In the past week I’ve been absolutely roasted for criticising two different countries. Normally I’d be okay with that, I can handle a mild toasting and after all debate is a good thing.
On both occasions though I was flamed for mentioning human rights issues that are established facts and have been known for many, many years. I was critical of the actions/laws of their governments and not the people, their race, religion, general political ideology or nationality.
On both occasions I was bombarded by long posts that parroted propaganda, and in the case of one country I was told (on multiple occasions) that I was ignorant, racist and even fascist for mentioning the issues I did. I’m not complaining about how I was treated, but as a reminder, I was discussing internationally-recognised human rights concerns that can be verified and based in fact.
I could just be paranoid but I’m fairly convinced the responses weren’t from patriotic citizens. I think they were paid trolls or bots, and I think their purpose was to quiet negative talking points about the countries that were mentioned.
Has anyone else had a similar experience?
Yeah J Edgar Hoover got up to all kinds of crazy shit. But that was a long time ago and was primarily about being against communists and black civil rights activists.
Most conspiracy theories fall apart when you just ask the question “why would they do this?”
So… why would the FBI be pushing the kind of content we see on lemmy? Why would the FBI be promoting socialism and anti-zionism? Why would the FBI be promoting trans rights? Is there some hidden agenda which would explain why the FBI would be promoting linux and other FOSS on lemmy?
I don’t really see anything on lemmy that would be in the interests of the FBI to be pushing. They might be monitoring things going on here, but which content are you seeing that looks like it’s coming from the FBI?
Foreign countries though? Yeah, they’re interested in trying to push anyone “radicalized” to do anything which would destabilize their adversaries. And if you look at the content on lemmy, much of the geopolitical discussion is very unhinged and often is trying to push people towards violence.
I think there’s a motive. If I were the FBI I wouldn’t be too concerned about actual violent outcomes, so long as they were lone wolf attacks or the product of tiny cells of radicals. It’s like a controlled burn in a forest. You get the fire out of the way before it reaches a critical mass. “Voting doesn’t work, burn down a government building” is a real hard sell to someone with a stable job, but the people it does sell to might one day be the types of people to organize and lead a meaningful opposition. So you flush them out early and fast. Some people might die, but Director Patel told me to catch leftists, not to prevent violence. As an added bonus, each violent act turns liberals more and more against what they perceive as an inherently violent ideology. “These are terrible times, and maybe if it prevents another bombing mass surveillance is acceptable even if I don’t like it,” they might think. You don’t have to go back too far to see that mindset in action. In the aftermath of 9/11 Americans saw an unprecedented erosion of their civil liberties. Terror is good for an autocratic regime.
That being said, I will grant that there’s no evidence of this. But then again there wasn’t evidence of COINTELPRO until the FBI field office in Media PA got broken into by a group of concerned citizens. Not that I’m condoning B&E. I also don’t think it would be productive to point fingers even if there were evidence the FBI was doing COINTELPRO 2. “So and so is a fed” is actually one of the tactics used in COINTELPRO to sow discord in infiltrated groups. Just, maybe we should keep in mind that we’re bound to see some discourse here that is trying to get us to play a useful idiot.
The question about whether the feds are on lemmy is falsifiable. There just needs to be enough people in congress willing to make that a primary issue to overrule whatever security laws/apparatus are in place and publish the info. There’s even recent precedent of one guy doing just that. Waiting until there’s complete evidence won’t move the ball forward at all. Even having a bad discussion has a random chance of moving the ball forward (subject to time constraints).
Not Suspicious on the Internet:
Suspicious on the Internet: