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Unpopular opinion: Its a sign of the world becoming more liberal and free. These kinds of weapons don’t directly kill hundreds of thousands of people. It’s pro

by aey 7y ago

Unpopular opinion: Its a sign of the world becoming more liberal and free. These kinds of weapons don’t directly kill hundreds of thousands of people. It’s propaganda wars. Let’s hope all future wars are fought only on the internet.

smt88 7y ago
Propaganda wars aren't better because they "don't directly kill". It's part of the same chain of events -- just a little earlier. Propaganda has been a necessary precursor for most recent civil wars, genocides, and regime changes. It's the most important ingredient in acts that can be labeled terrorism. Organized violence can't really happen without spreading information, and the internet has democratized the ability to spread information. I don't know whether it's net-good or net-bad, but I consider it to be unknowable what the net effect of all this propaganda is until it either leads to something or it doesn't.
- bayesian_horse 7y ago
  For the most part, those who don't want that violence seem to win, though.
  - smt88 7y ago
    Two of the worst human rights disasters of the last 100 years are happening now: the conflict in Syria and displacement 20 million, and the Uyghur genocide. I've thought about it a lot, and I don't know how anyone can ever topple the CCP when they control information so tightly. You could never create a large enough revolution with no organizing power. The really scary thing is that control of information also means you can hide the murder of millions of people. We'll never know how many people the Nazis, the Ottomans, or the CCP kill, and our estimates might be off by millions.
staplers 7y ago
Star Trek thought differently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon Worth a watch on this subject.
newguy1234 7y ago
Keep in mind that propaganda wars can kill people. Les not forget that Hitler was able to turn his conspiracy theory ideas about what should happen to the Jews into reality. Germany pre-hitler's rise was a vibrant democracy with many political parties.
- paganel 7y ago
  > Keep in mind that propaganda wars can kill people. Quoting Albert Speer [1]: > Albert Speer, Hitler's architect and later Minister for Armaments and War Production, later said the regime "made the complete use of all technical means for domination of its own country. Through technical devices like the radio and loudspeaker, 80 million people were deprived of independent thought." and to quote Goebbels himself [2], i.e. the Nazis' propaganda minister: > It would not have been possible for us to take power or to use it in the ways we have without the radio...It is no exaggeration to say that the German revolution, at least in the form it took, would have been impossible without the airplane and the radio…[Radio] reached the entire nation, regardless of class, standing, or religion. That was primarily the result of the tight centralization, the strong reporting, and the up-to-date nature of the German radio. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels#Workings_of_the_Ministry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels#Workings_of_th... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_propaganda#Nazi_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_propaganda#Nazi_Germany
- TheCoelacanth 7y ago
  Vibrant democracy is probably an exaggeration. It was a fledgling democracy that didn't have much of a tradition of peaceful transfer of power. Opposing political parties regularly devolved into armed conflict.
AdamHede 7y ago
I often find it hard to tell if authoritarian governments are strengthened or weakened by internet... The mass shutdowns tells me it's the latter. I think you are more right than most people here want to admit. Sure, surveillance is bad, and so is censorship, and we should fight it, and not let short-term moral panics like drug wars and terrorism forfeit our fundamental rights. But let's realize how impossibly hard information is to contain and control. With maybe the exception of China, let's imagine sitting in the Iranian or Saudi secret service. You might have vast funds at your disposal, but you also have a rapidly increasing sophistication in your populations technological awereness. Every day, New VPN technologies spring up and things like sudden critical mass of mesh networking threatens to turn everything upside down. You whack new exist points, but you also know, fundamentally, hundreds of thousands of you people have unrestricted access, and you best weapon is a frustrating shutdown, whenever things truly get out of hand.
- chasd00 7y ago
  things like Starlink will make access to information even harder to control/shutdown. I suppose it could be jammed but signal will still squirt out here and there. It's not as easy as controlling the physical fiber crossing your border.
Applejinx 7y ago
Unpopular because the end goal is most definitely real-world extermination of unwanted races and/or classes. That doesn't count as liberal or free. Propaganda without an end-game would be a pretty meaningless thing.
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  Nothing so directed is needed - the object of power is power. Although those with said intentions would find it useful for said ends. The dirty secret is they often want or need "undesirables" as a scapegoat. The difference may wind up academic though when dupes take the cynical scapegoating seriously long past the relevance of the propaganda. Like the European history of anti-semetism and the complete dumbasses who take the hundreds of Jewish expulsions as signs of guilt instead of being used as a political tool. Certainly not liberal or free and should still be opposed of course.
buboard 7y ago
> more liberal and free I think you 're confusing "alive" with "free". Merely surviving in a world of surveillance is not a life worth living.
- aey 7y ago
  Even 70s Soviet surveillance was comparatively brutal to todays Russia's troll farms. Ask any soviet jews.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]

by aey 7y ago

smt88 7y ago

Propaganda wars aren't better because they "don't directly kill". It's part of the same chain of events -- just a little earlier. Propaganda has been a necessary precursor for most recent civil wars, genocides, and regime changes. It's the most important ingredient in acts that can be labeled terrorism. Organized violence can't really happen without spreading information, and the internet has democratized the ability to spread information. I don't know whether it's net-good or net-bad, but I consider it to be unknowable what the net effect of all this propaganda is until it either leads to something or it doesn't.

