coffee_enjoyer
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User ID: 541
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
The Congo Propaganda War is relevant (only) insofar as it shows the extent to which states have historically engaged in propaganda. This propaganda always involves visceral, visual, emotionally potent language. It is evidence that such propaganda works, and as a consequence of it working (by hijacking the rational mind) we do need to dispel it and call out actors that engage in it.
As an example from the other side, if it’s the case that Hamas lied about the hospital casualty figures, that must also be called out as propaganda and we should adjust the priors on the accuracy of their future statements.
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
Because if the population leaves then Israel will be able to increase their bombing and displace them permanently
I cited you a source proving that it is incorrect.
And yes there is an emotional difference between shooting a child and decapitating babies. Just like there’s a difference between hanging a man, and tearing off his limbs one by one. And I cited you two articles about how atrocity propaganda was used in the past to great effect.
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
You should read up on atrocity propaganda before you make suggestions about “winning arguments”. Since the Congo Propaganda War of the 1800s nations have used atrocity propaganda to manufacture public support and/or outcry. They do that to win arguments, by creating a sticky grotesque visual image that can be repeated ad nauseam. Like, you know, beheading babies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocity_propaganda
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congo_Free_State_propaganda_war
The initial claim is wrong anyway; there is no evidence of babies decapitated
No war is fought with bullets and bombs alone. For as long as enemies have taken up arms against each other, propaganda has proven a robust weapon. During the Civil War, Southern printing presses put out materials that claimed Northern victory would lead to “race-mixing” and newspapers portrayed Union soldiers as rapists and thieves. World War I brought the rise of “atrocity propaganda,” which highlights, exaggerates, and sometimes outright fabricates the gruesome acts of violence committed by opposing combatants.
“Yesterday the Israeli Prime Minister’s office said that it had confirmed Hamas beheaded babies & children while we were live on the air,” she posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, Friday. “The Israeli government now says today it CANNOT confirm babies were beheaded. I needed to be more careful with my words and I am sorry.”
There is an enormous emotional difference between a child being shot and a baby being beheaded.
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
Does anyone know of a video of a Hamas rocket landing from a ground POV? The sound of the hospital blast is identical to a JDAM missile sound, but I want to hear if a Hamas rocket sounds similar.
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
It wasn’t an initial confused claim, though, it was atrocity propaganda, which requires a stable phrase to repeat and a visual image. An IDF spokesperson doesn’t accidentally say “40 babies decapitated”.
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
What is the deal with Jackson Hinkle? He is all over the top results when searching Israel/Gaza on Twitter.
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
The “surgical” strikes have already killed journalists and innocent civilians. But also: are you sure there will be bad press? We will have to wait and see what kind of propaganda Israel cooks up. Already they posted on Twitter, then deleted, a video “proving” that it was Hamas who launched the attacks.
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
Maybe they overestimated their mastery of the propaganda engine? https://twitter.com/Seamus_Malek/status/1714369464823857604
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
It doesn’t look anything like the blast of a Palestinian missile. Israel gains the infliction of terror on a population seeking shelter that they want to displace as much and as fast as possible. Hamas has never shown an interest in bombing their own hospitals (in this scenario they want the population to stay in Gaza), but Israel has attacked hospitals before and recently attacked a border crossing.
The discourse coming out of Israel has been extremist lately, with Netanyahu calling this a battle between “the children of light and the children of darkness”.
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
I don’t think we can know whether they are active regarding the Harvard debacle. If they have learned anything at all in recent years it’s that their more controversial actions should be concealed and not publicized. Did they have a role to play in getting Wall Street Jews like Ackman to speak out and threaten their job security? Were they responsible for the doxxing-mobiles we saw? Are they phoning faculty and directors? This is not information we will ever be privy to.
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
Satan infamously tempted the Son of God with all of the world’s riches in exchange for obedience (Matthew 4:8). The Son of God declined and instead chose poverty, trial, oppression, and a torturous death in order to save his people. Rejecting riches in exchange for a promised land is deeply Abrahamic. It’s also very evolutionary, if we want to talk as strict atheists: they are making a bet that, if they succeed in winning against Israel, they will have a greater genetic proliferation than if they are evicted and sent to a random Arab nation.
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
Sadly I don’t know any discussions, but if you find one send my way! There might be something from the church fathers under the word oikonomia.
That’s pretty cool. I don’t see any red flags. Using psychotropics in a safe, communal, spiritual environment is probably the best use of them.
Internal Family Systems
I actually have a theory that there is an IFS theme throughout the Gospel and early Christianity. Obviously there’s the Father/Son dichotomy in Christianity which is essential to the religion. But then there are passages like these which I think hint to a psychodrama of household relations —
For from now on in one house there will be five divided, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.
This appears right after a parable on a “wise manager”, a spiritual metaphor regarding a person who both obeys (the Master) and commands (the servant), and then precedes an aphorism on “interpreting the present season”. It’s extremely doubtful that this has some worldly meaning, because it’s nestled in between two very allegorical or mystical sayings, and it uses too many words for a simple “whoever leaves family for my sake will be rewarded”. It’s reminiscent of the centurion who is praised for his faith, and who specifies that he obeys those above and commands those below (details which are absurd to include for an historical account, but necessary if an allegory). Notably this “character” is present for the Crucifixion. Lastly there’s an early Christian Shepherd of Hermas which talks about “households” in a way that can be metaphorical.
