9 ms·
The impact of media organizations discrediting and completely debasing themselves over Assange, but also Snowden and a host of other U.S. false issues related t
by motohagiography 5y ago
The impact of media organizations discrediting and completely debasing themselves over Assange, but also Snowden and a host of other U.S. false issues related to the law enforcement and intelligence community and its contagion into social platforms is what has really cleaved the culture. These are bad people exploiting bad people to ensure that worse people can keep doing terrible things. It's capital-E evil.
Personally I think we could probably trace it back to soviet infiltration of the university education system around the world in the 60's and 70's, which within a lifetime has produced multiple generations of nihilistic bureaucrats trained to seek power for its own sake, and now they occupy our institutions at all levels and have used them to destroy the foundations of the culture and seize its means of production, while subordinating them to a global regime. All without firing a shot. The reason these people believe what they're doing is ok is because someone taught them that the ends justify the means.
The Assange affair is just a symptom of a much more terrible disease, and this witness and the media compliance around him are about par for the course in all of this.
- monocasa 5y agoI'm not sure you have to keep pointing to the boogie man of soviet infiltrators to explain power hungry bureaucrats. Those have existed in literally every society since at least the early bronze age.
- 46756e 5y agoAgreed, I think better explanation is much more simple: Those that will do anything for power have an advantage over others, ergo people at high level positions are disproportionately those types of people.
- phkahler 5y ago>> Those that will do anything for power have an advantage over others, ergo people at high level positions are disproportionately those types of people. One thought is that we could try to fix that problem with some type of screening, but that would be another system to game or corrupt. Also, those kind of people (high ambition and drive) can be really useful in those positions so long as they don't go off the rails.
- m12k 5y agoI like the solution from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Elect some random person as president of the galaxy, but don't tell him about it. Just have conversations with him to find out what he thinks about things, but don't let him know that you actually run the galaxy based on these conversations. If power corrupts, make it impossible to seek power, and don't let the person that wields it know that they have it.
- justinclift 5y agoThat could go seriously badly if the random person happened to have extreme views. :/
- 46756e 5y agoAlso it just moves the problem one person down the line. So the new most powerful position is the person that knows who runs the galaxy and talks to her/him. That person can make up things or sway the ruler. If you have many people, you now just have an oligarchy.
- bluejekyll 5y agoThis is pretty much how the Shogunate in Japan worked. Once a single war lord controls the “security” of the Emperor, they then wield power and justify all of there actions based on sole access to the Emperor.
- elliekelly 5y agoThis reminds me of the “Goldilocks” strategy the DoD supposedly uses when presenting a President with a menu of military options: 1. Very extreme militaristic response that will surely cause many deaths. Clearly unacceptable. 2. Very weak bordering on non-existent response. Clearly unacceptable. 3. What pentagon has already decided to do. Clearly the “only” viable option.
- pram 5y agoThis isn’t correct iirc. Zaphod definitely knew he was president. The government didn’t consult him about anything, he was just a distraction.
- jl2718 5y agohttps://twitter.com/officialmcafee/status/1273301164419952640 https://twitter.com/officialmcafee/status/127330116441995264...
- pessimizer 5y agoIt's Russians all the way down, trying to impurify our precious bodily fluids.
- baybal2 5y ago> I'm not sure you have to keep pointing to the boogie man of soviet infiltrators to explain power hungry bureaucrats. Those have existed in literally every society since at least the early bronze age. No, I'd say power hunger is one thing, but what you face now is unique to this poisonous "Soviet Culture." A very special, aggressive brand of social nihilism at the apex of civil society, characteristic of one party/social class governments. Putin put his own spin on the timeless demoralisation tactic (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bX3EZCVj2XA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bX3EZCVj2XA ,) an even more aggressive targeting of both the new elites, and the establishment (see Biden Jr. adventures with in Ukraine.) Or plainly speaking playing both sides.
- monocasa 5y agoPutin's tactics are postmodern, a philosophy that at it's core (despite right wing propaganda around the terms) is intrinsically anti Marxist. Seeing the ghosts of soviets in every dark corner is something that these very elites we're talking about use to control you and your perceptions of reality.
