We're not gonna take it -- Let's bring back "Amerika."

[ificandream]

Certainly the elders here will remember that term. It was used in the '60s and '70s a lot by the Jefferson Airplane and by prog radicals to put a scare in the Establishment. We need to scare The United Flakes of America and let them know we're not gonna take it. (Is Twisted Sister a prog band? Be great if they'd come put their theme out there.) Another great song that needs revival is "Volunteers" by the Airplane. Actually, we could use a whole bunch of music anthems these days.

[Ohio Joe]

1. I also really love this version

This guy still has amazing pipes.

[SouthernIrish]

2. Dee Snyder is definitely progressive

[keep_left]

3. "Amerika" was also the name of a miniseries in the late '80s about a Soviet...

...conquest (largely bloodless) of the United States. The miniseries was pretty cheesy, and it seemed far-fetched then, but little did we know how sophisticated Russian propaganda and psyops would become--and how gullible many Americans are. Pizzagate, QAnon, 4Chan/8Chan/whatever the hell they call it now, etc., who would have believed what we've seen over the last few years?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerika_(miniseries)

P.S. You will need to copy/paste the link manually in your browser; I can't figure out how to format it in the DU software to make it "clickable".

[Xavier Breath]

4. I remember the Soviets throwing a hissy fit

over the miniseries airing on ABC, but then I watched it and wondered what all the fuss was about. Yeah, it made them out to be the baddies, but it was so (as you mentioned) cheesy that it was difficult to take seriously.

In the pantheon of '80s miniseries, it was certainly no "V."

[keep_left]

6. Yeah, it was no "Thorn Birds" or "Winds of War", either. And of course, today we're dealing with...

...a capitalist (or rather, crony-capitalist) Russia, not the Soviet Union, the Cold War is over, and things should be much better now.

Truth be told, the sophistication of the Russian psyops was mostly the way it was micro-targeted through the unsecured software of Facebook, etc. Their software APIs were basically "hacked"--if you can call it that, because they were pretty much wide open--by bad actors like Cambridge Analytica and other Russian-affiliated groups. The propaganda itself was really crude, which is why it appealed to the rather...lumpenproletariat...Drumpf voters. Hence the rube from Appalachia who shot up the Comet Ping Pong pizza restaurant in DC: he had just got a dial-up internet connection and started visiting conspiracy sites on Facebook. But Cambridge Analytica really knew how to push their buttons thanks to the kind of micro-profiling that Facebook does (and to which CA had access).

[Caliman73]

5. I don't think that the Russian psy ops are sophisticated.

America because of our hubris, is an easy target.

We are the wealthiest country in the world, but our literacy rates, lifespan, quality of life indices, education levels, and health outcomes are mid range globally and among the worst in comparison with countries with similar economic development.

Our gun crime and incarceration rates are similar to many developing nations and authoritarian nations.

Yet we claim to be NUMBER ONE, in things like FREEDOM. Compared to students around the world, many of whom speak multiple languages and have better sense of geography and history, our students aren't even that well schooled in our own history, and can't identify other countries on the map, let alone understand how the histories of other countries have affected American History.

Conservatives in this country have been trying, ever more desperately and blatantly to retain power with less of a voting base for decades.

It didn't take a "sophisticated psyops and propaganda" operation to infiltrate. Just some willing partners, of which the Conservative movement and organizations like the NRA, CPAC, Turning Points USA, and others have become.

[keep_left]

7. See reply #6. You're correct, the approach was really crude. It didn't work on educated people...

...and probably wasn't designed to. What was sophisticated was the micro-profiling, especially when Cambridge Analytica was able to get access to the Facebook APIs (which until recently were wide open). It worked on the rubes; CA really knew how to push their buttons. You should see all the garbage produced by these people: the Reddit groups and their spinoffs (the ".win" sites) alone are just mind-blowing in terms of the wasted time and talent and wild goosechases by the rubes.

[Caliman73]

8. The educated people thought they could control the movement to their own ends.

Like they usually do. Like they tried to do in Germany in the 1930's. The Conservative Party sought to use the populism of the Nazi movement to maintain power. They miscalculated, much like the Conservatives here.

There is valid anger in the US regarding the conditions under which people are living. Unfortunately a lot of typical lower and middle class right wingers misattribute the problems to poor people, immigrants, etc... They think this is being orchestrated by Jews or some cabal of left wing academics (per conspiracy fodder) and fail to see how keeping people divided on racial, gender, and other lines helps the very few wealthy people maintain power beyond their numbers in society. While those distinctions are valid and meaningful and have real consequences for people. Women and people of color, immigrants and LGBTQ people aren't trying to "get over" on anyone. We are all just trying to live. Wealthy people, who have no real need for their obscene wealth, hoard resources and pit us against each other so that they don't have to share those resources.