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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   22399 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 30, 2024

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I can't speak to the state of actual relief efforts, but there does seem to be a bit of an effort to manufacture this as a mirror image to Bush's Katrina response, which dragged on Republicans for a long time: see Kanye's infamous "George Bush doesn't care about Black people" line.

Now adays, any time there is a disaster in the United States, you should assume that there is a Russian social media effort to try and inflame and twist it. Sometimes a disaster doesn't even have to actually occur, and they'll just fake-news one. This is just one of the things they do, independent of any truth to any criticsm.

Which is funny to me because in hindsight it's less clear that it was purely the Bush administration's doing. Much can be said about the (blue!) city and state leadership not taking the imminent storm seriously even as the National Weather Service issued extremely dire warnings, but Mike Brown's leadership of FEMA wasn't exactly a "heckuva job" either.

This is underselling the culpability of the democratic city and state leadership. There wasn't merely a 'not taking the imminent storm threat seriously', but actively delaying and hindering federal support responses including by not actually asking for various types of assistance from the federal and other states until days later, instigating a posse comitatus policy freeze disrupting federal military assistance, and of course the police not merely abandoning duty roles but partaking in the looting.

When the local police are joined in on the looting and a state senator is diverting national guard assets to get material from his personal home, there's not terribly much an organization like FEMA can do.

At least that's how I see it under the "politics is unprincipled conflict" lens. I suspect there are real challenges to providing useful aid with so many roads inaccessible (as there were in 2005), and I doubt anyone is actually slow-walking aid, even if they are trying to play political football ("FEMA is running out of funds" "that's because you spent it all on migrants"). Personally, I don't know much more to do than pray, although I'm open to suggestions.

The steelman is that airspace is dangerous if uncontrolled, and so in a disaster a government doesn't want to be competing with airspace. This is especially true when rescue agencies would be further diverted if they had to rerout resources to help someone who got themselves into a mess- like, say, by crashing aircraft into a town.

On the other hand, this administration is the heir to the one that repeatedly targeted religious medical charities if they didn't support abortion-enabling policies. There is an established vein of 'our way or not at all' in some parts of the US government.

I have no insight into this specific circumstance, but 'stop getting in our way as you try to help' is a real, and sometimes even valid, thing.

When the local police are joined in on the looting and a state senator is diverting national guard assets to get material from his personal home, there's not terribly much an organization like FEMA can do.

Wait do you have examples or sources of this? Would be crazy if it turned out to be true.

“Military sources tells ABC News that Jefferson, an eight-term Democratic congressman, asked the National Guard that night to take him on a tour of the flooded portions of his congressional district. A five-ton military truck and a half dozen military police were dispatched. Lt. Col. Pete Schneider of the Louisiana National Guard tells ABC News that during the tour, Jefferson asked that the truck take him to his home on Marengo Street, in the affluent uptown neighborhood in his congressional district. According to Schneider, this was not part of Jefferson's initial request.”

“Four New Orleans police officers have been cleared of allegations that they looted a Wal-Mart store after Hurricane Katrina, but each was suspended 10 days for not stopping civilians from ransacking the store, the Police Department said. The probe stemmed from an MSNBC report that showed the officers filling a shopping cart with shoes, clothes and other items. When a reporter asked the officers what they were doing, one responded, “Looking for looters” and turned her back. Assistant Police Chief Marlon Defillo, commander of the Public Integrity Bureau, said the officers seen on the video were recently cleared of looting because they had received permission from superiors to take necessities for themselves and other officers. The Police Department later informed Wal-Mart management, after the store had been secured, that its officers had taken some needed items, he said.”

I’m going to classify both of these stories as “technically true”.

Ahh I thought you were talking about Helene, not Katrina.

Still though, what a mess. Every time I think I can't hate the government more...

Now adays, any time there is a disaster in the United States, you should assume that there is a Russian social media effort to try and inflame and twist it. Sometimes a disaster doesn't even have to actually occur, and they'll just fake-news one. This is just one of the things they do, independent of any truth to any criticsm.

On the other hand, it’s a very very useful tool to hide incompetence and grift. Everything the government doesn’t want people talking about seems to be “Russian Trolls” and it’s become a sort of go to excuse for why people are saying things the government doesn’t want to hear on social media. Sure, sometimes it’s trolls, but by this point, enough ultimately true stories were officially dismissed as misinformation until they were shown to actually have happened that I no longer find the “Russian Trolls” story to be a sensible hypothesis. In fact, I’m trying to think of a story told in the past 2-3 years where it’s actually traced back to a real Russian whether working for the government or not.

I’m mostly with the steelman here. People who don’t know what they’re doing wandering about a disaster area are more likely to create situations where they need rescue than to do substantial good — unless they have enough knowledge to know what they’re doing. A bunch of rednecks coming in and sawing through things or chopping down trees or whatever might well injure people or need rescue themselves. Disaster areas tend to be dangerous and the dangers aren’t always obvious. Taking your John boat over downed power lines is pretty dangerous. So the government probably is turning people away because they don’t want to rescue the redneck brigades who have no experience rescuing people.

