A Powerful Russian Weapon: The Spread of False Stories

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/29/world/europe/russia-sweden-disinformation.html?_r=0

by rbanffy • 10 years ago

109 120 10 years ago

anc84• 10 years ago

That is one one-sided anti-propaganda-propaganda piece. Let's not pretend that any government does not do the same to others, eh?

ThisIBereave• 10 years ago

Nor should we accept false equivalencies.

zigzigzag5• 10 years ago

It isn't even necessary here. The "propaganda" the article opens with can be rephrased as this: some people in the Swedish government wanted something controversial, and social media i.e. their citizens talking to each other reflected the usual mishmash of true, half true and not true things people often believe about more or less anything controversial.

However, because this time the controversial thing was to do with NATO, it's obviously all the Russian's fault. They have no evidence, and nobody is willing to put their name to such a claim (it's all "analysts"), but no matter, it's definitely the Russians.

Besides, whose word do we have that these beliefs were false? The defence minister!

From the WSJ we learn this: "Swedish lawmakers formally backed an agreement Wednesday that allows the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to more easily operate on Swedish territory during training or in the event of a conflict or other crisis."

http://www.wsj.com/articles/sweden-ratifies-nato-cooperation...

That doesn't sound so very different from the supposedly false claim that "NATO could attack Russia from Sweden without government approval". thelocal.se says:

"Originally signed in September 2014, the HNSA with Nato would allow the alliance to transport helicopters, aircraft and ships across Swedish territory, but only upon Sweden’s invitation.

As the agreement involves changes to Swedish law in order to give Nato personnel privileges and immunities with regards to areas like tax and custom rules, it required parliamentary ratification."

http://www.thelocal.se/20160525/sweden-votes-yes-to-controve...

It's only a tiny step from that description (NATO soldiers have immunity from some areas of law) to the one apparently circulating (NATO soldiers have immunity in some other areas). Does this really require the invocation of Russian propaganda, or the Facebook telephone game sufficient?

fit2rule• 10 years ago

Governments do this, almost everywhere. But the Russians have been mastering these techniques for over a century now, and Maskirovka is a significant aspect of Russian military doctrine, which we in the West - while we are tuned into our own variety of it (the Pentagon are really good at this too) - are not necessarily prepared to understand, especially the Russian variant, completely:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_military_deception

It has relevance to us here on HN because after all, these same techniques can be de-weaponized and re-industrialized, and such actions have legitimacy in the marketing world in which we all play. It is indeed wise to learn the variants of deception that major governments - and other world-oriented bodies - enact upon us, the populace.

wonkaWonka• 10 years ago

Telltale missing article. The. A. An.

Grue3• 10 years ago

Ah, typical whataboutism. Because the Russian propaganda is so extreme in distorting the truth, everyone else must do the same. Reminds me of people who compare the political movements they don't like to ISIS, because "both are bad".

bobthechef4• 10 years ago

True, one must not only remember differences in kind but also in degree, though frankly the difference between Russia and the US is historically one of kind, though certainly not to the degree that the Cold War high school history books would suggest.

zde• 10 years ago

They quote Jakub Janda. Interesting person indeed. https://www.facebook.com/bruselin.watch/videos/1045786672165...

tpm2• 10 years ago

"bruselin watch" is a russian propaganda account

kushti• 10 years ago

Seems like a great expert to give an opinion for such an article. Shame on you NYTimes.

mason240• 10 years ago

A Powerful Election Weapon: The Use of the Russian Boogey Man

rbanffy5• 10 years ago

That it can be used in a way you condemn doesn't mean it's not real. Or that it's not being used.

bobthechef4• 10 years ago

No it doesn't, and in a scientific setting this approach would suffice. But in a social and political setting, implicature is also relevant. At the very least, there is an undeniable irony about the article.

tpm2• 10 years ago

RAND Corp: The Russian "Firehose of Falsehood" Propaganda Model - Why It Might Work and Options to Counter It http://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html

anovikov• 10 years ago

With the Russian situation being so dire, is it so hard for Western counterpropaganda to beat that?

avs733• 10 years ago

Because the people it is targetting are so siloed, and so angry at the other side they don't really look past the information. The two sides that they are appealing to are not doing any sort of source evaluation on things that make a person they distrust look untrustworthy. They want that information to be true soooooooooo bad they are failing to do basic information literacy.

rbanffy5• 10 years ago

They have much better control of media. Social media can be attacked this way, but, like China, it's relatively trivial to push the public towards a "friendly" competitor.

golergka4• 10 years ago

It's far easier to wreak havoc than to restore order.

jmnicolas• 10 years ago

What is so dire about the Russian situation ?

throwaway_jc• 10 years ago

Also http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/08/06/how-russia-...

