Category: Psychological Warfare

  • Excerpt from the book PsyWar: Enforcing the New World Order.

    By means of ever more effective methods of mind manipulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms… elections, parliaments, supreme courts and all the rest… will remain.

    The underlying substance will be a new kind of Totalitarianism. All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly like they were in the good old days. Democracy & freedom will be the theme of every broadcast & editorial. Meanwhile, the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite will quietly run the show as they see fit.

    -Aldous Huxley, 1962

    “I know it when I see it”

    In the 1964 Supreme Court case Jacobellis v. Ohio, – which was about pornography in the movie industry, the concurring opinion stated,

    “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [‘hard-core pornography’], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it.’

    And with that statement, one of the most infamous phrases in the American lexicon was born.

    PsyWar and Psyops operations are like that also. The problem is that people often have to be taught to “see it.”

    The US Department of Defense (DoD) 2004 and 2010 Counterinsurgency Operations Reports define “psyops” as the following:

    Psychological operations: Planned operations to convey selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of foreign governments, organizations, groups, and individuals. The purpose of psychological operations is to induce or reinforce foreign attitudes and behavior favorable to the originator’s objectives. Also called PYSOP.

    When authorized, PSYOP forces may be used domestically to assist lead federal agencies during disaster relief and crisis management by informing the domestic population.

    Psychological warfare (PsyWar) involves the planned use of propaganda and other psychological operations to influence opposition groups’ opinions, emotions, attitudes, and behavior. PsyWar is when psyops is used by governments against a foreign population or even against the citizens of a government (domestically) in a coordinated fashion.


    The book PsyWar was specifically written to provide armor against PsyWar being deployed by governments and the globalists against we, the people.

    In the back of that book, there is a list of terms associated with PsyWar, in the hopes that if people can understand the concepts, methods, and groups involved in PsyWar campaigns, they will “know it when they see it.”

    PsyWar is an excellent present for the older teen or anyone really who wishes to understand better the political world they were born into.

    Below is the full PsyWar Glossary from the book PsyWar: Enforcing the New World Order.


    A PsyWar Glossary

    Administrative state is a term used to describe the phenomenon of executive branch administrative agencies exercising the power to create, adjudicate, and enforce their own rules. The administrative state uses nondelegation, judicial deference, executive control of agencies, procedural rights, and agency dynamics to assert control above the republic and democratic principles.

    Advocacy journalism is a subset of journalism that adopts a nonobjective viewpoint, usually for some social or political purpose.

    Algorithms on social media and in search engines are computational processes. Online platforms such as Google, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and X use algorithms to predict what users are interested in seeing, isolate users who break “community standards” or government censorship rules and maximize revenues. Algorithms filter and prioritizes the content that the user receives, based on their individual user history. Algorithms can isolate different user groups into echo chambers and away from other others or bring users together.

    Artificial intelligence (AI) is a branch of computer science that focuses on creating machines that can perform tasks that typically require human intelligence. A key characteristic of AI is that it can learn from data and improve performance over time. AI systems learn from experience, understand natural language, recognize patterns, solve problems, and make decisions.

    Astroturfing (ergo, fake grass roots) is the practice of masking the sponsors of a message or organization to make it appear as though it originates from and is supported by grassroots participants. Astroturfing gives organizations credibility by hiding information about the source’s financial or governmental connections. An Astroturf organization is an organization that is hiding its real origins, in order to deceive the public about its true intentions.

    Asymmetric warfare is a type of war between opponents whose relative military power, strategy, or tactics differ significantly. It often involves insurgents or a resistance movement against a standing army or a more traditional force.

    Advocacy journalism is journalism that advocates a cause or expresses a viewpoint with a specific agenda. It is often designed to increase or decrease the Overton window. It is a form of propaganda.

    Bad-jacketing. Rumors and gossip meant to disenfranchise and destroy a movement or quell enthusiasm.

    Black ops is an abbreviation for “black operations,” which are covert or clandestine activities that cannot be linked to the organization that undertakes them.

    Black propaganda falsely claims a message, image, or video was created by the opposition in order to discredit them.

    Bot is an automated account programmed to interact like a user on social media. Bots are used to push narratives, amplify misleading messaging, and distort online discourse. The name “bot” came from a shortened version of the name robot.

    Botnet is a network of devices infected with malware, controlled by an attacker to launch distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks or spread malware.

    Chaos agents are a person or people that purposefully causes chaos or mischief within a group, for their own personal entertainment or as a tool to cause organizational fragmentation. It is a tool often used by intelligence agencies.

    Community technology is the practice of synergizing the efforts of individuals, community technology centers and national organizations with federal policy initiatives around broadband, information access, education, and economic development” (Wikipedia)

    Computational propaganda: is an “emergent form of political manipulation that occurs over the internet” (Woolley and Howard, 2018, p. 3). This type of propaganda is often executed through data mining and algorithmic bots, which are usually created and controlled by advanced technologies such as AI and machine learning.

    Computational propaganda (EU Parliament definition): “the use of algorithms, automation, and human curation to purposefully distribute misleading information over social media networks.” These activities can feed into influence campaigns: coordinated, illegitimate efforts of a third state or non-state agent to affect democratic processes and political decision-making, including (but not limited to) election interference. It is asserted that disinformation (deliberately deceptive information) turns one of democracy’s greatest assets—free and open debate—into a vulnerability. The use of algorithms, automation and artificial intelligence is boosting the scope and the efficiency of disinformation campaigns and related cyber-activities.

    Computer algorithms—to control access or speech. Example: Algorithms to enable X’s policy of “Freedom of speech, not reach”

    Controlled opposition, disruptors and chaos agents. Historically, these tactics involves a protest movement that is actually being led by government agents. Nearly all governments in history have employed this technique to trick and subdue their adversaries. However, in fifth-gen warfare, controlled opposition often may come in the form of disruptors and chaos agents. Either “real” people or bots that generate outrageous claims that delegitimize a movement (examples currently may (or may not be); “snake venom in the water” or “everyone is going to die who took the vaccine within two years.” Another tactic is placing agents of chaos whose job is to basically disrupt organizations and events. This may also come in the form of “reporters” who assert fake or highly exaggerated news stories, and who most likely are funded by the opposition. “Undermine the order from the shadows” is the tactic here.

    Cryptographic backdoors are methods that allows an entity to bypass encryption and gain access to a system.

    Cyberattack is an attempt by an individual or organization to hack into another individual or organization’s information system. The attacker seeks to disrupt, damage, or destroy the system, often for personal gain, political motives, or harm. Cyberattacks can include the use of botnet, denial-of-service, DNS tunneling, malware, man-in-the-middle attacks, phishing, ransomware, SQL injection, and zero-day exploitation.

    Cyberstalking involves the use of technology (most often, the internet!) to make someone else afraid or concerned about their safety. Generally speaking, this conduct is threatening or otherwise fear-inducing, involves an invasion of a person’s relative right to privacy, and manifests in repeated actions over time. Most of the time, those who cyberstalk use social media, internet databases, search engines, and other online resources to intimidate, follow, and cause anxiety or terror to others.

    Data mining: is the software-driven analysis of large batches of data in order to identify meaningful patterns.

    Decentralized and highly non-attributable psychological warfare (memes, fake news).

    Deepfakes are synthetic media that have been digitally manipulated to replace one person’s likeness or voice convincingly with that of another. Deepfake techniques include using a type of artificial intelligence called deep learning to create convincing images, audio, and video hoaxes.

    Deep state is a type of governance made up of potentially secret and unauthorized networks of power operating independently of a state’s political leadership in pursuit of their own agenda and goals.

    Denial-of-service (DoS) attack involves overwhelming a system with traffic to exhaust resources and bandwidth.

    Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is a malicious attempt to disrupt normal traffic to a web property.

    DNS Tunneling is the use of a domain name system (DNS) protocol to communicate non-DNS traffic, often for malicious purposes.

    DoD Military Deception Missions are attempts to deliberately deceive by using psychological warfare to deliberately mislead enemy forces during a combat situation.

    DoD Military Information Support Operations (MISO) Missions: Military Information Support Operations (MISO) missions involve sharing specific information to foreign audiences to influence the emotions, motives, reasoning, and behavior of foreign governments and citizens. This can include cyber warfare and advanced communication techniques across all forms of media. In the case of a domestic emergency, MISOs can be used on domestic populations.

    DoD Interagency and Government Support Missions: shape and influence foreign decision-making and behaviors in support of US objectives by advising foreign governments.

    Electronics intelligence (also called ELINT) is technical and intelligence information obtained from foreign electromagnetic emissions that are not radiated by communications equipment or by nuclear detonations and radioactive sources.

    Electronic warfare (EW) is warfare that uses the electromagnetic spectrum, such as radio, infrared, or radar, to sense, protect, and communicate. At the same time, EW can disrupt, deny and degrade the adversaries’ ability to use these signals.

    Emotional appeal is a persuasive technique that relies on descriptive language and imagery to evoke an emotional response and convince the recipient of a particular point of view. An emotional appeal manipulates the audience’s emotions, especially when there is a lack of factual evidence.

    Fearporn is any type of media or narrative designed to use fear to provoke strong emotional reactions, with the purpose of nudging the audience to react to a situation based on fear. Fearporn many also be used to increase audience size or participation.

    Fifth generation (fifth-gen) warfare is using non-kinetic military tactics against an opponent. This would include strategies such as manipulating social media through social engineering, misinformation, censorship cyberattacks, and artificial intelligence. It has also been described as a war of “information and perception.” Although the concept has been rejected by some scholars, it is seen as a new frontier of cyberspace and the concepts behind fifth-generation warfare are evolving, even within the field of military theory and strategy. Fifth-gen warfare is used by non-state actors as well as state actors.

    Flooding is a tactic that manipulates search engine or hashtag results by coordinating large volumes of inauthentic posts. Flooding may also be referred to as “firehosing.”

    Fourth industrial revolution, 4IR, or Industry 4.0, conceptualizes rapid change to technology, industries, and societal norms in the twenty-first century due to increasing interconnectivity and smart automation. This is being led by the joining of technologies such as artificial intelligence, gene editing, advanced robotics, and transhumanism, which will blur the lines between the physical, digital, and biological worlds.

    Gang stalking (cyber) is a form of cyberstalking or cyberbullying, in which a group of people target an individual online to harass them through repeated threat threats, fear-inducing behavior, bullying, teasing, intimidation, gossip and bad-jacketing.

    GARM is the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, a cross-industry initiative established by the World Federation of Advertisers and the WEF to address the challenge of “harmful” content on digital media platforms and its monetization via advertising. This is done by rating social media platforms and websites. If an entity has a low score, advertisers, including aggregator sites, such as Google, are not allowed to advertise on those platforms. This is a de-monetization strategy. That has been used by governments to censor news stories that they find inconvenient, such as the existence of Hunter Biden’s laptop, the safety and efficacy of the mRNA jab, and the origins of COVID-19. Both the participants and the terms of the GARM agreement are nontransparent.

