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The fantastic "Hypernomalisation" documentary by Adam Curtis[0] talks about exactly this. How the actual reality stops mattering at all, and how political leaders build whatever reality they want to be in. The Soviet Union comparison is especially apt and also mentioned in this documentary - when the Soviet government would announce that the potato harvest is once again 300% above the norm everyone knew they were lying. But it didn't matter because obviously everything said by the other side is also a lie.

[0] https://youtu.be/fh2cDKyFdyU

⬐ rightbyte

What otherside reported on Soviet agriculture statistics? There were only one side.

⬐ gambiting

No no, what I mean is - when the Soviet government reported that the wealth in the soviet union is the greatest in the world, everyone knew it was a lie. But the side effect of assuming that everything the government says is a lie was also assuming that everything coming from the West is also a lie. So yeah, maybe we don't have the best quality of life - but surely Americans also don't, their TV also lies just like ours.

⬐ soco

I lived on that side of the iron curtain and I didn't see this type of argument. The West was quite The Place To Be for everybody I knew.

Really liked Hypernormalization by Adam Curtis on the phenomena: https://youtu.be/fh2cDKyFdyU

Is "inclusive political and economic institutions" always a good strategy? I am not convinced and the article doesn't point to any solid evidence to support this claim rather portrays a representative picture.

Does "rich nations" imply nations where the elite hold huge amount of capital or does it refer to nations where an average citizen lives in prosperity? The article doesn't reflect on the comarison of ecomomic divide in the nations.

The article's claim that "exclusive" institutions concentrate power in the hands of the few elite and hence the nations end up being poor. THe US could be considered a rich nation with "inclusive" institutions and yet there exists the concentration of power and wealth to the few. These correlations argument of very shaky.

The Adam Curtis documentaries [0,1] at their core point out the loss of control by the democratic government (elected to serve its people) to the private economic institutions (created to serve the elite).

[0] https://youtu.be/fh2cDKyFdyU [1] https://youtu.be/v-npoz1SgRQ

Great recommendation. His newest long work "HyperNormalisation" (2016) [0][1] is even more timely and covers PR in a modern context, and explores how it fits in with modern hacktivism, international proxy wars, warlords current and former, Occupy movements and Arab Spring, and he even manages to fit in the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Barlow's Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, and early phreaker culture icons Phiber Optik and Acid Phreak.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fh2cDKyFdyU (full 166 minute documentary)

⬐ olivermarks

This Adam Curtis link now has deleted youtube videos but is still useful for searching episodes by title http://adamcurtisfilms.blogspot.com I've watched everything he's done and flew to NY from the west coast to see Massive Attack vs Adam Curtis which is probably the best live event I've ever been to. https://youtu.be/yv_S8GdylEA

⬐ nosuchthing

Here's a better source for Adam Curtis's series:

https://thoughtmaybe.com/by/adam-curtis/

  The Century of The Self

https://thoughtmaybe.com/the-century-of-the-self/

  HyperNormalisation

https://thoughtmaybe.com/hypernormalisation/

  All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

https://thoughtmaybe.com/all-watched-over-by-machines-of-lov...

  The Power of Nightmares

https://thoughtmaybe.com/the-power-of-nightmares/

  It Felt Like a Kiss

https://thoughtmaybe.com/it-felt-like-a-kiss/

⬐ aspenmayer

Nice set of links. Do you know much about the site thoughtmaybe.com? Seems interesting but I am always wary of sites like these with subscription links and unclear provenance of the videos they use.

For what it's worth, here are some links to Adam Curtis videos on the Internet Archive and a bonus link to Curtis chatting with the director of the Dick Cheney biopic "Vice," Adam McKay.

https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Adam%20Cur...

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/jan/18/adam-curtis-and...

⬐ nosuchthing

You're wary of sites with opt in email list subscription links?

From the site header ABOUT page:

https://thoughtmaybe.com/about/

"Thought Maybe is a 100% independent, autonomous, not-for-profit, self-directed project that exists to inspire action on a whole bunch of issues surrounding modern society, industrial civilisation, globalised dominant culture.

This website does not use nor support corporate “communication networks” such as YouTube, Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc. We think its important to maintain an independent platform for publishing—insofar as it’s possible to do on the Internet of corporate-controlled gateways or ISPs.

We run this project using Open Source Software and embrace the notion of Creative Commons, and supportive sharing.

--

We don’t run advertising on our site because we find it repugnant, compromising and unwanted!

This project is entirely not-for-profit—an open library funded by a small crew of dedicated media activists throughout the world. This freely accessible library is our labour of love project for positive social and political change. Even though it is a hard job, we don’t get paid.

We don’t receive any outside funds of any type, and we don’t receive nor would we accept money from any corporate or government entities. Our vested interest lays solely with humanity and the natural world, not this culture, not this system.

--

This library is independent and autonomous. It is a labour of love run by a small crew of dedicated activists throughout the world. We have no affiliations and are not part of any organisation or group, which means no vested interest, which means we can publish what is needed without interference, censorship or vetoing.

We don’t work with any commercial organisations, religious groups, political parties, etc—we’re entirely independent and self-determined in order to remain effective about what we set out to achieve, which is to cultivate and nurture an effective culture of resistance to the pertinent social and political issues outlined in this library. It is why filmmakers make films, it’s why we do what we do to support getting them seen and acted on. Where it goes from here is up to you…"

⬐ aspenmayer

I’m wary of “countercultural” sites run by a “small crew” not identified soliciting emails with no privacy policy in place. If it isn’t a honeypot it’s indistinguishable from one. Assuming it isn’t, the email list itself is ambiguous regarding GDPR compliance. It seems counter-intuitive to me that the intended audience would sign up for such an email list under such a cloud of uncertainty. With anonymity comes avoidance of accountability. Why would I visit such a site if I have nothing to gain and so much to lose from interacting with a site whose operators have inscrutable and seemingly paradoxical intentions?

