Information Warfare Education, Propaganda, and How to Tell the Difference

One thing I found interesting about living in Eastern Europe after the fall of communism was just how easily people can flip-flop between ideologies, but still retain the same personality. The ideology is just the veneer - a thin coating for many people. Their deeper philosophy that allows this is need to force compliance in others. In my mind the Trump supporter and the militant feminist share this these deeper traits, and I noticed this trait in former communists in the late 1990’s. They believe there is one right way, but have difficulty explaining it or discussing it. They often express anger when you try to break down exactly what their point of view is.

Honestly facebook has always been nefarious. Just look at how it was developed. I was an early adopter of google in 1998 and was amazed at what I found back then. Nothing like today. The change came when Google changed it’s ownership and business model in 2004 and became a public company. It’s around that time they started to have aspirations of global domination under the guise of making things more convenient.
For the crackdown on tracking, we have to go to an interesting place - the busting up of the Dark Web silk road in 2014 (though of course they were using tracking technology before then). Under the auspices of law enforcement protecting the common good, they developed techniques to track people suspected of criminal activity. Yes - the silk road was a freaking horrific space so I’m not saying it shouldn’t have been closed. But the techniques used to bring it down were then turned on the next target - bootleg Hollywood movies distributed through torrents. The Pirate Bay and other torrent aggregators went down in 2014 and now there is a strong case to be made that the current Pirate Bay is a sting operation. Facebook’s tracking algorithm became blatantly obvious t me around this time when I got an ad in my facebook feed for LDS derivatives for research purposes based on a site I had browsed on another computer. I like to keep my work and personal life 100% separate, and I kept getting friend suggestions from my work environment. I figured out this was based on my personal email and phone number being in at least one other person’s address book (like my boss), and then his email being in hundreds of people’s address book.

What I am disappointed in is when people get on the bandwagon only when their chosen side wants to win an election, then suddenly never talks about the subject when their chosen side is in office.
Vigilante groups such as Anonymous, Oathkeepers, preppers, and so on are an example of this. All through the Obama years there was an amazing amount of anti-tyranny social media content across all platforms. It was a full court press for 8 years to get that “guy” out of office and keep Hillary out of office. Then in November 2016 the silence across all these channels was deafening.

What I see as the similarity between the rise of totalitarianism today and 100 years ago is the lack of any actual consistent ideology except being “against the elite”. Communism came into power because the proletariat was against the bourgeoise, and they didn’t think beyond the idea of taking their neighbor’s property. Today we have the populist movement growing against the “elite liberals” but there isn’t any kind of consistent philosophy or policy beyond being against something. The most obvious of these is Trump being all in on vaccines and being proud that he was the one in office to push their development - but at the same time his refusal to advocate using those same exact vaccines because he lost. I could go on and on about policy flip-flops and 180 turns that happened in 2016 and 2020. Fiscal responsibility is another conservative policy that has gone completely out the window because it’s unpopular with the new proletariat.

Oh yes - the first real nail in the coffin was the Patriot Act 20 years ago. That’s how deep we are into this.

I agree 100% that the Patriot Act was the beginning of a clear erosion of individual rights and encroachment of the federal government. Sadly this is a perfect example of “once passed, never gets repealed” regarding legislation. No one that I know was comfortable then or now with CIA-NSA spying on Americans. The Clinton/Obama misuse of FISA wiretapping is a perfect example. Sadly It is a very different situation when you have an enemy with 200-400M “extreme” adherents claiming to be dedicated to blowing us up.

The conservative playbook is there for all to see Ray. You even trolled it when I posted it with your “hypocrite filp flop canned response”. Now will there be a bunch of squirrel chasing and teeth gnashing implementing it? Of course. Will the Conservatives have the fortitude to crush the Marcuse-ian nightmare the DNC is attempting? Likely.

In a general sense I would characterize your concerns as personal privacy, individual rights/freedoms and government overreach (correct if I err). Your argument is that everyone went silent when 45 took office. What encroachments into personal privacy, individual rights/freedoms or government overreach did 45 implement, or sign-off on?

Covid shut down? Yes, that was a “never done before” that many were against, even if they couldn’t trumpet their objections publicly. If I remember correctly, the vast majority of mainstream media and some very prominent DNC accused Ole 45 of being a xenophobic racist for closing airports (like Hawai’i did).

