Tag: propaganda

coolfayebunny:

liberalsarecool:

The suckered have to admit they bought the con job. Own up. You got played. Your judgment is flawed. You like racial narratives that appeal to the worst in people.

We don’t need to beg. The European court of justice today confirmed Britain can go back and withdraw, without any of the EU stopping us or putting extra demands on us.

We can pull article 50 ( which was the parliamentary starting gun for Brexit) which Mrs May triggered far too quickly.

Today she postponed the vote in Parliament because she knew that the deal she had made with the EU wouldn’t get through tomorrow.

By the way both trump and Brexit can be linked to Russian financial meddling. ( they appear to have bankrolled the Vote leave organisation.)

Unfortunately good summary from Carole Cadwalladr (with more there):

Polite reminder. Trump & Brexit are not 2 different things. They are the same thing. Same companies. Same data. Same Facebook. Same Russians. Same Cambridge Analytica. Same Robert Mercer. Same Steve Bannon. Same Breitbart. Same Alexander Nix. Same Donald Trump. Same Nigel Farage.

That said, I don’t think many supporters of either side of that mess are ever going to be able to admit they were purposely fed all kinds of bad information. Maybe find some other targets to double down on with the blaming and scapegoating, but face the idea that they were wrong? Unfortunately unlikely, even to themselves.

How to reasonably deal with that and move forward? Hard to figure out. But, that does seem to be the situation in front of us.

brehaaorgana:

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. 

Alright I’m just going to add a few things, especially because of this: 

#I think this is the most rational post about this that I’ve seen #I still want to see the proof though

This is part of a much larger ongoing Federal investigation. Tumblr delayed on acting on this for months, and in the end seems to have “found only 84 IRA blogs.” 

Now “evidence” is presumably how these blogs were proven to be Russian. It seems that Tumblr just cross-referenced already identified IRA backed usernames and IP addresses. We know that platforms like Twitter, Youtube, Google, and Facebook ALL were impacted by this. We had federal court hearings about it:

“Do you believe that any of your companies have identified the full scope of Russian active measures?” – Warner

“I have to say no.” – Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch

In September [2017], Facebook acknowledged that it had discovered 3,000 ads from 470 accounts connected to Internet Research Agency. It’s since revealed that those accounts collectively created 80,000 pieces of content that may have been shared, both organically and through ads, with 126 million people. It shared that information with Twitter and Google. Now Twitter says it has identified 2,752 accounts linked to Internet Research Agency, while Google says it has identified 18 YouTube channels connected to the group.

So just from this, we have 470 facebook accounts, 2,752 twitter accounts, and 18 youtube channels. Now we have also identified about 84 tumblr accounts. I don’t think this number is particularly low, nor do I think it’s very high either. I do think that tumblr did the bare minimum of identifying and purging IRA run blogs already identified under federal investigation. I don’t believe tumblr did any original investigation work, and instead simply cleared our already known and identified foreign actors. But that’s my personal belief, not a stated fact. 

At any rate, this has been a work in progress for years: 

In April 2014, the IRA created a new unit, known as the Translator Project, that focused on “the US population and conducted operations on social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter,” according to the indictment. By the following month, the project outlined, apparently in an internal document, an explicit goal: “Spread distrust toward the candidates and the political system in general.”

So we have documentation of the goal, we know the IRA itself exists, we’ve had federal investigations about Russian interference in the election, and we know the means with which they interfered (social media.). 

Also let’s be clear here: Tumblr didn’t do this out of the kindness of their hearts, a particular political belief, or because they care more about faux-BLM supporting accounts than they do deleting real life Nazis. They did it because the federal government compelled them to help a larger investigation. 

The blogging platform Tumblr has unmasked 84 accounts that it says were used by a shadowy Russian internet group to spread disinformation during the 2016 US election campaign.

Tumblr said it uncovered the scheme in late 2017, helping an investigation that led to the indictment in February of 13 individuals linked to the Russia-based Internet Research Agency (IRA).

