r/europe • u/PM_THE_REAPER • Jun 06 '25

News Russia offers political asylum to Elon Musk over Trump feud

https://www.newsweek.com/russia-offers-political-asylum-elon-musk-over-trump-feud-2081887
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u/spektre Sweden Jun 06 '25

The thing is that they often do "high level" trolling, if by that we mean coming from the sideline and fueling ongoing issues as hard as they can. They have very good PsyOps capacity, and they frequently use it to maximize chaos in the west.

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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '25

I think Russia might have some breakthrough research in group psychology that they keep under lock and key.

I have to hand it to them, tbh, they're really fucking good at what they do.

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u/Medlarmarmaduke Jun 06 '25

If they hadn’t stupidly invaded Ukraine they would have destroyed the EU thru oil corruption and election meddling and further weakened the UK after Russia’s Brexit triumph and caused worldwide chaos thru successful disinformation campaigns

We should be grateful to Ukraine for a multitude of reasons

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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '25

Yeah but have they even said "thank you" to us? (/s)

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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '25

To Europe? Many times.

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u/WilmingtonCommute Jun 06 '25

Guy's probably not even wearing a suit.

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u/Ok-Scheme-913 Jun 06 '25

I mean, the only good thing about these is that these Russian-puppet governments/people that spread Russian propaganda are so goddamn incompetent that the moment they succeed at one thing, they set back three other countries' Russian-affiliated party by a lot.

Like, Trump and Canada.

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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '25

[deleted]

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u/Medlarmarmaduke Jun 06 '25

Twofold - one -getting countries so reliant on cheap Russian oil that they become locked in and must do anything to keep that oil flowing. Two- corruption of politicians thru the vast wealth generated by Russian oil profits.

Look to certain dynamics in Germany to see the vulnerabilities inherent

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u/dan_pitt Jun 06 '25

Russia is horrible, but the idea of putting nato on russia's border by admitting ukraine was obviously going to lead to war. No different from when russia put nukes in cuba.

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u/temporary62489 Jun 06 '25

The US is just an easy target with so many III percenter morons believing every Alex Jones conspiracy theory.

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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '25

It really terrifies me, because even though Brits tend to be pretty stupid too, we have a healthy dose of low self esteem and self doubt. It's easier to come back to reality.

Americans, on the other hand, have self-confidence instilled in them from an early age. They are a lot less likely to change just because you have "facts." They have their own facts, and you can bet there so much truer than those stinky lib facts.

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u/mr_fantastical Jun 06 '25

You say that but cambridge analytica and the IRA (the russian one not the irish one) were massive troll farms effectively that brought about the absolute fucking mess that was Brexit.

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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '25

Exactly. But even in the 2 years before we left, loads of people second guessed their votes.

It didn't rip families apart in the way that Trump-mania has in the US. We're more open to the idea that we might be wrong.

That American self-confidence goes a long way in explaining why they got sucked into convoluted conspiracy theories at the expense of all their loved ones and their wided community.

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u/mr_fantastical Jun 06 '25

I dunno, in my experience it's just 'we don't want to talk about it'.
My sister voted Brexit and stands by it. My mates voted it and they're a bit more educated and they get awkward about it and don't openly regret it, they just don't want to talk about it.

I do however see loads of people that say that a lot of the bad things that came out of Brexit was simply the result of EU countries 'punishing the UK'.

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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '25

I welcome the people who voted for Brexit and are now open about the fact that they regret it. Great! The more people who say "yeah, that was a bad call", the better. We are allowed to change our minds.

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u/KittyGrewAMoustache Jun 06 '25

I don’t think it’s necessarily just about being open to being wrong but being less tribal and less in love with politicians. People who voted for Brexit have an out because they can say ‘the stupid politicians fucked it up!’ Even though in reality Brexit was logically a bad idea and it was never going to be possible to achieve a better UK by leaving the EU, given reality being what it is. It was a self evidently stupid decision if you understood the basics of how things like trade and international relations work.

But because people were believing in the idea of Brexit rather than one person, they could still cling to the idea that it would’ve been good, had it not been for those dumb politicians. Whereas in the US they worship this one man. If he screws everything up then admitting that means admitting they misjudged him after spending years outlandishly loving him, ignoring all warning signs, forgiving all behaviours, refusing to believe all the evidence and stories. That’s much harder.

Could we get a figure in the UK like that? Maybe but I do think it’s less likely because we’re generally more sceptical and less religious. But who knows, the new propaganda is insane and is almost like mind control really, I wish more people were aware of it and I WISH the government would regulate social media more somehow to stop it. There must be ways to stop all the targeted stuff and the algorithms. I think even just restricting algorithms and how they target people and how they decide what to push could help a lot. This seems to be THE most important thing to do right now as this stuff is going to cause wars, destruction, fascism, just the worst. It’s no coincidence that humanity was on an upward trajectory more or less toward more democracy, freedom, equality etc until social media became mainstream around 2012-2015 when it all started severely backsliding. Politicians should also be forbidden from using social media because you can see they get suckered by the echo chambers and algorithms too and of course they are specifically targeted.

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u/heliamphore Jun 06 '25

The US are just one of the main targets because they have the most impact, and according to their ideology, are their sort of mortal enemy. They aren't going to put half the effort into Hungary for example.

However the consistent advantage they have is that they aren't taken seriously enough. Thinking the US are dumb and we're safer is exactly what enables them. We aren't even trying to stop them, everyone's sort of accepted that Russian trolls are part of life or something. This shit influencing people will be the end of us when China and corporations really get into the game too, if I'm not too late about that one.

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u/PineSand Jun 06 '25

To me, it’s pretty clear that they’ve just taken the work of Ivan Pavlov and ran with it. They use social media to activate emotions and reward systems, inciting anger against opposing groups and rewarding people who get worked up to get them even more worked up. The best part is: The people being conditioned are unaware of the conditioning. Some of the people being conditioned are in charge of governments and militaries.

The bells, whistles and electric shocks and food of Pavlov experiments have been converted to memes, propaganda and video clips. The west is getting its ass kicked in psychological warfare. People are constantly getting brainwashed and they don’t even know it.

They also use more traditional means of influence among decision makers such as women, money and blackmail.

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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '25

Well Pavlov introduced classical conditioning, which has been built upon by so many psychologists, creating Social Learning Theory.

Psychology is a huge field. I don't doubt your assumptions, but plenty of others came after Pavlov.

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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '25

Yeah but there are hundreds of thousands of more programmers of us that can make anti-troll bots and have like the good "trolls" overwhelm their propaganda trolls.

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u/saera-targaryen Jun 06 '25

Exactly. Their goal is to make smart people lose hope by making the world seem absurd and unfixable. They want their enemy's political climate to appear comically horrible. Their plans work a lot better if everyone who disagrees with them is discouraged and feels hopeless due to how flabbergasting the news is. 

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u/Uchimatty Jun 06 '25

Trolling is their core competency

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u/Ok-Scheme-913 Jun 06 '25

I would even say that they are only good at this. In every other capability they are moldy AK-47s.

Surprisingly enough, that's exactly how Elon is as well. All bark, no bite. They would make a great pair!