    GARM was launched at Cannes in the summer of 2019 and has been working hard to highlight the changes needed for advertisers to feel more confident about advertising on social media. As of November 2019, GARM is a flagship project of the World Economic Forum Platform For Shaping the Future of Media, Entertainment and Culture.

    Gatekeeping is a process and propaganda technique of selecting content and blocking information to sway a specific outcome. It is often used in news production to manipulate the people by manipulating the writing, editing, positioning, scheduling, and repeating of news stories.

    Generative AI means the class of AI models that emulate the structure and characteristics of input data in order to generate derived synthetic content. This can include images, videos, audio, text, and other digital content.

    Gray and dark market data sets. A gray market or dark market data set is the trading of information through distribution channels that are not authorized by the original manufacturer or trademark proprietor.

    Gray propaganda is communication of a false narrative or story from an unattributed or hidden source. The messenger may be known, but the true source of the message is not. By avoiding source attribution, the viewer becomes unable to determine the creator or motives behind the message. This is common practice in modern corporate media, in which unattributed sources are often cited.

    The Great Reset is the name of an initiative launched by the World Economic Forum (WEF) and its founder, Klaus Schwab in June 2020. They are using the cover of anti-COVID measures and an overstated public health crisis, as well as emergencies such as “climate change” to push an agenda to remake the world using stake-holder capitalism (a form of socialism).

    Honeypots (not the sexual entrapment kind). In computer terminology, a honeypot is a computer security mechanism set to detect, deflect, or, in some manner, counteract attempts at unauthorized use of information systems.

    Hypnosis is a procedure that guides one into a deep state of relaxation (sometimes described as a trancelike state) designed to characterized by heightened suggestibility and receptivity to direction. Hypnosis can be implemented it in digital media, movies, advertising and propaganda. Trance-like experiences aren’t all that uncommon. If you’ve ever zoned out while watching a movie or daydreaming, you’ve been in a similar trance-like state.

    Hypnotic language patterns are used to influence and persuade by employing techniques such as lulling linguistic patterns, metaphor, and emotionally appealing words and phrases. Hypnotic language patterns and propaganda are connected through the use of persuasive and manipulative techniques to influence public opinion and highlights the powerful impact of language on shaping public perception and behavior.

    Industry 4.0: The fourth industrial revolution (4IR) is a term used to refer to the next generation of technological advances, where it is anticipated that the differences between physical, digital and biological technologies disappear. This is a world where machines and computers evolve independently, where new biological entities and evolutionary changes are being controlled by artificial intelligence, where brain waves can be manipulated. It is, quite literally, a brave new world.

    Infodemic is the rapid and far-reaching spread of information, both accurate and inaccurate about a specific issue. The word is a conjoining of “information” and “epidemic.” It is used to describe how misinformation and disinformation can spread like a virus from person to person and affect people like a disease. This use of this technique can be deliberate and intentional.

    Inverted totalitarianism is a managed democracy, where economic and state powers are conjoined and virtually unbridled. Regulatory control is superimposed upon the administrative state and a nontransparent group of managers and elites run the country from within.

    Limited hangout is a propaganda technique of displaying a subset of the available information. It involves deliberately revealing some information to try to confuse and/or prevent discovery of other information.

    A modified limited hangout goes further by slightly changing the information disclosed. Commercially controlled media is often a form of limited hangout, although it often also modifies information and so can represent a modified limited hangout.

    Low-cost radios (ham, AM, local) Throughout less-developed technologically areas in the world, these technologies are the backbone of communications.

    Mal-information is any speech that can cause mistrust of the government, even if the information is true.

    Malware is malicious software that breaches a network through a vulnerability, typically when a user clicks a dangerous link or email attachment.

    Man-in-the-middle (MitM) is an attack that interferes with a two-party transaction to steal data or inject malware.

    Mass formation is, in essence, a kind of group hypnosis that destroys individuals’ ethical self-awareness and robs them of their ability to think critically. Mass formation within a population can happen suddenly.

    Mass formation psychosis describes the individual under the spell of mass formation. Although this term is not found in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), it is our opinion that it is just a matter of time before this amendment will be included.

    Mass surveillance is the surveillance of a population or fraction of a population. This surveillance is often carried out by local and federal governments or governmental organizations, but it may also be carried out by corporations. Often specific political groups are targeted for their beliefs and influence.

    Modified limited hangout is a propaganda technique that displays only a subset of the available information, that has also been modified by changing some or all of the information disclosed (such as exaggeration or making things up). It is meant to confuse and/or prevent discovery of other information.

    Moral outbidding (see purity spiral)

    NBIC is hyper-personalized targeting that integrates and exploits “neuroscience, bio-technology, information, and cognitive” (NBIC) techniques by using social media and digital networks for neuro-profiling and targeting individuals.

    Neurolinguistic programming (NLP) is a set of techniques that are used to improve communication, interpersonal relationships, and personal development. It is based on the idea that our thoughts, language, and behaviors are all connected. By changing one of these elements, the other elements will be altered. Hypnosis and meditation, including the use of repetitive messaging are core NLP Techniques. Other techniques including visualization, image switching, modeling of other successful people, mirroring (using body language to mirror others that you wish to gain approval of) and the use of incantations to reprogram the mind.

    Nudging is any attempt at influencing people’s judgment, choice or behavior in a predictable way that is motivated because of cognitive boundaries, biases, routines, and habits in individual and social decision-making posing barriers for people to perform rationally in their own self-declared interests, and which works by making use of those boundaries, biases, routines, and habits as integral parts of such attempts. In fifth-gen warfare, nudging can take the form of images, videos or online messages.

    Open-source intelligence (OSINT) is the collection and analysis of data gathered from open sources (covert and publicly available sources) to produce actionable intelligence.

    Operation Mockingbird was organized by Allen Dulles and Cord Meyer in 1950. The CIA spent about of one billion dollars a year in today’s dollars, hiring journalists from corporate media, including CBS, the New York Times, ABC, NBC, Newsweek, Associated Press, and others, to promote their point of view. The original operation reportedly involved some three thousand CIA operatives and hired over four hundred journalists. In 1976, the domestic operation supposedly closed, but less than half of the media operatives were let go. Furthermore, documentary evidence shows that much of Operation Mockingbird was then offshored to escape detection. It is rumored that British intelligence picked up many of the duties of Operation Mockingbird on behalf of the US intelligence community (see the Trusted News Initiative).

    Othering is a phenomenon where individuals or groups are defined, labeled and targeted as not fitting in within the norms of a social group. This is a tactic used by the deep state, politicians and the media. Chaos agents as well as propaganda are used to create a sense of divide. This influences how people perceive and treat those who are viewed as being part of the in-group versus those who are seen as being part of the out-group. This can happen on both a small and very large scale.

    Outrage porn, also known as outrage journalism, is a form of media or storytelling that aims to elicit strong emotional reactions to expand audiences or boost engagement.

    Phishing is the practice of sending fraudulent communications that appear to come from a reputable source, aimed at stealing sensitive data or installing malware.

    Propaganda is a form of manipulation of public opinion by creating a specific narrative that aligns with a political agenda. It uses techniques like repetition, emotional appeals, selective information, and hypnotic language patterns to influence the subconscious mind, bypassing critical thinking and shaping beliefs and values. Propaganda can use a form of hypnosis, whereby putting people into a receptive state where they are more prone to accepting messages.

    Psychological Bioterrorism is the use of fear about a disease to manipulate individuals or populations by governments and other organizations, such as Big Pharma. Although the fear of infectious disease is an obvious example, it is not the only way psychological bioterrorism is used. Other examples include propaganda regarding environmental toxins, unsafe drinking water, soil contamination, and climate change risks. Another name for psychological bioterrorism is information bioterrorism.

    Psychological warfare involves the planned use of propaganda and other psychological operations to influence opposition groups’ opinions, emotions, attitudes, and behavior.

    PsyWar is when psyops is used by governments against a foreign population or even against the citizens of a government (domestically) in a coordinated fashion.

    Publicly available raw data and surveys used to sway public opinion by use of memes, essays and social media posts.

    Purity spiral is a form of groupthink, where it becomes more beneficial to hold certain views than to not hold them, and more extreme views are rewarded while expressing doubt, nuance, or moderation is punished (a process sometimes called “moral outbidding”). Moral outbidding makes it beneficial to hold specific beliefs than to not hold them. Although a purity spiral often concerns morality, it is about purity.

    Ransomware is a type of malware that encrypts a victim’s files and demands payment in exchange for the decryption key.

    Realpolitik is political philosophy (or politics) based on practical objectives rather than on ideals. The word does not mean “real” in the English sense but rather connotes “things”—hence a politics of adaptation to things as they are. Realpolitik thus suggests a pragmatic, no-nonsense view and a disregard for ethical considerations. In diplomacy it is often associated with relentless, though realistic, pursuit of the national interest.

    Repetitive messaging is a propaganda technique whereby a large number of messages are broadcast rapidly, repetitively, and continuously throughout media without regard for truth or consistency.

    Sealioning is a trolling or harassment tactic in online discussions and blogs. It involves the attacker asking relentless and insincere questions or requests for evidence under the guise of civility and a desire for genuine debate. These requests are often tangential or previously addressed and the attacker maintains a pretense of civility and sincerity, while feigning ignorance of the subject matter. Sealioning is aimed at exhausting the patience and goodwill of the target, making them appear unreasonable.

    Shadow banning (also known as stealth banning, hell-banning, ghost banning, and comment ghosting) is the practice of blocking or partially blocking a user or the user’s content from some or all areas of an online community. This is done in such a way that the ban is not readily apparent to the user, regardless of whether the action is taken by an individual or an algorithm.

    Social credit systems: China’s social credit system is a combination of government and business surveillance that gives citizens a “score” that can restrict the ability of individuals or corporations to function in the modern world by limiting purchases, acquiring property or taking loans based on past behaviors. Of course, how one uses the internet directly impacts the social credit score. This is the origin of the social credit system that appears to be evolving in the United States. Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics are a kind of social credit system designed to coerce businesses—and, by extension, individuals and all of society—to transform their practices, behaviors and thinking.

    Social engineering is any manipulation technique that exploits human behavior and error in order to gain access to sensitive or confidential information. Where some scammers would steal someone’s personal information, social engineers convince their victims to willingly hand over the requested information like usernames and passwords. “Nudge” technology is actually applied social engineering.

    Social media algorithms are a set of rules and calculations used by social media platforms to prioritize the content that users see in their feeds based on their past behavior, content relevance, and the popularity of post. Social media algorithms are also used to determine which posts will or won’t get seen by other uses. “Free speech but not reach,” first coined by Elon Musk describes the use of social media algorithms on “X” and other such platforms.

    Social media analytics (commercially available) is the process of gaining and evaluating data from social media networks (such as Twitter, Google, Brave or Facebook). This process helps to determine if a social media campaign’s performance was effective and make future decisions on the basis of this analysis.

    Social media manipulation (data driven) involves a series of computational techniques that abuse social media algorithms and automation to manipulate public opinion.

    Sophistry is the use of fallacious arguments, especially with the intention of deceiving. It is a technique often used by the media and fact-checkers.

