I have family who got sucked into Q-related stuff, and this kind of over-the-top ominous imagery is all over the telegram channels they are addicted to.
Many people in these circles take it very seriously, and Jan 6 is a bit of a counterpoint to the lack of interesting-ness, IMO. It shows what can happen when people buy in fully, and I think it’s best to see these memes not as a representation of what is, but a representation of what some people are trying to bring about.
Several of my family members too - mostly normal people who through terrible cable news and social media are utterly brainwashed about Q, pedophile rings, “illegals” voting for Biden, communist plots to indoctrinate their grandkids… none of their actual kids talk to them any more, they’re just hateful mean-spirited unhappy jerks now.
I wish nothing but pain and misery on anyone who knows better but willingly purveys this shit to score political points.
I clicked on the hyperlinked word 'spamoflage', repeatedly. I never found a satisfactory description of what the term was meant to mean, renderinhg the article pretty incomprehensible
It's not a word, it's a proper noun. It's like "Panda Banker". Cybercrime groups often don't choose the name, so security researchers coin one to talk about them in articles. Here's an explainer I found "Spamouflage, also known as Spamouflage Dragon, or DragonBridge, is a Chinese propaganda network that has been fully active on social media platforms since 2017-18. Spamouflage refers to deceptive practices that attempt to hide or blend spammy content within legitimate or inconspicuous contexts. It’s like spam wearing a disguise, trying to sneak past filters or appear less suspicious."
It is somewhat of an humorous thing. For decades the US has interfered with other countries' election trying to have the person the US felt was better for them to be in charge. Now, other countries are saavy enough to do it back, but the effort is much more effective because of the 24/7 firehose of information that is the internet. The lock-in echo chamber effect of social platforms took that effectiveness knob and turned it to 11.
The US used to fly planes to drop leaflets over population centers, so there was the expense of creating/printing the leaflets, the expense of flying them into place, the risk of invading foreign airspace, blah blah. Now, it's some keyboard warriors sitting in an office using a exponentially more efficient delivery system.
I doubt there's any evidence it's effective, only evidence that a lot of people with "analytics platforms" found a way to get paid to browse Twitter. (Oh no! China's posting memes on the internet!)
The fact that there are so many people re-posting/sharing and joining telegram groups pretty much shows how it's effective. The fact that some of the "proof" from some of these hard core believers is directly the content from these spammers also shows its effectiveness.
I think there's plenty of evidence that counters your claim.
If social media engagement corresponded to real changes, Kony would be behind bars. :-) That's why "twitter metrics" are such a perfect closed system; they're already optimized for engagement so of course their content engages the people observing the metrics.
Naïve perspective. Those as campaigns you see are probably designed by some expensive tech company that hires people with good resumes and bad skills to fleece their customers. Maybe I’m wrong and you’re caught in the dragnet of good campaigns that somehow can’t figure out targeting despite all the creepy tools at their disposal.
The thing is, people did not have the option on voting "What to do with Kony?" Whereas with elections they have a real, actionable thing that they were going to engage this anyway. The activation energy is much lower for this.
There are lots of things going on here, I'd be careful about being too dismissive about this.
Indeed. Based on the adverts I am shown, Facebook thinks I'm a meat loving American from Florida who moved to the town of Waterlooville in the UK, who enjoys gambling on horse races, owns a dog, and works in graphic design; when I am actually a vegetarian Brit who moved to Berlin, is bored by spectator sports, who has never owned any pet, and who works as a software developer.
Whoever paid money to show me those ads, wasted it.
So this is funny. USA wanted Pakistani prime minister out so when he leaked the cable showing American meddling, Pakistani courts found him guilty of leaking state secrets and had him removed from office?
Recently he was awarded 5 year jail sentence for among other things, for having "improper marriage" with his wife. As in her waiting period apparently from divorce - remarriage wasn't enough but that being a mere irregularity, courts had to find him guilty because they want to crucify him. Why?
You should look up how the Cambridge Analytica scandal influenced the 2016 presidential election and all the stuff that came up during the congressional hearings. It is highly likely that Trump won because of it. They not only used the leaked facebook data from 70 million americans to build models of who was voting for who, they also used it for targeted ads. For example, they knew that people from certain groups were highly unlikely to ever vote for Trump, no matter how many propaganda ads they were fed. But they didn't let all the personal data they had go to waste. They instead showed these people "news" articles via ads about Clinton and her alleged weakness, or her husband's infidelity. This way they made people who would have otherwise opposed Trump simply not vote at all. The rest is history.
> The US used to fly planes to drop leaflets over population centers, so there was the expense of creating/printing the leaflets, the expense of flying them into place, the risk of invading foreign airspace, blah blah.
Is your point that this is so inexpensive that it’s hardly a line item on a budget? Printing leaflets and flying a plane.
Seems a lot cheaper than defending Ukraine from a madman terrorist. A madman terrorist in cahoots with PRC.
No. For the US, the DoD spends exponentially more on Post-Its than one of these "missions". But if you're China/Iran/North Korea/Russia, you don't even have to spend that money at all. But again, the money isn't really the thing. It's just a comment.
The effectiveness of the leaflets greatly depended on the number of people that actually found them. Social platforms allow you to have your post placed directly in front of the eyeballs of your target. You even get analytics on the campaign.
I was just using old vs new techniques to show how much more modern day shenanigans are
Agree - also, to believe that "only" our grandparents did this and so "only" we deserve it is crazy. This had to have happened on all scales by all major powers since the dawn of time.
Where is that coming from? I just stated that I think it's humorous that the karma slap is happening. Obviously, there are "attempts" to prevent it which is the same thing that the countries the US targeted do.
Characterizing influence as "bad" no matter what is also questionable. Yes, the US attempted influenced other countries especially during the cold war. So did Russia. Would you rather live in a country influenced by the US, or Russia?
Is this a fair characterization? It's factually correct that USA interfered before and also that others are interfering now in USA's elections. But the allusion to a "only USA then" and "lol, anti-usa now" seems wrong.
Surely all major powers tried to influence all elections of interest wherever and whenever they could? Both then and now?
Where did you get that from my comment? I don't recall hearing Russia overflying US cities dropping leaflets, but there's plenty of stories of the US doing the very thing. I wasn't impling the US was the only ones doing it nor that they are not doing it now. However, it IS happening to the US now, and it is effective.
It's also much more difficult to deny a leaflet drop, but we have people here on a very technically oriented forum denying the effectiveness of these campaigns. I guess it's a positive that they are not being denied that they are happening.??
I'm actually not interested in the effectiveness, because as you say that's kind of a bad foundation to base a moral / retribution story off.
I'm just honest here, I have to assume we've been meddling in each other's leadership and civil directions for a long long time. Like forever. And I just can't believe that the USA is somehow unique either as a perpetrator or a victim. I could believe that there was a time when the USA was more effective and that time may not be right how, but the "coming back to bite you" argument doesn't ring true.
To me, the difference is the type of government. The US attacking the internet of North Korea seems strange since it is so closed off, but it is very effective for DPRK to use against the US. The fact that the internet is so open to the US citizens means that directly influencing the population via the source of their addiction is just very humorous to me. Maybe it's just part of my disdain against the socials, but you got to admit, there's just a bit of chef's kiss about it
The difference is earlier method were costly and based on power balance. No other country apart than USSR could afford to manipulate regimes like US did in Iran, Central America, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan etc.
Generally these efforts against the US were channeled through political parties like the US communist party (not to say it wasn’t a legitimate movement, but it was also an inflection point into the US political system). However I think what you’re referring to is the Cold War, where the US and its allies and the Soviet Union and its allies did shenanigans all over the world to third party states to try to bend the global balance in their favor through many nefarious means, and election interference was the smallest of those in terms of egregious behavior. It’s important to note this wasn’t a US against the world thing, it was a Cold War between two allied blocs. Generally the two primary parties didn’t directly and overtly do these things within each others borders as the name of the game was avoiding direct confrontation.
I absolutely think the US currently does culturally destabilizing stuff against what it considers its geopolitical adversaries. They are also. I don’t think it’s a causal effect in either direction - I.e., the US did X so everyone turned around and did it back. It it’s more like a well understood concept that’s been going on for decades if not longer.
