Hacker News Reader

Comment by anc84 | Hacker News Reader

That is one one-sided anti-propaganda-propaganda piece. Let's not pretend that any government does not do the same to others, eh?

View on HN

Nor should we accept false equivalencies.

It isn't even necessary here. The "propaganda" the article opens with can be rephrased as this: some people in the Swedish government wanted something controversial, and social media i.e. their citizens talking to each other reflected the usual mishmash of true, half true and not true things people often believe about more or less anything controversial.

However, because this time the controversial thing was to do with NATO, it's obviously all the Russian's fault. They have no evidence, and nobody is willing to put their name to such a claim (it's all "analysts"), but no matter, it's definitely the Russians.

Besides, whose word do we have that these beliefs were false? The defence minister!

From the WSJ we learn this: "Swedish lawmakers formally backed an agreement Wednesday that allows the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to more easily operate on Swedish territory during training or in the event of a conflict or other crisis."

http://www.wsj.com/articles/sweden-ratifies-nato-cooperation...

That doesn't sound so very different from the supposedly false claim that "NATO could attack Russia from Sweden without government approval". thelocal.se says:

"Originally signed in September 2014, the HNSA with Nato would allow the alliance to transport helicopters, aircraft and ships across Swedish territory, but only upon Sweden’s invitation.

As the agreement involves changes to Swedish law in order to give Nato personnel privileges and immunities with regards to areas like tax and custom rules, it required parliamentary ratification."

http://www.thelocal.se/20160525/sweden-votes-yes-to-controve...

It's only a tiny step from that description (NATO soldiers have immunity from some areas of law) to the one apparently circulating (NATO soldiers have immunity in some other areas). Does this really require the invocation of Russian propaganda, or the Facebook telephone game sufficient?

After the Crimea takeover, the Swedish internet was filled with comments with very, very bad Swedish who defended Putin. There were some articles that interviewed the people in St Petersburg employed to write these comments.

The main difference with the Putin supporters today is that the Swedish language is excellent....

(And for a fact -- even in the ex communist party, few Swedes support starting wars in Europe again, in 1930s style. There are obviously lots of Putin propaganda online.)

Edit: Thanks, rbanffy. I saw a Swedish copy and others: http://www.dn.se/nyheter/varlden/de-ar-putins-soldater-pa-na...

This may be the article you referred to https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/02/putin-kremlin-...

Ah, typical whataboutism. Because the Russian propaganda is so extreme in distorting the truth, everyone else must do the same. Reminds me of people who compare the political movements they don't like to ISIS, because "both are bad".

True, one must not only remember differences in kind but also in degree, though frankly the difference between Russia and the US is historically one of kind, though certainly not to the degree that the Cold War high school history books would suggest.

Telltale missing article. The. A. An.

Governments do this, almost everywhere. But the Russians have been mastering these techniques for over a century now, and Maskirovka is a significant aspect of Russian military doctrine, which we in the West - while we are tuned into our own variety of it (the Pentagon are really good at this too) - are not necessarily prepared to understand, especially the Russian variant, completely:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_military_deception

It has relevance to us here on HN because after all, these same techniques can be de-weaponized and re-industrialized, and such actions have legitimacy in the marketing world in which we all play. It is indeed wise to learn the variants of deception that major governments - and other world-oriented bodies - enact upon us, the populace.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com