- baybal2 5y ago> Putin's tactics are postmodern, a philosophy that at it's core (despite right wing propaganda around the terms) is intrinsically anti Marxist. This is what they want the West to believe. They want you to lower your guard, they want you to start working with them, and put thoughts like "hey, maybe those guys are a lesser evil than communists" into your head. They rely on people who they call "useful idiots" (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot) in communist lingo to perpetuate, and spread such ideas to the West.
- monocasa 5y ago> This is what they want the West to believe. They want you to lower your guard, they want you to start working with them, and put thoughts like "hey, maybe those guys are a lesser evil than communists" into your head. They're doing a terrible job then. They've somehow created an even worse society for Russians as far as I can tell. > They rely on people who they call "useful idiots" (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot) in communist lingo to perpetuate, and spread such ideas to the West. You realize that your citation of Useful Idiot literally points out that there's no record of the term actually being used by the soviets, but instead appears to have been first used by the New York Times?
- evv555 5y agoTrue but what's different is the groupthink and "ends justify the means" mentality. There's a qualitative difference
- monocasa 5y agoNo, those features have also been intrinsic to bureaucrat classes as a whole since the dawn of organized society. Bueracrats are sort of like neurons in the organism of society. They don't have a lot individual intrisic power, but gain power by moving to common (albeit very complex) beat, and commanding the other types of cells according to the machinations of that emergent beat. That manifests as both groupthink as they attempt to play their part in the neural system as a whole, and "ends justify the means" mentality as they look at the rest of us as other specialized cells that exist to serve the societal organism as a whole. I guarantee you that on average a 15th century BCE Egyptian bureaucrat trended the same way, as it's core to the space.
- evv555 5y agoDevil is in the details and I also guarantee you there are important differences between how western bureaucrats operate and how they operate in USSR/elsewhere despite any commonalities that can be drawn.
- monocasa 5y agoI've never said there weren't differences. Only that the specific aspects being pointed out in this thread as signs of continuing soviet corruption of American values are actually aspects of bureaucracy as a whole older than recorded history.
- evv555 5y agoThere's a difference between operating within the constructs of power and having a reductionist worldview of power. The 2nd one is more like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
- redis_mlc 5y agoGood analysis - the key thing is that Marxism is corrosive to the truth. Everything it touches turns to evil. The ultimate example of that is forced organ harvesting in China, used to fund their national hospital sysem for CCP members, which illustrates how immoral Marxism can get.
- spamizbad 5y agoAh yes, it must have been the virus of communism that caused this. Red-blooded Americans who are pure of heart are not tempted by the siren songs of careerism, cronyism, nationalism, or corruption.
- DaiPlusPlus 5y ago> Personally I think we could probably trace it back to soviet infiltration of the university education system around the world in the 60's and 70's, which within a lifetime has produced multiple generations of nihilistic bureaucrats trained to seek power for its own sake, and now they occupy our institutions at all levels and have used them to destroy the foundations of the culture and seize its means of production ... ...what?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- sudosysgen 5y agoI'm sorry, but pinning this on soviet infiltration is hilarious and is ironically the result of the exact debasement and exploitation you decry. In reality, this kind of thing has been going on in the US since the late 19th century. It's a 100% normal thing and there is absolutely no need for an ebil gommunist boogeyman for it. What you're seeing is those precious institutions operating as intended and as they always did. Just like they do pretty much everywhere.
- antman 5y agoIf it wasn't for you I would not have figured out that the Russians are behind this too. But surely the Chinese must have also played some part?
- washadjeffmad 5y agoHow convenient that all that ails us is always the work of our Enemies. Never responsible, never accountable, and most importantly, never wrong.
- bryanrasmussen 5y agoI sort of think you and antman might actually be in agreement here.
- vishnugupta 5y agoYou left out Iran.
- simonh 5y agoAnd the Venezuelan communists that rigged the election.
- roody15 5y ago“ the ends justify the means.” I do agree that this sentiment now extends to almost all power and influence institutions. News outlets produce stories solely as a commodity to influence behavior on behalf of large corporations (paid) or government entities. Journalism integrity is at a all time low in the US and honestly doesn’t look good moving into the future. Really kind of dystopian :/
- JKCalhoun 5y ago> News outlets produce stories solely as a commodity to influence behavior on behalf of large corporations (paid) or government entities. That would be a big story if true.