The key I think is the US political system other than in the early 1900’s, essentially since FDR, has been extremely stable. There was an enormous amount of cultural effort put into homogenizing the social and political dialogue during WW2, and even more in the 1950’s. In the 1960s the Soviet Union absolutely manipulated political unrest to their advantage and it weakened the will of the people to stand for the Vietnam war and helped nudge us into retreat gaining a Cold War victory. 70’s and 80’s saw a retrenchment of homogenization, but the 90’s individualism weakened the walls so to speak in favor of globalization, multiculturalism, etc (which fwiw are all great things in my mind).
I think the change is the advent of algorithmic social networks, memes, broad homogenized cultural enclaves that span spacial and social constraints, etc. This coupled with the broad access to interaction with the cultural “others” (I.e., while generally q-anon wackos isolate together, they’re constantly exposed to information and cultural influence by more liberal culture due to the internet, creating an opportunity to polarize).
This is specifically being exploited by nation states against each other. China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and the “bad guys” dominated by authoritarian dictators and oppressive regimes, are extremely well aware these technologies can be used to foment cultural discord that would destabilize their nations, not just internally but by external agents, and have cracked down on it aggressively. Knowing democratic and individualist cultures won’t and can’t, they have ramped up learning how to exploit the dynamics of algorithms, cultural polarization, etc. So it feels very one sided - because it is. It’s that way though because “they” have defended themselves against this vector of disruption, while “we” have explicitly invested in exposing everyone as much as possible to the vector for profit.
But the history isn’t one sided then and somehow swung around against the US. It’s more that this specific vector of cultural attack is a key weakness in the west because we believe it’s more valuable than dangerous, while “they” believe it’s more dangerous than valuable.
My belief is like a virus analogy, society will build meme antibodies and be able to more clearly distinguish mandating information. Most of the victims of this stuff tend to be poorly educated with minimal sophistication in online interactions. They are also not generally accepted in broader society, and over time the broader society will replace these vulnerable pockets of more susceptible minds and the effectiveness of cultural psyops via algorithmic and meme attacks will weaken quickly and social stability will emerge naturally. But it’ll take time.
Interestingly this means the authoritarian regimes populace ...
We can't talk about any other country here without someone bringing it back around to America, as if America were the Main Character of the whole world. Other countries exist, other countries don't need America to define themselves, other countries can be without needing to be in relation to America.
I wonder if other governments could even execute these types of campaigns on the Chinese internet. My sense is if I went on Sina Weibo and started posting weird stuff about politics the account would get shut down quite quickly.
I suspect that in order to mangle with election one should have elections in the first place, so I guess that its not possible for other governments to do the same on the Chinese internet
America used to win in such circumstances based on the power of its media exports. Hollywood. The music industry. American ideals advertised though the lens of culture.
Now we're beginning to approach fungible with domestic content production in every market.
And the US domestic market is now often funded by international interests. China-backed films highlight the intelligence and cunning of Chinese citizens, which often provide critical advice or technology to the dumb action-oriented Americans [1].
When's the last time China was an adversary in a film? Or that the henchmen or Bond villain was Chinese? It's always gotta be an Arabic, Persian, North Korean, or Russian villain.
It looked like that you're treating Hollywood-style cultural export as competition, and your conclusion is "America is losing control because of the involvements from China-backed films", believing the evidence is clear given how rare China was shown as "an adversary in a film"?
If what you said were pure true, that "US domestic market is now often funded by international interests" is the reason for current reality, which in turn implies that "US domestic market" is a complete sellout, then why Hollywood won't accept investments from the Persians, and then introduce some Persian superheros that sometimes randomly goes "Allahu Akbar"? The are huge money in this, why the US domestic market won't make it happen?
Maybe you're looking at the wrong direction. Maybe Hollywood (and US culture) is losing it's shine because by now, thanks to the Internet and medias (Vox, Vice, John Oliver etc), people starts to see the reality that America, behind all it's sparkling glares, also has quite a few flaws. Maybe China don't often get picked as an adversary simply because Americans just subjectively don't hate Chinese THAT much.
Here's my perspective as a Chinese: the exporting of cultural is more of a test than competition. It's a tool that communicates the cultural aspect of the exporter, to see if the importer welcomes it. It's a good tool if you want to infer the inner compatibility of the two parties, but it does very little beyond that.
Just to knock you out of your "winning" mindset: the movie Saving Private Ryan maybe resonate very well amongst Americans, after all, it's an true American hero doing American hero things. But in Chinese people's eyes (the eyes of the rest of the world, really) the movie just don't feel the same. Everyone got their own heros back home, you know? Funny enough, after watching the firm, I asked some of my friends whether or not they will save their soldier colleagues under similar situation showed in the firm, many of them answered solidly "Yes". To clarify, they were not thinking about saving Mr Ryan, instead, they were thinking about saving CHINESE soldiers Mr Zhao, Mr Qian, Mr Sun and/or Mr Li, maybe even under direct gun fire from Mr Ryan. That's something you might want to think about the next time you bring up your theories on the "victory" of America media exports ;-)
> It looked like that you're treating Hollywood-style cultural export as competition
Because it 1000% is, and China is engaging in the same game today.
> Hollywood won't accept investments from the Persians,
It absolutely would. Money can buy access. China has been one of the only countries to spend in this way for this access.
Hollywood is dying. Americans are more interested in video games, Instagram, YouTube, and the Internet. Hollywood will take money from anyone to save itself.
> Maybe Hollywood (and US culture) is losing it's shine because by now, thanks to the Internet and medias (Vox, Vice, John Oliver etc), people starts to see the reality that America, behind all it's sparkling glares, also has quite a few flaws.
> Here's my perspective as a Chinese: the exporting of cultural is more of a test than competition. It's a tool that communicates the cultural aspect of the exporter, to see if the importer welcomes it.
It's also a test to see how incompatible or divergent our societies have become. Whether due to polarity shifts, indoctrination, or tribalism and team sports.
These are the symptom of an underestimated immune system with little else to do. Most of the evils in the world are gone, so we've started chasing down the last mile. We've turned it into entertainment to attract viewers and make money.
> To clarify, they were not thinking about saving Mr Ryan, instead, they were thinking about saving CHINESE soldiers Mr Zhao, Mr Qian, Mr Sun and/or Mr Li, maybe even under direct gun fire from Mr Ryan.
Tribal thinking at it's finest. I'd save Mr. Ryan and Mr. Zhao. Or at least I think I would. That kind of courage is insane and highly laudable.
> Because it 1000% is, and China is engaging in the same game today.
So China is exporting it's movie such as the Battle of Chosin Reservoir to saturate America market with it's propaganda? Can you offer any example of that happening?
The truth however, is that as soon as when China steps out of their line, America clamps down really hard. There are real world example of this happening/happened. I'm not really sure why you're painting a picture showing how weak America is when in the reality it's not the case at all.
Also, there are way more America heros in the movies than Asian ones. If everything you saw in a movie was just few Asian dudes acting cool, and it got you agitated... then maybe just wait for few years until Hollywood seeks it's new diversity hotness to show off.
> Tribal thinking at it's finest. I'd save Mr. Ryan and Mr. Zhao.
So, what you were saying is that, it's "Tribalism" if in the story Mr Miller only saved Ryan brothers, but did not but also save German soldier Mr Altenburg, Mr Bachmann and Mr Chmielewski and his 5 month old pet cat who fired at you following their orders?
I mean, how do you save someone who's actively endangering your life from a distance? I imagine it would be really hard.
Plus, do US soldier really consider to save the life of their opponents in real life during an operation? Not judging anything there, just trying to be realistic.
It's not like China has no political system. I don't see why concerted media efforts couldn't have an effect on who gets ahead in the CCP and who doesn't
Ummm, 100% of votes went to one person and the elderly potential political adversary was led out against his will by the leader's security on live TV as part of the "election".
I agree that Chinese elections don't matter. And you won't replace the general secretary in short notice, unlike the US President who changes every couple years. But Xi doesn't rule China alone, the CCP does. And by manipulating the reputation of CCP members you can influence who gets into positions of power and who stays irrelevant, just like in a democracy
It’s naive to think Xi is not powerful. If he had less power than the CCP he would have been removed for all the disastrous decisions he’s made with covid and other aspects of the economy.
It's naive to think that Xi is more powerful than the politicians who give him that power. I think you are severely misunderstanding how political power works.
One man just does not get political power without the support of powerful people around him. Even kings and emperors work the same way.
I will totally agree that there is infighting (esp with the military) within the CCP, but as others have noted it's much more centralized that the last 50 years. That doesn't mean there aren't attempts (within and without) to influence public perception and control narrative (weibo douyin wechat) with news articles, individual bans, and 五毛.
