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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Hilary Clinton was interviewed yesterday and said those who follow Trump need to be 'deprogram'. What does that even mean?

[twitter]https://twitter.com/BigFish3000/status/1710124898452955315?t=3mox09BpWlDnzNgsVJ1IpQ&s=19[/twitter][/quote]

There is an obvious need to deprogram Trump cult members who have been fed endless toxic mixes of misinformation.

Some Q Anon recoverees have described it being a long process.

I am not sure it is possible for a majority of them now that Russia and a China are both using online misinformation as a major strategic tool to destabilize Western democracies. [/quote]

WASHINGTON (AP) — China has long been seen by the U.S. as a prolific source of anti-American propaganda but less aggressive in its influence operations than Russia, which has used cyberattacks and covert operations to disrupt U.S. elections and denigrate rivals.

But many in Washington now think China is increasingly adopting tactics associated with Russia — and there’s growing concern the U.S. isn’t doing enough to respond.

U.S. officials and outside experts cite recent examples of China-linked actors generating false news reports with artificial intelligence and posting large volumes of denigrating social media posts. While many of the discovered efforts are amateurish, experts think they signal an apparent willingness from Beijing to try more influence campaigns as part of a broader embrace of covert operations, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence[/quote]

Deprogramming is sorely needed but is going to be hard to achieve without better regulation of internet. Google and Meta did take better measures this year to take down Russian and Chinese misinformation online operations but no where near enough.

There is a war on democratic hearts and minds going on.

[b]
Disinformation may be one of Russia and China’s greatest weapons[/b]
BY WILLIAM DANVERS, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR 04/05/23 07:00 AM ET

https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/3932031-disinformation-may-be-one-of-russia-and-chinas-greatest-weapons/amp/

The United States has just completed its second Summit on Democracy. A warning from the State Department reinforces the reality that democracy is under threat globally and that public distrust is one reason for the threat. This distrust has various components, including concern about economic and political stability, but it is also driven and amplified by autocratic governments’ use of malign influence as a weapon against democracy.
Russia, in particular, uses disinformation and malign influence as part of its offensive national security strategy. In 2013, Russia’s military chief of general staff, General Valery Gerasimov, emphasized its importance in an essay he wrote, “The role of non-military means of achieving political and strategic goals has grown and, in many cases, they have exceeded the power of force of weapons in their effectiveness.” The government of the Soviet Union used what they called active measures — the strategy for the spreading of disinformation — for decades against the United States and the West.

[b]China and Russia are joining forces to spread disinformation[/b]

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/china-and-russia-are-joining-forces-to-spread-disinformation/

The deepening relationship between China and Russia is driven in part by a shared narrative that the United States and the European Union are constraining their interests and that they are using information and technology to exert leverage over their adversaries. Putin and the Chinese Communist Party have cracked down on free expression, independent media, and internet freedoms largely to counter what both perceive as the risk posed to their respective regimes by alternative sources of information reaching domestic audiences—and to legitimize these methods internationally.
Though Russian and Chinese interests diverge in important ways, they are increasingly collaborating on the narratives being supplied to domestic audiences, feeding similar disinformation and propaganda to a citizenry increasingly cut off from the global web. In the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Beijing has on the one hand avoided fully backing the incursion while on the other amplifying Kremlin propaganda on the issue. This week, for example, China’s foreign ministry repeated false Russian claims about the presence of U.S. biological weapons in Ukraine.
Against the backdrop of last month’s joint statement from Xi and Putin, this collaboration should be seen as part of a broader project to reshape the global information landscape to favor the Kremlin and Beijing’s authoritarian political projects.

[b]How the People’s Republic of China Amplifies Russian Disinformation[/b]
FPC BRIEFING

https://www.state.gov/briefings-foreign-press-centers/how-the-prc-amplifies-russian-disinformation

[/quote]

So OP - there are now MAGA equivalents in most western countries. Russia and China are exploiting populist discontent to promote their own anti democratic narratives.

