Somewhat famously, in an interview with BBC's Andrew Marr, Noam Chomsky[0] used COINTELPRO as an example of press subordination to power, by comparing their self-adulation over uncovering Watergate (an attack on 50% of corporate/state power, the Democrats) to their lack of reporting and even awareness of COINTELPRO (an attack on a wide variety of largely powerless social movements and civil liberties groups).
Knowledge of COINTELPRO was only achieved thanks to the burglary of an FBI office, with documents mailed to major newspapers, and only the Washington Post willing to run the story. The burglars[1] revealed themselves[2] only recently.
The fight against totalitarian communism is full of great examples of the principle that if you fight against an enemy there's a tendency to become that enemy. COINTELPRO is only one example. Another is the fact that we placed much of the US economy under at least indirect state control via the Cold War national security state in order to battle the evil of state controlled economies.
I saw the same thing after 9/11 when there seemed to be a strong push for some kind of theocracy in the USA, albeit of a far lighter variety than was found in Afghanistan, and a general revival of ultra-right reactionary ideologies that somewhat resemble those of the 9/11 hijackers. We also surrendered a great deal of freedom (especially privacy) to battle those terrorists who supposedly hate our freedom.
Edit: I can keep going... during WWII we put Japanese Americans in camps.
I've been joking for a while I'd like to see a sitcom where the main characters are an Islamic and domestic terrorist living together in New York while they execute their plots. A terrorist "odd couple" if you will.
I think the characters could bond over a lot of shared ideals, despite their superficial differences.
(And of course they'd have to be incompetent or it wouldn't be a funny.)
Brass Eye is his most outlandish creation but before that he did Jam which is (to quote the comments of the following YouTube video) "absurdly poignant" https://youtu.be/LhKla4MEstY
I wonder if you might enjoy the first couple seasons of homeland? there are a lot of problems with the show, but in some ways it's a surprisingly charitable portrayal of islamic terrorists.
I was thinking more like "damn it, we failed to blow up the government again", and "you got your bacon in my tagine" and "you woke me up with your call to prayer", "you might worship a different god than me, but at least we both hate women's rights". The domestic terrorist could be a coal-rolling hick. That kind of shtick.
I'm scared to even type that. You'd need writers legitimately from each culture to keep it funny, balanced, and self-deprecating.
It's not a full show, but Key & Peele have a hilarious skit where they are terrorists in a cave, plotting to overthrow America, only to be thwarted by TSA's rules.
"I can keep going... during WWII we put Japanese Americans in camps."
Good reminder, but don't stop there, it wasn't only those of Japanese decent, to a much lesser extent it encompassed other ethnic groups, this should never be forgotten.
It's problematic that the FBI targets groups for poor reasons, but it doesn't result in much change to the country, it just unfairly harasses members of those powerless groups.
It is somewhat tautological that Watergate is more consequential. 50% of private power has more power than relatively powerless groups, and powerful people run the country and the economy, so their concerns have more consequence. Even in this framing of "consequential", one can argue about the narrow range of consequences on offer by Democrats and Republicans, and the broad potential consequences of social movements, but I tend to agree with you.
However, Chomsky's argument is that this "perfect experiment" of history, Watergate vs. COINTELPRO, reveals that "on the question of principles", Watergate shows that the press "think[s] that powerful people ought to be able to defend themselves", whereas "one tiny part of the COINTELPRO program was itself far more significant in terms of principle than all of Watergate, and if you look at the whole program, it's not even a discussion".
This is to help dispel the notion that the press are adversarial, truth-seekers, thumbing their nose at authority. And the purpose of this argument isn't just to deflate the pompous self-esteem of the press, but also helps explain the press' _lack_ of adversarial, truth-seeking reporting on other matters of _extreme_ consequence, such as the Vietnam War and the first Gulf War, NAFTA, etc.
> It is somewhat tautological that Watergate is more consequential.
The tautology being that important people are important.[1]
Applying wishful thinking for the moment, what would America look like today if popular movements in the 60’s had never been infiltrated? What would the civic culture of America look like if regular people were “allowed” to participate in the public sphere without such underhanded tactics from the the government’s side?
But I guess all of that is inconsequential, wishful thinking or not.
[1] Infer disclaimers.
> This is to help dispel the notion that the press are adversarial, truth-seekers, thumbing their nose at authority. And the purpose of this argument isn't just to deflate the pompous self-esteem of the press, but also helps explain the press' _lack_ of adversarial, truth-seeking reporting on other matters of _extreme_ consequence, such as the Vietnam War and the first Gulf War, NAFTA, etc.
You predictably, given the demographics on this board, think that _the point_ is to stick it to The Man, The Press, or some Important Person, in order to embarass or dress them down.[1] And yet that is just a bonus, and was never the point at all. How many small-venue lectures has this man held, how many letters and emails to people-of-no-consequence has he sent, etc.? All in order to support and connect people working in grassroots movements (he explains this in the same interview). Not in order to, once in a blue moon, land a somewhat mainstream interview in order to tell The Press off to their faces or to combat other Important People of Consequence.
[1] Andrew Marr was so “dressed down” that he some years later cheered when GB and the US invaded Iraq—that interview had no impact on his view of the press or his role within it, as the Propaganda Model would have predicted.
I agree with all your points and my post was meant to convey the same logic. I think you misunderstand me. In particular, I mention deflating press self-esteem specifically to say that is _not_ the point. Chomsky is not interested in “epic smackdowns” like the Ben Shapiros or even Hitchenses of the world.
> It is somewhat tautological that Watergate is more consequential. 50% of private power has more power than relatively powerless groups, and powerful people run the country and the economy, so their concerns have more consequence.
But whom amongst those powerful groups would have had any kind of serious stake in whether Nixon or Ford was president? As opposed to whether the Black Panthers continued with their free breakfast and housing programs?
Oh, I guess I take it as a given that most media is not engaged in adversarial truth seeking, so it doesn't land as a point.
I guess on the other side of it I'm not convinced that the FBI would be effective at disrupting groups. There's lots of other things at play when you are talking about small groups of people with views outside the mainstream (a major one is that the mainstream will concede ideological ground, which can massively deflate a group, but that's the group succeeding…).
> [...] but it doesn't result in much change to the country [...]
