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>Significantly, they found that the pretend personas — employing tactics used by countries such as Russia and China — did not gain much traction, and that overt
by kmeisthax 4y ago
>Significantly, they found that the pretend personas — employing tactics used by countries such as Russia and China — did not gain much traction, and that overt accounts actually attracted more followers.
Because America is fundamentally not peddling the same kind of narrative that Russia or China does.
What America wants is freedom[0]. Russia is run by ethnofascists and China is run by near-textbook tankies. These ideologies are pariahs, and honest propaganda of this bent cannot survive contact with the background radiation of politics. In other words, when America is overt, people complain that we aren't living up to our own standards. When Russia or China is overt, people laugh at them and ignore them.
So, instead, they have to co-opt other concerns and lie about what their ideological opponents are doing. Hence shit like "the CDC created COVID" or "NATO is creating supersoldiers in Ukranian labs[1]". The job is not to prove that China or Russia is right, but to distract from what they are doing. The more they can piss off Americans against their own government, the better.
Americans do not need to do this, because... who is their target audience, here? Hardline Iranian theocrats or the Taliban aren't going to be distracted by covert propaganda. Neither will Russians who think Ukraine is run by the corpse of Adolf Hitler or Chinese who think America created COVID in a lab. People who aren't shitheaded will either respond well to American overt propaganda, or at least point out how America falls short of their own ideals. You don't need to lie to them.
Since America's interests are not furthered by covert propaganda, we should abandon it, since the only interest such propaganda could serve would be fifth-columning the country.
[0] As defined through a liberal lens; i.e. we accept and embrace private capital accumulation and business ownership. Other non-shitheaded definitions of freedom are free to reject this.
[1] Which is literally just the premise of Captain America with extra steps. Every time someone claims this we should reply, "Is this the new MCU movie"?
- cpursley 4y ago> Russia is run by ethnofascists Regarding the "ethno" part, do you see evidence of this? Russia is quite diverse in terms of ethnic/cultural groups. The richest woman there is ethnically Korean, for just one example. And other groups like Jewish, Armenian, Tartar, Chechen etc play important roles in government, biz and cultural life there. - https://www.rbth.com/lifestyle/334417-how-many-ethnic-groups https://www.rbth.com/lifestyle/334417-how-many-ethnic-groups - https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Minority_cultures_of_Russia#:~:text=Russia%20is%20home%20to%20as,groups%20scattered%20across%20the%20country https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Minority_cultures_of_Russia#:....
- jevgeni 4y agoRussia is fascist by assimilation (in contrast to the Third Reich which was fascist by exclusion). As in, you either call yourself russian or get marginalized. It's so pervasive that people stopped noticing it. There are 200 ethnicities, yet all the federal websites are only in russian and maybe english. This is why Putin has this fetish for "Ukraine is not a country / we are the same people" narrative.
- gdy 4y ago"you either call yourself russian or get marginalized" Marginalized for not calling themselves Russian? Marginalized how? "yet all the federal websites are only in russian and maybe english" That's true, but only 3% of Russian citizens are Tatar language speakers and there are even fewer speakers for other languages. Maybe you'll tell me where I can find Spanish version of the Congress website?
- marshray 4y ago> only 3% of Russian citizens are Tatar language speakers and there are even fewer speakers for other languages Ever stopped to wonder why that might be the case?
- cpursley 4y agoFor similar reasons that people in the US no longer speak German, Dutch or various British Isle dialects (and the reason after a couple generations, Spanish speaking immigrants are more fluent in English than Spanish).
- mistrial9 4y agothe world is not that different in some ways than five hundred years ago.. there are literate people and illiterate people, on a large scale. The rise and fall of literate languages is not the same story as the number of people that speak a language, or what colors are on the local police car. It is not popular to speak of this in the USA since there is a "unifying myth" of equality. What the USA did do brilliantly is use markets and local jurisdictions to let warring people settle nearby each other, and thrive. Over time the old ways show up however. Evolution is not practiced uniformly.
- Skgqie1 4y agoAmerica wants freedom for America above everything else. It's why they engage in subversive and potentially destabilising operations abroad (in order to "protect" their own freedom). Internally, the situation is not much different (at least from an outsiders perspective). The elite and wealthy effectively using their resources to further the gap between themselves and the lower rungs in the name of profit. Externally, the propaganda is aimed at distracting from how disruptive they are in other countries affairs (most notable in recent history being the Middle East). Internally, it seems like it's indoctrination into the belief of the inherent superiority of capitalism, and the construction of strawmen to distract from real issues.
- jevgeni 4y agoWhat would be the alternative? Wanting freedom for everyone in the world at the cost of your own?
- spoiler 4y agoContrary to what you seem to believe, freedom doesn't have to be a zero sum game
- jevgeni 4y agoSo why claim that America wants freedom at the expense of everyone else?
- spoiler 4y agoBut hasn't the American government constantly meddled in other countries' affairs and justified it using freedom/democracy to its own people? I don't want to be insensitive, but the whole 9/11 thing is such hypocrisy. They call it a terrorist attack, but America has been and is the terrorists to a substantial portion of the world. Claiming otherwise is just ignorant
- _glsb 4y ago
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago> Since America's interests are not furthered by covert propaganda, we should abandon it, since the only interest such propaganda could serve would be fifth-columning the country This conclusion should be self-evident for any democratic society, so any reasonable value of free and democratic. I have various bones to pick with the rest of the post, chiefly viewing all of politics as being about abstract notion of freedom instead of realpolitik