It’s exceedingly effective.
I was talking politics with someone earlier today, on the topic of the new BRICS payment system, and the conversation went something like this:
Me: Countries should be able to trade in their own currencies, and no one country (USA or otherwise) should be able to declare unilateral sanctions and cause sabotage just because they want to.
Lib: Shouldn’t USA be able to sanction Russia for its invasion of Ukraine?
Me: I don’t think any country should be able to declare unilateral sanctions. On the other hand, if the global community wants to decide on sanctions together, that’s another story. However, maybe the USA themselves should be sanctioned for their involvement in the 2014/2015 coup in Ukraine that started this whole mess.
Lib: Were those democratic protesters not legitimate?
Me: It was a far right, violet coup that overthrew a democratically elected government [Provides sourced examples of far-right violence during the coup, evidence it was a coup, and how it was clearly in the interests of Western governments]
Lib: [Provides Wikipedia links of the “Democratic mass movements in Ukraine”]
Me: Yes that is a textbook example of a CIA backed colour revolution.
Lib: That is Russian disinformation.
Why exactly does “disinformation” always have to come from “the other, evil foreign governments”? Why the fuck does Russia care what I think? Wouldn’t it make a lot more fucking sense that our own government is trying to manipulate our understanding of the world?
I don’t think I have ever once heard a lib use the term “American disinformation” or “misinformation from our own government” - it’s always the evil Russians or Chinese. Of course reactionaries and chuds always cry foul at what the government says but it’s only about dumb bullshit like vaccines and bike lanes.
The second any information runs contrary to the Libs heavily propagandised worldview it can immediately be dismissed as “foreign propaganda” - no matter how thoroughly sourced or researched or documented. It’s just an immediate off switch for both the conversation and their brain. And, conveniently, they have handy NATOpedia articles to counter with.
Anyway, thanks for coming to my TED Talk. Don’t forget to like and subscribe.
Free Palestine 🇵🇸
It’s effective as a thought-terminating cliche, which is a sign that they are experiencing cognitive dissonance and what you are saying is almost working.
The solution to a thought-terminating cliché is to not let them change focus. Keep attention on the thing they called Russian disinformation and walk through it.
It sounds like this is online or via text. As a warning, this is the worst possible way to have this kind of conversation. In-person is much more powerful, in no small part due to the fact that liberals rarely actually know anything and they have to Google things to keep up.
Yes definitely online. They shared a video with me about how the evil Putler is cooperating with the equally evil See See Pee, North Korea and Iran to do bad evil things. Honestly it was the type of video I would show to an elementary school student if I wanted to give them an incredibly one-sided, propagandised view of the war.
Edit: But yes, forcing them into the cognitive dissonance and forcing them to stare directly at it is probably a good method.
IMO if you’re talking to the typical liberal you have to pick and choose your arguments to avoid the ones where no dissension will be allowed. Replacing US intervention in Ukraine with US involvement in Iraq is much more likely to get them on-side.
It’s a thought terminating cliche at this point.
Absolutely, liberals use it to write off literally anything that challenges their worldview, it’s asinine.
Right? Anything they don’t like is a chinese bot, russian lying but make it racist, or both. Even their high rnaking leaders do it reflexively. They’re obsessed with it almost a decade after Russiagate turned out to be a nothingburger. It totally obliterates their ability to recognize American racism and imperialism as a core feature of us culture and politcs.
Yeah, this and “this is unrealistic, the world doesn’t just become a better place”. It’s a leftists cue that the other person is no longer capable of arguing based on the facts and evidence, and is just shutting down to protect themselves from cognitive dissonance. It is basically impossible to overcome.
going to start using “american disinformation” to disarm libs, that’s such a smart turn of phrase
Death to America
“Russian disinformation” is the one of the most effective pieces of propaganda the US has ever produced, and the US is pretty damn good at producing effective propaganda (you do not gotta hand it to them)
Other things once considered to be russian disinformation include:
The civil rights movement
The fact Germans were doing the Holocaust
The fact Germans were doing the Holocaust
Is that true? I looked for it and didn’t find it a while ago
“Russian disinformation” is in the same vein as “Chinese bots/wumao”
It’s a thought terminating cliché and nothing more.