It's just that Xi (and Putin to a slightly lesser degree) have isolated themselves so much that even the US political establishment has little idea what they want or plan to do. I'm not sure even the political establishment within China knows much better.
>> I suspect that in order to mangle with election one should have elections in the first place, so I guess that its not possible for other governments to do the same on the Chinese internet
> There are elections in China, and there have been for many decades.
There is a reason why the refrain is not just "elections" but "free and fair elections." Communist countries are famous for offering elections with no actual choice.
Election interference in China is not possible, because its "elections" are total shams so there is no point to try.
there's no real consistency on this in China. There's quite a lot of political content or "shitposting" happening on Weibo and whether something's taken down or not depends entirely on the particular issue and is pretty arbitrary. At times it's been used like a sort of anti-corruption tool where criticism of local officials in particular or issues isn't being suppressed at all, there is an awareness that letting complaints through is an important signal.
In many ways it's even necessary because the political system is so byzantine that online venting is really the best feedback loop there is.
IMO there aren't enough people with Chinese fluency/competency from other govs to try at scale on PRC net. Same vice versa - PRC 50C operates domestically, and even then spams platitudes, not substantive engagement - all the spamouflage networks in the last few years on western networks have been incompetently small scale operations. PRC was not wasting valuable language fluency on good/bulk propaganda. I think LLM is going to change this. Maybe TW with Chinese LLM can break into PRC net, but phone number / id linked accounts and lingo, probably limited scale. I think we'll start to see PRC propaganda networks slowly rival Indian presence on Anglo internet in the coming years. Dissenting opinions ares going to be absolutely innundated by automated PRC IT Cells. It doesn't even have to be good, but adundant and annoying.
Likely, but America likes lowest common denominator weird stuff anyway. I imagine there are nuanced ways of communicating to Chinese audiences that don't run afoul of the censors, eg fulsomely praising CCP leadership for relatively inconsequential results (implying that inconsequential results are all they can deliver).
I mean the leader of the Russian government wants Americans to elect they guy that's saying he'll get rid of a number of constitutional protections, so there is that.
This is hard to reconcile with real events: for example, Russia has a huge upside to replacing the guy supporting their humiliation in Ukraine with the guy who trying to break up NATO on their behalf – the opposite of “similar”! As for China, one candidate has been consistent in seeing the US as a needed counter to their power, the other has flipped a few times but most recently declined to answer whether he’d protect Taiwan and expressed his dismay over Taiwan having outcompeted in the semiconductor market – I know which of the two a competent opponent would be on being able to outwit, and I bet they’d offer great financing terms for his biggest hotel yet, too.
Trump and Biden's admins are very close together in what their opinions are on China. See Biden maintaining Trump's tariffs, which I remember a lot of Democrats proclaiming would be disastrous for the US economy when it was being instated.
Trump also had no problem saying what his thoughts before, during, and after his presidency, on the topic of China and trade deals. These things are all documented quite well, some are even laws, you may remember some of them, though you might pretend not to.
Tech related, you might pretend not to remember why Hauwei is restricted from use in official capacity (GovTech). You might also pretend not to remember when China was declared a currency manipulator, furthered by even stronger tariffs (what is in place today). Another thing you may pretend not to remember is Trump's admin restricting US firms from investing into Chinese companies.
You might even remember what Trump famously called what sent a lot of the world into a multi-year lockdown.
With history fresh in my own mind, I think that you should be held to the same standard as myself, I think you're dishonest, and I think you revel in it.
> I think you're dishonest, and I think you revel in it.
You know, when you’ve spent an entire reply attacking someone for words you put in their mouth it’s really not the right time to accuse anyone else of dishonesty.
If you have a rebut for Trump's position not being very consistent when it comes to China rather than your own headcannon, I'll be happy to hear it. Otherwise, you can leave this thread dead and annoy someone else.
From Taiwan’s perspective, the candidate who has repeatedly vowed that the United States will defend Taiwan is not the same as the one who refuses to take a position which should be easy and has a history of caving when an initial round of bluster fails (remember 2017 when he suddenly flipped to their One China policy?). They don’t want to have to guess whether they’re about to get sold out the next time someone in his family needs a favorable business deal to bail them out of a financial jam.
"One China" is the same policy that ALL presidents have agreed to, blue or red including the current one. This is not a political debate, this is the state's position (meaning the state of the USA) to agree to "One China".
Taiwan can make assertions all they want, but you are really spreading some falsities around.
If you don't believe me, what is the Biden's administration current position on the "One China" policy? Will you start calling Hunter Biden a CCP plant for consistency's sake? Why or why not?
> However, the bulk of the content appears aimed at creating a sense of dismay over the state of America without any clear partisan bent ... this content clearly also feeds into the attempt to create a sense of dissatisfaction with the state of the country among voters, as well as potentially engendering a sense of chaos in the US amongst international audiences.
It's sad to see so much provocation and doomerism on the news and social media, ironically among people who want the US to improve. I'm not saying it's as blatant or harmful as CCP propaganda, but I'm certain it's very bad for the country.
I think it might be so effective because the whole political spectrum in the US is ultimately projected onto two parties (and their presidential candidates). I am not a political scientist but if the US democracy were more pluralist in terms of the number of political parties, then it would perhaps be harder to manipulate voters using the "civil war" messaging.
> However, the bulk of the content appears aimed at creating a sense of dismay over the state of America without any clear partisan bent. It focuses on issues like urban decay, the fentanyl crisis, dirty drinking water, police brutality, gun violence and crumbling infrastructure.
If people think the country is in worse shape than it is, they’re more likely to turn to strongman figures who claim that they alone can solve the problem, if only we’d allow them to disregard law, the constitution, basic human decency, allies, etc.
> I mean, the sitting President got banned from almost every platform almost simultaneously… and yet we’re still discussing Chinese and Russian meme farms?
That he put considerable effort into overturning the election is established beyond doubt: he repeatedly attempted to pressure various officials in states he lost, the DOJ, and the Vice President not to perform their sworn duties. His legal team filed many spurious lawsuits towards the same end and tried to concoct strategies for involving Supreme Court justices they thought owed him a favorable ruling. None of that is compatible with the oath of office he swore.
The only question is whether his actions around January 6th rise to the level of “insurrection”. He’ll claim telling his followers to match to the Capitol with instructions like "take back our country" and "fight like hell" was purely figurative, but given that there was no legal reason for them to even be there (the tallying isn’t a public survey, just officially recording what’s already happened) it’s hard to say his intention was anything but the illegal act it sounds like, and saying that wasn’t an attempted insurrection seems like you’re simply arguing that it doesn’t count if you are [fortunately] incompetent.
He hasn’t been charged yet but as we’ve seen with the January 6th cases federal prosecutors are very conservative about making sure they have an airtight case first, and they’re often willing to bring lower charges which have a greater chance of success rather than risk losing a bigger charge. This is especially true for charges which require proving that someone consciously intended a particular illegal outcome. One of his 4 criminal cases currently in progress covers the election tampering because the evidence for those is very clear cut and doesn’t require proving his intention:
Only that they haven’t brought charges yet. We know he attempted to tamper with the election and that’s an objective question of facts where e.g. call recordings suffice as evidence. Proving intent for more serious crimes might hinge on testimony by witnesses who were considering playing ball but now that Republicans have are protecting Trump are instead mulling the odds of a January 20th pardon.
> there have been precisely 0 attempts to charge him with insurrection.
To be clear, there is an ongoing federal case charging him with conspiring to subvert the results of the 2020 election. And there is an ongoing Georgia state case charging him with orchestrating a criminal enterprise to reverse Georgia's election results in 2020.
Both of those are substantially similar to GP's claim of "an attempt to overturn election results."
Which case more specifically are you talking about? Again, there are 0 insurrection charges on the table. “Insurrection” is a specific crime mind you - potentially illegal activity surrounding January 6th doesnt mean insurrection.
> Bothe of those are substantially similar to GP's claim of "an attempt to overturn election results."
That’s not the claim im replying to. This is the claim: “incite a rebellion.” If he doesnt mean insurrection then I guess we’re on the same page.
There's been an ongoing special investigation into charging Trump with election interference and or insurrection.
This is not "precisely 0 attempts to charge him with insurrection" which is a delibrately silly thing to claim.
Full on insurrection charges are a political hot potato with all manner of side issues.
Also, it only just this month (Februray, 2024) that a panel of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that Trump is not immune from prosecution due to his position as active POTUS at the time.