By the way, this wasn’t just a couple of fake accounts, some of these people stole the social security numbers of living Americans, then opened accounts with paypal. They had fake IDs, stolen SSNs, paypal accounts, fake lives. They also hired actual American citizens to do a variety of different things for photo ops. We also have proof because Russian actors in the IRA admitted they got caught and were doing this. 

There’s one more thing, which I think is also confusing or bothering people.

Question: why did these accounts spend time being largely pro-liberal/leftist movements? 

Answer: across all media platforms? They didn’t. They were spread across all “sides.” Their goal was not simply electing Trump or being conservative, their goal was to spread distrust in the system and undermine the election process. Then to sow discord. They weren’t all left or all right. They were everything, with the intent to cause conflict. 

This also worked. 

Burr, the committee chair, highlighted two Facebook posts from a Russian propaganda group called Internet Research Agency that created a conflict on the streets of Houston by drawing two groups of protestors to fake “rallies” at the same place and time. One post, shared by the fake Facebook page Heart of Texas, promoted a purported protest against the “Islamization of Texas.” The second post, uploaded by the fake page United Muslims of America, promoted an event aimed at saving “Islamic knowledge.” Both groups bought ads to publicize their events, spending about $200 in total.

Burr then showed images of the resulting clash outside the Islamic Center in Houston, dramatizing how fake accounts can produce real conflict. Skeptics of the impact of Russian meddling in the US election have argued that just because Russia endeavored to influence American voters doesn’t mean they did. But the fact that people showed up for these protests, designed to foment anger on both sides, demonstrates that influence.

So a few people have suggested that the tumblr accounts would sometimes say inflammatory things like talking about white genocide, or hating the whites, or whatever else, and then the IRA would then turn around and use their own posts and spread that information to 4chan and reddit to stir up more anger from neonazis and white supremacists. 

I don’t have actual proof of that specific thing happening on hand, but it is very much in line with other actions the IRA took in this psyop, so I find it very reasonable. Tumblr was probably not a main point of actual influence action, but rather a place to disseminate extra “proof” of whatever angle or information they were trying to promote. 

But people seem to think this means the US is doing COINTELPRO or that Buzzfeed is calling BLM the result of the IRA psyop, as opposed to like…the reality which is that black liberal bloggers and their politics/organizing were targeted by the IRA. And it’s like…so painful for people to say “psyops won’t work on us because psyops definitely worked on us before.” 

– if this helped you in any way, consider buying me a coffee because i’m so tired

How do we ensure public safety w/o police? Check out this list on alternatives to policing

saxifraga-x-urbium:

crazy-pages:

nonbinarypastels:

lines-and-edges:

luchagcaileag:

bandana-roja:

4mysquad:

  1. Alternatives to Police (PDF) by Rose City Copwatch (2008)
  2. Alternatives to the Police by Evan Dent, Molly Korab, and Farid Rener
  3. The Avant-garde of White Supremacy by Steve Martinot and Jared Sexton
  4. Broken Windows is On Hiatus: Community Interventions We Can Enact Now for Real Justice by Hannah Hodson
  5. Can We Build an Anti-Policing Movement that Isn’t Anti-Police? by Radical Faggot
  6. Citizens, Cops, and Power: Recognizing the Limits of Community by Steve Herbert
  7. Feeling for the Edge of your Imagination: finding ways not to call the police
  8. A New Year’s Resolution: Don’t Call the Police by Mike Ludwig
  9. Not Calling the Police by Prison Culture
  10. Origins of the Police by David Whitehouse
  11. The Other Side of the COIN (PDF) by Kristian Williams.
  12. Policing is a Dirty Job, But Nobody’s Gotta Do It: 6 Ideas for a Cop-Free World by Jose Martin
  13. Policing Slaves Since the 1600s by Auandaru Nirhan
  14. The Shanti Sena ‘peace center’ and the non-policing of an anarchist temporary autonomous zone: Rainbow Family peacekeeping strategies (PDF) by Michael Niman
  15. Stop Kidding Yourself: The Police Were Created to Control Working Class and Poor People by Sam Mitrani
  16. We Don’t Just Need Nicer Cops. We Need Fewer Cops by Alex S. Vitale
  17. What Does It Mean to Be Anti-Police? by Alex S. Vitale
  18. Where abolition meets action: women organizing against gender violence (PDF) by Vikki Law

