This is an interesting choice of contrast between the KGB and US entrepreneurs.
How about when compared to US intelligence agencies?
Do you think they are more similar or different in their methodologies?
As with any country, different organizations have different missions and philosophies -- and so do the people within them.
Read my another comment below, by having a whoping 23 intelligence agencies, USA condemned its leadership to a shower of opinions out of which no correct one can be synthesized.
Only the size of antenna maters, not how powerful is the receive amplifier, or the number of them.
If you link up 23 pre-amps in a row, you will not get a 23 times clearer signal, but 23 times more noise.
But democracies shouldn't fear coups, you say? 6 of January, I say back. Or Charles de Gaulle (wait, you didn't know that Charles de Gaulle successfully executed a coup in France in 1958? [1])
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_d%27%C3%89tat:_A_Practica... [2] https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674737266
“In the multitude of counsellors there is safety” — Prov 11:14
The reality is that a society made up of people who think their country is terrible and don't feel any responsibility to work to support it is probably not going to last that long.
> In particular, I find the idea of a long-term government-sponsored program whose goal is to "demoralize" people a bit upsetting: It stands directly against the let's-roll-up-our-sleeves, we-can-do-it optimism for which US entrepreneurs have long been known around the world.
Though, IIRC, their subversion projects use a similar strategy to VCs: throw a bunch of efforts at the wall, and see which ones stick. For a lot of it, I don't think they had a big master plan, but tasked agents with coming up and implementing ideas for subversion and disinformation.
It's funny how I guess both sides ended up thinking he is referring to the other side though.
I'd say it is working. The sheer quantity of anti-American rhetoric online, places like Reddit and even on HN, is astounding. Ostensibly coming from our own citizens, in many cases. If this kind of self-loathing is reality, we have a big problem indeed. The optimist in me likes to assume that a good chunk of it is planted deliberately by America's foes.
The only way to make a great country greater is to acknowledge its flaws and strive to correct them. The default mode of communication seems to have been people pointing out US failures, and US people widely shouting them down, regardless of the merit of the claim. That has also been a major factor driving anti-American rhetoric, you can't blame that on foreign influence.
Or, in other words: anti-American rhetoric coming from American citizens is a good thing: it makes the country better.
Wouldn't subversion be opportunistic, though? Maybe during Cold War, their tactics had more success on the left, but more recently they've had more success on the right. If your goal is to subvert the whole, it's six of one, half a dozen of the other.
I guess it makes sense and it doesn't have to be pejorative: conservatives are usually more attached to traditional structures while historically leftist groups push for a transformative change. Subversion is a good way to transform a structure.
A good example would be the 1619 projet that, whether you agreed with its message or not, explicitly aimed at undermining the current mainstream narrative on the history of the USA. I can't think of any right wing equivalent
Read what I wrote in another comment. It doesn't matter if it's left, or right for as long as disturbing random discourse keeps your mind jammed, and prevents you from seeing things for what they are.
To me it seems more demoralizing to look back and think things have gotten worse
And yes of course it's demoralizing, his theory was that if you think your country is evil or based on evil and not much better than anything else why would you ever fight for it? Especially when faced with an enemy who actually believes that he is dying for a great cause, and the best system.
From a cold war perspective, if the other side doesn't believe his system to be superior anymore that could've been decisive to win a war. Just look at the vietnam war and how it (thankfully) ended.
Then my normalcy bias kicked in and I thought "it would never get that bad"
What I'm essentially saying is that he doesn't really fit into the "demoralize/destabilize/subvert/normalize" framework. But that's not to say he doesn't fit very well in others ;)
No, it's more like he is a Russian authoritarian leader appealing to the greatest imagery of Russian national struggle to make a war of aggression look like something more noble.
Back then, organizations like Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament were Soviet-influenced.
That's why so many of his examples are relatable today - we haven't actually fixed anything. And that's why it's unclear if the subversion was successful or not, these divisions already had momentum. They were already going to happen, the subversion, if present, only served to accelerate their unwinding.
