#Politics of division

[kazifatagar]

Rafidah Aziz Warns: Divisive Politics Threaten Malaysia's Unity Now

Rafidah Aziz warns of Malaysia’s peril if divisive issues persist unchecked, cautioning against allowing personal political agendas to overshadow national unity. She urges stern measures to curb such actions, likening them to throwing sand into rice pots. Rafidah stresses the importance of addressing societal divisiveness, emphasizing the nation’s image on the global stage. “The world is watching…

[iizuumi]

Guess Narumi isn't getting any paperwork done ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[ms-boogie-man]

Angie/Maddie🦇❥✝︎🇺🇸

[lurkiestvoid]

You're being targeted by disinformation networks that are vastly more effective than you realize. And they're making you more hateful and depressed.

(This essay was originally by u/walkandtalkk and posted to r/GenZ on Reddit two months ago, and I've crossposted here on Tumblr for convenience because it's relevant and well-written.)

TL;DR: You know that Russia and other governments try to manipulate people online. But you almost certainly don't how just how effectively orchestrated influence networks are using social media platforms to make you -- individually-- angry, depressed, and hateful toward each other. Those networks' goal is simple: to cause Americans and other Westerners -- especially young ones -- to give up on social cohesion and to give up on learning the truth, so that Western countries lack the will to stand up to authoritarians and extremists.

And you probably don't realize how well it's working on you.

This is a long post, but I wrote it because this problem is real, and it's much scarier than you think.

How Russian networks fuel racial and gender wars to make Americans fight one another

In September 2018, a video went viral after being posted by In the Now, a social media news channel. It featured a feminist activist pouring bleach on a male subway passenger for manspreading. It got instant attention, with millions of views and wide social media outrage. Reddit users wrote that it had turned them against feminism.

There was one problem: The video was staged. And In the Now, which publicized it, is a subsidiary of RT, formerly Russia Today, the Kremlin TV channel aimed at foreign, English-speaking audiences.

As an MIT study found in 2019, Russia's online influence networks reached 140 million Americans every month -- the majority of U.S. social media users.

Russia began using troll farms a decade ago to incite gender and racial divisions in the United States

In 2013, Yevgeny Prigozhin, a confidante of Vladimir Putin, founded the Internet Research Agency (the IRA) in St. Petersburg. It was the Russian government's first coordinated facility to disrupt U.S. society and politics through social media.

Here's what Prigozhin had to say about the IRA's efforts to disrupt the 2022 election:

"Gentlemen, we interfered, we interfere and we will interfere. Carefully, precisely, surgically and in our own way, as we know how. During our pinpoint operations, we will remove both kidneys and the liver at once."

In 2014, the IRA and other Russian networks began establishing fake U.S. activist groups on social media. By 2015, hundreds of English-speaking young Russians worked at the IRA. Their assignment was to use those false social-media accounts, especially on Facebook and Twitter -- but also on Reddit, Tumblr, 9gag, and other platforms -- to aggressively spread conspiracy theories and mocking, ad hominem arguments that incite American users.

In 2017, U.S. intelligence found that Blacktivist, a Facebook and Twitter group with more followers than the official Black Lives Matter movement, was operated by Russia. Blacktivist regularly attacked America as racist and urged black users to rejected major candidates. On November 2, 2016, just before the 2016 election, Blacktivist's Twitter urged Black Americans: "Choose peace and vote for Jill Stein. Trust me, it's not a wasted vote."

Russia plays both sides -- on gender, race, and religion

The brilliance of the Russian influence campaign is that it convinces Americans to attack each other, worsening both misandry and misogyny, mutual racial hatred, and extreme antisemitism and Islamophobia. In short, it's not just an effort to boost the right wing; it's an effort to radicalize everybody.

Russia uses its trolling networks to aggressively attack men. According to MIT, in 2019, the most popular Black-oriented Facebook page was the charmingly named "My Baby Daddy Aint Shit." It regularly posts memes attacking Black men and government welfare workers. It serves two purposes: Make poor black women hate men, and goad black men into flame wars.

MIT found that My Baby Daddy is run by a large troll network in Eastern Europe likely financed by Russia.

But Russian influence networks are also also aggressively misogynistic and aggressively anti-LGBT.

