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France uncovers a vast Russian disinformation campaign in Europe::undefined
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Disinformation or more accurately, lying, is Russian doctrine. Everything that they say seems to be a lie and designed to delay appropriate action.
All sides are doing it in every war, be wary what you trust
Of course. That’s been true since the dawn of humanity.
Russia has a certain flavor of lying that I don’t see elsewhere. They make claims that are so utterly ridiculous that everyone knows it is complete bullshit. It’s like some weird gaslighting / dominance thing. Lavrov and Putin are pros at this.
Purely by coincidence, you see a similar technique employed by one of the two major US presidential candidates. Only his approach is to repeat the ridiculous lie enough times that some people believe it.
Hitler described “große Lüge” in Mein Kampf in 1925.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie
Putin and Trump are both of course great admirers of this technique.
I like the bluntness of the name. BIG LIE
at this point I’m not even sure you’d have to try to disguise it. I think that Trump could admit that the whole stolen election thing was a lie and that people have ingrained it so deeply into who they feel themselves to be that they’d still believe it and still have the same sense of moral outrage that the election was “stolen”.
Yeah, they would go down fighting, saying someone “got to” Trump and threatened him into saying it was a lie
And I have already seen some people advocating for Putin say that if you compare Putin with Hitler you’ve lost.
What this also implies is that the more one’s actions resemble actions of Hitler the easier it would be to win over opponents in discussion because they will inevitably come up with this comparison
Russia has a certain flavor of lying that I don’t see elsewhere. They make claims that are so utterly ridiculous that everyone knows it is complete bullshit. It’s like some weird gaslighting / dominance thing.
There is one other place I do see this strategy replicated, which is from the IDF.
Turkey and Azerbaijan
China
half the African continent
…
seems to not be some innovation limited to specific countries really.
Sure, but for Russia it’s the actual doctrine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_military_deception
Now do the CIA
How is it worse than, for example, the US military deception doctrine? Would, say, Romania, be somehow above using military deception? What about NATO deception doctrine?
How about instead of linking to documents you do the analysis yourself.
But to spare you the burden: Remember when Bush came clean and said that all those weapons of mass destruction in Iraq were a lie? And how that didn’t go down well with the west, and how many western countries already called bullshit before the US even invaded? That kind of stuff is doctrine in Russia, not just in the military but also when it comes to securing regime power internally. It’s how Putin won his first election, by blowing up apartment buildings and blaming it on Chechens. Another important thing is to tell so many lies and contradictory things that the very notion of truth gets demolished, that people throw up their hands and say “I’d rather be apolitical than try to figure out what’s what”.
Western military deception OTOH is more of the “blink right, turn left” kind, it’s about anticipating the opponent’s analysis of the situation and exploiting that, either by feint or because they have a blind spot. And even then you want to be careful because damaging trust is often worse than taking a hit you could’ve avoided with deception.
Another important thing is to tell so many lies and contradictory things that the very notion of truth gets demolished, that people throw up their hands and say “I’d rather be apolitical than try to figure out what’s what”.
Yes, that is true, can confirm.
lying, is Russian doctrine
Its true. The entire Russian language is just a series of elaborate lies with grammar and syntax. It is impossible to say three consecutive true statements in a Slavic tongue.
That sounds more racist than true
I think they are joking.
That said, правда (“truth” as something you believe to be true) and истина (“truth” as objective truth) are different words in Russian, but not having that distinction in a language doesn’t prevent its speakers from making it.
In English, you’d just describe that as “objective” and “subjective”. This isn’t in any way uniquely Russian. But its nice to pretend it is, because it plays well with the process of demonization.
True versus verified, perhaps
I can do that in Russian too. I can’t do the former in English.
There are plenty of things possible in one language and not (yet\anymore) in another. I don’t see what does this have to do with any kind of demonization. Maybe for people knowing only one language, which, yes, is more common for English speakers than I’d like to think.
I suppose a speaker of Finnish would have something to enlighten us about some languages being in some regards inferior to his own, too. Or a speaker of Icelandic. Or maybe even Persian. There are languages having dozens of words to distinguish shades\textures of snow or sand, or not having future tense.
There are plenty of things possible in one language and not (yet\anymore) in another. I don’t see what does this have to do with any kind of demonization.
Pick a differential, declare that it is a unique good/bad indicator, and then work it into your propaganda. “In Chinese, the word for tragedy is the same as the word for opportunity” to imply Asian businessmen are naturally predatory. The “red heads have no souls” meme, used to denigrate the Irish. The entire field of Phrenology is based on picking differentials and trying to explain your way backwards into why it proves some racist theory.
