But even still, even assuming that Evans is completely innocent, how does this make these other podcasters spooks?
That's the point. Now do it the other way around and you'll get it.
The concern I have with Evans is that, ideologically, he is more supportive of the American state, despite its propensity toward fascism, than he is of anti-imperialist government, socialist governments and movements in the global south (see his “skepticism” about claims that there was a coup in Bolivia), and “tankies”, i.e. the communists he doesn’t like.
Your concerns are just someone being wrong. Why are you concerned that someone is wrong? His podcast isn't preaching these wrong views. He spends so much time working against fascism. He's put himself face to face with fascists. But because he's not as critical of something as you are, he's tacitly supporting the thing you don't support and therefore supporting the thing he obviously doesn't support. See how that works?
Then why have you been insisting, from the beginning, that all these podcasts are psyops or filled with spooks?
Bruh the reason why you've been arguing with me is because you missed the point from the beginning.
Propaganda does matter, actually, which is why the US government does spend so many resources on disseminating it. There’s a reason why things like Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe, Radio Marti, etc. exist. It’s why operation Earnest Voice exists. It’s why that guy who makes YouTube videos critical of the American state got a visit by DHS. It’s why there’s an Atlantic Council spook working for Reddit. It’s why there’s so much astrotufing on the internet.
The operations of the state against the left are multifaceted. They are not limited to direct violence, and they prefer to avoid that if possible for a number of reasons. Preventing people from becoming communists is just as if not more important than arming anti-communist death squads. Psyops exist for a reason. A single podcast might be small in the grand scheme overall, but the state absolutely has an interest in these things. If a podcast is actually a psyop, that’s worthy of concern. But also, there are standards of evidence that we should expect before fedjacketing them.
None of these podcasts are propaganda for the US government. They all criticize it. All of them. And the shit the US government has done against communism in the past is physical infiltration, framing people, inciting violence, paying right wingers to kill left wingers, and plain harassment. The idea that they're disseminating propaganda by having Robert Evans say true things most of the time except for a few times on twitter and then working for a propaganda outlet, that he doesn't actually produce propaganda for, but complements on twitter, is pretty silly. I can't explain it any simpler.
Buddy, that’s all you’ve been doing.
Again, you completely missed the point and jumped in on something you didn't understand.
No, it literally is not. Your first post was about how all of those podcasters are spooks.
My first post was show you can come up with evidence on why someone is a spook. I know what I said I don't need you to quote it back at me. You're the one stumbling into a conversation that was already done and going off half-cocked.
Reinforcing imperialist propaganda, while also working with the American and allied reactionary states, while also using his platform to shit on other socialists, is exactly the kind of behavior that you could expect from the “non-communist left” that the feds have a long history of supporting.
How many people say wrong shit everyday? How many times have you said something wrong in your life? Saying wrong things isn't anything but being wrong. You're trying to paint this picture of Robert Being a CIA agent whose purpose is to spread imperialist propaganda. But does he use his podcast to do that? Nope. You already admitted things said in his podcast doesn't matter. Because it's about his job with bellingcat. So when I presented you with a list of his works for bellingcat and asked you to point out the propaganda he wrote, you refused. Instead you just threw up links to searches. So not only is Evans not using his podcast to spread imperialist propaganda, he's not even using his platform at the website made for spreading propaganda. So what does that leave? He's spreading propaganda by being occasionally wrong on twitter. He was jovial with his co-workers on twitter. That's it. Your entire argument boils down to being wrong on twitter.
Oh wait, he worked with feds. So he's spreading propaganda of imperialism by teaching Feds about 4chan, for free. No, he's spreading propaganda by working with feds after a group of fascists became violent. He's actually helping fascism, according to you, by doing those things.
Plus, all of this completely ignores the work he did before being employed by bellingcat. He hasn't worked for them all his life. He was doing the podcast and other things before writing for them. So the CIA couldn't even get him a job with bellingcat right at the start of his career?
