When they started to yammer about disinformation up here about 15 to 20 years ago - and back then it was just a susurrus among journos and some politicos - I had a brief thought about it while chatting with the Syrian family that ran my go-to lunch café in Malmö, Sweden (fittingly, it was named 'Cosmopolitan').
It came upon me when the man running the business translated for his father who was explaining about Syria's modern history and why there's so much trouble in the region where it is located:
Only a weak regime relying on lies and propaganda needs to defend itself against foreign info-war operators, real or alleged. A strong regime does not need to, because its strength comes from its mutual and reciprocal loyalty and trust to its own people, and vice versa.
Case in point, the USA which trundles along nicely despite (as the likes of von der Leyen would put it) its 1st amendment. Also case in point most nations outside the Soviet sphere pre-1990s, where you could have groups, parties and papers openly calling for violent revolution and remodelling the nation on the CCCP/China/Kambodia - and no-one went to prison for just stating their opinion on such matters. (Acting on them, like various Soviet-funded and directed groups did*, is always a different matter.)
The EU I think knows that the peoples of its constituent parts have zero loyalty to the union as such, remain irritatingly nationalist and will simply not call a Turk a German no matter what a piece of paper says. Thus it lashes out in frustration when it understands that all someone has to do to undermine the EU's official lines of sanctioned truth and agit-prop media (the EU co-funds lots of comics and cartoons and other media targetting children, all with the well-known message of "white indigenous bad, brownblackindianchinese good, islam good, christians evil") is report reality. A former head of RT even stated to a Swedish journo over ten years ago that "No we don't need to manipulate images or distort content, we just need to broadcast what happens in Sweden without your censorship of who the criminals are" - this was about the regular shootings and bombings and riots in migrant-ruled areas.
*Putin's job in the DDR was directing and arming such groups in Germany.
Pre-1 Sept. 1939, perhaps. I think it's a stupid analogy to draw, esp. if it comes from someone from the chief successor country of the USSR, but then again, I'm more like an equal-opportunity offender.
Your continuum, however, misses a point: there's no functional distinction between a left-wing totalitarian planned economy and a right-wing one (with perhaps the limited extent of private property permitted in the latter being the one exception that proves that kind of rule). I do note that the right-wing versions were all in place well before WW2, with Mussolini (1922), Hitler and Roosevelt (both 1933) all espousing that kind of 'corporatism'.
Tongue-in-cheek, I think the best way of conceiving the 20th century might be thus: the (pseudo) Hegelian victory, with the USSR being the thesis, the 'right-wing' reactions the antithesis, and whatever came out at the end of the century becoming, of course, the synthesis.
my comparison does not involve economy, planned or otherwise, but the way in which the state handles the holders of unwelcome opposing views.
from the rather crude 'ab ins kazet' of the third reich, through the more covert 'zersetsung' of the ddr to the current situation of effectively being declared 'undead' in the, german dominated, eu.
Like that Latin quote at the end. What a one to use.
I sometimes throw it at my kids as a parent?
Long time for me from Latin I and II.
Hihi, I provide the kids with a translation (but I've gotta explain it, too).
When they started to yammer about disinformation up here about 15 to 20 years ago - and back then it was just a susurrus among journos and some politicos - I had a brief thought about it while chatting with the Syrian family that ran my go-to lunch café in Malmö, Sweden (fittingly, it was named 'Cosmopolitan').
It came upon me when the man running the business translated for his father who was explaining about Syria's modern history and why there's so much trouble in the region where it is located:
Only a weak regime relying on lies and propaganda needs to defend itself against foreign info-war operators, real or alleged. A strong regime does not need to, because its strength comes from its mutual and reciprocal loyalty and trust to its own people, and vice versa.
Case in point, the USA which trundles along nicely despite (as the likes of von der Leyen would put it) its 1st amendment. Also case in point most nations outside the Soviet sphere pre-1990s, where you could have groups, parties and papers openly calling for violent revolution and remodelling the nation on the CCCP/China/Kambodia - and no-one went to prison for just stating their opinion on such matters. (Acting on them, like various Soviet-funded and directed groups did*, is always a different matter.)
The EU I think knows that the peoples of its constituent parts have zero loyalty to the union as such, remain irritatingly nationalist and will simply not call a Turk a German no matter what a piece of paper says. Thus it lashes out in frustration when it understands that all someone has to do to undermine the EU's official lines of sanctioned truth and agit-prop media (the EU co-funds lots of comics and cartoons and other media targetting children, all with the well-known message of "white indigenous bad, brownblackindianchinese good, islam good, christians evil") is report reality. A former head of RT even stated to a Swedish journo over ten years ago that "No we don't need to manipulate images or distort content, we just need to broadcast what happens in Sweden without your censorship of who the criminals are" - this was about the regular shootings and bombings and riots in migrant-ruled areas.
*Putin's job in the DDR was directing and arming such groups in Germany.
i think the comparison with the third reich situation is a valid one.
however it would be more appropriate to compare it to the eastern german ddr one.
in a way their is a continuum from the third reich, through the ddr, to the, german dominated, eu.
Pre-1 Sept. 1939, perhaps. I think it's a stupid analogy to draw, esp. if it comes from someone from the chief successor country of the USSR, but then again, I'm more like an equal-opportunity offender.
Your continuum, however, misses a point: there's no functional distinction between a left-wing totalitarian planned economy and a right-wing one (with perhaps the limited extent of private property permitted in the latter being the one exception that proves that kind of rule). I do note that the right-wing versions were all in place well before WW2, with Mussolini (1922), Hitler and Roosevelt (both 1933) all espousing that kind of 'corporatism'.
Tongue-in-cheek, I think the best way of conceiving the 20th century might be thus: the (pseudo) Hegelian victory, with the USSR being the thesis, the 'right-wing' reactions the antithesis, and whatever came out at the end of the century becoming, of course, the synthesis.
my comparison does not involve economy, planned or otherwise, but the way in which the state handles the holders of unwelcome opposing views.
from the rather crude 'ab ins kazet' of the third reich, through the more covert 'zersetsung' of the ddr to the current situation of effectively being declared 'undead' in the, german dominated, eu.