This part is the most fun. Peeling back the curtain on these subversions doesn't do anything to make the subversion less effective! He has a reactionary perspective, certainly, but it could just as well be framed through the lens of leftism. It just happens that this particular framing leverages the fears of his audience to a decay of a glorious past whereas the leftist version would be the denial of a glorious future. That's why I like him so much. He's cementing his audience's stance in a way that makes them feel more resolute in their defiance to subversion which amplifies the division. It's like finding a perfectly crafted puzzle. Pure genius.
The division is because we haven't had anything to unite over since 9/11. The Iraq war was divisive.
At this point it is half the country living in one media fantasy land and the other half living in different media fantasy land. Both think they are the ones not living in a media fantasy land but believe the other side is. Both think the fantasy land they live in is objectively true.
Just like from your post the fantasy land you are in is no mystery. It is fun to watch this process honestly when you don't have a horse in the race.
If another country invaded the US though this would all disappear instantly overnight. A legit war with China or Russia that brings the threat of intercontinental missiles, this would all vanish overnight.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/25/tucker-carlson...
>But with all the right-wing folks I know, I've yet to hear ONE say they actually think this invasion is a good idea, or that Putin is a good guy.
How many right wing folks do you know?
Edit: Here's Candace Owens with 3M followers implying that the first air strikes in Kyiv were the work of NATO because Putin said he's only attacking the eastern parts.
Seriously, from everything I have been seeing going from meme accounts to trump aligned figure heads, there has been an overwhelming support for ukraine (while criticizing biden of course but that's still not being pro putin). Yes there are some on right who are but thats because the right isn't a monolith. Imo it's just unhelpful and it reeks of terminal partisanship mentality when even a pretty bad situation like this is used to score points against the other side using cherry picked examples even if it's so easily disproven. Inevitably it also turns into a "the other side is not as willing to go to war as we are so they are against us"
Now, part of this is the asymmetry of American politics where leftists, qua leftists, are generally marginalized, but it goes beyond that.
Her posts have 8 k. upvotes sometimes, that's still pretty low.
If this were some big Russian support smear campaign by the right, certainly we should see it in all their normal channels, right? I really do not feel like visiting any more right wing sites to prove my point. The simple fact is, we read comments like the grandparent, and we're supposed to believe that Russian support is wide-spread. The truth is, aside from a couple of nut-cases, both sides of the aisle seem to overwhelmingly condemn this invasion.
Putin has been recently using rhetoric that he must remove "neo-nazis" in an effort to "demilitarize" the rightful Ukrainian people.
But if you listen to the video, he is talking about using the Left's idealogy as subversion.
What Russians call "blowing fuflo" was certainly in use by the time the second flare up of second Chechnya war - 2003.
They funded a gazillion of cheap academicians, for-profit journalists, and think tanks with no apparent goal besides just keeping the buzz about it going, no matter what the actual argument was.
Basically they reduced the signal-to-noise ratio of sensible political discourse to near none, which then swayed the West into making bad decisions, and assured no high quality leadership can emerge, being outshouted by that cacophonic chorus of random opinion leaders.
The inability to take things for what they are, "analysis paralysis," politicians, and business leaders not being able to put a single coherent paragraph without an army of advisers — this is what it is.
They don't care what people keep arguing about for as long as they keep talking, and doing nothing.
1) demoralize the people of a country over a period of "at least 15 to 20 years;"
2) destabilize the country's institutions over a period of "2 to 5 years;"
3) precipitate a crisis that would normally unfold over a period of "up to 6 weeks;" and
4) normalize the new state of affairs.
Whether the KGB and its successor organization(s) could have or might have been successful is of course debatable, but no one can deny this kind of persistent effort to subvert another country's people over such a long horizon is... audacious (words fail me).
In particular, I find the idea of a long-term government-sponsored program whose goal is to "demoralize" people a bit upsetting: It stands directly against the let's-roll-up-our-sleeves, we-can-do-it optimism for which US entrepreneurs have long been known around the world.