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 🇵🇸

  • Barx [none/use name]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    19 hours ago

    It’s effective as a thought-terminating cliche, which is a sign that they are experiencing cognitive dissonance and what you are saying is almost working.

    The solution to a thought-terminating cliché is to not let them change focus. Keep attention on the thing they called Russian disinformation and walk through it.

    It sounds like this is online or via text. As a warning, this is the worst possible way to have this kind of conversation. In-person is much more powerful, in no small part due to the fact that liberals rarely actually know anything and they have to Google things to keep up.

    • sexywheat [none/use name]@hexbear.netOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      edit-2
      18 hours ago

      Yes definitely online. They shared a video with me about how the evil Putler is cooperating with the equally evil See See Pee, North Korea and Iran to do bad evil things. Honestly it was the type of video I would show to an elementary school student if I wanted to give them an incredibly one-sided, propagandised view of the war.

      Edit: But yes, forcing them into the cognitive dissonance and forcing them to stare directly at it is probably a good method.

    • Adkml [he/him]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      23 hours ago

      Also they made up a word to delegitimize when you point out they’re being huge fucking hypocrites.

      “We have repeatedly openly tried to influence the elections of other countries, including Russia, and openly bragged about it.”

      “Ah yes the classic Russian tactics of whataboutism.”

      Giving a new name to “being a fucking hypocrite” doesn’t make it ok to be a hypocrite.

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        41
        ·
        1 day ago

        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.

    • drake@lemmy.sdf.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      46
      ·
      1 day ago

      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.

  • It’s so powerful it broke out of the libs in America to infect everywhere else. The brewing Canadian election now has the Liberals accusing the Conservatives of being paid by Russian disinformation. The Cons are sketchy as fuck and not helping their own case either but now we also have the same “Everything I don’t like is Russia” shit

    • sexywheat [none/use name]@hexbear.netOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      23 hours ago

      Yeah, the Ukraine war propaganda is palpable here. A while back I (clueless) thought I might check out the CBC to see what sort of shit my parents are watching, sure enough the very first story on The National was ”rah rah go Ukraine defeat those evil Russians!!!1” 🙄

  • heggs_bayer [none/use name]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    29
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 day ago

    Why the fuck does Russia care what I think?

    The evil Ruzzins are trying to undermine the integrity of our wholesome keanu chungus democracy. They want the cheeto in the White House because Putler is the cheeto’s puppet master! /s

  • TheDoctor [they/them]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    34
    ·
    edit-2
    1 day ago

    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 that

  • newacctidk [none/use name]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    25
    ·
    1 day ago

    I was just reading an opinion piece on Telesur about russophobia and how the west uses Russia as the ultimate thought-terminating-cliche

    In an interesting article called “Russophobia: the other war” the analyst Elson Concepción Pérez points out that “The United States, NATO and the fascists in Ukraine have made Russophobia a kind of booklet in which each of the elements appear, duly ordered, to create a scenario of hatred towards Moscow, its authorities, its people and even its own history. The objective that is pursued is to reverse, and at the same time justify, the true root of the current war situation, placing NATO troops and its war resources very close to Russian territory, wanting to make people believe that it is the Russian government that is acting against the neighboring nation. The same purpose is had by those who supply multimillion-dollar figures of all kinds of weapons to Kiev, to act against the Russian military, or by those who impose economic, commercial and other sanctions on the country, in order to weaken it and make it surrender" end quote

    A desire to be relevant to NATO and to everything that smells of Washington, which will cost them dearly in terms of sovereignty. The cultural triumph of the United States and its closest allies who are leading the European flock to the abyss is total. In this panorama it is also evident that the world of the left has lost its way, is missing the direction of development and even the valuable action of criticism, where support for the Kiev regime is the majority, without making a minimum analysis of how the current state of things came about.

    And, if we take the process of extermination against the Palestinian people, this left has been incapable of showing a moral and correct path that would end, for example, with the financial and military support for the national-Zionist regime. The European Union is simply a sounding board for what Washington says and orders regarding Ukraine and Israel. It is shameful to note, for example, that Germany is today the second country that provides the most weapons to the Israeli entity to carry out the genocide of the Palestinian people. A Germany co-opted by Zionism and by Russophobic positions that are deplorable.

    https://www.telesurtv.net/blogs/europa-el-nuevo-patio-trasero-de-washington/

    Liberals are completely delusional, they exist so deeply entrenched in their fantasy of history and material reality that any opposition must literally come from nefarious lies. No counter narratives, no other circumstances even leading someone to an opinion they consider wrong, nope just plain disinfo by the evil slavs

  • barrbaric [he/him]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    22 hours ago

    IMO if you’re talking to the typical liberal you have to pick and choose your arguments to avoid the ones where no dissension will be allowed. Replacing US intervention in Ukraine with US involvement in Iraq is much more likely to get them on-side.

  • Venat [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    33
    ·
    edit-2
    1 day ago

    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.

  • Aradina [She/They]@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    49
    ·
    1 day ago

    “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)

  • iByteABit [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    32
    ·
    1 day ago

    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.