Now I'm arguing against him being a CIA agent, and you're criticizing me for calling everyone a CIA agent. Because you didn't pick up on the context of the conversation and instead assumed I was literally advocating everyone is an agent rather than showing how easy it is to accuse people of being an op.
Will’s grandpa was a rat/traitor in the 1950s. Brace was in Syria negotiating arms deals with the Kurds (“an American punk/drug addict who discovered Marx in rehab” is a laughably transparent cover story). Tom Sexton worked for the Clinton Foundation. Everyone else is friends they’ve met/recruited. Most of them use the same agent/manager
I didn't even write this. That was the other guy. Do you even know who you're arguing with?
Bellingcat is the op.
Then why the fuck wasn't he working there all along? He only proved himself after getting laid off from Cracked and doing a niche and fairly obscure leftist podcast for a year or two? Bellingcat was fine without him. It's wild how you don't see what you're doing here. You're making all these leaps and assumptions while trying to chastise me for making leaps and assumptions. Which I was only doing to make a point to people like you who make leaps and assumptions. I brought up Evans because I knew that eventually you guys would pop up. Because when the topic of CIA and podcasts come up, there you are to tell us how the guy who said tankies sux on twitter is an agent because he said something stupid about Assad/China/Russia/etc.
And boy has this story changed. First he was 100% a spook. Then he's an unwilling dupe. First he actively spreads propaganda, then unintentionally, then not at all but he adds legitimacy to the place that does. First he's an agent now he's not the op, the place he works for is. This is exactly why I made the posts I made. Because I knew people like you were going to troll the comments eventually. You can't help yourselves. Do some self-crit, please.
Evans doesn’t have to be on the CIA payroll or personally digging up the dirt on Iran or Russia or whatever to be a useful idiot for the feds.
For the last fucking time that means fucking nothing because it's indistinguishable from simply being wrong. You're essentially saying having bad takes (according to some dweeb on chapo.chat) makes you a useful idiot for the feds. Address this point. Don't address anything else I have said. Either answer this problem directly or stop replying already. Because this is what it all comes down to.
And stop replying to both threads. I'm not replying anymore to the other one.
No, public figures are allowed to be wrong. Your carefully worded post to change "being wrong" to "echoing their lines" doesn't change that. Because "echoing their lines" as you know is just a stand in for being wrong. What you're saying is that any public figure who is wrong about foreign policy should be treated as a spook.
Now, back to the original point. if you're willing to make that leap. If you're willing to say that simply being wrong on a platform or in public is aiding capitalist imperialism, then I can say that being #2 at a propaganda firm that propagandizes for the softer side of imperialism makes you a useful idiot too. And as you said, being a useful idiot is the same as being a spook. So consider Citations Needed your problematic fave and know you enjoy something that benefits capitalist imperialism. And you can't argue against it because they don't have to do it willingly. They can be true believers in their cause, and even be controlled opposition. But they provide a service to people who want to bag and tag POCs on foreign soil. They benefit from that. So they're normalizing that behavior and spreading it, even if unintentionally. I mean if I buy windows, I'm just buying a product. But that's not the same as making Bill Gate's experiments sound like philanthropy.
I get to browbeat other leftists over their podcast consumption choices and be morally superior for pointing out how problematic their podcast host is. And if you disagree, then you're not a real leftist.
But what differentiates this behavior from Nima’s? Nima does not spread imperialist propaganda as VP of Spitfire. (Unless he does and there’s some specific evidence of this we haven’t seen.)
The point of PR is propaganda. Do you know the history of the PR industry? Spitfire's job is to create propaganda. Bellingcat's is to create it.
The Gates Foundation and the Brookings Institution do carry out imperialism, but not literally every single thing they do is part of that initiative.
Not everything Bellingcat does carries out that initiative. Sometimes they rightfully and truthfully cover stories.
Meanwhile, Nima co-hosts a podcast that does the exact opposite of that and actually propagandizes against those same groups. Nima spreads counter-imperialist propaganda, whereas Evans spread imperialist propaganda.
