Pentagon opens sweeping review of clandestine psychological operations
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
Later, I thought I'd learned (maybe misheard?) that US could engage in propaganda or psyops, but that there were strict rules not to do it against US citizens.
That seems like good guidance, and I'd welcome an honest review that checks whether we're living up to standards that have been an inspiring part of our national character in the past, and leads to any corrective action.
Maybe US collective leadership realizes a way here that we can build upon our ancestors' great ideals, and follow through further, not drop the ball.
That law was repealed in 2010. Since then its all out propaganda.
Cite? I'm aware there was some kind of awkward law that meant to block domestic access to VOA-type stuff (IIRC, because it was feared the VOA or State Department was infiltrated by Communists or something like that) that got repealed, but that's a far cry from "since then its all out propaganda."
I mean, I don't think I've even seen a single VOA article in our local newspaper.
What's been the actual effect of that? It's been 10 years, and I can't recall seeing a VOA story reposted in a local outlet or radio stations switching to a VOA-based format.
I don't understand the implications of that, because I don't know the details of the law beforehand. But something that's clear is that it opens the door to some very nasty stuff - especially if there is no obligation for source/identity disclosure.
What is the mainstream medias opinion on Julian Assange?
You forgot the /s
https://adage.com/images/random/100mediacos03.pdf
Worldwide, thousands. But do go on about how they all meet in secret once a month to go over their collective talking points.
[0] https://www.webfx.com/blog/internet/the-6-companies-that-own...
One example mentioned in the article and visualized on TV shows—teams of software-assisted humans each acting under multiple online personas, e.g. on social media or discussion forums. The more problematic elements often intersect with private contractors and commercial activity, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29838001
> To a viewer, each report looked like any other 90-second segment on the local news. In fact, the federal government produced all three. The report from Kansas City was made by the State Department. The "reporter" covering airport safety was actually a public relations professional working under a false name for the Transportation Security Administration.
> This winter, Washington has been roiled by revelations that a handful of columnists wrote in support of administration policies without disclosing they had accepted payments from the government.
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/politics/under-bush-a-new...
I will never forget the cheerleader role the New York Times played in the Iraq Invasion, from the straight-up swallowing of Colin Powell's false "evidence", egregious saber rattling "articles", it was depressing. "The paper of record" officially killed the fourth estate during that time period, and journalism has never recovered.
I was a dumb 20something, and even I could see the vast conflicts of interests, the military industrial complex frothing at the mouth, the Cheney-fronted petroleum bigwigs cackling, and the callous political calculus of starting a war just to have a more important administration. Or the worst of all: trillions of dollars and a million dead iraqis just so Bush Jr could "show up" Bush Sr.
To the US, American lives are all that really matter? I mean, there's also the policy that torture is ok but not against Americans and not on US territory, hence the secret CIA torture spaces during the Gulf War and guantonomo bay (simplifying a bit here). Isn't that obviously wrong?
How can one maintain that their country is the greatest with such dubious ethics? I mean specifically using the argument 'doing objectionable things only to non US citizens' as part of the case for America's greatness seems...odd at best. I feel like I'm missing something here. A cultural gap maybe. Or is American superiority deemed so self evident that it legitimates itself in a circular justification?
I don't want to sound combative, though I probably do, but really I want to understand how this works for Americans.
I'd started to address that in my message, then awkwardly edited it out (see last sentence) before posting.
It's easy to persuade that we should be honorable towards ourselves.
Outside of ourselves are much more complicated and contentious geopolitical questions, I don't know the answers, and I thought negative reactions to raising that would defeat the smaller point.
Compared to who?
> I mean specifically using the argument 'doing objectionable things only to non US citizens' as part of the case for America's greatness seems...odd at best.
That is a rule of law (for their citizens) better than much of the world.
Because of conflict of interest.
When you're persuading people outside of the US of something you're presumably doing it in (at least nominally) the US' best interest because as a citizen of the US your personal interests are also aligned with those of the nation (at least at the scale these operations work at).
Turned internally there's all sorts of messy conflicts like political parties using the tools to gain power, agencies using the tools to gain funding, etc.
The notion that facts which are unapproved by the government are disinformation, is the propaganda.
But of course everyone who had never actually watched an episode would screech propaganda while embracing other state-funded channels. The Beeb saying “America border policy bad” is ok, but Russia… totally different.
To be fair, most Soviet citizens were just trying to go about their lives. Surely you don’t imagine your average Joe Blowkomarov is scheming nasty plans for crushing the evil capitalists. Poor dude was probably stuck in a bread line, wishing his toes were warm.
If there was propaganda involved, it’s probably that the magazines weren’t showing the deprivations. Sunny outlook & all that, hardly unusual for a “Life” type of magazine.
Social media is built with such research in mind.
Society will never stop trying to wrap a big fuzzy one size fits all blanket around everyone’s thoughts. We intentionally manipulate biology that religion stumbled upon.
A philosophy of “oh well there is this separation of powers written down on paper” does not stop graft, nepotism. Tribalism is innate to human biology; words on paper don’t just shut our bodies innate traits off. Thinking a law prevents intentional propagandizing is quaint and naive. They just call the same behavior and mechanics “behavioral economics” and viola; it may have all the mechanics of propaganda, but trust us, it’s not propaganda.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Five_Eyes#Domesti... (a treaty for joint cooperation in signals intelligence.)
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident#NSA_re...
At the height of our operations in Iraq, around 2006-2007, the main killer of our troops was of course "roadside bombs." In a candid talk with my class of cadets at that time, I remember a senior officer (a conventional infantry or artillery guy) telling us that the top priority had to be reducing this specific threat, above all the stated goals of our mission. His reasoning was that, although we knew roadside bombs were not going to tactically defeat any unit larger than a platoon, the deaths were eroding the American public's support of our operations and would ultimately force us to withdraw and abandon all of the stated goals.