"However, the bulk of the content appears aimed at creating a sense of dismay over the state of America without any clear partisan bent." This is a key point. The objective of modern Russian propaganda is to sow confusion and reap inaction. See McMaster's "Battlegrounds" book.[1] The winning strategy for Russia in eastern Europe is a non-united United States, and if possible a non-united European Union.
Classical propaganda is heavy drum-beating for how great your side is. That goes back to at least Cicero, increased when newspapers came along, and really got going during WWII. That stuff rapidly gets boring, and is usually aimed, at least in part, at stroking the backs of your own political leaders.
Increasing the noise level so that no one can believe anything isn't a new idea. British "black" propaganda during WWII used it quite a bit. "Rumor-mongering" was once a thing.[2] But it didn't scale.
It's picked up in recent years partly because it's much more effective when combined with ad targeting. This is a problem.
Your observation is just that conflict exists in the world and it seems to have existed at many times in the past. Of course you can state that fact with an aura of mystery and intrigue, but it’s plainly obvious and not that interesting.
No you don't get it. Splitting your enemies this way is not the same as saying "us good, them bad". First you would not say anything about your intentions and how you are at all.
Example: The way Putin has dealt with opposition within his own country was not to say how great his party was and how bad the others were. It was to financially support some of the opposition group, arrest others, invite other publically, have others beaten up by thugs and have it change by the day.
This way they can't trust what's real anymore, they lose hope not because there is none, but because it isn't clear what even to hope for and whom to hope with.
In the same time his party just is and wins by being in comparison more or less a clear, safe and before all known position to bet on — the devil that you know and all that.
So the confusion, the contradiction is the goal. That's why Tucker gets invited and Navalny murdered shortly after.
There's plenty of successful "classical" propaganda in the modern era, like Tucker Carlson interviewing Putin, and his subsequently tweeting about how much better the cities/subways/groceries/MacDonalds are in Russia than they are in America.
I like to browse both far left and far right social media to see what different circles are talking about, and a lot of the far right are coming around to be pro Russia (way more than I would have ever expected given US history).
There's also the conservative house representatives majority who are likely to continue blocking any additional military aid to the Ukraine. So on a whole it seems to me that Russian government has been highly effective at advancing their political agenda within the USA recently.
>There's plenty of successful "classical" propaganda in the modern era, like Tucker Carlson interviewing Putin, and his subsequently tweeting about how much better the cities/subways/groceries/MacDonalds are in Russia than they are in America.
I'm not sure that's actually successful. Even a lot of conservatives seem put off by Tucker's recent activities, especially with the Navalny news today.
His part about groceries has resonated with a lot of people. "Biden has destroyed the US, and groceries that cost easily $400+ only cost $100 in Russia."
Of course, he made no mention of how much $100 is to the average Russian's income proportional to the average American's income.
It's astonishing how easy it is to get people to forget about purchasing power. Even here in HN you often see people use that in "they don't make 'em like they used to" type threads.
Some of us just panic and react without thinking about why food is getting more expensive or what policies will improve the world for us now and our children in the future.
When people are hangry, they vote for the loudest monkey.
As far as I know this is kind of the strategy of Russian propaganda. I would not be surprised if killing Navalny was done purposely shortly after the Tucker interview.
For a MAGA follower (if they ever hear about it and even know who Navalny is) such combinations induce a cognitive dissonance, which translates either into dispair or into open support of Putin after he killed his major critic, either way it would be a win. And the other side of US politics is in dispair wittnessing how the MAGA crowd handles this, which (from Putins point of view) hopefully makes people stresses enough about politics that they just don't want to hear it anymore.
This idea of confusion and despair is how he managed to get the Russians to stay so apolitical after a short optimistic phase in the 90s. Better not think about it — this is the message.
>> I'm not sure that's actually successful. Even a lot of conservatives seem put off by Tucker's recent activities, especially with the Navalny news today.
> As far as I know this is kind of the strategy of Russian propaganda. I would not be surprised if killing Navalny was done purposely shortly after the Tucker interview.
Another data point: Putin is now putting down Carlson:
> Speaking with a state television host, Mr. Putin said he was disappointed that Mr. Carlson had not asked “so-called sharp questions” because he wanted the opportunity to “respond sharply” in his own answers.
> “He turned out to be patient and listened to my lengthy dialogues, especially those related to history, and didn’t give me reason to do what I was ready for,” Mr. Putin said. “So, frankly, I didn’t get complete satisfaction from this interview.” ...
> Mr. Putin’s mockery of Mr. Carlson came as the former Fox host was basking in the aftermath of his interview by offering a steady stream of praise for Russia and Mr. Putin, whose leadership he has extolled as superior to Mr. Biden’s.
I'm not sure that's for propaganda purposes, tbh, so much as Putin genuinely deeply disrespects Carlson even while making him a useful tool.
On one hand you have a KGB guy, who has for decades promoted himself as loyal-to-the-end, burning documents in East Germany while the wall was falling and Moscow wasn't picking up the phones with his colleagues nowhere to be found. And who has gone to great lengths (like using chemical weapons on UK soil) to punish people he sees as traitors.
And on the other hand you have Tucker, a CIA reject who is now running interference against his own nation's interests, who presents himself as a journalist while knowing less about Putin than Putin knows about him, and who was as intrepid as a wet noodle in that interview.
Putin made him wait for 2 hours before it even started. I think he just enjoys dunking on people.
I can't help wondering if Putin knew Navalny was going to die (perhaps with official assistance) and amused himself by using Carlson to pull the spotlight in his direction.
I've seen a few political influencers who reliably follow a pattern of saying something abjectly stupid/offensive which draws mockery and attention for a week or two, and just when this attention is waning, saying something else of more substance which gets widely circulated by the same attention network. If one has a thick skin for hostile criticism, it's a great amplification technique.
I don’t think the Russians are communists now. I think it’s pretty obvious that Putin wants to bring back something similar to the Russian Empire with him as the Tsar. Bringing back Autocracy with the Orthodox Church too.
No, communists no more. Communism at least tried to benefit the working class. Putin is a straight-up autocrat. Putin views the communist era as a mistake between two eras of glorious empire.
> a lot of the far right are coming around to be pro Russia
Pro-Russia or pro-US? The alt-right stance I've been seeing is that the war accomplishes nothing, introduces a lot of needless risks and wastes resources better spent elsewhere. It looks like all the US is achieving is piles of dead Slavs. That isn't wealth generation or strategically useful.
It has been decades since US foreign interventions have done anything useful for the US, the base rate here leans strongly towards pacifism being the most effective strategy. Even in the Russia-Ukraine war, I've been arguing that this gives China opportunities more than anything else. Hopefully the CCP are too inept to seize on them.
There’s definitely a sizeable chunk of pro-Russia in right wing circles. I’m reminded of those “I’d rather be a Russian than a Democrat” t-shirts that were popular in Republican circles from the 2016 election.
> I think that demonstrates relative hatred of Democrats, not love of Russia
It cleverly uses the hate for democrats to push for the love for Russia. Once you normalize this line of thinking, Russia is seen in a more favourable light by anyone who falls for it.
Funnily enough, this is one of the key goals of Russian propaganda machine. If you can convince people that everything is equal lies, you can lie to them as you like and they'll consider it alongside all the other narratives. Convenient!
> There’s definitely a sizeable chunk of pro-Russia in right wing circles. I’m reminded of those “I’d rather be a Russian than a Democrat” t-shirts that were popular in Republican circles from the 2016 election.
Honestly, that sounds mostly like a troll designed specifically to derange liberals ("own the libs" or whatever). If I remember my 2016 correctly, liberals were freaking out about Russian election interference at the time.
hey, I want to interpret this charitably but the language here is pretty bad: “achieving […] dead Slavs […] isn’t […] useful”.
Yeah I know I used a lot of editing but the sentiment and word choice is there. I don’t want the US to be the world police but I don’t want to dismiss that Putin is deeply rotten. And I don’t think whether something is “useful” is the only concern.
Are we helping? Are we making things worse? These are how we should talk about things.
When Russia invaded in 2022 it looked like they were going to conquer Ukraine. Then they'd have to stop because they would bump into the NATO border.
Then the US intervened. Maybe the European powers too, I dunno what the politics in the NATO war room looked like. Now it looks like the country is levelled, Europe is undergoing an energy crisis because of their response, it is now a realistic possibility that NATO might not be able to coerce Russia, China or even Iran on the outside. My money is still on the US but they're making it look like a struggle.
