discipline posted:

bloggers ARE assets - do you know anything about Gay Girl in Damascus? MacMasters dropped off the face of the planet, I can find nothing on him past the scandal. he wasn't even kicked out of university and the university refuses to comment on his investigation, only that it was closed suddenly and without explanation.

when I say there is zero accountability in using bloggers to disseminate propaganda I mean that the CIA can covertly dump a bunch of info on a blogger and it can all be wrong, but when the blogger turns out to be wrong or whatever then it won't get back to the USA, it will just be a bad blogger who won't lose their job or even their credibility really.. after all, it's just a blog. the CIA or whatever can plant a bunch of info with foreign bloggers (like Brown Moses) and then it is reported on in US press as legit news, albeit from a blogger or as you may call them "citizen journalist"

the whole weird blogger thing, by that I mean it being picked up and leaned on heavily in press, is that it basically constructs a reality where you can't be sure if anything is real or reliable, so you just sort of hold yourself in a corner and feel scared. I saw this whole leak dump on Brown Moses from the SEA and if it's correct it assumes that he is taking money from defense contractors and HRW, knew that the rebels possessed chemical weapons etc. and who's to say if it's right or wrong? welcome to the internet. You're going to LOVE my book

god yes. imho anti-imperialist work needs to be far more serious about dealing with the problem of social media disinformation campaigns, it is taking the penetration of propaganda into both popular discourse and leftist circles to a new frontier.

american counterintelligence got smarter and more cautious after the church and pike committees, they learned from everything that was exposed about their activities. but now that we have a sort-of-new information arena to engage in, in my experience we stand on comparatively better ground to fight it effectively while their strategies are comparatively fresh, and need to jump on that opportunity before they seal the deal so to speak and cointel programs develop the polished expertise that makes their other activities far more difficult to substantiate. i don't think that the internet is ultimately that radically different from other previously existing means of communication and propaganda dissemination, but one could take advantage of its current geography being slightly less familiar territory if you get my meaning

aerdil posted:

definitely gonna start an anti-Assad blog now and get some of that sweet cia funding

shriekingviolet posted:

i don't think that the internet is ultimately that radically different from other previously existing means of communication and propaganda dissemination, but one could take advantage of its current geography being slightly less familiar territory if you get my meaning

twitter, comment sections etc offer extremely narrow but concrete opportunities to call out bullshit in a publicly visible way, and try to influence the patterns of info flow through microgravitational exertions. unfortunately most of the work i've seen on how politics changes with new media has been pretty uncritically celebratory about its liberating and democratizing power without viewing it as a field of struggle. venezuela and zunzuneo should be making people seriously rethink their dissertation topics. the worst was one social media sociologist whose reaction to the zunzuneo news was to lament that it would harm anti-erdogan campaigns by making them seem less credible; the idea that they might actually be less credible didn't occur to him. i'm sure there are academics thinking about this who take the role of state&corporate power more seriously

jools posted:

shriekingviolet posted:

sorry, i was being a little glib, i have a lot of respect for wikileaks I just think that some of the strategic and tactical decisions they've made have been poor. an organization that is going to do something as dangerous as they are should be covert and disseminate leaks subtly to various diverse distribution points, instead of being a giant visible bullseye non-profit and collaborating with the exact same mass media that is complicit with the problems they are trying to address



how do you deal with the problem of state infiltration of sort-of-covert things? i mean, the syrian electronic army works because they're syrian. wouldn't a US version get fucked up toot sweet?

very carefully

the easiest part on paper is not to show off. you can't be investigated if no one knows you exist. the big mistake of wikileaks, anonymous and others is everyone wants to be part of something big and cool which, even if they're smart enough not to brag about it themselves, they can feel proud about bombastic visible actions and press releases made by the group they're a part of. that's just painting a big target on yourself, and it can be difficult to stop because people crave recognition for the work they do. don't call your group anything. don't have a name. don't make statements, don't lay claim to a direct action, don't lay claim to a leak. if someone is even suspected of getting heat, have them QUIT. there are many good other places to contribute and a good comrade should have the humility to move on if their continued involvement could be a threat.

don't try to accomplish action and propaganda with the same group of people, the goal is to have work that will speak for itself such that anti-imperialists with good analysis can recognize it and spread the word without either of you endangering each other by being in any form of contact. if you have a reason to use mass media, do it by means of completely anonymous information drops, plenty will be ignored as bullshit or crazies, but that's why you send them to multiple places. all you need is one site/channel to take the risk and run the story and the others will pick up.

there are also compartmentalization strategies that can get incredibly complicated to prevent and cordon off infiltration, but my grasp of the big picture with them isn't that thorough. but the most important thing is not to be a target in the first place! intelligence agencies have more resources, and always will, so don't pick a fight you can't win. this involves some creativity, for example encrypted communications will make you a target (even if the algorithm/agency in question doesn't know WHY yet) so instead it can be better to communicate through prearranged contextual messages in innocuous places like youtube comments. no one pays attention to an obvious spambot. this of course can't just be done on the fly, it takes a lot of careful coordination.