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How A Long-Dead Dictator Haunts The Internet
David Reavill
 September 27 2024 at 05:28 pm
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Joseph Stalin (1878 - 1953) The Dictator we’re speaking of was Joseph Stalin, who many historians consider to have exercised more control and power over his country than any other leader in history. Measured in the proportion of Soviet Citizens who died under his reign, this is undoubtedly true. Stalin began as Secretary of the Communist Party upon the death of the country’s founder, Vladimir Lenin, in 1924. From there, he steadily ascended to greater and greater levels of power and control until he became Prime Minister in 1941. He served as the Nation’s leader until he died in 1953 at the age of 74. Stalin began mercilessly “purging” enemies and allies in his lust for unlimited power. It is now estimated that tens of millions died in these purges. Combined with the estimated 20 to 30 million who died in World War II, it’s easy to see how most demographic estimates put the total deaths in the Soviet Union at 40 to 50 million. Today, we’ll discuss one of Stalin’s most powerful instruments in obtaining control and influence over the Soviet People and how that instrument is now being introduced to the World Wide Web. ** Stalin was a master of mass psychology and thoroughly understood the methods of controlling large groups of people. For instance, Stalin instinctively recognized that the State was uniquely positioned to present “news and information.” The average citizen would see any information disseminated by the Central Government as authoritative and reliable. So, when his disastrous agricultural programs failed, Stalin turned around the reports and told the Soviets that the farms were doing well, producing bumper crops. Most believed the government reports. Of course, it helped that any skeptics were labeled “enemies of the state” and quickly liquidated. This was also true during World War II when Soviet Troops sustained massive losses at the hands of the Germans. Stalin maintained morale by reporting that the Soviet Union was winning. And indeed, eventually, the USSR did secure victory over the Nazis.None of this was luck or coincidence. It was all part of a carefully orchestrated program that Stalin began back in 1923. Before Joseph Goebbels ( Nazi propaganda) or Edward Bernays (American propaganda), Stalin created his own version of State-controlled propaganda, which he called “Dezinformatsiya” (disinformation). Stalin wasted no time creating a government Ministry of Dezinformatsiya. This department would become the center of news and information for the Soviet people. Its chief mission was to extol Joseph Stalin’s virtues and victories. It was incredibly successful, and for many, Stalin became the living, breathing embodiment of the nation. Disinformation had built a cult of personality around Stalin that was nearly impossible to penetrate. Millions of Soviets would go to their graves believing that Stalin was the “savior” of their country and had only their best interests in his heart. So powerful was this disinformation. Throughout the Second World War, this unconditional allegiance to their leader welded the Nation together. It made it possible for the Soviets to withstand an unimaginable level of death and destruction. This did not go unnoticed across the Atlantic in America. As the two nations transitioned from World War Allies to Cold War Enemies, the US realized the growing importance of “disinformation/propaganda.” Today, The New Disinformation Throughout the 20th century, the dissemination of information, or disinformation, remained in the hands of those with “access.” Access principally to the media is the chief mode of information dissemination. The advent of the Internet allowed us common folk to have a forum to present our ideas and our way of viewing the world. Not since the competing pamphleteers of the American Revolution have we seen so many citizens participating in the public dialog. Today’s virtual forums, in which you and I are participating, have expanded our communities far beyond anything we could have conceived of just a few years ago. Now, Ordinary people around the globe have a voice. The “comment sections” tell internet creators that the world is listening and taking notes. Regrettably, the elites are not receiving this well. Their century-long monopoly is being challenged by a rabble group of internet commentators loosely labeled “the people.” As a result, politicians, internet platforms, and government agencies have been busy accusing us of the very thing that they’ve been doing for years: practicing “disinformation.” Internet platforms quickly pull the plug on any creator who “goes too far.” Use the wrong pronoun or politically abrasive term, and you’ll find that you’ve lost access. Ultimately, this battle will be fought in the Court House and the Halls of Congress, and the lines are already being drawn. In an hour-long speech before the Stanford Cyber Policy Institute two years ago, former President Obama laid out the case for internet censorship. While you and I may have considered the issue to be one of Free Speech, that our comments published on the Internet fall under the confines of the First Amendment to the Constitution, Obama takes a radically different approach. To the former President, the Internet is a mere “product” subject to the laws and regulations providing for our “safety,” like a toaster oven. “Of course, this business model has proven to be wildly successful. For more and more of us, search and social media platforms aren’t just our window into the Internet;they serve as our primary source of news and information. "No one tells us that the window is blurred, subject to unseen distortions and subtle manipulations. All we see is a constant feed of content where useful factual information and happy diversions, and cat videos, flow alongside lies, conspiracy theories, junk science, quackery, White supremacist, racist tracts, misogynist screeds. "And over time, we lose our capacity to distinguish between fact, opinion and wholesale fiction. "Or maybe we just stop caring.” https://barackobama.medium.com/my-remarks-on-disinformation-at-stanford-7d7af7ba28af Of course, President Obama is far from alone in calling for these “reforms.” Many in official Washington have joined in seeking additional restraint on the Internet. Recently, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton suggested that purveyors of “disinformation” ought to be charged with criminal activity. https://www.foxnews.com/media/hillary-clinton-called-out-suggesting-americans-should-arrested-over-disinformation-quite-chilling We live in a time of tremendous technological change. The same technology that has presented us with an opportunity to exercise our free speech rights could, if turned around, become the world’s most omnipresent instrument of censorship. The Ministry of Dezinformatsiya awaits our answer.