This is another blog Tumblr deleted for being a Russian psyop on main but it’s so strange that a good chunk of these were UhhHHhHh very vocally pro black and very anti police brutality 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔

I have no trouble believing lagonegirl was one, and although I still kinda doubt the-real-eye-to-see was one, it’s at least not totally impossible… but some of these seemed like completely normal anti-police-brutality, anti-racist, pro-black blogs that didn’t really… do anything remotely suspicious or likely to promote Trump.

That’s because they’re using stolen content from real activists to build their credibility. Here’s the original:

http://www.usprisonculture.com/blog/2014/12/29/thinking-through-the-end-of-police/

^ RB’ing this (and similar posts) because I’m seeing a lot of misinformation going around about what’s been happening and a lot of people dismissing this as “tumblr staff is unfairly targeting innocent people, none of this is real, FAKE NEWS!” and it’s…really damn discomforting.

As lines-and-edges said, a lot of these IRA blogs stole content from other legitimate activists. They did this in order to gain followers and get an ‘in’ with liberal/social justice groups. They created and reblogged posts with actual good, real content mixed in with memes and other things for the same reason—to gain a following, to gain trust, to make themselves out to be a regular person who other users could feel good about reblogging from.

The point of this was so that when they made/reblogged propaganda posts and posts created with the intention to manipulate people, they would be able to easily slip those posts in and make them seem more legitimate. This is basic common sense: if a user posts 100 posts that make them out to be Woke and real and good for every t 1 subtle propaganda post then people are much more likely to reblog that propaganda without really thinking twice about it; a blog that posted nothing but “I love Putin and you should too!!!”-esque things, obviously, would not have been as effective. The people doing this know that.

Also note that a lot of the propaganda spread was not directly pro-Trump because that kind of messaging likely would not have resonated well with the tumblr audience which the people who spread this also know. Instead, we got propaganda of the “both candidates are just as awful, vote for Jill Stein! it won’t be a wasted vote!” and “you’re more Woke to not vote at all!” and “if your candidate isn’t totally morally pure then you’re bad if you vote for them” variety which DID appeal to people on tumblr and, though it didn’t explicitly support Trump or even his ideals, it did do the work to sow seeds of discord, misinformation, and chaos among liberals which ultimately did help Trump’s cause.

Honestly, the difficulty Tumblr’s people seem to be having in recognizing propoganda blogs kind of concerns me. Like, I’ve seen a *lot* of posts of people saying “but this blog posted something I agree with, they can’t be a propoganda blog!”. And I’m just kind of like … yes? Of course they posted something you like? How do you think propoganda blogs operate? And of course their actual propoganda posts sound reasonable. How do you think propoganda works?

As lines-and-edges said, a lot of these IRA blogs stole content from other legitimate activists

Bolded for lazy readers

On Propaganda

catesly:

12drakon:

decepticonsensual:

So, I did it – went through and searched my blog for the posts I’d unknowingly reblogged from any of the Russian troll accounts on the list Tumbler’s sending round.  I think the results are interesting for anyone else who’s gotten the same email and may be wondering:

I came up with around 15 reblogs in total.  Most of them fell broadly under the umbrella of “legit things posted to build the account’s credibility”:  actual news stories with credible sources, or screenshots of twitter conversations (which might be either discussing facts or opinions) or of TV shows.  Most actually had a positive tone (probably because of the correct assumption that people are less likely to fact-check “awesome historical figure of colour!”-type posts than “awful thing happened yesterday here!” posts), and covered topics like Black history, modern Black leaders, Muslim positivity, and body positivity.  One was a post explaining the procedure for writing in Bernie Sanders in the 2016 election, which I and most of the other people in the chain reblogged expressly to explain what a bad idea it was.