The hypocrisy is they were silent until Obama took office, became vocal during Obama, went silent again during Trump, and are now vocal again. Same issue just hypocritical to only address it when the opposition is in office.

There are no longer that many Conservatives. I don’t see you as a conservative. I see you as a populist. You consume popular media uncritically.

You are joking, right? Sadly, no. You are a populist uncritical consumer of popular media. This is further substantiated when a simple google search turns up a plethora of information that would easily inform you if you just made a minimal effort:

First week - Muslim ban. lol.
Here’s a list

https://trumphumanrightstracker.law.columbia.edu/

https://www.aclu.org/

Even a writer attempting to be unbiased came up with this conclusion:
There are two other types of constitutional dubiousness indulged by Trump that merit a dishonorable mention: corruption and unethical behavior, and the abuses that would’ve been perpetrated had his aides not disregarded his instructions.
https://www.cato.org/commentary/exit-survey-trumps-constitutional-misdeeds
The best of Trump an unbiased person can say is as follows:
The Trump Administration is not unique in having violated the Constitution.
I would counter that the sheer audacity, degree and frequency were unique to Trump.

I don’t suddenly think everything is ok now that a Democrat is in office, and I think it is hypocritical when people all of a sudden only become concerned about their rights and freedoms when the opposition is in office but then give their own party carte blanche. I honestly don’t believe you and your friends were critical or outspoken against the Patriot Act in George W’s first term in office. I didn’t hear any of that 2000 - 2008 anywhere I went except in the most extreme liberal circles. Conservatives only joined when the bandwagon did after Obama was elected and suddenly they realized how bad the law was.

Ah yes, George Bush Jnr & the neo-cons. I’ve no argument with you there. The beginning of the end.

Ray, You can find about anything you want on the web - just as you have.

And yes, you’ve busted me. The only thing I “consume” is “uncritical consumer pop media”.
If I thought you might view or read some of the long form content, I’d post it. But not surprisingly, you dismiss with a “snark and wave of the hand”. :wink:

It’s a scary messed up world here on the mainland. :+1::+1:

This is a beautiful How To guide to weaponize the FBI in order to create Propaganda.

https://spectator.org/john-durhams-salad-shooter/

Uh oh… looks like Qanon has gotten to Durham who is persecuting Russian primary sources along with Hillarys lawyers. The Qonspiracy marches on…

Looks like one of the “primary” sources turns out to be a construct of Hillary’s consultants.

How does this impact our epistemological view on Trump and the gaslighting of half the US population by the mainstream media?

Also seems one of the star Impeachment witnesses Dr Fiona Hill made made initial introductions in formation of the infamous Dossier.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/justice/dossier-critic-fiona-hill-introduced-main-source-to-steele-and-durham-says-pr-exec-1?_amp=true

Interesting breakdown on Fact Checking. Some good Epistemological discussion on Biased vs Impartial, and True Testing vs False Testing, if you can get past the decidedly Conservative/Skeptical preface.

If you agree with this line, you might be a Qanon Acolyte :slight_smile:
No wonder many have intuited that a red flag from a fact checker actually denotes “things that might be true but are unsayable in the present climate”.

https://unherd.com/2021/11/what-fact-checkers-get-wrong/?1636731714223

Discussion seems to be just a straw man within another straw man.

What is “unsayable”? lol
I NEVER trusted medical Doctors. Even from the age of 12 I took the advice of “Always be your own Primary Care Physician. The rest are just consultants.” Doctors, dentists, surgeons my whole life I have always treated them as consultants.
Many a doctor has wanted to cut me open for one reason or another, and Dentists’ eyes flash when they see my Wisdom Teeth. I hear a little slyness when they mention them - it could be several thousands in their pocket if they play their cars right, lol.
I have friends with a medical, psychiatry or other practices, and know lots of people with PhD’s.
I’ve known people whose doctors had just been plain - wrong and messed up the people’s lives permanently as a result.
I have always known doctors prescribe medication unnecessarily and get some kind of financial reward.

All this means … questioning medical authorities and “fact checkers” didn’t suddenly appear in 2021.

Yet - I have also always used medical Doctors and medication when I needed it - or even just “to be on the safe side”.

