• neera_tanden [she/her]
    ·
    3 years ago

    The government doesn’t do psyops anymore sweatie.

    However, some of your problematic faves are Russian Psyops these include:

    • Chapo frat house
    • citations conceited
    • until 11 months ago, the Inferiority Report
    • Stalinbad Faith
    • the cult leader who wears a tracksuit and is going to take his followers to barbecue in Guyana
    • the young Armenians

    I have it on good authority that sCum Town is not a Russian psyop, but is funded by Mossad.

  • honeynut
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    deleted by creator

    • rubpoll [she/her]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Crash Course.

      "The reason Capitalism won the Cold War is because only Capitalism could invent something as brilliant yet useless yet fun as Silly Putty."

  • buh [she/her]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Behind the Bastards

    He did an episode about SynAnon recently and pulled a “literally 1917”

    • Des [she/her, they/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 years ago

      this is probably the closest to reality. i can see the CIA relying too heavily on analytics and big data these days to really have too many old school media psyops esp when there's so many libs to do their jobs for them. this is a dying empire after all.

      • blobjim [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        i can see the CIA relying too heavily on analytics and big data these days to really have too many old school media psyops

        :cia: :wut:

    • mr_world [they/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 years ago

      Brace didn't fight against US interests though, the YPG was allied with the US at the time.

      Matt's philosophy is definitely not only electoralism. He's spoken plenty of times about how useless it is without a worker's party. Logging off is not disregarding leftist organizing either. He's specifically talking about being a chronically online poster who's sum total engagement in politics is shitposting, memes, and consuming online media.

      Also, forgot to add, they did go after Brace for being in the YPG. The Trump Admin used him as evidence for antifa being tied to foreign terrorist groups. His name was on literal government documents along with all his silly screen names.

      https://www.thenation.com/article/society/dhs-antifa-syria/

      https://twitter.com/kenklippenstein/status/1290384673789673472

    • Alaskaball [comrade/them]A
      ·
      edit-2
      3 years ago

      Matt’s philosophy of logging off and disregarding leftist organising outside of electroralism

      Probably because that's all he has done?

    • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
      ·
      3 years ago

      The fact that Brace fought in a foreign war with no repercussions and became a minor celebrity from it raises a lot of questions for me.

      Brace is a muckraker celebrity journalist who spent a year embedded with the YPG. He's a shameless blowhard, not a Communist revolutionary.

          • invalidusernamelol [he/him]
            ·
            3 years ago

            Lol, in America being a trade unionist is about the only real way to do praxis currently. Forming a union then using that union to radicalize is good.

            He does call himself a communist and his brewery union is affiliated with the Longshoreman union which is probably the best one in terms of internationalism and solidarity.

    • OgdenTO [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Now I like TrueAnon, I think they do a great job of covering important topics from a class-aware perspective and they don't punch down.

      Saying that, I'm suspicious on how slick the show is. Even from the beginning, the production is great. Original music. Good rapport between Brace and Liz (that hasn't changed too much either). In contrast most left wing podcasts have horrible production.

    • evilgiraffemonkey [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      I read a conspiracy about his show once where someone detailed how immediately his opinions on the moon landing had changed (he used to think it was fake and now thinks it's real) and how he shuts down conversation about it now, suggesting he'd been "got."

      • Dingdangdog [he/him,comrade/them]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Lmao at that being the thing that's hardline with the CIA. Say whatever else, but don't you dare deny the moon landing or else

          • invalidusernamelol [he/him]
            ·
            edit-2
            3 years ago

            They gave him access to one piece of top secret information, he chose the moon landing, and saw irreremovedble proof that they actually landed on the moon, now he vocally defends the moon landing but can't tell anyone why.

            Lmao, I r r e f u t a b l e

    • Three_Magpies [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      +1 to Bad Faith. They come out of nowhere and immediately start making ~24k a month before their second episode — on what, the name Virgil Texas? That’s one of the most successful patreons ever, I find it very hard to believe that BJG + Virgil have THAT big a draw.

