The article makes a big deal about the craft of persuasion (tailoring speeches and memes to foreigners to take account of local history, culture, and sensibilities) and trying to give Ukraine credit for doing such a good job at it.
To me, the real answer is that the Western establishments have been fighting a proxy conflict against Russia for years, Western Media got their marching orders about what side to tell people to support, and a public that was bored with Season 2 of Covid seamlessly adopted The Next Current Thing they were told to support without skipping a beat.
Yeah, no. There is no need to listen to what the media tells us, we can ask our still living grandparents about the attrocities the russians did in the second world war. They were worse than the nazis.
Western media in most western countries isn’t state controlled, and so heavily influenced by public sentiment, not the other way around. Russia never really had a chance in the war of public opinion in the west: whenever they attack other countries they are just assumed to be the bad guys. But really, being the aggressor in most of their incidents is not a good look.
I get it, Russians really believe as you do about western societies, that somehow Biden controls FoxNews from behind the shadows, or that somehow Trump banned himself on Twitter. But if you think about the cases where government, social media, and traditional media have come into conflict, centralized government control really doesn’t add up.
But which one runs which? Democrats get as angry at twitter as much as republicans do. It seems like Twitter is run for…profit alone rather than catering to either one of those parties.
> Either way neither one runs an egalitarian swiss style direct democracy.
Having lived in Switzerland before, that sounds like a bit of an exaggeration.
>being the aggressor in most of their incidents is not a good look
Aggression is very much narrative based. There are very few conflicts in real life that didnt involve an extremely long chain of provocations and counter provocations with each side playing down their own provocations and playing up the other's. In this sense nobody is 'truly' an aggressor when they tell their own story.
In the case of America's unbridled aggression against Afghanistan there was 90% public support & 55% in iraq so apparently sometimes the look of unbridled aggression is good. I dont know why we'd expect the Russian public to be full of hippy peaceniks when our aggressive imperialism can enjoy such widespread support.
Western media might not be state controlled but it is all essentially controlled by a very limited number set of oligarchic power centers vying for power. The net effect is pretty similar. The example given here, is, in any case state controlled - the BBC is essentially little more than a western RT since david kelly.
> America's unbridled aggression against Afghanistan there was 90% public support
To characterize the US invasion of Afghanistan as “unbridled aggression” is a gross misrepresentation to the point of being a sign of unreasonable partisanship at the very least. The reason it had 90% public support as well as participation from NATO and other US allies is because there was proof that Afghanistan was a state sponsor of the 9/11 attacks on US soil. A military response was warranted which precludes “unbridled aggression” as a description by any good faith commentary. Criticism of the strategy of occupation and regime change as containing aspects of aggression, that is definitely reasonable.
>To characterize the US invasion of Afghanistan as “unbridled aggression” is a gross misrepresentation to the point of being a sign of unreasonable partisanship
Americans are not typically aware of it (this is relevant to what I said about our provocations being downplayed), but the Taliban offered to hand UBL over if we supplied evidence of his guilt and put him on trial in a neutral country.
Meanwhile, if you take your righteous indignation about what I said about Afghanistan you will have a template of a rough idea of how the average Russian feels about Ukraine. Were you born in Russia your views would probably align.
The Taliban's offer was obviously not in good faith. They were playing for time, and would never have handed over Bin Laden no matter what proof we showed them.
> This a link to the Wikipedia article on propaganda.
It is not.
It is a link to a Wikipedia article summarizing Herman and Chomsky's propaganda model. If you are genuinely curious why people argue that US mass media is state controlled, you would be hard pressed to find a better starting point than that page. You are not genuinely curious though, so feel free to move on.
Still haven't answered my very simple question. Just drifting off topic.
You are right, I had already forgotten what the link was about. It's a Wikipedia article unrelated to my question. Unless you can demonstrate how this article demonstrate that media are state controlled in the "western world". Also please feel free to define "western world", this might actually be interesting as I might then be able to find a country not on your list and hence a media not state controlled, according to your theory.
