We can if people stop this “everything i don’t like is a Russian botnet” bs, i mean come the fuck on, do you seriously believe Russia is the only actor out there doing online propaganda? What do you think the CIA is for? Or the psyops branch of the USAF that was posting so hard an Airforce Base got an award for being the town most active on reddit? Or all these reactionary foundations like the Alliance Defending Freedom or the Heritage Foundation? The state-sponsored ones like the National Endowment for Democracy? The PR departments of oil companies spreading climate change denial? And that’s just a small part of who’s engineering public opinion in the US, wait till you see the shit the multitudes of European governments, parties, corporations and churches get up to, or the Gulf states with their vested interest in keeping fossil capitalism going. Yes, the Russian government obviously does that as well, as do private actors in Russia like Vladimir Yakunin and Konstantin Malofeyev who both sponsor queerphobic and mysogynist groups all over the EU, but if you think that Russian disinfo campaigns are the only game in town, or even make up a plurality of disinfo funding, or that propaganda extends only to things you personally disapprove of, you need to wake the fuck up and realize that your view of the world is a dumbass James Bond movie from the 1980s.
We can if people stop this “everything i don’t like is a Russian botnet” bs, i mean come the fuck on, do you seriously believe Russia is the only actor out there doing online propaganda? What do you think the CIA is for? Or the psyops branch of the USAF that was posting so hard an Airforce Base got an award for being the town most active on reddit? Or all these reactionary foundations like the Alliance Defending Freedom or the Heritage Foundation? The state-sponsored ones like the National Endowment for Democracy? The PR departments of oil companies spreading climate change denial? And that’s just a small part of who’s engineering public opinion in the US, wait till you see the shit the multitudes of European governments, parties, corporations and churches get up to, or the Gulf states with their vested interest in keeping fossil capitalism going. Yes, the Russian government obviously does that as well, as do private actors in Russia like Vladimir Yakunin and Konstantin Malofeyev who both sponsor queerphobic and mysogynist groups all over the EU, but if you think that Russian disinfo campaigns are the only game in town, or even make up a plurality of disinfo funding, or that propaganda extends only to things you personally disapprove of, you need to wake the fuck up and realize that your view of the world is a dumbass James Bond movie from the 1980s.