That story is pretty extreme, but I (yes, an anon account on a random website) can confirm much of this is true based on some reasonable in-depth network analysis.

Take a look at the Incirlik story on twitter https://twitter.com/search?q=Incirlik and note the weird patten many have of reposting thing like emergency response accounts in between pro-Trump messages, and weird conspiracy theories (although [1]).

(Throwaway for various reasons)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law

dleslie18• 10 years ago

The New York Times has a long history of cooperating with three-letter agencies as a state mouthpiece. The irony of their publishing this article is delicious.

DenisM4• 10 years ago

Can you provide some sources? Thanks.

metamicah• 10 years ago

The NYT admits in this death notice for a spy that it was it manipulated by the CIA: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/10/us/austin-goodrich-spy-who...

In 1976 George HW Bush declared that the CIA wouldn't manipulate the media anymore but this NYT article from a couple months later shows the feds backpedaling on that promise, along with some specific examples of media manipulation from the time: http://www.nytimes.com/1976/04/27/archives/cia-will-keep-mor...

I haven't found any evidence of post-Cold War media manipulation of this sort, but I don't think American trust in the media has ever fully recovered since those days.

golergka4• 10 years ago

Not as delicious as this comment.

tptacek5• 10 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes

laretluval• 10 years ago

It's not just a matter of the moral equivalence of propaganda, but of credibility. When a major media outlet is pushing a narrative that supports a government agenda, skepticism is warranted.

dleslie18• 10 years ago

This is in references to illogical comparisons.

"How long does it take a soviet to earn enough to buy a car?" "Well, you lynch black people."

This is not that situation; it is one's state propaganda and another's state propaganda.

oxide• 10 years ago

every time Russia is mentioned on HN, folks just happen to want the narrative thread to be how unfairly persecuted Russia is by the western media.

dleslie18• 10 years ago

It would be fair if the source of the allegations wasn't likewise tainted.

Russia engages in propaganda, and this is abundantly obvious; it would be nice if those claiming such were forward and honest about their own ethical deviancies and the actions of their own state. It is tiresome to hear but one side of the concern from the media.

bobthechef4• 10 years ago

I have gotten the exact opposite impression. Maybe 25+ years ago when many Westerns on the hard left naively celebrated communism and the Soviet Union, but the only people who seem to sympathize with Russia are those on the alt-right who wish that the POTUS had the chutzpah of Putin when dealing with foreign adversaries.

akjj2• 10 years ago

Why is this ironic? I'm struggling to find a reasonable interpretation for this claim other than "The NY Times has been wrong about issues of spying and propaganda before, therefore it's not worth my time to consider the claims in this article, and I dismiss it completely." Which is a reasonable thing to believe. A little harsh in my opinion, but reasonable can disagree. However, it's definitely not ironic.

Even if you believe that the NY Times is nothing more than an appendage of the US security establishment, then it's completely straightforward that the establishment would be trying to counteract the propaganda. It's certainly not ironic for the CIA to try to identify and stop foreign spies even as it itself uses spies, or that the military builds armor even as it also uses guns, is it?

If you believe that the NY Times has an institutional position that propaganda is always and forever a legitimate tool of the government, then there's no contradiction if they also call out propaganda for the purpose of neutralizing it.

If you believe that the NY Times is more or less a legitimate news organization that maybe has made mistakes in the past, then I think the article is newsworthy and relevant.

I keep seeing discussion of Russian involvement in other countries' politics dismissed as ironic, which seems to just be a rhetorical trick to make it sound like there's a more sophisticated argument than just "I don't believe that source".

dleslie18• 10 years ago

I did not dismiss the notion that Russia produces propaganda; Russia produces propaganda.

Generally, I expect that those alleging wrong doing are not engaging in the same; and so it appears ironic when an exposed agent of state propaganda alleges that a state is engaging in propaganda. It's a, "well yes, and you would know" sort of humour.

