GenZedong

Talk of “manufacturing” and “inventing” suggests an imposition over and against the individual’s will. I believe that, on the contrary, the process of Western propaganda is better understood in terms of “licensing”: the issuing of moral license for the bourgeois proletariat to profitably go along with bourgeois designs without the feeling of shame overwhelming. In this alternative account people aren’t “brainwashed” insofar as they don’t actually believe the lies, not in the way that we generally understand belief. It’s more correct to say that they go along with them, whether enthusiastically or apprehensively, because it’s actually their optimal survival strategy. When we concede that the time horizon and scope of responsibility within which we all make our decisions varies, it becomes much easier to see how their choice could be smart and intelligent. The enlightened critic can plead that if we all agreed to denounce the status quo in unison we’d be immensely rewarded, but the average worker in the first world cannot be accused of naiveté for preferring to keep a low profile, particularly after being subject — very often by that same critic — to so many grim stories of murder and of punishment and of how any attempt at radical change always goes awry.

Masses, Elites, and Rebels: The Theory of “Brainwashing” (2022)

he picks one message in his chat to digress about for 30 minutes and loses track of what he was even talking about or what his point was. It's very easy to stun lock him with gish-gallop, and he can't stop talking about meta-politics and who was right and who was wrong

Drama drives engagement. That's how streamers make money.

I mean he could have done that but as Putin said in the interview: it's pointless to try to engage in the propaganda war against the West's narrative on their own media turf. In essence with this interview Putin showed that he refuses to play the West's game. The reaction this interview got from the anti-Russia crowd shows just how much this strategy rattles and confuses them: half of them are screaming about how this was a big propaganda win for Putin and how Carlson needs to be sanctioned and banned, while the other half are busy gloating over how badly Putin failed at delivering effective propaganda to a western audience which has little interest or patience for this kind of long winded history-heavy lecture about a part of the world they already know and care very little about (though i'm sure going forward we're gonna see plenty short and snappily edited clips pop up of the parts of this interview that actually do appeal to western audiences).

Liberals would have been much more comfortable if Putin had simply repeated typical western reactionary talking points, they know how to respond to those and how to discredit anyone using them. Instead they have to go out of their way to twist what he said into anything threatening, we did have a few headlines claiming "Putin threatens WW3 in interview" but those are so far removed from what he actually said that they can't credibly back it up and most people who aren't completely brainwashed by the liberal media can see it, they can listen to his own words.

Obviously it's gonna be hard to tell what Putin might have intended. While I agree that Americans are stupid, in my experience people generally respond to clear and patient in depth explainers reagrdless. It's just good to listen to. Americans are addicted of bombastic vitriol but avoiding is not necessarily a pivot towards non-western audiences.

If you look at the American frontrunners for presidents, they sound incredibly stupid and incoherent when they are not outright lying. While blue and red magas kiss their dear leaders feet regardless, people somewhat know deep down what they are. In comparison Putin talks like a normal human being while sounding wise and erudite in the face of being called a madman by mainstream western press. My view is that he didn't target non-westerns specifically is all I am saying. This is different from my earlier claim of targeting maga chuds which I am walking back on.