He was right, but I remember feeling uncomfortable with his thinking. It wasn't outright psychological operations against Americans, and I'm sure he wasn't tasked with that nor thinking of it that way, but it was trying to influence the opinion of American civilians who are supposed to be in control of the military. Of course public affairs stuff and reports to congress, while meant to inform, are also usually crafted to influence. Anyway, this is how it starts, and I'm not sure it's obvious when a line is crossed.
Edited to add: I don't think most "influence operations" on Facebook and Twitter, as described in the article, are about hiding or distorting the truth either.
Lol. Assuming you went to public school, you've already proven that the U.S.G. did propaganda to its people too.
This is right out of the 1960's. Not exactly the dawn of television, more like about 7:30, 8:00 in the morning when you're finally really waking up:
>Propaganda is a subject of great concern in our society today, perhaps more so than in any other society in history. With the advent of television as a complement to the other communications media now available to us, the opportunities to use propaganda in disseminating information, expounding ideas, and offering opinions have increaseed considerably. And, unfortunately, it is far too often the case that propaganda is used to make us accept questionable points-of-view, to make us vote for men who may be unfit for public office, and to make us buy products which are useless and sometimes even dangerous. Therefore, propaganda, or the method of influencing people to believe certain ideas and to follow certain courses of action, is of special importance to each of us.
from https://propaganda.games/about
Of course back then almost nobody had even seen a color TV yet, and when color eventually became less rare they were really hypnotic like never before.
There's always these well-worn techniques:
https://propaganda.games/technique
This actually started as an academic game during the Cold War, by a TV actor who had first-hand knowledge from associates who were blacklisted a decade earlier as suspected communists, in what can only be seen as an exaggerated over-reaction to actual Communist propaganda itself.
https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-20408094
For both communist and anti-communist propaganda, students were expected to be better off if they were more prepared to see through the BS.
https://public-assets.graphika.com/reports/graphika_stanford...
The first thing to note is that it's relatively benign in terms of propaganda.
> Assets in the group heavily promoted narratives supportive of the U.S. on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and Telegram. These posts primarily focused on U.S. support for Central Asian countries and their people, presenting Washington as a reliable economic partner that would curb the region’s dependence on Russia. Other posts argued that the U.S. was the main guarantor of Central Asia’s sovereignty against Russia, frequently citing the war in Ukraine as evidence of the Kremlin’s “imperial” ambitions. Interestingly, the assets also promoted U.S. humanitarian efforts, mentioning the United States Agency for International Development 94 times on Twitter and 384 times on Facebook in the respective datasets.
It's funny that they felt the need to do this in a "clandestine" way at all since almost certainly these are messages the US would happily say outloud as official statements.
The second thing to note is how ham-handedly they did this:
> The sham media outlet Intergazeta repeatedly copied news material with and without credit from reputable Western and pro-Western sources in Russian, such as Meduza.io and the BBC Russian Service. ... Typically, these sections were literal “word-to-word” translations into Russian, as opposed to more-advanced semantic translations, resulting in non-native sounding language.
The fact that such things are done domestically and covertly is the issue. And it’s pure speculation on my part, but there is cause to suspect this is but one facet of a much larger program. https://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-inside-militarys-secret-u...
> The largest undercover force the world has ever known is the one created by the Pentagon over the past decade. Some 60,000 people now belong to this secret army, many working under masked identities and in low profile, all part of a broad program called "signature reduction." The force, more than ten times the size of the clandestine elements of the CIA, carries out domestic and foreign assignments, both in military uniforms and under civilian cover, in real life and online, sometimes hiding in private businesses and consultancies, some of them household name companies.
...
> The newest and fastest growing group is the clandestine army that never leaves their keyboards. These are the cutting-edge cyber fighters and intelligence collectors who assume false personas online, employing "nonattribution" and "misattribution" techniques to hide the who and the where of their online presence while they search for high-value targets and collect what is called "publicly accessible information"—or even engage in campaigns to influence and manipulate social media.
I’m not paranoid about such programs being everywhere and doing all things, but do consider them a totally undemocratic roadblock to proper civil society.
Can you have fake social media accounts to spread propaganda online without doing it covertly? Is any nation transparent about doing that? I'd rather they didn't do it at all, but I expect everyone does and will because it's effective (when it's not obvious at least) and easy.
I also agree that states tend towards such action, but there should at least be an antagonistic relationship with the security state apparatus. Instead, both parties (with minor blips over incredibly personal matters) love the FBI, CIA, etc.
There are values expressed in Navy ads I find appealing, but I also recognize those ads are targeting potential recruits. I’m more likely to take expression of those values seriously when they’re expressed by unaffiliated human people. Or even my friend who is a naval officer but isn’t particularly inclined to shill for them. I’m certainly not going to take them seriously from a military-sponsored astroturf campaign.
> "Once the United States had entered the war, the U.S. government saw a need formally to enter the propaganda arena. The U.S. Committee on Public Information (CPI) was created to both centralize wartime communication and avoid restrictive European-style censorship... the CPI labored to create a homogeneous public opinion that accepted the war as a struggle of good versus evil waged to promote democracy around the world. The list of promotional activities undertaken by the Committee is impressive: a vast system of news handouts for journalists, tens of millions of copies of its pamphlets, wide circulation of war posters, several films, millions of advertisements donated by business organizations, war expositions in several states, "Americanization" Committees for each ethnic minority group, and 75,000 Four Minute Men speakers, who presented short appeals between features at the nation's movie houses. Through the work of the CPI, the official view of a just and idealistic war became ever present."
Source: Propaganda studies in American social science: The rise and fall of the critical paradigm, Sproule (1987)
https://sci-hub.se/10.1080/00335638709383794
History's judgement of WWI is varied, but many think it was entirely avoidable, and that the imperial desire by the 'Great Powers' (Britain, France, Germany, Russia) to control as many shipping and rail routes as possible, as well as oil fields and other overseas resources, was the main driving force behind the conflict, and diplomatic talks could have avoided the war.