And the plan for Ukraine recovering seems to involve them being bankrolled by a bankrupt US so I don't see that working out well either. This isn't the 1950s, the US is not in a position to go rebuild Europe. They have enough problems figuring out how to build prosperity in the USA without trying to do it overseas. That is a core complaint of the right wing and a significant part why said right-wingers are trying to vote a wrecking ball into the presidency.
Is the US helping? Maybe. Not a very clear picture yet.
Compare this to Iraq or Afghanistan where nobody stood up for them after the US invasion. It was bad for the countries, I don't know if it was worse than what is going on in Ukraine but I suspect we'll discover that US intervention has made things worse.
I’m not strictly isolationist. I’m also not smart enough to predict what happens when playing Risk with real countries.
It’s definitely possible that sending weapons into a conflict just makes it worse. Especially when soldiers are just people on both ends.
My only dispute with your text is that we definitely have the ability to get our shit together financially in the US. The opposition is purely ideological. “We can’t” becomes “we don’t try” becomes “we can’t”.
> My only dispute with your text is that we definitely have the ability to get our shit together financially in the US. The opposition is purely ideological. “We can’t” becomes “we don’t try” becomes “we can’t”.
One the one hand yes. On the other that is true of all countries, and most of them are basket cases when it comes to financial governance and they aren't in any position to be putting their finger on the scales in wars half a world away. The US just doesn't have a resource surplus and it is in question whether they can sustain their interventionist foreign policy without first sitting down and getting the house in order.
Where are the resources going to come from? Going back to the thread root, that is the core of the right wing backlash that is brewing on this topic. All this stuff going to Ukraine to get blown up could be going to the US to make life better for people.
Why does the right insist on a massive military budget, then complain about sending surplus supplies overseas?
You’re debating two things: whether the US should intervene in Ukraine, and whether the US should get its internal affairs in order.
Your points are that war is expensive*, the US has a poor ability to run its internal systems (yes and no, but how does this imply we should sit on our hands with foreign policy), this war isn’t useful.
*The monetary cost of this war (to the US) is just not a legitimate part of the debate. It’s pittance what we’ve supplied.
> Why does the right insist on a massive military budget, then complain about sending surplus supplies overseas?
Well we're crossing from the point where I can talk about "the right" because the stances I've heard are too mutually incoherent; this is the part where everyone has their own opinions. My argument is if you have an unreasonably large budget, then you donate some stuff, then the budget needs to get bigger again to cover the donations.
Fair summary of the thread so far by the way, not often I get to say that in threads that go beyond 2 posts.
> The monetary cost of this war (to the US) is just not a legitimate part of the debate. It’s pittance what we’ve supplied.
I have a few problems with that line of thought.
Firstly, describing it as a pittance is unreasonable. The resources sent to Ukraine could have been used in the US to achieve good things. It is 10s of billions of dollars; it could get dumped on some random small struggling town in the rural US and no-one there would ever have to work again (across multiple generations if they managed their investments right). There is an opportunity cost to wasting that much money that means the US is worse off.
Secondly, if you add all the "pittances" up that the US wastes on foreign war you get real money. The the war in Afghanistan ended up being around 2 trillion over 20 years which comes to a burn rate in the range of the US spending in Ukraine (~100 billion/yr in Afghanistan vs ~75 billion/yr in Ukraine [0]). These pittances aren't pittances from that perspective either.
And finally US doesn't look like it can afford a pittance. It is like someone with a deep debt problem buying lottery tickets. The financial situation in the US is dire; the threshold has been crossed where the principle on their debt isn't going to be paid back and we're looking for the point where either they stop borrowing or the interest doesn't paid back either. It is unreasonable to be talking about just finding a little surplus to give away - the US exhausted those options years ago. There has to be an answer to the "what is being given up?" question.
Now if the US was getting some sort of payoff or helping the Ukrainians in some way then that cost might be justifiable, but it seems that all the US involvement is doing is transforming Ukrainians into other-countrians and corpses while securing China's geopolitical position. We have established international norms for how theses invasions should play out, they were established in the 2000s by the US's adventurism. They're getting broken here with no obvious upside gained.
> However, the bulk of the content appears aimed at creating a sense of dismay over the state of America without any clear partisan bent. It focuses on issues like urban decay, the fentanyl crisis, dirty drinking water, police brutality, gun violence and crumbling infrastructure. These are not election-specific narratives and have been a significant feature of Spamouflage’s content over several years. While not explicitly linked to the election, however, this content clearly also feeds into the attempt to create a sense of dissatisfaction with the state of the country among voters, as well as potentially engendering a sense of chaos in the US amongst international audiences.
This is not exactly news, and there are plenty of American videos exposing these issues for years now. Maybe Congress should be spending that inflation printed money fixing them so that we don’t have to wait for a new president to get to work.
You aren’t responding to / speaking to this article at all. You are responding to the hypothetical propaganda that it’s talking about. That doesn’t feel on topic at all. The point is that they aren’t election-specific issues.
> The point is that they aren’t election-specific issues.
According to you and the mainstream media, yes, but not the voters. The point is that if you don’t want other countries to tell us how much we suck, we can maybe stop sucking. And our own propaganda machine is doing a great job of getting in the way of that, all the way down to the kids on reddit telling you you’re a bad person if you don’t vote a certain way.
I won’t be voting for the incumbent for reasons that are supposedly not “election issues”.
Don't know why they redacted the Twitter handles in the screenshots if they believe these to be bots/propagandists.
In any case, you can easily find the accounts by searching for the tweeted texts. It's very unlikely that these are regular Twitter accounts. But I see little reason to think this is part of a camouflaged "CCP propaganda operation" to influence the US election. You need to at least make an attempt to masquerade as a "fellow American" to qualify as election interference, but many of these accounts have handles/names that are literally pinyin, or have Chinese profile pics, or regularly retweet/like tweets in Chinese.
It's also not clear to me just what claim the report is making. It says Spamouflage "is already pivoting to focus on [the election]". Then later it says "the bulk of the content appears aimed at creating a sense of dismay over the state of America without any clear partisan bent... These [the issues focused on] are not election-specific narratives and have been a significant feature of Spamouflage's content over several years." So Spamouflage is at once pivoting to focus on the election and mostly talking about issues that aren't election-specific; and it's at once trying to improperly influence the election outcome and doing so in a way 'without any clear partisan bent'...
Influencing an election can take the form of sowing confusion and apathy, instead of driving people to a specific candidate. This leads to people not voting or otherwise participating, which cedes the political landscape to the extremes, who then go on to destabilize the country. It can be done without broaching election-specific topics.
So Spamouflage is at once pivoting to focus on the election and mostly talking about issues that aren't election-specific; and it's at once trying to improperly influence the election outcome and doing so in a way 'without any clear partisan bent'...
People are easily influenced by messaging. Today it is easy to create targeted messaging. A state actor could send messages to Republicans that are different than the ones sent to Democrats. In this way it is correct that the actor has no partisan bent. They just want to sow confusion, doubt, misinformation.
One can imagine that it is possible to influence an election without using election specific issues. If, for instance, welfare reform is not an issue in an election but talking about it in a way to create fear and anger can influence an electorate’s desires. I believe that if the CCP is actively engaged in an information war against Americans that they could do so in ways that, on the surface, would appear to be ineffective.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 217 ms ] threadI have family who got sucked into Q-related stuff, and this kind of over-the-top ominous imagery is all over the telegram channels they are addicted to.
Many people in these circles take it very seriously, and Jan 6 is a bit of a counterpoint to the lack of interesting-ness, IMO. It shows what can happen when people buy in fully, and I think it’s best to see these memes not as a representation of what is, but a representation of what some people are trying to bring about.
I wish nothing but pain and misery on anyone who knows better but willingly purveys this shit to score political points.
The US used to fly planes to drop leaflets over population centers, so there was the expense of creating/printing the leaflets, the expense of flying them into place, the risk of invading foreign airspace, blah blah. Now, it's some keyboard warriors sitting in an office using a exponentially more efficient delivery system.
What goes around, comes around
I think there's plenty of evidence that counters your claim.
There are lots of things going on here, I'd be careful about being too dismissive about this.
Whoever paid money to show me those ads, wasted it.
"I'm not addicted. I can stop at any time"
So this is funny. USA wanted Pakistani prime minister out so when he leaked the cable showing American meddling, Pakistani courts found him guilty of leaking state secrets and had him removed from office?
Recently he was awarded 5 year jail sentence for among other things, for having "improper marriage" with his wife. As in her waiting period apparently from divorce - remarriage wasn't enough but that being a mere irregularity, courts had to find him guilty because they want to crucify him. Why?