It's always extremely easy to be intellectually lazy and unconsciously fall victim to propaganda. Britain and the US invented the modern public relations and propaganda industry and have been very successful at convincing the average person who had never even heard of places like Donetsk and Luhansk up until a few years ago, that they're on the right side of an issue they know nothing about.

I remember awhile ago getting into a debate with someone in the /r/geopolitics subreddit, who literally said to me that if Russia only spent more money on it's domestic social programs to take care of its people, NATO wouldn't expand into Ukraine. And that is not hyperbole. This is the quality and caliber of the average person who takes great pride in having very strong opinions about something they know absolutely nothing about. Americans in general are not very good when it comes to putting themselves in the shoes of other people, and when you combine that with someone who mistakes the philosophy subreddit for the geopolitics one when it comes to understanding international affairs, riding a bike on the highway isn't your only problem when you're also going the wrong direction.

If you don't understand what's really going on, then you can't even represent the other accurately enough to have a sensible disagreement with it.

On the other hand, it’s a very very useful tool to hide incompetence and grift. Everything the government doesn’t want people talking about seems to be “Russian Trolls” and it’s become a sort of go to excuse for why people are saying things the government doesn’t want to hear on social media. Sure, sometimes it’s trolls, but by this point, enough ultimately true stories were officially dismissed as misinformation until they were shown to actually have happened that I no longer find the “Russian Trolls” story to be a sensible hypothesis.

Are you even dismissing the right hypothesis?

No, seriously. I think you mis-read what was claimed, and projected previous / other experiences onto it. The hypothesis is not that 'the coverage is the result of Russian trolls.' The hypothesis is 'no matter what happens, there will be Russian trolls trying to make it worse.' Whether the Russian trolls succeed in significantly shaping the conversation, or originated the talking points, or are fallaciously conflated with legitimate grievance is irrelevant to a characterization of their (a) existence and (b) attempts.

If you want to dismiss that, sure, but you haven't actually provided a grounds of disputing either supporting point. Which do you find non-sensible- that Russian troll farms like the Internet Research Agency exist?

Very directly- what do you think the Russians use the Internet Research Agency for? Not how influential it is, not whether it's fair to tar Americans with guilt by association. What do you think the Russian IRA does, and why?

In fact, I’m trying to think of a story told in the past 2-3 years where it’s actually traced back to a real Russian whether working for the government or not.

What does 'traced back' even mean in this context? If you mean 'originated with,' one of the more famous was the Colombian Chemicals Plant Hoax in 2014, and more recently the 2021 the pre-Ukraine War propaganda justification/narrative blitz, which included claims of genocide of Russian-speakers to justify Russian intervention.

But if 'traced back' means 'shaped / signal boosted,' which is the claimed level involvement here, then by definition any Russian social media coverage of any topic counts, especially since you said 'for the government or not.' Unless you intend to argue that the Russians don't use social media...?

I personally find the "Russian trolls" narratives to be really frustrating because, whether or not the subject actually originated, or even was just amplified by them, the discussion tends to devolve into Westerners (Americans) accusing each other of being Russian trolls. Which is itself a loss in social trust "making it worse" in ways far beyond what the Russians would have been able to do themselves. Bickering about Russian trolls is, in itself, a victory for those trolls! The long-running inquisition into the Russian activities in the 2016 election seems to me to have been far more damaging to American institutions than anything the Russians themselves directly did.

Which isn't to say that they don't exist -- they do -- but most coverage I see of the issue seems, at best, counterproductive.

Just for your understanding, this is exactly the danger of the Russian style of disinformation. It is decentralized and not tied to any particular narrative or to truth in general. The agents will amplify both true and false stories with impunity. This is because the stated goal of the Russian propaganda machine in the West is not, for example, 'make Russia look good' or 'show hypocrisy in Western countries'. The essential goal is to create division in Western societies over the long term by degrading trust in institutions, information sources, and each other.

So yes, in this case Russian disinformation may be amplifying actual government failures. In other cases it may be making things up wholesale. The point is to be aware that there are malign agents (and not just Russians) whose purpose is to turn this into a political or cultural battle rather than giving a clear picture of reality, and then factor that in to our assessment of the situation.

How are you defining "disinformation" in this context? That Russia has a project to subvert the liberal international order that the US has ran since the post-war period? They openly admit that all the time and have made formal declarations admitting as much. So presumably anybody who advances a different narrative through their own perception of events isn't pushing disinformation, unless you're setting the bar extremely low.

If Russia is this nebulous disinformation fountainhead that some people seem think it is, then their actions prove that they're incredibly bad at it. What Russia 'has' been successful in doing is a form of national rebranding and international marketing to try and attract disaffected people in their own nations to join them. And why would such a measure be aimed at such an end? Because most of the fractious disunity in western nations has come by their own hand. The progressive left in this country has done more harm and inflicted more damage upon itself than Vladimir Putin or Osama bin Laden ever have.

How are you defining "disinformation" in this context? That Russia has a project to subvert the liberal international order that the US has ran since the post-war period? They openly admit that all the time and have made formal declarations admitting as much. So presumably anybody who advances a different narrative through their own perception of events isn't pushing disinformation, unless you're setting the bar extremely low.

