5 ms·

Ah, here we go with the "invisible deep state" theory that secretly controls -- or tries to -- things behind the scenes. Does make for good movies though.

mjburgess 2y ago
It's not invisible, nor is it much of a secret. Nor does it "control" anything in particular. Much of the coordination against trump by NGOs funded through USAID, publicly, is just online -- you can just go watch recordings of the conferences. It's just an institutional consensus about Trump's style of populism which gave profound motivation to a large number of groups, to organise against his perceived threat. The issue is how the US government was involved -- not the activity itself -- , eg., leaning on mass media organisations to censor americans -- unconstitutional, and widely documented. You may think it's "for the good", but either way, its unconstitutional for the US gov. to do that. The US gov cannot demand social media censor americans, it's a prominent part of the bill of rights. The US gov. funds many programmes under the guise of aid, or sponsorship of "democracy" or "independent media", or, eg., "healthcare". Consider how egreious it would be for the US gov to lie about funding healthcare, but instead to use that as a guise for one of your "impossible, movie plot lines..." Oh wait, ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_fake_vaccination_campaign_in_Pakistan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_fake_vaccination_campaign_... FYI, this happened to the far-left in the 60s & 70s, leading to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee --- it's just now happening to Trump and the far-right. Kinda funny the right have discovered it, after decades of calling the left nutjob conspiracy theorists.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > Consider how egreious it would be for the US gov to lie about funding healthcare, but instead to use that as a guise for one of your "impossible, movie plot lines..." Sorry, what part of the CIA hatching hare-brained schemes is incredulous? (You should have linked to acoustakitty.)
  - mjburgess 2y ago
    People like to pretend the intelligence agencies don't operate this way today, and this was some past insanity. I mean, even more relevant would be the leaked recording of state department officials discussing who to replace the elected president of ukraine with in 2013. I just chose the HIV thing, since it's relevant how we interpret USAID's programmes -- in particular, ones which fund the NGOs that run censorship campaigns and kompromat collection (eg., the occrp). None of this is very remarkable, of course. The more concerning thing is how this has become turned inward on the USA itself via the internet, mass media, and so on.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > People like to pretend the intelligence agencies don't operate this way today Who? How do you think soft power works? > how this has become turned inward on the USA itself The CIA isn’t conducting political campaigns at home. To the extent we have intelligence operations running amok in our bureaucracy, it’s DOGE. Honestly, this edginess-seeking behaviour reminds me of students in New York and San Francisco convinced they’re being silenced. No, the truth is nobody cares.
      - mjburgess 2y ago
        https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-ban-spreads-government-made-news-to-americans/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-... ...oops, the law preventing that was amended under obama, to allow it. Drat. (cf. the original Smith-Mundt act preventing it, and the Modernization Act of 2012 allowing it again. The original, of course, created because law makers were terrified of what would happen if this was turned inward.)
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
        JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        Did you know we also have NPR and PBS? A literal public-TV censorship board? Also, we’re talking about the CIA. Your conspiracy theory has them waiting for a law to be repealed before acting? Do you think a single DOGE bro hired a lawyer before acting? > because law makers were terrified of what would happen if this was turned inward What nonsense. Where did you read this? We had a massive and celebrated domestic propaganda board during the Great Depression and WWII.
- insane_dreamer 2y ago
  The CIA has done a ton of bad shit - especially in other countries - over the past 50 years, but that’s a completely separate matter from a “deep state” controlling things and trying to prevent Trump’s election.
  - mjburgess 2y ago
    OK, well I was choosing one of you "movie plot" cases to show you that the CIA does not care if it runs movie plot programmes. The mechanism of anti-trump coordination has yet really to be briefed out, and wikiepedia will be dragged kicking and screaming before there's an article on it. Give it a decade, perhaps. For now, if you want examples here's the atlantic council (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Council https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Council) -- training journalists to treat emerging rightwing politics as disinformation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSAz0agYEeI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSAz0agYEeI
    - insane_dreamer 2y ago
      A lot of rightwing stuff that circulates is disinformation -- there are plenty of examples of it. Trump is an inveterate liar about almost everything (this is easily fact-checked), and his followers have adopted the same strategy (lies are powerful because they are usually more shocking and travel faster than a boring fact-check). Not to say that other politicians don't lie or distort the truth, but Trump has taken this to a whole other level.
      - mjburgess 2y ago
        The issue isn't whether that's true or not (personally, I think you're 80-90% correct). If private citizens, or organisations, want to get together and develop political counter-narratives that's fine -- entirely within the constitution, and always a good idea. The issue here is the top-down astroturfing from state-sponsored orgs whose boards are the last x heads of the CIA/etc. At the moment there is no strong firewall between private polticial organisation, and state power, within the USA. You may think that's fine if its being used against trump, but it isnt. Not least, since the example the AC gave in that video was trump tweeting "witch hunt" about the russia investigation -- calling this disinformation. Now, who was right? Trump. There was no Trump-Russia conspiracy, it was a witch hunt. The only thing the muller report found was trump obstructed the investigation, it completely exonerated any supposed connections to russia. Then you might ask: where did all these intelligence dossiers come from? And why is the atlantic council training journalists to label trumps poltical speech about this investigation as disinformation? (HINT: to enable its censorship etc.)