1. You are slightly hindered to access Russia Today at most, either this or you are technically very incompetent for someone hanging around on HN. It is highly unlikely you are actually not able to load this page, rather you pretend you can't to support your theory. Seriously, just lookup "how to access RT in Europe". What a horribly crap job European countries would be doing if they were not blocking this kind of searches, don't you think?
2. Thousands of media sources from Asia, Africa, America, Europe, are perfectly reachable for you. One is (barely) blocked and you assume a conspiracy. I think you don't understand how state control works. Go live in China or Russia and let me know how many international news outlet you can read. This is actual state control.
Do you see any media in the EU supporting the Russian intervention in Ukraine, that wasn't censored for it?
We've already established that RT was censored, and it's clear they aren't the only ones. People have already been arrested and fined for such things.
Hell, even here just mentioning these things I'm getting my replies pruned...
That's state control over media, no matter how much you want to ignore it.
I can assure you the CCP doesn't pre-approve every cake recipe that gets published. They just censor the things that are a priority for them, just like the EU is currently censoring the things that are a priority for them (right now ukraine, before covid, etc...)
It is a well known fact media outlets in France are terrorised by the german police and never would date to criticize it. Same for all other EU members of course.
Seriously how do you explain there is a single media outlet peddling this point of view?
In the last 20 years the US government has exerted more control over the press by denying access to outlets that are more critical. The department of justice has been more aggressive in going after outlets that publish confidential information. Many government officials and politicians go on to work for outlets, compromising their independence.
Denying access? Well, they quit allowing them into presidential press conferences. That's a very very minor "denying access".
They didn't deport them all. They didn't arrest them all. They didn't prohibit those outlets operating in the US. They restricted their access to official government sources (executive branch only, so far as I have seen).
Well, if you want the truth about what's going on, a presidential press conference might not be the most trustworthy source anyway...
In West we have a superior system where the interests of elites naturally align, so there is less need of forceful control. The effect however is exactly the same. Msm always just toots the elite aporoved narrative. There's not even a pretense of and disagreement in any meaningful subject.
The whole purpose of NATO is being anti Russia and we've been expanding it despite our initial promises toward Russia.
It's a basic tactic of "keep kicking the dog until it finally bites you, which is a perfect excuse to shoot it dead".
But a typical western msm watcher is too distracted and dumb to notice as it is being used over and over again in different situations.
It’s not that simple: in the west we lack authoritarian leaders that stifle all the competition so that one viewpoint prevails. Instead, their are multiple “MSM”s with competing narratives, to the point that there is no unified narrative at all. Disagreement is simply the norm, and it is the lack of agreement that makes our media look weird to Russians, Chinese, and so on.
I missed the point when Ukraine was inducted into NATO, making the Russian invasion completely valid and understandable. Ok, that’s sarcastic, but it makes my point that the Russian reasoning for this war was simply never going to fly, even if western media presents them exactly as Russian media does, they are still going to sound distasteful.
> Western media in most western countries isn’t state controlled...
Have to disagree. Western media and big tech have been very willing to control information flow to suit the desires of politicians if they are from the right political party. Considering how effective internet companies are at blocking things, I suspect that low-effort information searches online are more censored for Americans than they are for Russians.
Who knew that when the Russians actually start attacking the west, some of the people who prided themselves in fighting communism are suddenly doing their best to undermine anyone who opposes Russia.
It's not pro-Russia to aspire towards de-escalating a situation that could lead into nuclear war.
If you want to talk about stereotypical priorities, you have about 90% of HackerNews in a constant state of panic about the existential threat of the planet maybe getting a couple of degrees warmer over a century but seem to reject nothing but escalation into full nuclear war. How good is nuclear war for the environment?
Russia thinks the cold war never ended and is extremely bitter about losing their empire. All western nations would have been content continuing to buy their oil and gas and couldn’t care less about Russia otherwise. This idea that the west is in a grand conspiracy and proxy war against Russia is completely missing the mark.
This is one of the most pointless and unnecessary war, fully instigated by a dying imperial power. They are very good at propaganda and sowing dissension in western countries who are very vulnerable to it due to their openness. This particular war just exposed what a sand castle the whole thing is, looks like Putin just believed his own propaganda too much.