On January 23, 2017, just after the first Women's March, the New York Times found that the Internet Research Agency began a coordinated attack on the movement. Per the Times:

More than 4,000 miles away, organizations linked to the Russian government had assigned teams to the Women’s March. At desks in bland offices in St. Petersburg, using models derived from advertising and public relations, copywriters were testing out social media messages critical of the Women’s March movement, adopting the personas of fictional Americans.

They posted as Black women critical of white feminism, conservative women who felt excluded, and men who mocked participants as hairy-legged whiners.

But the Russian PR teams realized that one attack worked better than the rest: They accused its co-founder, Arab American Linda Sarsour, of being an antisemite. Over the next 18 months, at least 152 Russian accounts regularly attacked Sarsour. That may not seem like many accounts, but it worked: They drove the Women's March movement into disarray and eventually crippled the organization.

Russia doesn't need a million accounts, or even that many likes or upvotes. It just needs to get enough attention that actual Western users begin amplifying its content.

A former federal prosecutor who investigated the Russian disinformation effort summarized it like this:

It wasn’t exclusively about Trump and Clinton anymore. It was deeper and more sinister and more diffuse in its focus on exploiting divisions within society on any number of different levels.

As the New York Times reported in 2022,

There was a routine: Arriving for a shift, [Russian disinformation] workers would scan news outlets on the ideological fringes, far left and far right, mining for extreme content that they could publish and amplify on the platforms, feeding extreme views into mainstream conversations.

China is joining in with AI

[A couple months ago], the New York Times reported on a new disinformation campaign. "Spamouflage" is an effort by China to divide Americans by combining AI with real images of the United States to exacerbate political and social tensions in the U.S. The goal appears to be to cause Americans to lose hope, by promoting exaggerated stories with fabricated photos about homeless violence and the risk of civil war.

As Ladislav Bittman, a former Czechoslovakian secret police operative, explained about Soviet disinformation, the strategy is not to invent something totally fake. Rather, it is to act like an evil doctor who expertly diagnoses the patient’s vulnerabilities and exploits them, “prolongs his illness and speeds him to an early grave instead of curing him.”

The influence networks are vastly more effective than platforms admit

Russia now runs its most sophisticated online influence efforts through a network called Fabrika. Fabrika's operators have bragged that social media platforms catch only 1% of their fake accounts across YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, and Telegram, and other platforms.

But how effective are these efforts? By 2020, Facebook's most popular pages for Christian and Black American content were run by Eastern European troll farms tied to the Kremlin. And Russia doesn't just target angry Boomers on Facebook. Russian trolls are enormously active on Twitter. And, even, on Reddit.

It's not just false facts

The term "disinformation" undersells the problem. Because much of Russia's social media activity is not trying to spread fake news. Instead, the goal is to divide and conquer by making Western audiences depressed and extreme.

Sometimes, through brigading and trolling. Other times, by posting hyper-negative or extremist posts or opinions about the U.S. the West over and over, until readers assume that's how most people feel. And sometimes, by using trolls to disrupt threads that advance Western unity.

As the RAND think tank explained, the Russian strategy is volume and repetition, from numerous accounts, to overwhelm real social media users and create the appearance that everyone disagrees with, or even hates, them. And it's not just low-quality bots. Per RAND,

Russian propaganda is produced in incredibly large volumes and is broadcast or otherwise distributed via a large number of channels. ... According to a former paid Russian Internet troll, the trolls are on duty 24 hours a day, in 12-hour shifts, and each has a daily quota of 135 posted comments of at least 200 characters.

What this means for you

You are being targeted by a sophisticated PR campaign meant to make you more resentful, bitter, and depressed. It's not just disinformation; it's also real-life human writers and advanced bot networks working hard to shift the conversation to the most negative and divisive topics and opinions.

It's why some topics seem to go from non-issues to constant controversy and discussion, with no clear reason, across social media platforms. And a lot of those trolls are actual, "professional" writers whose job is to sound real.

So what can you do? To quote WarGames: The only winning move is not to play. The reality is that you cannot distinguish disinformation accounts from real social media users. Unless you know whom you're talking to, there is a genuine chance that the post, tweet, or comment you are reading is an attempt to manipulate you -- politically or emotionally.

Here are some thoughts:

Don't accept facts from social media accounts you don't know. Russian, Chinese, and other manipulation efforts are not uniform. Some will make deranged claims, but others will tell half-truths. Or they'll spin facts about a complicated subject, be it the war in Ukraine or loneliness in young men, to give you a warped view of reality and spread division in the West.

Resist groupthink. A key element of manipulate networks is volume. People are naturally inclined to believe statements that have broad support. When a post gets 5,000 upvotes, it's easy to think the crowd is right. But "the crowd" could be fake accounts, and even if they're not, the brilliance of government manipulation campaigns is that they say things people are already predisposed to think. They'll tell conservative audiences something misleading about a Democrat, or make up a lie about Republicans that catches fire on a liberal server or subreddit.

Don't let social media warp your view of society. This is harder than it seems, but you need to accept that the facts -- and the opinions -- you see across social media are not reliable. If you want the news, do what everyone online says not to: look at serious, mainstream media. It is not always right. Sometimes, it screws up. But social media narratives are heavily manipulated by networks whose job is to ensure you are deceived, angry, and divided.

Edited for typos and clarity. (Tumblr-edited for formatting and to note a sourced article is now older than mentioned in the original post. -LV)

P.S. Apparently, this post was removed several hours ago due to a flood of reports. Thank you to the r/GenZ moderators for re-approving it.

Second edit:

This post is not meant to suggest that r/GenZ is uniquely or especially vulnerable, or to suggest that a lot of challenges people discuss here are not real. It's entirely the opposite: Growing loneliness, political polarization, and increasing social division along gender lines is real. The problem is that disinformation and influence networks expertly, and effectively, hijack those conversations and use those real, serious issues to poison the conversation. This post is not about left or right: Everyone is targeted.

(Further Tumblr notes: since this was posted, there have been several more articles detailing recent discoveries of active disinformation/influence and hacking campaigns by Russia and their allies against several countries and their respective elections, and barely touches on the numerous Tumblr blogs discovered to be troll farms/bad faith actors from pre-2016 through today. This is an ongoing and very real problem, and it's nowhere near over.

A quote from NPR article linked above from 2018 that you might find familiar today: "[A] particular hype and hatred for Trump is misleading the people and forcing Blacks to vote Killary. We cannot resort to the lesser of two devils. Then we'd surely be better off without voting AT ALL," a post from the account said.")

[rejectingrepublicans]

[diaryofaphilosopher]

Subconciously, we see an attack on ourselves and our beliefs as a threat and we attempt to block with a counter-stance. But it is not enough to stand on the opposite riverbank, shouting questions, challenging patriarchal white conventions. A counter-stance locks one into a duel of oppressor and oppressed; locked in mortal combat, both are reduced to a common denominator of violence. The counter-stance refutes the dominant culture's views and beliefs, and for this, it is proudly defiant. All reaction is limited by, and dependent on, what it is reacting against. Because the counter-stance stems from a problem with authority - outer as well as inner - it's a step toward liberation from cultural domination. But it is not a way of life. At some point, on our way to a new consciousness, we will have to leave the opposite bank, the split between two mortal combatants somehow healed so that we are on both shores at once and, at once, see through serpent and eagle eyes. Or perhaps we will decide to disengage from the dominant culture, write it off altogether as a lost cause, and cross the border into a wholly new and separate territory. Or we might go another route. The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react.

— Gloria Anzaldua, “La concencia de la mestiza”

Follow Diary of a Philosopher for more quotes!

[harriswalz4usabybr]

Speech Liz Cheney gave at the Utah State Capitol!

~BR~

[asm5129]

…after the civil war, a few key mistakes were made.

the south’s economy was destroyed because it was reliant on slave labor, and never really fully recovered. And suffering breeds resentment.

On top of this, no one *wants* to believe their ancestors fought for something objectively evil. So the states rights narrative was appealing.

And in trying to heal the divide in America, many confederate leaders were not granted simply mercy in the form of a pardon, but actively given power once more.

And while slavery was dead (outside of prisons, anyway), black Americans were still considered inferior. The Reconciliation era included tremendous violence against black Americans.

In many ways white Americans healed through white supremacy.

Essentially, concessions were made to heal the divide that ultimately failed to address the problem that caused the war in the first place—whether anyone other than white men were included in the phrase “all men are created equal”.