Trying to sell WWI as a war to prop up the British and French imperial projects, as well as to help keep the Russian czar in power, would not have been so easy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVsDjGwFImc
is an intro.
I think Tilt Shift photography doesn't make the subject look like a miniature, but rather makes the photo look like a photo of a miniature. When photographing a miniature, the subject is so close that you have a much narrower depth of field and you end up with thin slices of the miniature subject being in focus. I think that this was probably more common in the days of film than digital photography. In other words: the photos of miniatures look like that because of limitations in the photography process, whereas tilt-shift is emulating those limitations at a macro scale.
A narrow depth of field is more characteristic of photographs of nearby objects, so people who are used to looking at photographs end up with the impression that the tilt–shift photograph is a picture of a much closer (and thus smaller) scene.
This is not the only use of tilt–shift lenses. They can e.g. also be used to keep more of the scene in focus than would be possible with a typical lens.
China just eclipsed the US government as biggest bad in the recent years as it’s asserted itself as a technological superpower along with the obvious Russia stuff. It’s only natural we see more of those posts as at least we have a way in our government however minor
I don't think this point is entirely without merit. We shouldn't opt to lose this battle on ideological grounds. Blaming the US govt for conducting psyops is somewhat analogous to blaming Robert Oppenheimer for the strong nuclear force, with the caveat that the laws of physics in this situation are somewhat actively controlled by the companies that host these "social media platforms".
Also, it's not like nuclear proliferation is solved. It's still breathing down our necks, we just don't talk about it anymore
*This is probably true in some areas but the opposite in others - our influence simply shifted.
Was the humanity better off during the Bi-polar era of the Cold War, with continuously escalating nuclear threats and proxy wars vs 1991-2010? What about the multi-polar world of 1919-1938?
Multi-polarity is generally code for regional hegemony. That's great if you're the regional hegemon. Not so much if you're the hegemon's neighbor.
America is a maritime power. These (think: Carthage, Venice, Portugal, the Dutch and Britain; counterfactual: Japan) have historically relied on trade, and trading outposts, to project power. As such, they're a natural friend of small countries resisting regional hegemony.
>natural friend of small countries resisting regional hegemony
Consider Cuba or Venezuela and their relationship to the USA.
Objectively, yes. In no small part because maritime powers tend to knit together alliances, not annex and colonise the way land powers do.
> Consider Cuba or Venezuela and their relationship to the USA
In both these cases, we are the regional hegemon.
There is no organization that can prevent one state from going to war with another, I believe a multi-polar world would inevitably lead to a global scale conflict.
Tangential to your comment, but in fact there was another path, spearheaded by, among others, India. It's where we get the term "third world", which became shorthand for "developing" because basically no developed countries joined this "third world" movement ("first world" being the so-called West, "second" being the Soviets).
Hollywood is the main exporter of American culture and values and that seems to have been compromised quite effectively in this last decade.
"foot-in-the-door" American culture maybe. I'd say it's a different projection of our culture at home.
GPT-3:
我覺得電影腳本被中國人牽制了
(Transition according to Google: "I think the movie script is being held back by the Chinese")
The biggest advocate for the fairness of a prison cell often is the prisoner.
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2021/09/how-holl...
What I can say though is that money appears to be the primary driving factor here whether that is pushing an agenda or censoring ideas.
And while it's true that U.S. cultural "force projection" hasn't weakened; they are being severely squeezed when it comes to trade dominance (https://merchantmachine.co.uk/china-vs-us/) and monetary dominance (see James Rickards' books).
America still has its hegemony, but the notion that it's declining is very much mainstream in academia (https://www.routledge.com/Americas-Allies-and-the-Decline-of...). Worse, its national security institutions have lost credibility among a significant portion of its electorate (MAGA people), and its military hegemony is now opposed by both populist left (pacifists) and populist right (non-interventionists). They're being squeezed both abroad and at home.
Pretty standard definition of an empire.
> The U.S. base at the Bishkek airport had become a regular source of criticism from various Kyrgyz politicians and, with heavy Russian influence, it also closed in 2014.
https://www.rferl.org/a/u-s-military-bases-in-central-asia-p...
Again, doesn't sound like any Empire i've read about in a history book.
That's not what empires do.
I sleep much better knowing my dog isn't taught such behavior is acceptable. I would hate for him to bite the hand that feeds him because he learned such, "enlightened" behavior is acceptable and condoned by his owner.
So the logical thing to do is dump resources into keeping yourself from being caught.
Ignoring any moral qualms or suspicions, any powerful weapon that isn’t actively overseen will inevitably be abused.
Infinite regress is only contemplated when you aim for perfect oversight which is impossible. The best we can hope for is 'as good as possible'. We the People, as well as possible, oversee that the appropriate authorities are, independently as possible, overseeing the use of weapons and interventions. It's obviously imperfect just like any other human endeavor but that's why we as citizens should fight for strong whistleblower protections, regular investigations/audits and reasonable timeframes for declassification etc so that we can do our job.
We all should - one of many arguments for complete transparency. Democracy dies behind closed doors. All the claims about the need for government secrecy, "national security", protecting "methods and sources" are trash when compared against the importance of transparency in a society purportedly governed by elected representatives of the people. The so-called "risks" posed by radical and complete government transparency are far less than the actual and tangible harms caused by the ever-growing secrecy afforded and demanded by those holding the levers of power.
"These tools are good for us when we use them against our enemies" breaks down very fast when your apparatus starts to find "enemies" within its borders, a line we crossed a very long time ago.
The US ambassador visiting our Justice Ministry [1] a few years ago when almost all of the middle-class electorate was out in the streets protesting against the Government's direct influence on some justice-related stuff was the cherry on cake. I didn't realise it back then, because I was busy protesting against my own government, but in retrospect I started wondering how come it's ok for a foreign entity to control the justice system from my (supposedly sovereign) country.