mjburgess 2y ago

It's not invisible, nor is it much of a secret. Nor does it "control" anything in particular. Much of the coordination against trump by NGOs funded through USAID, publicly, is just online -- you can just go watch recordings of the conferences. It's just an institutional consensus about Trump's style of populism which gave profound motivation to a large number of groups, to organise against his perceived threat. The issue is how the US government was involved -- not the activity itself -- , eg., leaning on mass media organisations to censor americans -- unconstitutional, and widely documented. You may think it's "for the good", but either way, its unconstitutional for the US gov. to do that. The US gov cannot demand social media censor americans, it's a prominent part of the bill of rights. The US gov. funds many programmes under the guise of aid, or sponsorship of "democracy" or "independent media", or, eg., "healthcare". Consider how egreious it would be for the US gov to lie about funding healthcare, but instead to use that as a guise for one of your "impossible, movie plot lines..." Oh wait, ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_fake_vaccination_campaign_in_Pakistan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_fake_vaccination_campaign_... FYI, this happened to the far-left in the 60s & 70s, leading to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee --- it's just now happening to Trump and the far-right. Kinda funny the right have discovered it, after decades of calling the left nutjob conspiracy theorists.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> Consider how egreious it would be for the US gov to lie about funding healthcare, but instead to use that as a guise for one of your "impossible, movie plot lines..." Sorry, what part of the CIA hatching hare-brained schemes is incredulous? (You should have linked to acoustakitty.)
- mjburgess 2y ago
  People like to pretend the intelligence agencies don't operate this way today, and this was some past insanity. I mean, even more relevant would be the leaked recording of state department officials discussing who to replace the elected president of ukraine with in 2013. I just chose the HIV thing, since it's relevant how we interpret USAID's programmes -- in particular, ones which fund the NGOs that run censorship campaigns and kompromat collection (eg., the occrp). None of this is very remarkable, of course. The more concerning thing is how this has become turned inward on the USA itself via the internet, mass media, and so on.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > People like to pretend the intelligence agencies don't operate this way today Who? How do you think soft power works? > how this has become turned inward on the USA itself The CIA isn’t conducting political campaigns at home. To the extent we have intelligence operations running amok in our bureaucracy, it’s DOGE. Honestly, this edginess-seeking behaviour reminds me of students in New York and San Francisco convinced they’re being silenced. No, the truth is nobody cares.
    - mjburgess 2y ago
      https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-ban-spreads-government-made-news-to-americans/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-... ...oops, the law preventing that was amended under obama, to allow it. Drat. (cf. the original Smith-Mundt act preventing it, and the Modernization Act of 2012 allowing it again. The original, of course, created because law makers were terrified of what would happen if this was turned inward.)
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        Did you know we also have NPR and PBS? A literal public-TV censorship board? Also, we’re talking about the CIA. Your conspiracy theory has them waiting for a law to be repealed before acting? Do you think a single DOGE bro hired a lawyer before acting? > because law makers were terrified of what would happen if this was turned inward What nonsense. Where did you read this? We had a massive and celebrated domestic propaganda board during the Great Depression and WWII.
insane_dreamer 2y ago
The CIA has done a ton of bad shit - especially in other countries - over the past 50 years, but that’s a completely separate matter from a “deep state” controlling things and trying to prevent Trump’s election.
- mjburgess 2y ago
  OK, well I was choosing one of you "movie plot" cases to show you that the CIA does not care if it runs movie plot programmes. The mechanism of anti-trump coordination has yet really to be briefed out, and wikiepedia will be dragged kicking and screaming before there's an article on it. Give it a decade, perhaps. For now, if you want examples here's the atlantic council (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Council https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Council) -- training journalists to treat emerging rightwing politics as disinformation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSAz0agYEeI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSAz0agYEeI
  - insane_dreamer 2y ago
    A lot of rightwing stuff that circulates is disinformation -- there are plenty of examples of it. Trump is an inveterate liar about almost everything (this is easily fact-checked), and his followers have adopted the same strategy (lies are powerful because they are usually more shocking and travel faster than a boring fact-check). Not to say that other politicians don't lie or distort the truth, but Trump has taken this to a whole other level.
    - mjburgess 2y ago
      The issue isn't whether that's true or not (personally, I think you're 80-90% correct). If private citizens, or organisations, want to get together and develop political counter-narratives that's fine -- entirely within the constitution, and always a good idea. The issue here is the top-down astroturfing from state-sponsored orgs whose boards are the last x heads of the CIA/etc. At the moment there is no strong firewall between private polticial organisation, and state power, within the USA. You may think that's fine if its being used against trump, but it isnt. Not least, since the example the AC gave in that video was trump tweeting "witch hunt" about the russia investigation -- calling this disinformation. Now, who was right? Trump. There was no Trump-Russia conspiracy, it was a witch hunt. The only thing the muller report found was trump obstructed the investigation, it completely exonerated any supposed connections to russia. Then you might ask: where did all these intelligence dossiers come from? And why is the atlantic council training journalists to label trumps poltical speech about this investigation as disinformation? (HINT: to enable its censorship etc.)