      They have access to Andrew Yang, Marianne Williamson and other highly-sought after figures? Virgil disappears, says nothing of where he went, and comes back with a ‘popular’ show at a time when it would be highly beneficial to sheepdog radicals back into the factory farm of electoralism? Really suspicious to me.

      • evilgiraffemonkey [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        on what, the name Virgil Texas?

        brie was pretty prominent as bernie's spokesperson. I can imagine people who aren't that online but supported sanders following her.

      • FidelCashflow [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        They are one of the least lib pods out there. Who would they be a psyop for?

        Virgil is known to have money/media connections but BGJ worked on a national presidential campaign and they got back to back back huge names out of the gate.

        • Three_Magpies [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          How do you figure they’re least lib? They softballed Yang and allowed Williamson to lie that she would “be marching against Biden the day after his inauguration right there with you!”

          I haven’t listened to too many episodes but all the ones I did seemed like they were safely in the ‘stomp your feet and say “bad!”’ bounds of civility liberalism. BJG straight up says it’s the sort of podcast you can tell your mom you listen to competed to the uncouth CTH.

          • mr_world [they/them]
            ·
            3 years ago

            We as posters have different goals than podcast hosts though. Our goal is to be confrontational because we don't care about media capital (because we don't use it to pay our bills). We can afford to be standoffish pricks who just berate people at the first opportunity. We like bullying libs. We think it's part of our duty as good leftists. But if you're a person who has conversations for a living, that won't get you far. You have to learn to put up with people you disagree with and to pick your battles. You have to sit through someone saying something bad or wrong so you can move onto something more productive. To be fair, this is a skill you need as an organizer too. If you go to someone's house for campaigning or any kind of outreach, you might have to listen to a chud or a lib say something you know is wrong. You don't pick an argument with them and then call them a doo doo shid head lib who should get the wall. You behave with tact.

            Someone might ask how having conversations for a living on a podcast helps the left, and it doesn't really. It's just media. It's kind a good for information. It's mostly good for entertainment. It's not supposed to be the center of the movement. We actually don't want to live in a world where the center of the left is a podcast. That's cringe and can't actually change anything. So it's okay if podcasts hosts don't tattoo that Mao quote about disregarding civility. Just listen to it if you want, don't if you don't like it. Keep an appropriate sensibility about what media is and what it can do. Even if the Brie or Virgil thinks they're doing something productive, I don't think it matters.

            I don't listen to BF but Virgil's interview on Chapo with Yang was delicate confrontation. He started off slow, worked inwards, and backed off if he felt Yang was getting frustrated or they were at dead end. It's a soft-soap at first but towards the end Virgil managed to get Yang to basically admit he had no idea how to do his "Everyone gets $1000" plan. That wouldn't have been possible if he called Yang a genocidal lib at the first point of disagreement.

            • Three_Magpies [he/him]
              ·
              3 years ago

              Yes, as an entertainment product BF is enjoyable for a certain crowd. Good point about how one can't be a hardliner all the time when organizing, although I don't think there's much else of a comparison between podcasting and doing on-the-ground stuff.

              But considering that Yang probably walked away completely unchanged from the interview and then went on to act like a dipshit in the NY mayor's race who would have actively hurt people if he won, I can't see it as much of an accomplishment that Virgil landed an extremely gentle dunk. It comes across like two people play-acting a drama where they're careful not to offend each other and I can't get down with that. But to your point, that just means I'm not the sort of liberal who enjoys that particular show.

              • mr_world [they/them]
                ·
                3 years ago

                Oh I'm sure he didn't change or learn anything. He's too well-off to do that. Everything he thinks has worked out well for him. The material connection between what his life is and what he thinks is too strong to be changed in an interview. I guess you could then ask why it matters to interview him at all and I don't think it does. I think some of this isn't so much a podcast platforming them, but them platforming the podcast. Someone like Marianne has way more followers and people who listen to her than the things she usually goes on. So you as a host have a chance to reach someone new, even if you can't change the guest's mind. But how much that actually moves a needle, I don't know. I don't think anyone was going to vote for Yang in the primaries who also was a regular Chapo listener so landing that dunk only reaffirmed our suspicions more than had an influence on the election. I don't think them being more aggressive would have hurt him in the primaries either. It's just a big luke warm nothing that we attach meaning to depending on what we believe about the nature of media and culture.