[1] https://stirileprotv.ro/stiri/actualitate/ambasadorul-sua-ha...
Is there a corruption problem in Romania, and the US is trying to help overturn it?
Is there no corruption problem in Romania, and the US is doing some power play to try to get the people in power out?
Plus the few cases when US companies (or they local subsidiaries, more exactly) do get tangled up in a corruption thingie for one reason or another the companies themselves get out of it as nothing had happened.
Here's an article about a former CEO of Oracle Romania [1] recognising that he took 500,000+ euros as bribes, but because he reached a deal with the prosecutors he received a suspended sentence (so no actual prison time).
And, the most famous, the Microsoft scandal [2], which has its own dedicated wikipedia page, but where, again, the company itself got away without anyone working for them actually being prosecuted. I'll give it to the American authorities on this one, though, that scandal was most probably put into motion at the very beginning thanks to the work of the FBI [3] (so, obviously, as the result of domestic US investigations), the FBI which had also found irregularities with MS's work in China and Italy.
[1] https://www.mediafax.ro/social/fostul-ceo-oracle-romania-aco...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_licensing_corruption...
[3] https://fcpaprofessor.com/microsoft-business-in-romania-the-...
> It also reveals a somewhat damning tidbit when talking about the reach and impact of these campaigns; according to the report, “the vast majority of posts and tweets we reviewed received no more than a handful of likes or retweets, and only 19% of the covert assets we identified had more than 1,000 followers.” What’s more, the two accounts with the most followers explicitly said they were tied to the US military. I’ll try not to think about how much all this cost when I’m paying my taxes next year.
Had US social media agencies been fully in bed with the feds such a report would have never been produced in the first place. Remember, conspiracists always talk about shadowy organizations or groups of people with near omnipotent power - an idea these agencies themselves would like perpetuated to make it seem resistance is futile.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/25/23322214/us-government-pr...
Quite the opposite - the conspiratorial reaction is that these agencies want to be mistaken for bumbling bureaucracies, so they let reports of small-level stuff get out. That way we underestimate the real degree of their control and believe that if they ever tried to manipulate us, they would get caught anyway, and besides, they're just making unsuccessful tweets, right?
Or even deeper, that these organizations are meant to distract us from much more powerful entities who they don't even realize they are controlled by.
I don't believe any of this, but the conspiracy theorists deserve more credit for creativity that you are giving them!
The most damaging thing that they do is inflate the like counts and apparent engagement of government thinktank employees and unaware nationalists drunk on the dopamine hits of botted upvotes. I'm absolutely certain that the removal of downvotes from social platforms in general was a long term government project.
edit: does anyone believe that this behavior can't be easily detected algorithmically? I don't know about other platforms, but Twitter is obviously a government partner, not a victim.
Ever heard of a limited hangout?
You were doing well until this last sentence.
No, propaganda and psychological manipulation is completely incompatible with a democratic society.
My take: Democracy is not the natural state, therefore requires a lot of psyops to remain in place. It’s not democratic, but well, can you speak up about it? No. Or if you can, will you? Probably not worth it. You’re “happy enough”.
My converging evidence: France’s 1789 democracy was set up by gillotining the very person who would have gotten all the majority votes (He was organizing a referendum and the parliament couldn’t let this happen); The EU wasn’t born as a democracy and we only ask people’s opinions when it’s trending up; etc. there are so many examples that actually-democratic systems are an unstable mess and superficially-democratic systems are the norm.
The idea is that people believe they live in democracy, and psyops the only way to reach this state. True democracy might be a naive dream.
If the democracy leads to a tyranny of a majority it does not deserve to be a dream either. To me what has the most value is the recognition and protection of the individual rights.
“Vimes had once discussed the Ephebian idea of ‘democracy’ with Carrot, and had been rather interested in the idea that everyone had a vote until he found out that while he, Vimes, would have a vote, there was no way in the rules that anyone could prevent Nobby Nobbs from having one as well. Vimes could see the flaw there straight away.”
The EU is hardly a triumph of stability - indeed I'd argue it supports the opposite idea, it's unstable because it's not accountable enough and people realise that, no matter how strong the propaganda.
one social credit has been deposited in your account
Government propaganda is anathema to a free and democratic society. Our government is purportedly granted its authority by the consent of the masses. Having this consent influenced (or completely manufactured by government propaganda) nullifies the whole idea of democracy. The absurd contention that propaganda being spread by US military and government operatives on Facebook and social media is only targeted at (much less only influences) "foreigners" is patently absurd. Millions of Americans (myself included) vehemently oppose our currently stated "US foreign policy objectives" devised by the CIA, the Pentagon and the various government-funded "think tanks" that set policy and direct these propaganda efforts. "Full spectrum narrative control" has been the wet dream of every dictator, king and authoritarian government since the dawn of time, and it should be something that every thoughtful, decent person recognizes as toxic and incompatible with a free and open society.
Corruption? Abuse of power?
Remember how Twitter gave Trump exemption from their own rules from 2017 thru 2021? They called it the World Leaders Policy, as in, "these world leaders provide so much value to our platform that we are going to give them a pass on our rules in the name of free speech". If I remember correctly, this even extended to DMCA 512 takedowns, which is an absolutely stupid level of risk to take on to protect a handful of users.
The Mudge disclosure also revealed that several Twitter admins - as in, people with control over all the servers and databases - are actually foreign agents of India or China's current governments. This is absolutely ludicrous levels of risk to take on for any company, but social media is so addicted to scale that this was deemed acceptable.
So even if Twitter were to enforce identity verification on everyone, they would still let the trolls through. Because the whole org is compromised and their incentives are to compromise themselves at every step.
You have it all wrong. Pissing off world leaders is taking on serious level of risk.
Washington Post: "Pentagon opens sweeping review of clandestine psychological operations"
New York Times: "Pentagon Orders Review of Its Overseas Social Media Campaigns"
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/19/us/politics/pentagon-soci...
