Propaganda

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From Panic to Policy: The Limits of Foreign Propaganda and the Foundations of an Effective Response​

Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election led to intense public and scholarly debates over the role of foreign propaganda — deliberate and systematic attempts to use media to shape perceptions and direct behavior within domestic politics.1 Russia’s brazen operation and Donald Trump’s victory were both unexpected, leaving analysts grasping for answers about the extent to which Russian activities may have influenced the outcome. The episode breathed new life into an old American fear: widescale societal manipulation by malicious foreign actors weaponizing media at home.2 Such concerns went beyond Russia. China’s investment in social media, for example, led to congressional hearings in which representatives spoke ominously about information campaigns by rival great powers.3 Such campaigns seem particularly insidious. They putatively threaten national security not by changing the balance of military power but by eroding faith in democratic institutions.4

With the 2024 U.S. presidential election looming, these anxieties seem well founded. That Chinese or Russian intelligence services seek to use technology and propaganda to covertly sway the American public is not in doubt.5 Governments, civil society organizations, and online platforms have demonstrated how narratives can spread online, spurred on by fake and foreign actors.6 Meanwhile, online data-harvesting is largely unregulated in the United States, fueling speculation that insights into Americans’ lives might be used to target them with both greater precision and persuasiveness. Insofar as national leaders presume that democratic institutions depend on citizens making rational calculations based on verifiable facts, the potential for disruption can seem catastrophic. Policymakers and researchers have therefore rallied to defend what is presumed to be the primary target of foreign propaganda, democracy itself: the trust among citizens and in institutions necessary for this participatory system of governance to function properly.

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From Panic to Policy: The Limits of Foreign Propaganda and the Foundations of an Effective Response - Texas National Security Review

American leaders and scholars have long feared the prospect that hostile foreign powers could subvert democracy by spreading false, misleading, and inflammatory information by using various media. Drawing on both historical experience and empirical literature, this article argues that such fears...
tnsr.org
 



We don't need foreign actors weaponizing the media at home. We had 51 former intelligence operatives all sign a letter stating that Crackhead's laptop was fake. Turns out they were all lying. If that wasn't an attempt by the left to influence an election, I don't know what is.


 

Russia: Putin’s propaganda machine - Manipulating the people | DW Documentary​

Apr 11, 2024

On 24 February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. Many Russians supported the move at the time. Others silently rejected what was described as a "special operation”, which Putin claimed would "de-Nazify” a former sister nation.

Years of indoctrination and propaganda, a single-party rule that muzzles the media - this film investigates how Russians under Putin have fallen silent, and why no one has pulled the political ripcord.

Although the international community continues to be horrified by this brutal, anachronistic war in the heart of Europe, most Russians back Putin’s "special operation”. The film is an unprecedented journey into the heart of a brainwashed, intimidated society and an in-depth investigation into the inner workings of Russia’s repressive machine.

42:25
 

Fall of Newspapers, Rise of Misinformation | 60 Minutes Full Episodes​

Apr 20, 2024
From 2013, Morley Safer's report on the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper's transition to a three-day-a-week publishing schedule in response to competition from the internet. From 2022, Jon Wertheim's report on local newsrooms being gutted by financial firms. From 2021, Scott Pelley's interview with a Facebook whistleblower who said the social media giant was misleading the public on progress against hate speech, violence and misinformation. And from March of this year, Lesley Stahl's report on efforts to combat the spread of misleading information on social media.

52:45
 
Not sure where to post this...

What is Coming in 2025? [The Shocking Truth]​

In Tom's revelatory new book Zeitgeist 2025, you will discover:
• Hidden secrets and forgotten prophecies surrounding the year 2025
• How the current U.S. government is tied to America’s occult destiny
• Lost prophecies from Qumran forecasting 2025 as the final age of man
• Why historians and intelligence agencies foresee a totalitarian world government by 2025
• How America’s Capital city is laid out to actuate the arrival of the Antichrist
• About the malevolent, Orwellian trinity currently converging
• The means by which the population’s thinking and speaking are being homogenized to create a nation of assimilated devotees who will embrace the Antichrist
• The deep, esoteric meanings that names and titles held in ancient societies, the impact they had upon destiny, and what that could mean for America’s near future
• Who the mysterious character Melchizedek of Genesis 14 truly was
• What the “People of the Name” covenant is
• AND MUCH MORE!

 
WOTR podcast, nothing to see, can listen in one tab, play around the forum in a different tab.