Why shouldn't the bar be that low for the way flailingace is using it?

Even selectively signal-boosting true-but-non-representative things can have an effect of misleading an audience. This very thread is based on someone taking something that has happened (an accusation of pushback against people wanting to help) in a way that generates outrage (FEMA is deliberately witholding help, partisan motivation?) that plausibly wouldn't exist with other potentially relevant context (the government has an interest in managing airspace, which appears to be the form of pushback being alluded to).

Nothing in it is false, but it's not information structured for building objective understanding either. It is an oppositional / antagonist information presentation, and one that- if done deliberately- can be information to promote discord rather than discourse.

flailingace's position, as I understand it, isn't that it's disinformation on the basis of truth / not truth, or 'their own' narrative, but the intended result of why the information is being presented.

If Russia is this nebulous disinformation fountainhead that some people seem think it is, then their actions prove that they're incredibly bad at it. What Russia 'has' been successful in doing is a form of national rebranding and international marketing to try and attract disaffected people in their own nations to join them. And why would such a measure be aimed at such an end? Because most of the fractious disunity in western nations has come by their own hand. The progressive left in this country has done more harm and inflicted more damage upon itself than Vladimir Putin or Osama bin Laden ever have.

Okay, I don't even disagree with you, but how does this relate to flailaingace's position?

This is a counter-argument of relative effectiveness, of relative harm done, but flailingace wasn't making an argument of relative harm / culpability / etc. Flailingace is making a point that russia will attempt to promote discord, to a person who has dismissed russian trolls as a reasonable hypothesis, to another post that also does not rest on relative effectiveness.

Remember that this branch of the conversation itself started over someone saying they felt there was a bit of an effort to manufacture an issue. Not that the issue was entirely manufactured, or that the dominant cause or concerns were manufactured.

Why shouldn't the bar be that low for the way flailingace is using it?

You can personally set the bar wherever you want. But in that case, I'm struggling to understand why people say this like it's some kind of surprise. What am I supposed to be made to think or feel upon hearing that?

Even selectively signal-boosting true-but-non-representative things can have an effect of misleading an audience. This very thread is based on someone taking something that has happened (an accusation of pushback against people wanting to help) in a way that generates outrage (FEMA is deliberately witholding help, partisan motivation?) that plausibly wouldn't exist with other potentially relevant context (the government has an interest in managing airspace, which appears to be the form of pushback being alluded to).

Well put it this way then. Anyone who would want to hold Russia or anyone else for that matter guilty of disinformation and not the media complex in the west which IMO is far worse by comparison, has a very hard sell to convince me of some kind of moral indictment, because anyone who wouldn't also hang the whole of CNN, Fox, MSNBC, CBS and everyone else from lampposts outside their headquarters for also being guilty of disinformation, is just being a partisan hack.

Nothing in it is false, but it's not information structured for building objective understanding either. It is an oppositional / antagonist information presentation, and one that- if done deliberately- can be information to promote discord rather than discourse.

And RussiaToday can also make similar claims in some of their reports as well as far as exposing disinformation. So what? Are people calling for them to be restored to YouTube now on grounds of their occasional fairness?

flailingace's position, as I understand it, isn't that it's disinformation on the basis of truth / not truth, or 'their own' narrative, but the intended result of why the information is being presented.

Meaning what? If they're doing it for a good cause or something they agree with then its okay then?

Show me a person of influence who made this case when the George Floyd video dropped.

I do not believe anything the Russians could ever say or do could hold even a flickering candle to the gigaton flare generated by the actual words and deeds of genuine Americans.

a flickering candle to the gigaton flare generated by the actual words and deeds of genuine Americans.

Sure, I think this is a healthy perspective. But Russia, and China, trying to sow discord is an argument some make:

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/01/russia-and-china-target-us-protests-on-social-media-294315

While these official social media accounts have not posted doctored images or false information, they have sowed divisive content — a strategy that Russia previously used during the 2017 Catalan referendum in Spain and the 2019 European Parliament election, according to previous analyses of social media activity by POLITICO. The goal, according to disinformation experts, is to foment distrust on both sides of the political spectrum rather than publishing easily identifiable fake social media posts.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/19401612221082052

RT and Sputnik primarily produced negative coverage of the BLM movement, painting protestors as violent, or discussed the hypocrisy of racial justice in America. In contrast, newer media properties like In The NOW, Soapbox, and Redfish supported the BLM movement with clickbait-style videos highlighting racism in America.

The government or at least substantial parts of it wanted the BLM protests. They aren’t going to call it trolling.

But again, very little of the stuff named Russian Trolls can actually be traced to Russia in any way whatsoever. They can’t find Russians behind the Laptop, election fraud, UAPs, or Q. They can’t because it’s not Russia.

The person you responded to is filtered.

On the other hand, it’s a very very useful tool to hide incompetence and grift. Everything the government doesn’t want people talking about seems to be “Russian Trolls” and it’s become a sort of go to excuse for why people are saying things the government doesn’t want to hear on social media.

I don't see any particular reason both can't be true.

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