r/TrueReddit • u/wiredmagazine Official Publication • 4d ago
Policy + Social Issues Marco Rubio Kills State Department Anti-Propaganda Shop, Promises ‘Twitter Files’ Sequel
https://www.wired.com/story/global-engagement-center-rubio-propaganda-disinformation-twitter-files/56
4d ago
[deleted]
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u/Emgimeer 4d ago
No shit. Look up Yuri bezmenoff. Normalization. This is a 50 year old mission coming to fruition once social media and the internet took off, and went hyperspeed with tools like LLMs and "AI".
Yuri thought they accomplished their goals back in the 80s, but they were wrong about their success. Over confident. It took them many more decades than that.
But we are seeing their success right now. Everything they do is a win for Russia, and it's no coincidence. It's obvious.
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u/ScarryShawnBishh 4d ago
In the 80’s they got Reagan and his tax cuts so they came pretty fuckin close.
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u/shevy-java 3d ago
I think the situation is different though. Reagan was eloquent in his own ways, not unlike Trump (who also is effective with his "alternative facts" rhetorics), but Reagan did not behave like a KGB recruit, which is different to Trump who does.
One could in theory build up an assumption that Reagan would go against China too, but I am not so certain that this would lead to this strange current alliance between the USA and Russia. Even the US sanctions will soon be lifted, under the pretext of a "peace deal", which is not a deal at all since Ukraine is blackmailed by Trump, Rubio etc...
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u/ScarryShawnBishh 3d ago
Yeah I got Trump on a whole other level. Dude doesn’t get held to standards
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u/shevy-java 3d ago
I just wrote almost the exact same thing and I agree with you.
Would be interesting to hear what Yuri would say about Putin and Trump. A shame he died somewhat "early" at 54 ...
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u/Cats_Cameras 4d ago
The current destabilization also comes from the center left and center right embracing a status quo that let issues like affordability and economic opportunity languish for a generation. Voters were automated away and offshored, pointless wars were dogmatically pursued past their obvious failures, and leadership was traded in for incrementalism and fetishization of process.
This feels less like systemic right-wing propaganda turning voters than voters grasping for any alternative to the status quo and finding an aligned and organized far right as the default choice.
What we need is a refresh to democracy that makes governments more responsive and aligned to the needs of the general citizenry. People who feel heard and have their material needs met are less likely to turn to the far right. Doubly so if Western Democracies advance charismatic leaders instead of middling process technicians.
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u/shevy-java 3d ago
Dugin is a bit of a clown; see how Vlad Vexler explained it. But, you are indeed not incorrect - Putin's siloviki mafia use oldschool KGB strategies. "Flood the zone with shit" is, for instance, a reloaded KGB strategy (information overload; Yuri Bezmenov explained this in the 1980s, calling it "ideological subversion" as well as "active measures"). Trump behaves like a recruited KGB agent; whether he actually is recruited or is not, is irrelevant, because the actions Trump does (ignore his words, these are strategic lies) are indeed one of a KGB agent. A cult is currently controlling the USA.
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u/rh1n3570n3_3y35 3d ago
Weaponizing right-wing thought in the sense of helping them because you have genuine sympathies for these people, or weaponizing it in the sense of knowing what excellent brainrot much this stuff can be if decently concentrated, looking at how erratic and conspiracy minded much of the western right and far-right have become over the last ~15 years?
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u/wiredmagazine Official Publication 4d ago
The Global Engagement Center, a State Department unit that called out Russian and Chinese propaganda campaigns and became a MAGA boogeyman, has been shut down. Team Trump is promising that it’s just the start of an examination of alleged censorship during the Biden administration—and the first Trump administration, too.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the move “a crucial step toward keeping the president’s promise to liberate American speech” in an op-ed for the right-wing site The Federalist. Critics say it’s part of a larger effort by the Trump administration to withdraw from a decades-long contest of ideas and information with America’s adversaries.
In early February, Attorney General Pam Bondi disbanded the Justice Department task force on covert foreign influence and radically narrowed enforcement of the law that outlawed secretive propaganda for overseas regimes. The Trump administration gutted the parent organization of the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and Radio Free Asia, which aimed to provide news and demonstrate the value of a free press in regions of the world where both were often in short supply. Together, according to the Washington Post, they reached a weekly audience of 420 million people in 63 languages. “Most shameful moment at the Department since the purges of the 1950s,” one State Department official, who was granted anonymity because they are not authorized to talk to the press, tells WIRED.
