Maxim is a regular commenter from Russia. I have many visitors from Russia, it's the #6-#8 country on my traffic source list. He is deeply suspicious about the West and believes that they are inherently different people. Instead of arguing further, I started collecting data. Breitbart is the main media serving Trump voters, its former chief executive became the highest ranking White House aide of Trump.
Let's see the what the audience has to say in comments! Like Reddit, the comments are ranked by upvotes and downvotes, top comment being most liked by other readers. Please remember that these posts were made during the peak of the "Russia rigged our election" conspiracy by those who lost the election. The first is as clear as it can be, it reports how a prominent liberal media guy wants to fuel tribalism the most blatant way he can:
Oops! The people said they rather be with "the big evil" than their own liberals. That must have hurt! Onward to the next, a really awkward article. It reports that Vladimir Putin testifies for ... Trump not being his spy. That's very reliable, I mean hostile countries are always telling the truth about their spies. Probably this should incriminate Trump even more: "if Putin is with Trump, Trump must be with Putin". I expected nothing but irony and doubt in the comments, but instead:
The next one is even worse. A Russian lawmaker made nuclear threats against the USA. Reasonable politicians use terms like "all possible means" or "with all our military arsenal" in such position. Actually, saying "we would consider it an aggression" would be enough, considering the still-valid doctrines of massive retaliation between the US and Russia. Ergo, the lawmaker was a dumbass sabre-ratter and deserved nothing but similarly dumb saber-ratting. Instead:
Let's see the final specimen, the favorite talking point of the liberals: Evil Putin beats up peaceful protesters:
Well, it seems like the Trump supporters are completely rejecting the liberal talking points and ready to take openly pro-Russia statements. Of course they aren't representing the whole American population. Probably not even the Republican voters, there are many Republicans who voted Trump only as lesser evil and follow opinions of John McCain. However it's undeniable that those who voted Trump because of Trump are openly understanding and even friendly to Russia. There is no "inherent trait" in the American people which would destine them to run unwinnable wars again and again, placing them at odds with Russia. That politics was forced upon them and they rejected it in droves, voting and donating for candidates against it (one of the two senators rejecting the new anti-Russian sanctions was Bernie Sanders). Only the USA elites (crony capitalists) and the core liberals are hating Russia.
Let's see the what the audience has to say in comments! Like Reddit, the comments are ranked by upvotes and downvotes, top comment being most liked by other readers. Please remember that these posts were made during the peak of the "Russia rigged our election" conspiracy by those who lost the election. The first is as clear as it can be, it reports how a prominent liberal media guy wants to fuel tribalism the most blatant way he can:
Oops! The people said they rather be with "the big evil" than their own liberals. That must have hurt! Onward to the next, a really awkward article. It reports that Vladimir Putin testifies for ... Trump not being his spy. That's very reliable, I mean hostile countries are always telling the truth about their spies. Probably this should incriminate Trump even more: "if Putin is with Trump, Trump must be with Putin". I expected nothing but irony and doubt in the comments, but instead:
The next one is even worse. A Russian lawmaker made nuclear threats against the USA. Reasonable politicians use terms like "all possible means" or "with all our military arsenal" in such position. Actually, saying "we would consider it an aggression" would be enough, considering the still-valid doctrines of massive retaliation between the US and Russia. Ergo, the lawmaker was a dumbass sabre-ratter and deserved nothing but similarly dumb saber-ratting. Instead:
Let's see the final specimen, the favorite talking point of the liberals: Evil Putin beats up peaceful protesters:
Well, it seems like the Trump supporters are completely rejecting the liberal talking points and ready to take openly pro-Russia statements. Of course they aren't representing the whole American population. Probably not even the Republican voters, there are many Republicans who voted Trump only as lesser evil and follow opinions of John McCain. However it's undeniable that those who voted Trump because of Trump are openly understanding and even friendly to Russia. There is no "inherent trait" in the American people which would destine them to run unwinnable wars again and again, placing them at odds with Russia. That politics was forced upon them and they rejected it in droves, voting and donating for candidates against it (one of the two senators rejecting the new anti-Russian sanctions was Bernie Sanders). Only the USA elites (crony capitalists) and the core liberals are hating Russia.
