In Soviet Russia, Bubba blow you!
Why don’t we start to do this in reverse? “Я гей-фермер из Владивостока. Я поддерживаю слом системы.”
Not sure whether this is serious, but to provide a serious answer: you can’t create a healthy democracy by spreading misinformation. Misinformation that’s aligned with your agenda might help push it in the short term, but it also undermines trust (in this case trust in what the average person is saying, since you can’t tell who genuine participants in a discussion are). In a low trust environment, people tend to gravitate toward big personalities and believe sources and make decisions based on their own gut feelings (i.e. their personal prejudices) rather than on things like people’s real experiences and accurate information from trusted institutions.
Demagogues like Putin thrive in this environment because ultimately they don’t have (or care about) solutions to the average person’s problems. They get by based on personality, stoking prejudice etc. But policies that are based on the truth and what the average person actually needs suffer.
That’s part of why russia is like this actually. Propaganda both pro and anti soviet wasn’t telling the whole truth and shit got weird
It was a joke. I lived and worked in Russia for some years. I understand that the country has more fundamental problems to resolve.
you can’t create a healthy democracy by spreading misinformation
You use this to build a case that Russia is the side with an unhealthy democracy. Categorically, it is 100% misinformation that Russia was not provoked into defending itself as a result of Ukrainian puppet nationalist leadership installed by the US. That we walk around thinking “healthy democracies have sub 40% approval for their rulership” and any country with 80%+ approval can only be a dictatorship is another massive level of misinformation.
Walking around thinking pure demonic warmongering lies is reality is by far the most destructive misinformation bubble you can possibly support. Sleepwalking through your rulerships’ “healthy democracy” by internalizing their right to supremacism is guaranteeing your submission to their pillaging of country.
That propaganda won’t work comrade Ivan, we all know there no gay farmers in Vladivostok. Our wise government made sure of it!
But yeah, jokes aside, it’s currently a crime to support LGBT in russia. Being gay = being rebel against regime, cause real rebels either already dead, in prison or fled. Next in line, if I would guess, would be jews I think.
Do you mean propagandise the Russian population? The West is already doing it by way of Radio Free Europe, NED and other NGOs. It is not a discussion that comes up often, but on occasions Russian trolls will bring up about color revolutions in Russian sphere of influence that advocate for democratic reforms, which is catalysed by the West through said media and institutions. Hence, for the Russian jingoists and Kremlin, their own propaganda against the West is justified. But if you ask the trolls what is objectively bad with promoting democracy? You will get crickets. That is certainly better than propping up illiberal and regressive groups.
what is objectively bad with promoting democracy?
Because calling a US puppet regime democracy, doesn’t actually lead to liberal peace values. As in Ukraine and Georgia, it lead to immediate war for purposes of diminishing Russia. Democracy has turned into “empty branding” for establishment rule.
You’re talking about CIA-orchestrated coups and without popular support. Almost all color revolutions tend to be grass roots movement, albeit have soft power influence from outside.
Almost all color revolutions tend to be grass roots movement, albeit have soft power influence from outside.
Contradictory. Soft power with lots of money gets lots of influence. Where any revolution can cause destabilization that favours CIA agenda/control, it will get funded. Opinion that “more trade with EU would be nice” gets funded into protests. Black flag nazi executions of protesters get narrated as Governmnent executions, and the protest frenzy causes a coup.
In Georgia and Ukraine, or just taking the Ukraine example, Maidan liberalism received no governance representation whatsover inside coup government. Only nationalists who would provoke a war on Russia got power. So there is 0 link between the substance of popular complaints, and the resulting evil of transforming complaints into CIA agenda.
K comrade.
In this exact case you will be washed away with a wave of homophoby. Because in Russia, many people with otherwise sane and non-destructive views are still homophobic. To compare with some other country, I would say it’s something like in Turkey.
So if I was trying to improve Russian society through “good kind of propaganda”(not sure it’s a thing), I would start from something else, and not from this problematic topic. Otherwise if will be generally harder to find wide support.
