8/31/20
For the first month in my 57 years I have heard Americans use the term “misinformation” casually, as if it is a commonly held term native to an exchange of ideas in the language of our ancestral master class. For the span of my life, this term has been, until now, limited to a discussion of Soviet system oppression and Cold War geopolitics. I recall that in my late 20s, while reading the book Utopia in Power, by two Soviet expats, along with a Reader’s Digest book on the KGB, that the term grated in the gears of my mind. The former book was a liberal examination of the mechanics of internal Soviet oppression. The latter was a jingoistic, American-could-do-no-wrong litany of Soviet atrocities.
In both readings, the word that seemed to set the communist system of anti-thought starkly against the backdrop of my liberal and conservative reading list, was “misinformation,” the concept of the weaponized lie fabricated from a kernel of truth to mislead and misinform. Ironically, this word was put into play and has been used, predominantly, by political, media and academic voices, who are themselves dedicated to misleading us.
Separated by three decades from these readings, and having watched our own agencies of oppression slaughter American civilians and blame it on mentally ill American civilians numerous times, with great success, I should not be surprised to hear people in their early 20s using the Soviet term “misinformation” in every day conversation about social media.
The canary in the coal mine just died.
Thucydides wrote in his chronicle of the suicide of Hellas that the first casualty of that culturally internal war of political dominance was “the word,” that the very meanings of words had become malleable and were reduced to the tools of factional strife, diminishing Man and his every action into something base. The beauty of this phenomenon from the System perspective is that once internal powers of a cultural field begin weaponizing words they will both be rendered blind and cursed to cyclic debasement, a process that fuels the false polarity necessary for a lie-based system to thrive, rendering us into its fuel.
What information about reality that does sift through the baffles of the Media Lie machine is now nothing but a resource to be weaponized, cloaked in the lie of the Left or the Lie of the Right and launched across the Truth vacuum that is surveillance space, which we have somehow justified as “social media,” in our quest to complete our domestic devolution from pack to herd.
The Vile Shepherds above grin.
"America could do no wrong litany of Soviet atrocities" - There would have been no Soviet Union without American bankrolling of the Bolsheviks, industrialization assistance during the reign of Stalin, logistical support of the Soviet Union inWWII (but the USSR did have Germany defeated prior to the aid really pouring in), literally feeding the USSR, etc.etc.
When I was a tyke we were giving them grain.
Which made the 1984 style propaganda that much more cartoonish.
There would have been no Nazis either. America, as one may boil it down to, bankrolled them to. The whole economy is a war based economy. Only 16 of the U$'s years have been without one. I don't believe a word they say re: Russia or China.
I lost my father in Viet Nam....not that way. The SOB that came back was not the father and husband that left.
McNamara's Folly, I think, is the title of a good book about how the military targets low IQ Americans. They still do. Think about that the next time you see that 'short bus' of future "heroes" goes by.
America will lose any real war.
McNamara's Folly was not his folly, but his genius. He targeted low IQ Muricans for cleansing and did so. It was a good book written by a fool who actually believes that the System is intended for good rather than ill.
The hyena manner in which America wages war is fascinating.
"Misinformation" or "disinformation" (dezinformatsiya)?
Let's be precise. There would have been no Soviet Union without JACOB SCHIFF, an American-based financier, bankrolling the Bolsheviks. It would be some sort of Hate Think (possibly rising to level of Hate CRIME) to note any details about Mr Schiff, so I will refrain, out of respect for our host.
Solzhenitsyn's quote that begins "You must understand, the leading Bolsheviks who took over Russia ..." is disturbingly applicable to our current mess. But we are variously told that Solzhenitsyn never said that, or that he did say it, but "even a genius can be wrong." Which of those is disinformation? Who knows? But it does seem that The Press is overwhelmingly run by those who do not hesitate to bend words to mean whatever they want. It's a sort of tradition, you might say, across both space and time.
"we were giving them grain"
That parallels part of my family history, actually. My great-grandfather was at one time in charge of the Sino-Siberian railroad. That side of the family was based in Harbin (way in the north of China) and most of them spoke Russian and went abroad for college in Tsarist Russia. GGF personally witnessed the Revolution (in the European parts of Russia, not in the ass-end hinterlands of eastern Russia) and came home a staunch anti-Communist. He was also both horrified and terrified by what he had seen. So some years later, when GGF had become a fairly prominent official, the Republic of China (this was before China became Chicom land) was trying to buy a measure of peace with the Soviets, by sending them food (soybeans) even though there was a famine in China at the time. GGF refused to allow food to be exported to Soviet Russia under those circumstances. He was driven from office and had his life destroyed by the appeasers and the outright communist sympathizers.
Thanks so much for this. Mike.
Yeah, add "deep state" to "misinformation" as well, lol.
I've been living under this assumption sense the late 90s when the Mouth of So-wrong (media) proclaimed we lived in the "age of information" = "Age of Dis-information". It has only gotten worse over the last 2 decades.