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The mainstream media blasted the entire populace with a cold war, KGB thriller, pee tape conspiracy theory for 4 years straight. It wasn't just cable news, it w

by kneel 5y ago

The mainstream media blasted the entire populace with a cold war, KGB thriller, pee tape conspiracy theory for 4 years straight. It wasn't just cable news, it was NYT/WSJ/WashPo piling onto the misinformation. In the end it turns out there was much hoopla about nothing, a giant psyop by the establishment powers that now want to earn your trust back.

guerrilla 5y ago
True but I think you might be getting downvoted because that fails to account for the time leading up to the election (and Brexit I guess) which is what a lot of the people commenting on this subject are interested in.
- rat87 5y ago
  He's probably downvoted for being wrong about collusion
rat87 5y ago
I'm not sure what you're trying to say but evidence overwhelmingly suggests that former President Trump colluded with Russia (a hostile foreign power) for personal electoral gain in exchange for decisions which benefited the Russian government. The problem isn't with the news media reporting on this it is, far from nothing, the problem is with Republican leadership refusing to put country ahead of party and get rid of Trump
- TrispusAttucks 5y ago
  Your comment is proof that the disinformation campaign the OP is talking about worked.
- drak0n1c 5y ago
  Trump put sanctions on Russian pipelines, which Biden later lifted. Is that evidence of Biden being beholden to Russia? Every president makes hawkish and dovish diplomatic decisions, the inferential correlating of them to lurid rumors is not evidence for the rumors.
  - Mangalor 5y ago
    Trump tried to lift the Russia sanctions in 2016. Trump said he'd partner with Putin on cybersecurity while they were preparing a major hack on the federal government, which succeeded. Stop gaslighting us.
    - the_optimist 5y ago
      That’s not the way this works. You actually have to provide a structured set of evidence, not merely a theory of conspiracy. Analogously, you don’t see people plausibly claiming that Biden designed a program to hand billions of dollars worth of weapons to the Taliban. If there were evidence, then such a hypothesis could transform from irresponsible theorizing to responsible theorizing. But there is no such evidence. You have flipped the script on what you call “gaslighting” to evade the necessary evidence.
      - Mangalor 5y ago
        Nonsense comment, there's plenty of evidence and it's all public.
        the_optimist 5y ago
        That's a very nice story that you have there. Thank you for sharing.
        Mangalor 5y ago
        I mean..you fool no one.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - Mangalor 5y ago
        Trump tried to lift the Russia sanctions in 2016. Trump said he'd partner with Putin on cybersecurity while they were preparing a major hack on the federal government, which succeeded. Stop gaslighting us.
- ribs 5y ago
  Russia is another foreign power whose interests often run counter to those of the US and which often acts accordingly. That does not make it a “hostile” power, at least in the sense the term has been used for decades; there is not even saber-rattling. Sure, its government is a bag of dicks and its people seem to like strongmen and authoritarianism and persecuting gays, but that’s not hostility. The evidence of collusion - whose existence you assert without naming, not that there isn’t any - wasn’t as persuasive to me as it was to you.
  - Mangalor 5y ago
    The last major cyberattack came from Russia. Russian hacker group ransomware hit US companies. It may not be "The Cold War", but it's definitely US vs Russian nationalism.
  - anticodon 5y ago
    persecuting gays This is a perfect case of an actual disinformation. There's no persecution of gays in Russia. There's no law for persecuting gays, there's no actual persecution happening. There's at least one openly gay bar in every major city, operating for years and everyone knows about them. Nobody cares. Just a few days ago I've seen two girls carrying LGBT flag on a street of a small Russian town. Nobody cared (although they obviously wanted attention). Only gay propaganda is disallowed in Russia, but it's not the same as "persecuting gays".
- the_optimist 5y ago
  No, no it does not. You believe this based on a continuous stream of suasion and half-truths with zero, zero tangible evidence of a crime, or even of malfeasance. If you clear your mind for a moment and review the actual facts you will recognize this. However, I recognize it is very difficult to relinquish closely-held beliefs, especially when you look around and see people agreeing with you and confirming your biases.
didibus 5y ago
I think that actually points towards the issue of social media. Even without explicit collaboration from US actors, Russian actors are able to interfere in elections and other processes through reaching a large US populace on social media. Prior media would have been a lot harder to coerce by foreign agents. New social media are way easier to take advantage of as a foreign power. For example, I'm able to participate in this debate without even being American. I have new reach and influence over Americans I never had before. How many people commenting here aren't American? Half the comments could be from Russians all we know. That Trump didn't ask for their help doesn't mean that he didn't play into their hand. In a strange way though, you can't dissociate them anymore. He could very well have won all by himself, hacked email or not, fake accounts or not, etc. But they did hack and leak her emails, and they did create fake accounts, and had troll farms targeted at American voters. I can see the hesitancy to acknowledge that, because it could discredit your own win, but it's also a very interesting new scenario that didn't exist before, which is that foreign powers didn't have direct means of communication with such a large portion of your citizenry as we do now. If I were to speak for the past, it was actually the US media that were one of the few to be able to reach into other countries populace through movies, books, games, and all that. But it was very hard for non-US media to reach Americans, and that's no longer the case.
- Applejinx 5y ago
  >Half the comments could be from Russians all we know. If they're any good at what they do… :) This HN thread is basically ground zero for pushing the 'Russiagate' set of arguments: namely, everything from Trump to QAnon and the antivaxxers are all totally organic and Russia didn't do any of it, in spite of their known tactics for seeding disparate opinion groups with chaos and disinformation to produce a state known as 'the Zone' where nobody knows what, if anything, is true or who is real anymore. I've got to hand it to them, it is one hell of a tactic. It's somewhat less effective if you know it's one of their tactics. Rather than producing despair, it's downgraded to more 'fog of war' tactics. If you don't know about the tactic, despair is a more likely reaction.
  - the_optimist 5y ago

by kneel 5y ago

guerrilla 5y ago

True but I think you might be getting downvoted because that fails to account for the time leading up to the election (and Brexit I guess) which is what a lot of the people commenting on this subject are interested in.

