I am maga from Texas, I say we secede from librul states, we have all we need, like warm-water port for naval and industry.
I love that Lemmy is building its own collection of epic moments.
Anyone who’s from Youngstown immediately knows it’s fake because the steel industry died there about 50 years ago or so and it’s never recovered. It’s depressing as hell.
“Warm water port”
Online campaigns to shift geopolitical agenda are deeper and far more vast than just the big numbers.
Ah, yes. As a patriotic American I love our warm water ports like Corpus Christi and Tampa. Don’t you love warm water ports as well?
Can someone explain this? I’ve never heard the the term referring to anything other than a port that doesn’t freeze over but it clearly has another meaning that I can’t figure out or even find with a search.
It’s a real geopolitical problem for Russia. Russia got screwed by geography in terms of natural harbors that don’t freeze over in the winter. It’s why they’ve always had a crap navy, going way back into the imperial days.
Right now, the Russian Navy is based in Murmansk (brrrr. limited routes to get out into Atlantic) and the Black Sea. The Black Sea is bad for them because Turkey (a NATO member) makes sure to maintain total control of what passes through the Bosphorous.
Part of what Russia did in Syria during the civil war netted them a lease on a base on the Mediterranean. That could have had some use for power projection, but I think they lost it when a certain opthalmologist was expelled.
Anyhow, it’s hilarious when the trolls posing as MAGA Americans bring this up, because real Americans just take their total abundance of ports that don’t freeze over completely for granted. That’s why I point out secondary, less busy port cities on the Gulf of Mexico, where the water is actually pretty warm (instead of just not freezing over). Just to highlight how good the US has it. Even if we were forced to give up Norfolk and Coronado, there are plenty of other suitable places we could have naval bases.
Very interesting! Thank you!
is it maybe that americans don’t think in those terms, but it is more relevant to russian strategic thinking, becuase they don’t have those?
There are no Americans on the internet
Some say that there are no humans on the internet.
Hey, the pay is good and they don’t have to go to the front line and die in Ukraine.
It’s fucking foreign grifters, because in the present day you can make money from being an “influencer”: all that fucking shit in the US has attracted every Techology savy, English-speaking scammer in the World because every fucking asshole with a computer and an Internet connection in his mother’s basement in bumfuck shitty-shit town in frigging Romenia can make more money in a day as an “influencer” feeding prejudiced, socially inept, delusions-of-grandeur-holding Americans with outrage that they can in a month working whatever job is available for them in shitty-shit nowehere-ville.
(Ditty for American grifters, by the way)
It’s targetting mainly the MAGAs because they’re the less intellectually capable population segment in the US, hence make for much easier marks.
Populism-dominated America together with the ability for “remote work” on the Internet and how one can make money from views has led to a fucking freeding frenzy for every tech-abled scammer with an internet connection and decent English-speaking skills in the World.
I bet this whole phenomenon is mainly a “emergent property” of the rewards and access structures in place in Social Media and that the top-down organised ops from state actors are but a tiny fraction of this shit show.
foreign grifters
I think its far more likely for GOP/MAGA to be buying twitter “engagement” on Fiver, than grifters “launching influencer careers” by directing MAGA fans to their other socials? or spamming affiliate purchase links on twitter?
A key question/reality check is that instead of treating MAGA fanaticism as foreign agent propaganda, it is GOP propaganda outsourced to cheapest providers.
There is a lot of foreign support for Trump among foreigners and immigrants (prior to elections anyway). What they all have in common is a hatred for the US, and a deep thirst for trans/woke outrage click bait. While it doesn’t affect foreigners in any good way, “at least he’s doing a great job on the mexican rapist invaders” is only point of approval support remaining. Really, where Trump fanaticism was resurected was purely on anger towards a trans inclusive world order. Every other policy is just brainwashing people who come for the anti-trans circlejerk, but stay for the tax cuts for oligarch climate terrorists.