COUNTERING FOREIGN MEDIA MANIPULATION. OR NOT.​

APRIL 25, 2024

Chris, Melanie, and Zack discuss Gavin Wilde’s recent article in the Texas National Security Review on foreign media manipulation. How vulnerable are citizens of democracies to manipulation through social media? Is a more open and less hierarchical media space a national security threat? And what, if anything, should policymakers in democracies do about this issue? Grievances for China blocking popular apps, Marjorie Taylor Green for her shenanigans surrounding the foreign aid vote, and to the F-35, the gift that keeps on giving (to the tune of $2 trillion); Attas for Samuel Charap and Sergey Radchenko for an important article on Ukraine, to Mike Johnson for taking a principled stand on the foreign aid bill, and to the first Australian officers to participate in AUKUS nuclear submarine training.

Countering Foreign Media Manipulation. Or Not. - War on the Rocks

Chris, Melanie, and Zack discuss Gavin Wilde’s recent article in the Texas National Security Review on foreign media manipulation. How vulnerable are
warontherocks.com
 
The Atlantic hit a home run with this one.

THE NEW PROPAGANDA WAR​

Autocrats in China, Russia, and elsewhere are now making common cause with MAGA Republicans to discredit liberalism and freedom around the world.

By Anne Applebaum
Illustrations by Tyler Comrie

On june 4, 1989, the Polish Communist Party held partially free elections, setting in motion a series of events that ultimately removed the Communists from power. Not long afterward, street protests calling for free speech, due process, accountability, and democracy brought about the end of the Communist regimes in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Romania. Within a few years, the Soviet Union itself would no longer exist.

Also on June 4, 1989, the Chinese Communist Party ordered the military to remove thousands of students from Tiananmen Square. The students were calling for free speech, due process, accountability, and democracy. Soldiers arrested and killed demonstrators in Beijing and around the country. Later, they systematically tracked down the leaders of the protest movement and forced them to confess and recant. Some spent years in jail. Others managed to elude their pursuers and flee the country forever.

In the aftermath of these events, the Chinese concluded that the physical elimination of dissenters was insufficient. To prevent the democratic wave then sweeping across Central Europe from reaching East Asia, the Chinese Communist Party eventually set out to eliminate not just the people but the ideas that had motivated the protests. In the years to come, this would require policing what the Chinese people could see online.

Nobody believed that this would work. In 2000, President Bill Clinton told an audience at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies that it was impossible. “In the knowledge economy,” he said, “economic innovation and political empowerment, whether anyone likes it or not, will inevitably go hand in hand.” The transcript records the audience reactions:

“Now, there’s no question China has been trying to crack down on the internet.” (Chuckles.) “Good luck!” (Laughter.) “That’s sort of like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall.” (Laughter.)
Click to expand...

While we were still rhapsodizing about the many ways in which the internet could spread democracy, the Chinese were designing what’s become known as the Great Firewall of China. That method of internet management—which is in effect conversation management—contains many different elements, beginning with an elaborate system of blocks and filters that prevent internet users from seeing particular words and phrases. Among them, famously, are Tiananmen, 1989, and June 4, but there are many more. In 2000, a directive called “Measures for Managing Internet Information Services” prohibited an extraordinarily wide range of content, including anything that “endangers national security, divulges state secrets, subverts the government, undermines national unification,” and “is detrimental to the honor and interests of the state”—anything, in other words, that the authorities didn’t like.

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The New Propaganda War

Autocrats in China, Russia, and elsewhere are now making common cause with MAGA Republicans to discredit liberalism and freedom around the world.
www.theatlantic.com
 
The conspiracy theorists are correct yet again!

Oh joy... any wonder there's been shootemups at schools these past few years...?

 

Corporate Media in the Age of Fascist Politics: Firewalls of Ignorance and Disappearance​

The corporate media undermines moral witnessing by often prioritizing the discredited notion of balance over the more crucial goal of seeking truth in the service of accountability and democracy.

If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.
– Malcolm X

Bearing witness is a crucial marker of a responsible press and media. It brings to light the unnecessary suffering and hardship of those rendered voiceless and disposable, as well as the underlying forces that produce such conditions. It also serves to challenge those who “wallow in willful ignorance.”[1] Shattering the lies concealed by claims of innocence is a powerful weapon for holding power accountable, making it visible and subject to exposure and resistance. Bearing witness does not guarantee justice, but it provides the awareness necessary to turn propaganda against itself and mobilize people to function as a collective force of resistance.

The corporate media undermines moral witnessing by often prioritizing the discredited notion of balance over the more crucial goal of seeking truth in the service of accountability and democracy. This retreat from holding power accountable not only discredits the pursuit of truth in the service of justice and the strengthening of democracy but also tends to fall prey to the seductions of corruption, political theater and entertainment.[2]

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