Even some of the positive posts, though, take on a bit of a sinister edge when you know where they’re coming from.  “Neglected historical figures” posts, like any “why is no one talking about X” posts, can bolster the sense that news sources outside your online bubble are ignoring or obscuring the truth about the world.  A gifset (like one I reblogged) of Jon Stewart giving a blistering takedown on The Late Show, with a caption about how much the poster misses Stewart and how much we need someone like him, but there’s no one on The Daily Show now who’s his equal, uses a genuinely great moment of political satire to denigrate the amazing work currently being done in satire, and chip away at the credibility of voices like Trevor Noah’s and all the other comedians and commentators who are calling politicians to account now.

I want to talk about this post in particular, because I think it’s really telling.  It shows just how insidious propaganda can be:

  • The Fact Check:  Like many others, the post presents facts that are broadly correct – India TV and several other sources did say that Tom Holland “wants to play an Indian Spiderman”.  However, if you read the coverage, the same articles also quote Holland saying that an Indian actor should take the role of Spiderman if an Indian version of the film is made.  It seems more likely that it was a language issue or other mistake than a deliberate attempt to misrepresent the actor.
  • The Hook:  The post creates a sense of urgency by suggesting that misinformation is already being circulated, and that this misinformation is hurting innocent people.  I certainly hit reblog because I didn’t want a misleading story to make people think badly of Tom Holland.  If you buy that the lie is already out there, then, given how fast information circulates, there’s a sense of time pressure around sharing the “truth” that (ironically) helps real misinformation spread.
  • The Framing:  The whole post is (again, kind of ironically) framed as a fact check, contrasting the headline with dialogue from the actual interview.  But the fact check is deliberately incomplete.  It demonstrates that what Holland said was different from the headline, but skirts the question of what the original article really claimed he said.
  • The Spin:  And this is the really insidious bit.  Why bother painting an Indian news outlet like it’s trying to smear a random actor when it’s not?  Look at the caption:

    I am fed up with the media nowadays

    That’s the point – that seed of doubt about the media.  Not entertainment media, all media. Don’t trust mainstream journalism.  Don’t trust the sources of information that have access, resources, and influence.

    Sound familiar?  The lying mainstream media?  Fake news?

So if you’re wondering how infiltration works and what it tries to accomplish – well, here you go.

^^^THAT

Learn to recognize the pattern. Inciting strife or outrage should be suspicious. Anything that is not constructive. “Fed up” – and then what?

Healthy movements want to BUILD: take care of people, comfort, feed, develop.

I’ve been trying to learn about that stuff, and then warn friends, for the last couple of years. The pattern has been very similar in 2013 and up with Russian meddling in Ukraine. Some of the same people are involved. I freaked out so much when I started to see that sick slag happening in the US. 

Currently, they are meddling in the gun issue to incite strife.

All of this. Kudos to DC for actually taking the time to do this. It shows how easy it is for any one of us to assist in spreading misinformation online.

(Also, an interesting little book published like almost 100 years ago that details how a lot of this bullshit works is Bernays’ Propaganda. I read it after the election and was surprised/unsurprised at how relevant it was today).

brehaaorgana:

shut-up-hippie:

glumshoe:

frosttrix:

glumshoe:

I just saw the weirdest ad on YouTube. I thought it was for a new WWII video game, but it didn’t seem to be selling anything – it looked like some kind of weird pro-Poland propaganda and just said “Poland did a lot to save the Jews” and then ended with a hashtag about Germany.

What… what did I just watch, and why was it on a YouTube video about sea slugs in America?

as far as I can tell, poland has made it illegal (!) to accuse them of being complicit in any nazi activity which occurred on polish soil, most sensible people objected to this, and the polish government are now putting weird propaganda ads on american youtube for unclear reasons

Hey… Poland? What the fuck?