It doesn't matter what he personally believes. What matters is his company is serving the function anyways. Controlled opposition is a thing. Surely don't believe that saying the US is imperialist makes the CIA shook.
One is a useful idiot for US empire, doing a spook’s work to undermine international solidarity with victims of American imperialism,
This is just unfalsifable. For one you can't judge the impact of what Evans has said on relations between the US leftist project and Syria. And I don't expect you try. You'll just say that it's helping in some capacity that we can never know. If we never go to war with Syria over chemical weapons, it will always be a possibility due to the propaganda. If we do go to war for any reason or even some sort of skirmish, then it was because the propaganda helped it happen. There's no condition under which this can be wrong.
You also don't know what happened in Syria unless you were there. Either you don't know and you're just choosing the opposite of what the imperialists say out of principle. Or you have read some news or state messages that say it never happened. But you're relying on another government, another media with ties to that government. But you trust that more than the US government. So let's not pretend this is a case where there's some undeniable facts involved and you know for sure that Assad is just getting a bad wrap. Surely you understand that you can be leftist or a victim of imperialism and still do bad things. So what this comes down to is that you don't trust the State Department, and I'm not judging you on that. I don't either. Evans seems to trust them more than most leftists. So that's a point against him. But we're not talking about Evans cheering on military intervention in Syria. He certainly didn't want the US to abandon the Kurds (simplified version of events I know), but that's not the same as advocating for Iraq War 2: Syria.
His position isn't as aligned with the State Department's as you think. And I know this because I've listened to enough of his podcasts (all three) and watched his protest videos. I haven't listened to his Women's War or Portland Uprising specials yet. But his detractors cut out all nuance, as I said before. I've actually said he was wrong about Qaddafi when he made that stupid post about it, like I posted on his twitter. But again, there are shades of gray. You can believe that china is authoritarian and not support any real action against it. That doesn't support sanctions against China even if the State Department also says China is authoritarian.
So, once again, this comes down to you seeing someone being wrong, and then associating that wrongness with helping imperialism. There's no clear mechanism as to how this helps imperialism in this specific instance, nor can you quantify the effects. Ultimately that is a value judgement, or a moral judgment. Because supporting imperialism is wrong. If it wasn't then you wouldn't be complaining about it. So you're saying that Evans is doing something bad, willingly or not. And if I choose to listen to propaganda, what does that say about me? If I'm not so blindly critical that I write him off as a spook not worth listening to, then I'm doing something wrong. If I tell someone they should listen to BTB then I'm spreading propaganda too.
Now, if the latter isn't true. If I can be both a good leftist and not fall for propaganda while listening, then so can others. If you don't judge people about their podcast consumption, then you're not judging the act of consuming propaganda. If people can listen without the propaganda working...then it's not very good propaganda and not really that dangerous. If the propaganda doesn't actually change anything materially and if it doesn't cause political action, then what? I'm just critically listening to someone who's wrong sometimes. All this struggle over nothing. If you're worried about all the kiddies who won't be critical and just accept it because they trust his other stuff, then that's the lib argument about Russia. If some facebook memes bring us down then oh well. The real problem is teaching people to be critical, not demanding podcasts hosts with a few thousands listeners subscribe to a specific Marxist worldview and disagree with the government on everything. Just like Russia playing on racial tensions isn't the problem, it's having racial tensions to begin with.
As evil as the Gates Foundation et al. are, they do have interests that align with those goals, it’s just that they’re fundamentally limited by the capitalist framework and outweighed by the other fucked up stuff they do.
And Evans has interests that are completely incompatible with pretty much everything capitalist imperialists. Unless you think that they too want a bottom-up organization and all that stuff too. He works for a paper that lets him run with his work on right wing extremism.
There’s no comparison between the two of them.
