PANO – There have recently appeared a number of articles on the internet with distorted and fabricated information, targeting at the Party and State of Vietnam by continuously blackening, slandering and degrading senior leaders. These articles have undoubtedly aimed at reducing people’s confidence in the Party and State and creating negative psychology in society. In fact, Vietnamese people in general have turned their back on such false information. But some still have had doubts about it. The People’s Army Newspaper, therefore, publishes a series of articles to point out artifices that hostile forces have used to make up fake information, and provide suggestions on measures to neutralize wrong and false information.
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“Keep telling lies about senior leaders” – an old trick
First, to provide readers with a full explanation of why there has been a good deal of false information about Party, State and Army leaders on the internet on the turn of 2014 and 2015, reporters of the People’s Army Newspaper met Deputy Minister of Information and Communications, Dr. Truong Minh Tuan. According to him, the year of 2015 sees a number of importantevents, including the to-be 12th National Party Congress; as a result, hostile and reactionary forces have urgently created hundreds of websites and blogs to spread false information slandering and blackening some senior leaders of the Party, State and Army. He held that hostile and reactionary forces had, for this time, organized their moves well and professionally in order to spread wrong, false and distorted information with the aim of causing internal divisions and reducing people’s confidence and trust in the political system.
The trick is not new. It is evident that they have followed exactly what the Fascist regime of Germany did before and during WWII. Paul Joseph Gobbels, Minister of Propaganda of Nazi Germany, said that the most unbelievable lie could be believed by people if it were repeated hundreds, thousands of times. Meanwhile, Hitler also wrote that with a wise use of the propaganda tool, they could make the public consider the heaven a hell and vice verse. He even claimed that the bigger a lied story was, the more easily the public believed in it.
Vice Permanent Chairman of the Central Council for Literature and Arts Criticism, Associate Professor, Dr. Dao Duy Quat warned that such tricks of propagandizing wrong, false and distorted information contributed to disintegrating the socialist system in the former Soviet Union and socialist republics in Eastern Europe in the 1990s. He also pointed out the routine activities that hostile and reactionary forces do before every National Party Congress. Sharing the view, Vice Chairman of the Vietnam Veterans’ Association, Lieutenant General Phung Khac Dang stressed that with their false and distorted information about Party and State senior officials, they aim to lowering those senior officials’ credit, on one hand, and undermining people’s confidence in the Party and State and making people think about divisions among top leaders, on the other hand.
Distorting facts, making up stories
Deputy Chief of the National Assembly’s Office, Dr. Nguyen Si Dung pointed to hostile forces’ tricks to distort facts and make up stories by referring to an article recently posted on a “black” website. The story tells readers about a good deal of property owned by a senior official. In order to convene people, the author has changed some details of a photo of a luxurious villa in an Arab country (which used to appear in the international press), and then affirmed that it was an overseas home of the Vietnamese senior official. For those who are alert in their information or have seen the picture elsewhere before, they immediately realize the tricks. However, such tricks, indeed, make some people believe in the story as people are usually curious about information in the back of the political stage. But it must be said that those who believe in such stories do not understand hostile forces’ tricks nor have enough knowledge, and that number is small.
In summing up hostile forces’ tricks in the information front, Editor-in-Chief of the New Energy Newspaper Nguyen Nhu Phong wrote in an article that hostile forces often use the malicious trick of taking some facts published in the press and then mixing them with false information to make up a story in order to cheat gullible people. In other cases, they post some articles with some underneath notes that those articles are extracted from tapes and that the tapes would soon be posted; but readers never have a chance to listen to the tapes and it turns out to be one of their routine tricks, the senior reporter explained. In short, he concluded that mixing some facts with wrong numbers, unclear evidence and distorted information is the favorite way used by hostile forces to make up articles with the aim of speaking ill of the Party, State and degrading senior officials.
