China is using the world's largest known online disinformation operation to harass Americans, a CNN review finds
The Chinese government has built up the world’s largest known online disinformation operation and is using it to harass US residents, politicians, and businesses—at times threatening its targets with violence, a CNN review of court documents and public disclosures by social media companies has found.
The onslaught of attacks – often of a vile and deeply personal nature – is part of a well-organized, increasingly brazen Chinese government intimidation campaign targeting people in the United States, documents show.
The US State Department says the tactics are part of a broader multi-billion-dollar effort to shape the world’s information environment and silence critics of Beijing that has expanded under President Xi Jinping. On Wednesday, President Biden is due to meet Xi at a summit in San Francisco.
Victims face a barrage of tens of thousands of social media posts that call them traitors, dogs, and racist and homophobic slurs. They say it’s all part of an effort to drive them into a state of constant fear and paranoia.
I can’t prove it, but my hunch is a lot of the obnoxious people I argue with online, who seem unable to see reason or resist devolving to insults and twisting my words, are actually foreign operatives tasked with depleting American morale
IDK, I think there are a lot of pretentious idiots who refuse to engage in good faith discussions without any direct ties to any foreign governments. People adamantly hold on to all kinds of stupid opinions and argue fervently for them.
So it's hard to tell who the foreign operatives are if regular people are willing to spread disinformation without any kind of compensation.
True, but the people funding disinformation operations believe they're making a difference, and anti-disinformation operations like Bellingcat agree with them.
I think a better way to view is that malicious actors have managed to weaponize the "pretentious idiots" you referred to, making them an integral part of their propaganda strategy. They're useful idiots working for foreign governments without even knowing it, and the way they're manipulated and amplifying deliberate propaganda makes them far more influential than they would be if they were just spewing their own personal idiocy.
That's fair. My point is that the person you're talking to is unlikely to be a foreign operative, so calling them on their BS (if you do it well) could have enough of a ripple effect to get others to ignore them.
It's a huge pain, and it's not something anyone will ever win, but I think it's important. It's a lot easier to neutralize an idiot than a professional.
I prefer to add a dose of spicey humour or sweet idiocy to my conspiracies to keep the real spies off my tail
That's where the psy-op is though. So much of our communication even in our local communities is done online anymore.
So just putting that uncertainty in your head of "I bet a large percentage of people we interact with are just Pooh-bear sock puppets" might be enough subtle false-flagging to heavily polarize entire societies, when we remember China excels at taking bad things and applying them "at scale."
At a time when we're deprived of and seeking community and social bonds, it's isolating, it's depressing, and it's doing a ton of potential damage.
Agreed. Assuming bad things is a great slope into playing devil's advocate
I honestly can't imagine any other reason why internet leftists would defend an autocratic capitalist nation so vehemently, while also putting so much effort into excluding European social democracy from leftist spaces.
Certainly social democracy would be an improvement for the US people over what the US currently has.
Quick question, though, Wikipedia gives this definition of a communist state:
How does this not apply to China? It sure makes sense to me that a communist forum would support a communist state...
The problem with that is the fact its a descriptor. Basically ever so called communist state since the Soviet Union has in some way been influenced by so called "Marxist-Leninism" due to soviet and now chinese influence. The thing there is a shit-ton of leftists who see MLs as nothing more than fascists with a red paint job, so will thusly argue that china isnt communist.
Plus you could have a communist society which actively lynches MLs which would actively invalidate that qoute you put up.
Its a bad definition, itd be like making a definition for republics based solely on the the Commonwealth of England.
Fair, I’m not saying it’s a definition. This is Wikipedia we’re talking about. My point was more that a “communist state” (although the term is misleading) is really in active usage referring to a country with MLs in power that are working for the benefit of their citizens to achieve communism. That’s not an exact definition either, but it should convey the point well enough in terms of currently existing countries.
Western Moral. I've got the same hunch here in Europe.
Nono tankies aren't Chinese operators, they're CIA, tasked to discredit the left. That's important because they'd be proud of the former but are enraged by the latter.
Ah, yes, of course, the classic strategy of discrediting the left by using the viewpoints of the definitely not left wing movement of ... checks notes communism?
The strategy of equating a classless, stateless, and moneyless society with brutal, authoritarian, oligarchy-run, very much statist, state capitalism. Just paint all means of oppression red and it's going to be fine, amirite?
Marxist-Leninists do not argue that when you have a communist revolution that you'll just magically end up with communism. Look into the "dictatorship of the proletariat."
No, of course not. China has a strategy of democratic centralism, which actually seems to be a quite effective implementation of a democracy. Unlike in countries like the US, Chinese citizens are quite satisfied with their government.
Read your fucking Lenin. Democratic centralism is an organisational principle for parties, not for societies. Also it doesn't work as the enforced unity ("thou shalt not question shit that has been voted on") allows authoritarianism to take root, especially considering that party officials were never freely elected, but from lists drawn up by guess who those already in power.
It's always funny, Tankies thinking other leftists don't know anything about the mechanics of ML parties and their state-level experiments. We do. We understand it. We know where it leads. That's why we don't want that shit because to communism it leads not. Granted Cuba is on a good path right now but, well, they've left a lot of that old ML stuff behind them.
As to China. Fucking China. China doesn't even have public healthcare. It has billionaires. It's not even state capitalism it's straight-up authoritarian capitalism. Singapore but in corrupt, without rule of law, and with polling that you can't trust because people are both afraid of speaking their mind, as well as isolated from the world.
Nah, people got too much dogma up their arse these days anyways