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It's a global far right power grab fueled by money from Russia using weaponized disinformation. It's been going on for decades at a smaller scale before Facebook, etc, even existed. It's also fueled by conservative dark money groups funded by conservative billionaires. You should read the book Dark Money, I highly recommend it.
Even the antivax stuff is from Russia and it way predates the big platforms. It was started in the crunchy mom communities on Livejournal, where they first experimented with seeing if westerners would glom on to weird mommy trends like not using shampoo, nursing your kids to ridiculous ages, "unassisted birth", which is where people deliver babies without any medical care at all, "unschooling", etc. That took off in a big way and then they began with the antivax stuff, and used Livejournal as a tool of Russian government propaganda.
Then they started funding white supremacist groups, and the groups like the yellow vests, Moms for Liberty, etc. Really recommend learning about dark money and Russian weaponized disinformation.
Western shitlibs try not to blame all their problems on foreigners challenge (impossible)
It's pretty convienient how all bad things stem from a single, external source, preventing the need for any sort of internal societal reckoning. How fortunate that we were born on the good guys' side and all we need to do is focus on our states' geopolitical enemies, and if they can be kept in check, it'll solve every one of our domestic issues, upto and including old wives tales.
False equivalence is part of the disinformation. The enemy of the perfect should not be the simply good
What?
I think they butchered the "don't let perfect be the enemy of good" quote (or maybe I am butchering it here lol)
I fucking hate that phrase. Those who say it have incredibly low standards and should be ignored.
I don't think I'm saying that at all, just that this is where it stems from and that Republicans and their supporters have glommed onto it. Obviously I'm saying it's multifaceted.
Do you have any sort of evidence that connects the Russian government to things like not using shampoo?
The best place to learn more about the early days of Russian weaponized disinformation on Livejournal is this podcast: https://soundcloud.com/replyall/100-friends-and-blasphemers
Re the shampoo and other crunchy shit, this is stuff my weaponized disinformation expert friend Brooke Binkowski and I have talked about extensively because we both used the site. Her professional opinion is that this was the early thought experiment stuff the Russians did to see what westerners would buy into, they dipped their toes into it with the crunchy mom stuff, and it really took off. This was later well documented. So some of this is just a professional's opinion, but if you were there and saw it, you'd know is all I can say. I realize this isn't the most satisfying answer, but see this article because Russian weaponized disinformation for vaccines is well documented.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45294192
OK, so if it's well documented, then where is the documentation?
I don't really want to listen to a 25 minute podcast and I read your BBC source and it only talked about vaccines, there wasn't a single word about things like shampoo.
I'd be curious to know exactly how deep this goes, since science skepticism and anti-intellectualism goes way back. Was Russia behind the controversy over evolution, going back to the Scopes trial? Were they behind the Satanic Panic? Maybe Russia funded Jack Chick to talk about how Dungeons and Dragons is teaching children to practice real magic. I know, let's go even further back, the Catholic Church only took issue with Galileo because Russia paid them to.
Or maybe, there's a long history of anti-science sentiment, particularly in the US, and Americans have autonomy and can use to believe stupid things and do so all the time and have always done so.
I stg, it's bad enough blaming Trump on Russia but this is seriously taking it to the next level. How did Russia even manage to acquire the power to influence American culture to such a degree? And if they can do that while having significantly less money and being significantly more distant, then surely our own intelligence agencies can do the same, right? Please help me make sense of this.
Ok, I don't want to argue, and I'm sorry I don't have more links. I really do recommend the podcast as it's excellent in general. I trust Brooke with my life and everything disinformation related and I believe her. I was on Livejournal in those days and I can say that scary things happened because of the crunchy mom shit that seemed to originate from there. I don't want to fight with you, and if you think differently that's fine, I'm not against changing my mind or anything. This is a pretty good study though on the phenomenon of Russian trolls as well on vaccine disinformation that does prove the point that they do this.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6137759/?ref=quillette.com
Regarding Russian funding these things, dark money is a powerful thing. Honestly it's so crazy to read about. The country being poor doesn't mean that Russian wealthy people don't fund disinformation. This is an article on Russian oligarchs and their dark money, about 1 trillion, hidden abroad.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-60608282
I hope you understand that you are off the deep end into conspiracy land to the same degree as Qanon types.