I really see this whole COVID vaccine discussion as a “where’s the beef” story. The medical and pharmaceutical industry ahs always been suspicious - and people have always had to decide between 100% and 0% acceptance, because both extreme 100% acceptance and 0% acceptance positions have been stupid ones to take my entire 50 year lifetime.

I really don’t see where the issue here is. The tobacco industry presented experts that said smoking did not cause cancer and a half dozen other problems, and other doctors presented evidence saying it was a health risk. In the end some people smoke but the vast majority know it is unhealthy.

It obviously makes more sense to get a COVID vaccination than to not get one. The hospitals are not filled with people who got vaccinated. Maybe a few. That’s just the facts. But hospitals are filled with people who did not get vaccinated.
The rest is all just hyperbole and ideological masturbation.

Here are a few of the Existential Threats that we are living in fear of today that we are using to rationalize major structural changes:
Gun Deaths - 0.0036% per year
Auto Deaths - 0.011% per year
Abortion - 0.19% per year
Cancer - 0.14% per year
Covid19 - 0.01% per year

Avoid Antifa riots, dealing drugs in inner cities, frequenting abortion clinics, smoking cigarettes, drunk driving, wash your hands and you vastly reduce your chance of becoming one of these statistics.

Your brain seems to be flying all over the place and I can’t seem to make rhyme or reason about what you are trying to say with the percentages.

Gun deaths - Your figure seems pretty small. I don’t own a gun, so that number seems like a very uncerning number for me. If I did own a gun, that percentage would be much higher. So yes, with a higher number I could see how a gun owner might be more concerned about his own safety being shot by his own gun.
But also, I have made life choices. Choices have consequences. I live in a liberal state with strict gun laws, reducing my fears of being gunned down by neighbors.
Auto deaths - again, this is another category where certain behaviors increase the risks dramatically and skew the averages. Using a vehicle has a risk-benefit ratio I’m willing to accept, and I don’t tempt the fates with risky behavior.
Abortion ??? What reason could I possibly have to fear abortion? Why would I possibly live in fear of abortion? I’m not a fetus and nobody I know is a fetus. Again, if you are talking about concern - that is a different matter but I am far more concerned about living babies starving or being malnourished and undereducated than the unborn.
Cancer - a legitimate concern and of course I take steps to eat less red meat, processed foods and so on and try to live a less carcinogenic lifestyle.
COVID - Please give numbers for vaccinated vs unvaccinated mortality rates. Again, since I have made decisions to reduce my risk of COVID by using a vaccine, you numbers don’t actually apply to me or any of my immediate friends (anyone I’ve associated with face to face in the past 6 months)

So I repeat - “where’s the beef”?
You seem to be overly influenced by media spin. Kind of like when we were kids there was always one guy who thought WWF Wrestling was real? You’re that guy, but you have traded in WWF for purple Cool Aide. (mixing up “red” and “blue”, lol)

ah, someone wrote an academic paper outlining something that is pretty obvious and I see in the majority of @FermentedAgave posts.

Rather than address their own internal dissonance between their religious and political views, the tendency seems to be to shout down this internal conflict with a constant stream of anti-left propaganda - most of it being of dubious quality.

Our survey data speak to the dissonance that contemporary American Christians, whether liberal or conservative, confront between their own political views and the traditional teachings and tenets of their faith.


How do American Christians of the left and right deal with discrepancies that remain between important tenets of their religion and their politics? Liberals can comfortably embrace the fellowship message of the Gospels—even conceding that they personally fall short of its demands—and insist that the Christian Right’s pronouncements on homosexuality and abortion are not the tenets of Christianity that they choose to embrace or the ones most emphasized in the teachings of Jesus. Conservatives, especially insofar as they report their faith and their personal relationship with Jesus to be so central to their identity, face a more difficult dilemma. They can hardly claim that their allegiance is less to the New Testament, which is the main authority for their cultural views, than to the Old Testament.