I would argue that it deliberately results in no change, which is subtly but meaningfully different. Kinda like how not choosing is still a choice, suppressing change is enforcing a preference for the status quo.
A number of powerful and mainstream people got caught up in cointelpro including members of congress, the naacp, and the sclc, including most famously mlk
Not in any meaningful sense. It's not like the tapes of Nixon sitting in the Oval Office ordering some crimes were faked, and that wasn't at all related to activities carried out against activists, it was Nixon seeking political advantage.
Bigger than COINTELPRO, an FBI program, it was largely a coverup of CIA involvement and connections that spread out like tendrils across the globe and touched other matters such as the coup of 63, the rise of Bush and CIA, etc.
"I just said that the thing was leading into directions that were going to create potential problems because they were exploring leads that led back into areas that would be harmful to the CIA and harmful to the government (unintelligible) didn’t have anything to do unintelligible)."..."Gray called Helms and said I think we’ve run right into the middle of a CIA covert operation."..."the problem is it tracks back to the Bay of Pigs and"..."the Bureau is going on this because they don’t know what they are uncovering" - H. R. Haldeman, Nixons Chief of Staff
[1]
"Another leading Watergate burglar was James McCord, a former top official of the CIA Office of Security, the agency bureau which is supposed to maintain contacts with U.S. police agencies in order to facilitate its basic task of providing security for CIA installations and personnel. The Office of Security was thus heavily implicated in the CIA's illegal domestic operations, including cointelpro operations against political dissidents and groups, and was the vehicle for such mind-control experiments as Operations Bluebird, Artichoke, and MK-Ultra. The Office of Security also utilized male and female prostitutes and other sex operatives for purposes of compromising and blackmailing public figures, information gathering, and control. According to Hougan, the Office of Security maintained a "fag file" of some 300,000 U.S. citizens, with heavy stress on homosexuals. The Office of Security also had responsibility for Soviet and other defectors. James McCord was at one time responsible for the physical security of all CIA premises in the U.S. McCord was also a close friend of CIA Counterintelligence Director James Jesus Angleton. McCord was anxious to cover the CIA's role; at one point he wrote to his superior, General Gaynor, urging him to "flood the newspapers with leaks or anonymous letters" to discredit those who wanted to establish the responsibility of "the company."" - George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography by Webster Tarpley
Another angle worth considering, especially given his actions the last 4 years, is how Woodward was former naval intelligence and an FBI asset. [2]
There's a phenomenon I have noticed where things like these are okay to discuss if they involve someone else's government or if they are far enough back in the past.
But there is some cut-off point closer to present day where sinister-sounding allegations about one's own government automatically become "insane conspiracy theories".
It's just good to know that anything bad they were doing is over now. It must be. Because the US government, and all of its agencies and military actions, despite a few bad apples in the past, is trustworthy and true to the pure mission of democracy and freedom for all. And there are never any "means to an end" "ethical compromises" anymore. Other countries, sure. But ours? No, of course we rooted all of that out. Only the pure of heart survive here. The pure light of Democracy doesn't permit evil or corruption or subversion to survive.
And anyone who suggests otherwise and makes a serious allegation against the government or admits a fundamental lack of trust for it, is definitely mentally ill and should be publicly noted as such.
Just the other day I brought up that many countries use things like memes to modify public perception. Topic was about China but I brought up that everyone else does it too (US, Russia, Israel, Germany, etc) and people thought it was insane and a conspiracy theory(specifically that anyone would want to influence Reddit because it is "a small website"). It honestly feels like we're gaslighting ourselves because this topic has been so openly discussed over the last 50 years that it is hard to say that this isn't happening. Though maybe because I suggested agencies use memes now instead of more well known sock puppets.
Even on HN news I've been downvoted for this. I guess people don't think memes are being weaponized, even when they are explicitly referred to as such by those in the military[0] and other agencies. Actually one thing I've liked about The Boys (on Prime) is how it shows the viral marketing of Stormfront and how it is manipulating people (and how people didn't even notice the not even remotely subtle naming of the character). I guess that just shows how effective of a tool all this is.
The problem isn't that it doesn't happen, it's that there's no reliable way to tell when it's happening vs. isn't, and internet users are, let's call it, rather undisciplined about jumping to conclusions. On any divisive topic, people eagerly proclaim without a shred of evidence that some comment they don't like has been planted. Soon there are astroturfers and spies and foreign agents under every bed. However much real manipulation may be happening, it's plain that many people are simply indulging their assumptions and fantasies about it, which quickly inflates to grandiose levels. This has an extremely degrading effect on discussion, surely at least as degrading as any sophisticated campaigns.
That's why the HN guidelines ask people not to post such insinuations [1]—it's not because such things don't exist. It's because once a topic gets polarized enough, it always feels like the other side isn't arguing in good faith. In the absence of some specific evidence or data or something at least a teeny bit objective to go on, the default presumption has to be that the other user is commenting in good faith and just has a totally different view than you do (I don't mean you personally, of course).
I find it helpful to imagine that we're already at the endgame of this, which is that everything is potentially manipulated and artificial. I call this the SSM: imagine a Sufficiently Smart Manipulator [2], smart enough to plant whatever they want, make it sound authentic, and leave no detectable traces in the data. What can we do in such a situation? Only what we should be doing anyway, which is thinking and writing clearly and respectfully replying to bad arguments with better ones. Since that's the only answer in the long run, we might as well practice it now. It has the desirable side effect of strengthening the community, and a healthy community is the best immune system against manipulation.
I think this is the root of it but also why it is so effective. You can never tell when it is happening and when it works correctly it causes people to independently mimic and generate new content for you. Even better when you push the very topics to the extreme. Either this is being done at such a large scale with such precision that the lizard people effectively are mind controlling the population vs it doesn't happen at all (for what it is worth I'm on the very mundane end of the spectrum). The former I would call gaslighting but I don't have a great term for the latter, maybe someone else does?
Side note: interesting to see you outside your moderator role and thanks for the service to the community and your thoughtful addition to the discussion.
Edit: (You got a ninja edit on me!) I think the point you make about the sufficiently smart enough effect. And I do like that the community here is (imo) much better at self enforcement with good faith arguments. But would not a simple tactic be to encourage the use of bad faith arguments? That seems fairly simple to execute and an easy way to generate a Divide and Rule[0] tactic. But I think when it comes down to it the impossibility to even know is what makes all this both very interesting and frustratingly difficult (as well as effective).