    SQL Injection is a code injection technique used to attack data-driven applications whereby malicious SQL statements (code) are inserted into an entry field for execution.

    Stovepiping is a term used in intelligence analysis, which prevents proper analysis by preventing objective analysts from drawing conclusions based on all relevant data by only providing some of the raw data without context.

    Surveillance capitalism is a business model based on the unilateral claim of human private experiences as free raw material for translation into behavioral data. These personal data are then extracted, processed, and traded to predict and influence human behavior. Specific data concerning individuals is the commodity. In this version of capitalism, the prediction and influencing of behavior (political and economic) rather than production of goods and services is the primary product. The economic success of this business model is a major contributor to the profitability of Google, Facebook, TikTok and many other social media companies. The data and tools of surveillance capitalism has been exploited for political purposes by Cambridge Analytica. In many cases the surveillance state and globalist governmental organizations have fused with surveillance capitalism to yield a new form of fascism commonly known as techno-totalitarianism.

    Switchboarding describes the federal government’s practice of referring requests fo the removal of content on social media from state and local election officials to the relevant social media platforms for removal.

    Synergistic use of mixed media to build excitement or to create outrage.

    Synthetic media is a term used for the artificial production, manipulation, and modification of data and media, through the use of generative AI and artificial intelligence algorithms for the purpose of misleading people or changing an original meaning. Often referred to as deepfakes.

    Technocracy is a form of government in which the decision-makers are selected on the basis of their expertise in a given area of responsibility. This system explicitly contrasts with representative democracy. Decision-makers are selected on the basis of specialized knowledge and performance, rather than political affiliations, parliamentary skills, or popularity.

    Tracking surveillance software (such as COVID trackers, GPS and cell phone keyword searches).

    Traditional protest tools can be combined with fifth-gen warfare. An example would be a large rally combined with social media tools to create synergy or opposition for a movement.

    Trolls are human online agents, sometimes sponsored to harass other users or post divisive content to spark controversies as well as dis-enfranchise individuals or group members through bad-jacketing and gossip.

    The Trusted News Initiative (TNI) is a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)–led organization which has been actively censoring eminent doctors, academics, and those with dissenting voices that contravene the official COVID-19 narrative as well as other narratives, such as voter fraud, elections and current news not sanctioned by government. Partners in this endeavor include the major mainstream media organizations, Big Tech (such as Google and social media), governments, and nongovernmental organizations. Anything contrary to the government narrative is considered disinformation or misinformation and will be deleted, suppressed, or deplatformed.

    Ultra vires (“beyond the powers”) is a Latin phrase used in law to describe an act that requires legal authority but is done without it. Its opposite, an act done under proper authority, is intra vires (“within the powers”).

    Virtue signaling is sharing one’s point of view on a social or political issue, often on social media or through specific dress or actions, to garner praise or acknowledgment of one’s righteousness from others who share that point of view or to rebuke those who do not.

    Web crawler, also known as a spiderbot, is an automated Internet program that systematically browses the World Wide Web for specific types of information.

    White propaganda is a type of propaganda where the producer of the material is marked and indicated, and the purpose of the information is transparent. White propaganda is commonly used in marketing and public relations. White propaganda involves communicating a message from a known source to a recipient (typically the public or some targeted sub-audience). White propaganda is mainly based on facts, although often, the whole truth is not told.

    World Economic Forum (WEF) is one of the key think tanks and meeting places for managing global capitalism and is arguably coherent enough to qualify as the leading global “deep state” organization. Under the leadership of Professor Klaus Schwab, it has played an increasingly important role in coordinating the globalized hegemony of large pools of transnational capital and associated large corporations over Western democracies during the last three decades.

    Wrap-up smear is a deflection tactic in which a smear is made up and leaked to the press. The press then amplifies the smear and gives it legitimacy. Then, an author can use the press coverage of the smear as validation to write a summary story, which is the wrap-up smear.

    Yellow journalism is newspaper reporting that emphasizes sensationalism over facts. Advocacy journalists who support government narratives often use it to sway public opinion.

    Zero-day exploit is a technique targeting a newly discovered vulnerability before a patch is available.

    The post The Psywar Glossary first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The U.S. government is working to re-shape the country in the image of a totalitarian state.

    This has remained true over the past 50-plus years no matter which political party held office.

    This will remain true no matter who wins the 2024 presidential election.

    In the midst of the partisan furor over Project 2025, a 920-page roadmap for how to re-fashion the government to favor so-called conservative causes, both the Right and the Left have proven themselves woefully naive about the dangers posed by the power-hungry Deep State.

    Yet we must never lose sight of the fact that both the Right and the Left and their various operatives are extensions of the Deep State, which continues to wage psychological warfare on the American people.

    For years now, the government has been bombarding the citizenry with propaganda campaigns and psychological operations aimed at keeping us compliant, easily controlled and supportive of the government’s various efforts abroad and domestically.

    For example, in 2022, the U.S. Army’s 4th Psychological Operations Group, the branch of the military responsible for psychological warfare, released a recruiting video that touts its efforts to pull the strings, turn everything they touch into a weapon, be everywhere, deceive, persuade, change, influence, and inspire.

    Have you ever wondered who’s pulling the strings?” the psyops video posits. “Anything we touch is a weapon. We can deceive, persuade, change, influence, inspire. We come in many forms. We are everywhere.”

    This is the danger that lurks in plain sight.

    Of the many weapons in the government’s vast arsenal, psychological warfare may be the most devastating in terms of the long-term consequences.

    Aided and abetted by technological advances and scientific experimentation, the government has been subjecting the American people to “apple-pie propaganda” for the better part of the last century.

    Consider some of the ways in which the government continues to wage psychological warfare on a largely unsuspecting citizenry in order to acclimate us to the Deep State’s totalitarian agenda.

    Weaponizing violence in order to institute martial law. With alarming regularity, the nation continues to be subjected to spates of violence that terrorizes the public, destabilizes the country’s ecosystem, and gives the government greater justifications to crack down, lock down, and institute even more authoritarian policies for the so-called sake of national security without many objections from the citizenry.

    Weaponizing surveillance, pre-crime and pre-thought campaigns. Surveillance, digital stalking and the data mining of the American people add up to a society in which there’s little room for indiscretions, imperfections, or acts of independence. When the government sees all and knows all and has an abundance of laws to render even the most seemingly upstanding citizen a criminal and lawbreaker, then the old adage that you’ve got nothing to worry about if you’ve got nothing to hide no longer applies.

    Weaponizing digital currencies, social media scores and censorship. Tech giants, working with the government, have been meting out their own version of social justice by way of digital tyranny and corporate censorship, muzzling whomever they want, whenever they want, on whatever pretext they want in the absence of any real due process, review or appeal. Digital currencies, combined with social media scores and surveillance capitalism, will create a litmus test to determine who is worthy enough to be part of society.

    Weaponizing compliance. Even the most well-intentioned government law or program can be—and has been—perverted, corrupted and used to advance illegitimate purposes once profit and power are added to the equation. The war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on COVID-19, the war on illegal immigration, asset forfeiture schemes, road safety schemes, school safety schemes, eminent domain: all of these programs started out as legitimate responses to pressing concerns and have since become weapons of compliance and control in the police state’s hands.

    Weaponizing behavioral science and nudging. Apart from the overt dangers posed by a government that feels justified and empowered to spy on its people and use its ever-expanding arsenal of weapons and technology to monitor and control them, there’s also the covert dangers associated with a government empowered to use these same technologies to influence behaviors en masse and control the populace.

    Weaponizing desensitization campaigns aimed at lulling us into a false sense of security. The events of recent years—the invasive surveillance, the extremism reports, the civil unrest, the protests, the shootings, the bombings, the military exercises and active shooter drills, the lockdowns, the color-coded alerts and threat assessments, the fusion centers, the transformation of local police into extensions of the military, the distribution of military equipment and weapons to local police forces, the government databases containing the names of dissidents and potential troublemakers—have conspired to acclimate the populace to accept a police state willingly, even gratefully.

    Weaponizing politics. Fear is the method most often used by politicians to increase the power of government and control a populace, dividing the people into factions, and persuading them to see each other as the enemy. This Machiavellian scheme has so ensnared the nation that few Americans even realize they are being manipulated into adopting an “us” against “them” mindset.

    Weaponizing the dystopian future. With greater frequency, the government has been issuing warnings about the dire need to prepare for the dystopian future that awaits us. For instance, the Pentagon training video, “Megacities: Urban Future, the Emerging Complexity,” predicts that by 2030 (coincidentally, the same year that society begins to achieve singularity with the metaverse) the military would be called on to use armed forces to solve future domestic political and social problems. What they’re really talking about is martial law, packaged as a well-meaning and overriding concern for the nation’s security. The chilling five-minute training video paints an ominous picture of the future bedeviled by “criminal networks,” “substandard infrastructure,” “religious and ethnic tensions,” “impoverishment, slums,” “open landfills, over-burdened sewers,” a “growing mass of unemployed,” and an urban landscape in which the prosperous economic elite must be protected from the impoverishment of the have-nots. “We the people” are the have-nots.

    The end goal of these mind control campaigns—packaged in the guise of the greater good—is to see how far the American people will allow the government to go in undermining our freedoms.

    As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the facts speak for themselves.

    Whatever else it may be—a danger, a menace, a threat—the U.S. government is certainly not looking out for our best interests, nor is it in any way a friend to freedom.

    The post Project Total Control: Everything Is a Weapon When Totalitarianism Is Normalized first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Cognitive warfare is no longer science fiction. Cognitive warfare is a fact of the modern age and everyone, whether civilian or military, is a potential target. Cognitive attacks are aimed at exploiting emotions rooted in our subconscious, bypassing our rational conscious mind. This is achieved by exploiting biases, fallacies, emotions and automatisms, but also through nanotechnology, biotechnology and information technology.

    — Commander Cornelis van der Klaauw, Royal Netherlands Navy and Strategic Communications

    The five domains of warfare are land, sea, air, space and cyberspace. The core technical components of Fifth Dimension Operations (cyberspace) are cyberwarfare and cyber-attacks. The military concept now is to treat cyber as a place, not a mission. Cyberwarfare relates to fifth generation warfare, but transcends and expands that model.

    The primary objective is freedom of action in, through, and from cyberspace as needed to support mission objectives. The corollary is to deny freedom of action to adversaries at times and places of our choosing. The ability to do both provides for cyber military superiority.

    Gen. Larry D. Welch USAF (Ret.)

    As many of our readers and subscribers know, Jill and I have been writing about PsyWar and Fifth Generation Warfare for quite a while now. Most of the strategies and tactics we have covered target conscious thought, conscious cognition, with the possible exception of neurolinguistic programming. But Cognitive warfare involves a different approach than more classical Fifth Generation Warfare strategies and tactics. Cognitive warfare is specifically focused on targeting your subconscious mind.

