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The russkies were doing the same. Read Thomas Rid's Active Measures. Choice quote from KGB colonel on publishing in western media: "If we didn't have the free p
by greesil 2y ago
The russkies were doing the same. Read Thomas Rid's Active Measures. Choice quote from KGB colonel on publishing in western media: "If we didn't have the free press we would have had to invent it"
- fakedang 2y agoThe russkies ARE doing the same. Ftfy.
- LtWorf 2y agoAnd the usians too.
- paganel 2y agoDo you happen to know the name of some of those writers that are sponsored by the Russians? So I can read them, of course, I’m tired of the Western-supported writers.
- greesil 2y agoExamples can be found in Thomas Rid's book I mentioned above. IIRC it was usually originating out of West Germany organized by East German agents
- paganel 2y agoThanks! Thought for a while that that book only dealt with Cold War-era propaganda (saw KGB in your comment), but if it includes newspaper writers/columnists who are in the Russians’ payroll right now then all the better, as I said, I’m tired of the Applebaums of this world.
- greesil 2y agoNo it's all old news I'm afraid.
- feedforward 2y agoThat's kind of the point - the US and Russia were doing the same thing. In 1961 in tge US, mobs repeatedly formed with implicit police backing and beat the hell out of white and black passengers for daring to sit next to each other, for risking their lives to affirm the idea that blacks were not less than whites. In the face of things like that, a lot of US criticism fell flat.
- nyokodo 2y ago> In the face of things like that, a lot of US criticism fell flat. While the absolute worst part of American society and culture did approach the more casual evils that Communism produced it all pales compared to the scale and pervasiveness of what Russians suffered and perpetrated. American criticisms were frustrated by some hypocrisy but they didn’t fall flat except to the willfully ignorant of what went on during Communism.
- mananaysiempre 2y agoFunny thing I just realized: russkies is a Russian-to-English borrowing with exactly the same kind of double plural as e.g. чипсы čipsy “potato crisps/chips”, an English-to-Russian one (a number of other Slavic languages do this as well, or so I’ve heard). That is, russkie is already a (nominative) plural in the source language (the nominative singular is russkij m, russkaâ f, russkoe n; it’s a nominalized adjective, thus the gendered forms). Presumably it doesn’t sound plural to the speaker of the target language, so(?) one more plural ending it gets. The only other Slavic-to-English example of this sort I know is pierogis, from Polish (the nominative singular form is pieróg). Any others?
- throwup238 2y ago> The only other Slavic-to-English example of this sort I know is pierogis, from Polish (the nominative singular form is pieróg). Any others? Pelmeni (пельмени) sometimes becomes pelmenis, but like with pierogi I usually see the plural form without the `s` in English (in America at least). I think "blintzes" too, from Yiddish `blintse` by way of Slavic.
- mananaysiempre 2y agoFunnily enough, בלינצעס blintses seems to be the native Yiddish plural, but if I’m to believe Wiktionary the English singular is blintz so might be a back-formation from it, because the Yiddish singular is בלינצע blintse.
- rdtsc 2y agoBecause it is easy to say and typical for English. In English "y" at the ends up as "ies" for plural. Whatever the rules, eventually whatever is easier for locals to say will be what people go with. > The only other Slavic-to-English example of this sort I know is pierogis, from Polish (the nominative singular form is pieróg). Not speaking Polish whenever I heard "pierogis" in English, I assumed all Americans meant was Russian "pirogi". So was expecting fluffy yeast leavened baked goodies, instead I got boiled vareniky/pelimini/dumplings.
- kemitchell 2y ago
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- mardifoufs 2y agoI guess whatboutism is okay when it's used against the other side
- greesil 2y agoOh the hand wringing. Fair's fair when the other side is doing it. Anyway, public discourse will always have someone pushing an agenda. Nabisco, CIA, your local Instagram influencer. It's a race to the bottom. That's why bastions of unbiased investigative journalism is just such a precious thing.
- walterbell 2y ago> bastions of unbiased investigative journalism is just such a precious thing Making them targets for influence. A circle of propaganda life. The soil must be tilled.
- greesil 2y agoOh definitely. This is the same reason why probably every company that's critical to the functioning of the internet probably has moles from every major intelligence agency private and state-run
- bozhark 2y agoNo till farming works. Maybe the CIA will shift into doing things “for the better” so that inherent value is raised across the world?
- greesil 2y agoWasn't that the point of Radio Free Europe and others?
- mistermann 2y agoI love how famous American propaganda is simply overlooked when people are whining about "Russian propaganda", the evidence of which is usually a cleverly written story (which is also propaganda). The irony, naivete, and logical inconsistency of this planet and Westerners in particular is mind boggling.