Just how flexible are we with language, exactly, that these two headlines can coexist?
It's not even as if these two papers' editors have particularly different ideologies or mindsets. They just looked at the same story, separately; selected a framing; turned the language intensity up to 11; and this is the absurd result.
How much collateral damage is within the legal limits of law? At what rate and percentage is it considered acceptable?
Reminds me of the 2019 U.S Army public document on the need to shift tactics towards cyber space, and it being an unknown territory for all militaries world wide because in the past wars were kenetic, and in the future they are psychic. Including the diffilculty of what strategies of identifying friend and foe and whatever an identity/ego is.
It is very much similar to an 'arms race' (in lieu of using technology as a form of narrative control for operational security). Unfortunately game theory optimizes us towards maximum escalation of risk in the hope of equal tension.
Fortunately it has worked so far.
Interestingly it is the first time in history as we know it that an individual or a small collection of individuals could have significant military power enough to affect billions of people with crafted messages. AI and Human-In-The-Loop systems are both incredibly fascinating and frightening.
I must be optimistic though. Growing pains, right? :P
That's kind of a bizarre question, and I think you're misunderstanding what this is. This sounds like it's a story on the organization's internally-focused management, not some kind of external accountability thing meant to convince you of anything.
This also brings to mind the movies like ‘the avengers’ which gets lots of military support to drive recruiting.
>One diplomat put it this way: “Generally speaking, we shouldn’t be employing the same kind of tactics that our adversaries are using because the bottom line is we have the moral high ground. We are a society that is built on a certain set of values. We promote those values around the world and when we use tactics like those, it just undermines our argument about who we are.”
This is my position as well. Going forward in a world where more and more of what we hear and even see can be fake, trust will become more important. Trust is hard to build and easy to break.
I understand the need to reach out to hesitant populations, and the desire to advance our national interests through persuasion and propaganda. However, actual lying, fake accounts, and disinformation that is deployed in a blanket fashion will be a long-term detriment to our government's credibility.
In shorter form: Bias and "targeted messaging" is one thing. Literally fake people and lies are another.
We should act better than our adversaries, because we are better.
A system of systems has to have flexibility to evolve; calling one team uniform as "better" is just more of the same
While I "appreciate the candor", it is ofc "hilarious" that there are still people like you out there
Before you write such blatant naivety, I would recommend you to at least read Killing Hope by Blum, you feelings of candor and emotional need of belonging clearly lack any sort of historical foundation
Because America is fundamentally not peddling the same kind of narrative that Russia or China does.
What America wants is freedom[0]. Russia is run by ethnofascists and China is run by near-textbook tankies. These ideologies are pariahs, and honest propaganda of this bent cannot survive contact with the background radiation of politics. In other words, when America is overt, people complain that we aren't living up to our own standards. When Russia or China is overt, people laugh at them and ignore them.
So, instead, they have to co-opt other concerns and lie about what their ideological opponents are doing. Hence shit like "the CDC created COVID" or "NATO is creating supersoldiers in Ukranian labs[1]". The job is not to prove that China or Russia is right, but to distract from what they are doing. The more they can piss off Americans against their own government, the better.
Americans do not need to do this, because... who is their target audience, here? Hardline Iranian theocrats or the Taliban aren't going to be distracted by covert propaganda. Neither will Russians who think Ukraine is run by the corpse of Adolf Hitler or Chinese who think America created COVID in a lab. People who aren't shitheaded will either respond well to American overt propaganda, or at least point out how America falls short of their own ideals. You don't need to lie to them.
Since America's interests are not furthered by covert propaganda, we should abandon it, since the only interest such propaganda could serve would be fifth-columning the country.
[0] As defined through a liberal lens; i.e. we accept and embrace private capital accumulation and business ownership. Other non-shitheaded definitions of freedom are free to reject this.
[1] Which is literally just the premise of Captain America with extra steps. Every time someone claims this we should reply, "Is this the new MCU movie"?
Regarding the "ethno" part, do you see evidence of this? Russia is quite diverse in terms of ethnic/cultural groups. The richest woman there is ethnically Korean, for just one example. And other groups like Jewish, Armenian, Tartar, Chechen etc play important roles in government, biz and cultural life there.
- https://www.rbth.com/lifestyle/334417-how-many-ethnic-groups
- https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Minority_cultures_of_Russia#:....
This is why Putin has this fetish for "Ukraine is not a country / we are the same people" narrative.
Marginalized for not calling themselves Russian? Marginalized how?
"yet all the federal websites are only in russian and maybe english"
That's true, but only 3% of Russian citizens are Tatar language speakers and there are even fewer speakers for other languages.
Maybe you'll tell me where I can find Spanish version of the Congress website?
Ever stopped to wonder why that might be the case?
If you consider what the Americans did to the natives bad (which you should) you should be as concerned for russian minorities. This "if Americans are bad, we should be allowed to be bad as well" take is tiresome.
Disappearing small languages? I am, but what about it is specific to Russia?
"This "if Americans are bad, we should be allowed to be bad as well" take is tiresome."
Of course it is tiresome. Especially after you say 'American history is good, Russian history is bad' and get reminded about Native Americans. So tiresome!
Some other examples:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_the_Crimean_Tat...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_transfer_in_the_Sov...
Stalin's (and bolshevik's in general) crimes are horrible, but ethnic Russians weren't safe from them either. Have you seen breakdown of their victims by ethnicity?
This didn't happen by accident. It is the result of a program of systematic, violent, erasure.
Now that is just false. [0][1]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Russia
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_of_Russia
All others are below 1%.
Or look at Poland where only 1.8% in total speak a language other than Polish. [1]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Canada#Indigenous... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Poland
I'll make it even easier. Go to any LOCAL government website in Russia where there is a concentration of these ethnic minorities and find me a version in their language.
Good examples of treatment of minorities are Finland with their treatment of the Swedish minorities there.