          • FidelCashflow [he/him]
            ·
            3 years ago

            you are mistaking being polite for being lib. She goes out of her way to act pmc so she can get the big names.

            She called Chomsky wrong to his face, she had an episode about how class consciousness is more important than race consciousness. The fact that she wants your mother to listen and be radicalized more praxis than the chapo libs have done since Bernie. It would have been cathartic to have called out Williamson, but that style would eventually cost her the media capital she has. Despite it being cathartic it wouldn't change anything.

            • Three_Magpies [he/him]
              ·
              3 years ago

              I don’t think that podcast is radicalizing anyone. Discussing class consciousness is good but anyone worried about preserving their media capital sounds extremely lib to me.

              I don’t perfectly remember the Chomsky argument but as I recall, BJG was making a ‘withhold your vote’ argument which, if that was the case, seems lib to me

              • FidelCashflow [he/him]
                ·
                3 years ago

                She was saying don't vote for Biden because he is useless or a monster. That is the opposite of lib shit.

                It might amount to nothing, this is true. To the extent that it can amount to anything though having an outspoken leftist infiltrate the PMC and is a pretty good change for something to happen.

                • Three_Magpies [he/him]
                  ·
                  3 years ago

                  This is where we would disagree. I don't think BJG has infiltrated the PMC in any meaningful sense. I just see it as her getting a paycheck from producing a show that entertains radlibs. From the Chomsky interview:

                  At 6:18 BJG talks about a coordinated mass of voters, the same way unions have arranged voting blocks in the past but it strikes me as hollow because I can't even think of a time within the last few decades when unions leveraged masses of voters to win electoral benefits. But even if they had, this strategy will not scale against the accelerating horrors that the ruling class aims to deliver to us. So this strategy of organizing one's vote just seems like a facile attempt to get electoral politics to deliver results for the working class.

                  At about 35:20 BJG says

                  the democratic party and Joe Biden is saying no you have to vote for me because of the environment i reject your individual material personal concerns i don't see it as i don't see how you can tell someone like that that even if there is are these bigger concerns that they should abstractly be invested in that they should put those things before their immediate material circumstances ... why is it that Joe Biden and democrats more broadly are rejecting these programs and what does that mean for our ability to actually affect change down the line without doing something that's more radical and and perhaps and and valuing our votes enough to arguably withhold them at some point.

                  See right here she's on the verge of saying something redacted, but she quickly backsteps to conditioning / withholding the vote. I understand why. And I think that's my criticism in a nutshell: carefully limiting the scope of one's arguments makes sense when Biden says criticizing capital makes you a criminal, but it's also lib shit.

                  At ~47:10 she makes her closing statement and it's all about Biden offering something more to get people to vote for him. I don't have confidence in this strategy to lead to good change or for anything to happen.

                  • FidelCashflow [he/him]
                    ·
                    3 years ago

                    That is an excelent critique. If I am right and she is hiding her power level to maintain engagement with libs that doesn't speak well of her capabilities. I suppose I am projecting my hopes for her project onto her more than the evidence supports. I maintain I would rather see a comrade grifting the libs than a regular failchild but in the end that isn't a huge get so you got me there as well.

                    You are correct that at this point there is no major progress to report back. I think though it is too early to call her a lib and her work doesn't support her being a grifter. I could easily be proven wrong with time though.

  • Fartman77 [none/use name]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Idk but anyone know a place where I can get TrueAnons premium episodes for free? The elon episodes are on the patreon which I’d rather avoid.

      • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
        ·
        3 years ago

        I heard one of the hosts was a decorated special forces guy.

        :gun-felix:

      • disco [any]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Will’s grandpa spied on the US for the Soviets, so that’s pretty cool.