France uncovers a vast Russian disinformation campaign in Europe::undefined
Disinformation or more accurately, lying, is Russian doctrine. Everything that they say seems to be a lie and designed to delay appropriate action.
lying, is Russian doctrine
Its true. The entire Russian language is just a series of elaborate lies with grammar and syntax. It is impossible to say three consecutive true statements in a Slavic tongue.
I think every literate soul in Afghanistan would agree that this isn’t really limited to Russia.
All sides are doing it in every war, be wary what you trust
Of course. That’s been true since the dawn of humanity.
Russia has a certain flavor of lying that I don’t see elsewhere. They make claims that are so utterly ridiculous that everyone knows it is complete bullshit. It’s like some weird gaslighting / dominance thing. Lavrov and Putin are pros at this.
Purely by coincidence, you see a similar technique employed by one of the two major US presidential candidates. Only his approach is to repeat the ridiculous lie enough times that some people believe it.
Hitler described “große Lüge” in Mein Kampf in 1925.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie
Putin and Trump are both of course great admirers of this technique.
I like the bluntness of the name. BIG LIE
at this point I’m not even sure you’d have to try to disguise it. I think that Trump could admit that the whole stolen election thing was a lie and that people have ingrained it so deeply into who they feel themselves to be that they’d still believe it and still have the same sense of moral outrage that the election was “stolen”.
Yeah, they would go down fighting, saying someone “got to” Trump and threatened him into saying it was a lie
Russia has a certain flavor of lying that I don’t see elsewhere. They make claims that are so utterly ridiculous that everyone knows it is complete bullshit. It’s like some weird gaslighting / dominance thing.
There is one other place I do see this strategy replicated, which is from the IDF.
Sure, but for Russia it’s the actual doctrine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_military_deception
How is it worse than the US military deception doctrine?
Now do the CIA
Uncovering these rings, publicizing them, and shutting them down needs to be a top priority. I think a lot, if not most, of the bad decisions made by voters stem from these kind of bad actors. We’ve let it go on for long enough.
Not only voters, also politicians. Everyone can be influenced, even those in power :)
You’d have thought publicising them would involve not only saying they exist, but also educating people about what the misinformation is. As far as I can tell from a quick scan, the article doesn’t talk about the message the proganda is pushing. I’m just as clueless as before about what I should believe and what I shouldn’t.
Are the public just meant to know when they’re being lied to?
Wait?!! RUSSIA?!?!?
Misinformation campaign?!?!
Surely some mistake?!?!
That would be SO unlike them!!!
DISinformation. The difference is that misinformation might or might not be intentional, whereas disinformation is organised intentional misinformation with specific goals in mind.
Not that I blame you for getting it wrong, mind you, since most media outlets consistently do.
Apologies. Late night sloppiness. I support your correction. After I posted it I thought the same thing but couldn’t be arsed changing it.
No worries, I’ve made worse late night sloppiness mistakes myself. Just last night, I accidentally called Janet Yellen Secretary of State in stead of Secretary of the Treasury.
To make matters worse, I actually looked up whether Yo Yo Ma is a cellist or violinist for the same comment, but neglected to double check Yellen’s title while I was on Wikipedia anyway 😄
Rightwing idiots are already drooling to swallow up everything they say.
Russian propaganda is big on the left, too.
I’m expecting a really nasty autumn this year. A big chunk of Russia’s campaign against Europe is held up by Ukraine and they badly need a stooge US president again.
Musk also opened Twitter’s doors wide for state-sponsored manipulation and agitation campaigns. All protections are offline and the teams are gone, under the guise of free speech.
I too also uncovered this, but it was quite some time ago now
The thing is that their uncovered the method, whisch should help a bit in mitigating the damage
Without paywall. (Initially posted the same link, but then I noticed their comment. Leaving mine up since theirs doesn’t explicitly say what the link is)
Honestly Portal Kombat is a great name.
It’s a great pun, but I hate how good an English pun it is, especially for the operation. It suggests that these guys aren’t hacks, and have enough language and culture skills to blend in. The recent “warm water ports” gaffe comes to mind.
