A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century
Tablet Magazine,
by
Jacob Siegel
Original Article
Posted By: earlybird,
4/9/2023 4:54:32 PM
PROLOGUE: THE INFORMATION WAR
In 1950, Sen. Joseph McCarthy claimed that he had proof of a communist spy ring operating inside the government. Overnight, the explosive accusations blew up in the national press, but the details kept changing. Initially, McCarthy said he had a list with the names of 205 communists in the State Department; the next day he revised it to 57. Since he kept the list a secret, the inconsistencies were beside the point. The point was the power of the accusation, which made McCarthy’s name synonymous with the politics of the era.
Reply 1 - Posted by:
earlybird 4/9/2023 4:58:58 PM (No. 1444510)
FTA:
In his last days in office, President Barack Obama made the decision to set the country on a new course. On Dec. 23, 2016, he signed into law the Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act, which used the language of defending the homeland to launch an open-ended, offensive information war.
Something in the looming specter of Donald Trump and the populist movements of 2016 reawakened sleeping monsters in the West. Disinformation, a half-forgotten relic of the Cold War, was newly spoken of as an urgent, existential threat. Russia was said to have exploited the vulnerabilities of the open internet to bypass U.S. strategic defenses by infiltrating private citizens’ phones and laptops. The Kremlin’s endgame was to colonize the minds of its targets, a tactic cyber warfare specialists call “cognitive hacking.”
Yeah, him. And thus it began.
56 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
Dodge Boy 4/9/2023 5:17:28 PM (No. 1444524)
FTA - "This is not because Americans are stupid; it’s because what has taken place is not a tragedy but something closer to a crime. Disinformation is both the name of the crime and the means of covering it up; a weapon that doubles as a disguise.
The crime is the information war itself, which was launched under false pretenses and by its nature destroys the essential boundaries between the public and private and between the foreign and domestic, on which peace and democracy depend. By conflating the anti-establishment politics of domestic populists with acts of war by foreign enemies, it justified turning weapons of war against Americans citizens."
Yes, this piece is very deep and very long. Please read and understand it. America is under full attack - right under noses. You must understand it. It is up to you, folks.
52 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
Illinois Mom 4/9/2023 5:30:54 PM (No. 1444527)
All could think when I read the headline was "Which Hoax?"
BTW...great article!
59 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
msliberty1937 4/9/2023 5:54:52 PM (No. 1444538)
Hope someone is putting articles like this in a Time Capsule. In another hundred years (if our country lasts that long and anyone can still read English) no one will be able to believe this happened.
41 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
earlybird 4/9/2023 5:55:14 PM (No. 1444539)
Some people ask “how can this happen here?”
FTA:
This is how the government-created “war against disinformation” became the great moral crusade of its time. CIA officers at Langley came to share a cause with hip young journalists in Brooklyn, progressive nonprofits in D.C., George Soros-funded think tanks in Prague, racial equity consultants, private equity consultants, tech company staffers in Silicon Valley, Ivy League researchers, and failed British royals. Never Trump Republicans joined forces with the Democratic National Committee, which declared online disinformation “a whole-of-society problem that requires a whole-of-society response.”
Which blurs the line between foreign and domestic, terrorists and ordinary Americans, because, after all, the Web is Worldwide and who knows who or where one really is. So let’s go after everyone.
17 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
DanvilleBill 4/9/2023 5:55:42 PM (No. 1444540)
Great article!!
I always enjoy reading the random meanderings of college sophomores.
7 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
earlybird 4/9/2023 6:10:13 PM (No. 1444543)
I dunno. The sophomores who meander here are just….sophomoric.
16 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
LC Chihuahua 4/9/2023 7:20:40 PM (No. 1444557)
It's all about controlling the narrative through influence, manipulation, and distraction. Most of the news isn't news anymore. None of the media sources are trustworthy.
Doubt it is just Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms the government was working with.
Have to imagine they would want to go after Conservative media as well. Find out what is 'trending' among Conservatives? What do you want Conservatives talking about and not talk about. How would one make that happen?
21 people like this.
It was/true in the 50s. Now oh so true today. This time, 2023, it's being accomplished. I remember "those day." Was a little girl. But do remember. Wake up people. The commies of the 50s went "under ground' so to speak.
25 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
walcb 4/9/2023 9:29:12 PM (No. 1444579)
"This is not because Americans are stupid; it’s because what has taken place is not a tragedy but something closer to a crime." No, it is because Americans are stupid.
22 people like this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
SouthernYankee 4/9/2023 9:30:30 PM (No. 1444580)
The left and that is what democrats have become enjoy almost total information dominance. Education, information technology, media, Hollywood, TV, the bureaucracy all are leftist or at least left leaning.
The American ideal is dead on alter of diversity and equity. It used to be come to America and become an American. Now it is come to America and make it like Columbia, El Salvador etc.