26 comments:
I was raised to "duck and cover" no not for an active shooter but for a nuclear war. I went through basic training where the bayonet dummies were red with sickles and hammers on the stars, we often drove our weapons home with the chant "kill a commie for mommy". I stood in the Fulda gap knowing at best we had exactly 20 minuets warning before the first bomb landed and 1 hour before the first red tank would roll through. We were not taught to win this fight, we were taught to hold on for as long as possible, in fact we were told the idea was to trade land and space for time (buy the world 7 days to get reforger up and running). I watch the evil of communism destroy lives and crush spirits, I watched communism fail and rejoiced at the Russian republic. I watch the Baltic states go free, I watched "gobs" country and check, and Latvia, and all the rest choose their future. I watched putin play parliamentary tricks to retain power, through all this I have come to appreciate Russia, respect their positions and understand (slightly) where they are coming from. Russia is not the enemy unless The west makes it the enemy, however Russia has to know that we will keep watch, we will forward mobilize as much as we can, yes we will put the flag forward not to stop the Russians but to draw a clear line (Estonia 100 US National Guard not a threat but a flag). Finnland is ready I seriously don't think Russia wants another bite at that apple it is costly to say the least. You ask me and this is just my opinion, the US and Russia should sit down discuss clear lines of operational control, the only problem with this discussion is Russia is likely to over reach wanting an equal share of the Pie and that will lead to conflict. The west is not coming there is more threat of china seizing resources then there is Europe and the US launching a ground offensive.
However it's undeniable that those who voted Trump because of Trump are openly understanding and even friendly to Russia.
Let me get this straight. You are making the above assertion based on the number of upvotes on Breitbart article comments? Putting aside the fact that the central thesis is that Russia was interfering with the election - which would include flooding sites with upvoting bots/trolls - your post seems to disregard the unfavorable articles on that same site. I'm not going to bother digging through all the garbage, but this jumped immediately to mind, for example.
In any case, the people who "voted Trump for Trump" only like Russia because Trump likes Russia. If Trump suddenly wanted to level more sanctions on Russia tomorrow, these same people would be against Russia tomorrow. None of it actually means anything.
@Provi Miner: The Soviet Union (communist dicatorship) is just as different from Russia (nationalist democracy) as today's Germany and Hitler's Germany.
Also, there is a clear proof that Russia won't overreach: it didn't in Ukraine. They captured the 80% ethnic Russian Chrimea and created clients in the 40-60% ethnic Russian Doneck and Luhansk. They didn't go to any clear Ukrainen majority land, despite Ukraine offering no resistance and the West leaving them to their fate.
Also, all of it is offtopic. The post isn't about Russia, it's about the Trump voters.
@Azuriel: I think you are a bot installed by Robby Mook, so I just don't answer to your argument that Breitbart commenters are Russian bots.
Have you checked the comment section of the article you linked? Maybe you should!
Even if Trump voters like Russia for Trump, that means they don't have an own opinion of Russia and ready to go with anything. This is - again - a proof that there is no anti-Russian sentiment in the Trump-voting American public.
>This is - again - a proof that there is no anti-Russian sentiment in the Trump-voting American public.
It's probably just sampling bias.
If you visit Stormfront then you'll find overwhelming proof that there is a white-nationalist sentiment in the Trump-voting American public.
If you visit Infowars then you'll find that all of the Trump voters also believe in conspiracy theories about 9/11, GMOs, and chemtrails.
If you visit Ravelry then you'll find that there is a pro-knitting bias among self-identified Trump voters.
There aren't actually patterns among Trump voters in the general population. You're just finding a common sentiment among the userbase of each particular website.