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
I think there’s a more innocuous way that this helps the dissident right, which doesn’t involve summoning the specter of anti-semitism. It’s as simple as: “look at this people proud of their bloodline, who make their ancestry the focus of their relationship with God Himself, who never dwell on any historical guilt on their part (such an idea is anathema), who impugn the whole world’s history with the guilt of hating them without cause, who have legislated in Israel to keep a portion of their bloodline pure forever, who deny the atrocities they committed in the founding of their Lebensraum (PDF warning / bottom of pg 83) (so boldly in fact that they accuse the victims of atrocities in the same breath), whose lawmakers call for ethnic cleansing without blemish to their reputation.”
Rather than leading to a hatred of Zionist Jews, this would lead to a love and admiration of them as an exemplar of behavior for Western conservatives.
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
Palestinians cluster with ancient Canaanite DNA, so the argument that Jews are the exclusive original inhabitants is a nonstarter. And Israel obviously does not believe in a statute of limitations because to this day Germany makes payments yearly restitution payments, Poland is pressured into compensating for lost Jewish property, and elderly German camp guards are put on trial. It would be a supremely ironic argument for Israel to make.
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
It is searchable for me on iOS. Actually it was a top search when I plugged in “Zionist terrorism Israel”, because I wanted to understand how the early Zionists used terrorism and whether it was comparable to Hamas actions. I realized that some American gentile’s military thesis from the 70s is almost certainly less biased than the leading Israeli or Palestinian histories, so why not read it? It’s all cited anyway. My passage is from page 81.
And yes I read most of it, it’s legitimately interesting, would recommend
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
I was just reading an interesting paper last night about Zionist terrorism in the lead-up to the founding of Israel:
Zionist Terrorism and the Establishment of Israel (pdf warning)
Zionists were only given the territory of Palestine as a nation (rather than a home for a small segment of Jewry) because of the abundance of terrorist attacks that Zionists committed against the British, in some cases slaughtering civil servants and kidnapping politicians, in one case blowing up a boat of 250 Jewish refugees as a false flag (the refugee ship Patria). Once they secured the nation of Israel for themselves, they used brutal terrorism and psychological warfare on the Palestinians to get them to flee. They killed innocents in a village called Deir Yassin, audio recorded their cries for help, and then drove loud “sound trucks” around Palestinian villages which played the cries of women and children while threatening nuclear warfare and poison gas attacks —
The Jews, too, used Deir Yassin's memory effectively, both against the Irgun and Stern Gang and against the Arabs. Jacques de Reznier of the International Red Cross said, "News of Deir Yassin promoted a widespread terror which the Jews always skillfully maintained. "The Jews used Deir Yassin extensively in their psychological warfare campaigns designed to make the Arabs quit their lands. Horror recordings and sound trucks accompanied Jewish attacks. “Shrieks, wails and anguished moans of Arab women, the wails of sirens and the clangs of fire-alarm bells, interrupted by a sepulchral voice calling out in Arabic, 'Remember Deir Yassin' and 'Save your souls, all ye faithful! Flee for your lives! The Jews are using poison gas and atomic weapons! Run for your lives in the name of Allah!"
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
I had understood that their military branch is independent of their ruling branch for op sec reasons
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
What is the non-sequitur of holding one million children hostage until an independent terrorist group releases their hostages? Think about how this rule could be extrapolated. What would Afghanis not have been justified in doing to America to free the 150 innocent men who were literally tortured in Guantanamo Bay for years? Or consider that the Nazis infamously blamed all Jews on the few thousand or ten thousand Jews who were involved in the Soviet Revolution and the failed November revolution. This moral rule blows. How about we just don’t threaten to starve (or “thirst out” or whatever) one million children.
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
What do you expect the average citizen of Gaza, who is about 14 years old, to do about Hamas?
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
You can say that about any country in the drone age, or even the nuclear age, or even just the high-flying bomber age. Hamas was able to find a zero-day vulnerability in Israel’s defenses which led to 1200 deaths at around 0.01% of their population (which has a TFR of around 3.0). There is no risk at all to their continued existence from this attack.
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
Right. This would arguably be worse than the holocaust. The holocaust took place when Germans were being killed in the millions and civilians were starving in the hundreds of thousands. But this atrocity would take place after the moral lesson of the holocaust, by a people who were victims of the event, and when Israel is facing zero threat to its continued existence and territorial sovereignty.
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
It’s interesting that the Nayirah Testimony that got us into the Iraq War also featured dying babies. That turned out to be fabricated, but before that it was confirmed by Bush and a host of journalists.
It’s insane to me that anyone would even consider using an alleged “intercepted call” as evidence. At a certain point, something is so easy to fake that it should be ignored completely unless there’s some way to independently verify the data on the call. All it takes is one sound expert employed at the IDF to double check that the lines and phraseology have the same cadence as typical Palestinian speech.
For the hospital blast, I would only trust the information that (1) can be independently verified as having an origin date of around the time of the blast, (2) was immediately posted online in the aftermath, eg within 20 minutes, (3) cannot be faked by a gainfully employed intelligence agent with an IQ higher than 115.
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