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Comment by throwaway27448 | Hacker News Reader

> which are things like, "Sanctions on Russian leaders are pointless and counterproductive", "Assad didn't gas anyone", "Actual nazis have the Ukrainian leadership's balls in a vice" etc.

What would be the point of that? Wars and support of wars do not generally rely on public support. For instance here in the us, only around 3% of americans vote based on foreign policy. Does it really matter which narrative the masses believe? I would think it would be people in power worth persuading, and there are much more direct ways of buying politicians and career government workers.

Propagandizing their own people I get, but what you're outlining just doesn't make sense. "Spreading chaos" does because it draws resources away from their interests to domestic discord.

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Public opinion does sometimes change the direction of a country. For Russia it's probably most relevant in a few eastern European countries, but there's a normality effect - it is probably easier for someone like Órban to dissent from EU on Ukraine the more there is minority dissent in other EU countries.

Either way, it doesn't have to actually work, the propagandist only has to think it's worth it to try.

Its not about Americans. Russians already owned them and got them to do what they want. Its about Europeans that are much closer to their representatives.

Do europeans vote based on foreign policy?

> Wars and support of wars do not generally rely on public support

Up until Iran, wars in America had large general support. Americans liked wars and their support for leadership went up when those wards started. And Americans politicians who wanted those wars put a lot of work into making people support wars.

Russians supported invasion of Ukraine. And Putin made sure they will. Even Germans prior WWI and WWII supported and wanted war. Ironically, especially young wanting to prove their masculinity.

In case of Germany nope. Germans were not against the wars but there was not a huge support case. Especially WWI it was only a nationalistic educated minority who supported the war. Most people were not so keen to die

> Especially WWI it was only a nationalistic educated minority who supported the war.

Definitely not minority. There were hawks "attack now" and doves claiming "we are not ready we get ready and attack". Moreover, large parts of Germans population did not accepted defeat of WWI, thought the peace was betrayal and wanted a redo.

In 1914, the "spirit for the war" was high.

> Most people were not so keen to die

It just so happen that young men and former soldiers were the keenest on WWII. Of course they were not keen to die, but they were massively keen on proving they are manly men who will kill their enemies. They wanted to prove they are as good as their heroes from WWI.

> It just so happen that young men and former soldiers were the keenest on WWII.

Weren't they subject to crushing economic conditions as a result of the diplomatic terms on which WWI ended? The context is important (as usual).

The actual context is that they believed they would win the war if they continued fighting. They believed that peace deal was "stab in the back" of great fighters by soft politicians (and jews). To large extend, WWII was redo because by and large Germans did not accepted defeat.

Btw, that is literally why WWII ended up without peace deal, with complete military takeover of Germany. The alliance wanted to avoid another "we were about to win" myth followed by third round of the whole thing. They wanted clear military victory, so that no one can possibly think they would win it if it continued.

Second, the conditions were softer then what Germany planned against their enemies in case they win. The bigger economic disaster in Germany pushing toward far right was great depression. You can discuss how much economic consequences of the loss contributed to the culture, but the fact is, Germany was pretty violent country and celebrated war itself.

It still is one - but more quietly.

We can get into the weeds about German (or more accurately, Prussian) militarism. Prussia dominated the day-to-day politics of the united German Empire (for good reason, it essentially led the unification), but didn't necessarily represent the rest of the country. Even today, German culture varies a lot by region.

I remember reading about the post-war reconstruction of Germany, where a handful of anti-nazi German politicians (in particular Ludwig Erhard) tried to rationalize how the German people, that gave the world Beethoven and Bach, fell to the evils of Nazism. The oversimplified answer could just be it depended on who was in control. There are evil people everywhere.

Rather like the Raytheon adverts in DC airport, the aim of all this nonsense is to alter the worldview of the small number of people who make the actual decisions. It does seem to have some effect - the Trump administration withdrew support from Ukraine.

I suppose. But social media would be a very indirect way of influencing decision makers. Surely it'd be more straightforward to simply bribe or threaten them.

> It does seem to have some effect - the Trump administration withdrew support from Ukraine.

No, they haven't. We just haven't increased support. They still benefit from our existing aid packages and intelligence.

There was definitely a withdrawal, partially resumed, and a reduction of funding: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-...

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