Would like to echo your compliments to dang. The only bit of pushback I would make to his point is that if the SSM really does exist, perhaps the correct course of action is to reduce our participation as much as possible and move our engagement to less easily manipulated forms of communication, particularly face-to-face meetings. Perhaps, even if we do our best to post in good faith and make well reasoned, careful arguments, in the end we only lend a superficial credibility to a system which still has a negative effect in the aggregate (because it has been engineered to do so). And yes, I'm aware of the inherent hypocrisy in posting this on a (well!) moderated forum with a system of largely opaque voting and flagging. :-)
(Sorry about editing the rug from under you - I write these comments by adding to them bit by bit, but it somehow only 'works' if I do it live.)
You're raising an important point which I think about a lot. It's very clear to me that most users who get into intense arguments about divisive topics are sincere. The anger and hurt feelings that energize these arguments and get re-energized by them are too unmistakeable to just be cynically planted. But it may be that these are second-order effects of propaganda systems. If you convince enough people and get them feeling angry and hurt enough, they'll do your job for you, and much better, by being intensely sincere. You can't say that these commenters are manipulators, because they're not. "You're a shill!!" will meet with justified indignation, and "you've been brainwashed!!" is no good either. The whole distinction between "manipulated" vs. "authentic" doesn't address what really goes on in these discussions. You can't use it to make anything better. That's not to say that we should do nothing when we find some real indication of actual manipulation—the opposite is the case. But it doesn't make that much difference when the 'organic' dynamics point in the same direction. Certainly it doesn't solve the problem.
Another extremely powerful factor that does the propagandist's work for them in an entirely innocent way is tribalism. Is it manipulation if I feed your beliefs about your identity and (especially) the opposing identity in a way that inflames you with indignation against the enemy? That "food" is so eagerly gobbled by the consumer that at some point you have to ask who's influencing who. The tribal psyche, which we not only all have but are almost totally dominated by, is enough to generate the situation all on its own. Media stories will feed it because that's what people want. No one can get enough of hearing how good their group is and how bad the opposing one is. This force is so powerful that it's not even possible to discuss it, except in the abstract.
In my experience, if you take that seriously then you come to feel that such external manipulators as are lurking out there are only effective because they activate the real manipulators, which are inside ourselves. "We have met the enemy and it is us," etc. This perspective is much better because it is empowering: we can do something about it, we can work on it, we can change. The other perspective (external agents are manipulating!) just leads to a wilderness of mirrors, even if external agents doubtless are manipulating. There's nothing we can do about that, except in the important (but relatively rare) case where evidence appears; in the absence of evidence, all we're doing is projecting our shadows onto each other.
The reason I think the sufficiently-smart-manipulator argument is a good one is that besides being the only response that can actually work, it points us directly at what we need to be doing anyway, which is addressing these more powerful factors in ourselves.
These are some really good points. It is reminding me a lot of one of my favorite John Cleese videos[0].
One of the things that I think makes this so difficult is that language has a lot of limits that people don't realize. Since we often don't run into issues with communication (or rather don't notice since the errors are small) it is difficult to realize when we're in boundary cases. For example there's priming[1]. Many may learn that this is a useful way to influence people and many are aware of the psychological experiments, but it is also a fundamental part of how we communicate. We try to communicate the most information with the least amount of words. But this same factor is why good faith arguments are so important but also difficult to maintain. We could not easily converse if we didn't make certain assumptions about another person's views. This is normally fine but we run into problems in heated topics where we often act like someone can only hold an extreme opinion (and of course, mine is not extreme and just common sense). It's the "oh, I've heard this argument before" and while one person may have subtext another may not (why it is difficult to identify dog whistling). Removing nuance from a topic makes it easy, and we like easy things. But that's not beneficial to resolving issues and like you say "leads to a wilderness of mirrors".
But it is impossible to tell if priming like this is actively being pushed or naturally happening, since we do have a natural predisposition to form tribes and groups. We're nuanced and thoughtful with our arguments while they are overly simplifying and idiotic. They just want a win while we want to actually fix things. And since this kind of talk is natural it is also almost impossible to figure out if I'm doing the thing I'm actively complaining about or not.
I like Monty Python so I watched your Cleese video. It's funny, but of course he lets "moderates" off the hook as if they aren't just as subject to this dynamic as everyone else, when the truth is that they not only are, they have the ace of trump cards—social proof—to mask it with.
To me the interesting thing about that video is that it shows how much self-reflection (or personal work, whatever you want to call it) Cleese had been doing by then. His classic character was the rigid, angry type who was comically un-self-aware, which had roots both in his own character and also in his effort to be conscious of it—it takes consciousness to make oneself hilarious in that way. In this video, the way he describes how to feel good about yourself by projecting badness onto others shows how much deeper he had gone with that.
At the same time, with the blatant loophole for "moderates" in that bit, one can sort of see his limit.
I think the conversation about moderates has changed a lot in this election. I think this also is relevant to our "no nuance" conversation. Defining a moderate now is relatively difficult and I think more people think they are moderates than actually are. Are we talking about moderates from a fairly objective viewpoint? American standpoint? That of the state? Are we talking about the moderates that the DNC describes and are the Joe voters? Are we talking about the moderates that the RNC describes? The moderates of today or the moderates when that skit was written? While I agree with you of the loophole of moderates since many self-label as moderate (even if they aren't by any reasonable metric) as a means of "feeling good" and having moral superiority. That kind is the same pitfall as the extremists, but I think just lumping all moderates into that bin (and subsequently having a total of 3 extremist bins) isn't helpful and makes it difficult to heal the divide that we have.
That said I'll admit I have a bias that I'm against parties since I feel they make things too simple for a well functioning democracy but you've also probably seem my passionate comments about voting.
Re: Doing it live = talking to someone = a bit different thought path.
The closest I have come to describing this is the difference between writing to a specific someone vs. writing generally. It feels real time, in the moment, theatre of the mind style. Like the other person is "there" going to respond or review. Using a different app breaks flow and it is more or less devolved into writing a letter.
The comment field is a place shared by other participants. And the closest way I can articulate it is being similar to how we may express ourselves differently when at home, vs work, or a bar.