    Cognitive warfare is a critical component of modern cyberwarfare. NATO’s strategic document “Warfare Development Imperative of cognitive superiority” details planning to develop a 10 to 20 year operational framework that defines defensive and proactive measures within the cognitive warfare space for NATO. In this document, NATO Allied Command defines cognitive warfare as including “activities conducted in synchronization with other instruments of power to affect attitudes and behavior by influencing, protecting, or disrupting individual and group cognition to gain advantage over an adversary.” The nature of the adversary is open ended, and can include both foreign and domestic interventions.

    NATO’s definition of cognitive warfare includes a cognitive attack that directly targets the minds of civilians (and citizens), meaning non-combatants. To their credit, NATO apparently believes (as do I) that this is a violation of the Law of Armed Conflict, but we also both agree that it is already happening. Therefore, it is proposed that countering cognitive attacks is a military task in which NATO must play a role. Of course, this logic can provide a convenient excuse for developing the capacity and capabilities to engage in and deploy these same practices if deemed necessary against domestic citizens. Another opportunity to advance “dual function” research logic.

    Please keep in mind that one way that the “five eyes” intelligence alliance operates is that intelligence groups from one of the alliance members can target members of an allied nation-state in the event that the intelligence community of that nation-state is prohibited from taking action against its own citizens. For more information on the five eyes alliance, please see the excerpt from a recent “The Hindu” article quoted below.

    NATO recently published an article in their journal, “Three Swords” titled “Cognitive Warfare” – written by by Commander Cornelis van der Klaauw, Royal Netherlands Navy and Strategic Communications and subject matter expert for the NATO Joint Warfare Centre. This essay lays out some critical ideas behind NATO’s concept of cognitive warfare.

    From the article:

    “Unlike psychological operations, cognitive activities are not directed at our conscious mind, but at our subconscious mind, the main drivers of our behavior: emotions. This takes place through hyper-personalized targeting integrating and exploiting neuroscience, bio-technology, information and cognitive techniques (NBIC), mainly using social media and digital networks for neuro-profiling and targeting individuals. We need to realize that individuals are at the centre of all military operations and strategic-political decision-making. Although they often sound like ideas from a science-fiction film, cognitive attacks are not science fiction anymore. They are taking place already now, and these attacks will continue to become more sophisticated.

    Several countries are developing NBIC capabilities and collecting data for use in targeting the cognitive dimension. These activities are supported by aspects such as data mining and data analytics, and are further combined with artificial intelligence. Although most of the cognitive attacks remain below the threshold of armed conflict, the effects can be lethal and multi-domain, affecting all five domains of warfare. Further- more, these attacks are people-centric, meaning they have human cognition as their centre of gravity, and in principle that is a continuous, never-ending battle. Although not proven to be a cognitive attack, the so-called Havana syndrome, a cluster of adverse symptoms reported by U.S. intelligence and military personnel stationed abroad in recent years, could well be an instance of the use of cognitive capabilities.

    China is globally one of the leading nations in the scientific development of NBIC capabilities. China conducts human research and experiments that are deemed unethical according to Western standards, but these experiments nevertheless attract scientists from all over the world. Within the context of the Chinese “three warfares” strategy, an integrated people-centric, psychological and legal approach, the Chinese have developed a data- base with the profiles of more than two million prominent individuals worldwide that may be used to influence decision-making processes.

    LOOKING AT COGNITIVE activities in more detail, we can identify long-term campaigns taking place over several years, but also one- off activities. What both have in common is a structured approach to achieve a specific aim without the target becoming aware of an attack. Generally the damage is already done before the target realizes that it has been targeted. The reason why cognitive attacks go unnoticed by their targets is that cognitive activities bypass the conscious mind and directly target the subconscious of a person. In fact, within the subconscious mind, the primary target is the amygdala. From an evolutionary point of view, the amygdala is the oldest part of the brain. Before we go more into detail on the ways and means used for cognitive activities, we will briefly look at the functions of our conscious and subconscious mind as well as the relationship between the two. As the term suggests, our subconscious mind exists “beneath” our conscious mind. Contrary to the conscious mind, the subconscious mind is always active; it never sleeps. It regulates our basic organic functions, our emotions and, surprisingly enough, most of our decision-making. The reason why most of our decisions are made by our subconscious is that our conscious mind uses a lot of energy, which causes it to reach the limits of its capacity quickly. Actually only five to ten percent of the decisions we make are rational decisions; for the rest, we rely on our subconscious decision-making, which is strongly influenced by repetition, automatisms, biases and fallacies. We tend to then use our conscious mind to justify, rationalize and explain our emotionally driven decision-making and behavior.

    What cognitive attacks then do is exploit these emotions, automatisms, biases and fallacies in a way that affects our processes of making meaning of our surroundings, affecting not what we think but how we think. Adversaries do this in different ways, integrating and exploiting NBIC techniques. In this context we need to consider that both biases (non-rational shortcuts acceptable in normal situations) and fallacies (conclusions without evidence, based on assumptions) are commonly uniform across cultures and therefore easier to exploit.

    The preferred way to do this is via social media and digital networks, as these are our primary environment for sharing all sorts of information, and they have increasingly become our main source for news. However, there are more aspects that make social media an ideal vector for cognitive activities. Social media weaken our cognitive abilities as the content can easily stir up emotions and forces us to react quickly. Social media platforms are designed to foster addictive behavior.

    On average, we are exposed to digital information systems between five and seven hours a day. Internet use disorder is now a recognized mental disorder. Furthermore, social media are ideal for collecting personal information and or carrying out data analysis and data mining. Drawing up a person’s digital profile is a quick and relatively simple process that can be carried out with limited means.

    The effects of the digital age are far-reaching: A paper copy of the newspaper does not know what we read; our tablets, however, do. The advertisement in the paper does not know what we bought and where; our smartphones do. The newspaper editor does not know what article we found interesting and shared with friends; our social network does. Closely related to and often fully integrated with social media are our smart devices. Smart devices collect all manner of personal physiological information such as blood pressure, heart and breathing rate, skin temperature and so on. All this information is relevant to target people in the right moment, for example when they are tired, hungry, stressed or angry.

    Looking to digital networks, gaming platforms, with their more than three billion gamers worldwide, are ideal venues for cognitive activities. The platforms contain all kinds of sub-cultures that are in turn linked to non-gaming groups who can create their own games or modify existing games to infiltrate the gamers’ lives without any control or regulations of the content of the games. An aspect that, in this context, should not be overlooked is that the lines between physical, digital and mental personas are becoming blurrier and with that, the difference between reality and fiction is also becoming unclear. Virtual reality environments in particular drive this trend.

    Three billion gamers worldwide, who are subject to cognitive warfare. That is a mind blowing concept.

    Digital spaces have also been known to breed echo chambers. Within them, people concentrate on a narrative that supports their beliefs and desires while ignoring information that is not aligned with their narratives.

     The Emerging Technologies:

    Those embryonic technologies or scientific discoveries that are expected to reach maturity in 2023–2043; and are not widely used currently or whose effects on Alliance defence, security and enterprise functions are not entirely clear. NATO Science and Technology Organization result is closed micro-societies vulnerable to group thinking, polarization and generation of distrust. This becomes more likely when the time to think about the information is limited; the less time is available, the more people tend to unquestioningly follow a narrative aligned with their beliefs. In addition, it should be noted that echo chambers are an excellent venue to collect personal information that can be used for micro targeting of individuals.

    Furthermore, emerging technologies such as synthetic media, deepfakes, artificial intelligence and data mining create opportunities to collect and process information that can be used for cognitive activities. One of these emerging technologies is the Metaverse. The Metaverse is able to replicate the physical world and provide a highly immersive social experience through the use of headsets, body suits and haptic equipment. At the same time, it can provide a significant amount of physical and mental information that can be used for psychological and emotional manipulation or, in the hands of adversaries, micro targeting of individuals.

    In the following section, the essay starts discussing how to counter cognitive warfare- by developing cognitive resilience. The advice is relevant to individuals, groups, military units and government leaders.

    Knowing one’s vulnerabilities is important, but knowing when a cognitive attack is taking place is just as vital. This requires a high level of awareness and a basic understanding of the different methods used. For example, it is essential to maintain awareness about the information we unknowingly share that can be used against us. At the same time, technological solutions can help to identify cognitive attacks through algorithms and artificial intelligence, but also with real-time pattern and signature recognition. General awareness and technological solutions may alert us to cognitive attacks in good time and help us in determining the best way to respond. This brings us to the subject of creating cognitive resilience.

    Within the Cognitive Warfare Concept, cognitive resilience is defined as “the capacity to withstand and recover quickly from an adversarial cognitive attack through the effective preparation of groups and individuals.” In order to create cognitive resilience, we must look at the current ways in which cognitive activities are conducted, and by which means. In order to keep the initiative, we need to anticipate possible future developments. Currently such future developments include ways to read thoughts and emotions, which can enable measurements of the effect of cognitive activities. Based on the result, models can be developed to improve decision-making, but also to identify weaknesses to exploit.

    This section of the essay develops the functional strategic and tactical adjacencies that are important to understand the cognitive warfare battlespace and related technologies.

    THERE ARE OTHER RAPID developments in the fields of nanotechnology, biotechnology and information technology. In nanotechnology we see the development of nanorobotics, nanosensors and nanoenergy sources making in-body processes possible. Bioartefacts linked to nanorobotics can stimulate perception, cognition and behaviour. In the field of biotechnology, there are encouraging developments in bioengineering, biogenomics and neuropharmacology. One of the most promising projects is the development of embedded synthetic DNA or sDNA. This can be a useful alternative to silicon semiconductors. Currently it is possible to store 2.14 × 106 bytes of data on sDNA. This organic material could enable human-machine interfaces and is often seen as the 47th human chromosome.

    In the field of neurocomputing, implants can be used to improve hearing and vision. Furthermore, neural nanotechnology can be used to bring nano-sized robots close to a neuron via the bloodstream and make it possible to link the human brain directly (i.e. not intercepted by our senses) to a computer, making use of artificial intelligence in the process. But we must keep in mind that this is a two-way street: such an artificial intelligence will, in turn, be linked to a human brain.

    In April 2013, U.S. President Obama announced the launch of the White House initiative Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN). Its goal was to support innovation that would further our understanding of the brain; Russian commentators perceived it as a project to “hack the human brain.”

    In 2016 Elon Musk started the neuro- technology company Neuralink, which aims to develop a brain-computer interface to extend the abilities of people with paralysis. Of course, such an interface may also be used to extend the abilities of people without disabilities, for instance to improve their performance on the battlefield. Future developments include innovation in artificial intelligence, machine intelligence and means to enhance human brainpower, either through alteration of genes or directly, by linking the brain through physical peripherals or anatomically internalized products.
    In Conclusion

    It is important to reiterate that cognitive warfare is no longer science fiction. Cognitive warfare is a fact of the modern age and everyone, whether civilian or military, is a potential target. Cognitive attacks are aimed at exploiting emotions rooted in our subconscious, bypassing our rational conscious mind. This is achieved by exploiting biases, fallacies, emotions and automatisms, but also through nanotechnology, biotechnology and information technology.