Is your point that this is so inexpensive that it’s hardly a line item on a budget? Printing leaflets and flying a plane.
Seems a lot cheaper than defending Ukraine from a madman terrorist. A madman terrorist in cahoots with PRC.
The effectiveness of the leaflets greatly depended on the number of people that actually found them. Social platforms allow you to have your post placed directly in front of the eyeballs of your target. You even get analytics on the campaign.
I was just using old vs new techniques to show how much more modern day shenanigans are
Surely all major powers tried to influence all elections of interest wherever and whenever they could? Both then and now?
It's also much more difficult to deny a leaflet drop, but we have people here on a very technically oriented forum denying the effectiveness of these campaigns. I guess it's a positive that they are not being denied that they are happening.??
I'm just honest here, I have to assume we've been meddling in each other's leadership and civil directions for a long long time. Like forever. And I just can't believe that the USA is somehow unique either as a perpetrator or a victim. I could believe that there was a time when the USA was more effective and that time may not be right how, but the "coming back to bite you" argument doesn't ring true.
Now with Internet the power is "democratised".
I absolutely think the US currently does culturally destabilizing stuff against what it considers its geopolitical adversaries. They are also. I don’t think it’s a causal effect in either direction - I.e., the US did X so everyone turned around and did it back. It it’s more like a well understood concept that’s been going on for decades if not longer.
The key I think is the US political system other than in the early 1900’s, essentially since FDR, has been extremely stable. There was an enormous amount of cultural effort put into homogenizing the social and political dialogue during WW2, and even more in the 1950’s. In the 1960s the Soviet Union absolutely manipulated political unrest to their advantage and it weakened the will of the people to stand for the Vietnam war and helped nudge us into retreat gaining a Cold War victory. 70’s and 80’s saw a retrenchment of homogenization, but the 90’s individualism weakened the walls so to speak in favor of globalization, multiculturalism, etc (which fwiw are all great things in my mind).
I think the change is the advent of algorithmic social networks, memes, broad homogenized cultural enclaves that span spacial and social constraints, etc. This coupled with the broad access to interaction with the cultural “others” (I.e., while generally q-anon wackos isolate together, they’re constantly exposed to information and cultural influence by more liberal culture due to the internet, creating an opportunity to polarize).
This is specifically being exploited by nation states against each other. China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and the “bad guys” dominated by authoritarian dictators and oppressive regimes, are extremely well aware these technologies can be used to foment cultural discord that would destabilize their nations, not just internally but by external agents, and have cracked down on it aggressively. Knowing democratic and individualist cultures won’t and can’t, they have ramped up learning how to exploit the dynamics of algorithms, cultural polarization, etc. So it feels very one sided - because it is. It’s that way though because “they” have defended themselves against this vector of disruption, while “we” have explicitly invested in exposing everyone as much as possible to the vector for profit.
But the history isn’t one sided then and somehow swung around against the US. It’s more that this specific vector of cultural attack is a key weakness in the west because we believe it’s more valuable than dangerous, while “they” believe it’s more dangerous than valuable.
My belief is like a virus analogy, society will build meme antibodies and be able to more clearly distinguish mandating information. Most of the victims of this stuff tend to be poorly educated with minimal sophistication in online interactions. They are also not generally accepted in broader society, and over time the broader society will replace these vulnerable pockets of more susceptible minds and the effectiveness of cultural psyops via algorithmic and meme attacks will weaken quickly and social stability will emerge naturally. But it’ll take time.
Interestingly this means the authoritarian regimes populace ...
Now we're beginning to approach fungible with domestic content production in every market.
And the US domestic market is now often funded by international interests. China-backed films highlight the intelligence and cunning of Chinese citizens, which often provide critical advice or technology to the dumb action-oriented Americans [1].
When's the last time China was an adversary in a film? Or that the henchmen or Bond villain was Chinese? It's always gotta be an Arabic, Persian, North Korean, or Russian villain.
[1] Independence Day, The Trench, etc. etc.
It looked like that you're treating Hollywood-style cultural export as competition, and your conclusion is "America is losing control because of the involvements from China-backed films", believing the evidence is clear given how rare China was shown as "an adversary in a film"?
If what you said were pure true, that "US domestic market is now often funded by international interests" is the reason for current reality, which in turn implies that "US domestic market" is a complete sellout, then why Hollywood won't accept investments from the Persians, and then introduce some Persian superheros that sometimes randomly goes "Allahu Akbar"? The are huge money in this, why the US domestic market won't make it happen?
Maybe you're looking at the wrong direction. Maybe Hollywood (and US culture) is losing it's shine because by now, thanks to the Internet and medias (Vox, Vice, John Oliver etc), people starts to see the reality that America, behind all it's sparkling glares, also has quite a few flaws. Maybe China don't often get picked as an adversary simply because Americans just subjectively don't hate Chinese THAT much.
Here's my perspective as a Chinese: the exporting of cultural is more of a test than competition. It's a tool that communicates the cultural aspect of the exporter, to see if the importer welcomes it. It's a good tool if you want to infer the inner compatibility of the two parties, but it does very little beyond that.
Just to knock you out of your "winning" mindset: the movie Saving Private Ryan maybe resonate very well amongst Americans, after all, it's an true American hero doing American hero things. But in Chinese people's eyes (the eyes of the rest of the world, really) the movie just don't feel the same. Everyone got their own heros back home, you know? Funny enough, after watching the firm, I asked some of my friends whether or not they will save their soldier colleagues under similar situation showed in the firm, many of them answered solidly "Yes". To clarify, they were not thinking about saving Mr Ryan, instead, they were thinking about saving CHINESE soldiers Mr Zhao, Mr Qian, Mr Sun and/or Mr Li, maybe even under direct gun fire from Mr Ryan. That's something you might want to think about the next time you bring up your theories on the "victory" of America media exports ;-)
Because it 1000% is, and China is engaging in the same game today.
> Hollywood won't accept investments from the Persians,
It absolutely would. Money can buy access. China has been one of the only countries to spend in this way for this access.
Hollywood is dying. Americans are more interested in video games, Instagram, YouTube, and the Internet. Hollywood will take money from anyone to save itself.
> Maybe Hollywood (and US culture) is losing it's shine because by now, thanks to the Internet and medias (Vox, Vice, John Oliver etc), people starts to see the reality that America, behind all it's sparkling glares, also has quite a few flaws.
> Here's my perspective as a Chinese: the exporting of cultural is more of a test than competition. It's a tool that communicates the cultural aspect of the exporter, to see if the importer welcomes it.
It's also a test to see how incompatible or divergent our societies have become. Whether due to polarity shifts, indoctrination, or tribalism and team sports.
These are the symptom of an underestimated immune system with little else to do. Most of the evils in the world are gone, so we've started chasing down the last mile. We've turned it into entertainment to attract viewers and make money.
> To clarify, they were not thinking about saving Mr Ryan, instead, they were thinking about saving CHINESE soldiers Mr Zhao, Mr Qian, Mr Sun and/or Mr Li, maybe even under direct gun fire from Mr Ryan.
Tribal thinking at it's finest. I'd save Mr. Ryan and Mr. Zhao. Or at least I think I would. That kind of courage is insane and highly laudable.
So China is exporting it's movie such as the Battle of Chosin Reservoir to saturate America market with it's propaganda? Can you offer any example of that happening?
The truth however, is that as soon as when China steps out of their line, America clamps down really hard. There are real world example of this happening/happened. I'm not really sure why you're painting a picture showing how weak America is when in the reality it's not the case at all.
Also, there are way more America heros in the movies than Asian ones. If everything you saw in a movie was just few Asian dudes acting cool, and it got you agitated... then maybe just wait for few years until Hollywood seeks it's new diversity hotness to show off.
> Tribal thinking at it's finest. I'd save Mr. Ryan and Mr. Zhao.
So, what you were saying is that, it's "Tribalism" if in the story Mr Miller only saved Ryan brothers, but did not but also save German soldier Mr Altenburg, Mr Bachmann and Mr Chmielewski and his 5 month old pet cat who fired at you following their orders?
I mean, how do you save someone who's actively endangering your life from a distance? I imagine it would be really hard.
Plus, do US soldier really consider to save the life of their opponents in real life during an operation? Not judging anything there, just trying to be realistic.
https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/news/hu-jintao-dragged-out-...
I mean King Henry VIII had parliament ratify his changes to the English church so that he could remarry 5 times.
