Val but a Cenobigbite @Valerie_Elysee@awoo.space

From @June in two parts
https://kitty.town/@June/101631515854082851
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For folks who don't know: RT and In The Now are actual propaganda designed to be consumable and attractive to progressive Western audiences. They are a facet of the overall propaganda structure that includes Russia Today's internal (within Russia, in Russian) propaganda. Russia Today is much more directly anti-queer, anti-Semitic, etc, and RT filters this into a package DESIGNED to be palatable to English-speaking westerners, with the goal of spreading "just asking questions" style disinfo.
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https://kitty.town/@June/101631522761440479
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Do not share RT and In The Now (which is of course designed explicitly to look like NowThis) content, even if it seems innocuous. If it's something legit sounding, find another several sources for it. Supporting these platforms in any way is helping people do serious harm to queer people and other minorities.

Ok. You've probably seen the news: we are gearing up for an honest-to-goodness ideological war in 2020. Propagandists, homegrown and otherwise, are already gearing up to sow discord and confusion on the left.

And, um, bad news: you and I are basically the remaining counterculture. If people at our level don't prepare themselves to fight, we're probably not going to win.

Start thinking about it NOW. For instance, it wouldn't hurt to get an elevator-pitch sized case against Trump into your head. Personally, I'm thinking of starting a list of undeniable Trump "fun facts" we can use to steer forum threads back on track. (e.g.: "Hey, isn't Trump ALREADY a known fraudster because of that Trump U thing?" "Hey, didn't Trump's own biographer say he's probably a Kremlin agent?") (I know, the base is hard to crack and never admits it's wrong. We're not _aiming_ for the base.)

Next: be wary of anything you see that turns you against a fellow Trump opponent. Remember that we KNOW FOR CERTAIN some of that is deliberate sabotage. Save your ire for the opposition-- and even then, think ahead to how we can draw them into the fold if Trump is ever properly defeated and humiliated.

And most importantly: for fuck's sake, don't despair. I grew up with the sincere expectation we would all be reduced to radioactive ash by the time I was 20. Instead, the Big Bads collapsed. Granted, they came back in a new form, but... here we are, still breathing.

This is a new era. We are the FIRST. GENERATION. EVER. to face this kind of targeted memetic infiltration online. You don't even know what we're capable of. The memetic immune systems we develop now could protect American humanists and progressives for generations. Quit fixating on a doom that will only become truly inevitable *if* we keep fixating on it.

EUROPE: "Haha, silly primitives! Look at them hulling this 'maize' stuff with their primitive technologies! We have MACHINES to do that!"

ALSO EUROPE: "Hey, let's take a bunch of this 'maize' back to Europe and eat it, without bothering to talk to the locals about it first, since everything basically belongs to us and we're smarter than everybody!"

ALSO ALSO EUROPE: "Hey, let's die in heaps because we never learned about nixtamalization, we aren't getting any niacin out of this snazzy new food, and now we all have pellagra!"

ALSO ALSO ALSO EUROPE *STILL*: "Man, I can't believe how much more sophisticated we are than everybody else."

ALSO ALSO ALSO ALSO EUROPE (AND ITS KIDS) STILL: "Let's base our entire diet around maximizing corporate profit and discover bold new health problems nobody has ever seen before!"

first, they sold exceptions to privacy tracking to Facebook and Twitter, now it comes out they've got a header override that allows them to set header exceptions on demand.

https://laptop-updates.brave.com/promo/custom-headers

don't use this garbage.