Because of how this works, I always give benefit of the doubt on edits and intent. Sometimes reading it a couple times and or that ninja edit makes all the difference in the world.
And it is also why I love basic, threaded discussion. Healthy participants are capable of powerful insights no single member may realize individually.
That aside:
The real reason I am responding is I find this exchange thought provoking.
What can someone interested in thinking with this perspective read, listen or watch to gain a greater grasp of it?
> But it may be that these are second-order effects of propaganda systems. If you convince enough people and get them feeling angry and hurt enough, they'll end up doing your job for you, and much better, simply by being intensely sincere. You can't say that these commenters are manipulators, because they're not. "You're a shill!!" is simply going to meet with justified indignation, and "you've been brainwashed!!" is no good either.
This is a really important point and something I try to very consciously and actively resist, not always successfully. The thought "these are all bots" may be a more comforting one to most people than "lots and lots of my fellow human beings have been manipulated into behaving like bots." I would bet an SSM might even have sockpuppets demo and engage in this tactic to encourage divisions.
It's just a pretty fuzzily defined theory. It's surely true that Western governments use memes and similar content to convince people of things. Quite often they do so openly, with military ads and public health messages and such.
But China dictates public perception - in addition to sending messages, the government has full editorial control over all major social media platforms, and regularly intervenes to shut off discussion on any topic they'd prefer people not to hear about. It seems very unlikely Western governments are doing anything like that.
Blatant censorship tends to call attention to things and reveal to people that their perceptions are being manipulated. It's much subtler and more effective to exercise editorial control over nominally "independent" media by firing reporters pushing stories about inconvenient truths, which Allen Dulles used to do by simply calling up the heads of major newspapers.
But inconvenient truths come out all the time, don't they? If the CIA had the power to keep stories they don't like out of the national conversation, they surely would have used on the Snowden leaks or Abu Ghraib.
I think the Snowden case is actually a good point. When we look at how officials responded they shifted the conversation to metadata to downplay the amount of information and what that information could be used for. It does seem like their responses were fairly effective since people don't consider metadata particularly useful. But also a large amount of people don't even know who Snowden is and opinions on him are quite divided (and there are radicals with ridiculous opinions on both sides that often take the spotlight).
I don't think people seriously talking about this think the government has an all seeing power or a hand in everything (I personally don't think even China does). So it would not be expected that the CIA/NSA or any agency could prevent a story like that from eventually breaking. But the question is how effective are they at being able to downplay it and sway public opinion? Personally I see it as subtle and frequent nudging more than active control.
Compare the way media covered the Snowden leaks vs the Vault 7 ones. The Vault 7 leaks basically show that as soon as you're a person of sufficient interest to the state, tools like Signal and Tor (for which Snowden is probably the highest profile proponent) are at best useless, and at worst might just paint a target on your back. But hardly anyone has ever heard of them.
Russian government has the same power in regards to VKontakte, Yandex, etc. However it does not really stop stories spreading.
What they have realised recently, is that injecting misinformation, even if it's outrageous bullshit, is far more effective.
Coming back to the West: Snowden and Assange are still pariahs, Assange is remembered by the public as a rapist escaping justice rather than for wikileaks. Id say the strategy is working.
Greenwald has continued to cover both US political parties critically. In an era of hyper-partisanship, anyone not choosing a tribe and remaining loyal to it is treated as a pariah by those who do, but it's the latter group who have lost their credibility.
I don't think they have the power to exercise total control or prevent (much of) the truth from eventually coming out, in particular now that alternative sources have become more widespread. Again it's a balancing act -- mixing some of these things into the mainstream sources which are meant to be trusted helps to lend them credibility, and there seems to have been no serious repercussions to any programs or the players involved from the Snowden or Abu Ghraib leaks.
I think this is the key word here which makes it impossible to differentiate sock-puppetry from genuine outrage (or at least genuine levels of outrage). I think this is why some turn to monsters under every bed (as dang suggested) vs gaslighting. The fact that this is both extremely transparent and very opaque makes it very difficult to even have a discussion. That is amplified by the difficulties we have in communicating and being able to determine where someone is on the spectrum of "doesn't exist" to "microphones in my vaccine"
And everybody here believe that US Gov has no influence in the recommendation algorithms of the main social networks. That they don't an army of fake profiles to direct public opinion to their economical benefit.
The funny thing is, a strategy to do this kind of thing was explicitly laid out by a U.S. Army major named Michael Aquino in 1980. He appears to have gained influence after his paper's publication and was promoted to lieutenant colonel. I imagine the sort of things he advocated had already been going on for some time so I don't think he represented some kind of inflection point, but it's not like this stuff has never been openly discussed.
> But there is some cut-off point closer to present day where sinister-sounding allegations about one's own government automatically become "insane conspiracy theories".
This is indeed a really interesting, perhaps even engineered, phenomenon. It's quite striking for example that people will clamor to have Confederate generals' or even George Washington's name removed from schools and public buildings, but don't bat an eye at having a major airport named after the Dulles brothers.
I think engineered outrage has been openly discussed for quite some time. America does it to its own people. Other nations do it to and about American citizens. And this isn't even remotely unique to America. Every major country plays the same game, just to different degrees (if anyone is aware of a major country that doesn't play this I'm honestly interested). Why would "trying to manipulate perception" be surprising for a country to do? Is that not what propaganda is at the root of it? Why wouldn't this idea also advance and get better? We've got native advertising, why not native propagandizing? (foreign and/or domestic) And why would America or China (insert enemy) be unique in using this tactic?
Agreed on all points. What's interesting to consider is the implications of the existence of a technology like social media which can provide the perfect means for short feedback cycles, experimentation, and mass dissemination. And then you dig into the military roots of the internet itself and start really rubbing your chin. There's a good account on Twitter that delves into some of this: https://twitter.com/cuttlefish_btc
Had exactly this kind of cognitive disonant moment with a friend of mine the other day. They were going off about Chinese persecution of Uighurs (which is terrible and should stop). When I pointed out that the Chinese government claims this as an antiterror campaign and compared it to America's disasterous antiterror campaign they were not having it.
P.S. Before I get dogpiled, I am not saying that one justifies the other or that they are identical.
I visited Aruba a decade ago. The Hotel TV picked up a channel fro Venezuela. It was amazing. It was like the Hugo Chavez action channel. Hugo playing baseball. Hugo interacting with a farmer, Hugo riding in the back of a truck... and so on. That day I learned all I need to know about TV. And those who control it.
