Damage Done by the Right-Wing Media in 2016

[_mikwut]

Ok Doc, thanks for the links. The Russian text book is really interesting and frightening. Maybe I should ask the question this way. Do the Russians or Chinese just make friends on Facebook and followers on Twitter and pretend to be Americans and give opinions, post things that are pro Chinese/Russian etc.. just as if they were a regular American? And that ends up going deep into our population? I am not skeptical of any of it, I'm just interested in the actual examples of what is being done. Do we even know it if we see it if we are educated about it?

mikwut

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Hi Mikwut,

I'm not ignoring your question, but I think I got one step ahead of you. I believe my post above does a fairly good job at explaining the nuts and bolts of state-sponsored propaganda in the 21st century.

- Doc

[_mikwut]

Thanks Doc.

[_moksha]

Do we even know it if we see it if we are educated about it?

Look for outrageous news items on suspect news outlets like Fox and Breitbart. These sites frequently feed thoughts directly to the Kremlin Candidate through select handlers.

[_iwanttotalk]

I'll just make this follow-up post underscoring the point I'm trying to make.

So the company behind this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJZN7IrC1k8

is based in Cyprus and is an offshoot of a Russian advertising firm. If you look at some of their sister channels' videos about Russia, and do some digging around you'll find a bunch of shell corporations that are almost certainly under the umbrella of the Russian troll farm, the Internet RESEARCH Agency, which is a Kremlin asset.

What does that mean for a government that wants to follow the FoG game plan?

Well, in order to use propaganda the 21st century you have to employ cleverness and layering. The US has started to ramp up their operations in the cyber arena, but we're really, really behind the Russians and more importantly, the Chinese at this point (I have a few buddies that went into the US Army's Cyber branch from CI, and we've talked about this on a few visits given the 2016 elections).

Anyway. Go back to that YouTube channel. It targets here in the West women of all ages (they've done the same thing with gaming channels to get young men and channels targeting tweeners & teenagers). You spam out a bunch of low-quality content to find suckers and people who will literally watch anything, and then link the algorithm of the videos to package propaganda alongside it (all the little videos that load up to the right and also Google searches).

So now you not only have people watching your videos from a wide cross-section of your target country's population, you have the most gullible morons watching your videos, and they're the most gullible morons with tons of free time. What do these morons do? They believe the propaganda and start digging to find out if the propaganda is "true." Think flat earth, anti-vaxx, and all sorts of weird issues that essentially erode trust in established institutions. Effective propaganda chooses issues that literally nobody else talks about so it can flood searches with only one point of view, that the invented-issue is an issue. Well, where do you see people who've figured this out doing this on a daily basis? Fox News does the same thing with focusing on non-issues to flood the news with a singular point of view, but online propaganda has scaled up their operations because you can get millions of hits per piece WITH RELATED SEARCHES THAT YOU'VE ENGINEERED TO PRODUCE A VERY SPECIFIC RESPONSE.

As people who are sucked into being concerned about the invented issue, their searches and discussion forums or comments from the video comments sections where half the comments are trolls reassure them that they're not the crazy ones, even though they're so far inside their information bubble that they're completely out of touch of any reality that is contradictory to their invented-issues.

Anyway. Because there's just so much content, disseminated through all the sources you mentioned, even though it's all low quality spam, it gives the appearance of seeming legitimate but it's a completely invented reality. If you ever wonder why rando middle-class Conservative people get enraged over complete non-issues this along with Fox News are really good starting points. They got sucked into this hole, and there's not getting out because humans are psychologically affixed to their opinions.

- Doc

This is the most basic leftist agitprop. Its like the level of understanding youd get watching racheal maddow on msnbc.

Not only is it very facile, but displays no real understanding of the magnitude of propaganda and its power, which is primarily carried out by the left by “non state” actors.

If you actually knew anything about “russian” propaganda youd know that.

[_Chap]

This is the most basic leftist agitprop. Its like the level of understanding youd get watching racheal maddow on msnbc.

Not only is it very facile, but displays no real understanding of the magnitude of propaganda and its power, which is primarily carried out by the left by “non state” actors.

If you actually knew anything about “russian” propaganda youd know that.

Hmm. Spelling, odd use of quotes ... poor grammar.

Has ldsfaqs made himself a sock puppet?

[_iwanttotalk]

This is the most basic leftist agitprop. Its like the level of understanding youd get watching racheal maddow on msnbc.

Not only is it very facile, but displays no real understanding of the magnitude of propaganda and its power, which is primarily carried out by the left by “non state” actors.

If you actually knew anything about “russian” propaganda youd know that.

Hmm. Spelling, odd use of quotes ... poor grammar.

Has ldsfaqs made himself a sock puppet?

What an odd thing to say.

[_EAllusion]

Hmm. Spelling, odd use of quotes ... poor grammar.

Has ldsfaqs made himself a sock puppet?

Too literate for ldsfaqs. ldsfaqs has a pre-literate style that is hard to match unless you are really trying to get into character. It's almost identical to Donald Trump's, which both amuses and horrifies me.

Regarding his/her post, there's no actual content to it, so there's nothing to engage.

[_iwanttotalk]

Hmm. Spelling, odd use of quotes ... poor grammar.

Has ldsfaqs made himself a sock puppet?

Too literate for ldsfaqs. ldsfaqs has a pre-literate style that is hard to match unless you are really trying to get into character. It's almost identical to Donald Trump's, which both amuses and horrifies me.

Regarding his/her post, there's no actual content to it, so there's nothing to engage.

I was calling you “useful idiots”.
(Its a term of art not an insult)

[_EAllusion]

I was calling you “useful idiots”.
(Its a term of art not an insult)

Haughty condescension mixed with ignorance does fit a stereotype that you probably should try to live down. But rejoice, I don't think you're ldsfaqs even if there are signs that you might share the basic disposition.

Anywho, I'm looking forward to you quoting that post praising Maxine Waters in the other thread you are commenting on. I'm sure it'll happen any second now.