If you care about your mental health, I would recommend against it - it's a chilling and depressing story of how an indian politician uses communal violence to further his career and promote religious fundamentalist fascist ideology in India.

Imagine going into a time machine and telling people that they shouldn't watch a documentary about some contemporary madman murderer such as pol pot or someone like that because it'll be bad for their mental health?

Maybe people are meant to face these things straight up and be hard about them

True. But it's also true that cognitive dissonance is a real thing. People actively feel discomfort when confronted with truth that conflicts with established belief, and some people just can't handle the truth - so they seek out more lies, and help to spread them as a coping mechanism. The lies are soothing. The truth is too hard.

If your preference to the truth is drinking boxes of lie juice that's on you. People acting like the media is somehow at fault here for telling it is just another box of juice to me.

Personally - I'm willing to fight tooth and nail for the truth, and I'm sick of people acting like there's some kind of ambiguity here. The world has enough genocide as is without people being wishy-washy about it while it's happening.

If you have a problem with mass murder predicated on bigotry, it's time to take a stand, just saying.

Imagine thinking that the only way to educate yourself is to watch a video that you agree could be bad for someones mental health.

Maybe people can learn in other ways that also don't subject them to harm.

If a documentary about current events is enough to wreck you somehow then you've got other issues

With 8 billion people in the world, even with the 4 billion when I was born, there's enough genuine evil[0] in the world to wreck anyone with even the slightest capacity for empathy. I have no idea if this documentary is or isn't at that level, because I have enough going on without wading into Indian politics.

Will this documentary cause its viewers to end whatever specific ills are shown within? I presume so, otherwise it wouldn't be getting censored.

Will it cause any specific person to effect that change? Probably not, most of us have no influence whatsoever over Indian politics or economics.

[0] or, if you don't like the word "evil", sadistic Machiavellian psychopathy

What's it like being okay with hurting people?

This is what you are advocating for.

Rather than present other means to learn about this, you insist that this is the ONLY way to learn about this.

It's not education of the topic you are promoting, but hurting people. You are, in many ways, supporting Modi's cause by actively working to limit the spread of the knowledge of a chilling and depressing story of how an Indian politician uses communal violence to further his career and promote religious fundamentalist fascist ideology in India.

Why are you protecting this?

> documentary about mass murder predicated on hate crimes

> mass murder predicated on hate crimes

choose one

Why are you working to protect and defend mass murder and hate crimes?

With self-censorship like this, who needs repressive government policies?

I'm sorry. I didn't know wanting to read something rather than watch a video is somehow self-censorship.

Tell me again how video is the ONLY means by which someone can educate themselves? Without using words.

Edit: In fact, by pretending that the ONLY means to watch this is a video which everyone in this thread admits is hard to watch, you are in fact helping to limit the knowledge that it shares.

In a way, you protecting Modi.

I can't tell you anything with all these words you put in my mouth.

Share links to reading material that informs the reader without harming them, or admit that by your tortured logic, you are also "protecting" Modi.

This is a valid point. Film as a media is a far more potent vector for propaganda than print. Increasingly this is being leveraged by bad actors or those who are more interested in persuasion or psychological effect than in presenting truth. That said I assume John Cusack isn’t trying to psy-op the public in this particular instance. But as a more general point, I agree people are increasingly being impacted in unproductive ways by inflammatory videos.

> Film as a media is a far more potent vector for propaganda than print.

I definitely agree with this, but in my perception the moving images themselves are secondary in effect to the audio. Tone of voice and emotive music in particular are very powerful methods of hacking emotions. When watching videos that I think are trying to be manipulative with music or tone of voice, I like to mute the audio and rely on subtitles. This is also one of the reasons that I read newspaper articles but avoid all radio and TV news broadcasts (the other reason being that newspapers hire better writers and provide more details and nuance. I read https://lite.cnn.com/ to stay in touch, but the writing there is abysmal.)

I’m converging on this myself. Very little interest in news tv, especially the highly partisan flavor which increasingly dominates. Sadly some of the better print journalism is paywalled. Sub stack is great but I’m used to free so probably not doing my part to support independent voices.

Imagine someone’s comment being voted down simply because you don’t agree with it, regardless how valid the arguments within are.

Which is expected behaviour on HN. As is not posting about downvotes.

So, where’s pvg to whine about that? Guess you’ve taken their place?