Xi has more power than the CCP.
One man just does not get political power without the support of powerful people around him. Even kings and emperors work the same way.
Xi has consolidated power in himself to an extent not seen since Mao, maybe Stalin. Xi controls the CCP and has no rivals alive (anymore.)
It's just that Xi (and Putin to a slightly lesser degree) have isolated themselves so much that even the US political establishment has little idea what they want or plan to do. I'm not sure even the political establishment within China knows much better.
There are elections in China, and there have been for many decades.
There are other aspects of these elections that make them less likely to succumb to soft influence from the outside.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_China
> There are elections in China, and there have been for many decades.
There is a reason why the refrain is not just "elections" but "free and fair elections." Communist countries are famous for offering elections with no actual choice.
Election interference in China is not possible, because its "elections" are total shams so there is no point to try.
In many ways it's even necessary because the political system is so byzantine that online venting is really the best feedback loop there is.
The foreign, domestic, and economic policies of both potential presidents are different. Are you really arguing that they have negligible differences?
This is hard to reconcile with real events: for example, Russia has a huge upside to replacing the guy supporting their humiliation in Ukraine with the guy who trying to break up NATO on their behalf – the opposite of “similar”! As for China, one candidate has been consistent in seeing the US as a needed counter to their power, the other has flipped a few times but most recently declined to answer whether he’d protect Taiwan and expressed his dismay over Taiwan having outcompeted in the semiconductor market – I know which of the two a competent opponent would be on being able to outwit, and I bet they’d offer great financing terms for his biggest hotel yet, too.
Trump also had no problem saying what his thoughts before, during, and after his presidency, on the topic of China and trade deals. These things are all documented quite well, some are even laws, you may remember some of them, though you might pretend not to.
Tech related, you might pretend not to remember why Hauwei is restricted from use in official capacity (GovTech). You might also pretend not to remember when China was declared a currency manipulator, furthered by even stronger tariffs (what is in place today). Another thing you may pretend not to remember is Trump's admin restricting US firms from investing into Chinese companies.
You might even remember what Trump famously called what sent a lot of the world into a multi-year lockdown.
With history fresh in my own mind, I think that you should be held to the same standard as myself, I think you're dishonest, and I think you revel in it.
You know, when you’ve spent an entire reply attacking someone for words you put in their mouth it’s really not the right time to accuse anyone else of dishonesty.
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trumps-taiwan-remarks-spark-...
From Taiwan’s perspective, the candidate who has repeatedly vowed that the United States will defend Taiwan is not the same as the one who refuses to take a position which should be easy and has a history of caving when an initial round of bluster fails (remember 2017 when he suddenly flipped to their One China policy?). They don’t want to have to guess whether they’re about to get sold out the next time someone in his family needs a favorable business deal to bail them out of a financial jam.
Taiwan can make assertions all they want, but you are really spreading some falsities around.
If you don't believe me, what is the Biden's administration current position on the "One China" policy? Will you start calling Hunter Biden a CCP plant for consistency's sake? Why or why not?
Try again.
It's sad to see so much provocation and doomerism on the news and social media, ironically among people who want the US to improve. I'm not saying it's as blatant or harmful as CCP propaganda, but I'm certain it's very bad for the country.
This seems pretty global.
I'm very certain every political party likes to pretend every election is a civil war.
Very odd selection you've chosen there.
> However, the bulk of the content appears aimed at creating a sense of dismay over the state of America without any clear partisan bent. It focuses on issues like urban decay, the fentanyl crisis, dirty drinking water, police brutality, gun violence and crumbling infrastructure.
Maybe it's not so bad for people to be dismayed.
I don’t see why not…
The sitting President incited a rebellion in an attempt to overturn election results in which he did not succeed.
The only question is whether his actions around January 6th rise to the level of “insurrection”. He’ll claim telling his followers to match to the Capitol with instructions like "take back our country" and "fight like hell" was purely figurative, but given that there was no legal reason for them to even be there (the tallying isn’t a public survey, just officially recording what’s already happened) it’s hard to say his intention was anything but the illegal act it sounds like, and saying that wasn’t an attempted insurrection seems like you’re simply arguing that it doesn’t count if you are [fortunately] incompetent.
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67656604/united-states-...
To be clear, there is an ongoing federal case charging him with conspiring to subvert the results of the 2020 election. And there is an ongoing Georgia state case charging him with orchestrating a criminal enterprise to reverse Georgia's election results in 2020.
Both of those are substantially similar to GP's claim of "an attempt to overturn election results."
> Bothe of those are substantially similar to GP's claim of "an attempt to overturn election results."
That’s not the claim im replying to. This is the claim: “incite a rebellion.” If he doesnt mean insurrection then I guess we’re on the same page.
This is not "precisely 0 attempts to charge him with insurrection" which is a delibrately silly thing to claim.
Full on insurrection charges are a political hot potato with all manner of side issues.
Also, it only just this month (Februray, 2024) that a panel of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that Trump is not immune from prosecution due to his position as active POTUS at the time.
only then a peace deal can be made, politics should never be a one sided effort.
Classical propaganda is heavy drum-beating for how great your side is. That goes back to at least Cicero, increased when newspapers came along, and really got going during WWII. That stuff rapidly gets boring, and is usually aimed, at least in part, at stroking the backs of your own political leaders.
Increasing the noise level so that no one can believe anything isn't a new idea. British "black" propaganda during WWII used it quite a bit. "Rumor-mongering" was once a thing.[2] But it didn't scale. It's picked up in recent years partly because it's much more effective when combined with ad targeting. This is a problem.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._R._McMaster
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vaupcu2qqI
Vladislav Surkov and propaganda methods of making people distrust everything and sow strife and confusion.
https://youtu.be/Gr7T07WfIhM?t=8567
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=vladislav...
> Classical propaganda is heavy drum-beating for how great your side is.
Isn't that a form of "classical propaganda" in itself? "We are perfect. There is nothing wrong with us. Only our enemies say we have problems."
or
"All our problems are caused by THEM"
or
"If you don't like America you MUST be a commie!" (one of the worst slurs in post-WW2 USA)
Now I guess there's also China.
Example: The way Putin has dealt with opposition within his own country was not to say how great his party was and how bad the others were. It was to financially support some of the opposition group, arrest others, invite other publically, have others beaten up by thugs and have it change by the day. This way they can't trust what's real anymore, they lose hope not because there is none, but because it isn't clear what even to hope for and whom to hope with.
In the same time his party just is and wins by being in comparison more or less a clear, safe and before all known position to bet on — the devil that you know and all that.
So the confusion, the contradiction is the goal. That's why Tucker gets invited and Navalny murdered shortly after.
I like to browse both far left and far right social media to see what different circles are talking about, and a lot of the far right are coming around to be pro Russia (way more than I would have ever expected given US history).
There's also the conservative house representatives majority who are likely to continue blocking any additional military aid to the Ukraine. So on a whole it seems to me that Russian government has been highly effective at advancing their political agenda within the USA recently.
I'm not sure that's actually successful. Even a lot of conservatives seem put off by Tucker's recent activities, especially with the Navalny news today.
Of course, he made no mention of how much $100 is to the average Russian's income proportional to the average American's income.
Some of us just panic and react without thinking about why food is getting more expensive or what policies will improve the world for us now and our children in the future.
When people are hangry, they vote for the loudest monkey.
For a MAGA follower (if they ever hear about it and even know who Navalny is) such combinations induce a cognitive dissonance, which translates either into dispair or into open support of Putin after he killed his major critic, either way it would be a win. And the other side of US politics is in dispair wittnessing how the MAGA crowd handles this, which (from Putins point of view) hopefully makes people stresses enough about politics that they just don't want to hear it anymore.
This idea of confusion and despair is how he managed to get the Russians to stay so apolitical after a short optimistic phase in the 90s. Better not think about it — this is the message.
> As far as I know this is kind of the strategy of Russian propaganda. I would not be surprised if killing Navalny was done purposely shortly after the Tucker interview.
Another data point: Putin is now putting down Carlson:
> Speaking with a state television host, Mr. Putin said he was disappointed that Mr. Carlson had not asked “so-called sharp questions” because he wanted the opportunity to “respond sharply” in his own answers.
> “He turned out to be patient and listened to my lengthy dialogues, especially those related to history, and didn’t give me reason to do what I was ready for,” Mr. Putin said. “So, frankly, I didn’t get complete satisfaction from this interview.” ...
