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Having seen this video before, I'm not sure dismissing it because of who has taken it seriously is sufficient as an intellectual response. It's a useful modern

Having seen this video before, I'm not sure dismissing it because of who has taken it seriously is sufficient as an intellectual response. It's a useful modern articulation of the totalitarian strategy. However, when I think of friends who would never watch it because from their perspective, it's just right-wing propaganda, here are the arguments I think they make against it: - even if it was relevant at the time back in the 80s, applying it to today is not an accurate comparison - sovietism wasn't real socialism - whether what he is saying is true or not it arms ideological enemies and undermines the progressive cause, and is therefore misinformation - his whole structure is decorating an underlying set of deceptions with facts that make it seem true, but it's not. - if the soviet agenda is that subtle and complex as he says it could have produced him as an equally false disinformation source. - governments need to do and hide things to manage people and the economy for the greater good so he's saying normal government techniques are evil to make you paranoid - if you are educated you know this is how politics really work anyway and being responsible sometimes means compromising for the greater good, etc. - people use this video to justify their existing racism, homophobia, anti-semitism, misogyny, etc. These have some truth, but I don't think they persuasively discredit the systemic process of attacking a culture with the predictive power that he describes. They're separate things. There is a lot of prior art on the tactics and strategies of totalitarian movements, most of it in the form of american cold war anti-communist propaganda, which though campy, when you view it again from the present perspective of the US having lost it's surprisingly prescient stuff. The soviet goal was to destabilize and dissolve cultures in the space of a couple of generations, and that's what it does. Sometimes I think the fall of the iron curtain wasn't the end of soviet totalitarianism, but rather, its liberation from being confined to mere nation states, only to spend the 90's and 00's infiltrating western institutions, and we're seeing the fruit of that today. Most of our current leadership went to university in the 90s and were introduced to a wave of critical theory virus then (last one was the 70s), and we are seeing it in the milennials now.

avgcorrection 5y ago
If you want to learn about propaganda and indoctrination then look no further than Edward Bernays and other PR pioneers. People like him came up with a blueprint to manage liberal democracies because nominal freedom requires (according to him) the management of thought in order to make people make the right choices (we are all free to pick between Pepsi and Coke). Propaganda and indoctrination makes less sense in a totalitarian society. It’s in the name: a totalitarian society needs no consent or illusion of choice because the choices have been made for you. The same applies to merely authoritarian societies to a lesser degree. Putin had his whole narrative of the Russian Empire becoming a thing again. So that was definitely meant to motivate the average Russian. But on the other hand it is not crucial that Russians buy it; Russians were directly told that people who protest the invasion will get arrested. There is too much fascination with the Orwellian “thought crime” type of propaganda and indoctrination. Try to have a more pscyhoanalytical approach to it. Like Bernays.
dev_by_day 5y ago
> - sovietism wasn't real socialism This is one of those funny and illogical arguments that come up often and uses a rather common (and ironic) propaganda trick of just denying a massive failure ever existed. This is the equivalent of stating Nazism wasn't "real national socialism" or Mussolini wasn't using "real fascism". You can't just pretend away bad outcomes from a terrible system when it doesn't go your way. They deployed socialism and communism and the outcomes were exactly what those systems always bring. Where has this mythical "real socialism" been tried and succeeded? Venezuela? Its also a disaster. Was that not "real" socialism either? The reality is Socialism has been most effective while being integrated in a hybrid manner with other systems (Social Democracy). Socialism on its own is a disaster that hands over far too much power to the state and doesn't work economically.
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
  > Where has this mythical "real socialism" been tried and succeeded? The only place it really worked were small communes like Longo Maï. Why? Because they are made by people who want it and everybody shares the common spirit. This is only possible on a small scale, never on a state scale when it's pushed down your throat and often you can't leave.
  - kelseyfrog 5y ago
    Honestly same for capitalism too. It is only possible to succeed at a small scale. When it is forced on people who don't have a choice it tends to fail.
- malermeister 5y ago
  > Where has this mythical "real socialism" been tried and succeeded? Yugoslavia under Tito.

avgcorrection 5y ago

If you want to learn about propaganda and indoctrination then look no further than Edward Bernays and other PR pioneers. People like him came up with a blueprint to manage liberal democracies because nominal freedom requires (according to him) the management of thought in order to make people make the right choices (we are all free to pick between Pepsi and Coke). Propaganda and indoctrination makes less sense in a totalitarian society. It’s in the name: a totalitarian society needs no consent or illusion of choice because the choices have been made for you. The same applies to merely authoritarian societies to a lesser degree. Putin had his whole narrative of the Russian Empire becoming a thing again. So that was definitely meant to motivate the average Russian. But on the other hand it is not crucial that Russians buy it; Russians were directly told that people who protest the invasion will get arrested. There is too much fascination with the Orwellian “thought crime” type of propaganda and indoctrination. Try to have a more pscyhoanalytical approach to it. Like Bernays.

dev_by_day 5y ago

> - sovietism wasn't real socialism This is one of those funny and illogical arguments that come up often and uses a rather common (and ironic) propaganda trick of just denying a massive failure ever existed. This is the equivalent of stating Nazism wasn't "real national socialism" or Mussolini wasn't using "real fascism". You can't just pretend away bad outcomes from a terrible system when it doesn't go your way. They deployed socialism and communism and the outcomes were exactly what those systems always bring. Where has this mythical "real socialism" been tried and succeeded? Venezuela? Its also a disaster. Was that not "real" socialism either? The reality is Socialism has been most effective while being integrated in a hybrid manner with other systems (Social Democracy). Socialism on its own is a disaster that hands over far too much power to the state and doesn't work economically.

hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
> Where has this mythical "real socialism" been tried and succeeded? The only place it really worked were small communes like Longo Maï. Why? Because they are made by people who want it and everybody shares the common spirit. This is only possible on a small scale, never on a state scale when it's pushed down your throat and often you can't leave.
- kelseyfrog 5y ago
  Honestly same for capitalism too. It is only possible to succeed at a small scale. When it is forced on people who don't have a choice it tends to fail.
malermeister 5y ago
> Where has this mythical "real socialism" been tried and succeeded? Yugoslavia under Tito.