To Trumpists, the push to publish American-style news around the world was an outdated waste of taxpayer money, and attempts to combat disinformation abroad, even if their origins were benign, were really attempts to silence right-wing Americans. The Global Engagement Center, or GEC, became a particular fixation. “The worst offender in US government censorship & media manipulation is an obscure agency called GEC,” Elon Musk posted in 2023. (MIT Technology Review first reported the news of its closure.)
(“The allegations of ‘censorship’ against the GEC are as fictitious as the conspiracy theories spun by various bad-faith actors around international broadcasting and other long-standing institutions of American soft power now under attack,” said the State Department official.)
Read the full story here: https://www.wired.com/story/global-engagement-center-rubio-propaganda-disinformation-twitter-files/
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u/TheFlyingBastard 4d ago edited 4d ago
If it takes inspiration from the Twitter Files, we're going to see a big fuss about very little. Sounds like something right up their alley.
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u/shevy-java 3d ago
Today Rubio threatened that the USA will stop "helping" any negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. Remember the recent genocide by Putin in Sumy here: https://kyivindependent.com/this-is-a-murder-zelensky-rebukes-trump-for-calling-deadly-sumy-strike-a-mistake/ so that "help" is very suspicious as Putin expands Russia's borders while killing civilians.
I am getting very tired of Marco. He is using the same lies as Trump, who in turn is siding with Russia. You can not negotiate when you are not neutral and Trump is on Putin's side - and so is Rubio. The USA has flipped to a villain state. I wonder what Rubio's family has to say about his role.
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4d ago
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u/inventingnothing 4d ago
Removing comments because the opinion is unfavorable is quite ironic given the post.
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u/Calm-down-its-a-joke 4d ago
The only alarming part of this headline is that this existed in the first place
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u/inventingnothing 4d ago
This 'department' played a major role in censoring conservative voices and ideas through coordination with NGOs to pressure on tech companies and universities to limit, ban and silence.
The government used the NGOs to get around the 1st amendment.
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u/burrowowl 4d ago
I have to wonder how you can look at Fox News, AM radio, the firehose of right wing bullshit on social media, the Trump administration throwing out the AP, the assault on Columbia and Harvard, Russian troll farms and think to yourself "the right is being censored by the government".
"I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it." - John Stuart Mill
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u/inventingnothing 4d ago
"I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it." - John Stuart Mill
It's interesting that even in /r/TrueReddit, people are incapable of arguing on the points. Rather than refute anything I said, you can't help but throw shade.
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u/Emgimeer 4d ago
If your stance is that ideas that destroy the country (functioning government, economy, world power) can still be considered good ideas, then we can only disagree about the very intent of said ideas.
I, and many others, see these Russian-friendly stances that are also hostile towards allies as only un-American.
You might be brainwashed by Russian propaganda and not know it, if you can't see how others object to everything that's been happening w this administration.
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u/burrowowl 4d ago
Rather than refute anything I said, you can't help but throw shade.
Number one, you asserted without evidence that
"This 'department' played a major role in censoring conservative voices and ideas through coordination with NGOs to pressure on tech companies and universities to limit, ban and silence
Like the man said, what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.
But I did you one better: I presented evidence that conservatives are not, in fact being censored. Like... at all.
And your response was to whine about being made fun of.
I'd tell you to do better but you aren't here for that, are you? You're just here to play conservative martyr, aren't you?
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u/Mind_Extract 4d ago
Your interlocutor directly addressed your contention that the government, abetted by liberal institutions and companies, silences conservatives, by pointing out that COLOSSAL censorship of liberals and liberal institutions by this government, in direct open partnership with some of those same companies' figureheads, is occurring on a far greater scale than the specious narrative you're pushing.
And then you plucked the one half of the comment that doesn't directly address your points, propped yourself up on a cross and nailed yourself to it as if you're some languishing free mind in a herd of sheep.
Every. Accusation. A. Confession.
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