Let those without sin cast the first stones, and all that.

berntb19• 10 years ago

I use a simple method to recognize Putin's propagandists:

Ask if someone is willing to condemn Putin for doing similar invasions as Hitler did in the 1930s.

If the only answers you get to that question are personal attacks and attacks on USA, the person writing is probably working in St Petersburg and paid to write things on the internet.

Edit: 1. I am not American "pabloski", at least get the unserious personal attacks correct. 2. USA generally don't annex territory, unlike Hitler and Putin.

Edit 2: I would ask "pabloski" if he was willing to condemn modern invasions and theft of area in Europe, but it isn't really needed, after he behaved just like I described and he even gave an rt-link.

pabloski• 10 years ago

Are you sure they are not the USA who are doing similar invasions as Hitler? Do you remember? Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria ( through Al-Nusra aka Al-Qaeda, yes Al-Qaeda! ).

WTF, at least listen to Gen. Wesley Clark https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8YtF76s-yM

How can you ( americans ) condemn Russia without an ounce of shame? I am an EU citizen, so I am not russian, not a Putin shill, not a payed troll.

And what about your propaganda machine? The shameless media who attack Donald Trump on each word he spells. The same media who fabricate war stories https://www.rt.com/news/356734-aleppo-child-image-china/

Read the article first, don't stop to rt.com to draw conclusions.

tptacek5• 10 years ago

This was a coherent argument until it got to the "shameless media who attack Donald Trump on each word he spells" and then cited RT about Syria.

DenisM4• 10 years ago

It's entirely possible to be opposed both to US and Russia foreign interventions. And yet you chose to presume the opposite about berntb post. Why is that?

sergiotapia• 10 years ago

There's the Hitler mention I was waiting for! A new record!

berntb19• 10 years ago

The last ones in Europe that made a habit to invade countries and appropriate area were Hitler and Stalin. So whom else could I compare with?

Are you willing to condemn Putin for doing similar invasions and annexations..?

lipun4u• 10 years ago

Both Russian and American medias are two sides of same coin. Both are expert in spreading propaganda, only difference is American media is convincing and Russian media appears to be fake and there is no freedom of media in Russia and freedom of media is rarely used in the US.

I follow RT and NYTimes, and I can say both have left journalism long back.

tptacek5• 10 years ago

Whatever anyone's qualms about the New York Times, I find it hard to take seriously any argument that puts it on the same level as RT. The New York Times is not in fact an instrument of the US Government.

sverige• 10 years ago

Correct. The NYT is an instrument of the Democrat party, just as Fox News is an instrument of the GOP. Journalism has abandoned the pretense of impartiality, and it is especially notable during this election cycle.

zigzigzag5• 10 years ago

As a non-American who follows US politics closely, the NYT might as well be run by the US Government: as far as I can tell the worldviews of the people who run the NYT are identical to those who run the USA and so it's not surprising that it's so often viewed as a mouthpiece. This specific story being a case in point.

Just look at how they handled GWB's "War on Terror", or NSA revelations etc. They just sat on them, despite how newsworthy they were. Too often it was foreign media that broke the stories.

internaut• 10 years ago

Here is a different take on the subject tptacek.

It is unlikely that NYT is ordered to produce stories according to the current administration's liking. Broadly in the West we don't go in for that sort of thing and one hopes we never will.

We don't like being told what to think. The trouble though, is that all ideas have to come from somewhere.

The power of Western style propaganda is that the government does not have to orchestrate it as intensely as in autocracies. It happens automatically because they live and breathe the same air. The relationship is more symbiotic.

If you have real power, you can afford not to be petty. That is the same deal as with the Joker in the medieval court with the King. A government official only kills journalists were they a real threat to his power. If you punish people for a small degree of insolence it is because you are not secure in your power and any provocation could be used to coordinate an attack to displace you. Being 'above' that is a tacit demonstration of power and stability (a good thing!).

What is the practical difference between the information printed by the New York Times and the opinions of the State Department?

I cannot think of any. Any divisions I see are also expressed within the government itself. So they must be coordinated. But is it really from government to media?

The neo-reactionary take is basically the exact reverse of this:

"The New York Times is not in fact an instrument of the US Government."