I absolutely agree with this policy, using downvotes as a sign of disagreement. There are other people who complain about, one could even say whine, about it in their profiles.

Do you watch uncensored videos of what is happening in American prisons and Guantanamo bay, of mexican mafia torturing people, of Wagner group military removing tescacles of a captive with pliers or smashing in the head of a deserting soldier with a sledge hammer?

Its all out there, and you' ve got to stay informed!

Heh, yes.

Some of those I turned off after a few seconds, but I think I got the gist.

I'm sorry, but I have no choice but to take this comment in extremely bad faith. The BBC isn't broadcasting stuff on that level with this documentary.

Its simply taking the OP's argument to the logical extreme. He demonstrated no respect for the other commenter's concern and no argument for why the bounderies defined were unreasonable, only mocked them..

I think it is only fair to question if he lives up to hos own standards

You can know Modi is a genocidal bigot without watching all the details.

if you care about individual liberty in the mid-term future, I would recommend to look into it, sure it'll be hard to watch.

The BJP party and ideology of RSS(Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) are just two sides of the same coin - hopefully India will survive this ethnofacism.

>If you care about your mental health,

One should be enough mentally stable learning something about reality.

You've learnt everything there is to know about paedophiles, cannivals and people that dimember their victims? .

Have you ever heard about hoa mental health is going for people that have to moderate social networks for this shit?

>people that dimember their victims

Yes i even eat beef for example.

> social networks

Yeah i don't do that, THATS not good for your health, not knowledge.

> Yes i even eat beef for example

Good one. Doesnt count if you've never been to a slaughterhouse and only ever see a steak wrapped a plastic at the supermarket shelf.

ah yes never watch documentaries about war either then? Masterpieces like The world at war etc?

True, i would say don't use social media if you care about your mental health, instead watch documentary's like "First Kill" or "Russia's way from the tsar to putin"..but who am i ;)

WARNING: First Kill is a deeply disturbing documentary about human nature in war (The Writer of Full Metal jacket speaks too about his memory's), it brutal and brutally honest, and the best explanation why you as a person should never ever go to war (if it's not absolutely necessary)...you have been warned.

Yeah, Indian judicial system is only fair and independent when it's time to bash modi for trying to undermine it.

Typical colonial westerner.

Not sure if I want to watch it, although -assuming it's all true- knowing to what extent a politician can screw his own people can be instructive even if we know that it could never happen in our backyard (/s).

I care about my mental health, and i will now watch it on principle, because of what you commented. I will also share the link more than i would have. Thanks for caring.

At this point I got used to that kind of story.

It's still live on the BBC (in the UK to licence fee payers I suppose) though, so this is a slightly weird one.

Possibly the BBC DMCA all content internet-archived, and the controversy about this particular content is a coincidence here?

Some messages in this thread speculate that DMCA notices would have been fake. I guess we find clarity soon.

I mean if BBC has the independence to make such a docu they likely also have the means to keep it up on their site.

Weather other sides carved to political pressure or where "tricked" by malicious DMCA notices (or non DMCA copyright take-down requests) or malicious flagging etc. or a mix of both is also an interesting question.

This contains both parts:

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:B96B9C1CD9A0332E82023FA934DDD4ACF94377DE&tr=http://tracker.trackerfix.com:80/announce&tr=udp://9.rarbg.m...

<pre>

    magnet:?xt=urn:btih:B96B9C1CD9A0332E82023FA934DDD4ACF94377DE&tr=http://tracker.trackerfix.com:80/announce&tr=http://tracker.trackerfix.com/announce&tr=udp://9.rarbg.me:2790&tr=udp://9.rarbg.to:2760&tr=udp://tracker.thinelephant.org:12710&tr=udp://tracker.tallpenguin.org:15790

TIL that four spaces indents it into code blocks... thanks!

Two spaces suffice to do that.

available in Odysee already

The Indian right wingers I know think the ban is ridiculous either on principle or because it simply plays into the Streisand effect. There is some openness to banning BBC altogether as foreign state-funded propaganda (akin to how Europe has banned RT), but everyone seems to think this selective ban of the documentary is a self-own by the Modi administration.

> akin to how Europe has banned RT

I can’t agree with this analogy, RT wasn’t banned before Russia started an invasion.