At this point “Russian disinformation” is just a shorthand for “foreign lies”. Even though disinformation tends to be more subtle and complicated than just telling lies. At best, libs have heard the thing about “nothing is true and everything is possible” and just been like, “yup, this is how I feel” even though it’s generally capitalist social media making them feel like that
A nostalgia for the year 2014:
I disagree. It isn’t effective propaganda but a quick slogan to dismiss criticism. If its not Russian disinformation, it’d be “conservative propaganda” or performative and ceremonial politics like it was during the Obama administration. The heart of the sentiment is indifference and annoyance.
In other words, “don’t make me think about politics”. Brace Belden mentioned this in a True anon episode a month ago, and a recent post on the_dredge_tank linked a redditor who echoed the same sentiment (despite working in politics and having a PhD thereof).
A sentiment articulated in that Red Sails article about propaganda, or how Morris Berman - an academic who describes the US - says that the “wool isn’t over American eyes, but they are the eyes”; which means American culture makes Americans inherently delusional and prone to refute any challenge to it. Americans have been under such cultural hypnosis likely as long as the post-independence period from Britain.
These generations of Americans want to believe in their idealized version of it to the detriment of everyone else, including themselves, because they themselves have it pretty good. Their material conditions do not prompt them to question the American civic religion.
Would you happen to have a link to that TrueAnon episode?
If it’s one of the DNC episodes, they’re all on youtube
Thanks comrade!
I found YouTube links in your comment. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Link 1:
Link 2:
Link 3:
Link 4:
I think it was when they were covering the DNC? It was fairly recent. I cna’t recall the exact episode, but one of those DNC coverage episodes.
Brace talks about it briefly; he just says that Americans are exhausted from actually engaging in politics and that’s just not where they were. He was dryly describing a situation rather than lamenting it or admonishing Americans for their apathy and resignation.
Why the fuck does Russia care what I think? Wouldn’t it make a lot more fucking sense that our own government is trying to manipulate our understanding of the world?
A counter example to this would be the CIA. But the thing with US foreign propaganda is that it’s absolutely objective, documented, so massive that there’s no place in the world left untouched by it, everyone knows it happens whether they admit it or not.
On the other hand, the so called Russian propaganda machine that looms above the world according to them still remains unproved for the most part, and doesn’t make any sense when the widely accepted world views and ideologies in the west are the ones pushed by the US, not Russia. So either the propaganda doesn’t exist, or it’s entirely powerless compared with the propaganda done by the US.
Libs are mirroring hard and aren’t even aware of that 🥶
It’s so powerful it broke out of the libs in America to infect everywhere else. The brewing Canadian election now has the Liberals accusing the Conservatives of being paid by Russian disinformation. The Cons are sketchy as fuck and not helping their own case either but now we also have the same “Everything I don’t like is Russia” shit
Yeah, the Ukraine war propaganda is palpable here. A while back I (clueless) thought I might check out the CBC to see what sort of shit my parents are watching, sure enough the very first story on The National was ”rah rah go Ukraine defeat those evil Russians!!!1” 🙄
It’s just “fake news” but racist
Also they made up a word to delegitimize when you point out they’re being huge fucking hypocrites.
“We have repeatedly openly tried to influence the elections of other countries, including Russia, and openly bragged about it.”
“Ah yes the classic Russian tactics of whataboutism.”
Giving a new name to “being a fucking hypocrite” doesn’t make it ok to be a hypocrite.
Why the fuck does Russia care what I think?
The evil Ruzzins are trying to undermine the integrity of our wholesome keanu chungus democracy. They want the cheeto in the White House because Putler is the cheeto’s puppet master! /s
It seems to only be really effective with NATO countries. They tried that here and it just didn’t work.
That’s because the Atlantic powers have been shitting their pants over “Russian encroachment on Europe” since Napoleon lost at waterloo. These nations literally don’t believe Russia deserves to be considered European. Whether due to racism or greed that opinion still dominates. Personally I think a significant amount of it is geopolitical fear. Being a major land-based Eurasian power, the Atlanticist domination of the seas strategy doesn’t work so well on Russia. And if they can’t control russia, they have to contain it. The west wanted this war to happen just to stick a spike in Russia’s tire, Ukrainians be damned. NATO was formed as an anti-Russian alliance after all, now they have their purpose back. If you listen to them you’d think a country never fought a war before Russia. The rest of the world sees Russia as just another major power, which it is. :chigurh-glare:
