Category Archives: Propaganda

William Penn Died This Week; Just When We Needed Him Most

Three hundred and six years ago, on July 30, 1718, William Penn died, in England. Aged 73, he had been in very poor health for almost six years, after a massive stroke in 1712.

This is not exactly news. And in recent years, Penn has been out of fashion in many Quaker quarters — disowned and erased for having owned slaves, who labored at his estate Pennsbury in his proprietary colony of Pennsylvania.

The slaveowning was bad, and should not be forgotten. But if we cancel and further erase Penn, it is Friends, and friends of Friends, who are in my judgment the big losers.  Especially now. Continue reading William Penn Died This Week; Just When We Needed Him Most

A Quaker In Conflict, Outer and Inner: Damned if He Speaks, Damned If He Doesn’t. Meanwhile, There’s Work To Do.

New York Times — December 31, 2023

Can He Condemn the Killings Without Causing More Pain?

Chris George has lived in Israel and Gaza, where he was once held hostage. As his employees ask him to speak out on the latest war, he is torn.

He had spent his entire career attending to the horrors of terrorism and war, and now Chris George, 70, believed it was his responsibility to act again. He sat at his desk inside Connecticut’s largest refugee resettlement agency, trying to write a public statement about the violence in Israel and Gaza that had resurfaced traumas among his staff, and in his own personal history. Continue reading A Quaker In Conflict, Outer and Inner: Damned if He Speaks, Damned If He Doesn’t. Meanwhile, There’s Work To Do.

James Risen

The Intercept:

PRIGOZHIN TOLD THE TRUTH ABOUT PUTIN’S WAR IN UKRAINE

Yevgeny Prigozhin is a disinformation artist whose failed rebellion was marked by a burst of radical honesty.

ONE OF THE most subversive things that Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin did during his brief rebellion last weekend was to tell the truth.

Prigozhin is a pathological liar, a professional disinformation artist who was indicted in the United States in connection with the internet troll farm he ran, which was at the forefront of Russian efforts to intervene in the 2016 U.S. presidential election to help Donald Trump win.

But as the mercenary boss began his mutiny in late June, he experienced a brief and surprising bout of honesty when he launched into an online tirade against what he said were the lies used by Moscow to justify the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine. His comments were so candid and off-message for a Russian leader that it seemed as if someone had mistakenly handed him a speech meant for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Continue reading James Risen

“Fear Speech” vs “Hate Speech”: An Important Distinction

From, The New York Times:

[NOTE: I learned something valuable from this piece: “fear speech” is distinct from (but closely related to) “hate speech,” and its emergence in research further complicates such tangled issues as how to preserve free speech in the toxic media culture we seem stuck in. I didn’t find simple or easy solutions here. But being enabled to think more clearly about what we’re facing — to me that’s progress. Check it out.]

Few Are Addressing One of Social Media’s Greatest Perils

By Julia Angwin — May 6, 2023

Ms. Angwin is a contributing Opinion writer and an investigative journalist.

[F]ear is weaponized even more than hate by leaders who seek to spark violence. Hate is often part of the equation, of course, but fear is almost always the key ingredient when people feel they must lash out to defend themselves.

Continue reading “Fear Speech” vs “Hate Speech”: An Important Distinction