That's not as whack-a-doodle as it at first sounds. The New York Times is the mouth of a much larger network they refer to as the Cathedral, just as Christianity is not just the physical Vatican City.

This is not necessarily an 'evil' to vanquish, but it does mean if the NYT is misguided on some subject, then it invariably also means the government too is running into the same dead end.

The long and short of it is that the press and the government sup from the same pool of propaganda while they generate it, they believe in their own manufactures. I hope this makes sense to you.

ariwilson• 10 years ago

Based on the number of false equivalencies and specious arguments in this comment thread, it looks like the Russian trolls also have Hacker News on their roster of Western social media sites.

golergka4• 10 years ago

Definetly. HN may not have a huge audience, but it's a very common source of news and articles that later get republished in other aggregators; I would bet they'd use more subtle tactics there though.

zigzigzag5• 10 years ago

This comment is so typical of any story that discusses Russia these days: a flat out rejection of the idea that people who disagree might just be people who disagree. You're either against Russia or you're paid by them/are them.

It's ridiculous and just makes the anti-Russia position look piss weak, or even like propaganda itself. And I say that as a man born in western Europe who has never even been to Russia, but this business of constantly painting anyone who doesn't toe the party line as a paid troll is disgusting.

emblem21• 10 years ago

From the US communist parties of the 1930s to the overleveraged anti-American sentiments of US citizens in the 1960s to the massively expanded and nebulous academic rush to redefine oppression in the 1990s to the "European socialism is so perfect" fantasies of the American lower class in 2010s, Russian propaganda has long been the bedrock of modern America leftism.

dmytrish3• 10 years ago

As a witness of protests at Maidan square in Kiev, I was staggered by the depiction of the events in Russian medias: it was a heavily engineered and coherently orchestrated image full of humongous distortions to the point of creating a parallel reality. Their usual tool is taking an insignificant trend/event that fits their needs and blowing it out of proportions ("nazi" at Maidan, "repressed Russian-speaking population" in mostly Russian-speaking Kiev), producing emotional news about fake events ("a little boy in Slavyansk crucified by Ukrainian punishers"), carefully planned wording and dictionary ("Ukrainian junta/punishers"), flooding websites with paid trolls [1].

Having seen it myself, I will not believe a single word from Russian medias until the Russian regime and its centralized control over media is gone.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolls_from_Olgino

gfosco• 10 years ago

The same shit is happening here. Massive distortion of reality and epic-level propaganda on US media. We need to always be skeptical of the pushed narrative.

dmytrish3• 10 years ago

I can't judge that by myself, but my external impression that if there is such thing as Western propaganda, it must be incredibly subtle and seamless, omnipotent and omnipresent to be real. Russian propaganda is not a thing you are not aware of as a Russian, it's just that it gets you emotional and grows a self-protection from external believes.

Many Russian medias start to claim "look at the others, they are not better" when confronted with a clear evidence of their lie. Even more, it grows a kind of double-speak: I have an impression that the majority of Russians understood who the Crimean "polite green men" were, but they were still supporting the official narrative in public.

I strongly advise against believing in "all these media are sides of the same coin", it's a well-known instrument of propaganda.

rbanffy5• 10 years ago

I think the US has a slightly different problem, and it's much scarier than an external opponent alone.

http://billmoyers.com/story/donald-trump-and-the-walter-winc...

woodandsteel2• 10 years ago

The idea that the media in the US is pure government propaganda. There is vigorous debate on innumerable issues. Think for instance of the climate change debate, or Middle East policy. In Russia you don't have that at all.

One of the basic tactics of pro-Russian propagandists is to not deny that the media in Russia is all propaganda, but try to persuade people that the same is true everywhere else.

The idea is that people won't know what ideas to trust, and will become cynical and apathetic. Once that happens Russia can simply expand unopposed.

bbctol• 10 years ago

There's media manipulation, but it's more by private companies than the state. Which is definitely also troubling, but at least we get three or four different pushed narratives to choose from, instead of the true Russian reality distortion field.

summarite• 10 years ago

Absolute nonsense. There are occasional biases in the media and some level of circular information flow, but that is not even remotely comparable to the Russian shill factories and the absurd and abstruse stories created and pushed by Russian government and linked media. If you don't believe in the shill factories (which are indeed real), think of that: the Russian foreign minister going on TV to criticise a supposed rape of a young girl in Germany, days after it has been forcefully debunked and state media reporting it as a fact still. All with the intention to get people angry/scared of refugees, rile up the Russian community in Germany and overall sow distrust and conflict.

hcarvalhoalves• 10 years ago

Besides Russia, I see the same on Venezuelan and Brazilian media, at different levels of intensity.