@Anon: can you find any "Trump" sites where anti-Russian sentiment is present? Also, Breitbart - according to Alexa rating - is way bigger than either of the sites you mentioned, it is the largest "Trump" media (Fox is rather "generic Republican", they support Trump, but would support Jeb too)
Dear Gevlon,
This is exactly what I've been telling you ever since that post of yours with 3 questions required to answer before commenting. Those are... not real people comments.
Putin has an army of online trolls on paycheck who write those comments and upvote them for RUB 11.80 (~$0.2) per comment. I'd give you an article about how a reporter infiltrated one of those paid troll companies (registered and belonging to Putin's personal chef, for extra spice), but it's in russian.
For a good sample of a fellow eve player and paycheck troll of mr. Putin, who's using the same reddit account for both, you can check https://www.reddit.com/user/A_K-47 (ex-MoA for extra spice again). Too bad you can't see his upvotes, because I'd bet $10 you you'll find his on those article links on reddit.
I told you that you miss every time when you mention putin. Indeed, you missed again, and probably shot your own foot too, bringing in those paid troll comments, buying them, and trying to sell them as real. But, then again, living in russia, we're used to it, while in better places like Hungary it'll be a major laughingstock after the first infiltration happened and the place would be closed.
P.S. The entire russian media has been brought under control of mr. Kovalev, putin's friend, who got only putin's interests in mind, and that's what all russian media is translating. I'd give you an article about that too, how people working in it talk about massive censorship, including entire policy that forbids to call putin's opponents by their names (and yes if you have the same name as mr. Navalny for example, you're not getting on TV without being renamed, even if it means hilarity: when fairly known russian businessman Grigory Vinnikov has been openly introduced as Greg Viner on TV and not denying it, to avoid such collision, despite getting laughs from everyone of millions who knew his name).
P.P.S. if you still need those prooflinks despite them being in russian, just ask, I'll get it for you.
@Anon: here is a random post I've found on top of r/politics https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/6i2yoz/russia_renewed_6_trump_trademarks_while/
The commenters aren't Russia friendly. Where is the bot army?
"Breitbart News has published a number of falsehoods and conspiracy theories, as well as intentionally misleading stories."
So, the source of your logic is pro-chemtrail websites?
If I want to research public beliefs about chemtrail, then a pro-chemtrail website is a good source.
So, are you researching "public beliefs", or just pro-chemtrail website material? Comments and their upvotes (real or not), are also a owned by that website, so I do not see how can you tell that these represent anything else, than just whatever that website wants it to represent.
Even if the comments are placed by Russian bots or the site owners, Trump voters still frequent that site. Which proves that they agree with that sentiment. Which is what I claim "Trump voters like Russia".
You can say that they are wrong to like Russia. Or that they are wrong to vote Trump. But you can't deny that Trump voters like Russia. (just like we can't deny that chemtrail believers exist, even if we believe that they are idiots)
1) Crimea. Sevastopol. Black Sea/Warm Seas fleet. You really do not need genius to figure that one. Ethnicity means nothing in comparison to real threat against one of the biggest Russian Navy bases. Tool vs. goal.
2) Americans clueless as usual. Good/Evil narrative is really naive when you are playing Realpolitik. Again, goals vs means.
Putin and his crew does really good job appearing much more stately and professional in comparison to western leaders. cool and all, but you need to remember mailed fist underneath. Think you are old enough to remember how it was last time we ended up on the Russian side of the fence.
One thing for sure - appearances-wise Russians are doing great job. More often than not Western leaders do appear like clueless children in comparison. Incredibly well-executed PR campaign. Reality living under those rulers would be quite different though, and personally I think all those US-putin cheerleaders do not have any clue about what life and your options really look like under "glorious leadership" . They are buying candy-wrapped RT version of reality instead of CNN -one. Again- just shows extent of incredibly well executed PR campaign.