Its a boilerplate technique for alienating, mystifying, and ultimately demonizing an outside group.,
This whole chain of thought may make sense to you if you don’t speak any other languages that English.
It just never in the world would weigh more for me than the joy of noticing unique traits of any particular language\dialect I’ve been lucky to learn something about.
And as a Russian native speaker, I’ve given you an example which is factual in the very first my comment in this thread. What are you going to do, ignore the fact?
Or maybe it’s just easier to find something to condemn in what others say when you yourself have nothing to say on subject because of being simply ignorant about other languages.
I think every literate soul in Afghanistan would agree that this isn’t really limited to Russia.
Uncovering these rings, publicizing them, and shutting them down needs to be a top priority. I think a lot, if not most, of the bad decisions made by voters stem from these kind of bad actors. We’ve let it go on for long enough.
Not only voters, also politicians. Everyone can be influenced, even those in power :)
Wait?!! RUSSIA?!?!?
Misinformation campaign?!?!
Surely some mistake?!?!
That would be SO unlike them!!!
DISinformation. The difference is that misinformation might or might not be intentional, whereas disinformation is organised intentional misinformation with specific goals in mind.
Not that I blame you for getting it wrong, mind you, since most media outlets consistently do.
Apologies. Late night sloppiness. I support your correction. After I posted it I thought the same thing but couldn’t be arsed changing it.
No worries, I’ve made worse late night sloppiness mistakes myself. Just last night, I accidentally called Janet Yellen Secretary of State in stead of Secretary of the Treasury.
To make matters worse, I actually looked up whether Yo Yo Ma is a cellist or violinist for the same comment, but neglected to double check Yellen’s title while I was on Wikipedia anyway 😄
Respect for Yo Yo Ma the cello player 😀
7-Year-Old Cellist Prodigy Yo-Yo Ma’s Debut Performance for President JFK | The Kennedy Center
Just to be clear, is this person different than ‘Yo Mamma’?
I mean… has anyone ever seen them in the same room together?
When you think about scammers that send fishing emails and stuff, it’s similar. Should we be surprised when we click on sketchy links and get scammed? No. Should we stay on top of reporting the issue and ensuring that more people aren’t scammed? Yes.
I’m expecting a really nasty autumn this year. A big chunk of Russia’s campaign against Europe is held up by Ukraine and they badly need a stooge US president again.
Musk also opened Twitter’s doors wide for state-sponsored manipulation and agitation campaigns. All protections are offline and the teams are gone, under the guise of free speech.
To add: Twitter under Musk also complies with all government censorship requests since Musk took over. News on Twitter has been hugely influential in the past in protests in authoritarian states, but that’s clearly a thing of the past now.
Full compliance with government censorship was 83% in may last year, up from the 50% it was before Musk.
And partial + full compliance was at 98.8%, up from 92% before Musk. And the remaining 1.2% were not denied, just status unknown, so it’s basically 100%.
I wonder what the current numbers are and how the full/partial takedowns are geographically distributed. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if partial compliance was limited to some western countries and it’s full compliance everywhere else.
Elon Musk, the self declared “free speech absolutist”, what a shithead.
stooge president
Don’t worry, we’ll deliver that with a bow on. Or orange spray.
Anyone else getting tired of Russia’s bullshit?
If you’re in a country that shares a border with Russia, or are Canadian or British and understand the end goal of this, you’ve been sick of it for a while.
Europe certainly is. I should note that while most of their campaigns happen over on Twitter & Facebook that if federated social media ever took off in a big way it would happen there too and it might actually be harder to control if it did.
It sure would be nice if NATO and the EU would just steamroll them back into place.
Wait until springtime though.
tired of Russia’s BS
I think Ukraine is.
And most of western Europe.
And US.
And…
Well yes and obviously. Russia is a bad actor and obviously wants to sow division & doubt over the war in Ukraine, to sow division in general, and to slander political enemies. They have a special interest in interfering with US and European politics.
They’re not the only bad actor of course. If you see memes & misinfo trend about immigration, Ukraine, drugs, vaccines, climate change, abortion, gas & oil, politics, NATO, EVs, MAGA, Palestine / Israel, dissidents etc. then invariably there is a bad actor driving that crap. They’ll use their clusters of bots on Twitter to amplify the info until it gets picked up by useful idiots looking to retweet around.
Rightwing idiots are already drooling to swallow up everything they say.
Russian propaganda is big on the left, too.
Reason number %large_number% + 1 why support for Ukraine cannot falter. Russia cannot win its offensive there and continue to spread its poison across the world.
