it’s like you believe you can tariff them expecting they won’t do the same. Why do you believe the rest of the world is not going to retaliate and why do you believe America can prosper without the rest of the world?
What’s the point of having a military alliance with countries you puts tariffs on? That’s unfriendly to say the least.
I’m super confused by what chain of reasoning would lead you to say this. First, it doesn’t matter at all that they’re not foreign states, they still have interests directly opposed to the vast majority of Americans. Second, we’re talking about whether the American government has the ability to influence Americans’ media diet in a way comparable to what Russia does, so the point that they’re “not foreign governments” is doubly confusing.
Your argument is that Russian propaganda is effective because they’re able to censor platforms with conflicting views, but they aren’t able to control what media Americans have access to, meaning that your position makes absolutely zero sense.
Also, I’m not talking about the US government using propaganda to influence Russian citizens, I’m talking about the US government using propaganda to influence US citizens. Which seems to be a fully alien concept to you. But US citizens have access to the same set of media that could be used to host either Russian or American propaganda, it’s an even playing field. Except the US has more money and a major home field advantage, so why would Russian propaganda be so much more effective? It’s nonsense, and there are much simpler, more logical explanations.
I see, we’re talking past eachother because you fail to follow the topic. As a reminder, the topic was USA/Russia influencing eachothers population. That should help you finally understand why it works better in one direction and not the other, and why internal bad actors aren’t relevant to the conversation.
No, that wasn’t the topic at all. How does America influencing Russia’s population relate to anything we were talking about at all?
That was the topic, you’re the one who started mixing in state actors like Musk and Zuckerberg after implying that Western propaganda directed at Russia should be just as effective as theirs towards us. Go and improve your reading comprehension and then read everything again.
I never said that. Please cite the line where you think I did.
The implication being doing the same to their country, obviously.
Why would that be the implication? There’s nothing in that statement that suggests it would be the case, calling it “obvious” doesn’t make it so.
The equivalent action of Russia interfering with the West’s population is obviously the West interfering with the Russian population. If you want to say you were implying Western interference in its own population, sure, then you could’ve made that clearer. Nothing changes though because we still don’t control information or punish opposing views internally as they do, obviously.
But feel free to send as much evidence of Western bot farms as I can easily send of Russian ones.
But the group of people we were talking about about being influenced was Americans, so it would be fairly natural to assume that I was talking about them influencing our own population, or that I was leaving it ambiguous. If you wanted to jump to the conclusion otherwise, you should’ve clarified.
I have no idea why were’re limiting “propaganda” to “bot farms” which aren’t a particularly effective form of it. Every US media outlet has a vested interest in falling in line behind what the president wants because otherwise they could be refused access to things like press briefings, something Trump is especially blatant about. The US media was fully supportive of the Iraq war and published countless lies promoting it, the NYT made up a story about “mass rapes” claimed to be conducted by Palestinians to justify the government’s support for the war, going back further, into periods where we have access to declassified stuff, the US government literally had a mind control program called MK Ultra specifically about trying to brainwash people.
Of course, it has also conducted misinformation campaigns in other countries. Recently, the US government was spreading COVID/vaccine disinformation in the Philippines. During the Iranian coup that ousted democratic leader Mohammad Mossadegh in favor of a right-wing dictator, the CIA admitted that it had taken control of virtually every newspaper and media outlet in the country, used to manufacture discontent. If they can stuff like overseas, then they can do it at home too.
Furthermore, these intelligence agencies have interests that are more directly contrary to the American people than the Russian government does. They represent the interests of the rich, and the US rich are the most direct and primary enemy of the US poor. And yet, I never hear any libs express even the slightest ounce of concern that the most well funded intelligence network in the world, with an atrocious historical record showing that they have both the means and motive to suppress democracy, might be something to be concerned about. We should only worry about a less well-funded, less connected intelligence community with less directly opposed interests, because, what? They’re foreigners?