Por qué no los dos?
It’s targetting mainly the MAGAs because they’re the less intellectually capable population
I’ve seen a flood of “I’m a Palestinian who is struggling to survive, please send me money” posts and PMs on BlueSky and Instagram and other liberal-leaning social media. Folks love to believe their team is the “smarties” and the opposition is the “dummies”. Nobody likes to believe they’d be ripe for exploitation.
Consequently, your refusal to believe in your own gullibility and bias opens you up to scammers.
I bet this whole phenomenon is mainly a “emergent property” of the rewards and access structures in place in Social Media and that the top-down organised ops from state actors are but a tiny fraction of this shit show.
Like everything else capitalist, it starts out as an independent venture and congeals into national industry as the rate of return grows. The modern era of internet scamming is just the latest in a long history of affinity scams and MLM schemes. People are drawn in out of fear, confusion, and desperation. And because the better scammers know to tip their political overclass, these scam factories tend to be insulated from any kind of regulation or public prosecution.
People who have a higher level of Education and have to think for a living are less prone to fall for pure lies + strong displays of emotion and instead tend to fall for context/information-control scams + pushing of subconscious buttons, and as it so happens the Republicans tend to use more the former kind of scam whilst the Democrats the latter (none of which “my” “team” as I’m not even American).
As it so happens, outright lies and emotional raging are far more accessible for foreign scammers than the more subtle kinds of manipulation (which are more common in the Press: for example how in most of the Press in the Israeli Gaza Genocide, Israelis are “killed” whilst Palestinians merely “die”).
I totally agree with the rest of your post. Widespread scamming is a natural thing in Capitalism.
The whole emergent property element is how, due to in the modern age external scammers that aren’t even directly involved in US politics and thus don’t gain from side A or side B being able to still make money from view alone, as a group they have had a systemic impact in the use politics - those individual actions of individuals who aren’t actually organized (as they’re not even in those political parties) combined to do (or at least accelerate) a systemic change in the politics of the US.
Maybe (probably?) scams around politics in Capitalism also do combine in an emergent way from bottom up to shape each nations’ politics as a whole, but this is the first time a large fraction of the actors in that don’t directly gain from being in politics or receiving political patronage, and instead merely gain from using rage to get attention (more specifically, clicks), and I believe that has caused something else to emerge from it at a systemic level than what there was before since these people care even less about the possible destruction that their actions might cause since they themselves will never suffer from it.
People who have a higher level of Education and have to think for a living are less prone to fall for pure lies + strong displays of emotion
That’s simply not true. Education does not negate emotion. Nor does it negate the consequences of old age or the erosive effect of decades of propaganda. Hell, “education” in the abstract isn’t even well-defined. You get a degree from Liberty University and you’re not going to come out more Woke than some kid with a GED busting ass in the dockworker’s union or organizing Starbucks and Walmart workers.
I believe that has caused something else to emerge from it at a systemic level than what there was before since these people care even less about the possible destruction that their actions might cause since they themselves will never suffer from it.
Definitely not good to see people farther and farther removed from the ramifications of their actions. That said, this is right in line with the 19th century quackery and fly-by-night scams that plagued the laisse-faire economy of the era.
I wouldn’t say its creating a new ideology so much as resurrecting an old one.
And the added pain to work the night shift in order to react timely.
In Soviet Russia, Bubba blow you!
And people fall for it and regulators allow it.
“People fall for it”
checks the accounts of people responding positively to the post
they’re all bots
That’s odd. He’s not saying genocide is wrong. I’ve been assured by lemmy’s pro-genocide centrists that this is the sole criterion by which to identify a russian.
I can’t wait for this to be the new thought terminating cliche of neolibs. Remember when they said we’d all be turned off after the election? And post election no one would care about Gaza?
Love that projection from them.
Why don’t we start to do this in reverse? “Я гей-фермер из Владивостока. Я поддерживаю слом системы.”