Are you saying that “Waiting on the World to Change”
is sung from the perspective of a demoralized communist citizen, living in a state in which the government controls all information? That would be amazing if it were true, but I’m not convinced.
The cutoff point is simply the point where modern politics tempts people to fire off streams of sarcastic quips instead of discussing the evidence and why they believe it. I've never seen for example the ATF gunwalking scandal described as a "conspiracy theory", because the people calling out the ATF focused on concrete evidence for specific accusations of wrongdoing.
ilaksh says >"It's just good to know that anything bad they were doing is over now."<
One could make that assumption but since, if something bad once happened then it might also have happened before, after, or now in the same or other context[and almost certainly did, will, or is happening]. If we see a system fail we must become more alert in watching for failure. If we put fail-safes in place we must constantly monitor and verify they are working properly, probably forever. Always verify.
As for mental illness: by now in human history it should be clear that a man may try most anything to improve his lot, even at the expense of others. Neither mental illness nor malevolence is required. It is best to keep an open mind when examining motive.
This type of behavior has resulted in an inquiry of long-term (up to five years at a time) police undercover work in the UK[0].
There is a short podcast series on the ways in which UC police wrecked the lives of women with whom they entered into long-term sexual relationships as part of their cover. Really unconscionable behavior by the state. The series is called Bed of Lies.
It's obvious these sorts of programs are still ongoing. Probably all that really came out of the Congressional inquiries in the 1970s was the development of better methods to keep them hidden from the public.
We only know about COINTELPRO because some mysterious group of activists stole a bunch of the records from an FBI field office in Pennsylvania!
They were all retired IIRC & they waited until the statute of limitations for those crimes had passed before revealing themselves. So it would have been difficult for the government to meaningfully retaliate without making significant changes to the legal system & it's not exactly an episode that the government wanted to draw attention to.
I suppose they could have gone for extra-legal methods, but after so much time the people with the motivation to make that happen (if it was possible at all) would have mostly retired too.
Isnt that just a bunch of conspiracy theories? Hanlons razor! Its just a few bad actors not systemic to the org. At least it stopped after the Church committee, because its impossible to keep a secret conspiracy secret. Its just a bunch of coincidences that aligned by chance. Did everyone here forget their tinfoil hat? We should censor such conspiracy craziness for the greater good, because the platforms are private and have every right to do so, also people who believe in conspiracy theories are mentally ill. Talk like this is just illogical people trying to put meaning to events that happen where there is none. Its not like there is cordination among rich and powerful groups of people to conspire against the people, thats just a cliched trope.
Conspiracy theory: Many crazy conspiracy theories are published and promoted by intelligence agencies to foster public distrust in the existence of actual conspiracies.
Meanwhile many "crazy conspiracy theories" are based on a real conspiracy, so if QAnon is full of bullshit then Epstein is a non-story and anyone asking questions is a conspiracy nut.
I think this is absolutely a real phenomenon. I've even witnessed liberals starting to make jokes about the Epstein case itself because they seem to be convinced that the idea it's anything more than one lone guy is crazy simply by association with QAnon.
Jasun Horsley refers to QAnon and things like it as "conspiratainment" or "the second Matrix": essentially, since some people will unavoidably begin to perceive that the consensus reality is not what it seems to be, you set them up to enter a second one which is as much a hall of mirrors as the first.
There is a documentary about the burglars [0] who revealed COINTELPRO, called 1971 [1]. It's really an awful name for SEO! It was released in 2014 so searches for "1971 2014" might return useful results. Funnily enough, there is also a completely unrelated film called '71. Anyway, 1971 is more about the reveal of the program, so details about the program itself are secondary.
I would love to see a documentary/drama series about UK agent provocateur, Bob Lambert [2].
> To gain credibility as an activist, he formed friendships with other movement members; he also embarked in long-term relationships with women as a means of establishing a cover story. He fathered a child with one of the activists he was spying on.
> In 2013, it was reported that while undercover with London Greenpeace, Lambert had co-authored the 'McLibel leaflet', which resulted in a defamation lawsuit from McDonald's Corporation that took ten years to resolve.
After we wake up and stop playing this bizarre “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” game with Trump, the hangover from what the FBI (and the CIA) did in OUR elections is going to be massive.
Make distrusting the intelligence agencies cool again!
My first experience being “black pilled” with the Russia hoax was finally getting to the bottom of what that whole “trump tower computer backchannel to Russian Alfa bank” thing was all about[1] (this link will not give you the answer, just allegations)
As a technical person it made me curious. A direct “connection”? Was it an IRC channel? Was trump talking directly to a Russian bank over AOL instant messenger?? Lol what a joke it turned out to be.
Good luck to you as you wade through mountains of MSM excrement in search of answers. It’s easy to find the allegations and hard to find the truth. Is that by accident?
Make distrusting the intelligence agencies great again!
It was three servers doing DNS lookups on each other.
One was Alfa Bank.
One was in Trump Tower.
One was at Spectrum Health, which is owned by the DeVos family. Notable members include Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and Blackwater founder Erik Prince. Erik Prince is known to set up backchannel meetings between the Trump team and Putin associates in the Seychelles.
By this line of reasoning you would not have distrusted the FBI up until the moment these stories broke in the mid 70s, long after the point where that distrust would have been useful in the present moment.
I'm not in favor of vague statements like OP's initial comment, which is compatible with (and on it's own, indistinguishable from) wild conspiracy theories.
It appears from OP's subsequent comment that OP was referring to stories in the run-up to the 2016 election that depended on anonymous/pseudonymous sources with links to the intelligence agencies. In that case there is a wealth of reporting on those issues-- some similar to the one the OP has now posted which were before the election, but many more in the aftermath of it.
Hell, writing on the subject of blind trust in anonymous intelligence sources is apparently the raison dêtre of Glenn Greenwald these days. Pick any piece at random of his from The Intercept or substack and I'd bet you'll find reputable sources regarding trumped-up 2016 election stories that back up his general argument about how problematic that practice is. Other writers have done the same, consistently, for years now.
Given that wealth of easily searchable material (which, btw, has stood the test of time and been corroborating by other sources), being comfortable making vague statements and encouraging blanket distrust is irresponsible. Are you and OP bedfellows with the "stop the steal" idgets who AFAICT are following the "make distrusting the deep state cool again" to the tee?
