brehaaorgana:

I think some people don’t know what a “psyop” is and are like…reflexively objecting to the idea that a Russian psyop A.) happened, or B.) worked and people disbelieve it which is also how you know it was successful. 

a psyop is a psychological operation. It’s a tactic, usually from a government, enacted upon a group of individuals (of varying sizes, kinds, etc). 

I don’t see anything wrong with looking at wiki’s definition of what a US PsyOp is defined as:

planned operations to convey selected information and indicators to audiences to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of governments, organizations, groups, and individuals.

People seem to mistakenly believe that people (buzzfeed?) is claiming that Black Lives Matter was a Russian Psyop. That’s not the case (not in the Buzzfeed article, and not seriously anywhere I’ve seen). 

RATHER, it seems that the Russian PSYOP targeted BLM. BLM is not the psyop itself. The psyop just happened to target that movement (as well as other social justice/liberal movements). 

The people who seem to object to the idea that this was a Russian psyop are also often reasoning this can’t be a Psyop because…the CIA/FBI successfully infiltrated liberal movements (particularly Black-led ones) before? 

Historically, our very own government used psyop and infiltration tactics to do the exact same thing to similar US populations that people are uncovering about Russia. Seeing people claim that this whole psyop thing is “people are saying BLM is a Russian Psyop!!” is like people trying to say “they claimed the Black Panthers was a CIA/FBI psyop!!!” 

When the reality is that the psyops/infiltration targeted BLM, or targeted the Black Panthers. It seems…really important that people know that! and it’s like…i keep seeing the SAME people who seem aware the FBI/CIA fucked over groups in the civil rights movements ALSO deny these bloggers were Russian psyops which is weird?? Both things can be true.

This isn’t an accident, it’s super intentional. The whole point is to choose a group of people to target to influence, then assimilate into said community, and then influence or undermine it. It’s effective if you choose a group which is marginalized. It’s more effective if that group would stand to lose something by being publicly undermined. It’s really effective when the end result is a lot of people going “calling this a psyop is a psyop! It’s not their government undermining us, it’s our government doing that.”

Eliciting that response is tactically clever, because you aren’t even wrong for criticizing our government, but also you become complicit in covering up the tracks of the original [outside] influence because you are more willing to blame whatever would normally be the cause of the problem.