That propaganda won’t work comrade Ivan, we all know there no gay farmers in Vladivostok. Our wise government made sure of it!
But yeah, jokes aside, it’s currently a crime to support LGBT in russia. Being gay = being rebel against regime, cause real rebels either already dead, in prison or fled. Next in line, if I would guess, would be jews I think.
Because russia is not a democracy and an average russian is staying away from politics due to learned helplessness. Because of multiple factors, even protests won’t change anything. You can call for sabotage, but that isn’t what an average person would do.
Besides, their internet is far more restricted. They don’t have access to twitter. They use vk and registration there essentially requires a gov id, 1 per citizen.
You grow up in those countries, you’d soon learn to keep quiet.
My family was all born in mainland China, we live in the US right now, my parents keeps telling me to stop criticizing the government, as in neither the governments of of PRC and USA. Because in their mind:
dissent = trouble
shut up = safeWhich I mean, to be fair, seeing how PRC allegedly has overseas operatives and also the US’s current autocratization, they might actually have a point.
I don’t agree with that idea, but I get where they’re coming from. They lived through the Cutural revolution stuff. My dad was a kid during those times, my mom was born near the end of it, but she heard direct first hand accounts from my maternal grandparents. So… those fears gets passed on. My mom told me many times to not post anti-government views on the internet… even here in the US… 👀
I know what you mean. My parents (both Ukrainian) were telling me to lower my profile and don’t post anything political cause we don’t know where are we heading. They did enjoy their freedom to criticize gov at home & with the family members though, but in a very characteristic Ukrainian trait - all the politicians bad, they all steal etc.
My wife’s granny from Belarus, she switched to very quiet whisper every time she was talking about politics. Even in Ukraine, where people faced no consequences. Because walls have ears.
And re genetic memory, I know what you mean cause even people that didn’t experience Holodomor had very different attitude towards food, having stashes & wasting food was basically unthinkable.
dissent = trouble shut up = safe
That’s true in the US, anyone who thinks they have free speech hasn’t said anything that anyone cared about, and were asleep the entirety of 2020 and hasn’t turned on the news now that Trump’s ICE are so wildly incompetent they don’t even bother to obfuscate what they’re doing.
Those who don’t move don’t notice their chains.
…even protests won’t change anything.
the fact that you get Siberia’d for holding a blank poster on the street says more than enough to this end.
This isn’t the key factor. Every protest that has big political change goal is potentially dangerous for those who participate, in every country. That didn’t stop Ukrainians, for example.
But the thing that russian gov wouldn’t just go away. Even if 10 millions would be on the streets for like a month. Even if they defend against riot police instead of running away. The key figures would just stay till the bitter end. They would use army. And then what, an average russian doesn’t have a rifle at home. And who would you fight, an army?
At this point it’s easier to just join russian corps in Ukrainian army. At least it is organized.
But then again, they won’t get a million on the streets. And they won’t resist the riot police. Russian protest is a sad view.
When Russia was not in the war, protests were way more prominent. Some of them were not sad at all.
The thing is, protests don’t do shit on their own. They are tools that opposition use to organise and send a message, and Putin learned to strike where it hurts, so when you participate in a protest all you achieve is that you paint a target on your back.
This is one of the reasons Ukranian protest of 2014 ultimately prevailed, cops were targeting protesters and not the leaders, so it became an organised fight.Protest in a country with the rule of law and democracy is about sending a message. Those tools don’t work in authoritarian countries like Russia (or Ukraine in 2013, for that matter). I’m fairly convinced that russian opposition politicians don’t want to allow the real protest to happen, directing the protest energy into waste.
Otherwise, I can’t explain why the protest never evolves into action. As if the protest wasn’t about the goal (to change things), but about fixing self-consciousness (to say that you don’t agree & getting jailed & say you did all you could).