Healing division inevitably includes concessions and compromise, but the way it was done in the aftermath of the civil war was fundamentally flawed because it treated a problem that still existed as if it had been solved. When you let racists back in power, they will do more racist things, whether or not the institution of slavery for African Americans still exists.

When we try to heal from where this country is now, we must learn from that history. People in the south don’t deserve for people to see them get hit by a deadly hurricane and hand wave it away as “they got what they voted for”, but neither should we allow those who have lead red states down the path of fascism have a say in what healing looks like.

In order to reconcile with one another, we have to be willing to sit down and have conversations with one another like people. There will be people who are not willing to do that, or who will try to take advantage of it, and we can prepare for that.

But we do need to be able to coexist.

We can start with the basics. Do people have enough stability? Can they afford food? Do they have support when they need it?

And then we can talk to them about what they need to address that.

It’s telling that the main issue people voted for Trump for was the economy. People are suffering, and even though Kamala’s economic proposal was very good she didn’t always do the best job explaining it, especially for those who would need it most who are often not super educated. And ultimately it wasn’t enough of a change, and what’s more, it asked people to be patient and not angry. Trump is able to gain the support he has because he taps into deep suffering and anger and gives it a target.

Kamala didn’t give legitimacy to that anger the way they needed.

these are my thoughts on healing the division in America, i suppose. I hope you find them interesting.

**Btw, these thoughts are mainly informed by information from the documentary *Civil War (or Who Do We Think We Are)* and the book *Democracy Awakening* by Heather Cox Richardson, both of which I highly recommend to help grasp a deeper understanding of why America is where it is today.

[ghost-rattz]

the fucking transmisandry on this site is insane. “no matter what stage of transitioned a transmasc person is, they always have an advantage over a transfem person” HELLO?

the moment we pass we get othered; people assume we’re misogynistic if we pass as well as any cis man and if we aren’t misogynistic it somehow has to do with the fact that we’re “not like cis guys”. either way we’re ostracized

if i have to hear “all men are bad, oh except trans men and gay men” one more time i’m losing it

[contemplatingoutlander]

America has legislated itself into competing red, blue versions of education

This is an excellent article in The Washington Post about how our school systems have begun to reflect the political divisions in our nation, with many red states legally banning discussions on racism, sexism, and gender issues, and many blue states legally requiring those kinds of discussions. This is a gift🎁link, so anyone can read the entire article, even if the don't subscribe to the Post. Below are some excerpts:

Three-fourths of the nation’s school-aged students are now educated under state-level measures that either require more teaching on issues like race, racism, history, sex and gender, or which sharply limit or fully forbid such lessons, according to a sweeping Post review of thousands of state laws, gubernatorial directives and state school board policies. The restrictive laws alone affect almost half of all Americans aged 5 to 19. [...] The divide is sharply partisan. The vast majority of restrictive laws and policies, close to 9o percent, were enacted in states that voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, The Post found. Meanwhile, almost 80 percent of expansive laws and policies were enacted in states that voted for Joe Biden in 2020.

The explosion of laws regulating school curriculums is unprecedented in U.S. history for its volume and scope, said Jonathan Zimmerman, a University of Pennsylvania professor who studies education history and policy...states have never before stepped in so aggressively to set rules for local schools. [...] [A] nationally representative study from the Rand Corp. released this year found that 65 percent of K-12 teachers report they are limiting instruction on “political and social issues.” “What the laws show is that we have extremely significant differences over how we imagine America,” Zimmerman said. [...] In practice, these divisions mean that what a child learns about, say, the role slavery played in the nation’s founding — or the possibility of a person identifying as nonbinary — may come to depend on whether they live in a red or blue state. [...] Almost 40 percent of these laws work by granting parents greater control of the curriculum — stipulating that they must be able to review, object to or remove lesson material, as well as opt out of instruction. [...] Another almost 40 percent of the laws forbid schools from teaching a long list of often-vague concepts related to race, sex or gender.

[...] At the college level, among the measures passed in recent years is a 2021 Oklahoma law that prohibits institutions of higher education from holding “mandatory gender or sexual diversity training or counseling,” as well as any “orientation or requirement that presents any form of race or sex stereotyping.” By contrast, a 2023 California measure says state community college faculty must employ “teaching, learning and professional practices” that reflect “anti-racist principles.”

