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1210 points jbegley | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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aucisson_masque ◴[] No.43656830[source]
I like to think we are in a better place than russia for instance with all its propaganda and jailed journalists, but then i see these kind of article come over and over....

Most of the people in the 'free world' goes on mainstream media, like facebook to get their news. These companies are enticed to 'suck up' to the government because at the end they are business, they need to be in good term with ruling class.

you end up with most media complying with the official story pushed by government and friends, and most people believing that because no one has the time to fact check everything.

One could argue that the difference with russia is that someone can actually look for real information, but even in russia people have access to vpn to bypass the censorship.

Another difference would be that you are allowed to express your opinion, whereas in russia you would be put to jail, that's true but only in a very limited way. Since everyone goes on mainstream media and they enforce the government narrative, you can't speak there. you are merely allowed to speak out in your little corner out of reach to anyone, and even then since most people believe the government propaganda, your arguments won't be heard at all.

The more i think about it, the less difference i see.

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earnestinger ◴[] No.43662676[source]
Technically, they are the same. As in: people with power want to control the narrative.

This was so, is so and will always be so, everywhere.

But but but… details matter. A lot.

The west has traditions how and when to apply power, which is distinctly different from Russia.

I hand-pick two illustrations of Russia:

1. https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/09/27/moscow-police-accu...

> Officers “beat up Kamardin very badly and stuck a dumbbell in his anus,” according to Novaya Gazeta Europe.

2. Bald man claim to power was accompanies with mysterious explosions of apartment buildings after which Chechens were declared enemies and war started.

Some interesting bits from wikipedia:

> Three Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) agents who had planted the devices at Ryazan were arrested by the local police.[6] The next day, FSB director Nikolai Patrushev announced that the incident in Ryazan had been an anti-terror drill and the device found there contained only sugar, and freed the FSB agents involved.[7]

And

> 13 September 1999: Russian Duma speaker Gennadiy Seleznyov makes an announcement about the bombing of an apartment building in the city of Volgodonsk that only takes place three days later

> 16 September 1999: Bombing in Volgodonsk, 17 are killed, 69 injured

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Russian_apartment_bombi...

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AlexGrothen ◴[] No.43665653[source]
>hand-picked

cherry-picked, actually

1. Almost exactly the same incident happened in the USA, NYPD sodomized Michael Mineo: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prospect_Park_alleged_police...

None of the NYPD officers didn't have any sentence for this

2. That's an old conspiracy theory, even the Russian opposition (at least the reasonable part of it) doesn't support this theory. There are plenty of publications about it in Russian, and if you will do some effort you will find why

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int_19h ◴[] No.43668434{3}[source]
Most of Russian opposition does support this theory. Many people do, in general. It's hard to call it a conspiracy theory when they literally caught a couple of FSB guys loading bags of explosives into an apartment building. The official version is that this was a "security training", but c'mon.
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earnestinger ◴[] No.43671150{4}[source]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory

> A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that asserts the existence of a conspiracy (generally by powerful sinister groups, often political in motivation),[3][4][5] when other explanations are more probable.

Evidently, different people assign different probability to security chief thinking “while real bombings are actually exploding each week and whole cities sleep outside to avoid death, let’s plant a fake bomb and see what happens”

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1. int_19h ◴[] No.43671630{5}[source]
FWIW there was a public opinion poll by Levada back in 2002 about this. 6% said FSB did it, 37% said that there's no clear evidence but they could have done it, and 38% said that it's definitely not the feds.