Comment by porpoisely | Hacker News Reader

Comment by porpoisely | Hacker News Reader

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What evidence? The russia-brexit narrative is as flimsy as the trump-russia narrative. Some russian company spent a few thousand dollars on facebook and google and that means that russian interfered?

What about when obama openly campaigned against brexit? What about when our politicians and business moguls openly campaigned against brexit? What about the billions spent by US/Europe politicians against brexit. Is that foreign influence?

There was obviously foreign interference in brexit and the US election. Most of it didn't come from russia, a country with an economy the size of australia or spain. It came from the anti-brexit side.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...

The russia narrative is simply propaganda by the powerful pro-globalism state and corporate institutions. Also, the idea of brexit is a pipe dream. The EU and corporation powers will never let britain leave.

The US, EU, China, Saudi Arabia and every major corporation has come out against it. It will never happen. Everyone knows what is going to happen. The EU will force a revote like it has done every time they didn't get what they wanted.

I think there's a crucial difference between legitimate open campaigning and deceitful clandestine campaigning. The former is an investment toward making certain facts and, possibly controversial, opinions made known to a wider, perhaps targeted, audience and the ultimate motivation for this is transparent. The latter is a deliberate attempt to sow disinformation and confusion to particularly vulnerable audiences to achieve an outcome for which the ultimate motivation is troublingly obscure. They are total opposites - truth and lies.

In the world of politics and propaganda, it's pretty much all lies. Just like the narrative that russia controls trump or russia is behind brexit. If you think one side is offering truth and the other lies, it's most likely because you favor one side over the other. Objectively, it's all nonsense.

What our "state" propaganda on both of the atlantic have been saying is something all states do when things don't go their way. Blame the "other". The chinese do that to crackdown on muslims, falun gong, etc. The russians do that for separatists. The turks do that. The nazis did it. The japanese did. We did it many times. Everyone does it.

The simplest and most effective way to manipulate and control the public is to present an external threat. It's propaganda 101. But of course, we only call it propaganda when others do it. When we do it, it's news/facts/truth.

But maybe I'm just naive. I'll wait with bated breath to see how a relatively poor country like russia has taken control over the politics of regions that are collectively nearly 40X as wealthy as russia. It's a notion as absurd as dirt poor north korea controlling china, but anything is possible.

"Flimsy"

Sure, we'll see how flimsy this is once everything comes to light

We pretty much already know it's flimsy. It's been nearly 3 years and we've had nothing. Now, the question is whether it is outright propaganda on the level of mccarythism or yellow cake.

That a country with a GDP the size of australia is dominating britian and american politics seems laughable to me. But perhaps that's just me being naive.

"We know", speak for yourself

The GDP of the country has not much correlation with their geopolitical capabilities

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