9 ms·

I remember a story a couple of weeks ago, or perhaps earlier this year about the lead-up to the NSDAP takeover of the German government in the mid 1900:s. It wa

by Y-bar 1y ago

I remember a story a couple of weeks ago, or perhaps earlier this year about the lead-up to the NSDAP takeover of the German government in the mid 1900:s. It was something about just overwhelming people with pointless crisis and issues to keep you busy and preoccupied both physically and mentally so not to notice the truly bad things going when the democratic state was eroding. This seems like one such thing, it's a ploy for the public, it distracts from other things, it takes space away from other thing in the news, it ties up courts and others.

mossTechnician 1y ago
I would love a link to this story, if you have it.
red-iron-pine 1y ago
TikTok and social media exist to do that, writ large. This is just a way to jam up the courts, but make no mistake -- Big Tech is allowing it to happen.
jack_tripper 1y ago
[flagged]
- balaz 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - simmerup 1y ago
    So you're okay with Project 2025 because its your team?
    - balaz 1y ago
      I’m not even American.
- embedding-shape 1y ago
  Except similar things happened in multiple countries in the world at the same time, yet most are not slipping closer and closer to authoritarianism today.
  - jack_tripper 1y ago
    Like which?
ncgl 1y ago
During dt's first term I believed this as well and eagerly awaited the Mueller investigation. Then when he won reelection I concluded I was consuming media in an echo chamber. This fear you're commenting on goes way farther back than dt. Ballroom, mueller investigation, Benghazi, guantanemo, tan suit, parkland, Alex Jones, mission accomplished, 911. These all got airtime. Some longer than others. You're commenting on the nature of media to fill silence with noise, and the expectation we place on the reader to triage the news.
- potato3732842 1y ago
  Speaking of Mission Accomplished and 9/11, I recently watched Tucker Carlson's 9/11 series. I was expecting garbage but it actually did an amazingly good job building off of Fahrenheit 9/11 using the stuff that's come out in the 20yr since. If you take a step back the contrast does a really does a good job illustrating how just by sprinkling bullshit into the data the state, the media, etc, can do a sufficiently good job keeping people from connecting the dots or knowing what questions they ought to be asking. Moore knew something stunk, but he was groping around in the dark in a totally different political climate less receptive to questioning authority.
  - tremon 1y ago
    What's the intention behind your second paragraph? It seems to suggest that the current political climate is more receptive to questioning authority?
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- itsalwaysgood 1y ago
  Biased newsfeeds are one thing, cronyism and flooding courts/weaponizing the judicial system are a different thing. It could be the case that the level of cronyism and weaponizing we see today is the same amount as in the past. It's up to the reader to determine how much of their opinion is due to bias, and how much is due to a real increase in nefarious political strategy. Some are more diligent about checking their sources that others.
fatbird 1y ago
Or as Steve Bannon put it: "flood the zone with shit"
rhcom2 1y ago
It's intentional. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-echoing-project-2025-flood-zone-strategy-push/story?id=121124118 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-echoing-project-2025-f... https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/16/media/steve-bannon-reliable-sources https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/16/media/steve-bannon-reliable-s...
lo_zamoyski 1y ago
You don't need to go the reductio ad Hitlerum route. Distraction, lawfare, divide-and-conquer are old, tried, and tested tactics for diverting attention, grinding down the opposition, and scattering threats. It isn't unique to this administration nor to our times. (Incidentally, in the US, divide-and-conquer often happens on racial grounds, for example. When American oligarchy starts feeling threatened, it can easily reach for the race card by giving the appropriate people a platform to manufacture paranoia, grievance, outrage, indignation, and antipathy. Solidarity breaks down. People stop talking about how badly they're being governed and manipulated by gov't and private interest and shift focus toward hating each other. Indeed, this is how democracies function in practice. Whereas dictatorships often rely on a good deal of brute force, oligarchs in democracies must be craftier in their methods - this includes the abuse of media, or the phenomenon of sexual lib, as described by Aldous Huxley, as another intersecting example. The citizen cannot know he is subject to manipulation or coercion. Media and education become instruments of conditioning and inculcation, with society functioning as a force multiplier.)
- bitexploder 1y ago
  This is all truthy but loses nuance and is too tidy. The oligarchy is not a unified body, but it often resembles one.
  - lo_zamoyski 1y ago
    Of course it isn't. Oligarchs jockey for power all the time amongst themselves, even while they have converging interests.
- danaris 1y ago
  > You don't need to go the reductio ad Hitlerum route. And yet, when the people at the top, the ones implementing these strategies and policies, are explicitly lionizing Hitler in a variety of ways, on top of mimicking his policies, strategies, values, and ideals, suddenly treating the comparison as if it's absurd or illogical starts to seem like it's trying to distract us from something...
