5 ms·

Racism against US economic rivals has been the MO for decades on western social media. It's certainly widely known that the US has "embedded operatives" at the

by Garvi 3y ago

Racism against US economic rivals has been the MO for decades on western social media. It's certainly widely known that the US has "embedded operatives" at the biggest tech firms. This is what they do with their time. Censor anyone that doesn't get dogpiled. The dogpiles then serve as a deterrent. I will never forget the racist "covid in russia" threads in /r/worldnews. Weekly renewed threads, old ones deleted, full of people expressing their hopes for a high number of covid deaths in Asia. Some used innuendo, some were quite direct. They were all rewarded with happy points. History will treat these sites as the he modern equivalent of the hitler youth. For instance the recent US invasion and occupation of parts of Syria seems to be completely missing from peoples memories. Were Americans simply not informed in the first place? We got millions of Syrian refugees into the EU.

kristopolous 3y ago
The term for this generally is american exceptionalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism Essentially the US pretends like it's the only country. It's softened in the past 20 years with the rise of the internet but the bubble used to be extremely strong when I was younger.
- Garvi 3y ago
  Interesting. I studied propaganda academically (communicology studies) and would have argued it's gotten worse in the last 20 years, due to new technologies. That is not a strong opinion of mine and your post made me think. I'd like to better understand your point. Are you US American? Are you talking about cold-war propaganda as having been worse or the post 911 hysteria?
  - bavell 3y ago
    American here, it has vastly eroded in the past two decades among the younger generations.
    - Garvi 3y ago
      Be aware I am leading you on, but would you say that was more due to the spread of alternative ideas on social media (on covid and lockdowns, gender politics, race politics, geopolitics), distrust in the political system (politicians not being true to what they promised during campaign time) or something completely different?
      - bavell 3y ago
        I'd say it's largely due to the coming of age during the Internet era where there is much more visibility into the thoughts and inner workings of our political leaders and public institutions. Plus some notable milestones: 2001 Patriot Act - very unpatriotic and anti-american 2008 mortgage crisis - huge bailouts for large corps, nothing for regular joes 2016 election of Trump - reality TV president, collapse of "norms" 2020+ covid response - unprepared and poorly handled, contradictions and backpedaling abound Probably lots more I'm omitting but it's much harder to make the case we're #1 these days without adding caveats and qualifiers.
  - kristopolous 3y ago
    I'm an American. There's many metrics for measuring this. Frequency of international travel is up for Americans, even normalized for immigration. The consumption of foreign media such as anime kpop and bollywood films is up. Classic white Americans have also become more multilingual and their cuisine choices have diversified. It's not great but it's up from a baseline of terrible where people would be asked to point to England on a map and then point to, say, Japan or shown some Hangul text and think it's Farsi. They're not quite that awful anymore.
    - Garvi 3y ago
      I'm familiar with the PISA study as being an objective measurement for what you're describing. If I remember correctly the US scored somewhere in the middle of the field, just above Croatia (technically a 3rd world country, as when it was part of Yugoslavia it was also part of the Non-aligned movement during the cold war or 3rd world. The phrase was later turned into a derogatory term by some pretty crafty spin doctors). I remember the US getting constantly humiliated on the study and stopped taking it. I also remember it being a big thing here in the EU. Pretty much all national TV channels were covering their respective scores. That was some time ago and I do believe you might be right and that things have improved dramatically. However how does one track this now-a-days? I tried the PISA website, but it seems to have been mostly discontinued, as the last published survey seems to be from 2018. So I'm basically looking for a source that compares education objectively by country with recent data.
mistermann 3y ago
> Racism against US economic rivals has been the MO for decades on western social media. Could simple nationalism (or something else) not be the motivator?
- tuatoru 3y ago
  Hard to explain why Europeans, for example Volkswagen or BMW, are not treated similarly, then.
  - mistermann 3y ago
    How sure are you that they aren't? Don't forget you are describing your/a model.

by Garvi 3y ago

kristopolous 3y ago

The term for this generally is american exceptionalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism Essentially the US pretends like it's the only country. It's softened in the past 20 years with the rise of the internet but the bubble used to be extremely strong when I was younger.

Garvi 3y ago
Interesting. I studied propaganda academically (communicology studies) and would have argued it's gotten worse in the last 20 years, due to new technologies. That is not a strong opinion of mine and your post made me think. I'd like to better understand your point. Are you US American? Are you talking about cold-war propaganda as having been worse or the post 911 hysteria?
- bavell 3y ago
  American here, it has vastly eroded in the past two decades among the younger generations.
  - Garvi 3y ago
    Be aware I am leading you on, but would you say that was more due to the spread of alternative ideas on social media (on covid and lockdowns, gender politics, race politics, geopolitics), distrust in the political system (politicians not being true to what they promised during campaign time) or something completely different?
    - bavell 3y ago
      I'd say it's largely due to the coming of age during the Internet era where there is much more visibility into the thoughts and inner workings of our political leaders and public institutions. Plus some notable milestones: 2001 Patriot Act - very unpatriotic and anti-american 2008 mortgage crisis - huge bailouts for large corps, nothing for regular joes 2016 election of Trump - reality TV president, collapse of "norms" 2020+ covid response - unprepared and poorly handled, contradictions and backpedaling abound Probably lots more I'm omitting but it's much harder to make the case we're #1 these days without adding caveats and qualifiers.
- kristopolous 3y ago
  I'm an American. There's many metrics for measuring this. Frequency of international travel is up for Americans, even normalized for immigration. The consumption of foreign media such as anime kpop and bollywood films is up. Classic white Americans have also become more multilingual and their cuisine choices have diversified. It's not great but it's up from a baseline of terrible where people would be asked to point to England on a map and then point to, say, Japan or shown some Hangul text and think it's Farsi. They're not quite that awful anymore.
  - Garvi 3y ago
    I'm familiar with the PISA study as being an objective measurement for what you're describing. If I remember correctly the US scored somewhere in the middle of the field, just above Croatia (technically a 3rd world country, as when it was part of Yugoslavia it was also part of the Non-aligned movement during the cold war or 3rd world. The phrase was later turned into a derogatory term by some pretty crafty spin doctors). I remember the US getting constantly humiliated on the study and stopped taking it. I also remember it being a big thing here in the EU. Pretty much all national TV channels were covering their respective scores. That was some time ago and I do believe you might be right and that things have improved dramatically. However how does one track this now-a-days? I tried the PISA website, but it seems to have been mostly discontinued, as the last published survey seems to be from 2018. So I'm basically looking for a source that compares education objectively by country with recent data.

mistermann 3y ago

> Racism against US economic rivals has been the MO for decades on western social media. Could simple nationalism (or something else) not be the motivator?

tuatoru 3y ago
Hard to explain why Europeans, for example Volkswagen or BMW, are not treated similarly, then.
- mistermann 3y ago
  How sure are you that they aren't? Don't forget you are describing your/a model.