    In cognitive warfare, the ultimate aim is to alter our perception of reality and deceive our brain in order to affect our decision-making. We are commonly unaware of such attacks before it is too late and they have already affected their targets. Therefore, we must protect ourselves by raising awareness and developing a system of indicators and warnings that can provide realtime information. The use of artificial intelligence can show us the preferred way to react to a possible cognitive attack. The human mind is becoming the battlefield of tomorrow, and this means that every person is a potential target. Warfare is no longer a purely military concept; it has become much broader and more complex. In the future, there will only be one rule in warfare: There are no rules. While other domains can provide tactical and operational victories, the human domain is the only domain in which we can secure a full victory.

    The post Cognitive Warfare, Targeting your Subconscious first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Cognitive warfare is no longer science fiction. Cognitive warfare is a fact of the modern age and everyone, whether civilian or military, is a potential target. Cognitive attacks are aimed at exploiting emotions rooted in our subconscious, bypassing our rational conscious mind. This is achieved by exploiting biases, fallacies, emotions and automatisms, but also through nanotechnology, biotechnology and information technology.

    — Commander Cornelis van der Klaauw, Royal Netherlands Navy and Strategic Communications

    The five domains of warfare are land, sea, air, space and cyberspace. The core technical components of Fifth Dimension Operations (cyberspace) are cyberwarfare and cyber-attacks. The military concept now is to treat cyber as a place, not a mission. Cyberwarfare relates to fifth generation warfare, but transcends and expands that model.

    The primary objective is freedom of action in, through, and from cyberspace as needed to support mission objectives. The corollary is to deny freedom of action to adversaries at times and places of our choosing. The ability to do both provides for cyber military superiority.

    Gen. Larry D. Welch USAF (Ret.)

    As many of our readers and subscribers know, Jill and I have been writing about PsyWar and Fifth Generation Warfare for quite a while now. Most of the strategies and tactics we have covered target conscious thought, conscious cognition, with the possible exception of neurolinguistic programming. But Cognitive warfare involves a different approach than more classical Fifth Generation Warfare strategies and tactics. Cognitive warfare is specifically focused on targeting your subconscious mind.

    Cognitive warfare is a critical component of modern cyberwarfare. NATO’s strategic document “Warfare Development Imperative of cognitive superiority” details planning to develop a 10 to 20 year operational framework that defines defensive and proactive measures within the cognitive warfare space for NATO. In this document, NATO Allied Command defines cognitive warfare as including “activities conducted in synchronization with other instruments of power to affect attitudes and behavior by influencing, protecting, or disrupting individual and group cognition to gain advantage over an adversary.” The nature of the adversary is open ended, and can include both foreign and domestic interventions.

    NATO’s definition of cognitive warfare includes a cognitive attack that directly targets the minds of civilians (and citizens), meaning non-combatants. To their credit, NATO apparently believes (as do I) that this is a violation of the Law of Armed Conflict, but we also both agree that it is already happening. Therefore, it is proposed that countering cognitive attacks is a military task in which NATO must play a role. Of course, this logic can provide a convenient excuse for developing the capacity and capabilities to engage in and deploy these same practices if deemed necessary against domestic citizens. Another opportunity to advance “dual function” research logic.

    Please keep in mind that one way that the “five eyes” intelligence alliance operates is that intelligence groups from one of the alliance members can target members of an allied nation-state in the event that the intelligence community of that nation-state is prohibited from taking action against its own citizens. For more information on the five eyes alliance, please see the excerpt from a recent “The Hindu” article quoted below.

    NATO recently published an article in their journal, “Three Swords” titled “Cognitive Warfare” – written by by Commander Cornelis van der Klaauw, Royal Netherlands Navy and Strategic Communications and subject matter expert for the NATO Joint Warfare Centre. This essay lays out some critical ideas behind NATO’s concept of cognitive warfare.

    From the article:

    “Unlike psychological operations, cognitive activities are not directed at our conscious mind, but at our subconscious mind, the main drivers of our behavior: emotions. This takes place through hyper-personalized targeting integrating and exploiting neuroscience, bio-technology, information and cognitive techniques (NBIC), mainly using social media and digital networks for neuro-profiling and targeting individuals. We need to realize that individuals are at the centre of all military operations and strategic-political decision-making. Although they often sound like ideas from a science-fiction film, cognitive attacks are not science fiction anymore. They are taking place already now, and these attacks will continue to become more sophisticated.

    Several countries are developing NBIC capabilities and collecting data for use in targeting the cognitive dimension. These activities are supported by aspects such as data mining and data analytics, and are further combined with artificial intelligence. Although most of the cognitive attacks remain below the threshold of armed conflict, the effects can be lethal and multi-domain, affecting all five domains of warfare. Further- more, these attacks are people-centric, meaning they have human cognition as their centre of gravity, and in principle that is a continuous, never-ending battle. Although not proven to be a cognitive attack, the so-called Havana syndrome, a cluster of adverse symptoms reported by U.S. intelligence and military personnel stationed abroad in recent years, could well be an instance of the use of cognitive capabilities.

    China is globally one of the leading nations in the scientific development of NBIC capabilities. China conducts human research and experiments that are deemed unethical according to Western standards, but these experiments nevertheless attract scientists from all over the world. Within the context of the Chinese “three warfares” strategy, an integrated people-centric, psychological and legal approach, the Chinese have developed a data- base with the profiles of more than two million prominent individuals worldwide that may be used to influence decision-making processes.

    LOOKING AT COGNITIVE activities in more detail, we can identify long-term campaigns taking place over several years, but also one- off activities. What both have in common is a structured approach to achieve a specific aim without the target becoming aware of an attack. Generally the damage is already done before the target realizes that it has been targeted. The reason why cognitive attacks go unnoticed by their targets is that cognitive activities bypass the conscious mind and directly target the subconscious of a person. In fact, within the subconscious mind, the primary target is the amygdala. From an evolutionary point of view, the amygdala is the oldest part of the brain. Before we go more into detail on the ways and means used for cognitive activities, we will briefly look at the functions of our conscious and subconscious mind as well as the relationship between the two. As the term suggests, our subconscious mind exists “beneath” our conscious mind. Contrary to the conscious mind, the subconscious mind is always active; it never sleeps. It regulates our basic organic functions, our emotions and, surprisingly enough, most of our decision-making. The reason why most of our decisions are made by our subconscious is that our conscious mind uses a lot of energy, which causes it to reach the limits of its capacity quickly. Actually only five to ten percent of the decisions we make are rational decisions; for the rest, we rely on our subconscious decision-making, which is strongly influenced by repetition, automatisms, biases and fallacies. We tend to then use our conscious mind to justify, rationalize and explain our emotionally driven decision-making and behavior.

    What cognitive attacks then do is exploit these emotions, automatisms, biases and fallacies in a way that affects our processes of making meaning of our surroundings, affecting not what we think but how we think. Adversaries do this in different ways, integrating and exploiting NBIC techniques. In this context we need to consider that both biases (non-rational shortcuts acceptable in normal situations) and fallacies (conclusions without evidence, based on assumptions) are commonly uniform across cultures and therefore easier to exploit.

    The preferred way to do this is via social media and digital networks, as these are our primary environment for sharing all sorts of information, and they have increasingly become our main source for news. However, there are more aspects that make social media an ideal vector for cognitive activities. Social media weaken our cognitive abilities as the content can easily stir up emotions and forces us to react quickly. Social media platforms are designed to foster addictive behavior.

    On average, we are exposed to digital information systems between five and seven hours a day. Internet use disorder is now a recognized mental disorder. Furthermore, social media are ideal for collecting personal information and or carrying out data analysis and data mining. Drawing up a person’s digital profile is a quick and relatively simple process that can be carried out with limited means.

    The effects of the digital age are far-reaching: A paper copy of the newspaper does not know what we read; our tablets, however, do. The advertisement in the paper does not know what we bought and where; our smartphones do. The newspaper editor does not know what article we found interesting and shared with friends; our social network does. Closely related to and often fully integrated with social media are our smart devices. Smart devices collect all manner of personal physiological information such as blood pressure, heart and breathing rate, skin temperature and so on. All this information is relevant to target people in the right moment, for example when they are tired, hungry, stressed or angry.

    Looking to digital networks, gaming platforms, with their more than three billion gamers worldwide, are ideal venues for cognitive activities. The platforms contain all kinds of sub-cultures that are in turn linked to non-gaming groups who can create their own games or modify existing games to infiltrate the gamers’ lives without any control or regulations of the content of the games. An aspect that, in this context, should not be overlooked is that the lines between physical, digital and mental personas are becoming blurrier and with that, the difference between reality and fiction is also becoming unclear. Virtual reality environments in particular drive this trend.

    Three billion gamers worldwide, who are subject to cognitive warfare. That is a mind blowing concept.

    Digital spaces have also been known to breed echo chambers. Within them, people concentrate on a narrative that supports their beliefs and desires while ignoring information that is not aligned with their narratives.

     The Emerging Technologies:

    Those embryonic technologies or scientific discoveries that are expected to reach maturity in 2023–2043; and are not widely used currently or whose effects on Alliance defence, security and enterprise functions are not entirely clear. NATO Science and Technology Organization result is closed micro-societies vulnerable to group thinking, polarization and generation of distrust. This becomes more likely when the time to think about the information is limited; the less time is available, the more people tend to unquestioningly follow a narrative aligned with their beliefs. In addition, it should be noted that echo chambers are an excellent venue to collect personal information that can be used for micro targeting of individuals.

    Furthermore, emerging technologies such as synthetic media, deepfakes, artificial intelligence and data mining create opportunities to collect and process information that can be used for cognitive activities. One of these emerging technologies is the Metaverse. The Metaverse is able to replicate the physical world and provide a highly immersive social experience through the use of headsets, body suits and haptic equipment. At the same time, it can provide a significant amount of physical and mental information that can be used for psychological and emotional manipulation or, in the hands of adversaries, micro targeting of individuals.

    In the following section, the essay starts discussing how to counter cognitive warfare- by developing cognitive resilience. The advice is relevant to individuals, groups, military units and government leaders.

    Knowing one’s vulnerabilities is important, but knowing when a cognitive attack is taking place is just as vital. This requires a high level of awareness and a basic understanding of the different methods used. For example, it is essential to maintain awareness about the information we unknowingly share that can be used against us. At the same time, technological solutions can help to identify cognitive attacks through algorithms and artificial intelligence, but also with real-time pattern and signature recognition. General awareness and technological solutions may alert us to cognitive attacks in good time and help us in determining the best way to respond. This brings us to the subject of creating cognitive resilience.

    Within the Cognitive Warfare Concept, cognitive resilience is defined as “the capacity to withstand and recover quickly from an adversarial cognitive attack through the effective preparation of groups and individuals.” In order to create cognitive resilience, we must look at the current ways in which cognitive activities are conducted, and by which means. In order to keep the initiative, we need to anticipate possible future developments. Currently such future developments include ways to read thoughts and emotions, which can enable measurements of the effect of cognitive activities. Based on the result, models can be developed to improve decision-making, but also to identify weaknesses to exploit.

