[tristor]

I think a critical examination of the political sphere would show you that the far left has been using propaganda tactics for a very long time. It might even be most accurate to say that throughout recent human history that most of our current propaganda tactics were first discovered or invented by the far left.

[travmatt]

Could you give me a rundown on American far left propaganda tactics you think I’m not aware of? Could you give me a rundown on why you believe the far left invented modern propaganda tactics?

As far as I can tell, most modern propaganda tactics originate or start with Russia’s new nonlinear warfare campaigns (gerasimov doctrine), and have been used heavily by Putin in Ukraine and more recently across Europe. I have a hard time seeing him as a far left figure, for obvious reasons.

[tristor]

I don't think that a comment on Hacker News is the right place for me to write an expository essay, but I was making reference to a few things in particular. Before I briefly respond I should point out that I don't necessarily think propaganda is inherently bad, it's just a fact of democracy and the need to influence large groups of people to a particular viewpoint. There's a huge negative connotation in the term, but propaganda in a lot of ways is no different socially than advertising.

1. Both the far right and the far left are utilizing memes and "fake news" on social media in order to influence opinion through directed propaganda. This is a relatively new development, because social media is a relatively new development. Interestingly, politicians on the left and similar activist groups have been far more effective and successful in this regard, partly because they're often the first to make use of new platforms and they tend to be managed and composed of younger audiences which innately are more familiar with the social media territory including the uses of meming. If you look back to the early 2000s you'll see that social media was an important gathering place for activists and organizers on the left preparing for the push after the 2nd term of Bush and how effective social media was in helping the election of Obama. Not all of this was strictly propaganda, but a lot of it was.

2. Most of the basic techniques of manufacturing and spreading propaganda were created far before the Internet was even a concept. Many of them were explicitly created and used by the Left as a method to organize people across wide geographic areas to do coordinated activities. This is most strongly associated with the way that Marxist rebellions occurred in many parts of the world in the early parts of the 20th century. This later morphed under these Leftist government to adopt some of the propaganda techniques developed during WWII by both sides of the conflict along with other new techniques in order to effectively control the populace after they seized power. Probably the primary outcome of this, and a doctrine which was extensively used by the USSR in particular, was the creation of the model for agitprop. Agitprop continues to be created to this day and is an effective method of inculcating ideas into a populace and shifting the Overton window. It's used by Leftists in Hollywood to help influence the viewpoint of Americans and those abroad, and in some cases is used through the US's worldwide cultural influence to spread the ideas of democracy itself. I reiterate that propaganda isn't necessarily inherently bad.

3. The Gerasimov Doctrine doesn't exist. Not only that, if it /did/ exist, the outcome of it is that it makes the US look weak and particularly makes Trump/Republicans look weak on the international stage. While there is strong evidence that the Russian government influenced the outcome of the 2016 election in the US, this does not in and of itself imply that this is "right-wing propaganda" or that it's necessarily a tool of the Right. The person who originally coined the term "Gerasimov Doctrine" has written an editorial on this topic [1]

[1]: http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/05/im-sorry-for-creating-th...

[travmatt]

Thank you for the thorough reply, and for arguing in good faith.

I disagree with (1): I don’t see this as a ‘both sides’ issues, and I don’t believe that the left, as a whole, has been as amenable to inflammatory propaganda as the right has been. As my prime example, I’d note the Macedonian fake news phenomenon that occurred right around the election. As the creators themselves have stated, those articles targeted right wing voters because those were the people who were interested in reading, spreading , and talking about the propaganda they were spreading. Since these creators were solely interested in financial profit, it stands to reason that they would have preferred to make money appealing to left wing audiences as much as they did right wing ones. There was no explosion in fake news from these sources to the left because there was no demand. As my secondary examples, I’d maintain that most left wing media outlets (tyt, mother jones) have much higher journalistic standards than their counterparts Breitbart and infowars - and the equally opportunistic propagandadists as Russia Today. If you’d like to point me towards the cases you believe the left has pushed fake news I’d be interested in learning more.

2) that’s why I specified ‘modern’ propaganda- things like troll farms, planting anti immigrant stories (faking rapes, murders, massacres) along with investment into finer targeting mechanisms (the hacking of state voter rolls and CA data to be used for micro-targeting). I should note that I brought up the election collusion because it is propbabaly the place the left could be most prone towards conspiratorial fantasies, and the first place you’d find such ideas.

3) I liked the piece but I thinks it’s a stretch to try and use it to refute my points. We could call them active measures, political warfare, nonlinear or hybrid warfare, but the point still exists that Russia is pioneering new weapons to attack western and western leaning democracies. And you’re saying if those measures did exist the result would be making the us look weak on the international stage - isn’t that ‘exactly’ the point of them? I assume when Russia launched a chemical weapons attack in the UK the purpose was exactly the same - to underscore British weakness and estrangement from her allies.