Reprogramming is only one part of counter initiatives needed .

We need more concerted efforts to prevent the misinformation and disinformation in the first place.  [/quote]

And, you probably call yourself a "liberal."  You aren't.  You are a leftist. 
A true, classic liberal would NEVER condone any kind of "reprogramming" or "deprogramming."  [/quote]

On the contrary, classical liberals recognize that authoritarians represent an existential threat to all classical liberal values.[/quote]

Then, you must truly fear Biden.  [/quote]

No. We understand the big words we use because we understand history, comparative government, and we read. [/quote]

While at the same time ignoring the authoritarian actions your dear Leader makes.  [/quote]

Such as? And please don't call him our "dear Leader." Presidents as golden idols to be worshipped is something weird Republicans do, not us.[/quote]

This is just the beginning....

[quote]Biden and the Democrats use the spectre of Trump to assert their own brand of authoritarianism – a version less obvious and more sophisticated than Trump’s, but authoritarianism all the same.

The debate over ‘election denialism’ reveals how the Democrats’ criticisms of Trump do not mean they are principled defenders of democracy. In a speech at Union Station in Washington, DC in November, Biden warned that ‘extreme MAGA Republicans aim to question not only the legitimacy of past elections, but elections being held now and into the future’. Yes, casting doubt on elections does damage democracy. But Democrats are just as guilty of this as ‘MAGA Republicans’. Democrats claimed Trump’s election in 2016 was illegitimate due to Russian influence (and many still believe that). Leading party figures backed Stacey Abrams’ claims that the Georgia governor race was stolen from her in 2018. And Biden himself showed doubts about democracy when he described Georgia’s changes to its election laws as ‘Jim Crow 2.0’, adding that those laws could make the Midterm elections in Georgia ‘illegitimate’.

When it comes to elections, Democrats are just as conspiratorial and anti-democratic as the wackiest Trumpists. In October, Hillary Clinton popped up to pre-emptively question the legitimacy of the 2024 election. ‘Right-wing extremists already have a plan’, she says in a video, ‘to literally steal the next presidential election. And they’re not making a secret of it.’ Hillary and her friends call their cam

The Democrats’ denunciations of Trump and his followers are always a prelude to the censorship or repression of those who disagree with them. It’s a classic authoritarian move – ‘my enemies are so evil and dangerous that every illiberal action we take is justified and moral’.

The Democrats’ authoritarianism is more pervasive and censorious than anything Trump ever tried. In the Biden era, it is the Democrats who increasingly favour government and corporate control of political discourse, especially on social media. A Pew poll in 2021 found that 65 per cent of Democrats agreed that the US government should take steps to restrict false information online, even if it limits freedom of information. Only 28 per cent of Republicans shared that view.paign ‘Crush the Coup’, which sounds awfully similar to Trump’s ‘Stop the Steal’. But not to worry – the Democrats’ election denialism is the good kind.

Biden and his team have pursued this speech-control mission with passion. Earlier this year, his administration set up a new Disinformation Governance Board to combat ‘misinformation, malinformation and disinformation that threatens the security of the homeland’. This would-be Ministry of Truth was soon disbanded after a backlash. But there are now reports that the board has re-emerged, continuing its monitoring of social media, only this time behind closed doors.

Attempts by Biden and the Democrats to limit speech go well beyond the clumsy and ill-fated Disinformation Governance Board. As the ‘Twitter Files’ have revealed, internal Twitter documents show the Biden 2020 campaign pressed Twitter and other social-media organisations to ban critics or remove damaging stories. Most notoriously, the Biden team sought to suppress the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story, joining former intelligence officials in calling it ‘Russian disinformation’. The Democrats then joined with the US security state in calling for Trump to be deplatformed from social media after the Capitol riot.[/quote]

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/12/27/joe-biden-and-the-rise-of-respectable-authoritarianism/[/quote]

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