I’ll ask more directly since I was vague before. Are you associated with thoughtmaybe.com? I only ask because you seem to be advocating for using it under the guise of a user or fan of the site, and not as operator or staff of the site; to not identify yourself as staff when commenting on the site could be interpreted as commenting in bad faith. If not then please disregard this paragraph.

⬐ None

None

⬐ nosuchthing

The threat model you sound concerned about could easily be mitigated in several ways. Use a proxy/VPN/TOR to visit the site, don't sign up for the email list. Maybe use a spare email address? I'd assume the email list is just alerts for new documentaries. News letters and email sign ups are extremely common?

Why does this site look like a honey pot?

Paradoxical intentions? Can you clarify what by visiting a website, you'd have "so much to lose"? That seems excessively paranoid.

I'm not involved with thoughtmaybe.com - if there were any other website hosting Adam Curtis films, please feel free to share.

⬐ aspenmayer

My threat model is “if the site gets hacked and the user list gets leaked, who benefits and who is harmed? Certainly not the anonymous operators of the site. I only want for the users what the operators want for themselves.”

I do agree with your remediations by the way. It’s not any one thing that makes me suspicious. It’s the subject matter itself. TLAs will MITM and send you a 0day just to find a specific user if they are known to use a site so it’s more of a concern of visiting single purpose sites or niche sites in general as they don’t benefit nearly so much from your signal remaining hidden in the noise of otherwise innocuous traffic to a benign url such as archive.org or youtube.com.

Now that I mention it, it seems that the only indexer blocked by thoughtmaybe.com’s robots.txt is the one for archive.org. Why that may be is curious but I don’t know how common blocking that specific crawler is so I won’t speculate as to the reasons why.

This speech reminds me of the following Adam Curtis documentary, where he touches upon the same observations that Sacha brings up. It's an interesting watch, and aired on BBC back in 2016.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fh2cDKyFdyU

I also recommend Adam Curtis’s four part documentary “The Century of the Self”, the first episode of which is here: https://youtu.be/DnPmg0R1M04

The first episode deals exclusively with Bernays, and the following three episodes follow a political narrative of impact.

I believe Curtis’s “Hypernormalisation” would be more salient to the narrative here, which discusses the funding of misinformation as an alternative to traditional authoritarian power structures like censorship: https://youtu.be/fh2cDKyFdyU

The, ahem, documentary ‘HyperNormalisation’ seems to have the exact same footage: https://youtu.be/fh2cDKyFdyU?t=4947

(The use of Eliza in the film is hilariously nonsequitous, though.)

However, half of the clip looks like stock videos of people typing or looking at the screen, so not too much value in that.

⬐ HNLurker2

Hyper is a good documentary

⬐ aasasd

Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.

Ditto. Was expecting something along the lines of HyperNormalisation [1] by Adam Curtis.

[1] https://youtu.be/fh2cDKyFdyU

Having recently discovered Adam Curtis (from other HN posts), I'd highly recommend watching his documentaries. All of them. Absolutely riveting stuff.

HyperNormalization: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fh2cDKyFdyU

Bitter Lake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRbq63r7rys

The Trap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y97Ywl7RtUw&list=PLsGiHTmHVD...

The Power of Nightmares: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTg4qnyUGxg&list=PLtPP_-rkrT...

The Mayfair Set: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuqYbohCLFM&list=PLtPP_-rkrT...

The Century of the Self: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s

⬐ petermcneeley

You have more adam curtis to discover https://thoughtmaybe.com/all-watched-over-by-machines-of-lov...

⬐ cronix

Thank you, I missed that one. Another is Dr. Jordan Peterson. I found this very interesting as well, and is another piece of this puzzle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQCTeGKHsVc

⬐ petermcneeley

Its interesting but you should know that Adam Curtis and Jordan Peterson are opposites in their conclusions. Curtis attacks negative liberty and individualism birthed in the 80s. Curtis suggests that we should still try to change the world (positive liberty and collective action). JP is very the polar opposite to this. He is almost purely negative liberty (libertarian) and is the inheritor of the 80s individualism.

Because the people have become pacified and complacent and allow it to happen. They're "protecting" us, after all, so it's all good, man. There is a relatively small percentage of people who understand and care, and most are on places like HN. To the rest, it's just more noise in the ether to filter out. "Nothing I can do. Hey look, a cute cat pic."

The name of the game is distraction, and to pump so much contrary and competing information at everyone that no one can discern the truth from fiction. It's happening. Now.

From another great HN discussion today, watch this (HyperNormalization by Adam Curtis): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fh2cDKyFdyU

We get what we deserve.

The documentary "Hypernormalization" talks about how this strategy came into being: One of Vladimir Putin's advisors advised him to fund all sorts of political causes locally such that the population would be unable to distinguish between authentic activists and the causes funded by Putin [0].

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fh2cDKyFdyU

The key part here is that the electorate no longer has the ability to distinguish between what is real or false: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fh2cDKyFdyU&feature=youtu.be...

Watch from t=8535 onwards for about ten minutes for an example.