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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   31474 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 7, 2022

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I mean practices which are to «memes» as ASML engineering is to redneck engineering. Mature practices not to produce random flashy effects on the social tissue or have a few crude immediate-term uses, but to steadily and reliably expand your domain and degrees of freedom, and suffocate your competitors. Such as exacerbation of fear of unapproved non-state actors and normalization of anarcho-tyranny. Things behind campaigns like this one.

I find this fascinating! Any blogs/books you'd recommend to learn more about how these types of practices operate? I've read Manufacturing Consent and a bunch of anti-PR work, but anything more in depth and modern?

Widespread fear of incumbent Western state-affiliated actors, which is strong enough to negate all of their propaganda about monster-of-the-week threats like islamchinarussianazis, but simultaneously not so strong as to be mind-numbing.

Their goal is to move us past that sweet spot as quickly as possible.

What does moving past this sweet spot look like in practice? Are you saying the goal is to make us terrified of the incumbent Western state actors, so much so we lose the will to resist?

I have not read "credible" literature on this subject but there's plenty of literature on it. Pinging @eetan. I spoke more of the above-ground long-term social engineering, even detailed by Scott, like the success of the Fabian Society.

Are you saying the goal is to make us terrified of the incumbent Western state actors, so much so we lose the will to resist?

Perhaps not «us» in the broadest possible sense, but yes, the goal is to make e.g. unsurveilled communications on badthink topics, and crypto business that's not entirely fetishistic (like "waow I'm paying for Mossad VPN in Bitcoin from my Coinbase to discuss Elon Musk's racism on Mastodon! this is the future of freedom!") as mentally taxing as building FGC9's in your garage in Europe.

I have not read "credible" literature on this subject but there's plenty of literature on it. Pinging @eetan. I spoke more of the above-ground long-term social engineering, even detailed by Scott, like the success of the Fabian Society.

Thanks for ping ;-)

It depends what you count as "credible".

Open source publication in the realms of marketing, advertising, PR?

Lots of material showing how to do "memetic engineering" for profit.

Everyone heard about Bernay and his torches of freedom (lung cancer so liberating, light up!), fewer know , for example, how diamond rings became necessary part of every traditional marriage.

https://edwardjayepstein.com/diamond/prologue.htm

Official declassified documents?

Lots of material here too, starting with CIA efforts in arts and literature (while various neanderthals were braying that abstract art is bolshevik conspiracy, CIA was busy supporting it as the perfect capitalist art form).

https://www.theawl.com/2015/08/literary-magazines-for-socialists-funded-by-the-cia-ranked/

https://twitter.com/marina0swald/status/1579138604911439872

Moving to more clandestine things, we have COINTELPRO.

Many of their methods look rather childish to modern eye, but they worked at the time.

https://twitter.com/RobertSkvarla/status/1448816158807838720

https://twitter.com/RobertSkvarla/status/1567226620687122435

https://twitter.com/TrueAnonPod/status/1588173962768285697

What happened since the sixties, since three letter agencies promised to be good guys and do not do bad things any more?

Few "credible" sources, but we saw hard to explain rise of causes that could appeal only to extreme minority to worldwide acceptance

https://archive.ph/XH5v5

and even clearly mentally unstable individuals with no achievements and no distinction at all thrust to worldwide "stardom" overnight

https://www.theartofannihilation.com/the-manufacturing-of-greta-thunberg-for-consent-the-political-economy-of-the-non-profit-industrial-complex/

When we burrow into these rabbit holes we find nothing spontaneous. Do they end at big business both profit and "nonprofit", or do they lead further?

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