6 ms·

I wonder why you single out the usual boogie men that US propaganda uses.

by beebeepka 3y ago

cookiengineer 3y ago
Let me google that for you: Advanced Impact Media Solutions (in short: AIMS). Have fun in that rabbit hole.
MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
The irony will be lost on most here.
jampekka 3y ago
I find it rather ironic that a lot of people, probably quite a vast majority, see themselves immune to propaganda (be it state or commercial). I often play with the tought that I may well be just as brainwashed as e.g. Russians or Chinese are portrayed to be. I don't think there's really a way of knowing for certain. For most this is probably unthinkable. Or maybe I've been brainwashed by constructivist cultural marxism or whathaveyou?
- benterix 3y ago
  For me it's very easy to tell because I've been living under a Communist regime and now in a "capitalist" (or "democratic" to use a more PC term) system so I know the difference extremely well. Many books have been written about this but essentially it boils down to the freedom of speech and the amount of punishment you can receive for criticism or being disobedient to those in power. People in the West have no idea what it means to be constantly afraid for oneself and one's family, to be totally at the mercy of a soulless system with no justice at all and no recourse, to learn not to trust anyone, even one's neighbors and family members and so on. Getting back to your question: of course we are all brainwashed (or "culturally conditioned"), this way or another. But there is an abyss of difference between living in one of these regimes that criminalize everything that is not official vs living in a Western country with all its particularities and inconveniences.
  - saiya-jin 3y ago
    Freedom of thought, freedom to travel not only for some vacation, even just a neighboring state firmly within your bloc. Not being executed on the border. Watching what you say, constantly. You have no idea how much that means to you until you properly lose it. Then suddenly there are very few things in life worth more.
  - Applejinx 3y ago
    Of course there's a cost to this. Liberal democracy is intensely annoying and always expands to embrace whatever kind of diversity is too much diversity. That's how it can be a target for fascist uprisings: people want to pretend they're open to all things and have all freedoms as long as there are no consequences. In reality, there's one cost to restriction and another cost to multiculturalism and diversity. If you look at it in a-life terms you see the autocracies as plateaus. Stuff gets locked down, and there's no progress. But progress hurts. Liberal democracies and their tolerance of diversity are about coping with all the unaligned interests of starkly different people, knowing that combining those people is what gets you startling progress. It can almost be reduced to simple mechanical terms, like recombination in a genetic soup. It's always possible to crush inconvenient genes and have everyone the same (to a point, and if you're determined enough). And then, you don't have those genes anymore, and your future's narrowed.
Swenrekcah 3y ago
A boogie man is something that isn’t real. Russian disinformation warfare is very much real, no matter if it is a Lithuanian workman or the head of the CIA talking about it. The head of the CIA might have ulterior motives but it is silly to dismiss the facts though.
- jampekka 3y ago
  There's probably a very equivalent story that a lot of Russians believe in.
  - ethanbond 3y ago
    Well, it certainly isn’t “equivalent” given that the Russian version of the story/belief isn’t created and maintained in the open air of a free information environment. In the US, you’re welcome to (and people actually do) contradict “official narratives” whenever you want.
    - beebeepka 3y ago
      they just get downvoted instead of jumping out of the window
  - benterix 3y ago
    I read Russian forums and these people are more sober than you may think. They are fed up with Putin and with what is happening to Russia now. It's not so much that they care about Ukrainians but more about the terrible direction the country is heading. For many, it's the return of the dark era of the collapse of the USSR, they don't see any bright light on the horizon.
    - Applejinx 3y ago
      This is because chaos warfare and the attempts to just straight up reestablish an old school empire, are bad in the context of modern global commerce. I think it might have worked better for them had Putin run his country along more communist lines, but instead he held power in his government with the same chaos warfare tools he used overseas, and the cost of that is that he's clung to power unto death, but all the systems that are supposed to make Russia work, disintegrated.
benterix 3y ago
Maybe because it's incredibly effective? > The campaigns exploit existing political fault lines like race and regionalism to increase polarization and disaffection with the political system. The complete lack of a coherent message across these campaigns is jarring until one realizes that the goal of the campaigns is not necessarily to convince anyone of anything, but rather to generate noise. In other words, they simply don't care about the message as long as it's divisive. They will loudly support BLM or alt right or whoever as long as it sparks negative emotions and increases conflicts between Americans. And this strategy works incredibly well just because instead of inventing non-existent conflicts it rekindles the existing ones. [0] https://www.brandeis.edu/now/2020/october/elections-russia-disinformation-social-media.html https://www.brandeis.edu/now/2020/october/elections-russia-d...
- Applejinx 3y ago
  My litmus test for this is always whether the person loudly and persistently propagandizing for stuff, leads back to an insistence that the country they're working is going to collapse in race and/or civil war. It can be framed as 'yes let's go fight this!' or it can be framed as a dismaying, looming threat rumbling ever closer. Doesn't matter. I identify that behavior as an attempt to produce race and/or civil war, even from nothing. And the more persistent the calls, the more well-funded but ill-sourced the outlet (ask yourself how the person's getting paid to do that full-time with such a busy workday), the more likely I'm going to think they are part of what I've come to think of as WWIII: the attempt to destroy rival nation-states purely with the old CIA techniques, which themselves probably date from the middle ages or Machiavelli or something. Nothing is new. It's all humans continuing to bumble along as a cooperative but rabidly competitive species. These dichotomies produce this behavior and it's about whether stuff's got out of balance. I think Russia waging WWIII predominantly informationally, is out of balance and having some serious negative externalities beyond their wish for power.