> This is one of the most pointless and unnecessary war, fully instigated by a dying imperial power.
Agree with dying imperial power. But the war was not "pointless". Putin saw an opening. The way out of "dying imperial power" was to reconstitute the former Russian Empire (temporarily known under the name of Soviet Union). Bismark made Germany great by conquest. Germany fought 3 wars during his time (vs Austria, Denmark and France) and won all of them. All of them were instigated by Bismark, none was a defensive war. After these 3 wars, Germany was more than double in population.
If Putin could have conquered Ukraine in a matter of days/weeks, then all the other former Soviet republics would have folded in a matter of a few short years, and with this Russia would have doubled its population.
Putin's big blunder was to not know how inept (and corrupt) his own military was. All the talk about NATO aggression was just a pretext. He was simply hoping to quickly finish the job and present the West a new "fait accompli", just like what he did with Crimea.
We are actually very lucky that Putin let corruption fester inside his military.
For the benefit of future authoritarian, empire-hungry leaders, letʼs correct the historical lesson Bismarck & Co. can provide:
- The first of the three wars was a reaction against Denmarkʼs attempt at annexing Schleswig. Prussia and Austria won the war on behalf of the so-called “Deutscher Bund” ‘German Federation’, a rather loose federation of states. It actually was a defensive war: against an on-going forced annexation.
- The second war was Prussia against Austria – not Germany against Austria; in fact, the majority of the German Federation was on Austriaʼs side, which lost the war.
- The third war was declared and started by the French emperor (after a public outcry in France over an alleged insult by the Prussian king, it was a ridiculous matter) with the objective to annex more of the German regions to the left of the Rhine. So it certainly was a defensive one.
This is often misunderstood because the wars were of use to Bismarckʼs policy. But he was not able to telepathically force the Danish king or the French emperor to their aggressive policies. He just had an uncanny ability to foresee peopleʼs actions, especially their stupid ones, and to align his policy with what he had foreseen. And of course it was necessary that the wars then were won, which was mainly Moltkeʼs work as far as the mere military matters were concerned. But the victories, especially in the first and third war, depended also on allies and benevolently neutral parties Bismarck won for his side.
So the lesson here would be: Donʼt start a war, you have to wait until you can credibly claim to be attacked; wage war from the position of the defender.
(Besides: “After these 3 wars, Germany was more than double in population” doesnʼt make sense: Before the war, the Germany that was after the war didnʼt exist in the first place; and the Germany after the war was rather “little–Germany”: the realization of the “kleindeutsche Lösung” ‘little-German solution’ because Austria was out.)
> So the lesson here would be: Donʼt start a war, you have to wait until you can credibly claim to be attacked; wage war from the position of the defender.
No, not really. The real lesson is: Win the wars that you start. Bismark did that, Putin is not able to. That's Putin's big mistake.
No, Bismarck didnʼt, because he didnʼt start them (esp. not No. 1 and 3), and he could win them – among other reasons – because he didnʼt start them (that was the point about allies and benevolent neutral parties). As I said, this is often misunderstood, tragically so by William II.
In the case of Bismark, the allies and benevolent parties were not so because they were sold on Bismark's theater. They were so because of the cold calculus of self-interest. In the 1850's Prussia was seen as a second rate power, not that threatening. The other powers thought they have more to gain than to lose if Prussia nibbles at the expense of others. In 1870, Prussia was already dangerously close to being a great power, so France attacked. The other powers miscalculated, and thought that France being the bigger dog in that fight, it's not such a big deal if it gets a bloody nose. Few could foresee that Prussia will become the giant of 40 years later that could threaten pretty much all the others combined.
Before WW1 the calculus of war was quite simple:
- Austria was on the decline. It was threatened by both Germany and Russia. They chose to ally themselves with Germany which they perceived as the lesser of the two dangers
- Russia was growing. They were threatened by Germany. They allied themselves with France and later the UK in the Triple Entante.
- France was declining. Germany was their natural enemy, not amount of diplomacy could change that. On top of that, they still felt the sting of the 1872 defeat.
