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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHow Barr and Trump Use a Russian Disinformation Tactic
On Nov. 9, 2016, according to the Mueller report, some redacted figure wrote to a Russian regime crony, Putin has won. Based on the assessment of the intelligence community and the findings of Robert Mueller, President Vladimir Putin of Russia did indeed succeed in his efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election on behalf of Donald Trump.
But Mr. Putins ultimate victory may have come on Thursday morning, during Attorney General Bill Barrs news conference. By seamlessly conflating the terms collusion and conspiracy, and absolving President Trump of both, Mr. Barr revealed that the Russian information warfare technique of reflexive control has officially entered American public discourse and threatens, with his recent allegations of campaign spying, to stay there for a while.
Reflexive control is a uniquely Russian technique of psychological manipulation through disinformation. The idea is to feed your adversary a set of assumptions that will produce a predictable response: That response, in turn, furthers a goal that advances your interests. By luring your opponent into agreeing with your initial assumptions, you can control the narrative, and ultimate outcome, in your favor. Best of all, the outcome is one in which your adversary has voluntarily acceded. This is exactly what has happened with much of the American public in the course of Muellers investigation.
The assumptions that culminated in Mr. Barrs conclusions began almost two years ago, when the White House, Trump supporters and the media characterized the focus of the special counsels investigation as collusion. The word collusion does not appear anywhere in Mr. Muellers appointment letter: His mandate was to investigate any links and/or coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia. There is a good reason for this: Collusion is the legal equivalent of Jell-O. Outside of specific factual contexts such as price fixing in antitrust law the word collusion has no legal meaning or significance. In fact, in his report, Mr. Mueller explicitly stated that his conclusions were not about collusion, which is not a specific offense or theory of liability found in the United States code.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/19/opinion/mueller-report-barr-trump-russian-disinformation.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
Whether this, "reflexive control" is "uniquely Russian" or not, I don't know. The article should be required reading for those interested in framing and rhetoric. We should be slamming Trump with the word "collusion," but Trump, Barr, and the Republicans have managed to twist the word to their advantage. Using it, they have a lot of people on our side and in the media saying exactly what they want us to say. We need to untwist that word.
FakeNoose
(32,639 posts)... where the reader has no trouble understanding collusion by Chump's (and others') actions. Mueller lets us draw the conclusions while he just lays out the facts.
underpants
(182,814 posts)I don't see how "reflexive control" is unique to anyone. I would suspect every intelligence operation has some sort of it and we see it everyday with Fox News and it has been used for years by other cults.
onecaliberal
(32,861 posts)keithbvadu2
(36,811 posts)Russians celebrated their victory.
"It turns out that United Russia won the elections in America," Viktor Nazarov, the governor of Omsk, Russia, declared in a radio interview.
http://www.nationalpost.com/m/wp/news/blog.html?b=news.nationalpost.com/news/world/make-russia-great-again-if-trump-lifts-sanctions-putin-could-finally-establish-his-country-as-an-equal-to-u-s&pubdate=2016-12-03
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Trumpster places Russian flag above American flag
trev
(1,480 posts)The Republicans have been practicing the art of owning words for decades. ("Democrat Party," anyone?). This is their primary tactic, because people always fall for it.
Including us, on occasion. "Depends on what the meaning of is is."
People uneducated in critical thinking and not having a clear ability to comprehend speech will always embrace this twisting of words. It's something our leaders seem reluctant to confront.