- Y-bar 1y ago
zerosizedweasle 1y ago
What I despise about the stock investing climate right now is it is doing exactly this
legitster 1y ago
In his interviews, this is more or less what Yuri Bezmenov described the aim of Russian propaganda was. It's hard to just get people to buy into ideas, but if you just turn up the volume on existing noise, it's simultaneously authentic but also robs people of discerning what's true or worth prioritizing. The irony is all of his concerns were about the spread of Marxism in the US. Well, it turns out the methods are useful for anyone.
- red-iron-pine 1y ago
  This is the Russian Firehose model detailed report about it from RAND Corp: https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html The approach can be considered something of a DDoS attack on your attention span and mental energy: keep up a constant attack, and then, at intervals known only to the attacker, drop the flow just for a second to allow for an attack -- in this case, to allow for the official party line to be created and spread via Fox News, RT, etc. When mentally exhausted, people eventually gravitate to that which hits their "bellyfeel" best, and by pandering to that and tying it into whatever agenda you want to push, you can essentially push a narrative that is 100% against the interests of the people supporting it. Capitalism's ruthless, creep-into-everything marketing approaches make this even easier, since there exists apparatus to do this already, and all you need to make it work is to pay for the marketing (via ads, influencers, marketing bots, etc.).
Herring 1y ago
I don't like putting the blame on a "takeover". Democracy is about a kind of equality among people, and the US has had a strong anti-democratic strain since slavery. Probably even feudalism before that. Once you see it, you see it everywhere and can't unsee it. There's a reason Trump's best polling issue is immigration. https://www.natesilver.net/p/trump-approval-ratings-nate-silver-bulletin https://www.natesilver.net/p/trump-approval-ratings-nate-sil... There was always going to be a day of reckoning. If you want multiculturalism, you need to follow Europe's lead with everything from strictly banning Nazis (Germany), to healthcare, to getting over 90% mutlilingualism (Nordic countries).
- IAmBroom 1y ago
  > Democracy is about a kind of equality among people, and the US has had a strong anti-democratic strain since slavery. Probably even feudalism before that. Yeah, I remember reading about all those US feudal lords that preceded slavery...
honzabe 1y ago
"…it consumed all one’s energies, coming on top of the work one really wanted to do. You can see how easy it was, then, not to think about fundamental things. One had no time." I read this recently on Hacker News, in a discussion about "They Thought They Were Free" (1955) [1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45321663 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45321663
- Y-bar 1y ago
  That's the one I was thinking about, thanks!
throw0101a 1y ago
> It was something about just overwhelming people with pointless crisis and issues to keep you busy and preoccupied both physically and mentally so not to notice the truly bad things going when the democratic state was eroding. This is something that Russia has been doing for more than a decade: > We characterize the contemporary Russian model for propaganda as “the firehose of falsehood” because of two of its distinctive features: high numbers of channels and messages and a shameless willingness to disseminate partial truths or outright fictions. In the words of one observer, “[N]ew Russian propaganda entertains, confuses and overwhelms the audience.”2 > Contemporary Russian propaganda has at least two other distinctive features. It is also rapid, continuous, and repetitive, and it lacks commitment to consistency. > Interestingly, several of these features run directly counter to the conventional wisdom on effective influence and communication from government or defense sources, which traditionally emphasize the importance of truth, credibility, and the avoidance of contradiction.3 Despite ignoring these traditional principles, Russia seems to have enjoyed some success under its contemporary propaganda model, either through more direct persuasion and influence or by engaging in obfuscation, confusion, and the disruption or diminution of truthful reporting and messaging. * https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html Steve Bannon used the same technique during Trump 1.0: > While watching the news coverage of Steve Bannon’s initial appearance in federal court on Monday, I kept thinking about his 2018 confession to the acclaimed writer Michael Lewis. His quote is like a compass that orients this crazy era of American politics. “The Democrats don’t matter,” Bannon told Lewis. “The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.” > That’s the Bannon business model: Flood the zone. Stink up the joint. As Jonathan Rauch once said, citing Bannon’s infamous quote, “This is not about persuasion: This is about disorientation.” * https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/16/media/steve-bannon-reliable-sources https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/16/media/steve-bannon-reliable-s... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Bannon#Political_ideology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Bannon#Political_ideolog...