- Komi Republic (Komi - a Finnish/Uralic language): https://gov.rkomi.ru/kv/kontakty-pravitelstva-respubliki-kom...
- Tartarstan (Tartar language): https://tatarstan.ru/tat/
- Adygheya Republic (Adyghe aka West Circassian): http://www.adygheya.ru/ady/
That's just a handful that I'm personally familiar with. It's easier to search in Cyrillic.
https://tatarstan.ru/documents.htm
So, a guide through all the relevant administrative documents you might need. Let's click the "TAT" button to switch to the Tartar language... Oh wait, what's this? It doesn't exist? Imagine that. Another Potemkin website. The most ironic thing is that the "Report of the Tatarstan Foundation for Citizen's Right Protection" (PDF) is russian only.
Regarding your pre-edit statement about seething in anti-russian hate: if russians don't like it, they can stop invading, stealing and killing. Maybe that'll help?
Glad my country never invaded or killed anyone recently...
Being liked is a privilege you have to earn. Thinking you are owed nuanced, friendly treatment is a bit naive after what russia has done.
If so, you have more in common with Azov than traditional Western values.
2. Visas are not a right, but a privilege.
3. Skripal case.
Because it's a slippery slope to collective punishment.
"This is a telling slip; Lewy is talking about ‘the Armenians’ as if the defenceless women and children who comprised the deportation columns were vicariously responsible for Armenian rebels in other parts of the country. The collective guilt accusation is unacceptable in scholarship, let alone in normal discourse and is, I think, one of the key ingredients in genocidal thinking. It fails to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants, on which international humanitarian law has been insisting for over a hundred years now." [0]
Collective responsibility seems to have worked for post-WW2 Germany though. And made the society as a whole stronger.
Denying visas is not "failing to recognize between combatants and non-combatants". It is denying a privilege that the russian government has messed up for their own citizens. EU or USA don't owe you anything. The russian government does.
Personally, I have zero interest in letting someone into my country for them later to claim that learning my language is "nazism".
Should Americans (including me) collectively be punished for this (of those of us like me who were actively against it)?
Is the EU at war with Russia? Maybe you should stop buying Russian oil and gas right now? Trading with the enemy, you know. Financing Putin's government.
You are doing exactly what the genocide scholar I quoted warned about.
You asked what's wrong with 'collective guilt' and I answered that using this justification is the slippery slope towards "collective punishment" that includes "failing to recognize between combatants and non-combatants". I never said that denying visas is "failing to recognize between combatants and non-combatants".
But I can give you an example: I've seen many times the calls to stop the export of medicaments to Russia thus killing or disabling most vulnerable civilians [0].
> And how is visa ban justified?
That was dishonest.
To reitterate:
> Denying visas is not "failing to recognize between combatants and non-combatants". It is denying a privilege that the russian government has messed up for their own citizens. EU or USA don't owe you anything. The russian government does.
Now, where is collective Ukrainian guilt for the genocide of Poles and Jews during WW2 on part of Ukrainian Insurgent Army? Looks like it's absent, Ukrainian ambassador to Germany compared Bandera with Robin Hood to the disgust of Germans, Poles and Jews. [0]
[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-07-07/stepan...
Oh look, a (presumably) russian lecturing me about my country’s history with an OPINION piece, while simultaneously knowing dick-didly about it.
Receipts:
https://m.knesset.gov.il/EN/activity/Documents/SpeechPdf/Por...
Perhaps, you will like Israeli [0] and German [1] news more.
"The statement made by the Ukrainian ambassador is a distortion of the historical facts, belittles the Holocaust and is an insult to those who were murdered by Bandera and his people," the Israeli embassy said.
Polish deputy Foreign Minister Marcin Przydacz wrote on a local online platform that "such an opinion and such words are absolutely unacceptable."
And if you want historical information about Ukrainian Insurgent Army, I gave you wikipedia link in another comment here.
[0] https://www.israelnews.net/news/272606794/ukrainian-envoy-li...
[1] https://www.dw.com/en/ukraines-envoy-to-germany-irks-israeli...
Kind of like calling Bandera's collaboration with the Abwehr "nazism", but pretending that it wasn't nazism or even nazi-collaboration, when Stalin signed a pact with Hitler to divide Europe and conducted joint military invasion of Poland in full knowledge of what will happen to the Jewish population there...
No visas until you guys work on your own self-awareness! :D
P.S. Just to make it a bit easier for you, because I suspect The Cult of the 9th Of May is interfering here, but Ukrainians understand that history is not a Marvel movie - heroes can be flawed to say the least. Just because OUN/UPAs actions were criminal against Poles and Jews doesn't negate the fact that their fight against the Nazis and russians were heroic. THAT'S HOW BAD YOU GUYS WERE.
Quite the opposite, I keep the conversation on track and ignore your sealioning [0]. You can't possibly be ignorant about the fate of German civilians when war moved to German territory. Especially about 'which war' was it.
"their fight against the Nazis ... were heroic"
OUN/UPA didn't really fight Germany. [1]
"Just because OUN/UPAs actions were criminal against Poles and Jews"
What were you saying about 'ethno-fascist roots'?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organization_of_Ukrainian_Nati...
As a US citizen by birth (zero control), should my visa/passport also be banned?
Is my 9 month old little girl collectively guilty?
- Treatment of minority cultures (Finland as a counter example, which I give) - Popular media (movies -i.e. Brat 2-, and especially now the outright genocidal state media) - Popular culture (a cursory scroll through VK on the topic of Ukrainians should be enough) - I don't even mention the systemic antisemitism during the soviet times.
If you are russian, you have a choice. You can nitpick and misinterpret my arguments, which -personally- I don't care about. Or you can think about how your own society has failed to uphold humanist values both towards your neighbours and your own compatriots. You can point fingers at the USA, but it won't make your country better and honestly, I bet the majority of people would feel safer having USA on their side, rather than russia. Armenia is a case in point. Nobody says the Americans or EU are holy, but russia is worse, china is worse, iran is worse.