- jessaustin 5y agoThis is common knowledge [0], but the common person has come to this conclusion on her own without the help of media. That this would never be "a story" of any size is the point of this discussion. [0] https://www.poynter.org/ethics-trust/2021/us-ranks-last-among-46-countries-in-trust-in-media-reuters-institute-report-finds/ https://www.poynter.org/ethics-trust/2021/us-ranks-last-amon...
- xnyan 5y ago>soviet infiltration of the university education system around the world in the 60's and 70's, which within a lifetime has produced multiple generations of nihilistic bureaucrats Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Source please?
- ed25519FUUU 5y agoInterview with Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov who speaks at length about the strategy. https://youtu.be/bX3EZCVj2XA https://youtu.be/bX3EZCVj2XA
- jessaustin 5y agoPosting this twice in the same subthread would have been enough. [EDIT:] Thanks for deleting the other references!
- kylestlb 5y agoPretty sure the user is making sock puppet accounts because I also see this link elsewhere on this thread... wish I had the power to report it.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- monocasa 5y agobabybal2 is another user, it's just that this video is a rather effective piece of propaganda.
- ed25519FUUU 5y agoOP here. Not sure about other people posting it but it’s a pretty well known interview. What makes it propaganda? Do you have a better source for what the IC communities of other countries are doing to weaken our institutions than a defector from a rival country? What do you think our very own CIA does with the opaque budget we provide it with every year? The same thing. They do the same thing. Don’t turn a blind eye to it. Also the Assange case is near and dear to a lot of people. It’s evil what’s happening to him. And the only reason it continues to happen is because of the silent consent of people who really probably have no idea what our intelligence agencies are doing and because of the cultivated ineptitude at some of our important institutions.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- usefulcat 5y ago"The impact of media organizations discrediting and completely debasing themselves... is what has really cleaved the culture." Really, that's what did it? I'd wager that a majority of Americans don't even know who Assange or Snowden are, much less care about them. I think constantly living in self-selected information bubbles might be just a tad more significant..
- cudgy 5y agoHaving a hard time thinking of any self-selected bubbles that are not aware of Assange or Snowden given that the two big political bubbles have been both assisted (and embarrassed) by Wikileaks.
- pessimizer 5y agoAccording to HN, people only care about privacy on HN.
- pjc50 5y ago> Personally I think we could probably trace it back to soviet infiltration of the university education system around the world in the 60's and 70's The Soviet Union is over, you can't keep relying on the Red Scare any more. I mean, there definitely are problems with US media - concentrated ownership and a reliance on hyperbole, as well as pundits who retreat behind the "it's entertainment, no reasonable person would have taken what I said seriously" defense when sued over their lies. But wheeling out McCarthyism again is ridiculous.
- evv555 5y agoI'm from the USSR and I don't think it's a red scare this time. There's legitimate concern.
- baybal2 5y ago> soviet infiltration of the university education system around the world in the 60's and 70's, which within a lifetime has produced multiple generations of nihilistic bureaucrats trained to seek power for its own sake It is only a small cookie in comparison to what people in USSR had to deal daily. Regular bureaucrats being bastards was a given, the only difference being how much. From customary "f__k off attitude," to ones laughing, and spitting you in the face while waving their party member card. I don't have many ideas how to build a system to keep non-appointed government workers in line. Any kind of promotion system can get corrupted in its own way. There is no magic bullet. What the West got right in general about bureaucracy were these: 1. Less government officers as such 2. Them being given less duties 3. Good distance in between them (this is what is getting eroded lately, with government service becoming a monolith with rich law schools) Bad things, and bad class culture perpetuate faster than good ones, and is in generally more resilient against deliberate campaigns for cleansing institutions. Taking the example of Georgia (a country of,) it was proven to be much easier to oust small time habitual bribe takers, nihilists, or poor performing bureaucrats, than "talented villains" who are both more hardcore in their ill, and are better at hiding their crimes, bad ideological stances, or underperformance. If you kick out those half-corrupted people, but pass a few completely rotten ones, you often empower the later. They can quickly recruit more co-conspirators from new bloods, and corrupt their surroundings more completely. Paradoxically, half-hearted purges in state institutes can often exacerbate the problem by "distilling the poison." It takes generations, or an extreme shock therapy to disrupt such institutional nihilism.