What these countries have in common?

dmytrish3• 10 years ago

It's hard for me to guess, maybe centralization of media makes it so attractive for governments to distort information. When there are at least two sides loudly confronting each other, the general picture gets much better.

A curious example: Ukrainian media channels are mostly funded by local oligarchs, but each of them has different agenda and interests, so they often fight each other, and that produces an external assessment of "partly-free" for Ukrainian media space.

cancancan2• 10 years ago

But neo-nazis like Andriy Parubiy did play a significant role.

The guy founded Social-National Party of Ukraine together with Oleh Tyahnybok. There's nothing "nazi" about them, they are nazi and they're not trying to hide it at all. Look at the logo of the party they founded, look at the Azov Battalion insignia.

Parubiy first became the head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council mostly managing paramilitary units and now he is the chairman of the Ukrainian parliament. Tyahnybok made it to the top list of antisemites, published by the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

Journalist in Kiev are being killed on a regular basis. Alexander Shchetinin was found shot dead in his apartment today. A month ago car bomb killed Pavel Sheremet.

Russian trolls are the least of your problems.

kozak2• 10 years ago

That's actually a nice example of the very propaganda we are speaking about. It's hard to find someone farther removed from being a "nazi" than Parubiy. And yet, here this comment is, coming from a freshly registered account.

And the Azov insignia is just a stylized state emblem of Ukraine. Seeing swastikas everywhere is an important part of the approach, I guess.

bfuller2• 10 years ago

Do you think it is any different in the USA or any other country for that matter?

I don't know the answer but it stands to reason that if it works for the Russians it will work for the US aswell

rz2k2• 10 years ago

Yes, it's different.

Ask former classmates or relatives who went into journalism. You may hear they are reluctant to pursue some stories because they don't have enough proof to protect themselves against powerful people the stories could be construed to be slandering, but it's almost unheard of for western journalists to be worried about being assassinated at the rate journalists are assassinated in Russia and the territories it dominates.

Watch talks given by Russian journalists before they were assassinated or after they fled. Even compare them to American journalists who died in uncertain circumstances, or whistle blowers like Edward Snowden.

It's an entirely different ballgame.

golergka4• 10 years ago

It only works when media have been monopolized. All media in Russia that have not enjoyed full government editorial control have debunked these stories quite spectacularly, but now they're almost non-existent.

This would never work in a media world with a Daily Show, for once.

whybroke3• 10 years ago

And.... off the front page almost as quickly as it go there.

Moral of the story: don't criticize Russia with today's HN crowd.

yogthos• 10 years ago

sums it up https://twitter.com/adamjohnsonNYC/status/769944655316287488

faebi• 10 years ago

I clearly do not want to support russian propaganda but as european I distrust the usa as much as russia. The usa has a way to big influence on european media. Its very nicely described in this video of german satire show "Die Anstalt" how big german media companies are financed and controlled through transatlactic companies: https://youtu.be/1ntSxZatFv8 (only german, couldn't find one with english subtitles). There is also a nice video of young journalist Tilo Jung how he asks german government about the fact that russia is renewing their atomic weapons (its bad) and then he asks what they think about the fact that the usa is doing the same inside germany with their atomic weapons (good).

Also they descripe nicely how the usa is and was destabelising the near east and we europeans have this huge crisis next to us now because of those actions. https://youtu.be/MCjeHLjyiMo

In the end for me the usa is playing this game of the good and the bad as much as russia is and as a european I see ourselfs in another political situation than good and bad, we are something third.

damptowel• 10 years ago

Reminds me of "Oh Dearism" I just watched. http://thoughtmaybe.com/oh-dearism-2/

achikin• 10 years ago

I'm glad to hear that my homeland finally caught up with the rest of the world PR culture.

zaro• 10 years ago

Russian false stories are weapon . what is the censorship of us election stories then ?

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-08-29/huffingon-post-revo...

A Powerful Russian Weapon: The Spread of False Stories

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