- Germany was growing. They were on the verge of becoming hegemon. They knew that France and Russia would like to attack it from both sides. They perceived that if they attack first, they stand a better chance to get a better deal in the end
- UK was slightly on the decline. They used to be the undisputed hegemon of the seas, but now the new German High Sea Fleet was becoming a real nuisance. If Germany were to win the continental wars (like Napoleon 100 years earlier), they were going to be in big trouble. It did not take them long to figure out on which side they should fight (despite all the royal family connections).
- the Ottoman empire. They were not a great power anymore. Still, if they perceived a threat, it was mostly from the Russian empire, which had had for about three hundred years the nasty habit to keep chomping at their territories
Putin's situation was much simpler. There are only 2 superpowers around, the US and China. The US will be against whatever adventure Russia tries. As for China, it will be ok with such adventures, provided they don't become a headache for itself. Putin did a pilgrimage to kiss the Sultan's hand, and that was that. He even went beyond the minimal task of securing China's approval, one way or another he also secured India's (tacit) approval.
“[…] not so because they were sold on Bismar[c]k's theater.” Actually they were sold, and it wasnʼt just theater (‘this man means what he says’), but of course it was indeed the cold calculus of self-interest – that was one of the things Bismarck took into account in his complex calculus. And maybe we can even call it “theater”: in the sense a tightrope walk is, with which Bismarck compared the art of politics.
To be clear: I agree with your main point regarding the present war; I just think that specifically the “Einigungskriege” are not a good analogy, that they are quite unlike Putinʼs war, even before the question of defeat or victory comes into play.
You have shifted the focus to WW1, and I think your analysis of the power relations before WW1 is completely convincing (given the usual allowances due to brevity). (Nitpick: 1872 → 1871)
Also to add that most people (or maybe just a significant portion) in Russian don’t even support the invasion. IMO it has nothing to do with social media tactics, but rather that the invasion is just not popular with anyone besides Russian bureaucrats
The article describes how Ukraine is putting more effort into online propagandizing toward than Russia is toward Ukraine. Is that by itself winning? There isn't much discussion of effectiveness and probably can't be without extensive polling.
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[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 169 ms ] threadTo me, the real answer is that the Western establishments have been fighting a proxy conflict against Russia for years, Western Media got their marching orders about what side to tell people to support, and a public that was bored with Season 2 of Covid seamlessly adopted The Next Current Thing they were told to support without skipping a beat.
You’re sounding conspiratorial. You need to provide some evidence for your claims.
In spite of your sly misimplication, both systems are far more alike than they are similar to, say, an egalitarian swiss style direct democracy.
> Either way neither one runs an egalitarian swiss style direct democracy.
Having lived in Switzerland before, that sounds like a bit of an exaggeration.
There are probably more.
1. https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-and-twitter-censorship-al...
2. https://news.yahoo.com/mark-zuckerberg-tells-joe-rogan-20573...
Let's hope the outcome of the lawsuits are widely known, reported fairly by the media, and taken seriously.
Aggression is very much narrative based. There are very few conflicts in real life that didnt involve an extremely long chain of provocations and counter provocations with each side playing down their own provocations and playing up the other's. In this sense nobody is 'truly' an aggressor when they tell their own story.
In the case of America's unbridled aggression against Afghanistan there was 90% public support & 55% in iraq so apparently sometimes the look of unbridled aggression is good. I dont know why we'd expect the Russian public to be full of hippy peaceniks when our aggressive imperialism can enjoy such widespread support.
Western media might not be state controlled but it is all essentially controlled by a very limited number set of oligarchic power centers vying for power. The net effect is pretty similar. The example given here, is, in any case state controlled - the BBC is essentially little more than a western RT since david kelly.
To characterize the US invasion of Afghanistan as “unbridled aggression” is a gross misrepresentation to the point of being a sign of unreasonable partisanship at the very least. The reason it had 90% public support as well as participation from NATO and other US allies is because there was proof that Afghanistan was a state sponsor of the 9/11 attacks on US soil. A military response was warranted which precludes “unbridled aggression” as a description by any good faith commentary. Criticism of the strategy of occupation and regime change as containing aspects of aggression, that is definitely reasonable.