And when I’m thinking of that, homophobia in Russia is just a result of people “worrying too much about other people’s shit” - everyone knows how you should or shouldn’t live, and ready to tell you about it. So if you work on that in general, that would help.
You have been banned from lemmy(dot)ml for Russophobia!
О нет! Думаешь, администратор возьмет взятку?
“Warm water port”
Online campaigns to shift geopolitical agenda are deeper and far more vast than just the big numbers.
Ah, yes. As a patriotic American I love our warm water ports like Corpus Christi and Tampa. Don’t you love warm water ports as well?
Can someone explain this? I’ve never heard the the term referring to anything other than a port that doesn’t freeze over but it clearly has another meaning that I can’t figure out or even find with a search.
It’s a real geopolitical problem for Russia. Russia got screwed by geography in terms of natural harbors that don’t freeze over in the winter. It’s why they’ve always had a crap navy, going way back into the imperial days.
Right now, the Russian Navy is based in Murmansk (brrrr. limited routes to get out into Atlantic) and the Black Sea. The Black Sea is bad for them because Turkey (a NATO member) makes sure to maintain total control of what passes through the Bosphorous.
Part of what Russia did in Syria during the civil war netted them a lease on a base on the Mediterranean. That could have had some use for power projection, but I think they lost it when a certain opthalmologist was expelled.
Anyhow, it’s hilarious when the trolls posing as MAGA Americans bring this up, because real Americans just take their total abundance of ports that don’t freeze over completely for granted. That’s why I point out secondary, less busy port cities on the Gulf of Mexico, where the water is actually pretty warm (instead of just not freezing over). Just to highlight how good the US has it. Even if we were forced to give up Norfolk and Coronado, there are plenty of other suitable places we could have naval bases.
Very interesting! Thank you!
is it maybe that americans don’t think in those terms, but it is more relevant to russian strategic thinking, becuase they don’t have those?
Anyone who’s from Youngstown immediately knows it’s fake because the steel industry died there about 50 years ago or so and it’s never recovered. It’s depressing as hell.
I hate this shit the problems with America and its oppression isn’t primarily due to scary “foreigners” its homegrown and refusing to confront it as such makes it impossible to destroy and feeds into warmongering and xenophobia.
While I think there is a huge honegrown issue, the foreign influence is another gigantic problem that can’t be ignored and it was just 100% proven.
It is possible to care about multiple things at a time
Issues like this are systemic and need to be looked at in at a macro as opposed to a micro way.
if a weed helps an invasive but native species grow, whose fault is it?
it’s the rich assholes fault that keep telling us that it’s the grass’ fault for growing that caused the invasive species to spread.
who planted the weeds? the rich.
Foreigners are just the “others” used by the elites to point the tribalist weak minded morons towards somebody else whilst the very much local elites pillage the place.
And this is not just done to the MAGA muppets: notice the whole bitching and moaning about “foreign interference” from the rest - guess what, the influence of the likes of Russia and even China have in countries like the US is fucking nothing next to that of the local traditional fatcats owning the Press and Tech-bros owning social media or even in relative terms that cultivated by the kind of Propaganda ops we see in action here in the most popular Lemmy.world forums.
Fuck, if you want to worry about Foreign Actors, look at how Israel got most of the West, especially the US, to basically destroy in non-aligned countries at least half a fucking century of cultivate image of being Rule Of Law abiding and Freedom Promoting, which amongst other things resulted in some of those now turning towards Russia or China - all this shit to protected the fucking modern day Nazis whilst they get off from murdering little brow children.
The supposed Leftwing of the US (but not really: in World terms the Democrats are a hard Right party, just ultra Capitalist Neolibs rather than Fascists) are just as much doing the whole “it’s those scary foreigners” smoke and mirrors show to turn the mob eyes away from their sponsors as the Fascists, it’s just that in their propaganda the cartoonish bad guys are “state actors” rather than “immigrants”.