33 people like this.
Reply 12 - Posted by:
NamVet70 4/10/2023 8:28:43 AM (No. 1444752)
I suggest the global warming hoax is a greater hoax than the Democrat's disinformation hoax.
18 people like this.
Reply 13 - Posted by:
FJB 4/10/2023 8:53:50 AM (No. 1444776)
I'm going back in to read this. But I like calling what's happened to America under Barry, China Joe, and Georgie Soros "Crimes," instead of "Politics." It has been much more the former than the latter.
Now, click me aboard Scotty!
13 people like this.
Reply 14 - Posted by:
Right Time 4/10/2023 9:19:30 AM (No. 1444807)
This confirms what I already knew...Barack Obama should never have greeted the New Year in 2017
9 people like this.
Reply 15 - Posted by:
red1066 4/10/2023 10:37:51 AM (No. 1444895)
It seems it wasn't a hoax after all. McCarthy was just a little ahead of his time.
14 people like this.
The problem with this article is that McCarthy was right and when the Wall fell and the Russian archives were opened albeit briefly we found that in fact there were many cells and spies in Hollywood but those were shut down so as not to leave a trail. But if you think there were not real spies (mainly from the left) still working against our nation long after celebrations in Berlin you are either blind or a fool or both. Any thinking man would realize that ideologues don't switch sides on an announcement. They will always be with us. The world is divided into camps of haves and have nots and it doesn't have to be a money thing it can be a religion thing or a jobs thing or whatever. There will always be warring factions and within in faction a sliding scale of intensity and beliefs. Nothing changes just the names to protect the guilty.
8 people like this.
Reply 17 - Posted by:
mc squared 4/10/2023 11:12:06 AM (No. 1444916)
#12: I posit that disinformation and global warming are one and the same.
6 people like this.
Reply 18 - Posted by:
Zigrid 4/10/2023 11:44:29 AM (No. 1444935)
Obama funded by the nazi soros has done all the damage in two years of the feeble biden that he could do...I haven't decided whether he's rushing his destruction because he knows President Trump will take over in 2024...or whether his ego is so large that he doesn't think he can lose with crooked Hillary...she's out there folks...on every media outlet she can intimidate into letting her cackle on and on and on about how President Trump stole her chance to be president...that's one angry white woman...just as Whoopi is the original angry black woman....
7 people like this.
Reply 19 - Posted by:
garyhope 4/10/2023 12:14:07 PM (No. 1444962)
#7,.....earlybird,....."sophomoric",..... One of my favorite words to describe SO man people these days.. I use it a lot. Thanks.
1 person likes this.
Reply 20 - Posted by:
WWIIDaughter 4/10/2023 12:51:01 PM (No. 1444973)
I was alive and reading during the 1950s and 60s. LadyChurchill # 16 may have been too. The VENONE papers first release July 1995 document in detail Soviet espionage, infiltration of every aspect of American culture including politics, literature and movies. 3,000 papers have been released establishing that the Rosenbergs were absolutely guilty, Alger Hiss at the State Department was actively complicit with the USSR, and credible USSR sources stated that FDR's aide, Harry Hopkins was "the most important of all wartime Soviet agents in the United States." Patrick Moynihan (the last patriotic Democrat?) chaired the Commission on Government Secrecy, which released the papers. He stated that among the important purposes of the release was "to resolve questions of what was going in Washington in mid-[20th] century." Read it for yourself. McCarthy was on the right track.
5 people like this.
Reply 21 - Posted by:
WWIIDaughter 4/10/2023 12:52:20 PM (No. 1444974)
VENONA (being old is a blessing but the eyesight is a curse)
4 people like this.
Reply 22 - Posted by:
The Remnants 4/10/2023 1:18:25 PM (No. 1444987)
Excellent article. Read half and will read the other half later, but I wanted to mention a complementary article because we need all the information we can get before we are all mowed down and plowed under. On April 7, 2023, the New York Post had a piece entitled, "Inside the Woke Scoring System Guiding American Companies". Quite short, but informative.
3 people like this.
Reply 23 - Posted by:
Foghorn 4/10/2023 2:39:29 PM (No. 1445050)
There is no believing in the statements from the government. Anything said by the government is too complicated to sort out truth from fact. The truth can be presented in a slanted way toward the political left, but it is still the truth no matter the distortion. The truth of the matter is you cannot trust the Biden administration. Most of what they spew on the news networks is bull dust.
4 people like this.
Reply 24 - Posted by:
Faithfully 4/10/2023 5:11:44 PM (No. 1445133)
The lunatics are trying hard to overwhelm us. Remember your 'raising.
2 people like this.
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Second headline: Thirteen ways of looking at disinformation
This is long. Take your time. Worth it.
Widely cited Article dated March 28, 2023, posted with permission.