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> I simply can't trust ANY media, search engine, or social network anymore. It's one of the key goals of Russian information warfare: to create a feeling that
by mopsi 5y ago
> I simply can't trust ANY media, search engine, or social network anymore.
It's one of the key goals of Russian information warfare: to create a feeling that you can't tell truth apart from fiction, and to force you into apathy and paralyze you, so you become unable to act and protect your interests. Russians are among the largest pushers of conspiracy theories from Covid to QAnon, and have been for a very long time, because it is cheap and very effective way to divide free societies into infighting groups. NYC station chief of Russian foreign intelligence used to visit public libraries to post conspiracy theories on Geocities in 1990s -- that's how important it was and remains.
They flood all available channels with utter nonsense to make people turn their brains off. Just today a general and the spokesperson for Russians Ministry of Defense tried to justify the war by saying that the United States was training migratory birds in secret Ukrainian laboratories to carry dangerous pathogens into Russia: https://redd.it/tb6sn8 https://redd.it/tb6sn8 Antivaxx groups have already switched to parroting such crap, because many of them are seeded by Russia.
By the way, Mearsheimer is an idiot and nobody takes him seriously in Eastern Europe. You might as well read books by Nazis explaining why Germans had the right to Lebensraum in the East. Instead of precompiled knowledge provided by TV talking heads or authoritative-appearing "experts", I recommend building up knowledge from basic building blocks. Start by reading general histories of the regions you are interested in to understand historic difficulties that people in those places have faced over the past several centuries and what their current goals and motivations are. Then you don't need Mearsheimers to tell you what's going on, you can derive it from your knowledge. This applies to everything else too. If you know a thing or two about basic statistics, then you're much less likely to fall for bullshit narratives like Covid conspiracy theories from people who look trustworthy. Knowledge is power.
- maratc 5y ago> Mearsheimer is an idiot and nobody takes him seriously in Eastern Europe Maybe they should have listened to that idiot when he suggested in 1993 that Ukraine retains some of its nuclear weapons to deter Russia from attacking it in the future.
- sidibe 5y agoAnd then what? Or do you mean the Americans should have listened to him? Eastern Europeans can't do anything but react to the USA's prodding in Mearsheimer and the like's view, they're just pawns to be played by the USA vs. the if-then AI known as Russia. The world is a 1 player game, everything that happens is ultimately due to the right or wrong decisions of the Americans
- tonguez 5y ago“ It's one of the key goals of Russian information warfare” were you born yesterday? do you not remember the iraq war? babies in incubators? vietnam? syrian gas attacks? russiagate? qanon? the 2014 ukraine coup? these are all things created by western TLAs. im not gonna read anything else you wrote but i noticed at the bottom you said “knowledge is power” wow thanks for that powerful insight!
- hluska 5y agoWow, thanks for an incredibly boring addition.
- lern_too_spel 5y agoExcept for Fox News, which breathlessly covered every new possible chemical weapons facility that the US captured, mainstream media pretty quickly concluded that there was no extant chemical weapons program in Iraq after the US entered. Russian media is still pretending that Ukraine is the aggressor, and there is no war.
- kuraudo 5y agoStill waiting for the war crimes tribunal for the American military + Bush and friends.
- lern_too_spel 5y agoThere isn't going to be one for Russia either. That doesn't mean that the news media in the US is tightly controlled government propaganda or that the news media in Russia isn't.
- rixed 5y ago> There isn't going to be one for Russia either. I'm not so sure about this. What makes you believe so?
- 5y ago
- armitron 5y ago> Mearsheimer is an idiot and nobody takes him seriously in Eastern Europe Because .. you say so? His argumentation stands on its own. Yours on the other hand, doesn't. I suggest you practice what you preach after toning down calling your betters "idiots" and educate yourself.
- nerdponx 5y ago> It's one of the key goals of Russian information warfare This was also overtly one of the goals of Trump's political messaging. In the past, American politicians merely hid or distorted unpleasant facts. Trump and his political strategists instead attacked the problem head-on, tapping into populist skepticism and anti-intellectualism in order to promulgate the idea that all truth is relative and that correctness is a matter of opinion. Of course, all politicians benefit from this state of affairs. Hence all this empty "fact-checking" that actually just exacerbates the problem.
- rixed 5y agoWhat you say about information warfare is certainly true, but one would be a fool to think only Russia does it. Controlling opinions is a more terrifying weapon than even atomic bombs, because you can actually make use of it, every day, every minute, and it cannot be that easily regulated.
- raxxorrax 5y ago> It's one of the key goals of Russian information warfare They seem to have pretty smart people to be able to predict this behavior then. Doesn't mean this behavior should be condoned.