
Hashtag Propaganda. Secret UK govt tactics for post-terror planning - thinkingemote
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/mind-control-secret-british-government-blueprints-shaping-post-terror-planning
======
AndrewOMartin
The third sentence of the article makes the claim of the title without the
scary headline.

"In operations that contingency planners term “controlled spontaneity”,
politicians’ statements, vigils and inter-faith events are also negotiated and
planned in readiness for any terrorist attack."

So that's the story, the govt. has prepared some statements, vigils and inter
faith events in the case of a terrorist attack.

Read this way, and compared against the alternative of not making such plans,
it's not such shock.

~~~
atemerev
No, it is not that. The government hasn't prepared some statements in their
own name. They prepared coordinated plans for astroturfing, simulating
organic, grassroots response, with fake actors and accounts. The whole "War of
the worlds" scenario, government-operated.

~~~
0815test
"Crisis actors" \- for real, this time around!

~~~
java-man
_this_ time?

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atemerev
I feel that the UK and Commonwealth states are the worst offenders in digital
privacy violations and "inauthentic behavior" programs. "Porn law", known
information operations campaigns, and now this... It's one thing when Russia
or China do this, and another when a supposedly free and democratic state
does.

Now all dictatorships in the world, when confronted about their own propaganda
and manipulation campaigns, will shrug it with "UK does that, so what?"

(Update: the article is a little low on sources and confirmations, so I would
fact check the information there before leaping to any conclusions).

~~~
toby-
>when a supposedly free and democratic state does

Create social media campaigns to promote social cohesion? I'm, er, actually
okay with this?

The article says "politicians’ statements, vigils and inter-faith events are
also negotiated and planned in readiness for any terrorist attack". Nothing
about that strikes me as particularly harmful; a government promoting social
cohesion during times of turmoil is standard fare. What's upsetting about
that?

~~~
atemerev
With fake accounts, bot networks and hashtag stuffing?

Welcome to Russia.

~~~
toby-
Where in this article does it allege "fake accounts" or "bot networks" are
employed?

This article is from a dubious source, and is rather light on sources. Nowhere
is it alleged the UK government is abusively creative accounts on social
media.

~~~
atemerev
"pre-planning social media campaigns that are designed to appear to be a
spontaneous public response"

Can this be interpreted in any other way?

~~~
toby-
Yes...? I'm amazed if you drew from that single sentence that the UK is
creating fake accounts on social media and using bot networks. There's
'filling in the gaps', but that leap you've managed to make is egregious.

The third sentence further explains the false spontaneity: "In operations that
contingency planners term 'controlled spontaneity', politicians’ statements,
vigils and inter-faith events are also negotiated and planned in readiness for
any terrorist attack."

Basically: the UK government coordinates social media campaigns to promote
social cohesion in the wake of terror attacks, and additionally coordinates
with community leaders and politicians. That's all you can draw from the
article, unless you have additional information or sources to the contrary.

~~~
atemerev
These are not "spontaneous public response". Hiring people to distribute
flowers to look like spontaneous bystanders is. Marching with fake posters
with fake hashtags to look like spontaneous gatherings is, these are already
fake personas. If you add "on social media", you can infer all the rest.

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accnumnplus1
I find the UK gov unbelievably sneaky. The NSA, China and Russia get most of
the publicity, meanwhile the UK spies are very hard at work out of sight
behind a facade of PR.

~~~
toby-
A very good point generally, but not particularly relevant here. All this
article is alleging is that the UK government coordinates social media
campaigns with politicians and community leaders to promote social cohesion in
the wake of terrorist atrocities. They're, somehow, attempting to portray this
in a negative light.

I can't help but note the complete lack of sources in the article, and we have
to question[1] the source itself.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_East_Eye#Links_to_Hamas...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_East_Eye#Links_to_Hamas,_Muslim_Brotherhood_and_Qatar)

~~~
dankusmcmeme
The whole attitude is what allowed grooming and rape gangs to go on interfered
with for so long though.

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detritus
This is all very interesting, and I can quite believe it... but it's an
article seemingly without much - if any? - exposition of sources or evidence?

\- ed

in fact, I've never come across this ‘Middle East Eye’ and when I go to find
out more about them, it's surprisingly sparse on information?
[https://www.middleeasteye.net/about-middle-east-
eye](https://www.middleeasteye.net/about-middle-east-eye)

As I was once taught, many many years ago - of any article, always ask: “Why
are these bastards lying to us?”