At this point, it is safer for the rest of the world to not engage with russia and contain it until, at the very least, it starts upholding the international treaties and agreements it signed.
If you use the comparison with Finland as indication of Russia being 'fascist', then whole lot of countries including Ukraine are 'fascist' too. Which devoids the word 'fascist' of its meaning.
"Popular media (movies -i.e. Brat 2-)"
And what is fascist about it? Main hero is negative about fascism. [0]
"the systemic antisemitism during the soviet times"
Which is not the case in today's Russia.
As for the past, Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which are treated as heroes in modern Ukraine, was quite busy butchering Jews [1] and Poles [2].
"you can think about how your own society has failed to uphold humanist values"
I don't think that vast majority of Russians believed that Putin was going to start the war.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2G1tL235aM
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Insurgent_Army#Holoc...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Insurgent_Army#Massa...
That's quite a leap from questioning why the federal government websites aren't translated into local languages. Care to share examples of such disrespect?
"Good examples of treatment of minorities are Finland with their treatment of the Swedish minorities there"
How would you rate pre-war treatment of language minorities in the Ukraine?
"In April 2019, the Ukrainian parliament voted a new law, the Law of Ukraine "to ensure the functioning of the Ukrainian language as the State language". On 16 June 2019, the law entered into force. The law made the use of Ukrainian compulsory (totally or within certain quotas) in the work of some public authorities, in the electoral procedures and political campaigning, in pre-school, school and university education, in scientific, cultural and sporting activities, in book publishing and book distribution, in printed mass media, television and radio broadcasting, in economic and social life (commercial advertising, public events), in hospitals and nursing homes, and in the activities of political parties and other legal entities (e.g. non-governmental organizations) registered in Ukraine." [0]
"So at which percentage"
Ukrainian answer was 10% [0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_policy_in_Ukraine
Compare it yourself.
Ukraine: "Under the bill, all schools and universities will be required to teach in Ukrainian. All schools and universities are required to teach in Ukrainian, although special exemptions apply to certain ethnic minority languages, to English and to other official languages of the European Union.
Contrary to the minority languages which are EU official languages, Russian, Belarusian and Yiddish are granted no exemption for the purposes of the law." [0]
Finland: "All teaching from children’s pedagogy to university studies is available in Swedish in Finland." [1]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_policy_in_Ukraine#Ana...
Not according to the law. It simply had 3 years of grace period, starting from 2019. [1]
"members of national minorities who do not speak an official EU language — Byelorussians, Gagauzes, Jews, and, significantly, Russians — will only be able to study at the secondary school level their language as a subject." [0]
"But Ukrainian is the state language."
And Finland has two state languages. [2]
"Are you saying that minimal standards in Ukraine should be education in russian"
No, it's what you are saying when you state that Ukraine has "the same level of laws that you get in Western countries, including Finland".
[0] https://www.venice.coe.int/webforms/documents/?pdf=CDL-AD(20...
[1] https://www.kyivpost.com/ukraine-politics/parliament-passes-...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Finland#Ethnic...
> Classes taught in ethnic minority languages will be allowed at Ukrainian-language schools, and some subjects at Ukrainian-language universities can be taught in English or one of the official languages of the European Union.
And yes, maybe the Ukrainian language that has been repressed by russia since 19th century at the latest needs a bit of an affirmative action.
That's dishonest.
"maybe the Ukrainian language that ... needs a bit of an affirmative action"
Maybe, but then discrimination of minority languages doesn't allow you to claim that the Ukrainian policy is on the same level as in Western countries.
And you do know why there are few Yiddish speakers in the Europe now, right? Yiddish might have been an official language somewhere in the EU if not for mass extermination of Jews. In which Ukrainian heroes took part [0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Insurgent_Army#Holoc...
Also, if someone's genuinely interested in my "sources" I'm willing to put in the work and post them, but didn't want to waste time in case people can't be bothered to be critical and click the links, and I also don't have a horse in this race, but the whole "America best, everyone bad" mentality literally reeks of indoctrination and lack of critical thinking that indoctrination and gaslighting cause, and it's worrying that it's happening in America of all places (which I admired for human rights and freedom of expression and thought, at least until recently). For reference, some were older BBC and CNN articles, a few YouTube videos, and a Quora thread which duplicates some of these.
[1]: Which the US military is supplying weapons to, apparently
[2] Maybe I fell victim to not appropriately fact checking some propaganda though, but I'm also not sure how to fact check something like this, and... The truth of the matter is that the US has done much worse in the past.
Aside: This whole "everything is a propaganda machine" is so frustrating, and I hate that there's literally nothing you can trust these days. I honestly can't even tell if I'm "paranoid" to think so. It just so very saddening, and despite some people's best efforts, it seems human nature is truly disappointing everywhere we turn.
It was never really about NATO [1] for the russians, but as Putin said in his initial speech at the beginning of the invasion to "find a final solution to the Ukrainian question).
If you want to see the origin of russian ethno-fascism, try to find an early 2000s russian action film called "Brother 2" (Брат 2). It was immensely popular in russia at the time and is the most racist thing I've ever seen.
1 - https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/exclusive-war-beg...
Why would one be that willfully superficial to look only at a recently crafted public image, instead of... I dunno... The recent history of the organisation?
At the very least being lazy as we are, we could just take a quick look at their recent logo from a few years ago, according to Wikipedia featuring "...a combination of a mirrored Wolfsangel and Black Sun, two symbols associated with the Wehrmacht and SS, over a small Tryzub".
Somehow I doubt that this was all a total accident made up by evil Russians. I also remember internet openly talking about the rise of nazism in Ukraine before it became a taboo topic. And you could too, by simply telling your search engine to look for documents before 2022, when everyone went full post-truth.
> russian ethno-fascism
Ukrainians and Russians are mostly ethnically slavs, ugh.