And I need to vocalize the unfortunate truth about the protests that resolve around the goal - you need to be able to answer the question “and what if they won’t?” at every step, and be able to escalate.
“We are on the streets for a month, what if they won’t go?” - take the gov buildings / their villas and make them go. “What if they beat those people?”. Organize the people so they are coordinated and can fight back. “What if they shoot?” Raid the military bases and shoot back. Etc.
Every next step is escalation into more violence. Every next step don’t add you new followers, but filters out the existing ones that can’t follow further. All the peaceful protest part is about getting the biggest amount of people on the streets. But if you can’t answer a single “and what if they won’t?” - you lose.
The Ukrainian revolution worked because it had no leaders. There were politicians who wanted PR and were telling speeches, but lots of people despised them. There was no single entity you could eliminate to make it fall. Sure, different groups had their authority figures, but there were dozens of those groups. And people used their time to self-organize into militia groups, new leaders emerged naturally from those who took action and responsibility.
Not sure whether this is serious, but to provide a serious answer: you can’t create a healthy democracy by spreading misinformation. Misinformation that’s aligned with your agenda might help push it in the short term, but it also undermines trust (in this case trust in what the average person is saying, since you can’t tell who genuine participants in a discussion are). In a low trust environment, people tend to gravitate toward big personalities and believe sources and make decisions based on their own gut feelings (i.e. their personal prejudices) rather than on things like people’s real experiences and accurate information from trusted institutions.
Demagogues like Putin thrive in this environment because ultimately they don’t have (or care about) solutions to the average person’s problems. They get by based on personality, stoking prejudice etc. But policies that are based on the truth and what the average person actually needs suffer.
That’s part of why russia is like this actually. Propaganda both pro and anti soviet wasn’t telling the whole truth and shit got weird
you can’t create a healthy democracy by spreading misinformation
You use this to build a case that Russia is the side with an unhealthy democracy. Categorically, it is 100% misinformation that Russia was not provoked into defending itself as a result of Ukrainian puppet nationalist leadership installed by the US. That we walk around thinking “healthy democracies have sub 40% approval for their rulership” and any country with 80%+ approval can only be a dictatorship is another massive level of misinformation.
Walking around thinking pure demonic warmongering lies is reality is by far the most destructive misinformation bubble you can possibly support. Sleepwalking through your rulerships’ “healthy democracy” by internalizing their right to supremacism is guaranteeing your submission to their pillaging of country.
It was a joke. I lived and worked in Russia for some years. I understand that the country has more fundamental problems to resolve.
Do you mean propagandise the Russian population? The West is already doing it by way of Radio Free Europe, NED and other NGOs. It is not a discussion that comes up often, but on occasions Russian trolls will bring up about color revolutions in Russian sphere of influence that advocate for democratic reforms, which is catalysed by the West through said media and institutions. Hence, for the Russian jingoists and Kremlin, their own propaganda against the West is justified. But if you ask the trolls what is objectively bad with promoting democracy? You will get crickets. That is certainly better than propping up illiberal and regressive groups.
what is objectively bad with promoting democracy?
Because calling a US puppet regime democracy, doesn’t actually lead to liberal peace values. As in Ukraine and Georgia, it lead to immediate war for purposes of diminishing Russia. Democracy has turned into “empty branding” for establishment rule.
You’re talking about CIA-orchestrated coups and without popular support. Almost all color revolutions tend to be grass roots movement, albeit have soft power influence from outside.
Almost all color revolutions tend to be grass roots movement, albeit have soft power influence from outside.
Contradictory. Soft power with lots of money gets lots of influence. Where any revolution can cause destabilization that favours CIA agenda/control, it will get funded. Opinion that “more trade with EU would be nice” gets funded into protests. Black flag nazi executions of protesters get narrated as Governmnent executions, and the protest frenzy causes a coup.