The difference is that prior invasion it’s a different opinions, after the shooting begins it’s part of the warfare and not a public debate activity.

For example it’s completely okay to claim that Zelensky should go and Ukraine and NATO caused the war, totally not acceptable to claim that Zelenksy left the country and requested amnesty in Poland. At war time yok can’t afford BS like that because the impact can have immediate and irreversible consequences.

The UK once invaded India. Maybe that was too long ago to matter, but I think a lot of people in India might think otherwise.

They can think whatever they like but they will be wrong if they think that.

Subjectively wrong (e.g. you disagree), or objectively wrong? How could such a thing be objectively determined at all?

There are people alive today who grew up in an India subjugated by the UK. It wasn't so long ago in the grand scheme of things.

Objectively wrong, there’s no evidence of ongoing British invasion of India.

The claim is that the UK once invaded and subjugated India, recently enough to matter. Not that India is presently in that state.

The analogy works when the owner of the foreign media also is waging a war against you or your allies. Just because some time in the past you had a military conflict doesn’t make it the same thing because something happened in the past doesn’t have immediate and irreversible effects. Since there are no immediate risks, you get the chance to respond and correct and that’s why you can have free media.

Besides, everyone was once invaded by the British.

What you're saying is that you, subjectively, think that the UK's past invasion of India isn't relevant because it was long ago and not ongoing (and because the UK did this to lots of people, that makes it a lesser crime?) And I'm saying that quite a lot of people don't agree with your subjective judgement.

Objectively, the facts are that the UK once invaded India and some Indians alive today personally experienced that subjugation. But what any of that means or implies is subjective.

No, Objectively UK's past invasion of India doesn't create a cause for British media to pose immediate and irreversible risks to India.

This doesn't mean that Indians shouldn't be cautious but gives them an opportunity for healthy debate thanks to input from outside. Because there's no immediate and irreversible dangers, they can counter the British arguments or get something from it to make their own position better.

That’s not the invasion they have a chip on their shoulder about

There are a lot of people today in India subjugated by Indians as well.

There's still a huge blind spot in the west when it comes to "our" propaganda. You never see the BBC or Radio Free Asia get the "state owned media" tag on social media that's applied to anything Russian or Chinese since 2016.

I think Indians should run media in UK and expose Rishi or whoever they like.

Asians should flag the British media as foreign, can’t expect British do it for them.

> You never see the BBC or Radio Free Asia get the "state owned media" tag on social media

Youtube at least tags BBC videos with "BBC is a British public broadcast service."

I do think that there are substantive differences in the kind of "propaganda" between Russia and the West.

The reporting in the west is certainly ideologically biased with lots of ignorance and naturally often steeped in sensationalism.

Russias reporting is very often an intentional hostile psyops directed by state forces. Whatever take damages western society most is getting air time.

Its the same with western NGOs vs russian influence campaigns.

Those NGOs were in Russia since the 90s and havent changed a bit. Its the russian state that changed in a way that those NGOs are now hostile and detrimental to the cleptocracy. Now they are all banned.

In contrast Russias support of extremist groups in the west has no ideological consistency and is only aimed at doing maximum damage.

I think at this point there have been more debunked reports of Russian influence from our propaganda organs than actual Russian influence.

Not that you're wrong, they're trying, but we are just so much bigger.

This is not quite what happened. Illia Kyva [1] is a Ukranian politician who was a former presidential candidate, as well as the head of Socialist Party in Ukraine. He is pro Russia and skeptical of Western interests and motivations in Ukraine. After the war this did not change and he supported Russia while blaming Zelensky and urging him to resign.

Zelensky then decided to purge him and his entire party, charging him with treason. This led to Kyva making increasingly unhinged claims and recommendations. Among those were that Russia should nuke Ukraine, and that Zelensky had secretly fled to Poland. Some Russian outlets (I cannot find this story on RT, but perhaps I missed something?) ran this story such as here [2].

The article certainly doesn't state it as a fact. Instead it recounts the events in a relatively impartial way - two Ukrainian lawmakers said he fled. Rumors of something similar were spread shortly before the article was published and Zelensky rejected them while providing video evidence of himself in Ukraine. It also mentions that the US reportedly offered to help him escape Ukraine, and also that he rejected the offer. End of article.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illia_Kyva

[2] - https://sputniknews.com/20220304/zelensky-left-ukraine-for-p...

