All posts tagged: propaganda

TikTok and Government Clash in Last Round of Supreme Court Briefs

TikTok and Government Clash in Last Round of Supreme Court Briefs

Published by skeptic

The two sides in the momentous clash at the Supreme Court over a measure that could shut down TikTok made their closing written arguments on Friday, sharply disputing China’s influence over the site and the role the First Amendment should play in evaluating the law. Their briefs, filed on an exceptionally abbreviated schedule set last month by the justices, were part of a high-stakes showdown over the government’s insistence that ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, sell the app’s operations in the United States or shut it down. The Supreme Court, in an effort to resolve the case before the law’s Jan. 19 deadline, will hear arguments at a special session next Friday. The court’s ruling, which could come this month, will decide the fate of a powerful and pervasive cultural phenomenon that uses a sophisticated algorithm to feed a personalized array of short videos to users. TikTok has become, particularly for younger generations, a leading source of information and entertainment. “Rarely if ever has the court confronted a free-speech case that matters to so many people,” …

The Darkroom of Propaganda | Andrew O’Hagan

The Darkroom of Propaganda | Andrew O’Hagan

Published by skeptic

It is a sad feature of the ego that it will always seek pleasure in the wrong places. Now and again, voters will crave the approval and the leniency of the thing which despises them, and that is how a felonious bigot gets to be president. To millions of decent people who might judge better when it comes to their children, Trump’s menace is not a bar to his attraction but is rather a part of it, and so, for reasons too deep for tears, his manifold hatreds have proved more inviting than repugnant to a proportion of the electorate. It is an aspect of Trump’s cruel magic that he so readily invites the communion of people who find they can express in company what they might otherwise resist. As George Orwell showed, groupthink may be developed in a darkroom of propaganda. For us, it now shows in the lower depths of the Internet as well as on talk radio shows and a hundred perfidious podcasts, where the sleep of reason becomes a populist mania, …

Russian Civil War Propaganda: Posters & Propaganda Trains

Russian Civil War Propaganda: Posters & Propaganda Trains

Published by skeptic

  Russian Civil War propaganda had a bold and convincing style. Posters adorned urban sites, while trains draped in patriotic colors steamed through the countryside. Propaganda media brought land, peace, and liberation themes that appealed to an often illiterate, multi-ethnic population. Designed for busy urbanites or those who could not read, visual media offered the most direct way to change popular opinion. Bolshevik and White Army propaganda machines developed effective techniques for their target audiences.   Here is how Russia’s information war worked to change the political landscape 100 years ago.   A Nation Ripe for Change Bolsheviks with a red banner painted with the slogan “Communism” during the Russian Revolution. Source: Radio Prague International   In the winter of 1917, facing desertions, bread riots, and a population weary from the First World War, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated the Russian throne during the February Revolution. A provisional government replaced Russia’s monarchist regime. Intended as an interim governing body, the Provisional Government filled the gap until a constituent assembly could elect representatives for a new, democratic …

Steve Bannon Is Out of Prison and Spreading Lies Online

Steve Bannon Is Out of Prison and Spreading Lies Online

Published by skeptic

Steve Bannon got out of federal prison at around 3 am Tuesday. Seven hours later, he was live on his War Room podcast to “flood the zone with shit” exactly one week before the presidential election. Flooding the zone with shit is Bannon’s own oft-quoted description of his media strategy: churning so many lies or half-truths into the stratosphere that it becomes impossible to draw a line between fact and fiction. “I am more energized and more focused than I’ve ever been in my entire life,” said Bannon on the War Room stream on Rumble, which garnered nearly 100,000 live viewers at one point. “The four months in federal prison not only didn’t break me, it empowered me.” Bannon, 70, a longtime ally of and former strategist for Donald Trump, spent four months at a low-security federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut, for contempt after he defied a subpoena in the congressional probe into the January 6 Capitol riot. Bannon has cast himself as a martyr—someone who, like January 6 rioters and like Trump, is being …

Private Snafu: The World War II Propaganda Cartoons Created by Dr. Seuss, Frank Capra & Mel Blanc

Private Snafu: The World War II Propaganda Cartoons Created by Dr. Seuss, Frank Capra & Mel Blanc

Published by José

Pri­vate Sna­fu was the U.S. Army’s worst sol­dier. He was slop­py, lazy and prone to shoot­ing off his mouth to Nazi agents. And he was huge­ly pop­u­lar with his fel­low GIs. Pri­vate Sna­fu was, of course, an ani­mat­ed car­toon char­ac­ter designed for the mil­i­tary recruits. He was an adorable dolt who sound­ed like Bugs Bun­ny and looked a bit like Elmer Fudd. And in every episode, he taught sol­diers what not to do, from blab­bing about troop move­ments to not tak­ing malar­ia med­ica­tion. The idea for the series report­ed­ly came from Frank Capra — the Oscar-win­ning direc­tor of It’s a Won­der­ful Life and Mr. Smith Goes to Wash­ing­ton and, dur­ing WWII, the chair­man of the U.S. Army Air Force First Motion Pic­ture Unit. He want­ed to cre­ate a car­toon series for new recruits, many of whom were young, unworld­ly and in some cas­es illit­er­ate. Capra gave Dis­ney first shot at devel­op­ing the idea but Warn­er Bros’ Leon Schlesinger, a man who was as famous for his hard-dri­ving busi­ness acu­men as he was for wear­ing exces­sive …