There absolutely is. You're relaxing your standards for one and tightening them for another. You're implying that some small percentage of a podcast saying Assad bad is damaging how the left views Syria. You're saying getting at 1099 from bellingcat is spreading propaganda. You're saying that being wrong on one of the worst platforms for discussion is parroting propaganda. As if the entirety of Evan's views on foreign policy fit in a 240 character limit and perfectly match the State Department's plans. Or that they don't match but they're close enough to get people to the edge of distrusting Syria/China/Bolivia/Russia/etc so that the SD can push them over the edge and support imperialism.
I gotta go to bed man. I've been up for about 30 hours now. Your dislike or distrust of Evans is more tenuous than you're willing to admit. I really do not care about Nima. Them being CIA agents has no real material effect on the leftist movement. The leftist movement won't fail because some people listened to a podcast and then didn't trust Syria enough. If Robert Evans went full on interventionist tomorrow all that would happen is some breadtube videos and shitposts. Then we'd all forget about it. I think Chapo has a larger audience than Evans and would be a better means to spread propaganda. If the CIA's success depends on BTB then that's great news for us. This whole revolution thing will be a lot easier. I think Evans has useful information regardless of what he thinks about Syria or China or Bolivia. So I'm gonna keep writing off these criticisms. I'm gonna keep saying he's not an agent. When some goober posts one of the same three twitter screenshots of his we can have this conversation again, just like I already had it before. Podcasters aren't the movement. They aren't even thought leaders. They're themed infotainment at best. AM talk radio for the internet.
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That's the point. Now do it the other way around and you'll get it.
Your concerns are just someone being wrong. Why are you concerned that someone is wrong? His podcast isn't preaching these wrong views. He spends so much time working against fascism. He's put himself face to face with fascists. But because he's not as critical of something as you are, he's tacitly supporting the thing you don't support and therefore supporting the thing he obviously doesn't support. See how that works?
Bruh the reason why you've been arguing with me is because you missed the point from the beginning.
None of these podcasts are propaganda for the US government. They all criticize it. All of them. And the shit the US government has done against communism in the past is physical infiltration, framing people, inciting violence, paying right wingers to kill left wingers, and plain harassment. The idea that they're disseminating propaganda by having Robert Evans say true things most of the time except for a few times on twitter and then working for a propaganda outlet, that he doesn't actually produce propaganda for, but complements on twitter, is pretty silly. I can't explain it any simpler.
Again, you completely missed the point and jumped in on something you didn't understand.
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My first post was show you can come up with evidence on why someone is a spook. I know what I said I don't need you to quote it back at me. You're the one stumbling into a conversation that was already done and going off half-cocked.
How many people say wrong shit everyday? How many times have you said something wrong in your life? Saying wrong things isn't anything but being wrong. You're trying to paint this picture of Robert Being a CIA agent whose purpose is to spread imperialist propaganda. But does he use his podcast to do that? Nope. You already admitted things said in his podcast doesn't matter. Because it's about his job with bellingcat. So when I presented you with a list of his works for bellingcat and asked you to point out the propaganda he wrote, you refused. Instead you just threw up links to searches. So not only is Evans not using his podcast to spread imperialist propaganda, he's not even using his platform at the website made for spreading propaganda. So what does that leave? He's spreading propaganda by being occasionally wrong on twitter. He was jovial with his co-workers on twitter. That's it. Your entire argument boils down to being wrong on twitter.
Oh wait, he worked with feds. So he's spreading propaganda of imperialism by teaching Feds about 4chan, for free. No, he's spreading propaganda by working with feds after a group of fascists became violent. He's actually helping fascism, according to you, by doing those things.
Plus, all of this completely ignores the work he did before being employed by bellingcat. He hasn't worked for them all his life. He was doing the podcast and other things before writing for them. So the CIA couldn't even get him a job with bellingcat right at the start of his career?
Now I'm arguing against him being a CIA agent, and you're criticizing me for calling everyone a CIA agent. Because you didn't pick up on the context of the conversation and instead assumed I was literally advocating everyone is an agent rather than showing how easy it is to accuse people of being an op.