Does the heated rhetoric that conservatives use in derogating liberals—including fellow Christians—and the energy they devote to proselytism reflect further attempts at dissonance reduction? In this context, it is worth recalling that, before the 1970s, Christian political movements in the United States were largely progressive. Notably, the Christian leaders in the North were the most vocally opposed to slavery in the New World; and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, headed by Martin Luther King, was similarly associated with the left in its efforts at desegregation and addressing the needs of minorities and the poor. Elements of the Catholic Church in America (including the Catholic Workers Party founded by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin in 1933) similarly have long been associated with workers’ rights and antiwar movements.

Hey Ray - Just ran across a couple of things that would like to get your feedback on that I think might help coalesce a few things.

My horribly quick synopsis is that their are two psychological approaches:

  • Compare yourself (or the world) to a fantastical person (Stephen Hawkings, Usain Bolt,…) or accomplishment (sub-4 minute mile
  • Compare yourself to you last week - passing Quantum Physics or shaving 5 seconds off that mile time

Psychologically one can enable being somewhat at peace, while the other might drive you mad or perhaps you become a high achiever.

Specifically how this relates to this discussion and my statistics is that Progressives tend to focus on (perhaps invent?) meta/existential/cataclysmic “issues” due to how fucked up the world is proposing wholesale (aka radical) “fixes” (aka gun violence/control, covid/vaccines, etc). Meanwhile Conservatives tend to have gratitude for the world, the ideas that have worked very well for decades or millennia and look for responsibility and accountability through national, state, local and even to the individual to make incremental changes.

Here’s an interesting audio cast that @WillE shared. The first 6 minutes describe this much better than I can.

Let me know what you think!

These are tropes, and artificially biased at that. Honestly I see the “gratitude” of Conservatives as relativist. It used to be fairly consistent but since around 2008 I’ve seen conservatives grateful or hostile towards the exact same policy depending on who is in charge of various branches of government. I do not see that conservatives have taken responsibility at all. More truthfully they pass the buck and spin, spin, spin.
And if you think conservatives aren’t focusing on the end of the world - you’ve obviously never talked to “preppers”, the vast majority of these preppers are the new “conservative”.

The progressives in my social circle don’t “focus on” issues. We are aware of them. But honestly in mixed company the most likely to bring up politics is the conservative. Unless you think saying “Sorry, we’re vegan” when offered a steak is an opening for political debate?

This is what I see day in and day out - and honestly what you display day after day in this forum. There are lots and lots of liberals on this forum, but they aren’t nearly as outspoken compared to you, for example. You seem to be the one to constantly focus on these artificially created “news” stories and IDK - you just can’t seem to stop thinking of people as more than one dimensional. Corey said something that triggered you and you spent the next few months accusing him of being a Marxist and a dozen other things.

Towards a Deeper Conservativism
It’s nice that some conservatives might have some kind of image of themselves - but when the reality doesn’t match the dialogue I call B.S.
So if you are going to develop yourself into a Deeper Conservative, more power to you. I don’t think that involves following the mass conservative media unthinkingly.
Yet even in this “Deeper Conservativism” - the speaker just COULD NOT go 5 minutes without forming at least a token position contra to liberalism, but essentially if I look at his specific words, liberalism and new conservativism are the same? Conservativism before 2012 used to mean “Averse to change or innovation”, but according to the speaker the new conservativism is:
respect the past —> innovate and see what to change —> create a better world
While liberalism is
recognize faults of the past —> innovate and see what to change —> create a better world

So we see that apparently conservatives have transformed into a more liberal frame of mind (change) and liberals and conservatives have essentially the same goals, but conservativism seems to not be able to stand on its own feet without artificially creating liberalism as an enemy.

Here’s the thing you are constantly missing: Liberalism in 2021 is very different from 1990, but you and conservatives seem to be focused on Liberalism 1990.

Ok, the next 10 or so minutes he talks about gay issues and educating conservatives. This furthers my point - the “Deeper Conservativism” is basically Liberalism. Finally 50 years after Liberals “figured it out” and fought conservatives tooth and nail on gay rights (and racial equality and a dozen other issues) now someone is describing a new “Deeper Integral Conservativism” and lawdy lawdy, it sounds to me like the Old 1990’s Liberalism, lmao. Yet even today Conservatives still love to bash alternative culture via dog whistles, so it isn’t even genuine.