Microsoft report details Russia disinformation campaign against Harris

Microsoft report details Russia disinformation campaign against Harris

Published by Sam

Mashabuba | Getty | Getty Images The video was seen millions of times across social media but some viewers were suspicious: It featured a young Black woman who claimed Vice President Kamala Harris left her paralyzed in a hit-and-run accident in San Francisco 13 years ago. In an emotional retelling from a wheelchair, the alleged victim said she “cannot remain silent anymore” and lamented that her childhood had “ended too soon.” Immediately after the video was posted on Sept. 2, social media users pointed out reasons to be wary. The purported news channel it came from, San Francisco’s KBSF-TV, didn’t exist. A website for the channel set up just a week earlier contained plagiarized articles from real news outlets. The woman’s X-ray images shown in the video were taken from online medical journals. And the video and the text story on the website spelled the alleged victim’s name differently. The caution was warranted, according to a new Microsoft threat intelligence report, which confirms the fabricated tale was disinformation from a Russia-linked troll farm. The tech giant’s report released Tuesday …

The Russian propaganda attack on America

The Russian propaganda attack on America

Published by skeptic

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. When people think of the world of espionage, they probably imagine glamorous foreign capitals, suave undercover operators, and cool gadgets. The reality is far more pedestrian: Yesterday, the Justice Department revealed an alleged Russian scheme to pay laundered money to American right-wing social-media trolls that seems more like a bad sitcom pitch than a top-notch intelligence operation. According to a federal indictment unsealed yesterday, two Russian citizens, Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, worked with a Tennessee company not named in the indictment but identified in the press as likely to be Tenet Media, owned by the conservative entrepreneurs Lauren Chen and her husband, Liam Donovan. The Russians work for RT, a Kremlin-controlled propaganda outlet; they are accused of laundering nearly $10 million and directing the money to the company. Chen and Donovan then allegedly used most of that money …

The North Korean official whose propaganda helped build the Kim dynasty dies at 94

The North Korean official whose propaganda helped build the Kim dynasty dies at 94

Published by skeptic

SEOUL, South Korea — Kim Ki Nam, a North Korean propaganda chief who helped build personality cults around the country’s three dynastic leaders, has died at 94, the North’s state media said. North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said the country’s current leader, Kim Jong Un, visited the body of Kim Ki Nam at a funeral hall in the capital, Pyongyang, early Wednesday and expressed condolences to family members. The agency said Kim Jong Un will lead the state funeral committee for Kim Ki Nam, who will be buried on Thursday. KCNA said Kim Ki Nam, a former secretary of the ruling Workers’ Party’s central committee, “devoted his all to the sacred struggle for defending and strengthening the ideological purity of our revolution and firmly guaranteeing the steady victory of the socialist cause.” The agency said he died Tuesday after being treated for age-related illnesses and multiple organ dysfunctions for the past year. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visited the body of Kim Ki Nam in Pyongyang on Wednesday.KCNA via AP Kim Ki …

Europe’s election campaigns are under the constant threat of foreign interference

Europe’s election campaigns are under the constant threat of foreign interference

Published by Sam

François-Xavier Bellamy, the top candidate for the conservative Les Républicains party in the upcoming European elections, revealed Monday that he had been targeted by an attempted cyberattack launched by a group believed to be linked to the Chinese government. Coming soon after Socialist Party candidate Raphaël Glucksmann’s announcement that he was targeted by what seemed to be a mass disinformation campaign on social media, Bellamy’s declaration is a stark reminder of the threat of foreign interference that continues to plague parties competing in the June elections. Issued on: 07/05/2024 – 17:36 5 min Bellamy announced on Monday that he had filed a complaint after he was targeted by a cyberattack attempt from a group of hackers called APT31, which several countries – including the US and the UK – believe to be linked to the Chinese government. “At a time when Chinese President Xi Jinping is embarking on a state visit to Paris, there’s a feeling that we haven’t taken the measure of what’s at stake today in terms of foreign interference,” Bellamy told AFP. …

June 2024 Cover by Anne Applebaum, New Propaganda War

June 2024 Cover by Anne Applebaum, New Propaganda War

Published by Sam

For The Atlantic’s June cover story, “Democracy Is Losing the Propaganda War,” staff writer Anne Applebaum reports on how autocrats in China, Russia, and other places around the world are now making common cause with MAGA Republicans to discredit liberalism and freedom everywhere. Applebaum’s story is adapted from her forthcoming book, Autocracy Inc. (publishing July 23), and draws from her exceptional reporting for The Atlantic. Even in authoritarian states where surveillance is almost total, Applebaum reports, “the experience of tyranny and injustice can radicalize people. Anger at arbitrary power will always lead someone to start thinking about another system, a better way to run society.” This has resulted in autocratic regimes slowly turning their repressive mechanisms outward, into the democratic world. Applebaum writes: “If people are naturally drawn to the image of human rights, to the language of democracy, to the dream of freedom, then those concepts have to be poisoned. That requires more than surveillance, more than close observation of the population, more than a political system that defends against liberal ideas. It also …