- gameswithgo 5y agoI think you are letting your imagination come up with elaborate explanations when very simple ones are available. Soviet infiltration? Come on dude. Seeking power for it's own sake is not uniquely soviet and predates any imagined university infiltration.
- agency 5y agoYeah this is some John Birch Society level shit. The Soviets invented being power hungry? The US has used its own brand of Realpolitik to maintain its empire since long before it was “infiltrated by the Soviets,” and has nearly always been co-signed by the media apparatus.
- dukeofdoom 5y agoSeeking power is the goal. But the way to achieve it is through consensus building. So you need ideas and an ideology to rally people around you. Like for example these two intellectuals that overtly had the goal of subverting society. They came up with an actual plan how to go about doing it. Antonio Gramsci https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdsSIWh_VkQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdsSIWh_VkQ Theodor Adorno https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YGnPgtWhsw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YGnPgtWhsw That intellectual subversion, and propaganda is and was a political tool is fairly obvious to anyone that has lived under a totalitarian government.
- kylestlb 5y agoSeize the means of production...? That has an actual meaning and I don't think that's what you're describing. I assure you that hasn't happened in the US yet. The means of production have generally been controlled by the ruling elite since the founding of the nation.
- evv555 5y agoBureaucracies aren't "means or production"? It's the rough equivalent of Lenin capturing railroads and other key infrastructure.
- kylestlb 5y agoAccording to whom? There is a pretty strict definition of means of production, as it was labeled by Marx & Engels, and 'bureaucracy' as a concept isn't it. Adding on to this: there is no rough equivalent to Lenin capturing the railroads in the USA, at all. The bourgeoise have controlled the means of production from 1776 til now. Who owns amazon fulfillment centers? Who owns media companies? Who owns airlines? If it ain't the workers, then nobody has seized the means of production.
- sudosysgen 5y agoBureaucracies are not the means of production. Actually, Marx specifically sees bureaucracy as the polar opposite of the means of production, and a large part of Marxism is that the bureaucracy and other state apparatus molds itself to the owners of the means of production. Railroads and infrastructure are the means of production because they're the material things that are required to produce other material things.
- woodruffw 5y ago> Personally I think we could probably trace it back to soviet infiltration of the university education system What, not into our precious bodily fluids[1]? This is a facile explanation. America’s politics and culture over the last 80 years have first and foremost been a reaction to the perceived threat of the Soviets. There’s no particular reason, especially as the United States remains remarkably conservative for a developed nation, to blame things on a country that’s been gone for over 30 years. [1]: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=N1KvgtEnABY https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=N1KvgtEnABY
- baybal2 5y ago> There’s no particular reason, especially as the United States remains remarkably conservative for a developed nation, to blame things on a country that’s been gone for over 30 years. The USSR is gone, but the CPSU is alive, and kicking under a new brand, more determined, aggressive leader, and as a highly distilled, more pure mafia than it was before, without even a pretence of behaving like statesmen.
- woodruffw 5y agoWhat does one of Russia’s opposition parties have to do with the state of the media in the US?
- baybal2 5y agoOpposition? The true CPSU successor has recently won an election there, scoring up to 146% of the vote in some regions.
- woodruffw 5y agoMy understanding (which, again, is completely irrelevant to this thread) is that Putin and his party are still in complete control of Russia, at least in all ways that matter. But again, I fail to see what Russia’s myriad dysfunctionalities have to do with the topic at hand.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- user764743 5y agoBlaming another country for your own corruption is just another form of propaganda.
- simonh 5y agoIndeed. Some citizens in your country having common beliefs or interests as people in another country is their own business. We all have allies and like minded people abroad. Maligning fellow citizens as foreign dupes is a common and despicable tactic. If you find actual evidence of specific crimes, prosecute them, otherwise it's just dirt flinging.
- simonh 5y agoThat's interesting, and I know from the Bezmenov video and commentary on it Barak Obama is supposed to be the prime example of a Marxist infiltrator promoting the rot from the inside. Except - Obama chose not to prosecute Assange because of potential collateral damage to independent journalism, a well known major concern of Soviet infiltrators (er...). It's only after Trump came to power that his administration got the ball rolling on prosecution and offering Thordarson an immunity deal. It's all in the article. So what's the contention, that Trump's administration was the result of a Marxist inspired Russian plot to subvert the universities in the 60s? Well, that's a new one.