I'm not. If you aren't either, then I don't see how you would distinguish your positions if not through clear-headed discussion of documented acts of corruption. I also don't see why we shouldn't go out of our way to distinguish our own distrust from the myriad active campaigns to exploit people's growing general distrust to siphon money from them. (The hundreds of millions Trump has raised is one such example.)
Also notice how OP's follow-up essentially implies that I would not be able to easily figure out the truth without doing my own personal research project. MSM can't be trusted. Intelligence can't be trusted. But personal speculation is apparently in play: "Is that by accident?" OP asks, again without explanation as to scope, evidence, etc. of the implication.
> I'm not. If you aren't either, then I don't see how you would distinguish your positions if not through clear-headed discussion of documented acts of corruption.
I’m reminded a little bit about the NRA and their congressional supporters, who block every attempt to fund and study gun violence, and then in the same breath say “There’s no evidence of gun ownership affects violence”
Maybe, but news from 1975 that already was part of revelations of that nature that triggered their backlash, legislative responses, and every other kind of “hangover” they could, before many people voting today we're even born, probably aren't much of a factor in that except as precedent and context, not news or triggering events.
There weren't “FISA courts” before the revelations in the 1970s because there was no judicial oversight or legal limits with penalties applied to surveillance by the national security apparatus at all. FISA, the courts it created, and the criminalization of domestic surveillance outside of specified limitations were part of the backlash against the abuses that were revealed in the mid-1970s.
>It's crazy how the intelligence agencies used Trump to make themselves look like knights in shining armor to liberals
That's not a thing that actually happened - "liberals" don't trust the intelligence agencies any more or less than they did before Trump. And I don't know why this article has people suddenly running defense for Trump when it doesn't even mention him. But interesting play nonetheless.
Remember all the intelligence people, like former CIA director Brennan that became MSNBC pundits? Remember the time they made a big deal of Trump offending the CIA in front of the wall of fallen heroes?
For the record, I despise Trump. I am not defending him, but I don't like people thinking highly of the longstanding dark institutions that have been at the heart of American politics since WW2. Trump = Bad does not mean any other part of the American state is good.
It's not just the intelligence agencies. Gallup polling shows liberals' trust in the media skyrocketed after Trump's election and has remained persistently high despite the whole Russiagate farce.
You mean when the DoJ indicted, charged, or successfully prosecuted a number of Russian nationals and members of the Trump administration for election-related crimes or obstruction of justice? That farce? Like someone said, "For a purported witchhunt, they sure found a lot of actual witches."
As an outsider I don't follow much USA politics, so apologies if I got the gist wrong and I'd appreciate corrections.
For my bias, I mainly read left wing publications, listen to right wing YouTubers and I'm an anarcho-capitalist.
The claim sold by the media was that Russia "hacked" the elections, making Trump win.
(that was before this year's message that election meddling is highly unlikely)
What was found out was contact with Russia to dig dirt on Trump's opponents.
Sure, it may be illegal, but that's hardly interesting.
> The claim sold by the media was that Russia "hacked" the elections
I didn't see that. Most of the claims were about Russian social media campaigns. We'll never know if those campaigns made a significant difference, but they certainly did happen. The other big thing was the DNC hack, also probably orchestrated by Russia.
> What was found out was contact with Russia to dig dirt on Trump's opponents.
I'd call that highly illegal, highly interesting, and even more worrisome than the prospect of a few hacked Diebold machines. A President who conspired with a foreign power to win election? Can you imagine the leverage that foreign power would have over such a President? With machine hacking, the President can claim ignorance. No such chance here.
The last guy who did that was named Richard Nixon.[1][2]
There were not mainstream US media claims that the Russians hacked the 2016 elections. On the other hand, there were lots of stories about Russian influence operations.
Did you watch basically any cable news in 2016? They literally started the Russian collusion special counsel investigations from allegations Russia hacked the DNC and released the emails to help Trump.
The phrase 'Russia "hacked" the elections, making Trump win' implies tampering with the voting and vote counting. You've linked an influence operation that may have involved computer hacking.
It's also, you know, pretty clear that Russia was running influence operations, not a media delusion.
What's your point? People got there because they have trouble interpreting information, not because the information in mainstream media was particularly ambiguous.
What people believed 2 years later is not at all a meaningful survey of what the media was saying at the time!
"Russia hacked voting systems in 39 states before the 2016 Presidential election"
They would stick in a disclaimer like this:
> So, despite assurances from the Obama administration that the election’s integrity was not compromised, there was still a very large-scale Russian effort to mess with it. That means future elections, including ones next year, run the risk of being tainted.
But then proceed with an article like this:
> Apparently, the cyber intruders aimed to delete or alter voter data they got a hold of.
Last line of the article:
> But in the meantime, collusion with Trump or not, we now know that Russia has struck deeper into the heart of America’s democracy: its elections.
The whole thing is structured in the form of "nobody proved they did it but they sure tried so maybe they did/will" and leaves the reader to infer the result based on their political leanings. The polling after two years of that sort of coverage measures the extent to which those insinuations misled the public.
Like I said, people are bad at processing information, the article there isn't ambiguous, it talks about voter data and never about votes. It's sensationalized, but it's not hard to understand what it actually says either.
Voter rolls and campaign contributions aren't even maintained as sensitive information, the latter is published by the FEC, and most states more or less publish voter rolls. The Bloomberg article makes it sound like they tried to access/control the underlying storage, which would actually be problematic...
It's not ambiguous if you read it carefully, but you're essentially arguing "technically correct, the best kind of correct" for sensationalized reporting where it's known that many people won't even read past the headline.
You:
> The phrase 'Russia "hacked" the elections, making Trump win' implies tampering with the voting and vote counting.
Title of that article:
> Russia hacked voting systems in 39 states before the 2016 Presidential election
It's crafted to survive a mechanistic fact check while targeting the fact that people are bad at processing information.
No, it's just over estimating people, it's a matter of fact description of the contents of the article.
If Russia accesses the backend systems storing voter data, what are they supposed to report to ensure that they do not mislead people? (I say backend there because there's actual directly published voter data all over the place that is intended to be accessed by whoever).
