that will never affect them (as far as they know, at least).

moksly 7y ago

Haven’t we become a lot less apt at exposing manipulation? There isn’t a history of what you see in your social media feed or in your search results, and there is no record of who paid for it to look the way it did on that particular day. Facebook and others offer a view into the total advertising spending, but not on what or to whom. So while it’s probably better than nothing, it’s really far from being transparent. I’m not into the field of communication or advertising, but I know from our own communications benchmarking that Social Media campaigns work better than almost anything. We use it to raise awareness on his feeding ducks with bread is a terrible idea, but you could be using it for anything really. Advertising has certainly always been damaging to society, but in 2019 it’s now also the strongest political weapon of anyone with money and interest, and it seems to be leas transparent than ever before. Maybe it only seems that way because I’m not old enough to know what it was like 50 years ago. But I do know that we don’t currently have the tools to out it to the sunlight, because the records and the data behind it are locked away.

roenxi 7y ago

> It really feels like the modern world should be able to expose dictatorships and their propaganda machines much easier than in the past. It is easier, but you might not have realised just how bad the situation was in the past. In the grand old days, propaganda machines were orders of magnitude harder to detect and challenge. Consider how much we know about what is going on inside China in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Tibet, etc, etc. Compare that to the old Soviet sytem where an academic could stand up on stage, say "This communism seems like a good idea" and be taken seriously. I mean, even today, the American press on the left and right are both clearly running what are basically propaganda operations for the major parties. The easy availability of transcripts, raw recordings, etc, allow an interested denizen in a foreign country to peer behind the veil in a way that they couldn't 50 years ago.

emilsedgh 7y ago

Coming from a dictatorship country (Iran), my personal understanding is not that dictatorships are not "exposed". At least in my case it seemed that everybody knows whats going on. It's just that there are socio-economics in place that keep the balance of power, somehow, despite the fact that everyone is completely aware of the situation.

trilila 7y ago
It’s almost as if members of the society support dictatorships, making governments a reflection of those societies. I am originally from a former communist society and 30 years after communism fell people still vote strongmen in power.
- emilsedgh 7y ago
  Absolutely. After all these years, a humongous chunk of Iranian society would be more than happy to have another King/Leader/Dictator who is on the same page with them "right now", not understanding that the whole concept of a single person holding power is flawed, not the current policies of the current dictator.
  - anovikov 7y ago
    Maybe it's wrong for civilized nations and OK for not so civilized? Also, Iran is nowhere like a dictatorship. Mr Ahmadinejad who was labelled as a dictator by the west, just lost an election one day. Can a dictator possibly ever lose an election? As for the Ayatollah, they aren't really politicians. More like Kings in the constitutional monarchies or say Japanese emperor - a figure of authority who has a big weight in taking decisions, but not an everyday ruler.
    - msoad 7y ago
      President doesn’t hold much power in Iran. It’s the supreme leader that has all the power and has been in power since the previous supreme leader died.
    - 7y ago

MaxBarraclough 7y ago

> It really feels like the modern world should be able to expose dictatorships and their propaganda machines much easier than in the past. Interesting timing. The most recent Last Week Tonight episode covers the Turkmenistan dictatorship.

tmtempaccount 7y ago
Lately, I started to see a lot of activities on anti-government media. It barely existed in the country. Azatlyk was the only one. Western media picked up (HBO, newspapers),number of social media pro and anti government "trolls" increased. First time after the independence of Turkmenistan - singers, actors (the only influential people after president) talked about politics on social media channels (instagram, twitter). All of them had strikingly similarly outlined pro-government speech on "fake death of president".
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]