I too also uncovered this, but it was quite some time ago now
The thing is that their uncovered the method, whisch should help a bit in mitigating the damage
Without paywall. (Initially posted the same link, but then I noticed their comment. Leaving mine up since theirs doesn’t explicitly say what the link is)
Honestly Portal Kombat is a great name.
It’s a great pun, but I hate how good an English pun it is, especially for the operation. It suggests that these guys aren’t hacks, and have enough language and culture skills to blend in. The recent “warm water ports” gaffe comes to mind.
Also, intelligence agencies don’t use cute code names for things like this since it makes it easier to work out the operation scope or intent. To me, this also says that the operation is “at arm’s length” and the name was coined by non-government folks. Think: information age mercenaries.
intelligence agencies don’t use cute code names for things like this since it makes it easier to work out the operation scope or intent
It’s kind of amusing that during WWII Germany had a penchant for choosing meaningful code names for some of their secret programs, names that actually gave important information to the Allies. Knickebein and Wotan were noteworthy examples, names given to German electronic bomber navigation systems.
I was gonna say “I love the name they gave it”
FIGHT!
No shit .
Why even fund uncovering these. Just build your systems with this as a consideration. If it’s not Russia it will be someone else.
To prove that they’re real. Without proof it can be seen as a conspiracy
‘Just’
Just make sure all information is correct. How hard can it be?
Yeah I hear you
How do you defend against something without first uncovering it and seeing how it works?
Out of curiosity can anyone point out to me some of this russian disinformation? There’s so much western propaganda around that i really can’t find any
Right now, France is gripped by a large labor revolt in the agricultural sector being driven by the state’s effort to increase agricultural imports from North Africa and Eastern Europe while reducing state price-supports for down-year crops. This threatens to lead to large scale real estate consolidation and foreign real estate purchase. Nationalists, agricultural owner-operators, and farmers exposed to rising interest rates (basically all of them) don’t like this very much.
However, claiming the heartland farmers of rural France are angry at Macron for selling out the agg sector to financial interests in Brussels and Zurich isn’t going to be too popular as we approach the 2024 EU Parliamentary elections. So we’re getting an earful about how all these local yokels are hoodwinked by anti-EU Russian Propaganda.
If you’re not in favor of truckloads of exported Ukranian agricultural salvage ending up competing with fresh French produce on store shelves, then you’re a secret spy for Putin and a traitor.
A perfect demonstration of how Russian indoctrination works right here.
Original reporting: A major disinfo attack against Europe being prepared by Russia is uncovered through diligent investigation and published and reported on.
The response:
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- divert to farmer’s dissatisfaction with several policies
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- cast disinfo reports as underhanded attempts (by politician Russia wants gone) to arrogantly brush off farmer’s concerns (which the report never even related to)
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- claim Macron is selling out to EU (here, have a serving of anti-EU sentiment, too)
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- vaccinate reader against the disinfo being countered (“everyone who tells you otherwise belittles you and hates you, join us in our righteous anger”)
Emotional framing:
Nationalists, agricultural owner-operators, and farmers exposed to rising interest rates
“truckloads of exported Ukranian agricultural salvage” vs. “fresh French produce”
we’re getting an earful about how all these local yokels are hoodwinked by anti-EU Russian Propaganda
Macron for selling out the agg sector to financial interests in Brussels
“If you’re not in favor of (insert supposed evil acts described in lurid way), then you’re a secret spy for Putin and a traitor.”
Result: The reader comes out the other end an angry person, outraged about the plight of farmers, outraged again at disinfo reports supposedly serving to silence them, outraged once more at a France politician selling them out to the EU, EU painted as high-and-mighty villain, automatic anger against anyone who tells them a different viewpoint ready to trigger.
A major disinfo attack
The question was “What disinformation is being circulated?”
And the answer is “By answering this you are doing Russian propaganda”
Result: The reader comes out the other end an angry person
Isn’t that the same result as the original “Russia is doing an evil propaganda” headline?
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Turn of FOX News. If you can stand it.
It doesn’t really air in Europe though.
What would you say is your version of a media company run by fascist Russian sympathizers used to destabilize populations where you’re from? You can just substitute that.
Russia Today comes to mind
Ya I gotchu, fam. https://www.washingtonblade.com/content/files/2017/11/Bernie_Sanders_in_speedo_460x470_courtesy_House_Intelligence_Committee.jpg
They moved mountains with this one.
Here’s a great book on the subject: https://www.amazon.com/Putins-Trolls-Frontlines-Russias-Information/dp/1632461293
Also in news tonight: Water, it is wet!
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