bayesian_horse 7y ago
For the most part, those who don't want that violence seem to win, though.
- smt88 7y ago
  Two of the worst human rights disasters of the last 100 years are happening now: the conflict in Syria and displacement 20 million, and the Uyghur genocide. I've thought about it a lot, and I don't know how anyone can ever topple the CCP when they control information so tightly. You could never create a large enough revolution with no organizing power. The really scary thing is that control of information also means you can hide the murder of millions of people. We'll never know how many people the Nazis, the Ottomans, or the CCP kill, and our estimates might be off by millions.

staplers 7y ago

Star Trek thought differently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon Worth a watch on this subject.

newguy1234 7y ago

Keep in mind that propaganda wars can kill people. Les not forget that Hitler was able to turn his conspiracy theory ideas about what should happen to the Jews into reality. Germany pre-hitler's rise was a vibrant democracy with many political parties.

paganel 7y ago
> Keep in mind that propaganda wars can kill people. Quoting Albert Speer [1]: > Albert Speer, Hitler's architect and later Minister for Armaments and War Production, later said the regime "made the complete use of all technical means for domination of its own country. Through technical devices like the radio and loudspeaker, 80 million people were deprived of independent thought." and to quote Goebbels himself [2], i.e. the Nazis' propaganda minister: > It would not have been possible for us to take power or to use it in the ways we have without the radio...It is no exaggeration to say that the German revolution, at least in the form it took, would have been impossible without the airplane and the radio…[Radio] reached the entire nation, regardless of class, standing, or religion. That was primarily the result of the tight centralization, the strong reporting, and the up-to-date nature of the German radio. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels#Workings_of_the_Ministry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels#Workings_of_th... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_propaganda#Nazi_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_propaganda#Nazi_Germany
TheCoelacanth 7y ago
Vibrant democracy is probably an exaggeration. It was a fledgling democracy that didn't have much of a tradition of peaceful transfer of power. Opposing political parties regularly devolved into armed conflict.

AdamHede 7y ago

I often find it hard to tell if authoritarian governments are strengthened or weakened by internet... The mass shutdowns tells me it's the latter. I think you are more right than most people here want to admit. Sure, surveillance is bad, and so is censorship, and we should fight it, and not let short-term moral panics like drug wars and terrorism forfeit our fundamental rights. But let's realize how impossibly hard information is to contain and control. With maybe the exception of China, let's imagine sitting in the Iranian or Saudi secret service. You might have vast funds at your disposal, but you also have a rapidly increasing sophistication in your populations technological awereness. Every day, New VPN technologies spring up and things like sudden critical mass of mesh networking threatens to turn everything upside down. You whack new exist points, but you also know, fundamentally, hundreds of thousands of you people have unrestricted access, and you best weapon is a frustrating shutdown, whenever things truly get out of hand.

chasd00 7y ago
things like Starlink will make access to information even harder to control/shutdown. I suppose it could be jammed but signal will still squirt out here and there. It's not as easy as controlling the physical fiber crossing your border.

Applejinx 7y ago

Unpopular because the end goal is most definitely real-world extermination of unwanted races and/or classes. That doesn't count as liberal or free. Propaganda without an end-game would be a pretty meaningless thing.

Nasrudith 7y ago
Nothing so directed is needed - the object of power is power. Although those with said intentions would find it useful for said ends. The dirty secret is they often want or need "undesirables" as a scapegoat. The difference may wind up academic though when dupes take the cynical scapegoating seriously long past the relevance of the propaganda. Like the European history of anti-semetism and the complete dumbasses who take the hundreds of Jewish expulsions as signs of guilt instead of being used as a political tool. Certainly not liberal or free and should still be opposed of course.

buboard 7y ago

> more liberal and free I think you 're confusing "alive" with "free". Merely surviving in a world of surveillance is not a life worth living.

aey 7y ago
Even 70s Soviet surveillance was comparatively brutal to todays Russia's troll farms. Ask any soviet jews.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]