@Gevlon, that's true. Interesting thing is, how come Pro-chemtrail and love for Putin are usually is bundled together. It's just some generic "anti-establishment" attitude of people, who are usually not so bright, but they think very smart and understand things better than the established science, politics, etc. And there is just some mass conspiracy in the world, which is somehow oppressing them. So, the sites like the one you were using is just something which attracts such people - they are always looking for prove that there is something or someone to blame. Like "they" are using Chemtrail to control all the people and only Putin can stand against "them". The mysterious "they". Such people looking for consiparicies can twist, cherry pick, interpret the facts in various weird ways, so it could just confirm their theories. Well, more or less the same you sometimes like to do when looking for some "prove" about rigged LOL, etc.
@L Papay: Black Sea is useless without treaty with Turkey as they can lock the Bosporus. Also, Ukraine didn't try to evict the Black Sea fleet for decades.
I'm not 100 years old to remember last time Russians did anything in the WWI. After that Russia was swallowed by the Soviet Communist empire.
In reality there are only thousands of hardcore liberals protesting Putin in Russia. 10M Hungary has bigger protests. I'd guess most people in Russia are content (=/= happy) with Putin.
@Anon: can you point a single Chemtrail stuff on Breitbart. Or any other "conspiracies" (easily disprovable lies)?
Goblin should familiarize with demagogy methods. Because probably you missed to see and even try yourself to spread unfair and biased strategies. Russian topic is so wide ranging, that there is very hard to find a unbiased ground. Lets try as a simpler example on something else.
I claim that "flat earth believeres like alcohol". For proof, i go to main social hub for flat earth believers, filter out topics with alcohol in it and show all the praising comments for alcohol use. Many people dont see the bias here: there are flat earth believers, there are people who like alcohol and there are flat earth believers who like alcohol, so flat earth belivers must like alcohol. Wrong! Only actual proof is, there are some people, dont know how many, on that flat earth social hub community who praise alcohol use. Literally, if there is just 1 user who is fanatic about that topic, it can spam with praising comments and upvote all the comments so that Gevlon can claim, "Flat earth belivers like alcohol".
Only problem is, rarely you get a loud fanatic who is sturdy enough to create such a content. But politicans needs claims to be believable, so they can make some actions. What to do, if you want to claim "flat earth believers dont like alcohol" and there wont exist such persons? You create them. What you need to do is comment on relevant topics and upvote them to top and then you can back up the biased claim with examples what you have produced. It cant happen overnight, because this kind of spam is easily detectable, but if its spread over years, it makes it believable. Let me say again, community who 100% like alcohol is believed to not to like it.
I dont want to take sides here, every modern country got politicans, who abuse this. Russia is just using it to the more to the maximum limit with long standing army of trolls. And Putin got the power to claim whatever he wants, and its backed up years of biased articles and comments. Ii he want to look someone or something bad, it can do. Thats all what he needs to claim country or 2.
> The commenters aren't Russia friendly. Where is the bot army?
You see, the post is 10 hours ago, and a few days ago new american sanctions against Russia were approved, which Trump didn't even attempt to put a stop on (for obvious reasons, but nevertheless) - so I assume the trolls are on hold with Trump for now. Technically, unconditional Trump favoritism has been called off from paid troll bounty board ever since the second airstrike on May 18th (could linger a few days on bureaucracy). Your screenshots are from that period of time.
The main client for paid trolls in english language is not even putin, he prefers to hire PR agencies (Ketchum, Oliver Stone, etc) for his western image. The main client is ms. Simonyan, the head of Russia Today (RT), the main source of outbound propaganda, and a recipient of $1.1bil annually from russian state budget. Her main target are bitter westerners much like you, who think "the West" is doing it wrong, and they project an utterly false twisted image of Russia (we have a whole web project https://noodleremover.news/ dedicated to RT lies) to make it seem like "Russia" has done that thing right. In fact, I have enough fingers without using my hands and feet to count the amount of things that are done right in Russia, and you can safely assume that everything RT puts up to headlines is fake news.
This is my official request to you from all the russians that haven't gone insane... yet: if you see any green RT tags, if you see unnaturally upvoted comment which isn't worth its weight in gold, RUN.