Americans are not typically aware of it (this is relevant to what I said about our provocations being downplayed), but the Taliban offered to hand UBL over if we supplied evidence of his guilt and put him on trial in a neutral country.
Meanwhile, if you take your righteous indignation about what I said about Afghanistan you will have a template of a rough idea of how the average Russian feels about Ukraine. Were you born in Russia your views would probably align.
Officially, you are right.
Sending me the definition of propaganda seems to indicate you think I don't know what propaganda is, I find this assumption very audacious on HN.
It is not.
It is a link to a Wikipedia article summarizing Herman and Chomsky's propaganda model. If you are genuinely curious why people argue that US mass media is state controlled, you would be hard pressed to find a better starting point than that page. You are not genuinely curious though, so feel free to move on.
You are right, I had already forgotten what the link was about. It's a Wikipedia article unrelated to my question. Unless you can demonstrate how this article demonstrate that media are state controlled in the "western world". Also please feel free to define "western world", this might actually be interesting as I might then be able to find a country not on your list and hence a media not state controlled, according to your theory.
You are saying the Russia Today has a different opinion? This is your source?
> Western media in most western countries isn’t state controlled
What is the relation between you being allegedly censored (as it appears you publish on Russia Today) and this?
I really enjoy the irony of this because if there is one medium which really is state controlled, it's RT.
Censorship isn't just being prevented to speak, but also being prevented from listening.
This is merely a method through which the EU is controlling speech, just like the authoritarians they decry
I will entertain your off topic point.
1. You are slightly hindered to access Russia Today at most, either this or you are technically very incompetent for someone hanging around on HN. It is highly unlikely you are actually not able to load this page, rather you pretend you can't to support your theory. Seriously, just lookup "how to access RT in Europe". What a horribly crap job European countries would be doing if they were not blocking this kind of searches, don't you think?
2. Thousands of media sources from Asia, Africa, America, Europe, are perfectly reachable for you. One is (barely) blocked and you assume a conspiracy. I think you don't understand how state control works. Go live in China or Russia and let me know how many international news outlet you can read. This is actual state control.
> Western media in most western countries isn’t state controlled
Still waiting on your take. So far you have drifted off on all directions, maybe I made the mistake of indulging it. Let's go back on topic.
We've already established that RT was censored, and it's clear they aren't the only ones. People have already been arrested and fined for such things.
Hell, even here just mentioning these things I'm getting my replies pruned...
That's state control over media, no matter how much you want to ignore it.
I can assure you the CCP doesn't pre-approve every cake recipe that gets published. They just censor the things that are a priority for them, just like the EU is currently censoring the things that are a priority for them (right now ukraine, before covid, etc...)
You can't make a rule out of one media outlet.
https://m.dw.com/en/german-police-probe-displays-of-support-...
Seriously how do you explain there is a single media outlet peddling this point of view?
They didn't deport them all. They didn't arrest them all. They didn't prohibit those outlets operating in the US. They restricted their access to official government sources (executive branch only, so far as I have seen).
Well, if you want the truth about what's going on, a presidential press conference might not be the most trustworthy source anyway...
The whole purpose of NATO is being anti Russia and we've been expanding it despite our initial promises toward Russia.
It's a basic tactic of "keep kicking the dog until it finally bites you, which is a perfect excuse to shoot it dead".
But a typical western msm watcher is too distracted and dumb to notice as it is being used over and over again in different situations.
I missed the point when Ukraine was inducted into NATO, making the Russian invasion completely valid and understandable. Ok, that’s sarcastic, but it makes my point that the Russian reasoning for this war was simply never going to fly, even if western media presents them exactly as Russian media does, they are still going to sound distasteful.
Have to disagree. Western media and big tech have been very willing to control information flow to suit the desires of politicians if they are from the right political party. Considering how effective internet companies are at blocking things, I suspect that low-effort information searches online are more censored for Americans than they are for Russians.