It's really actually problematic and news that a foreign power is fiddling around with those backend systems, but apparently if you report that they did it, there will be years of controversy about how you reported that they hacked the election.
If all that was on offer from the beginning was taking out a few lackeys like Manafort and Stone obviously it wouldn't have captured liberals' attention the way it did. They were expecting a big break of evidence that Trump was a Manchurian candidate installed by the master Svengali Putin. It was a classic psychological deflection tactic on liberals' part, "Trump's election can't be a symptom of any real institutional rot in America, it's just a result of dirty foreign tricks that will be exposed and easily rectified by removing Trump."
> They were expecting a big break of evidence that Trump was a Manchurian candidate installed by the master Svengali Putin
"It couldn't be proved to be bad as some people said" is not the same thing as "farce". The stuff that was proven was bad and illegal.
The Mueller report concluded that there was some evidence of coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia.[1] The investigation achieved multiple convictions and indictments.
> "Trump's election can't be a symptom of any real institutional rot in America, it's just a result of dirty foreign tricks that will be exposed and easily rectified by removing Trump.
It's not an either-or. Trump was only ever a competitive candidate due to real, deep problems and widespread disillusionment with the establishment. But it's also possible that Russian social media campaigns, the DNC email hacks, and the Comey letter tipped the scales (80k votes in 3 states) in his favor in 2016. We'll never really know.
Liberals tripped over themselves to push a story about Russian bounties that can't be corroborated[0] and that was criticized by people like Glenn Greenwald, hardly a right-winger. It's fine to hate Trump I guess and if you think the ends justify the means, that's your right, but it's demonstrably true that people who in normal years would be highly skeptical of anything coming out of the intelligence agencies are eager to promote anything that makes the Trump administration look bad.
Edit: Another aspect of this story is that it was pushed after bipartisan support for exiting Afghanistan was emerging. So basically this "information" was put out there to keep us in a war no one likes and the putatively anti-war party eagerly promoted it because Trump is bad.
Edit 2: I fully expected this comment to be downvoted, but I hope some of you downvoters will engage with my argument in the replies, since most of you have no argument against my claims, which are factually true.
Anyone claiming the Russian bounty program was a certainty or a hoax is misinformed. Some credible agencies had a high degree of confidence; others, such as the NSA, disagreed [1]. “Can’t be corroborated” reflects the NSA’s view, but not the CIA or NIC’s, who found it “credibly sourced and plausible, but falling short of certainty.”
I can't even say this without sounding like a "whataboutism," but the main material support for the Taliban in Afghanistan, for the last nineteen years, roughly two decades of war, has been Pakistan, and we've done NOTHING about it but keep shoveling them money in exchange for the transit rights to ship material through to support our troops in a rearguard fight against their minions.
WE are paying people to kill US troops by ignoring what Pakistan does with the money.
And that they were harboring Osama Bin Laden for a decade.
But we need to chase rumors that Russia does the same. Yeah, right.
Maybe we need to stop sending troops to countries where they're not accomplishing anything besides being hostages?
The tone of the initial NYT story that broke the scoop certainly didn't reflect any of this uncertainty. Would have been a good idea for them to check in with the NSA or the DoD first!
"among the left" is a really wide net to throw and I don't think it really does any favors to your statement to be so overly general.
I think it's pretty much the mirror image of the Benghazi investigations. Some investigating needed to happen, but politics got involved and turned the whole thing into a circus. This isn't particularly surprising since the US's two party system usually leads to extremely incompatible "truths" now that social media bubbles exist.
I'm pretty sure the left dislikes James Comey quite a lot since he did a last minute "give Trump's Hillary emails conspiracy a false sense of legitimacy right before the election" thing
"The left" is multiply defined. If you mean Democrats generally, the party has become the number one home of middle class people with college degrees. They are naturally going to be more comfortable with the FBI than, say, old school left wing labor activists.
It seems less likely that opinions are changing, and more likely that people with certain opinions are moving.
Both of these guys have been involved in really shady stuff in America's past, they are career company men and never represented or mounted any real threat to Trump. Comey may even be a big part of how Trump even became POTUS in the first place.
> James Comey and Robert Mueller were popular among the left (of which I consider myself a part) because of their resistance to Trump
Because of their resistance to Trump. That doesn't translate to the left, in general, suddenly being in favor of and trusting the three letter agencies or the military industrial complex. You know, the side of the political spectrum with all of the anti-war protestors and socialists.
The narrative is bizarre.
Edit: never mind, I see this is about discrediting Russiagate for whatever reason, I get it now.
You look around at the gig economy, our stagnant wages, our failing industrial sector, our hyper-militarized police force, and wonder "How did we get here?"
I can tell you how we got here: COINTELPRO. The FBI's war on political freedom. I don't believe for a second it ever stopped, rather, they just found new euphemisms to use.
I believe the behaviour of our law enforcement agencies to destabalize progressive movements has been WILDLY destructive to our culture and politics.
The FBI and law enforcement agencies use federal funds to destabilize and destroy our worker and leftist movements over and over again. Progress cannot happen because whenever people begin to organize, their organizations are destroyed.
Look at Occupy Wall Street, a valid movement protesting the bailing out of big, corrupt banking institutions while leaving the average person out to dry. They were maced, demeaned by the media, their organizers stalked and harassed by police organizations.
> I believe the behaviour of our law enforcement agencies to destabalize progressive movements has been WILDLY destructive to our culture and politics.
It's important to realize that this isn't partisan behavior. They use the same tactics against anarchists and anti-authoritarians, or really any threat to institutional power.
An obvious recent example on the other side being their campaign against Trump, e.g. Steele Dossier, and the apparently true Hunter Biden story being derided as "Russian disinformation" by "intelligence sources" in the run up to the election. Because Trump, for all his faults, was one of the most prominent threats to institutional power in recent history. And Trump sucks, let's be clear about that, but it's the same dynamic and it's important to see it for what it is even when it's being deployed against someone you don't like.
I assume that was stated with heavy sarcasm since two of those people (Micheal Flynn + Paul Manafort) have already been pardoned[1] and none of them were either handed or likely to be handed serious sentences anyways. Michael Flynn is as close as you can get to a legit case of treason and his sentencing had already been kicked down the road several times.