~~~
thinkingemote
I also looked on Wikipedia before submitting this and it didn't scream fake
news site. There was also a fair few articles submitted here from that site
before.

As for the sources, reading between the lines and based on some experience it
feels like it is based on presentations by the marketing companies at an
emergency planning conference. So not exactly secret but not for public eyes.

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A2017U1
Were this to occur in an authoritarian state people would harp on about a
brainwashed population.

Get the suspicion no one feels as strongly when it happens in the UK despite
being the exact same ballgame.

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tiniuclx
This is a dangerous article. It seems to be engineered to produce a knee-jerk
anti-government reaction, as can be seen in this comment section. The article
does not seem to provide any sources for any of its claims. Furthermore, I
have never heard of middleeasteye.net before and it would be safe to be
skeptical of any claims posted by them.

Even if the allegations are true, is it such a bad thing after all? Terrorist
attacks leave people vulnerable and afraid. Those feelings can easily turn
into violence against those who are perceived to be the "cause" of the attack.
Taking preemptive, albeit underhanded action to ensure mass violence does not
occur seems like a good thing to me.

~~~
otakucode
I could see two sides to it. On the one hand, if you're in a position of
trying to reduce harm in the society, it makes sense. On the other hand... it
is a direct betrayal of the most foundational principles of democracy itself.
It is a reversion to pre-democratic principles where the general public are
seen as a teeming mass of resources to be manipulated by their betters for
goals chosen by those betters, and where influence and participation of the
public is to be prevented. Where do you stop once you have decided that the
general public generally has bad ideas and shouldn't play a role in their own
governance? We did persist, as a species, for thousands of years with
governments based upon the notion that those in the government were inherently
superior, chosen by a god, from special bloodlines, etc, and I don't see any
reason we couldn't get back there. But for the past couple hundred years,
we've been trying out this democratic bent where we don't believe there are
any specially anointed people destined by mystic forces to be leaders. And
actively manipulating the public opens doors to lots of dangerous practices
that were previously barred solely upon the principle that it would prevent
public participation. Why not suspend elections if it looks like your party
will lose power if you earnestly and honestly believe that the other parties
won't continue the efforts you started to 'protect the public from
themselves'? You can no longer form an argument against it.

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anthuman
It's not just the UK. The US, China, Russia, EU, New Zealand, Australia, Saudi
Arabia, Israel, etc.

The first thing you see after a terrorism incident is a controlled
government+media propaganda campaign. They all use the same mindless talking
points.

The second thing the government+media does is advocate for stealing your
rights and more surveillance.

Someone does something bad, everyone else gets punished. It's true of "free"
societies or authoritarian societies. Same tactics. Same terminologies. It's
for our benefit and it's to keep us safe. Big brother loves us after all and
knows best.

~~~
umvi
> Someone does something bad, everyone else gets punished ... It's true of
> "free" societies or authoritarian societies. Same tactics. Same
> terminologies.

I'm not so sure the reasons are the same in each case. A totalitarian regime
obviously would love the opportunity to limit rights because it gives them
more control over the populace.

But free societies often do so (in my opinion) because of the politician's
fallacy[1]. There's a public outcry to "do something" so the politicians
scramble to "do something". Like scramble to ban bump stocks after the Vegas
domestic terrorist event even though a bump stock ban would have a near
negligible effect on future domestic terrorist attacks.

Then again, it's hard to tell if the public outcry is because of the media
intentionally stirring the pot, and if so, it's hard to tell if the media is
intentionally stirring the pot because of some hidden political agenda or if
they are just optimizing for clicks/eyeballs.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politician%27s_syllogism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politician%27s_syllogism)

------
bloak
This reminds me of the time I accidentally participated in a genuinely
spontaneous reaction to a bomb attack against civilians by insurgents (or
whatever the neutral term should be: somebody's "freedom fighters", I expect).