> Mr. Putin’s mockery of Mr. Carlson came as the former Fox host was basking in the aftermath of his interview by offering a steady stream of praise for Russia and Mr. Putin, whose leadership he has extolled as superior to Mr. Biden’s.
(https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/16/business/media/tucker-car...)
On one hand you have a KGB guy, who has for decades promoted himself as loyal-to-the-end, burning documents in East Germany while the wall was falling and Moscow wasn't picking up the phones with his colleagues nowhere to be found. And who has gone to great lengths (like using chemical weapons on UK soil) to punish people he sees as traitors.
And on the other hand you have Tucker, a CIA reject who is now running interference against his own nation's interests, who presents himself as a journalist while knowing less about Putin than Putin knows about him, and who was as intrepid as a wet noodle in that interview.
Putin made him wait for 2 hours before it even started. I think he just enjoys dunking on people.
I've seen a few political influencers who reliably follow a pattern of saying something abjectly stupid/offensive which draws mockery and attention for a week or two, and just when this attention is waning, saying something else of more substance which gets widely circulated by the same attention network. If one has a thick skin for hostile criticism, it's a great amplification technique.
Pro-Russia or pro-US? The alt-right stance I've been seeing is that the war accomplishes nothing, introduces a lot of needless risks and wastes resources better spent elsewhere. It looks like all the US is achieving is piles of dead Slavs. That isn't wealth generation or strategically useful.
It has been decades since US foreign interventions have done anything useful for the US, the base rate here leans strongly towards pacifism being the most effective strategy. Even in the Russia-Ukraine war, I've been arguing that this gives China opportunities more than anything else. Hopefully the CCP are too inept to seize on them.
You might liken it to vowing to never voting Republican, even if you agree on some issues
It cleverly uses the hate for democrats to push for the love for Russia. Once you normalize this line of thinking, Russia is seen in a more favourable light by anyone who falls for it.
Honestly, that sounds mostly like a troll designed specifically to derange liberals ("own the libs" or whatever). If I remember my 2016 correctly, liberals were freaking out about Russian election interference at the time.
Yeah I know I used a lot of editing but the sentiment and word choice is there. I don’t want the US to be the world police but I don’t want to dismiss that Putin is deeply rotten. And I don’t think whether something is “useful” is the only concern.
Are we helping? Are we making things worse? These are how we should talk about things.
Then the US intervened. Maybe the European powers too, I dunno what the politics in the NATO war room looked like. Now it looks like the country is levelled, Europe is undergoing an energy crisis because of their response, it is now a realistic possibility that NATO might not be able to coerce Russia, China or even Iran on the outside. My money is still on the US but they're making it look like a struggle.
And the plan for Ukraine recovering seems to involve them being bankrolled by a bankrupt US so I don't see that working out well either. This isn't the 1950s, the US is not in a position to go rebuild Europe. They have enough problems figuring out how to build prosperity in the USA without trying to do it overseas. That is a core complaint of the right wing and a significant part why said right-wingers are trying to vote a wrecking ball into the presidency.
Is the US helping? Maybe. Not a very clear picture yet. Compare this to Iraq or Afghanistan where nobody stood up for them after the US invasion. It was bad for the countries, I don't know if it was worse than what is going on in Ukraine but I suspect we'll discover that US intervention has made things worse.
It’s definitely possible that sending weapons into a conflict just makes it worse. Especially when soldiers are just people on both ends.
My only dispute with your text is that we definitely have the ability to get our shit together financially in the US. The opposition is purely ideological. “We can’t” becomes “we don’t try” becomes “we can’t”.
One the one hand yes. On the other that is true of all countries, and most of them are basket cases when it comes to financial governance and they aren't in any position to be putting their finger on the scales in wars half a world away. The US just doesn't have a resource surplus and it is in question whether they can sustain their interventionist foreign policy without first sitting down and getting the house in order.
Where are the resources going to come from? Going back to the thread root, that is the core of the right wing backlash that is brewing on this topic. All this stuff going to Ukraine to get blown up could be going to the US to make life better for people.
You’re debating two things: whether the US should intervene in Ukraine, and whether the US should get its internal affairs in order.
Your points are that war is expensive*, the US has a poor ability to run its internal systems (yes and no, but how does this imply we should sit on our hands with foreign policy), this war isn’t useful.
*The monetary cost of this war (to the US) is just not a legitimate part of the debate. It’s pittance what we’ve supplied.
Well we're crossing from the point where I can talk about "the right" because the stances I've heard are too mutually incoherent; this is the part where everyone has their own opinions. My argument is if you have an unreasonably large budget, then you donate some stuff, then the budget needs to get bigger again to cover the donations.
Fair summary of the thread so far by the way, not often I get to say that in threads that go beyond 2 posts.
> The monetary cost of this war (to the US) is just not a legitimate part of the debate. It’s pittance what we’ve supplied.
I have a few problems with that line of thought.
Firstly, describing it as a pittance is unreasonable. The resources sent to Ukraine could have been used in the US to achieve good things. It is 10s of billions of dollars; it could get dumped on some random small struggling town in the rural US and no-one there would ever have to work again (across multiple generations if they managed their investments right). There is an opportunity cost to wasting that much money that means the US is worse off.
Secondly, if you add all the "pittances" up that the US wastes on foreign war you get real money. The the war in Afghanistan ended up being around 2 trillion over 20 years which comes to a burn rate in the range of the US spending in Ukraine (~100 billion/yr in Afghanistan vs ~75 billion/yr in Ukraine [0]). These pittances aren't pittances from that perspective either.
And finally US doesn't look like it can afford a pittance. It is like someone with a deep debt problem buying lottery tickets. The financial situation in the US is dire; the threshold has been crossed where the principle on their debt isn't going to be paid back and we're looking for the point where either they stop borrowing or the interest doesn't paid back either. It is unreasonable to be talking about just finding a little surplus to give away - the US exhausted those options years ago. There has to be an answer to the "what is being given up?" question.
Now if the US was getting some sort of payoff or helping the Ukrainians in some way then that cost might be justifiable, but it seems that all the US involvement is doing is transforming Ukrainians into other-countrians and corpses while securing China's geopolitical position. We have established international norms for how theses invasions should play out, they were established in the 2000s by the US's adventurism. They're getting broken here with no obvious upside gained.
[0] https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-aid-has-us-sent-ukraine... - I just took the number from this article, I'm sure there are big error bars depending on the start & end dates used.
This is not exactly news, and there are plenty of American videos exposing these issues for years now. Maybe Congress should be spending that inflation printed money fixing them so that we don’t have to wait for a new president to get to work.
According to you and the mainstream media, yes, but not the voters. The point is that if you don’t want other countries to tell us how much we suck, we can maybe stop sucking. And our own propaganda machine is doing a great job of getting in the way of that, all the way down to the kids on reddit telling you you’re a bad person if you don’t vote a certain way.
I won’t be voting for the incumbent for reasons that are supposedly not “election issues”.
In any case, you can easily find the accounts by searching for the tweeted texts. It's very unlikely that these are regular Twitter accounts. But I see little reason to think this is part of a camouflaged "CCP propaganda operation" to influence the US election. You need to at least make an attempt to masquerade as a "fellow American" to qualify as election interference, but many of these accounts have handles/names that are literally pinyin, or have Chinese profile pics, or regularly retweet/like tweets in Chinese.
It's also not clear to me just what claim the report is making. It says Spamouflage "is already pivoting to focus on [the election]". Then later it says "the bulk of the content appears aimed at creating a sense of dismay over the state of America without any clear partisan bent... These [the issues focused on] are not election-specific narratives and have been a significant feature of Spamouflage's content over several years." So Spamouflage is at once pivoting to focus on the election and mostly talking about issues that aren't election-specific; and it's at once trying to improperly influence the election outcome and doing so in a way 'without any clear partisan bent'...
https://twitter.com/blackintheempir
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FtKeFiYWIAgQLfw.jpg
https://youtu.be/MNPiTsaH1ak?t=23
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FemF_adUoAAgbAF?format=jpg&name=...
People are easily influenced by messaging. Today it is easy to create targeted messaging. A state actor could send messages to Republicans that are different than the ones sent to Democrats. In this way it is correct that the actor has no partisan bent. They just want to sow confusion, doubt, misinformation.
One can imagine that it is possible to influence an election without using election specific issues. If, for instance, welfare reform is not an issue in an election but talking about it in a way to create fear and anger can influence an electorate’s desires. I believe that if the CCP is actively engaged in an information war against Americans that they could do so in ways that, on the surface, would appear to be ineffective.