From what little I’ve seen, no. I only know Tim Pool from his accurate portrayal of Swedens failed immigration experiment. Perhaps he’s now yet another boot licker?

"By 2010, the military began using social media tools, leveraging phony accounts to spread messages of sympathetic local voices – themselves often secretly paid by the United States government. As time passed, a growing web of military and intelligence contractors built online news websites to pump U.S.-approved narratives into foreign countries. Today, the military employs a sprawling ecosystem of social media influencers, front groups and covertly placed digital advertisements to influence overseas audiences, according to current and former military officials.

...

Nevertheless, the Pentagon’s clandestine propaganda efforts are set to continue. In an unclassified strategy document last year, top Pentagon generals wrote that the U.S. military could undermine adversaries such as China and Russia using “disinformation spread across social media, false narratives disguised as news, and similar subversive activities [to] weaken societal trust by undermining the foundations of government.”" [0]

[0] https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covi...

You have to understand, there are people that have built their entire lives around this blob of power. People spend 20-50+ years there, and for the first time since JFK there is a very real risk of an outsider threatening to up-end all of the personal career goals decades in the making. And these people don't have useful real-world skills, if they did, they would be making 2-3x their current salary in the private sector. The people there are either completely helpless, or deranged power-drunk sociopaths. The former are really not anyone's concern, but the later most definitely are.

It also doesn't help that these people have used every single dirty trick imaginable to try to prevent it with an air of supreme arrogance and confidence that immediately blows up in their faces. If any these these desperate measured worked, they would negatively affect the outsider's polling, but it does the opposite suggesting the voters have total contempt for the establishment and are keenly aware of their buffoonery. Given that context, if the outsider does win, it's would not be unreasonable to assume the voters want the outsider to use the full power of the military to completely refresh the civil service.

So given this reality, the elected officials that do genuinely have pure intentions either have to compromise, and continue maintaining the existing codebase, or become a heretic and suggest doing a rewrite.

There are also lots of unpolitical government departments that deserve to be left completely in tact. Departments that are soley mission driven and have a purpose are good in my book, and I say that as a very staunch anarcho-capitalist. I'm thinking NOAA, for example. Yes, they get a few drops of money for political efforts, but that's not their fucking job in any meaningful way. Same with the FAA.

"By 2010, the military began using social media tools, leveraging phony accounts to spread messages of sympathetic local voices – themselves often secretly paid by the United States government. As time passed, a growing web of military and intelligence contractors built online news websites to pump U.S.-approved narratives into foreign countries. Today, the military employs a sprawling ecosystem of social media influencers, front groups and covertly placed digital advertisements to influence overseas audiences, according to current and former military officials.

...

Nevertheless, the Pentagon’s clandestine propaganda efforts are set to continue. In an unclassified strategy document last year, top Pentagon generals wrote that the U.S. military could undermine adversaries such as China and Russia using “disinformation spread across social media, false narratives disguised as news, and similar subversive activities [to] weaken societal trust by undermining the foundations of government.”" [0]

Don't like it now, do you?

[0] https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covi...

1

https://x.com/KamalaHQ/status/1829950849482694938

2 https://x.com/realvisigoth/status/1831441494601077081

What does this part mean? Is anything that is anti Ukraine considered propaganda? I feel like that word gets tossed around a lot, and just like labels like “disinformation”, it doesn’t say anything much other than trying to discredit something via a label.

Regarding your linked clip. I agree he comes off as uncontrolled and it is bizarre. But I don’t think it is unreasonable to say that Ukraine blowing up Nordstream (if that is actually the case?) is a threat to the US, since it has the potential to escalate things towards a world war. Would I call them an enemy? No I wouldn’t. But I can see how someone can look at a situation that is costing us a lot of money (which Ukraine is) and actions that potentially create global instability through escalation, and ask that we stop funding them and walk away.

Does that make it “propaganda”? Not to me, but I am not sure what the definition even is.

This is the standard playbook of those trying to avoid any scrutiny into these industrial propaganda campaigns mounted by the likes of Russia and China: when faced with the evidence, they rush to try to muddy the waters with inane non-sequiturs on semantics, or other logical fallacies such as whataboutisms.

This is what I meant by odd equivocating. I made a clear point about Tim Pool and linked to a specific video. It is downright bizarre to ask the equivalent of “What if some other guy said something else entirely?” There is quite literally no room for misinterpretation unless it is forcibly introduced into conversation here.

That this is so difficult to get a direct answer to suggests very strongly that you're also captured by propaganda and struggle to distinguish it from reality.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda

> Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information that is being presented.

From the specific example of the Tim Pool video posted earlier, his repetition of the phrase “Ukraine is our enemy” is a good example of loaded language meant to evoke an emotional rather than rational response.

Propaganda is not actually nebulous or usually all that difficult to identify. There are of course degrees of nuance sometimes, but Tim Pool is no master of subtlety or rhetorical complexity.

The idea that pointing out propaganda is the realm of people that have been “captured by [opposing] propaganda” is itself nonsense that traps a person in a sort of feedback loop (for example if that is how identifying propaganda works, if you notice that someone is captured by propaganda that is because you yourself are captured by a different propaganda). The idea that “propaganda” means “things I don’t want to hear” is factually wrong, and the endeavor of pretending that it is only accomplishes discouraging people from recognizing it.

Russia, Ukraine, Israel, Hamas, Iran, North Korea, South Korea, Japan, USA, UN, Intel, AMD, Microsoft, Google, Apple... literally everyone engages in propaganda.

The first casualty of war is truth.

If you think your side does not engage in propaganda, congratulations: You are a victim of propaganda.

  What does the fact that guy is literally yelling at you from the very first frame of the video suggest to you?

  (a) something about Ukraine
  (b) something about Russia
  (c) that he must be really smart and have very insightful things to say
  (d) that he is trying to emotionally manipulate me
  (e) that he is my friend

That's very clearly not what was said. Rather, they were referring specifically to content from Tim Pool.

I agree he comes off as uncontrolled and it is bizarre.

That's good to know. But here's the thing -- it doesn't matter that he may be right, or partially right on certain details (like Nordstream, for example).

Because as a whole -- it's still propaganda, just from how it's structured, and the pungently shrill, and yes, intentionally uncontrolled and bizarre tone he employs. And from all the deceptions and diversions that's it packed with, and which we very quickly key into once we stop to break it all down.

That's how propaganda works. It's kind of like a shit sandwich, we might say. Parts of it might be kind of tasty actually, and perhaps have some nutritive value. But as a whole, its nutritive value is entirely the opposite. And in fact can be quite toxic.

As is basically every piece of content you will find from Tim Pool and others of his mold.

Are they trying to protect their reputations? Yeah think about that for a minute. If you read all the way to the end of the indictment there's a section called forfeiture allegations. That means the doj is going after all the money involved in the scheme. That's why people are playing dumb.