Why "borderline"? It _is_ misinformation written specifically to advance a narrative.

We will soon need new words for different flavors of misinformation, because the business model for generation of new flavors is proving extremely profitable, far beyond the dynamics of Soviet propaganda that only had a mere dysfunctional state as sponsor. PR agencies can (have already?) incorporate machine learning for real-time message adjustment based on social media tests and sentiment signals. Thanks Smith-Mundt Act! https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-cult-of-the-vaccine-neurot...

> As a student in the Soviet Union I noticed subscribers to what Russians called the sovok mindset talked in interminable strings of pogovorki, i.e goofball proverbs or aphorisms you’d heard a million times before (“He who takes no risk, drinks no champagne,” or “Work isn’t a wolf, it won’t run off into the woods,” etc). This was a learned defense mechanism, adopted by a people who’d found out the hard way that anyone caught not speaking nonstop nonsense could be suspected of harboring original thoughts. Voluble stupidity is a great disguise in a society where silence is suspect.

Never thought of it this way TBH. Proverbs are common in Russia, so it might have been Taibbi's cultural misunderstanding. He's usually pretty astute about things, and he has lived in Russia for a while (and at an interesting time, no less), so he knows the mores and you can trust most of his observations, just not this one.

That said, I can confirm that even in USSR people did very much harbor original thoughts even though quite obviously there was no free press and one could pay dearly for speaking their mind. You just had to be sure that you know everyone you're speaking to really, really well. The KGB had lots of "secret collaborators" embedded within the populace (much like the FBI in the US today), so if you're not careful with your jokes or thoughts, you could easily get 5 years in the labor camp. I predict that the United States will be like that within 10 years or less.

There's even a Soviet joke about this: a judge is heard laughing when exiting the court, and a friend of his asks "why are you laughing?", "The guy on trial told a really funny joke.", "Could you tell it to me?", "No, I can't, I just gave him 5 years in the labor camp for it."

Thanks for sharing your experience. Let's hope the immigrant residents of the USA can help reverse the current trajectory. Those born in America have not seen how the current movie ended elsewhere.

Read "Heart of a Dog" by Bulgakov, or better yet watch the movie. Note that there are several movies under that name, you want the black and white one. The parallels between that and today's United States are plain as a day to see. I'm still stunned that the book got past Soviet government censors somehow. I'm sure US government censors won't make the same mistake when the time comes. It utterly eviscerates wokeness that preceded the Russian revolution of 1917 and intensified after it. Comrade Shvonder in particular is a classical SJW that you could just pluck from there and then and place here and now, and he'd be in his element immediately.

1988 version, directed by Vladimir Bortko?

(Wikipedia lists it as filmed in 'sepia', which could colloquially be called black & white)

Yes, that one. One of the most thought provoking movies you'll ever watch. I'm not sure how well it translates culturally to someone who never lived under an authoritarian communist regime, but it's a masterpiece even if just half the meaning gets through. Basically all works of Bulgakov are wonderful and worth reading.

To reduce the temperature on HN :) Technically the article is correct, alas it reads as a half-truth. Mark Twain had some words for half-truths, but those words won't advance a level-headed conversation.