Also, intelligence agencies don’t use cute code names for things like this since it makes it easier to work out the operation scope or intent. To me, this also says that the operation is “at arm’s length” and the name was coined by non-government folks. Think: information age mercenaries.
I was gonna say “I love the name they gave it”
FIGHT!
finally?!
These dudes look like we’ve just walked in on them kissing
finally?!
Well yes and obviously. Russia is a bad actor and obviously wants to sow division & doubt over the war in Ukraine, to sow division in general, and to slander political enemies. They have a special interest in interfering with US and European politics.
They’re not the only bad actor of course. If you see memes & misinfo trend about immigration, Ukraine, drugs, vaccines, climate change, abortion, gas & oil, politics, NATO, EVs, MAGA, Palestine / Israel, dissidents etc. then invariably there is a bad actor driving that crap. They’ll use their clusters of bots on Twitter to amplify the info until it gets picked up by useful idiots looking to retweet around.
Anyone else getting tired of Russia’s bullshit?
Europe certainly is. I should note that while most of their campaigns happen over on Twitter & Facebook that if federated social media ever took off in a big way it would happen there too and it might actually be harder to control if it did.
It sure would be nice if NATO and the EU would just steamroll them back into place.
Wait until springtime though.
tired of Russia’s BS
I think Ukraine is.
And most of western Europe.
And US.
And…
If you’re in a country that shares a border with Russia, or are Canadian or British and understand the end goal of this, you’ve been sick of it for a while.
Out of curiosity can anyone point out to me some of this russian disinformation? There’s so much western propaganda around that i really can’t find any
Right now, France is gripped by a large labor revolt in the agricultural sector being driven by the state’s effort to increase agricultural imports from North Africa and Eastern Europe while reducing state price-supports for down-year crops. This threatens to lead to large scale real estate consolidation and foreign real estate purchase. Nationalists, agricultural owner-operators, and farmers exposed to rising interest rates (basically all of them) don’t like this very much.
However, claiming the heartland farmers of rural France are angry at Macron for selling out the agg sector to financial interests in Brussels and Zurich isn’t going to be too popular as we approach the 2024 EU Parliamentary elections. So we’re getting an earful about how all these local yokels are hoodwinked by anti-EU Russian Propaganda.
If you’re not in favor of truckloads of exported Ukranian agricultural salvage ending up competing with fresh French produce on store shelves, then you’re a secret spy for Putin and a traitor.
A perfect demonstration of how Russian indoctrination works right here.
Original reporting: A major disinfo attack against Europe being prepared by Russia is uncovered through diligent investigation and published and reported on.
The response:
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- divert to farmer’s dissatisfaction with several policies
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- cast disinfo reports as underhanded attempts (by politician Russia wants gone) to arrogantly brush off farmer’s concerns (which the report never even related to)
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- claim Macron is selling out to EU (here, have a serving of anti-EU sentiment, too)
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- vaccinate reader against the disinfo being countered (“everyone who tells you otherwise belittles you and hates you, join us in our righteous anger”)
Emotional framing:
Nationalists, agricultural owner-operators, and farmers exposed to rising interest rates
“truckloads of exported Ukranian agricultural salvage” vs. “fresh French produce”
we’re getting an earful about how all these local yokels are hoodwinked by anti-EU Russian Propaganda
Macron for selling out the agg sector to financial interests in Brussels
“If you’re not in favor of (insert supposed evil acts described in lurid way), then you’re a secret spy for Putin and a traitor.”
Result: The reader comes out the other end an angry person, outraged about the plight of farmers, outraged again at disinfo reports supposedly serving to silence them, outraged once more at a France politician selling them out to the EU, EU painted as high-and-mighty villain, automatic anger against anyone who tells them a different viewpoint ready to trigger.
A major disinfo attack
The question was “What disinformation is being circulated?”
And the answer is “By answering this you are doing Russian propaganda”
Result: The reader comes out the other end an angry person
Isn’t that the same result as the original “Russia is doing an evil propaganda” headline?
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Ya I gotchu, fam. https://www.washingtonblade.com/content/files/2017/11/Bernie_Sanders_in_speedo_460x470_courtesy_House_Intelligence_Committee.jpg
They moved mountains with this one.