Who knew that when the Russians actually start attacking the west, some of the people who prided themselves in fighting communism are suddenly doing their best to undermine anyone who opposes Russia.
If you want to talk about stereotypical priorities, you have about 90% of HackerNews in a constant state of panic about the existential threat of the planet maybe getting a couple of degrees warmer over a century but seem to reject nothing but escalation into full nuclear war. How good is nuclear war for the environment?
Or, it's just pro-russia talk masqueraded as "peace talk".
This is one of the most pointless and unnecessary war, fully instigated by a dying imperial power. They are very good at propaganda and sowing dissension in western countries who are very vulnerable to it due to their openness. This particular war just exposed what a sand castle the whole thing is, looks like Putin just believed his own propaganda too much.
Agree with dying imperial power. But the war was not "pointless". Putin saw an opening. The way out of "dying imperial power" was to reconstitute the former Russian Empire (temporarily known under the name of Soviet Union). Bismark made Germany great by conquest. Germany fought 3 wars during his time (vs Austria, Denmark and France) and won all of them. All of them were instigated by Bismark, none was a defensive war. After these 3 wars, Germany was more than double in population.
If Putin could have conquered Ukraine in a matter of days/weeks, then all the other former Soviet republics would have folded in a matter of a few short years, and with this Russia would have doubled its population.
Putin's big blunder was to not know how inept (and corrupt) his own military was. All the talk about NATO aggression was just a pretext. He was simply hoping to quickly finish the job and present the West a new "fait accompli", just like what he did with Crimea.
We are actually very lucky that Putin let corruption fester inside his military.
- The first of the three wars was a reaction against Denmarkʼs attempt at annexing Schleswig. Prussia and Austria won the war on behalf of the so-called “Deutscher Bund” ‘German Federation’, a rather loose federation of states. It actually was a defensive war: against an on-going forced annexation.
- The second war was Prussia against Austria – not Germany against Austria; in fact, the majority of the German Federation was on Austriaʼs side, which lost the war.
- The third war was declared and started by the French emperor (after a public outcry in France over an alleged insult by the Prussian king, it was a ridiculous matter) with the objective to annex more of the German regions to the left of the Rhine. So it certainly was a defensive one.
This is often misunderstood because the wars were of use to Bismarckʼs policy. But he was not able to telepathically force the Danish king or the French emperor to their aggressive policies. He just had an uncanny ability to foresee peopleʼs actions, especially their stupid ones, and to align his policy with what he had foreseen. And of course it was necessary that the wars then were won, which was mainly Moltkeʼs work as far as the mere military matters were concerned. But the victories, especially in the first and third war, depended also on allies and benevolently neutral parties Bismarck won for his side.
So the lesson here would be: Donʼt start a war, you have to wait until you can credibly claim to be attacked; wage war from the position of the defender.
(Besides: “After these 3 wars, Germany was more than double in population” doesnʼt make sense: Before the war, the Germany that was after the war didnʼt exist in the first place; and the Germany after the war was rather “little–Germany”: the realization of the “kleindeutsche Lösung” ‘little-German solution’ because Austria was out.)
No, not really. The real lesson is: Win the wars that you start. Bismark did that, Putin is not able to. That's Putin's big mistake.
Before WW1 the calculus of war was quite simple:
Putin's situation was much simpler. There are only 2 superpowers around, the US and China. The US will be against whatever adventure Russia tries. As for China, it will be ok with such adventures, provided they don't become a headache for itself. Putin did a pilgrimage to kiss the Sultan's hand, and that was that. He even went beyond the minimal task of securing China's approval, one way or another he also secured India's (tacit) approval.To be clear: I agree with your main point regarding the present war; I just think that specifically the “Einigungskriege” are not a good analogy, that they are quite unlike Putinʼs war, even before the question of defeat or victory comes into play.
You have shifted the focus to WW1, and I think your analysis of the power relations before WW1 is completely convincing (given the usual allowances due to brevity). (Nitpick: 1872 → 1871)
Not really because they care about urkriane, but are worried where Putin will invade next after this?
He has already mentioned Moldavia, Poland and parts of Sweden belong to him. What did you expect?