    This section of the essay develops the functional strategic and tactical adjacencies that are important to understand the cognitive warfare battlespace and related technologies.

    THERE ARE OTHER RAPID developments in the fields of nanotechnology, biotechnology and information technology. In nanotechnology we see the development of nanorobotics, nanosensors and nanoenergy sources making in-body processes possible. Bioartefacts linked to nanorobotics can stimulate perception, cognition and behaviour. In the field of biotechnology, there are encouraging developments in bioengineering, biogenomics and neuropharmacology. One of the most promising projects is the development of embedded synthetic DNA or sDNA. This can be a useful alternative to silicon semiconductors. Currently it is possible to store 2.14 × 106 bytes of data on sDNA. This organic material could enable human-machine interfaces and is often seen as the 47th human chromosome.

    In the field of neurocomputing, implants can be used to improve hearing and vision. Furthermore, neural nanotechnology can be used to bring nano-sized robots close to a neuron via the bloodstream and make it possible to link the human brain directly (i.e. not intercepted by our senses) to a computer, making use of artificial intelligence in the process. But we must keep in mind that this is a two-way street: such an artificial intelligence will, in turn, be linked to a human brain.

    In April 2013, U.S. President Obama announced the launch of the White House initiative Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN). Its goal was to support innovation that would further our understanding of the brain; Russian commentators perceived it as a project to “hack the human brain.”

    In 2016 Elon Musk started the neuro- technology company Neuralink, which aims to develop a brain-computer interface to extend the abilities of people with paralysis. Of course, such an interface may also be used to extend the abilities of people without disabilities, for instance to improve their performance on the battlefield. Future developments include innovation in artificial intelligence, machine intelligence and means to enhance human brainpower, either through alteration of genes or directly, by linking the brain through physical peripherals or anatomically internalized products.
    In Conclusion

    It is important to reiterate that cognitive warfare is no longer science fiction. Cognitive warfare is a fact of the modern age and everyone, whether civilian or military, is a potential target. Cognitive attacks are aimed at exploiting emotions rooted in our subconscious, bypassing our rational conscious mind. This is achieved by exploiting biases, fallacies, emotions and automatisms, but also through nanotechnology, biotechnology and information technology.

    In cognitive warfare, the ultimate aim is to alter our perception of reality and deceive our brain in order to affect our decision-making. We are commonly unaware of such attacks before it is too late and they have already affected their targets. Therefore, we must protect ourselves by raising awareness and developing a system of indicators and warnings that can provide realtime information. The use of artificial intelligence can show us the preferred way to react to a possible cognitive attack. The human mind is becoming the battlefield of tomorrow, and this means that every person is a potential target. Warfare is no longer a purely military concept; it has become much broader and more complex. In the future, there will only be one rule in warfare: There are no rules. While other domains can provide tactical and operational victories, the human domain is the only domain in which we can secure a full victory.

    The post Cognitive Warfare, Targeting your Subconscious first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Special to the Newport (OR) News Times: Part three of Three-Part monthly series on domestic abuse

    Part One: Elephants in the Room: battered women are our sisters, mothers, friends, wives

    Part Two:  Stages of Grief, Disempowering the Abuser, Healing

    Domestic Violence Court | Center for Justice Innovation

    I’m in the courtroom at the plea bargain hearing – aka diversionary sentencing. My friend is there – strong, professionally dressed, with her mother who had come a long way out of state to support her daughter. Behind my friend is her tribe – nine women who she has come to call friends over the course of a year. There are two men in the courtroom also supporting her.

    The accused is in an orange jumpsuit with arms shackled to his waist.  Two sheriff’s deputies are in the courtroom watching over him.

    He has no one there for support. His defense attorney looks nervous, with reddened face.

    The judge calls my friend to the witness stand where she begins reading her victim impact statement. I’ve been to many of these sorts of hearings – I know not all judges are attentive. This judge, however, is moved by the survivor’s words – all four pages, single spaced. It’s her story, and the words are directed at the accused, her husband.

    He forces a gaze away from his powerful voiced wife during her catharsis.  The people supporting her have tears in their eyes. Her mother is distraught hearing the details of these four and a half years of hell.

    Criminal injustice: A view inside the courtroom | Princeton Alumni Weekly

    Near the end of her testimony, these words ring so true now that she’s a survivor, no longer his victim:

    “The person you assaulted that night exists no more. I am in process of regaining all the self confidence you took away from me, taking back control over my life and healing from all the trauma you caused me. Make no mistake — you can’t fool me anymore. Although you’ve shaken me to my core, you didn’t succeed in killing me; I am now growing stronger than ever.

    That’s my biggest victory. I am finally seeing you for the monster that you are. I am standing up for myself. Unlike you, I never sought vengeance. By now, I only want you to take accountability and be held legally responsible for what you did to me. I am finding myself much more peaceful knowing exactly who and what I was dealing with. I know you know exactly what you did to me that night and how much you’ve abused me over the years, and it’s going to haunt and torture your consciousness forever, no matter how drunk you get. YOU will have to live with those thoughts after this day.”

    The judge commends the survivor for her strength, for her composure and for her ability to move ahead in her life. Not surprisingly, the defendant shows no remorse; in fact, he makes no statement or any attempt at an apology.  He is emotionless.

    Language puts ordinary people at a disadvantage in the criminal justice system

    Universal Abuse

    There are around twenty folk at the Samaritan Education building where My Sister’s Place is hosting the legal services people with Catholic Charities. The discussion is domestic abuse and immigration. We listen to a Romanian lawyer and one from Columbia, originally. They work on asylum cases and special visas for those fleeing the hell of emotional, sexual, emotional abuse. As well as the economic and physical intimidation and threats. Stalking and manipulation of children also occur with folks who are undocumented and attempting to get a green card.

    We get the alphabet – VAWA, U Visas, T Visas and SIJS, to name a few. Respectively, we have Violence Against Women Act; serious crimes & sex trafficking U & T visas; Special Immigration Juvenile Status.

    This arena is a WHOLE other set of stories, but the bottom line is that ironically my friend who is the subject of this piece is a married woman who sought a green card during the marriage, and with the abuse, the husband threatened her with pulling away his support of her application. He contacted the immigration officials working on my friend’s case to renege his support of a green card.

    I did get the survivor to contact the Arizona social worker during her fleeing to Arizona March  2022. Heild’s experience is deep:

    She was the Director of Services for the first nonprofit directing a 16-bed safe home as the domestic abuse provider in Northern Pinal County , AZ — CAAFA, Community Alliance Against Family Abuse. She supervised the staff but also directed a 24-hour hotline, support groups and worked in legal advocacy.

    Both Heild and Amber agree that community outreach, fundraising and volunteer programs are vital in terms of shifting the culture at large to support services and advocacy for victims of domestic abuse.

    Limitations exist, according to Heidi:

    “DV programs are for the most part short term solutions – average stay in a shelter 2-3 months, not enough time to deal with trauma, find housing and other basic needs. Most victims seeking shelter and services are lacking support, childcare, financial support and are considered economically vulnerable.”

    The PA Criminal Court Process | 2023 | McAndrewslegal.com

    The Story Never Ends – Victim to Survivor to Hero

    My friend the survivor wants to tell – write her story. She advocates even now for other women fleeing abusive partners. She is out of one limbo and in another as the legal separation – divorce – from this fellow is another stage in her complete break from the abuser, his family, and friends.

    She knows this series is about how abuse fits into the entire scheme of things, and my own take on her story is my take. Her story is hers to tell, and while a memoir is a worthy forum or medium, who knows where she will be in half a year, a year, five years from now.

    “I’ve taken back my power,” she states. Even her opening of her statement contextualizes her life with an abuser and others’ lives: “I see clearly now. I see how you gained control over the years and how you targeted me from day one. By shining so bright – me the independent, multi-lingual, smart business owner — I had what you never had. You saw in me a powerful but vulnerable well intentioned human being, and you took advantage of it as all abusers do. You never treated me as your equal. I was the perfect victim for you.”

    Each step she takes is a power step, even though she has to march through a minefield of the possibility of her abuser breaking no-contact orders and fighting for every penny in a divorce.

    “I’m a different person now that I finally broke the cycle,” she tells me. “I may never be ‘that’ woman I was when he first met me, but I am reclaiming the strength qualities and moving into a new version of me.”

    Amazon.com: Domestic Violence Memoirs: A Collection of True Stories of Domestic Abuse (Audible Audio Edition): Kaitlyn Riley, Sangita Chauhan, Light in the Dark Media: Audible Books & Originals

    *****

    The first National Domestic Violence Awareness Month occurred in 1987, so this October, check out local social services agency pages, but most pointedly, go to the My Sister’s Place Facebook page or their web site [https://www.msplincolncounty.org/ ] for the activities in our area tied to DV awareness and celebration of the survivors and their families.

    NOTE: So, the following statement, in some form that was talked about but never written by the surivor, almost ended up in the newspaper with the survivor’s name as the final signature line, but this entire fucking broken system ontop of broken system she survived has straffed the soul and fiber of the survivor, pushing her back into victim mode/mood.

    This is my putting my boots to the ground, putting my feet into her boots, my words, if I was the victim to survivor. And, still today, we have people on all sides of the political and intellectual divide still asking:

    Quotes on Abuse | HealthyPlace

    Moving from Victim to Survivor to New Life

    I appreciate Paul Haeder and Newport News Times for the three-part series on Domestic Violence – August 8, Sept. 24, Oct. 13). Readers received a small view into the complications and complicities involved in battered wife syndrome.

    The articles were definitely “trauma-informed.” Alas, though, I am writing this as the unnamed victim in this case. I am from Canada, I met the abuser five years ago in Guatemala, where I was a thriving business owner in Antigua.

    I wanted a life of adventure and travel, and so, as a 33-year-old, finding this man seemed to be a great next step in my life.

    I was wrong. I was targeted. I was manipulated. I was threatened, verbally abused, and fell into the trap of the yo-yo – leaving for a day or few weeks, but being roped back by my abuser who cried, plead, and promised to change.

    I was in a sort of mental cage, a prison, and a Stockholm Syndrome.

    On Nov. 12, he attempted to murder me, and was charged after the deputies had to break into our bedroom where he locked himself. I was shaking, with my dog, and without a phone as he threw my lifeline into the blackberry bushes.

    The grand jury indicted him on 11 charges. He was put in jail on $750,000 bail.

    My life from that point on was a dichotomy of me finding strength to begin divorce procedures, working with the DA on the upcoming trial, and working two jobs, landing a really amazing counselor, and understanding those almost five years of BWS.

    I have to say that a few friends here, my sister and the investigating deputy were the only ones who did not let me down. The rest of the individuals and systems failed me. This failure speaks to the larger issue of domestic violence charges and trial and divorces landing the survivor back into a re-victimization role.

    I’m not going to list specific names of those who failed me, and I have to believe I am not the only victim who has been failed in Lincoln County. The Das office failed me by slowly breaking down and opting for some odd plea agreement and fear of going to trial. Our tax-payer supported public defender failed me and other DV victims by doing her job by attempting to break me down and smear my reputation. The victims advocates were not deeply ensconced in trauma informed methodology.

