[sersi]

> This has been going on for years; the right simply refuses to countenance the possibility of legitimate organic opposition, while also being chronically unable to provide any evidence for their claims.

That strategy is also typical of China. Whenever there's a protest (for example the HK protests), it's always financed by western interests. Even volunteers organically organising themselves to help victims of the Tai Po fire were deemed to be western interests trying to discredit China. It's a surprisingly effective tactic.

I just always wonder how we have so many people eating this up when the strategy is so blindingly obvious.

[throwaway17_17]

I can’t help but be a little depressed by this realization. But to take it a step further, while I think there are some people who are genuinely buying this propaganda, I expect that a chunk of the propaganda aligned side also don’t think there is any point correcting the misleading statements. They benefit from the overall control of their ‘side’ and so just go right along sliding toward the fanatical fringe extreme of their side. On the other ‘side’, many people seem to have decided there is no use attempting to counter message after seeing the failure to move any extremists from their positions (and a failure to get even a milk toast correction from the non fanatics who are aligned). I think that the end result of this pattern is a gradually accelerating move towards the far ends, leaving no one to have any reasonable discourse in the center.

I’m not saying I support the center positions, nor that I don’t support what is often called an extreme position, just that this seems to be a watershed moment globally.

[notarobot123]

Polarization leaves very little room for reasonable discourse at the poles too. Pure tribalism doesn't care about reason unless that reason is in service of the identity and ideology of the tribe.

What if political discourse was focused on policy not identity and couched in terms of mutual interest instead of party affiliation? There would still be tensions, trade-offs, conflicts and political strategy at play but the discourse would be infinitely more reasonable.

I think this is what we mean when we talk about "center positions": a "value-based realism" that recognizes that society is nothing but the mutual alignment of values and interests. I don't understand why "common sense" has become so unpopular.

[M95D]

> I don't understand why "common sense" has become so unpopular.

IMHO, that's exactly it. You named it. Common sense is actually missing from more and more people. Why that is? I don't know - lack of basic common sense education, family, primary school, too much facebook, tiktok, common sense defined by YT shorts?

It's going to get far worse once the AI generation grows up.

[guerrilla]

> I just always wonder how we have so many people eating this up when the strategy is so blindingly obvious

It shouldn't be surprising considering how naive people are in general. People actually believe we live in democracies despite a century of evidence to the contrary. Propaganda and indoctrination are highly effective, and why wouldn't they be? I think it's the same reason we end up with so many unhinged people believing in reptilian conspiracy theories ir whatever: the media is always lying to them on a daily basis, so they can't trust it and without educations of their own have no way to distinguish truth from falsity anymore... why not just go with what sounds good or feels right. What other option do they have? Buy in, tune out or be lost. Those are the choices for 99% of people alive. Also, who has the energy anyway? Few are as privledged with time and energy as we are.

[temp8830]

Thing is, someone is paying all these bills. Yes really. Trump gutting USAID funding brought a lot of this out in the open: many organizations that claimed to be independent turned out to be mouthpieces of the US government and closed down as soon as the funding dried up.

[jonway]

Can you please tell me which organizations are just mouthpieces because they closed down due to lack of funding vs just closed due to lack of funding?

It makes perfect sense that when an organization loses funding it ceases operations, why is this now evidence of cointelpro?

[caminante]

I don't understand how you're aware of terms like COINTELPRO, yet are dismissive that black box slush funds like USAID weren't facilitating US soft power.

Heard of ZunZuneo, National Endowment for Democracy, Reporters Without Borders? The DOGE campaign put a spotlight on the ulterior motives of these "independent" USAID funded initiatives.

[jonway]

I guess so, it’s certainly no secret that US soft power has been a HUGE part of foreign policy, but I do t really see the connection between cointelpro( which had a lot of moving parts, like infiltration of news rooms in the USA and following around black student on college campuses for example) and this soft power.

American soft power is good. It means we don’t need to use direct action aka bombs and missiles.

I just reject your claims on this. US soft power is, for the United States, good and desirable.

[caminante]

> I just reject your claims on this. US soft power is, for the United States, good and desirable.

Not sure where this is coming from.