I didn't even write this. That was the other guy. Do you even know who you're arguing with?
Then why the fuck wasn't he working there all along? He only proved himself after getting laid off from Cracked and doing a niche and fairly obscure leftist podcast for a year or two? Bellingcat was fine without him. It's wild how you don't see what you're doing here. You're making all these leaps and assumptions while trying to chastise me for making leaps and assumptions. Which I was only doing to make a point to people like you who make leaps and assumptions. I brought up Evans because I knew that eventually you guys would pop up. Because when the topic of CIA and podcasts come up, there you are to tell us how the guy who said tankies sux on twitter is an agent because he said something stupid about Assad/China/Russia/etc.
And boy has this story changed. First he was 100% a spook. Then he's an unwilling dupe. First he actively spreads propaganda, then unintentionally, then not at all but he adds legitimacy to the place that does. First he's an agent now he's not the op, the place he works for is. This is exactly why I made the posts I made. Because I knew people like you were going to troll the comments eventually. You can't help yourselves. Do some self-crit, please.
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For the last fucking time that means fucking nothing because it's indistinguishable from simply being wrong. You're essentially saying having bad takes (according to some dweeb on chapo.chat) makes you a useful idiot for the feds. Address this point. Don't address anything else I have said. Either answer this problem directly or stop replying already. Because this is what it all comes down to.
And stop replying to both threads. I'm not replying anymore to the other one.
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No, public figures are allowed to be wrong. Your carefully worded post to change "being wrong" to "echoing their lines" doesn't change that. Because "echoing their lines" as you know is just a stand in for being wrong. What you're saying is that any public figure who is wrong about foreign policy should be treated as a spook.
Now, back to the original point. if you're willing to make that leap. If you're willing to say that simply being wrong on a platform or in public is aiding capitalist imperialism, then I can say that being #2 at a propaganda firm that propagandizes for the softer side of imperialism makes you a useful idiot too. And as you said, being a useful idiot is the same as being a spook. So consider Citations Needed your problematic fave and know you enjoy something that benefits capitalist imperialism. And you can't argue against it because they don't have to do it willingly. They can be true believers in their cause, and even be controlled opposition. But they provide a service to people who want to bag and tag POCs on foreign soil. They benefit from that. So they're normalizing that behavior and spreading it, even if unintentionally. I mean if I buy windows, I'm just buying a product. But that's not the same as making Bill Gate's experiments sound like philanthropy.
I get to browbeat other leftists over their podcast consumption choices and be morally superior for pointing out how problematic their podcast host is. And if you disagree, then you're not a real leftist.
/S since you missed it the first time.
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The point of PR is propaganda. Do you know the history of the PR industry? Spitfire's job is to create propaganda. Bellingcat's is to create it.
Not everything Bellingcat does carries out that initiative. Sometimes they rightfully and truthfully cover stories.
It doesn't matter what he personally believes. What matters is his company is serving the function anyways. Controlled opposition is a thing. Surely don't believe that saying the US is imperialist makes the CIA shook.
This is just unfalsifable. For one you can't judge the impact of what Evans has said on relations between the US leftist project and Syria. And I don't expect you try. You'll just say that it's helping in some capacity that we can never know. If we never go to war with Syria over chemical weapons, it will always be a possibility due to the propaganda. If we do go to war for any reason or even some sort of skirmish, then it was because the propaganda helped it happen. There's no condition under which this can be wrong.
You also don't know what happened in Syria unless you were there. Either you don't know and you're just choosing the opposite of what the imperialists say out of principle. Or you have read some news or state messages that say it never happened. But you're relying on another government, another media with ties to that government. But you trust that more than the US government. So let's not pretend this is a case where there's some undeniable facts involved and you know for sure that Assad is just getting a bad wrap. Surely you understand that you can be leftist or a victim of imperialism and still do bad things. So what this comes down to is that you don't trust the State Department, and I'm not judging you on that. I don't either. Evans seems to trust them more than most leftists. So that's a point against him. But we're not talking about Evans cheering on military intervention in Syria. He certainly didn't want the US to abandon the Kurds (simplified version of events I know), but that's not the same as advocating for Iraq War 2: Syria.