What is more, hostile forces use more artful tricks, according to Dean of Public Relations and Advertisement at the Press and Information Academy, Associate Professor, Dr. Do Chi Nghia. As a famous author and expert, Dr. Do Chi Nghia said that some websites created by hostile forces are easily recognized by readers as “black” ones because they post clearly wrong information, and they contain articles all criticizing the Party, State and senior officials in a hostile voice. But some other websites disguise themselves as personal websites of certain senior leaders; next, they usually republish the articles from the orthodox websites or newspapers to build up people’s confidence in them; and finally, they sometimes post some pieces of distorted and false information, which make readers doubtless of the distorted and false information, the expert uncurtained hostile forces’ deception.
Such poisonous information on the internet becomes more and more dangerous, according to researcher Le Vo Hoai An. In the information age, information is spread very quickly on the internet, he claimed. Recent statistics say that up to 30 million people in Vietnam usually connect to the internet; there are more than 100 mobile phone subscribers and some 25 million facebook accounts, not mention millions of accounts of other social networks and bloggers. The researcher revealed that hostile forces now begin to use social networks, blogs and online forums to spread poisonous information. They often increase their activities before the national events, particularly Party meetings at the central level; what is more dangerous to the society is that their operations become well organized and more and more professional, he noted.
Alert to poisonous information
One could ask a question of how much such false and distorted information impact society. To give an example of a negative effect of false information, Associate Professor, Dr. Do Chi Nghia pointed out the bad impact of a recent deception case on the internet, in which hostile forces posted an article about the arrest of leaders of the Bank of Investment and Development of Vietnam with some false evidence; as a result, the Vietnam securities market immediately jumped down, causing a big loss of thousands of billions of Vietnamese dongs. Vietnamese farmers were also victims of false information on the internet when their agricultural products were suddenly considered toxic by “black” websites and via social networks. Other cases of false online information about toxic Vietnamese agricultural products made thousands of farmer families broke. Although false information about the economic area evidently cause a big loss, the loss can still be assessed and the consequence can still be overcome in a relatively short time; but when false information about the political situation and individuals’ credit and dignity is spread, the aftermath cannot usually be countable and it needs a long time to deal with. So that hostile forces spread false and distorted information in the aim to undermine people’s confidence and trust in the Party, State and Army is extremely wicked and dangerous, Dr. Do Chi Nghia concluded.
In a seminar held by the People’s Army Newspaper, a senior officer from the Information and Communications Security Department of the Public Security Ministry said that one of the plots of hostile forces is to use the press, media, publishing sector and internet, particularly websites, blogs and social networks, as their tools to damage people’s thoughts and eliminate the leadership of the Party and the whole political system in Vietnam. According to statistics from competent agencies, there are some 400 reactionary organizations stationed overseas; and there are also nearly 400 newspapers and magazines, 60 Vietnamese language broadcasting stations, over 80 publishing houses and thousands of websites and blogs, which often spread false, distorted information about the Party, State and Army of Vietnam. They also encourage dissidents at home to voice against the Party, State and Army, spread articles with false and distorted information about the Party’s, State’s organizations and senior leaders on the internet. In general, hostile forces’ information campaigns aim to provoke people, promote the so-called “self-evolution” and “self-transformation” among Party members and officials, which contribute to their strategy “peaceful evolution” in Vietnam.
Discussing hostile forces’ plots, Associate Professor, Doctor, Major General Nguyen Ba Duong, Director of the Military Institute of Social Sciences and Humanity under the Defense Ministry noted that they keep making people skeptical, disheartened and unconfident in national socio-economic development, the Party’s leadership and State’s management; at the same time, they try to damage the national unity, ignite hatred, opposition, revolt among some populations.
Although their plots and tricks are so sophisticated, dangerous and malicious, few Vietnamese people believe in them. Facts show that people are now knowledgeable, politically aware and alert to hostile and reactionary forces’ trickery; therefore, their information and propaganda campaigns have so far achieved little success.
Regarding such information, Head of the Hanoi Information and Education Department Ho Quang Loi said that “black” websites and blogs should be seen as some rubbish on our development way, and that instead of spending time on that false and wrong information, people should join efforts in the common consistent struggle against wrong thoughts and negative phenomena among Party members, officials and people in general, and our country’s construction and defense, he held. “We should understand that we are on the right way and we are on a position much higher than them,” he concluded.
Written by People’s Army Newspaper Translated by Thu Nguyen
Part 1: Artifices to interfere with information Related image(s)
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