I wonder why you single out the usual boogie men that US propaganda uses.

cookiengineer 3y ago

Let me google that for you: Advanced Impact Media Solutions (in short: AIMS). Have fun in that rabbit hole.

MrBuddyCasino 3y ago

The irony will be lost on most here.

jampekka 3y ago

I find it rather ironic that a lot of people, probably quite a vast majority, see themselves immune to propaganda (be it state or commercial). I often play with the tought that I may well be just as brainwashed as e.g. Russians or Chinese are portrayed to be. I don't think there's really a way of knowing for certain. For most this is probably unthinkable. Or maybe I've been brainwashed by constructivist cultural marxism or whathaveyou?

benterix 3y ago
For me it's very easy to tell because I've been living under a Communist regime and now in a "capitalist" (or "democratic" to use a more PC term) system so I know the difference extremely well. Many books have been written about this but essentially it boils down to the freedom of speech and the amount of punishment you can receive for criticism or being disobedient to those in power. People in the West have no idea what it means to be constantly afraid for oneself and one's family, to be totally at the mercy of a soulless system with no justice at all and no recourse, to learn not to trust anyone, even one's neighbors and family members and so on. Getting back to your question: of course we are all brainwashed (or "culturally conditioned"), this way or another. But there is an abyss of difference between living in one of these regimes that criminalize everything that is not official vs living in a Western country with all its particularities and inconveniences.
- saiya-jin 3y ago
  Freedom of thought, freedom to travel not only for some vacation, even just a neighboring state firmly within your bloc. Not being executed on the border. Watching what you say, constantly. You have no idea how much that means to you until you properly lose it. Then suddenly there are very few things in life worth more.
- Applejinx 3y ago
  Of course there's a cost to this. Liberal democracy is intensely annoying and always expands to embrace whatever kind of diversity is too much diversity. That's how it can be a target for fascist uprisings: people want to pretend they're open to all things and have all freedoms as long as there are no consequences. In reality, there's one cost to restriction and another cost to multiculturalism and diversity. If you look at it in a-life terms you see the autocracies as plateaus. Stuff gets locked down, and there's no progress. But progress hurts. Liberal democracies and their tolerance of diversity are about coping with all the unaligned interests of starkly different people, knowing that combining those people is what gets you startling progress. It can almost be reduced to simple mechanical terms, like recombination in a genetic soup. It's always possible to crush inconvenient genes and have everyone the same (to a point, and if you're determined enough). And then, you don't have those genes anymore, and your future's narrowed.

Swenrekcah 3y ago

A boogie man is something that isn’t real. Russian disinformation warfare is very much real, no matter if it is a Lithuanian workman or the head of the CIA talking about it. The head of the CIA might have ulterior motives but it is silly to dismiss the facts though.

jampekka 3y ago
There's probably a very equivalent story that a lot of Russians believe in.
- ethanbond 3y ago
  Well, it certainly isn’t “equivalent” given that the Russian version of the story/belief isn’t created and maintained in the open air of a free information environment. In the US, you’re welcome to (and people actually do) contradict “official narratives” whenever you want.
  - beebeepka 3y ago
    they just get downvoted instead of jumping out of the window
- benterix 3y ago
  I read Russian forums and these people are more sober than you may think. They are fed up with Putin and with what is happening to Russia now. It's not so much that they care about Ukrainians but more about the terrible direction the country is heading. For many, it's the return of the dark era of the collapse of the USSR, they don't see any bright light on the horizon.
  - Applejinx 3y ago
    This is because chaos warfare and the attempts to just straight up reestablish an old school empire, are bad in the context of modern global commerce. I think it might have worked better for them had Putin run his country along more communist lines, but instead he held power in his government with the same chaos warfare tools he used overseas, and the cost of that is that he's clung to power unto death, but all the systems that are supposed to make Russia work, disintegrated.

benterix 3y ago

Maybe because it's incredibly effective? > The campaigns exploit existing political fault lines like race and regionalism to increase polarization and disaffection with the political system. The complete lack of a coherent message across these campaigns is jarring until one realizes that the goal of the campaigns is not necessarily to convince anyone of anything, but rather to generate noise. In other words, they simply don't care about the message as long as it's divisive. They will loudly support BLM or alt right or whoever as long as it sparks negative emotions and increases conflicts between Americans. And this strategy works incredibly well just because instead of inventing non-existent conflicts it rekindles the existing ones. [0] https://www.brandeis.edu/now/2020/october/elections-russia-disinformation-social-media.html https://www.brandeis.edu/now/2020/october/elections-russia-d...

Applejinx 3y ago
My litmus test for this is always whether the person loudly and persistently propagandizing for stuff, leads back to an insistence that the country they're working is going to collapse in race and/or civil war. It can be framed as 'yes let's go fight this!' or it can be framed as a dismaying, looming threat rumbling ever closer. Doesn't matter. I identify that behavior as an attempt to produce race and/or civil war, even from nothing. And the more persistent the calls, the more well-funded but ill-sourced the outlet (ask yourself how the person's getting paid to do that full-time with such a busy workday), the more likely I'm going to think they are part of what I've come to think of as WWIII: the attempt to destroy rival nation-states purely with the old CIA techniques, which themselves probably date from the middle ages or Machiavelli or something. Nothing is new. It's all humans continuing to bumble along as a cooperative but rabidly competitive species. These dichotomies produce this behavior and it's about whether stuff's got out of balance. I think Russia waging WWIII predominantly informationally, is out of balance and having some serious negative externalities beyond their wish for power.