    My divorce lawyer failed me by only really jumping into the divorce trial a day before the actual proceeding. She was disorganized, inarticulate, and unfocused.

    The judges failed me, too, including the judge who found that my years with this abuser, my supporting him in his deep alcoholism and sick days (four our of seven each week), my own concussion at the hands of this husband, all the threats and my sweat equity on the house in Waldport we built was worth a $27,500 asset award (sic) to me.

    Even one of the judges failed me when I attempted to get a protective order/restraining order on my abuser’s mother who was harassing me and threatening to take my dog away. He found two out of the three precedents in my favor, but the last one stopped him from awarding me protection from an out-of-control mean mother-in-law.

    I will be leaving this county soon. I have my dignity shredded, but I am mending through self-reflection, a close circle of friends and family support and my counselor who has been a lifeline for me to understand how and why I stayed in this abusive relationship and what I can do to move on with life to never be taken in by a narcissist and misogynist.

    Amazon.com: Recover and Rebuild Domestic Violence Workbook: Moving On from Partner Abuse eBook : Freudenberg PsyD, Stacie: Kindle Store

    Does it take two to be part of a domestic abusive marriage? Yes, and it takes more than two. I was too hopeful, too willing to try and try again, I isolated myself, letting my family and friends down without letting them the true nature of this man’s abuse and threats.

    Our patriarchal society played a part in my yo-yo behavior. The media and Hollywood also pushes some sick prejudices against women fighting back. And, unfortunately, the legal system, the mental health community, the so-called advocates, lawyers, and other “support” services have failed me.

    Let it be known that I was VERY involved in my cases. The one judge at the plea agreement lauded me for being a strong, powerful woman. She listened to my four-page victim impact statement and seemed moved.

    This is not about the final judgment —  the money, lack thereof — but for me, with my “green card,” I now face financial challenges. My big dog is my friend and emotional support, so I’m glad the mother-in-law failed to take the dog from me (she gifted him as a puppy almost three years ago).

    I will be journaling and possibly writing my memoir tied to this very unsettling and emotional significant events in my life. I’m not yet forty years old, and I have so much positive energy moving on. I will never forgive this abuser, and I will always be looking behind my back from time to time, for PTSD is a never ending mental state, even in remission.

    I write this to the Lincoln County community – advocates, stakeholders, families, women, all the people who believe in justice and restitution and restorative justice: beware of broken systems that will entangle you in compassionless or incompetent pencil pushers and overworked lawyers and prosecutors. Get a counselor, for sure, quickly, and steel yourself for a threadbare system that fails victims time and time again.

    Best books on life after domestic violence

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Orientation

    Definition of propaganda and the purpose of this article

    Are the chances better that you’d read this article if I called it The Ten Commandments of Propaganda? The author of the book The Ten Commandments of Propaganda thinks so because you have deep collective associations with the Ten Commandments because of the centuries of propaganda by the Catholic and Protestant Churches. Because this article is rhetoric and not propaganda, I will take my chances, identifying thirteen commandments of propaganda.

    In my last article, Speaking with Forked Tongues, I defined propaganda as the deliberate, systematic and often covert attempt by institutional elites to control perceptions, cognitions, emotions and behavior while censoring, hiding, restricting distorting and exaggerating the claims of their opposition. Propaganda can be found in economics textbooks, political campaigns, religious recruiting, news reporting, advertising campaigns, movies, sports and even educational textbooks.

    A little less than two years ago I wrote an article called Jacques Ellul: Controversies in Propaganda. The purpose of this article is to explicate the theory of propaganda of Brian Anse Patrick in The Ten Commandments of Propaganda. Secondly and briefly, it will be to compare his theory to that of Ellul.

    Most Provocative Points of Ellul’s Propaganda Theory

    • Unlike other theorists, Ellul argued that propaganda served boththe upper classes and the lower classes for different reasons.
    • Unlike other theorists, he understood propaganda as inevitable in modern societies. There is no getting around this.
    • Unlike most other theorists, he saw masses of people as complicit in their own subordination. He saw them neither as victims of circumstance nor as heroic masses.
    • He distinguished between hard and fast political propagandaand soft and slow sociological  He called political propaganda “agitation”. Education is not outside propaganda. It is part of sociological propaganda.
    • He identified two techniques of propagandizing the masses. The first kind is mithridatizationwhich acts like a sedative and sensibilization which is about riling people up.
    • Unlike most other theorists of propaganda, Ellul followed Joseph Goebbels and said that the best propaganda is based on facts.It becomes propaganda with the interpretation of facts. Propaganda based on lies is a sign of weakness.
    • Most propaganda theorists thought the working class was most impacted by propaganda. Ellul argued that it is the upper-middle classes that create the propaganda and are most likely to believe it.
    • Ellul distinguished horizontal propaganda,which was made inside the group, from vertical propaganda, which uses centralized power. An example of horizontal propaganda was the re-educational groups of Yankee soldiers organized by the Chinese communists during Yankee imprisonment.
    • For Ellul, propaganda does not come from the ruling class, but from the upper-middle class.
    • Industrialist capitalist “democracies” need propagandabecause they depend on public opinion, which is disorganized. It requires propaganda to compete with socialist societies.
    • Unlike other theorists, Ellul makes a distinction between ideology and myth and argues that myth is more powerful.
    • His concept of crystallization claims that the individual has latent drives and stereotypes which are vague (based on the work of Karen Horney), and they then become the foundation of propaganda.
    • Unlike other schools of propaganda, Ellul argues that quantitative study of propaganda isn’t effective. One cannot tell how many people are reached and how effective white vs black propaganda is. At what point do you say it failed? At what point does the payoff justify the cost?
    • According to Ellul, psychological propaganda in foreign countries does not work. Propagandists are too ignorant of the attitudes, centers of interest, presuppositions and suspicions of the foreign population.

    Thirteen Commandments of Propaganda

    1. Control the information flow by becoming a source or distributor of information

    This includes creating news events, press releases, town hall meetings, scientific reports, op-ed pieces, direct mail appeals, talk show appearances, books, think tanks and commissions. It means creating novelties and hiring screen writers for movies. Many ideas are testing out the public by creating focus groups to see how people respond. This was shown in Parts I and II of Adam Curtis documentary The Century of the Self. Another technique was in the creating of Gallup polls which surveyed the opinions of Mordor’s citizens about sociological and political hot topics to see what floats and what doesn’t.

    1. Use black and white absolutes

    This was included in my previous article Speaking in Tongues in that it used loaded language, specifically virtue and vice words. Propaganda does not seem to work well when there seem to exist only many shades of gray. It is successful when it paints in broad, bold brushstrokes complicated social reality into a melodramatic, dichotomous struggle between good guys and bad guys. Nazi’s terms such as Jewish “bacillus” (parasites) to define the Jews helped the extermination process. Once the Jews were officially defined as the “parasitic nation of Judea” it became easier to do horrible things to them. The same is true with what was done to Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi. Conspiracy theories are perfect frameworks for black and white thinking.

    Expect that as Mordor revs up its propaganda machine against China, Chinese images will appear, just like the image at the beginning of this article. Here the Chinese are wallowing in opium dens making them seem like a decadent culture. What is absent from the propaganda poster is the story of how the British brought opium to China to begin with.

    1. Crafting the message so it resonates with what is already in people’s heads in terms of their values and beliefs

    One of the two most common misunderstandings about propaganda is that propagandists want to introduce something new. Propagandists cannot afford to risk time, effort and resources on messages that might not fly. They need to work with the beliefs and commitments that people already have and just interpret the meaning differently. All a propagandist has to do to create negative propaganda is use propaganda which violates these values in order to drum up hostility among the natives against their supposed enemy. In psychological warfare, predictably, the CIA trots out its tired old list of atrocity stories of the enemy – eating babies, various betrayals to family and any of the violations of evolutionary psychology to work people up into supporting the latest war.

    Neither is it true that propaganda is filled with lies. It is true that black propaganda does this, but the use of black propaganda is a sign that propaganda’s messages come out of weakness rather than strength. Following Goebbels, Patrick says propaganda must be factual. It in the interpretation of the facts that propaganda makes its move. In addition to facts, there must be something inexorable about the interpretation as if it could not be any other way. It also must seem necessary, as if any other interpretation would lead to a disaster. Finally, the message must seem to have legitimacy, with the weight of the authorities and the ages behind it.

    1. Address psychological, spiritual and social needs of the population

    Over two thousand years ago Patrick points out, Aristotle identified what made people happy. He included security, the independent enjoyment of goods, health, wealth, friendship, good children, good birth and pleasant old age. Patrick says these are the same values American politicians draw from. The differences between people in different cultures is the order of these values, not the values themselves. In addition, what is important to people will draw their attention. Lastly, the biological need for food, sex and economic survival is sure to draw people out.

    Today Patrick says modern mass society the media person is a strange hybrid of neurotic insecurity and solipsistic egomania. A mass individual is socialized to think himself unique and inviolable in his opinion and in his voting. Propaganda must appeal to this.

    Propaganda must appeal to the individual’s identity, his ego, his power and his efficacy. The person must feel like he belongs somewhere, that he is wanted and useful. Lastly, propaganda must give the individual a sense of understanding the world, where it is going along with addressing the political anxiety that develops because of an absence of reassurance about direction. It also helps for the propaganda to have the appearance of hidden underground knowledge that is revealed only to superior beings.

    1. Censoring stories or contrary information

    Even if you control the content and sources of information, even if you hammer your message into dualistic opposites and even if you appeal to the beliefs and values of the audience, the message of propaganda will be weakened if the beliefs, values, movements, parties and programs of its opposition are allowed to be aired publicly. Propaganda must actively suppress its opposition. Patrick’s most blatant example of this is Britain’s cutting the transatlantic cable from Germany during the World War I. A weaker version of this is to make sure that stories that run against propaganda never get to the public through the press. For over two decades an organization called Project Censored comes out with a book which, among other things, contains 25 of the top censored stories every year. In the 2022 edition, here are some of the stories:

    1. Prescription Drug Costs Set to Become a Leading Cause of Death for Elderly Americans
    2. Journalists investigating the Financial Crimes Threatened by Elites
    3. Historic Wave of Wildcat Strikes for Worker Rights
    4. Google’s Union-Busting Methods Revealed
    5. Police Use of Dogs as Instruments of Violence Targets People of Color
    6. Corporate Media Sideline Health Experts during Pandemic
    7. US Factory Farming a Breeding Ground for Next Pandemic
    8. New Wave of Independent News Sources Demonized by Google-Owned You Tube
    9. Conservative Christian Groups Spend Globally to Promote Anti-LGBTQ Campaigns
    1. Use of group pressure to horizontally shape beliefs and behaviors

    Many, many people imagine propaganda works like the spokes of a wheel. In the center is the propagandist sending out information to separate the spokes. The relationship between the spokes has nothing to do with propaganda. But Patrick rightly claims horizontal propaganda (relationships between groups) is perhaps the most effective way yet of sustaining a propaganda message. It extends, supplements and complements centralized, authoritative bureaucratic propaganda. In the case of the Milgram experiment, the “teachers” obeyed the authorities not just because the authorities seemed legitimate, but because other members of the group were also shocking people. Maoist Chinese communists relied on hammering their propaganda in a centralized way. But they also wisely held writing contests for groups in which the winner of the essay would be the one that most successfully denounced US imperialism. These essays were then discussed in a groupsetting where the content of the essays reinforced the propaganda of the communists. In a text I used to use in teaching my Brainwashing, Propaganda and Rhetoric class, the author pointed out that when Yankee soldiers were asked why they stuck out horrendous situations, it wasn’t because of obedience to their officers and the propaganda of patriotism. It was because they didn’t want to let their comrades down.

