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A comment on Oliver Stone’s 2016 Ukraine Documentary Banned on YouTube. Parent comment

Re:Oliver Stone’s 2016 Ukraine Documentary Banned on YouTube by DyslexicAtheist on Friday March 11, 2022 @03:05AM (#30637494)
3-2-1 until anything that has ever been said in favor or RU and in criticism of the US will be framed as propaganda. Everything is propaganda. All art is propaganda (Orwell). But not all propaganda is false. Propaganda is telling you the truth 99% of the time and sprinkles in the strategic lies (Jacques Ellul[2]). In a hot war that "trust switch" is flipped and it's suddenly 50% lies, and nobody shall dare to question the "good" guys.

I'm absolutely against the Kremlin regime, but hope they get their asses handed by a thousand Bayraktars and tank-stealing farmers. But I wouldn't immediately throw under the rug all the horrors the US has inflicted on the world with it's foreign policy. And let's not forget that the main benefactor of this infowar is 100% "our good guys" who would only report news accurately and never have done differently (aehm Iraq war, Brexit, etc).

I know propagandists are ruling my thoughts already 2 weeks into the conflict, because I see myself cheering for as many dead Russian soldiers as possible, and a smile comes over face when I look at the horrors of war, as long as the propagandist shows me my heroes are winning, but totally forgetting that the RU "elite" soldiers[3] are often just kids & petty criminals who live on the streets.

I don't believe for a minute that the criticism that has been aimed at the West for all our previous wars is 100% unjustified. And painting Oliver Stone as peddling RU propaganda is just wrong when he has a history of sticking his finger into every wound and fragile ego of those in power.

[1] https://archive.org/details/AllArtIsPropagandaCriticalEssays

[2] https://archive.org/details/Propaganda_201512

[3] https://twitter.com/sergeenko_i/status/1500589120732676096

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Oliver Stone’s 2016 Ukraine Documentary Banned on YouTube by NoPie on Friday March 11, 2022 @03:21AM (#30637590)
I don't cheer for dead Russian soldiers. I weep for them. It is a terrible tragedy that they had to die. And yesterday 1200 Ukrainian civilians died in Mariupol.

The video is propaganda because it mixes some real events by trying to present that all Ukrainians are like that or at least that the Ukrainian leaders are like that. It instigated war and now unexperienced Russian boys are being killed. And in Russia it is even forbidden to tell that there is a war going.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Oliver Stone’s 2016 Ukraine Documentary Banned on YouTube by DyslexicAtheist on Friday March 11, 2022 @03:51AM (#30637774)
> I don't cheer for dead Russian soldiers

you are a bigger person than me.

> because it mixes some real events by trying to present

I have never seen it but if that's the case then it deserves to be called out for sure.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Oliver Stone’s 2016 Ukraine Documentary Banned on YouTube by NoPie on Friday March 11, 2022 @05:15AM (#30638236)
It is very difficult because these are complex issues to which many people have emotional reaction that prevents seeing detailed picture.

For example, the current scare that Ukraine has bio labs to study different biological agents. That's a normal thing, every country studies viruses and bacteria etc. for public health reasons. Some of those labs need very good containment to protect the public. Due to the war there is a risk of breaking containment. But someone reports it as “bioweapons” and now everybody is scared and think that the US is developing biological warfare in Ukraine. It is almost impossible to counteract this misinformation. It can and will be used for propaganda purposes.

[ Parent | on HN ]