by Y-bar 1y ago

mossTechnician 1y ago

I would love a link to this story, if you have it.

red-iron-pine 1y ago

TikTok and social media exist to do that, writ large. This is just a way to jam up the courts, but make no mistake -- Big Tech is allowing it to happen.

jack_tripper 1y ago

[flagged]

balaz 1y ago
[flagged]
- simmerup 1y ago
  So you're okay with Project 2025 because its your team?
  - balaz 1y ago
    I’m not even American.
embedding-shape 1y ago
Except similar things happened in multiple countries in the world at the same time, yet most are not slipping closer and closer to authoritarianism today.
- jack_tripper 1y ago
  Like which?

ncgl 1y ago

During dt's first term I believed this as well and eagerly awaited the Mueller investigation. Then when he won reelection I concluded I was consuming media in an echo chamber. This fear you're commenting on goes way farther back than dt. Ballroom, mueller investigation, Benghazi, guantanemo, tan suit, parkland, Alex Jones, mission accomplished, 911. These all got airtime. Some longer than others. You're commenting on the nature of media to fill silence with noise, and the expectation we place on the reader to triage the news.

potato3732842 1y ago
Speaking of Mission Accomplished and 9/11, I recently watched Tucker Carlson's 9/11 series. I was expecting garbage but it actually did an amazingly good job building off of Fahrenheit 9/11 using the stuff that's come out in the 20yr since. If you take a step back the contrast does a really does a good job illustrating how just by sprinkling bullshit into the data the state, the media, etc, can do a sufficiently good job keeping people from connecting the dots or knowing what questions they ought to be asking. Moore knew something stunk, but he was groping around in the dark in a totally different political climate less receptive to questioning authority.
- tremon 1y ago
  What's the intention behind your second paragraph? It seems to suggest that the current political climate is more receptive to questioning authority?
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
itsalwaysgood 1y ago
Biased newsfeeds are one thing, cronyism and flooding courts/weaponizing the judicial system are a different thing. It could be the case that the level of cronyism and weaponizing we see today is the same amount as in the past. It's up to the reader to determine how much of their opinion is due to bias, and how much is due to a real increase in nefarious political strategy. Some are more diligent about checking their sources that others.

fatbird 1y ago

Or as Steve Bannon put it: "flood the zone with shit"

rhcom2 1y ago

It's intentional. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-echoing-project-2025-flood-zone-strategy-push/story?id=121124118 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-echoing-project-2025-f... https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/16/media/steve-bannon-reliable-sources https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/16/media/steve-bannon-reliable-s...

lo_zamoyski 1y ago

You don't need to go the reductio ad Hitlerum route. Distraction, lawfare, divide-and-conquer are old, tried, and tested tactics for diverting attention, grinding down the opposition, and scattering threats. It isn't unique to this administration nor to our times. (Incidentally, in the US, divide-and-conquer often happens on racial grounds, for example. When American oligarchy starts feeling threatened, it can easily reach for the race card by giving the appropriate people a platform to manufacture paranoia, grievance, outrage, indignation, and antipathy. Solidarity breaks down. People stop talking about how badly they're being governed and manipulated by gov't and private interest and shift focus toward hating each other. Indeed, this is how democracies function in practice. Whereas dictatorships often rely on a good deal of brute force, oligarchs in democracies must be craftier in their methods - this includes the abuse of media, or the phenomenon of sexual lib, as described by Aldous Huxley, as another intersecting example. The citizen cannot know he is subject to manipulation or coercion. Media and education become instruments of conditioning and inculcation, with society functioning as a force multiplier.)