And all the fucking shit in the US (not just the propaganda but its use to distract the crowd from the pillaging by the likes of the Finance Industry, “realestate investors” and other parasites) is leaking to the rest of the World and accelerating the shitstorm elsewhere.
It’s fucking foreign grifters, because in the present day you can make money from being an “influencer”: all that fucking shit in the US has attracted every Techology savy, English-speaking scammer in the World because every fucking asshole with a computer and an Internet connection in his mother’s basement in bumfuck shitty-shit town in frigging Romenia can make more money in a day as an “influencer” feeding prejudiced, socially inept, delusions-of-grandeur-holding Americans with outrage that they can in a month working whatever job is available for them in shitty-shit nowehere-ville.
(Ditty for American grifters, by the way)
It’s targetting mainly the MAGAs because they’re the less intellectually capable population segment in the US, hence make for much easier marks.
Populism-dominated America together with the ability for “remote work” on the Internet and how one can make money from views has led to a fucking freeding frenzy for every tech-abled scammer with an internet connection and decent English-speaking skills in the World.
I bet this whole phenomenon is mainly a “emergent property” of the rewards and access structures in place in Social Media and that the top-down organised ops from state actors are but a tiny fraction of this shit show.
foreign grifters
I think its far more likely for GOP/MAGA to be buying twitter “engagement” on Fiver, than grifters “launching influencer careers” by directing MAGA fans to their other socials? or spamming affiliate purchase links on twitter?
A key question/reality check is that instead of treating MAGA fanaticism as foreign agent propaganda, it is GOP propaganda outsourced to cheapest providers.
There is a lot of foreign support for Trump among foreigners and immigrants (prior to elections anyway). What they all have in common is a hatred for the US, and a deep thirst for trans/woke outrage click bait. While it doesn’t affect foreigners in any good way, “at least he’s doing a great job on the mexican rapist invaders” is only point of approval support remaining. Really, where Trump fanaticism was resurected was purely on anger towards a trans inclusive world order. Every other policy is just brainwashing people who come for the anti-trans circlejerk, but stay for the tax cuts for oligarch climate terrorists.
Por qué no los dos?
It’s targetting mainly the MAGAs because they’re the less intellectually capable population
I’ve seen a flood of “I’m a Palestinian who is struggling to survive, please send me money” posts and PMs on BlueSky and Instagram and other liberal-leaning social media. Folks love to believe their team is the “smarties” and the opposition is the “dummies”. Nobody likes to believe they’d be ripe for exploitation.
Consequently, your refusal to believe in your own gullibility and bias opens you up to scammers.
I bet this whole phenomenon is mainly a “emergent property” of the rewards and access structures in place in Social Media and that the top-down organised ops from state actors are but a tiny fraction of this shit show.
Like everything else capitalist, it starts out as an independent venture and congeals into national industry as the rate of return grows. The modern era of internet scamming is just the latest in a long history of affinity scams and MLM schemes. People are drawn in out of fear, confusion, and desperation. And because the better scammers know to tip their political overclass, these scam factories tend to be insulated from any kind of regulation or public prosecution.
People who have a higher level of Education and have to think for a living are less prone to fall for pure lies + strong displays of emotion and instead tend to fall for context/information-control scams + pushing of subconscious buttons, and as it so happens the Republicans tend to use more the former kind of scam whilst the Democrats the latter (none of which “my” “team” as I’m not even American).
As it so happens, outright lies and emotional raging are far more accessible for foreign scammers than the more subtle kinds of manipulation (which are more common in the Press: for example how in most of the Press in the Israeli Gaza Genocide, Israelis are “killed” whilst Palestinians merely “die”).
I totally agree with the rest of your post. Widespread scamming is a natural thing in Capitalism.
The whole emergent property element is how, due to in the modern age external scammers that aren’t even directly involved in US politics and thus don’t gain from side A or side B being able to still make money from view alone, as a group they have had a systemic impact in the use politics - those individual actions of individuals who aren’t actually organized (as they’re not even in those political parties) combined to do (or at least accelerate) a systemic change in the politics of the US.