If we're talking about war, the BBC was an active participant in the coup that toppled the democratically elected government of Iran. Ample reason for any country that values its sovereignty to ban the BBC.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/document/document_20050...

Over the years the India telecommunications department has repeatedly null routed or diverted traffic to BBC websites thru scrubbers domestically. Know this because I have infra in India and can observe them do this regularly (when our customers complain I'll have to escalate to the local transit provider such as TATA). Usually it's blocking websites hosting content that is critical of any govt official or their family members. They'll not always understand what they're blocking and occasionally drop a CDNs address space which is multi tenant.

  akin to how Europe has banned RT

Seems very different considering RT says whatever the Kremlin tells them to say and the BBC is a legitimate news organization

I agree that it's a very different case (see my other comment) but like most news organizations BBC is not always fully honest and often also have people which huge influence on their reporting.

It's just that it's more about selective reporting and creating news in a way that people come to conclusions not backed by truth without making up information (tho in practice it's often not that much better then making up information as most people will be tricked into believing misinformation you just never wrote down).

Like for example a reporting about a demo consisting of a march and then multiple speech and announcements at a plaza being written highlighting that extremists taking part in it and making it look as if only a small number people took part in it. But selectively ommiting (or hiding in subtle formulations) that 80+% of protestors where "normal" people and that while the number of people during the march where small the number at the plaza wasn't.

(One of the most stupid parts is that the "independent state media" using such tricks often doesn't realize that this is perfect to convince people of conspiracies and "media is all lies" etc., e.g. in that example they did claim "they lied there where 20 times the number of people (compared to the march) here see picture of plaza" and then backed down later one to "we miscounted it where only 15 times" making many people believe that this (15x) is the truth and media is outright making up things (the truth was 3-4 times of people at the plaza compared to the march)).

I would add that:

There is a a difference between someone operating as a news channel actively continuously repeatedly spreading misinformation with the intention to undermine a government and a documentation which seem to be mostly correct but unpleasant to hear information.

Also there is a difference between restricting availability in your jurisdiction (country, country union, i.e. case RT) and trying to restrict it beyond that.

While it is questionable banning BBC in India is well in the right of the Indian government, it banning BBC (content) outside of India is on the other hand not something which should be possible/allowed/tolerated.

I will watch it right now from BBC. : )

The right wing flex is to demonstrate power.

The people who are into that admire the strongman, and don’t really care about the how and why. Understanding nuance or balancing interests is cast as weakness. Caveman clubs cavelady, ugh ugh.

If only the USSR had understood this. Forget trying to infiltrate American lefty movements. They could have rebranded Soviet communism as a tough no nonsense real man’s ideology and brought big chunks of the American right.

Or maybe not. People who were actually tough and did things like fight in WWII may not have fallen for it. This stuff appeals to wannabes.

  They could have rebranded Soviet communism as a tough no nonsense real man’s ideology and brought big chunks of the American right.

This has literally happened though. The extremist right loves V. Putin. Tucker, trump, etc. sing his praises regularly.

Russia has a lot more difficulty subverting the left in the US, though they do fund the more radical elements (which have very little power compared to the centrist dems and extremist right). The Mueller report goes into a lot of Russia's efforts in this arena.

A 2023 Soviet Union probably would. You didn’t have the ability to target messages in those days - mass media and organizations required mass appeal.

For better or worse, times are different but people are the same in terms of vulnerability to demagoguery. McCarthy played to postwar America’s fear and anxiety the same as people are doing today. As myko said, modern Russia’s influence operations are pushing a Soviet-like narrative without the communism. Stalin was pushed as a father figure, Putin was wrestling bears shirtless and doing other man stuff, etc.

> trying to infiltrate American lefty movements

How much of this was real, as opposed to hysteria?

> They could have rebranded Soviet communism as a tough

We had 'independance-loving' Nigel Farage admiring Putin

Watch it man. Know that it's 100% true but even then covers just a small part of what really happened and continues to be normalized over decades. That coming straight from a survivor here.

Being in tech, what is surprising is how powerful the post-truth era is and how such things can be hidden in plain sight by just knowing how to manipulate Google, Twitter, Wikipedia and all social platforms by using an organized army of trolls.

The awful truth is that a large section of the population knows that the documentary is true and supports Modi even more for it.

The minority hatred in India is now naked and public.