Well actually, Flynn case was based on him lying to an FBI agent during a party. The case was pure entrapment. It was so bad, that eventually the government itself asked for the case to be dismissed. Then a partisan hack judge (Sullivan), decided that he was going to continue with the prosecution by appointing his own prosecutor (I kid you not).
This is a great example of how public perception has been manipulated by the media.
In fact, the Obama DOJ set Flynn up, sending two FBI agents to question him before the transition to the new administration. They pretended that he was not the subject of the investigation, so Flynn felt no need to have an attorney present while being questioned.
Afterward, the FBI agents themselves, on the form they filled out regarding the interview, stated that they did not think that Flynn lied.
Regardless of that, the DOJ continued to prosecute Flynn for doing something completely normal for an incoming National Security Advisor to do, speak with a foreign diplomat. Only after bankrupting him with legal fees, which even forced him to sell his home, did they relent.
And then, when the DOJ refused to further prosecute Flynn, a federal judge refused to dismiss the case, a bizarre act forcing Flynn's attorneys to file a plea with a superior court. The judge even appointed his own prosecutor to continue prosecuting Flynn!
Now, why did all this happen? Is it because the then-newly elected President's incoming National Security Advisor spoke with a foreign diplomat? Or is it because the Obama administration hated Flynn because of what he did while running DIA (which they fired him for), and the incoming President appointed him to be his National Security Advisor, and the DOJ is apparently full of "#resist"ers?
But that's not a perspective you'll hear from NYT, CNN, WaPo, etc. From them, you hear, "Treason!"
The old saying applies: You can fool some of the people some of the time...
> Regardless of that, the DOJ continued to prosecute Flynn for doing something completely normal for an incoming National Security Advisor to do, speak with a foreign diplomat. Only after bankrupting him with legal fees, which even forced him to sell his home, did they relent.
Just to clarify here... Michael Flynn was retained by a Turkish firm to try and run PR against a cleric that had fled to the US - he was not "reaching out" or "establishing open lines" - he was employed as a hatchet man against an American resident while employed as a National Security Advisor. When you take a cabinet level position in the US government it's generally accepted that you sever all foreign financial ties.
An interesting analogy...Brutus who was close and loyal to Caesar until Caesar’s extrajudicial and dictatorial excesses pushed him to put republic before family and kill his mentor? :)
Except Trump is not a dictator, no matter how much the TV tells you so.
What you should realize you are defending the current two party system in the US. The same cabal of people that have been in power forever. Communism fell and new people took over. But these US politicians predate that. They're so old and corrupt, they are literally crapping their pants on live TV.
Enjoy the Biden administration. Its all you deserve.
It got cold out is the more obvious explanation. There's a reason they are called "hot summers" in the history books.
However, there is an element of truth in the fact that the Biden campaign succeeded in coopting liberal civil rights people after the election. IMO they should continue to fight hard against state oppression, which will continue regardless of the face of power.
That did take the heat off a lot too. Whatever happened after Trump won would probably last until temperatures fell to below freezing at which point only very committed people would be out there, which isn't the millions in the streets we saw over the summer.
It's hard to say how much property destruction there might have been, but tbh I don't really care because property is replaceable.
If it were up to me, I'd pass a law saying anybody hired by such agencies must take an oath to America, to report their bosses within the agency who violate morality, democracy, or legality, to an oversight court.
Consider just for one moment how likely you would be to ask somebody to do something illegal if they have taken an oath to report you to an oversight body.
We need: less dark budgets, less people/positions "above the law", whistle blower protection programs for these heroes, and put people in jail who thought to be above the law (this never happened yet).
You can go to jail for some weed, but executing evil-yet-state-sponsored atrocities is a serious career. Topsy turvy all the way.
Fully agree. Pardoning Snowden would be the most effective single act a president could take towards reducing corruption in the intelligence community.
I agree specifically with less people/positions "above the law" but it'll be rough. The law in this case is politics - it's whatever the people say it is - and the political system is terribly broken right now. I think it is still proper to move these agencies to have more civilian oversight but in the short term we're going to see a whole lot of abuse of the system until our representation can be fixed.
I wish that modern oaths also had curse clauses. It seems oddly common for autocrats and kleptocrats to have no problem screwing over millions of people, while still being terrified of religious or superstitious wrath.
"So help me god" is not enough. How about, "And should I ever violate this sacred oath, in thought or in deed, may I be forever cursed and damned."
Anyways, the US military already takes those sorts of oaths to refuse and report illegal orders, but they still commit plenty of war crimes.
“Again, your ancestors were taught, ‘Never swear an oath that you don’t intend to keep, but keep your vows to the Lord God.’ However, I say to you, don’t bind yourself by taking an oath at all. Don’t swear by heaven, for heaven is where God’s throne is placed. Don’t swear an oath by the earth, because it is the rug under God’s feet, and not by Jerusalem, because it is the city of the Great King. And why would you swear by your own head, because it’s not in your power to turn a single hair white or black? But just let your words ring true. A simple ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ will suffice. Anything beyond this springs from a deceiver.”
There are evangelical Christian sites that interpret this as oaths of office being non-binding or non-Christian, and while I don't think many people consciously use that as a reason for violating their oaths, it's something to keep in mind.
These are extremely twisted interpretations - a better way to read that is "Don't be a dick whether or not you took an oath - be truthful in all things."
Those interpretations don't surprise me though since, like with any other group of people, there are a bunch of evangelical christians that bend the tenants of the group beyond a breaking point to suit their own interest.
Yes, but we're not talking about people who read the Bible here.
One example off the top of my head, Jeff Sessions once invoked Romans 13 to defend Trump's immigration policies:
>“I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order,”
If he had actually read that book, he would have reached Romans 13:8.
>Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.
Or Romans 15:1.
>We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves.
At some point, you have to recognize that many people don't actually care what their holy books say. I maintain that a curse clause could work with those kinds of people.
What? Get rid of the oaths entirely. It's just pageantry. It's the most human thing in the world to twist words to your desire and then justify it morally through rationist gymnastics.
Knowledge of COINTELPRO was only achieved thanks to the burglary of an FBI office, with documents mailed to major newspapers, and only the Washington Post willing to run the story. The burglars[1] revealed themselves[2] only recently.
[0] https://youtu.be/-34w0OUIOyw?t=961
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens%27_Commission_to_Inve...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/07/us/burglars-who-took-on-f...