"because Americans don’t understand how they are being manipulated." - December 11, 2020
"a central part of a new system of political control. And to understand how this is happening, you have to look to Russia, to a man called Vladislav Surkov, who is a hero of our time. Surkov is one of President Putin's advisers, and has helped him maintain his power for 15 years [as of 2014], but he has done it in a very new way. He came originally from the avant-garde art world, and those who have studied his career, say that what Surkov has done, is to import ideas from conceptual art into the very heart of politics. His aim is to undermine peoples' perceptions of the world, so they never know what is really happening. Surkov turned Russian politics into a bewildering, constantly changing piece of theater." - BBC, Adam Curtis, year 2014
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Egoism / egomania / LOL / mocking / mockery / amused / hilarious / WTFBBQ / ... ++ !leopardsatemyface@lemmy.world / absurd humor / surreal humour / simulacras everywhere / ... !NAFO@lemm.ee LOL LOL chambers / anti-citation / anti-quotation / anti-intellectual LMFAO / tactical cleverness - year 1951
“Everything in our background has prepared us to know and resist a prison when the gates begin to close around us . . . But what if there are no cries of anguish to be heard? Who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements? To whom do we complain, and when, and in what tone of voice, when serious discourse dissolves into giggles? What is the antidote to a culture's being drained by laughter?” ― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, year 1985 !BackTo1985@lemm.ee