His position isn't as aligned with the State Department's as you think. And I know this because I've listened to enough of his podcasts (all three) and watched his protest videos. I haven't listened to his Women's War or Portland Uprising specials yet. But his detractors cut out all nuance, as I said before. I've actually said he was wrong about Qaddafi when he made that stupid post about it, like I posted on his twitter. But again, there are shades of gray. You can believe that china is authoritarian and not support any real action against it. That doesn't support sanctions against China even if the State Department also says China is authoritarian.
So, once again, this comes down to you seeing someone being wrong, and then associating that wrongness with helping imperialism. There's no clear mechanism as to how this helps imperialism in this specific instance, nor can you quantify the effects. Ultimately that is a value judgement, or a moral judgment. Because supporting imperialism is wrong. If it wasn't then you wouldn't be complaining about it. So you're saying that Evans is doing something bad, willingly or not. And if I choose to listen to propaganda, what does that say about me? If I'm not so blindly critical that I write him off as a spook not worth listening to, then I'm doing something wrong. If I tell someone they should listen to BTB then I'm spreading propaganda too.
Now, if the latter isn't true. If I can be both a good leftist and not fall for propaganda while listening, then so can others. If you don't judge people about their podcast consumption, then you're not judging the act of consuming propaganda. If people can listen without the propaganda working...then it's not very good propaganda and not really that dangerous. If the propaganda doesn't actually change anything materially and if it doesn't cause political action, then what? I'm just critically listening to someone who's wrong sometimes. All this struggle over nothing. If you're worried about all the kiddies who won't be critical and just accept it because they trust his other stuff, then that's the lib argument about Russia. If some facebook memes bring us down then oh well. The real problem is teaching people to be critical, not demanding podcasts hosts with a few thousands listeners subscribe to a specific Marxist worldview and disagree with the government on everything. Just like Russia playing on racial tensions isn't the problem, it's having racial tensions to begin with.
And Evans has interests that are completely incompatible with pretty much everything capitalist imperialists. Unless you think that they too want a bottom-up organization and all that stuff too. He works for a paper that lets him run with his work on right wing extremism.
There absolutely is. You're relaxing your standards for one and tightening them for another. You're implying that some small percentage of a podcast saying Assad bad is damaging how the left views Syria. You're saying getting at 1099 from bellingcat is spreading propaganda. You're saying that being wrong on one of the worst platforms for discussion is parroting propaganda. As if the entirety of Evan's views on foreign policy fit in a 240 character limit and perfectly match the State Department's plans. Or that they don't match but they're close enough to get people to the edge of distrusting Syria/China/Bolivia/Russia/etc so that the SD can push them over the edge and support imperialism.
I gotta go to bed man. I've been up for about 30 hours now. Your dislike or distrust of Evans is more tenuous than you're willing to admit. I really do not care about Nima. Them being CIA agents has no real material effect on the leftist movement. The leftist movement won't fail because some people listened to a podcast and then didn't trust Syria enough. If Robert Evans went full on interventionist tomorrow all that would happen is some breadtube videos and shitposts. Then we'd all forget about it. I think Chapo has a larger audience than Evans and would be a better means to spread propaganda. If the CIA's success depends on BTB then that's great news for us. This whole revolution thing will be a lot easier. I think Evans has useful information regardless of what he thinks about Syria or China or Bolivia. So I'm gonna keep writing off these criticisms. I'm gonna keep saying he's not an agent. When some goober posts one of the same three twitter screenshots of his we can have this conversation again, just like I already had it before. Podcasters aren't the movement. They aren't even thought leaders. They're themed infotainment at best. AM talk radio for the internet.