bitexploder 1y ago
This is all truthy but loses nuance and is too tidy. The oligarchy is not a unified body, but it often resembles one.
- lo_zamoyski 1y ago
  Of course it isn't. Oligarchs jockey for power all the time amongst themselves, even while they have converging interests.
danaris 1y ago
> You don't need to go the reductio ad Hitlerum route. And yet, when the people at the top, the ones implementing these strategies and policies, are explicitly lionizing Hitler in a variety of ways, on top of mimicking his policies, strategies, values, and ideals, suddenly treating the comparison as if it's absurd or illogical starts to seem like it's trying to distract us from something...
Y-bar 1y ago

zerosizedweasle 1y ago

What I despise about the stock investing climate right now is it is doing exactly this

legitster 1y ago

In his interviews, this is more or less what Yuri Bezmenov described the aim of Russian propaganda was. It's hard to just get people to buy into ideas, but if you just turn up the volume on existing noise, it's simultaneously authentic but also robs people of discerning what's true or worth prioritizing. The irony is all of his concerns were about the spread of Marxism in the US. Well, it turns out the methods are useful for anyone.

red-iron-pine 1y ago
This is the Russian Firehose model detailed report about it from RAND Corp: https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html The approach can be considered something of a DDoS attack on your attention span and mental energy: keep up a constant attack, and then, at intervals known only to the attacker, drop the flow just for a second to allow for an attack -- in this case, to allow for the official party line to be created and spread via Fox News, RT, etc. When mentally exhausted, people eventually gravitate to that which hits their "bellyfeel" best, and by pandering to that and tying it into whatever agenda you want to push, you can essentially push a narrative that is 100% against the interests of the people supporting it. Capitalism's ruthless, creep-into-everything marketing approaches make this even easier, since there exists apparatus to do this already, and all you need to make it work is to pay for the marketing (via ads, influencers, marketing bots, etc.).

Herring 1y ago

I don't like putting the blame on a "takeover". Democracy is about a kind of equality among people, and the US has had a strong anti-democratic strain since slavery. Probably even feudalism before that. Once you see it, you see it everywhere and can't unsee it. There's a reason Trump's best polling issue is immigration. https://www.natesilver.net/p/trump-approval-ratings-nate-silver-bulletin https://www.natesilver.net/p/trump-approval-ratings-nate-sil... There was always going to be a day of reckoning. If you want multiculturalism, you need to follow Europe's lead with everything from strictly banning Nazis (Germany), to healthcare, to getting over 90% mutlilingualism (Nordic countries).

IAmBroom 1y ago
> Democracy is about a kind of equality among people, and the US has had a strong anti-democratic strain since slavery. Probably even feudalism before that. Yeah, I remember reading about all those US feudal lords that preceded slavery...

honzabe 1y ago

"…it consumed all one’s energies, coming on top of the work one really wanted to do. You can see how easy it was, then, not to think about fundamental things. One had no time." I read this recently on Hacker News, in a discussion about "They Thought They Were Free" (1955) [1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45321663 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45321663

Y-bar 1y ago
That's the one I was thinking about, thanks!

throw0101a 1y ago

> It was something about just overwhelming people with pointless crisis and issues to keep you busy and preoccupied both physically and mentally so not to notice the truly bad things going when the democratic state was eroding. This is something that Russia has been doing for more than a decade: > We characterize the contemporary Russian model for propaganda as “the firehose of falsehood” because of two of its distinctive features: high numbers of channels and messages and a shameless willingness to disseminate partial truths or outright fictions. In the words of one observer, “[N]ew Russian propaganda entertains, confuses and overwhelms the audience.”2 > Contemporary Russian propaganda has at least two other distinctive features. It is also rapid, continuous, and repetitive, and it lacks commitment to consistency. > Interestingly, several of these features run directly counter to the conventional wisdom on effective influence and communication from government or defense sources, which traditionally emphasize the importance of truth, credibility, and the avoidance of contradiction.3 Despite ignoring these traditional principles, Russia seems to have enjoyed some success under its contemporary propaganda model, either through more direct persuasion and influence or by engaging in obfuscation, confusion, and the disruption or diminution of truthful reporting and messaging. * https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html Steve Bannon used the same technique during Trump 1.0: > While watching the news coverage of Steve Bannon’s initial appearance in federal court on Monday, I kept thinking about his 2018 confession to the acclaimed writer Michael Lewis. His quote is like a compass that orients this crazy era of American politics. “The Democrats don’t matter,” Bannon told Lewis. “The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.” > That’s the Bannon business model: Flood the zone. Stink up the joint. As Jonathan Rauch once said, citing Bannon’s infamous quote, “This is not about persuasion: This is about disorientation.” * https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/16/media/steve-bannon-reliable-sources https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/16/media/steve-bannon-reliable-s... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Bannon#Political_ideology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Bannon#Political_ideolog...