Share this page!

JChoe Profile picture
Twitter logo
Aug 28 • 10 tweets • 6 min read
At some point, I think #jagarhar and #nafo are going to be a useful comparison to make in terms of popular-movement responses to disinformation.

Both cases are user-generated content movements with strong personal affiliation components.

180° opposite cultures, though.

1/10
Three sources on #jagarhar:

dw.com/en/german-anti…

theguardian.com/world/2019/jan…

bbc.com/news/blogs-tre…

2/10
#NAFO got "recognized" by the @DefenceU official account, so there'll be more news articles I'm sure...


3/10
...but here's what's up in Google News right now; note one of them is a regional Australian source, that's about where #NAFO is as far as "being a thing"

vice.com/en/article/y3p…

newsweek.com/russia-ukraine…

watoday.com.au/world/europe/n…

4/10
It's definitely much more of a thing on Twitter than in verified outlets right now.

I mean, there's people gatekeeping it on replies to this thread as far back as August 6, so, there's your sign. I was a bit of a latecomer to even that party, FWIW.



5/10
A few anti-fascist researchers, in the early days of both #nafo and #darkBrandon memes, noted that they deploy visual tropes of fascist art - laser eyes, military language, social-dominance-orientation language in feudal terms.

This is missing the point badly, I think.

6/10
I get some fairly hilarious "why you talk all fancy hurr durr" feedback when I talk about memes this way (which is actually good feedback in my book), but the mechanism that's happening here is basically Situationist detournement.



7/10
The context of the #nafo dogs are a lot of the point.

You've got a country 1/3 the size of a neighbor that's invading it and fulminating on Russia-1 about how they're going to exterminate Ukrainian-ness.

They're plundering it for grain, money, and horrifyingly, people.

8/10
I get about the doggie jokes that it doesn't make that horror disappear - nothing really does, that's the nature of horror in daily life.

For a minute or two it recedes into the background a bit though

9/10
The profound similarity with #jagarhar is that #nafo meme jokes with smiling cheems, too, are a survival tactic.

Compassion, the way that "we are here" activists do it, seems hard to ask for in this war.

Humor and joy, that you can get, though.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with JChoe

JChoe Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @JoohnChoe

JChoe Profile picture
Aug 29
The biggest problem I have with talking about Trump leaking a list of U.S. spies to Putin through Mar-A-Lago comes down to "falsifiability".

It's a Karl Popper idea from the philosophy of science; it demarcates responsible speculation from conspiracy theories rather neatly.
(🧵) Image
This is a critical formal characteristic of disinformation, which means that it exists independently of what the disinformation is about.

It's as true of disinformation about... I don't know, fruit sentience... as it would be for disinformation about politics.

It's a BS signal.
If someone is saying something wild and there's no way to prove them false... it's probably BS. Examples help here.

A classic one is, I have a hot girlfriend in Canada, you've never met her, her name is... uh...

Let's go with Brenda, I'm listening to Tupac.
Read 13 tweets
JChoe Profile picture
Aug 29
Perhaps the greatest unexamined internal contradiction of Trumpism is the pathetic idea that Trump or the G.O.P. give a f**k about their supporters.

Sometimes I think the reason why we don't talk about it is because it gets too close to the truths of why we have audiences.
The truth of identity politics is that all politics are identitarian today.

Linguists might call it an aspect of the "illocutionary" force of our statements - it's not precisely what we're saying, it's the context that it participates in, the things it reaffirms and creates.
It's probably somewhat uncomfortable for the more substantive blue-check scene out there, but, look through the replies on what you Tweet and ask, why are people saying this?

Not just the hate tweets, the one-line "I agree" statements, or the "those rascals!" exclamations.
Read 14 tweets
JChoe Profile picture
Aug 25
This is an important report.

Multiple neutral, independent reports document Russia's unusually brazen policy of legitimized plunder as war.

Filtration camps are a part of that machinery that I'd argue are basically for plundering human beings.

This is what it looks like.
In-depth, this is the process that Yale School of Public Health researchers document.

We've seen fragments of this process, but I don't think anyone has bothered to lay out its peculiar logic in a flowchart like this until @YaleSPH (<-- tagged here for you to follow)
This is particularly relevant to trying to envision a more agile U.S. foreign policy incorporating some aspect of whole-of-state, non-linear war, including lawfare & sanctions intended to enforce consequences upon Russian proxy entities.

The L/DNR is an interesting test case.
Read 5 tweets
JChoe Profile picture
Aug 25
Earlier today Putin issued an order increasing Russian army levels by 137k to 1.15 million, three sources:
marketwatch.com/amp/story/puti…

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

abcnews.go.com/International/…

This is one edge of the Twitterverse reading it together right now.

Quick thread with context:
I'm not an expert, so I have to go on only verified reporting if I want to be sure I'm avoiding disinformation.

Fortunately, that's not hard to find on Russian morale problems and systemic military issues.

This Twitter thread for instance:
ends up being corroborated in this Washington Post article dated August 21, so:
washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/…

...it's not very hard to gain a fairly good amount of texture, on at least one person's experience of the machine.

TL;DR, they don't know how to turn the 'suck' switch off.
Read 12 tweets
JChoe Profile picture
Aug 24
On August 10, Jennifer Rubin noted three pillars of Pelosi's midterms messaging. Oversimplifying very broadly, they're:

1. "kitchen table" accomplishments
2. abortion
3. Republican extremism

The Democratic Party is good at talking about 1 & 2

It's #3 that that gives me pause.
It's somewhat noteworthy, but unsurprising, that even on this side of August 8, the Mar-A-Lago raid isn't on that list.

As important as it is, the Barr memo also probably won't make that list.
I concur with Rubin's assessment that big-lie support is a liability, but I think the signals that "big lie" extremists send won't be very visible to Democratic campaigns either.

External expertise is necessary to decode how race and legitimacy and extremism interplay.
Read 4 tweets
JChoe Profile picture
Aug 24
I'm pretty directly affected by the student loan forgiveness, but I'm finding it much more impactful and interesting how it's sorting things out politically and also economically.

I think it's a smart move. Look at the timing, look at the audiences; I think it makes sense.
The idea that there were enough moderates to make a substantial difference in election outcomes seems somewhat repudiated by forgiving billions in student loans 76 days out from an election.

If they mattered, Biden wouldn't have done this.
At the same time, it's hard not to read the limits on loan forgiveness - only under $125k, an additional $10k if you got a Pell Grant - as also being in some measure moderate concessions.

They are also, perhaps intentionally, refutative of basic right-wing talking points.
Read 9 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

:(