Maybe (probably?) scams around politics in Capitalism also do combine in an emergent way from bottom up to shape each nations’ politics as a whole, but this is the first time a large fraction of the actors in that don’t directly gain from being in politics or receiving political patronage, and instead merely gain from using rage to get attention (more specifically, clicks), and I believe that has caused something else to emerge from it at a systemic level than what there was before since these people care even less about the possible destruction that their actions might cause since they themselves will never suffer from it.
People who have a higher level of Education and have to think for a living are less prone to fall for pure lies + strong displays of emotion
That’s simply not true. Education does not negate emotion. Nor does it negate the consequences of old age or the erosive effect of decades of propaganda. Hell, “education” in the abstract isn’t even well-defined. You get a degree from Liberty University and you’re not going to come out more Woke than some kid with a GED busting ass in the dockworker’s union or organizing Starbucks and Walmart workers.
I believe that has caused something else to emerge from it at a systemic level than what there was before since these people care even less about the possible destruction that their actions might cause since they themselves will never suffer from it.
Definitely not good to see people farther and farther removed from the ramifications of their actions. That said, this is right in line with the 19th century quackery and fly-by-night scams that plagued the laisse-faire economy of the era.
I wouldn’t say its creating a new ideology so much as resurrecting an old one.
I grew up in a country which is weird: it’s a mix of people from the old generation who mainly have basic education and then the next generation over has a high proportion of University educated (this, by the way, applies to my extended family).
The latter simply have a higher tendency for thinking before reacting (even though they’re the younger ones) which is much rarer in the former. Doesn’t mean the latter don’t have emotion, it means they’re less prone to unthinkingly react on emotion alone.
I’ve also seen a similar effect in other countries I lived in.
In my experience and as you say, Education doesn’t negate emotion, what it does is make people more prone to first think (which might mean they stop themselves) rather than immediatelly react on emotion alone.
In addition to that it also gives people a larger based of information to, when they think, judge things in a more informed way.
So, repeating myself, the more highly Educated are not immune to being scammed, they’re just more resilent to simpler scams because there’s they have a higher tendency to think rather than just blindly react. If you want to scam people who tend to think and have a broader base of information, you have to be more subtle (hence, as I pointed out, using techniques like a lot of the “progressive” Press like The Guardian or the New York Times uses in their Gaza coverage such as subtly portraying Israel and Israelis as more important and trustworthy - they “are killed” and their authorities “say” - and Palestinians as less so - they “die” and their authorities “claim” - the kind of subtle manipulation anchored on modern psychology technique which you don’t see in less highbrow media.
By the way, life experience (emphasys on “experience” - merelly being old doesn’t count) confers the same effect of tending to stop and think before plunging into things.
That said, I’ve seen plenty of highly educated people react in stupid ways driven by emotion, it’s just less likely.
I wonder if anyone feels like having some fun by combing through fox news and presidential retweets to find instances of overseas influencers fucking with our politicians.
You can tell it isn’t real because everyone in Youngstown in a mafioso
Live in Youngstown. It is a full of Midwestern turds. They should have flushed the whole city down the toilet when the steel left.
Live in Youngstown.
Man I’m sorry
My uncle was locked up there for a little while
I am maga from Texas, I say we secede from librul states, we have all we need, like warm-water port for naval and industry.
I love that Lemmy is building its own collection of epic moments.
Hey, the pay is good and they don’t have to go to the front line and die in Ukraine.
That’s odd. He’s not saying genocide is wrong. I’ve been assured by lemmy’s pro-genocide centrists that this is the sole criterion by which to identify a russian.
EDIT: the downvotes are from centrists who can’t find any anti-genocide sentiment among the actual foeign influence peddlers.
I can’t wait for this to be the new thought terminating cliche of neolibs. Remember when they said we’d all be turned off after the election? And post election no one would care about Gaza?
Love that projection from them.
And the added pain to work the night shift in order to react timely.
And people fall for it and regulators allow it.
“People fall for it”
checks the accounts of people responding positively to the post
they’re all bots
Nyet