In Georgia and Ukraine, or just taking the Ukraine example, Maidan liberalism received no governance representation whatsover inside coup government. Only nationalists who would provoke a war on Russia got power. So there is 0 link between the substance of popular complaints, and the resulting evil of transforming complaints into CIA agenda.
K comrade.
Don’t forget PBS.
Sesame Street is literally one of the most effective pieces of western propaganda. Reaching, primarily, kids and moms, in oppressive, patriarchal societies…and delivering messages of acceptance and equality right into their homes.
Better pull the plug from that, right Donnie?
can’t control women and kids unless they feel helpless and scared.
kind of pathetic when you think about it. the only control that they can hold over you is the control you allow them to force upon you.
become ungovernable, fuck the oligarchy.
In this exact case you will be washed away with a wave of homophoby. Because in Russia, many people with otherwise sane and non-destructive views are still homophobic. To compare with some other country, I would say it’s something like in Turkey.
So if I was trying to improve Russian society through “good kind of propaganda”(not sure it’s a thing), I would start from something else, and not from this problematic topic. Otherwise if will be generally harder to find wide support.
And when I’m thinking of that, homophobia in Russia is just a result of people “worrying too much about other people’s shit” - everyone knows how you should or shouldn’t live, and ready to tell you about it. So if you work on that in general, that would help.
You can tell it isn’t real because everyone in Youngstown in a mafioso
Live in Youngstown. It is a full of Midwestern turds. They should have flushed the whole city down the toilet when the steel left.
Live in Youngstown.
Man I’m sorry
My uncle was locked up there for a little while
I hate this shit the problems with America and its oppression isn’t primarily due to scary “foreigners” its homegrown and refusing to confront it as such makes it impossible to destroy and feeds into warmongering and xenophobia.
You missed the point. Twitter just revealed that many of the deranged MAGA influencers are from outside the US.
The main issue with MAGA is actually foreigners! Suprise surprise. That is what the meme is making fun of.
Yes, US hasn’t got a monopoly in propaganda and internet narrative manipulation. And this was in 2013.
Surprise Surprise!
Foreigners are just the “others” used by the elites to point the tribalist weak minded morons towards somebody else whilst the very much local elites pillage the place.
And this is not just done to the MAGA muppets: notice the whole bitching and moaning about “foreign interference” from the rest - guess what, the influence of the likes of Russia and even China have in countries like the US is fucking nothing next to that of the local traditional fatcats owning the Press and Tech-bros owning social media or even in relative terms that cultivated by the kind of Propaganda ops we see in action here in the most popular Lemmy.world forums.
Fuck, if you want to worry about Foreign Actors, look at how Israel got most of the West, especially the US, to basically destroy in non-aligned countries at least half a fucking century of cultivate image of being Rule Of Law abiding and Freedom Promoting, which amongst other things resulted in some of those now turning towards Russia or China - all this shit to protected the fucking modern day Nazis whilst they get off from murdering little brow children.
The supposed Leftwing of the US (but not really: in World terms the Democrats are a hard Right party, just ultra Capitalist Neolibs rather than Fascists) are just as much doing the whole “it’s those scary foreigners” smoke and mirrors show to turn the mob eyes away from their sponsors as the Fascists, it’s just that in their propaganda the cartoonish bad guys are “state actors” rather than “immigrants”.
And all the fucking shit in the US (not just the propaganda but its use to distract the crowd from the pillaging by the likes of the Finance Industry, “realestate investors” and other parasites) is leaking to the rest of the World and accelerating the shitstorm elsewhere.
It is possible to care about multiple things at a time
While I think there is a huge honegrown issue, the foreign influence is another gigantic problem that can’t be ignored and it was just 100% proven.
if a weed helps an invasive but native species grow, whose fault is it?
it’s the rich assholes fault that keep telling us that it’s the grass’ fault for growing that caused the invasive species to spread.
who planted the weeds? the rich.
Issues like this are systemic and need to be looked at in at a macro as opposed to a micro way.
Nyet
