2 ms·

Maybe because it's incredibly effective? > The campaigns exploit existing political fault lines like race and regionalism to increase polarization and disaffec

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.

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.