> If you want to see the origin of russian ethno-fascism, try to find an early 2000s russian action film called "Brother 2" (Брат 2)
Oh please, it's like claiming that Duke Nukem is a represantative origin of women's rights in the US.
> Ukrainians and Russians are mostly ethnically slavs, ugh.
Thanks for your racial theories...
> Oh please, it's like claiming that Duke Nukem is a represantative origin of women's rights in the US.
It was indicative of the culture though. This is why today you won't see a popular game with such rhetoric as Duke Nukem anymore. But Russians still don't realize Brat 2 is racist.
Who cares about it's recent political pivoting? Why are you trying to stir the discussion away from the fact that Azov first and foremost in its recent origin is a military organisation born of banal street-level neonazi skinhead sorts? It's not your typical US Republican or German AfD talks-kinda-maybe-like-nazi-apologist, it's an actual physical organizied force.
And the scandal of integrating it into Ukraine's National Guard back when it was openly waving the Third Reich's symbolics tells us quite a lot of its role in post-revolution Ukraine power structure.
> Right now you're going "symbol scary!". By that logic German AfD, the French Front Nationale, or UKIP are totally above board in that respect...
Are any of these also military organizations at their core? And specifically, what symbols so commonly associated with the Thrid Reich are they using?
> Thanks for your racial theories...
Beg your pardon? You were the one to bring up the topic of ethnicity, not me.
> It was indicative of the culture though. This is why today you won't see a popular game with such rhetoric as Duke Nukem anymore.
Duke Nukem had a reboot and an aniversary edition a few years ago... And the abundance of wierd rape fanasy porn games on Steam doesn't really add up.
> But Russians still don't realize Brat 2 is racist.
Is this a verifiable claim? Cuz you're referring to a 20 smth y.o. lowlife trashy criminal drama, not some "Brat N+1". Is it any different from a movie like La Haine (1995)?
People who vote for them.
You have zero evidence that the regiment follows a neonazi agenda. Neither does the National Guard, the Army, nor the government. Not to mention that Azov itself is multiethnic.
Russians on the other hand have filtration camps and TV hosts on government channels call for nuclear war, ethnic cleansing and destruction of the Ukrainian national identity. Thank god they have nice logos though, otherwise they'd seem like Nazis! /s
> Beg your pardon? You were the one to bring up the topic of ethnicity, not me.
I didn't make any ethnic assertions. You started the "brothers slavs" trope.
> And specifically, what symbols so commonly associated...
Again, "symbol scary". Azov has no stated political goals against any minority / groups of population. AfD has. FN has. UKIP has.
> Duke Nukem had a reboot and an aniversary edition a few years ago...
Are they as popular as the original then?
> Is this a verifiable claim?
Ask a russian.
And why would we care about them, at least in context of this specific discussion?
> You have zero evidence that the regiment follows a neonazi agenda.
The evidence is plenty, although might feel inaccessable when naive-googling without setting filter to before the great post-truth of 2022.
Azov recruiting neonazis:
https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/ukraine-deutsche-soel...
Azov being your typical far-right brute force thugs, targeting identity groups:
https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-far-right-vigilantes-destroy... https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-azov-right-wing-militia-to-p... https://khpg.org/en/1517275970
They even have their own hitlerjugend: https://youtu.be/CpV16BQfbrQ
And we've already discussed the symbolics that you were so fast to dismiss. I'm sorry, but if it's recruiting neonazis, dresses as neonazis and operates like neonazis, it's neonazis. I'm not sure what argument could be made here.
The government is a whole another matter. Sure, Israel is not happy with some of its politics, and the Odessa fires incident (specifically the investigation of it) doesn't inspire confidence, but it's hard to clearly distinct policy of one from the network effect of turing a militant skinheads brigade into glorified policie.
> I didn't make any ethnic assertions. You started the "brothers slavs" trope.
Trope? Slavic people were historicaly kinda disjointed, I am not sure where you had inferred all that "brother" stuff from.
> Again, "symbol scary". Azov has no stated political goals against any minority / groups of population. AfD has. FN has. UKIP has.
I dunno, their statements seem pretty clear to me: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/11/ultranationali...
> Are they as popular as the original then?
Correcting for the explosive expansion of the industry, yeah, I'd say the genre had marked itself pretty solidly.
> Ask a russian.
So you actually have no idea?
There is massive racism in Russian society, the various awareness movements that happened in the West never happened in Russia. One could compare the way USA has treated native people, and many issues would be similar.
Additionally, some of the ehnicities have beef with each-other that sometimes sparks into armed conflict.
Internally, the situation is not much different (at least from an outsiders perspective). The elite and wealthy effectively using their resources to further the gap between themselves and the lower rungs in the name of profit.
Externally, the propaganda is aimed at distracting from how disruptive they are in other countries affairs (most notable in recent history being the Middle East). Internally, it seems like it's indoctrination into the belief of the inherent superiority of capitalism, and the construction of strawmen to distract from real issues.
I don't want to be insensitive, but the whole 9/11 thing is such hypocrisy. They call it a terrorist attack, but America has been and is the terrorists to a substantial portion of the world. Claiming otherwise is just ignorant
The US killed six million Muslims in the war on terror.
edit: so for perspective, only 13.5 million Uighurs exist in the world, and the vast majority survived the hardship and imposition China unleashed on them in a fairly brutal Sinoization campaign meant to stop a separatist movement that was using terrorism. The US killed 6 million Muslims to respond to 9/11, and virtually none of them were of the nationality or related to the people who hijacked the planes, who came from a close ally of the US. Instead, we killed Iraqis.
Good old times when Putin was first to call Bush and offer all the possible help [1].
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/specials/attack...
[1] https://carnegieendowment.org/2001/10/24/u.s.-russia-relatio...
This conclusion should be self-evident for any democratic society, so any reasonable value of free and democratic.
I have various bones to pick with the rest of the post, chiefly viewing all of politics as being about abstract notion of freedom instead of realpolitik