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Quotation Archeology
LadyVal
 September 18 2024 at 01:14 pm
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Few people are truly aware of a form of research today designed to make criminals of people whose words, written and spoken, were – until our present “WOKE” era – perfectly acceptable and even, in many instances, distinctly worthwhile in the communication of ideas within the public forum. However, the current WOKE culture now demands that opinions held (much less expressed!) must conform to the prevailing “politically correct” understanding of what is, and is not, acceptable. The result of this totally malformed and misfit understanding of human communications has created a form of “research” carried on by various individuals and groups that involves searching or “digging” (hence the allusion to “archeology”) through a person’s past statements, quotes, references, allusions, excerpts and/or expressed viewpoints in order to discover – and subsequently reveal – whether those statements, quotes, references, allusions, excerpts and/or expressed viewpoints can be used to publicly charge that Individual with thoughts, beliefs and opinions considered offensive, hateful and/or morally – even criminally – wrong, thus making that person unworthy of public approval and possibly liable to legal prosecution and punishment. It does not matter if such statements, quotes, references, allusions, excerpts and/or expressed viewpoints were not problematic at the time they were made. It only matters that they were made and therefore they cannot be denied, gainsaid or explained away with the claim that they are being “misinterpreted” and/or “misrepresented” by the finder. But should anyone believe that this concept is something “new under the sun,” one need only look to the law to see that such efforts are not at all new! Indeed, the concept itself is so set that it possesses legal nomenclature that makes clear immediately what is being attempted. This particular legal situation is called, in Latin, ex post facto – in English, “retrospectively” or “after the fact.” An ex post facto law is one that retroactively changes the legal consequences (or status) of actions that were committed, or relationships that existed, before the enactment of the law under consideration. In criminal law, it may criminalize actions that were legal when committed (such as charging a man who had a drink before the ratification of Prohibition!); it may aggravate a crime by bringing it into a more severe category than it was in when it was committed; it may change the punishment prescribed for a crime, as by adding new penalties or extending sentences; it may extend or reduce the statute of limitations; or it may alter the rules of evidence in order to make conviction for the crime involved likelier than it would have been when the deed was committed. Indeed, the American Civil War was initiated when eleven Southern States chose to secede from the union created by the Constitution even though to do so was perfectly legal under that same Constitution! This “ex post facto” finding of secession as a crime when it only became one after the war initiated to punish that “crime” is an example of the dangerous nature of being able to make criminal what was not criminal when it is useful for the government to do so! Indeed, we see in that same “Civil War” the use of the institution of slavery to condemn and castigate people whose only “sin” was that they were born in the 18th and 19th centuries. For the use of that particular issue – considered the great Sin of the United States (alone apparently!) – permits our WOKE “historians” (HA!) to make of men like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Robert E. Lee and anyone else on the “wrong side” of what passes for “history” these days, to be fully and totally condemned as unworthy of any possible decency and goodness much less public reverence. Of course, the further result of that viewpoint is to make the country founded by those same former individuals – such as Washington and Jefferson – also unworthy! And as there is no requirement in our “archeology” to report accuratelyabout anything said and or done by people now long dead, they are unable to defend themselves or make mention of the fact that their actions during that period of history are being made into ex post facto moral and even legal crimes! The mind numbing and constantly ongoing allusions to slavery in any and every coverage of this nation’s history – whether written or visual – together with the fact that former uncontested national heroes are, when considered appropriate – that is, when they are white! – always defined in relationship to slavery. They are always – no matter what the subject referenced! – defined as and referred to as “slave owners,” a matter that clearly indicates the agenda being advanced by these so-called “historians.” Returning to the here and now, trying to “incriminate” an individual by virtue of repeating some presently unacceptable and offensive position or statement even if it were made years ago seems to anyone with a brain to be, at worst, nonsensical! But remember, what God given freedoms formerly guaranteed to us as Americans by our Constitution are disappearing faster than ice in a furnace and when what was legal becomes illegal – and if the concept of ex post factohas been well and truly established – few indeed are those who will escape prison – or worse. And, finally, this has all been made a thousand times worse by our technological revolution that now records – and saves – all that most of us say and do. We can no longer hope that our freely expressed opinions can be, if necessary, denied much less hidden! Actually, it is worse even than that, for with AI we now have the capacity to present an image of what is purported to be any individual saying (and doing!) anything! Eventually they won’t even need ex post facto, but for now, at least, it gives the Deep State the ability to obtain a “background” on anyone should they wish to deliver that individual to prison or the grave! What Americans have learned since 2020 about the tyranny that runs our once great country reveals that there is little (or no) hope that anything ordinary people – or even extraordinary people – can do will stop our long march into the darkness. “Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”― George Orwell, 1984
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