> Black Sea is useless without treaty with Turkey as they can lock the Bosporus.
That's why we have a joke about Putin's back being used as Erdogan's knife stand, since he's basically betraying any of the putin's (sometimes assumed) promises on every turn, downed russian military plane and never regretted it, and still didn't get as much as an angry note from putin, who looks like a cowardly old goat he is in this situation.
> Also, Ukraine didn't try to evict the Black Sea fleet for decades.
Actually, it did. A number of times too, ever since Kuchma, putin's type of crook, has stepped down after 11 years of presidency in 2005.
> In reality there are only thousands of hardcore liberals protesting Putin in Russia. 10M Hungary has bigger protests. I'd guess most people in Russia are content (=/= happy) with Putin.
10M Hungary doesn't get their cars burned and their kids attacked on streets next week for participating in protests.
In 2013, mr Navalny (who's running for president against Putin in 2018) scored 27% on mayoral election in Moscow, with hundreds of thousands of votes, despite massive falsification effort on behalf of acting mayor, putin's left hand man, mr Sobyanin.
Real approval of mr Putin is about 22% at the moment. With election turnouts hovering at 30%, they are the clear "majority", with 70% sitting home due to putin downright banning anyone threatening to bring those 70% to the voting booth from taking part in elections (in 2012 election, that was mr Yavlinskiy), from presidental ones the lowest levels. Such ruthless measures never happened around the top approval putin ever had (39%), which means the confidence level is, at the moment, zero, and it's because they know people are not happy about losing 40% of their salaries in the last 2 years, with millions going down into poverty due to prices spiraling out of control (today I had my favorite salad at the shop, it cost me 48RUB, just 5 years ago I had it for 18RUB, and salaries are frozen by a presidental order "to not provoke inflation").
You're free to read and delete this comment, it's just there for information to you anyway.
USA has historically been an isolationist, aloof country more than it has been an interventionist and warmongering one. There was popular opposition to getting involved in both world wars, Wilson was elected on the slogan "he kept us out of war" and "america first" (both now proven ironic, obviously). Only after 1945 the imperialism and warmongering became accepted, so Trump is actually a reversion to the traditional american culture.
But you can find flat earth believer anti-alcoholists too. Good luck finding Russia hater Trump supporters.
@Gevlon "Good luck finding Russia hater Trump supporters".
The real question being do they "do not hate Russia" because:
1) They believe it is great country worth living in, and Putin is great guy.
2) They consider head-to-head collision course with Russia to be bloody suicidal, no matter how personally repugnant is guy sitting in Kremlin. MAD is mad for a reason.
@Gevlon
...?
The only thing you need to convince me of is that what the West actually does is consistent with the will of its people.
I mean, Trump is doing so well carrying out the promises he was elected for.
@Putin-hatin' anons
I'd like those prooflinks. The notion of 20% support for Putin is especially hilarious.
Navalny's "hundreds of thousands of votes" sounds about right for a mayoral election in a 10mil population city
Then there's the article I just saw this morning: "Russia Threatens to Attack U.S. Planes in Syria Following Assad Jet Fighter Shootdown". Comment section is still mostly against Clinton/Obama/globalists...
@L Papay: 3) they do whatever they want in their own country as long as they don't bother us
@Maxim: no he is not doing well. But my point is that candidates can appear with OPEN pro-Russian stance, with inviting Putin to rally and win.
@Gevlon
Only to then later fall in line like everyone else since Kennedies.
I'd give USA's political system the benefit of a doubt, but i'm fresh out of doubt :(
Every person on earth should be forced to play Europa Universalis IV for a week or two. Then they might be educated on how long Russia has existed and how much territory it has historically either held directly in its empire or had complete political control over. Hint, the Crimea and Ukraine have been basically a part of Russia far longer than the USA has existed. I try to tell my Liberal friends this when they complain about Russia 'aggression'.
Great mr. Anonymous. By the same logic, tou won't complain when Turkey anexes Hungary.
Post a Comment