- donthateme 5y ago> soviet infiltration of the university education system around the world in the 60's and 70's, which within a lifetime has produced multiple generations of nihilistic bureaucrats trained to seek power for its own sake buckles seatbelt More like produced generations of social warriors who push critical theory and oppressor/oppressed dynamics wherever they can to disrupt society much like what has been happening visibly in the US for the past 15 years. The globalist media corps of today are literally doing this to a T with their viewership in lock step with Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals", wedging and destroying any semblance of unified culture in the US in the name of ...social justice? Does anyone here really think these multinationals or their political operatives give a single f*ck about whether we have due oversight into our secretive branches of govt or tangible social equity and mobility in the US? Soviet infiltration is a boogeyman, but if anyone wants to read about actual university infiltration, much of it can be credited to academics from the Frankfurt School who immigrated post-WW2 - Marcuse, Gramsci, Horkheimer, Adorno - individuals that set and grew awareness of an ideological framework that is actively dismantling cultures and societies all over the Western world.
- throwaway1203as 5y agoThrowaway because I do not want to be ostracized. Thank you for pointing out the Soviet angle in this. Others criticize this angle, saying either that the Soviet Union doesn't exist or that America has always been this way. The first point is not a good argument, because while the Soviet Union as a political entity does not exist, the ideas it created and the culture it spread still do. The second point is more difficult to refute because we can only rely on historical sources, which may sway one way or the other, depending on what's deemed "right" by the current culture in academia. So my refutation, even though weak, is this: short of the North vs the South, the US has not been divided into two clean camps the way it is now. > The reason these people believe what they're doing is ok is because someone taught them that the ends justify the means. This is an important point to keep in mind. Look, we don't even expect the media or politicians to say anything that has any attachment to reality. Because the ends justify the means, it's ok to warp reality just to score points for your team. For example, check out this piece about the lab leak theory by Yglesias, formerly of Vox: https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-medias-lab-leak-fiasco https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-medias-lab-leak-fiasco It clearly shows that the media was interested in the actual state of reality for maybe a few hours, then the issue got divided into camps, and then everything written about this issue was _complete fiction_ where the only goal was to show either CHINA BAD or RED TRIBE BAD. For another take on this, I recommend reading Politics is for Power (2020) by Eitan Hersh. He doesn't point out the problem I'm talking about explicitly. Instead, he describes it as 2 groups so focused on gaming the system to get votes that they don't actually do anything else -- it's all canvassing, donating, calling, etc. but no actually talking with voters, making plans, figuring out compromises.
- jancsika 5y agoI've never read a first paragraph more fully undermined by the rank speculation of your second paragraph. I'm imagining a teacher giving eloquent explanation of discrete Fourier transform to students, then going on claim that the whole purpose is compute horoscopes for cats.
- brobdingnagians 5y agoDr Robert Malone got censored for speaking out about some of the research being done on Covid Vaccines, including having his name wiped from the Wikipedia article about the invention of mRNA tech and having his premium LinkedIn account deleted. Enough to make a person suspicious...
- AlexandrB 5y agoOver the last 50 years capitalism has gotten everything it wanted - extremely free trade with minimal tariffs, international agreements on IP and corporate law, and the freedom to offshore production to any number of less-than-democratic states where labor is cheap. And you're saying that this capitalist utopia is the result of soviet infiltration? That's a little hard to believe. All of the media organizations discrediting and debasing themselves are private companies who prioritize ROI above anything else. They're not run by bureaucrats, but by amoral capitalists. The universities themselves are also increasingly run "like a business". It takes some serious blinders to look at the consequence of 50 years of free market maximalism and say: "This is the work of the communists".
- jrsj 5y agoOur own officials, agencies, etc are involved in this stuff & media cooperated with them. The CIA has been using both foreign and domestic “journalism” as a weapon for pretty much as long as it’s existed. If anything, our own practices got worse because of our reaction to Soviet infiltration not as a direct result of the thing itself.