Before someone bites the bait - this comment is sarcastic and 100% of democratic societies spend resources to control the narrative around their government/country/whatever. 100%.
> 100% of democratic societies spend resources to control the narrative around their government/country/whatever
That's like saying 100% of people lie. Yes, but that's meaningless - people range from highly trustworthy to miserable frauds. What the democratic societies actually do, and the consequences, is what matters.
It doesn't help that the nature of "democracy" is itself endlessly contested. E.g. both supporters and critics of the way Romanian courts have treated Georgescu seem to claim they are "defending democracy".
There are important advantages to a social contract which is simple and unambiguous.
> It doesn't help that the nature of "democracy" is itself endlessly contested.
It's not really; I've never heard someone say that, in fact. The nature of propaganda is to make everything uncertain, and then everyone is frozen and nobody has done wrong.
>It's not really; I've never heard someone say that, in fact.
Lots of disputes within democracies consist of both sides implicitly claiming their position is "more democratic". E.g. how much power should the US president have over US bureaucracies? Some say that because bureaucrats are "unelected", the president should have more control. Others say that too much executive control is authoritarian. In both cases, the nature of "democracy" is what's [implicitly] at stake.
>propaganda
* I speak truth to power.
* He is exercising his right to freedom of speech.
* They spread propaganda.
I don't think the phrase "propaganda" is meaningless, necessary. But this reinforces my point from earlier, about how our social contract could use more simplicity and less ambiguity.
I don't see that happening. I see lots of propaganda trying to make the same paralyzing arguments, especially the argument that 'it's all the same and you can't tell the difference'. Yes we can, pretty easily.
That's the propagandist's argument. But the reality is there is a difference between truth and falsehood, it's not just a matter of perception, and we can tell the difference with reasonable accuracy.
>there is a difference between truth and falsehood
Of course, but that's distinct from propaganda vs non-propaganda. A foreign actor can secretly pay for a marketing campaign that spreads the truth. A scientist can make an honest mistake and spread a falsehood.
>we can tell the difference with reasonable accuracy.
Depends on the claim. Suppose I tell you that exactly one year from now, at your current location, it will be raining. Is that true or false?
Hopefully I'm not nitpicking, "propaganda" in general form can be to
any purpose; rallying/unity, sapping morale, creating a scapegoat...
A lovely word for what your describing is "discombobulation" - sowing
seeds of fear, uncertainty, doubt (FUD), gaslighting and disorienting.
And there is much propaganda - especially now - used to sow hate, violence, and division.
We need clear language for each form (how many are there?). And I think we need a more serious word than 'discombobulation' - for one, it describes the effect, not the cause; and for another, people won't take the issue seriously.
I am pretty shocked at that Romanian court ruling though. It seems like the entire questioning of the election outcomes was motivated by EU leadership not liking the result of democracy.
The decision to not stop at redoing the election but to then ban the candidate seems motivated by the fact that opinion polls show him to still be winning even today despite the alleged “election interference”, months after he won the first election.
It’s weird seeing the EU conduct elections sort of like Russia does, ironically. In the past I viewed the EU as supporting things like free speech and democracy in the same way America does.
>what do you do about election manipulation? 'Nothing' isn't an acceptable answer.
I agree, and this reinforces my point about the ambiguity of the social contract. When the US constitution was written in 1787, the telegraph wasn't even invented. Now we all live in a single "global village". People from all over the world are commenting on politics in other nations in real time. Where do you draw the line for "election manipulation"? No one seems to know, exactly.
The problem is that we've made this intellectual laziness acceptable. Nobody knows exactly? We have pretty good ideas; we know the difference between legitimate media and propaganda; we just need to encode that in English in specific rules.
And before that, we need to get the people who benefit from propaganda, and therefore defend it, out of power. Look at the widespread, and effective campaign to shut down anyone studying disinformation. The problems with letting things like that fester and not doing anything - which is what we've done, mostly - is that people in power become invested in it.
>we just need to encode that in English in specific rules.
Well, I encourage you to lead the way, fight this intellectual laziness, and propose specific rules. I suspect that you will find the task more difficult than you thought. Whatever rules you propose will be adversarially interpreted by your political opponents, and by actual propagandists. Ideally, the rules should also be simple enough for any voter to understand.
I'm not shocked although it's messy. From the technical point of view elections have rules and if candidates break the rules it seems ok to block them.
At another level, Russia is kind of waging war on Europe to try to engineer a fascist takeover. Some of us don't like that - remember Hitler was democratically elected and Putin is merrily killing thousands of innocents in his imperial quest.
There is other iffy stuff:
> ... evidence about a plot organised by former presidential candidate Călin Georgescu and a group of former French Foreign Legion fighters ... were planning to "infiltrate peaceful protests and trigger chaos through violent actions"