Some experts predicted the politically divergent instruction will lead to a more divided society. “When children are being taught very different stories of what America is, that will lead to adults who have a harder time talking to each other,” said Rachel Rosenberg, a Hartwick College assistant professor of education.

[awesomecooperlove]

💥💥💥

[jupiter-crushes-the-moon]

It's frankly pathetic.

"If she had run a more effective-" Shut the fuck up. As a thinking adult with the capacity for reasoning, you knew what was at stake and you stayed home. Your praxis is shit.

"If [demographic] wasn't misogynistic/sexist-" Shut the fuck up. You goddamn know better than to discount entire demographics. Your self-awareness is shit.

"America deserves this because -" Shut the fuck up. You don't get to pretend that righteousness lies in oppressing the citizens of a nation you hate the government of. Your morals are shit.

"This wouldn't have happened if -" Well, it did, and the conditions are not going to be the same next time - if there is a next time. Your timing is shit.

"lol gonna sit back and enjoy the next four -" Shut the goddamn fuck up, idiot! Go jack off to *Come and See* if you're so entertained by trauma. Your empathy is shit.

You are not going to post your way out of this. You are not going to blame, scold, or laugh your way out of this. Hold your friends close, stay sane, and stop looking for people to blame. This is a burden we either shoulder as a nation, or we slip and let it crush us all, and no one will be able to pick out whose fault it was from the slurry of crushed bones and mangled flesh left behind.

Now play nice. We have two months to get in position, and anyone spending that time squabbling instead of fortifying will regret it.

Just like I'm probably going to regret posting this.

[ms-boogie-man]

Ahem…

If at this point, you are supporting the political establishment's candidate, Kamala Harris — 'cause let us face facts here, RINOs like Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney are supporting her and it is totally obvious that the two political parties are and have been a uni-party playing good cop/bad cop with Americans — then you are doing so out of ego and selfishness, or just plain ignorance

Have fun with that yo

… and if I am wrong, I do not have an ego and I will gladly admit I was wrong and apologize. You heard it here, bae

Angie/Maddie🦇❥✝︎🇺🇸

Meme by Angie

[tomthefanboy]

I see a lot of haters mocking the "just vote blue" strawman online this week.

I don't know anybody who was saying or thinking "voting blue is all you have to do". Nobody thinks that electing a democrat will "fix the country" or make our problems go away.

We are screaming about voting because it's the bare minimum, entry level, welcome to adulthood part of the political process and people STILL DON'T GO TO THE POLLS!

Look at the numbers from the 2024 primaries. Every single one of these elections had a dozen or so ADDITIONAL RACES being decided, some even had ballot measures and special elections added in but the turn out was TERRIBLE!

And the 2022 mid terms where the Democrats lost the House seats?

Voter turnout for the 2022 U.S. congressional elections was the second highest for a nonpresidential election year since 2000, with 52.2% of the citizen voting-age population participating. 

"Just over half" was a RECORD!

You haters need to focus your energy on activism that doesn't involve attacking your allies. those of us trying to get people to vote aren't the problem.

And if you haven't done so this month, make sure to make sure you're registered.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Loud cheers erupted inside a packed high school gymnasium after the Brandon School Division rejected a call to remove books dealing with sexuality and gender identity from libraries.

[...]

The school division was inundated with calls, letters and emails after a delegation at its May 8 meeting, led by former school trustee and grandmother Lorraine Hackenschmidt, called on the division to set up a committee to review the content of books available in school libraries, and remove titles deemed inappropriate, including "any books that caused our kids to question whether they are in the wrong body."

Before the vote, board chair Linda Ross said there were many "errors and untruths" in Hackenschmidt's presentation.

Ross said that by denying the possibility that people could feel like they are born in the wrong body, "you are denying the reality of others. Because it is not your experience does not mean that it is not the reality of others."

Full article

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[halluciniwaynia]

one of the most annoying things about looking at discussion for yuri shows like oniisama e and utena is that i can smell the biphobia coming off the lesbians who talk about these shows like women liking men somehow makes them lesser than those who don’t and more deserving of the violence they receive. like there’s a very historical precedent to the way that bisexual sapphicism has been ostracized and divorced from women x women spaces, to the point where any woman shown to have a distrust of men is somehow assumed to be a lesbian without considering that bisexual women actually go through something similar