Did progressives “invent” that gays should not be beaten up or indeed murdered just for being gay, should not be subjected to “conversion therapy”, should not be fired for what they do outside the workplace, should not be kicked out of the military etc etc. If it is as you say and this was just yet another “eta/existential/cataclysmic “issues” due to how fucked up the world is” and that liberals proposed “fucked up” fixes … then why are conservatives now patting themselves on the back that they are “Deeper” for just finally coming to the same conclusion 50 years after Liberals? (don’t hate gays)

Excellent insight into journalism route to power and influence.
Not intending this to be a Left-Right slug fest but focus on epistemology, hubris, power, influence, ego associated with the “perceiving” domains.

“There’s something uniquely fascinating about the persona of the journalist who betrays his or her professional ethics. There is no medical malpractitioner of historic notoriety, no lawyer so inept or corrupt that their infamy elicits international derision a century later. In fact, it might be only in the field of espionage that we find a parallel. The reason is that, like a nation’s spies, a citizenry loans journalists its most precious asset: trust. This is even more true in secular societies where social institutions take on the characteristics of religious bodies, guiding belief and shaping public perception of reality.”

https://unherd.com/2021/11/why-the-new-york-times-rewrites-history/

So again - the complete hypocrisy of unherd is astounding.

Were they even remotely anything other than just “infotainment” themselves, they would instead do a much more in-depth analysis of FOX News - the leader of the pack in a steady stream of willful errors and inaccuracies for 30 years.

Newspapers and Media “leaning” to the left or right has always been the case. Most cities always had one newspaper that was slightly left and another that was slightly right. To single out the New York Times is essentially just kowtowing to a Trump driven narrative.

FOX News was the first major media to openly admit on air that they are not journalists - they are commentators and thus not bound by journalistic rules of professionalism or integrity. They say “fair and balanced” but it’s been documented that they get told what to report and what not to report and the slant to spin it with every morning - along with all the other major right wing media they have a coordinated propaganda effort. This isn’t theory - it’s been corroborated several times over the past two decades.
Then you remember when Obama won in 2012 and Rush Limbaugh and several other so-called News outlets actually said they deliberately misled their audiences to think they would win easily but they completely lost. I was astounded. For months all major conservative news outlets claimed to have deliberately lied to and manipulated their own audiences rather than admit that they had just been wrong.
This leads in a direct line to the feeling on the right that there is massive voter fraud. The right wing propaganda machine led by FOX News manipulates their audience time and time again into believing they should win, and when they lose they think Democrats must have cheated.

This “unheard” website is just more of the same propaganda machine and marches in lockstep with the same exact stories, spin and talking points while giving their readers a feeling that they are not part of the “herd” when they completely are the definition of her mentality.

So again - the most egregious violators of journalistic ethics writing such a story is hypocritical.

Info Warfare, Propaganda, News, or Education on Media, DNC, DC Swamps Russiagate?

https://amgreatness.com/2021/11/15/retract-every-russian-collusion-story-and-fire-everyone-who-wrote-them/

The website is clearly propaganda
The article is clearly hyperbolic opinion. EVERY STORY? “Every Story” includes even the Right Wing media, ironically including this website, lol.

Again, again, again - selective myopia. They don’t actually want journalistic greatness or even American Greatness.

They want America to run like a reality program.

Here are some other great titles:

I this one falls under “I know you are but what am I”
https://amgreatness.com/2021/11/12/banana-republic-biden-doj-indicts-steve-bannon-for-contempt-of-congress/

Here’s a good straw man COVID debate. A completely pointless article because there was never any realistic way we would get "herd immunity without twice s many deaths or more
https://amgreatness.com/2021/11/12/the-cdc-cant-prove-a-single-instance-of-a-naturally-immune-individual-spreading-covid/

Here’s a fun one - coal would be doing just fine standing on its own if that Biden guy doesn’t bankrupt it, lol
https://amgreatness.com/2021/11/12/morning-greatness-biden-treasury-pick-wants-to-bankrupt-coal-oil-gas/

Guess what? I searched on facebook and in 5 seconds found this one to be just not true:
https://amgreatness.com/2021/11/11/facebook-blocks-search-results-for-kyle-rittenhouse/
https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=kyle%20rittenhous

and so on
ad nauseum

Keep trying Ray. You’re making progress.
Biden is shaping up as a Top 30% Prez.
Enjoy some comedy… Bill Maher you might find funny.