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 🇵🇸
Other things once considered to be russian disinformation include:
The civil rights movement
The fact Germans were doing the Holocaust
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 tbaf
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.
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.
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.
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.
"Russian disinformation" is in the same vein as "Chinese bots/wumao"
It's a thought terminating cliché and nothing more.
It seems to only be really effective with NATO countries. They tried that here and it just didn’t work.
"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)
going to start using "american disinformation" to disarm libs, that's such a smart turn of phrase
Death to America