Yeah they’re basically pulling all the propaganda out that they can saying that they weren’t AT ALL complicit in the murder of Jews and Roma along with the Nazis.

This is a part of Poland’s massive push to erase their own complicity in the Holocaust, and in post-Holocaust antisemitic violence. It is part of Poland’s rising antisemitism. It’s not just American youtube, however. It’s also Israeli youtube. So essentially, Poland is targeting the two countries in the world which have the largest Jewish populations today with this propaganda campaign.

There are multiple advertisements doing this.  

I have yet to see one, but I will report any if they show up while I’m watching youtube. 

Basically, here is a quick timeline of current related events which make this propaganda campaign terrifying:

obiternihili:

the-grey-tribe:

bpd-anon:

antoine-roquentin:

people who discuss martin luther king jr as a successful example of anti-violence should know they’re part of a pretty vast propaganda campaign that’s existed since the late 70s to whitewash the history of the civil rights era. as soon as king took aim at desegregating northern cities, especially chicago, hate for him exploded. according to gallup, he was actually reviled by 1966, with two thirds of the country saying they had a negative perception of him. the major responses to his assassination mostly track with governor ronald reagan’s assessment of him, that he deserved his own death. it was common to see letters in newspapers and in senators’ offices that said things like “It is my firm belief, and [that] of all my neighbors, that King should be taken into custody. … Today, the insufferable arrogance of this character places him on a pedestal as a dark-skinned Hitler…. When greedy Mr. Hitler started taking over other countries, people at first thought ‘give him a little more, then he will be satisfied.’ Give greedy Mr. King a little more freedom then he will stop. Isn’t that what we are being told today?… Is the ultimate aim the same as the Soviet Union when all property was collectivized?“ (all from nixonland, rick perlstein). white public opinion even blamed him directly for the riots going on in american cities, as in this cartoon: 

this in response to his disagreement with the war in vietnam and his effort to ensure those selling their houses couldn’t refuse to sell them to black people because they were black. king preached non-violence, and white people despised him for it. 

I don’t get this post. People hated MLK, yes, and eventually murdered him. But he still won. The civil rights laws passed. How is that unsuccessful?

As a non-USian, I also don’t get it. At first they painted him as violent, then they portrayed him as a pacifist, and both times it was slander? What are you trying to say in this post, OP?

Not OP, might not say anything they agree with.

King had a particular strategy. They lied (type A) to discredit him, but his strategy still perserviered (I don’t say “won” because it’s not like racism stopped). Now they lie in the other way (type B), in order to discredit the movements they’re trying to lie (type A) about now. Because in juxtaposition when you push strategy in the direction of lie B, it makes the stuff in the same place look like they’re type A, when you don’t realize you’re on a spectrum.

Violence or non-violence is probably a false dichotomy, and a mixed strategy can be nuanced, contextual, and successful because it can potentially win through pathways locked out from one of the paths.

It’s like, if you say only yellow movements can win, and red only leads to ruin. Well you got this orange guy you can’t stand so you call him red so everyone abandons him and his movement fails. But he “wins”. So you recast him as yellow, because he has yellow features and only yellow wins, but in fact he was always orange, the ill-defined region between the two. And it’s really unfair to orange, because now orangists are called red by yellow, the same yellow plus a generation that stood against orange a generation ago. It’s just false because he was neither red nor yellow. And continuing to present the false dichotomy is bad, because it’s a strategy used by people dishonestly manipulating the playing field.

Like, the Dalai Lama is not a peacenik; he educates guerilla organizations in India for the ultimate purpose of taking Tibet back from the PRC. He’s not yellow, and weaponizing him against the Tibetan liberation movement is to dishonor him and inaccurately characterize them. Of course it doesn’t follow that he’s actually bad (i.e. red) and therefore the PLA and the PRC are the good guys (that yellow is good), but that’s the kind of how the propagandists want you to see the situation. It’s giving the reigns to other people.