Hacker News Reader

Comment by 0815test | Hacker News Reader

> a strain of leftist totalitarianism

A strain of leftist totalitarianism which - as it turns out - originally came about as a result of Russian (well, Soviet, but still) political interference. Isn't that deliciously ironic? Of course the memetic infection has been self-propagating for a very long time, also merging with other strains originating from e.g. Maoist China at the peak of the Cultural Revolution. It's a bit like a zombie invasion which has no real underlying goals of its own besides memetic success - but the Russian propaganda component was definitely there originally!

View on HN

No it's not, that started around 2010 with the Great Awokening. It's being driven by the mainstream media:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1133440945201061888.html

That's pretty interesting. As they say, Meme Magic is real.

Missing from this post - a source and also the total num of articles used as source data. I’d bet that the number of articles in general have increased by a lot.

> originally came about as a result of Russian (well, Soviet, but still) political interference.

Could you share what this refers to, and do you have specific conclusive evidence that you could also share?

I would guess he's alluding to Soviet influence on our 60s counterculture.

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

See e.g. Vladimir Bukovsky's Judgment in Moscow, currently being reissued in English translation. It just goes to prove that Russian interference in Western politics is nothing new, much less out of the ordinary. But the direction it points towards is very different from what you hear these days in the mainstream media!

Thank you, that's seems both substantive and evidence-based.

In my mind, the important question is: to what degree, in what forms, and backed by what evidence, does this interference actually in fact continue today, and (as you say) how closely does this align to the narrative of interference that is presented (through various channels, by various actors, coordinated or independent) to people today?

It's quite fun to think about impartially.

The interference need not continue today for the related memes to still be active. They've simply become zombie memes and have been actively spreading as such, perhaps being quite independent of any outside interference. Similarly, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution has been over for decades in China itself and the Gang of Four has even lost political favor in the PRC, but the memes which have been boosted by it ("Marx, Mao, Marcuse!" and the like) are very much active in the West. The unrolled Twitter thread that's been linked in a sibling comment is highly instructive in this regard!

Some zombie memes may still be active, but we also have a fresh set of Russia memes that are pushed every day by the three letter agencies, media, and individual people (with infected brains) on various social media platforms. It's quite fascinating to watch how it all works in action, human brains act very much like computers that are attached to a network - just as a computer virus infects a machine, which in turn infects other machines it comes in contact with, the same thing can be observed (via comments on internet forums) happening with human beings as they both enthusiastically spread and defend the meme.

If anyone happens to know of anyone who is studying this phenomenon specifically in today's context, or if there is even a general name for the phenomenon, please post a comment.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com