About an hour after the attack, a huge crowd of people had sat down blocking
the streets in the European city, chanting slogans. I was near a group of
teenagers, mostly, fairly photogenic, I suppose, so a television crew turned
up to film them. When one of the journalists started trying to direct the
young people, telling them where they should sit and what they should chant,
there was an interesting reaction: they got very angry with the television
crew and refused to cooperate, basically shouting at the television crew until
it went way.

Unfortunately I only had a basic knowledge of the local language and could
only get a rough idea of what was being said.

In view of all that, perhaps I should approve of the UK government's plans:
they are directing how naive people react to the violence while at the same
time giving less naive people an opportunity to learn about manipulation.
Everyone benefits!

~~~
thinkingemote
Europeans generally have less trust in the media when encountering them in the
street than Brits or Americans.

They are often seen directly as tools of the state or partisan at best or
where footage will be used against them. During riots in European cities the
TV crews often get attacked and have to stay behind police lines.

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sverige
No one wants an ongoing debate about any difficult issues that the government
has already determined the answers to. That would be messy and perhaps force
them to change their plans.

The exposure of this also makes more plausible the claims that many
"spontaneous" street demonstrations that turn violent are carefully planned
using similar elements, though perhaps not by the government.

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megous
Yeah, flagged, since we can only discuss the social media manipultion if the
bad guys do it.

~~~
cannedslime
This isn't social media manipulation, its downright social engineering
directly from the state. If it were a branch of the military or intelligence -
performing something like this in a foreign country, it would have been
labelled as a PSYOP.

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beojan
Is this article seriously arguing that governments trying to prevent a
terrorist attack from sparking rioting and tit-for-tat revenge attacks is a
_bad_ thing?

~~~
cannedslime
Its a bad thing when it is this dishonest. They aren't actively fighting
terrorists, or deradicalizing anyone. They are just obscuring truth and
seeding public opinion under false premises.

Do you honestly think that staging "muslims handing out roses" and paying
imams to say one thing in public, while they continue to say something else
entirely in the mosques, will help anyone?

With all the recent years of attacks in Europe, I would say that a little bit
of outrage over terrorism would be more healthier than the current response
with facebook filters and staged "organic" protests.

~~~
beojan
Take a look at countries in Africa and Asia. Anger turns into rioting, revenge
attacks and all out civil war. Preventing this by encouraging harmony is a
good thing.

~~~
cannedslime
Except it doesn't encourage harmony. I would say it has the opposite effect
for people intelligent enough to see through the bullshittery. In the long run
it just harms the relationship between state and citizens. The special
treatment that radical islamism gets in Europe is no less than bizarre. You
get media appraisal in the UK for throwing milkshakes at center-right
politicians and ousted by the same media for saying that Europe has an
islamism problem.

~~~
beojan
I think we have very different definitions of the term "center-right".

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JulianMorrison
Steering the public to be upset, rather than rioting and beating people up,
seems sensible.

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boomboomsubban
They want to continue mass publicizing the attacks, allowing them to continue
their often hostile foreign policy, while minimizing the anger locals feel
that could cause domestic issues. Not much of s surprise.

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ptah
David Cameron's Tory government is the undoing of freedom

~~~
Crosseye_Jack
Sadly these freedoms were under attack even during Labour’s time in power.
They also want more restrictions and windfall taxes on tech firms then we do
already. GCHQs Mastering the internet program started under Labour.

I’m not saying that the Tories are angels in all this, far fucking from it
(Their current porn law is more fucking stupid than the last). But Labour laid
the ground work and the Tories fucking ran with it. Labour's stance on Article
11 and 13(renamed 17) was to pass them. In my area only one MEP from the
"mainstream" parties voted against Article 11, 13/17 and he is conservative,
the others who voted against in my area were independent and UKIP. Not a
single Labour MEP in my area voted against them.

IMO They are both as bad as each other.

~~~
ptah
Tory cuts have massively increased poverty and is currently causing a spike in
prostitution due to delayed benefits payments. knife crime is at all-time high
due to theresa may's cuts to police force

