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Is Anything Still True? On the Internet, No One Knows Anymore (www.wsj.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Is Anything Still True? On the Internet, No One Knows Anymore::New tools can create fake videos and clone the voices of those closest to us. ‘This is how authoritarianism arises.’

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false

-Former CIA Director William J. Casey

This has always been the goal of the (dis)information agencies.

They have actually succeeded with a large portion of the American public who, instead of turning to critical thinking and critical reading skills, have just decided to throw the baby out with the bathwater and instead trust random asshats on the internet.

Like, I get it, you can't trust everything you read from mainstream media, who have billionaire owners who make sure their personal biases show in news coverage and ideas they don't like are downplayed. That doesn't mean the most effective solution is to stop listening to them entirely and start listening to entirely random sources with no background. However, that's the solution many, many Americans have chosen to go with, and that's effectively what the CIA has been hoping for. They want to be the final arbiters of what is considered "truth" because they don't want people questioning what they do.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Interestingly the USSR disinformation worked exactly the same way.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.

-From an OSS psychological profile of Adolf Hitler

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.

-Joeseph Goebbels

Naturally the common people don't want war . . . but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or parliament or a communist dictatorship. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.

-Hermann Goering

Sounds like Goering was right, then. It seems to be a hallmark of modern disinformation campaigns no matter where they happen: make the public not know who to trust so you can swoop in and be all "you can trust us."

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

They lost the war but all the sides proceeded to learn from them...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

And they were so right, too. The truth is the enemy of the state. Part of the way the allies won was by the US/UK working together to break German encryption, and then basically lying by omission to the world by never telling anyone about it until about 75 years or so after the war.