Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

Re:Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament by mirimir on Tuesday January 15, 2019 @11:41PM (#18918281)

In seeking to destabilize opponents, a key strategy is sowing domestic discontent. Everyone does it, to the best of their abilities. And in particular, it was a key part of the Cold War.

So the US managed to destabilize the Soviet Union. Threats from NATO and strategic nuclear weapons forced the Soviets to spend so much on defense that the civilian economy was destroyed. And yes, corruption and incompetence also played a huge role. Add saturation with VoA messages about the US consumer economy, and the Soviet Union collapsed. And more recently, they messed with Georgia, and finally engineered Ukraine independence. Not to mention Syria.

Russia has also sought to destabilize Western Europe and the US. For a long time, it was mainly messages about the communist paradise. And in the 60s, promoting protest against the Vietnam war, and pushing isolationism.

But then, in the late 80s, the message shifted to distrusting government, conspiracy theories, etc. I mean, look at RT! And more recently, basically the alt-right, with its overt racist overtones.

I don't know the UK situation well, but it's pretty clear that Russia promoted Brexit to destabilize the EU, and so NATO.

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Re:Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament by roenxi on Wednesday January 16, 2019 @06:54AM (#18920043)

What if, instead of foreign influences, you just swap in poor economic management? I mean, China has moved from a position considerably weaker than Russia in its heyday to one that is probably stronger. So whatever mischief you think the US tried, obviously the Chinese have figured out how to deal with it. It seems to have involved a dose of freeish-markets.

> And in the 60s, promoting protest against the Vietnam war

This really takes the biscuit. Opposition to war is not evidence of a Russian plot, it is evidence of common sense. Without even considering if the Vietnam war made a lick of sense, any healthy democracy should at a minimum have some protests when it engages in a war of aggression.

> But then, in the late 80s, the message shifted to distrusting government, conspiracy theories, etc.

I don't think this affects your main point, but irony here is that "Russian Influence" is clearly a conspiracy theory. It might turn out true, as a number of conspiracy theories do, but still. Maybe the Russians have got to you :P

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Re:Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament by mirimir on Wednesday January 16, 2019 @09:40PM (#18927832)

Re the Vietman War, of course opposition made perfect sense. It was a stupid, misguided adventure. It was driven by the "zero tolerance" standard for accepting communist development, even when in response to legitimate grievances. For Vietnam, that was long-term colonialist repression by the French.

So I'm not arguing that the Soviets created the antiwar opposition. But they clearly helped it develop. As I understand it, the main actors were domestic US communists, who were encouraged to join the movement, help train and organize, and so on. I was there, and I was part of it.

About Russian-influence conspiracy theory, have you actually watched RT very much? They've been trolling disgruntled Americans for almost 15 years. As subversive as VoA ever was, they've been total straight shooters compared with RT.

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