rat87 5y ago
He's probably downvoted for being wrong about collusion

rat87 5y ago

I'm not sure what you're trying to say but evidence overwhelmingly suggests that former President Trump colluded with Russia (a hostile foreign power) for personal electoral gain in exchange for decisions which benefited the Russian government. The problem isn't with the news media reporting on this it is, far from nothing, the problem is with Republican leadership refusing to put country ahead of party and get rid of Trump

TrispusAttucks 5y ago
Your comment is proof that the disinformation campaign the OP is talking about worked.
drak0n1c 5y ago
Trump put sanctions on Russian pipelines, which Biden later lifted. Is that evidence of Biden being beholden to Russia? Every president makes hawkish and dovish diplomatic decisions, the inferential correlating of them to lurid rumors is not evidence for the rumors.
- Mangalor 5y ago
  Trump tried to lift the Russia sanctions in 2016. Trump said he'd partner with Putin on cybersecurity while they were preparing a major hack on the federal government, which succeeded. Stop gaslighting us.
  - the_optimist 5y ago
    That’s not the way this works. You actually have to provide a structured set of evidence, not merely a theory of conspiracy. Analogously, you don’t see people plausibly claiming that Biden designed a program to hand billions of dollars worth of weapons to the Taliban. If there were evidence, then such a hypothesis could transform from irresponsible theorizing to responsible theorizing. But there is no such evidence. You have flipped the script on what you call “gaslighting” to evade the necessary evidence.
    - Mangalor 5y ago
      Nonsense comment, there's plenty of evidence and it's all public.
      - the_optimist 5y ago
        That's a very nice story that you have there. Thank you for sharing.
        Mangalor 5y ago
        I mean..you fool no one.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - Mangalor 5y ago
      Trump tried to lift the Russia sanctions in 2016. Trump said he'd partner with Putin on cybersecurity while they were preparing a major hack on the federal government, which succeeded. Stop gaslighting us.
ribs 5y ago
Russia is another foreign power whose interests often run counter to those of the US and which often acts accordingly. That does not make it a “hostile” power, at least in the sense the term has been used for decades; there is not even saber-rattling. Sure, its government is a bag of dicks and its people seem to like strongmen and authoritarianism and persecuting gays, but that’s not hostility. The evidence of collusion - whose existence you assert without naming, not that there isn’t any - wasn’t as persuasive to me as it was to you.
- Mangalor 5y ago
  The last major cyberattack came from Russia. Russian hacker group ransomware hit US companies. It may not be "The Cold War", but it's definitely US vs Russian nationalism.
- anticodon 5y ago
  persecuting gays This is a perfect case of an actual disinformation. There's no persecution of gays in Russia. There's no law for persecuting gays, there's no actual persecution happening. There's at least one openly gay bar in every major city, operating for years and everyone knows about them. Nobody cares. Just a few days ago I've seen two girls carrying LGBT flag on a street of a small Russian town. Nobody cared (although they obviously wanted attention). Only gay propaganda is disallowed in Russia, but it's not the same as "persecuting gays".
the_optimist 5y ago
No, no it does not. You believe this based on a continuous stream of suasion and half-truths with zero, zero tangible evidence of a crime, or even of malfeasance. If you clear your mind for a moment and review the actual facts you will recognize this. However, I recognize it is very difficult to relinquish closely-held beliefs, especially when you look around and see people agreeing with you and confirming your biases.

didibus 5y ago

I think that actually points towards the issue of social media. Even without explicit collaboration from US actors, Russian actors are able to interfere in elections and other processes through reaching a large US populace on social media. Prior media would have been a lot harder to coerce by foreign agents. New social media are way easier to take advantage of as a foreign power. For example, I'm able to participate in this debate without even being American. I have new reach and influence over Americans I never had before. How many people commenting here aren't American? Half the comments could be from Russians all we know. That Trump didn't ask for their help doesn't mean that he didn't play into their hand. In a strange way though, you can't dissociate them anymore. He could very well have won all by himself, hacked email or not, fake accounts or not, etc. But they did hack and leak her emails, and they did create fake accounts, and had troll farms targeted at American voters. I can see the hesitancy to acknowledge that, because it could discredit your own win, but it's also a very interesting new scenario that didn't exist before, which is that foreign powers didn't have direct means of communication with such a large portion of your citizenry as we do now. If I were to speak for the past, it was actually the US media that were one of the few to be able to reach into other countries populace through movies, books, games, and all that. But it was very hard for non-US media to reach Americans, and that's no longer the case.

Applejinx 5y ago
>Half the comments could be from Russians all we know. If they're any good at what they do… :) This HN thread is basically ground zero for pushing the 'Russiagate' set of arguments: namely, everything from Trump to QAnon and the antivaxxers are all totally organic and Russia didn't do any of it, in spite of their known tactics for seeding disparate opinion groups with chaos and disinformation to produce a state known as 'the Zone' where nobody knows what, if anything, is true or who is real anymore. I've got to hand it to them, it is one hell of a tactic. It's somewhat less effective if you know it's one of their tactics. Rather than producing despair, it's downgraded to more 'fog of war' tactics. If you don't know about the tactic, despair is a more likely reaction.
- the_optimist 5y ago