I was listening to an interview on protests in Georgia (the country) at the end of April.
This article skips over the full weight of this seemingly innocuous (heck, even seemingly valuable!) disclosure law for organizations with 20%+ foreign funding, but the key is that Russia in 2012 used a similar law as a wedge to disrupt civil society.
So locals know it's a dogwhistle. It invites *more*, not less sowing of disruption in favour of foreign interests.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/17/georgia-russia-how-dream-of-freedom-unravelled-foreign-agents-law
Something Adam Curtis described in one of his docs has stuck with me for years:
One way Putin's Russia solidified was through investment in political action groups across the spectrum. The key was to discourage citizens from feeling they could trust any initiative for change to be genuine. That's how you keep people in line: Believe me! Everyone else is lying to you!
It's been a good tactic for many operators (including Russia with other countries!) ever since. And we just aren't ready for it.
@MLClark Adam Cutis documentaries are brilliant
Bitter Lake · Pandora's Box · Modern Times · Inside Story · The Century of the Self and HyperNormalisation to name a few
The series Russia 1985-1999: TraumaZone is also awesome six 1hr episodes
Russia 1985-1999: TraumaZone is SO GOOD.
It also affirmed the feeling captured in Svetlana Alexievich's Secondhand Time (2013), if you've ever come across her recording of oral histories. She covers the disorientation of the 90s vividly, in a way that also acutely highlights how the era shaped the cultural consciousness that would come next.
Friend of mine was talking about Tartaria, and how it's weirder than flat earth. He said it feels like there's a conspiracy to spread conspiracies...and I'm like, oh, that's because there IS.
Read about it shortly after Jade Helm. That Russia was paying talk radio folks to boost conspiracies with the intent of undermining our sense of reality and exhausting people trying to disprove these things.
Now, all they have to do is boost things online.
@tyghebright @ecksmc @CanisPundit
Yes! Exactly.
There are four dangerous mentalities with which to engage with intel in this climate:
1) all is psyops and can't be trusted;
2) everything I don't agree with is psyops;
3) everything I agree with can't be psyops; and
4) nothing is psyops - that's just what "they" want you to believe.
We all fall prey to one or more of these from time to time - such is the nature of our infowar economy - but the key is getting better at recognizing when we do.
@ecksmc @tyghebright @CanisPundit
OMFG TOO GOOD. 😂
@MLClark I haven't heard of that I'll certainly check it out though 👍
I really liked Bitter Lake, footage of the west’s 13 year engagement in Afghanistan was interesting and not met well by loadsa people/critics in UK, and HyperNormalisation, another goof one IMO love the "acid" Curtis gives in his docs, all of Curtis docs are worthy of a watch
Thanks for the tip deffo look at that
@MLClark *acid affect* lol obvs he doesn't give "acid" 😂😂
As another Curtis fan, I had a sneaking suspicion Alexievich might be right up your alley. She also wrote Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War, which is another powerful emotional history of the era.
I feel like she and Curtis are aesthetic kin, even if they're working in different media.
@MLClark zinky boys added to list 👍
Its always good when you stubble onto someone who's an aesthetic-kin-like to someone you like - ty
@MLClark For centuries, Russian culture has been to value collective security over individual liberties. They don't have the tradition of liberalism that we have in the west. Change has always been scary for them, even if the status quo is miserable.
I can't remember the specific doc, but in one a Russian woman is interviewed in the 90s, and asked what she thinks about her future. I can't remember if it was in general or where she saw herself in a few years, but she radiated annoyance with the very query. Who could think about "the future"? What a question. There was only survival in the moment. It was an arrogance and an insult to talk of the future with people living as she was. The world looks very, very different to some.
@MLClark I had a one-year Russian history course in college. They wanted to get across to us the point that collective security has always been prized in Russia. The few attempts at Western liberalism have been fleeting and unsuccessful.
If we don't make sure the orange menace is overwhelmingly defeated in November, our individual liberties will go the way of the dodo.
Then again, what *are* we ready for? 🙃
Good morning and good brew to you! ☕️