    In cults, the central propaganda comes from the cult leader. But the cult leader by themselves is not strong enough to break the bond between the recruit and their family and friends. However, the propaganda is sustained by fellow cult members, especially when they are living together. The pressure of horizontal propaganda has often been strong enough to break the loyalty of the recruit to their own family. This is why families hire cult counselors to intervene to get their children out of the cult.

    A less heavy-headed approach can be seen in AA groups. The centralized propaganda of Alcoholics Anonymous are the twelve steps. But when a person declares that they are ready to graduate from AA, even the best sponsor will not be as successful in pressuring the person leaving to stay as much as having to face the group at one of their meetings. Similar processes are in place in the horizontal sustaining of propaganda in DARE and in Amway groups.

    When propagandists bombard a mass population, they never know how it will be perceived. There will always be people who are apathetic, recalcitrant or openly rebellious and are invisible to the vertical propagandists. However, once propaganda becomes horizontalized, groups have a far better record of winning the recruit to their side and for marginalizing or driving out deviants.

    Propagandists also have ways of controlling groups by spouting an ideology that seems to be the opposite of the propagandists’ attempts at control. Some of these include “Team” management; “Democratization” of the workplace; “quality” circles; “shared” governance. Once groups have begun implementing the ideology, it only becomes stronger and more difficult for people to recognize that team management hides the old authority; that democracy in the workplace is still controlled by managers; quality circles rarely result in higher pay for workers and shared governance still has the same bosses at the top. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

    1. Cognitively penetrate and stick

    How does the propagandist get attention in an age of attention deficit? How do they sustain the attention once it has been noticed? Two means of being noticed are novelty and humor. In the case of humor, from what I am told, there are an extraordinary number commercials during the Superbowl which are dominated by humor. A person is more likely to remember a brand when a commercial made them laugh.

    In order to sustain a person’s attention, the propagandist has to compete with many other propagandists from the fields of advertising, politics, economics and sports. An essential strategy is to burrow a hole into the consciousness by repeatingthe message. In addition, these messages must be simple and easy to understand, filled with slogans and with accompanying images. Popular music is a great example. I still remember the lyrics of rock and roll songs from 50 years ago because the verses were repeated, the music was simple (think of Motown) and there were the accompanying images of the musicians. For two thousand years the discipline of rhetoric has studied the ways in which people can have their minds and actions changed. Rhetorical devices – metaphors, acronyms, alliteration, and  rhyme – make language memorable, dramatic and visual.

    1. Personalize events

    Many years ago, I  worked as a counselor for an organization called Men Overcoming Violence. It was a 40-week program for men who were violent with their partners. Our job was to teach them better communication skills. Periodically we would hire outside speakers to give talks for the public that was related to our work. One time we had two presenters, each taking the opposite stance about the extent that violence was inevitable in men. The first presenter approached the problem statistically. He presented research from Darwinian evolutionary psychology. He also presented cross-cultural research claiming that men were nine times more likely to be violent than women. The second presenter took the case study approach. They brought up a man who had successfully graduated from our program. He told the audience the story of how he was once violent with his wife, but thanks to our program he had changed. Then he called on the man’s wife who testified about how much he had changed. There was not a dry eye in the house. After the two talks we asked the audience via secret ballot whether they thought men could ever be no more violent than woman. Guess who won? The personal story won out over the statistics.

    When we hear of mass shootings in the news are we presented with statistics on how many the police have killed in the course of the year? No. We are presented with the personal stories of either the victim or the slayer. Patrick points out that when a lawyer defends a multiple slayer to the jury, he is likely to lead with “my client made a mistake”. Everyone makes mistakes, right? It could have been you. Switching to cinema, whatever the movie you’re watching, you can be sure part of the trailer line will be “one man’s quest…to overcome adversity”. Heroes and villains – not sociology – dominate the popular imagination. What propagandists fear most is masses of people responding against the propagandists in a collective manner. In making the problem personal and psychological, collective responses are less likely.

    1. Bureaucratize events

    The flip side of personalizing events is to bureaucratize them, that is to convey the message that there is nothing that can be done to combat the propaganda. It removes the question of responsibility. To speak in a bureaucratic passive voice depersonalizes decisions which are ugly, stupid and arbitrary. Political scientist Edelman says the main function of modern mass political language is to sharpen the pointless to show some interest and blunt the too sharply pointed.

    In their book Bureaucratic Propaganda, David Altheide and John Johnson say that bureaucratic propaganda is used in how newsrooms use records; how tv ratings are constructed and interpreted and how religious movements count souls. Bureaucratic propaganda also includes keeping a transmission of records about what an organization does, how the police magnify or minimize its reports and how the military counts its casualties. Patrick points out:

    Military censors or media relations personnel avoid news images that show the caskets for the people on their side of the conflict, especially in quantity. In the first World War, despite nearly a million United Kingdom military dead, no British newspaper reputedly even showed a photography of a dead British soldier. Seeing actual bodies shocks and reduces morale. (148)

    In the political context, with competition for scarce funds, prestige and continued political support make records creation a self-serving activity. The capitalist state fudges rate of unemployment, the gross national product, the rate of inflation and the number of Covid cases to reassure the public that it has everything under control.

    With bureaucratic propaganda the public gets what Goffman called the “front” part of the organization and never the back side. Unlike traditional propaganda, bureaucratic propaganda does not try to reinforce deeply held beliefs, but instead the legitimacy of an existing organization through painting a contrived, managed and decontextualized picture. The appeal of bureaucratic propaganda is not to economic, political or advertising forces, but to the scientific validity, rationality and objectivity of an organization which will hopefully not be investigated. Officials are encouraged along with their subordinates to use two or more sets of records. One for the inspection of other officials and organizations and one for the privacy of insiders only.

    At the same time, bureaucratic propaganda can be used for political purposes while hiding under the cloak of dispensing information.

    In its nearly half century of official existence, the US Information Agency employed several thousand persons, mainly for “informing people” in foreign countries (especially the Soviet bloc) via news, education and entertainment broadcasts. (175)

    Op-ed pieces are another way of introducing scientific sub-propaganda to an unaware public. Gallup polls supposedly do a “need assessment” for social services or political programs and lo and behind, the bureaucratic organization is found to support public needs. On the other hand, if a research proposal contradicts the purpose of the bureaucratic organization it is not favorably reviewed or funded.

    Why people accept bureaucratic propaganda is partly because of the reasons Weber gave in his description of a bureaucracy. There are rational rules which govern an office (not capacious); people compete for their roles (vs nepotism) and are trained in the roles they play. They receive a regular salary and work is supervised. There are records kept of their work.

    1. Demonstrate good ethics

    Patrick points out that in Aristotle’s rhetorical triangle, ethos was the most important element in persuasion. Though propaganda is different than rhetoric in many ways, including that it is impersonal, mass produced and standardized, it is still worth keeping in mind. One of the myths of propaganda is that it does not try to be moral. On the contrary, there is a need for conspicuous displays of ethics and morals in propaganda. One instance of political propaganda is Kipling’s justification for British colonialism as “The White Man’s Burden”.

    Patrick points out that a triumph of British and American propaganda during the 20th century was the successful attachment during both World Wars to the label of propaganda solely to Germans. For many, propaganda is associated forever with Joseph Goebbels. When one says propaganda people quickly think of jackboots and swastikas, but these are a direct result of Anglo-American propaganda. Later on, the same thing was done to the Soviet Union and Japan.

    The truth was that it was British and Americans who were best at propaganda. It was Bernays who first called propaganda by its real name. He then wisely switched it to “public relations” when he realized propaganda had some nasty political implications which would expose what he was actually doing. Americans disguised their propaganda efforts under euphemistic organizations such as the Committee of Public Information in World War I.  In World War II there was TheOffice of Wartime Information.

    Good ethics in propaganda means keeping control at all times and showing poise in difficult circumstances. Losing control in public with displays of anger show there might be conflicts between elites or a lack of confidence in propaganda. Secondly, propagandists want to appear as moderates, not as “extremists”. Third, propagandists must be dressed in a respectable manner, be in good shape physically and attractive. Further, other signs  of good ethics is that people are open and capable of handling disagreement. Being closed and defensive draws suspicion. Lastly, propagandists should have ethical codes of conduct, mission and vision statements which elevate propagandistic activities to the level of the broader social services.

    1. Dispense selective interpretation of facts

    As much as possible propagandists start with facts. What they do then is interpret the facts in a particular way. What the propagandist doesn’t tell you is that there may be four or five other ways of interpreting the facts and connecting the dots that are suppressed. For example, a Freudian propagandist may tell an audience at a psychoanalytic conference that depression is repressed anger. A graduate student may be very impressed. But what the Freudian propagandist will not discuss is that there are cognitive, behavioral, physiological theories of depression as well, and some of the better follow-up results than Freudians.

    1. Distance the propaganda from its source by using front groups like foundations, think tanks, and research patronage

    Propagandists rarely go to the public directly. They mediate their message through intermediate organizations such as universities, foundations, think tanks, policydiscussion group, and other organizations I’ll discuss shortly. This gives the propagandist credibility – or the benefit of the doubt that goes with organizations that appear to be just disinterested third parties.

    Political sociologist G. William Domhoff in his great book The Powers That Be, lays out a political funnel through which propaganda is disseminated. He starts out by saying the three most powerful economic organizations in Mordor are the Council of Foreign Relations, the National Association of Manufacturers and the Business Round Table. It is through these three organizations that all conservative and liberal propaganda is spun. The first level of dissemination is through the board of trustees of universities and through grants that come from foundations. These organizations then set up think tanks. Centrist think tanks are the Center for American Progress and the Brookings Institute. There are lots of right-wing think tanks including the American Enterprise Institute; the Heritage Foundation; the Cato Institute; The Center for Strategic and International Studies; the Hoover Institute and the Manhattan Project.

    The only liberal Think Tank is the Ford Foundation. Johnny-come-lately social democratic think tanks are the Economic Policy Institute and the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

    The third level down are policy discussion groups from which testimonies, reports, books and editorials flow. The fourth level is the result of these policy discussion groups that go through mass media newscasts along with the Chambers of Commerce.

    All these filters peddle the same conservative-liberal propagandistic line. Willingness to toe the line determines which political candidates are chosen from either party.

    The Republicans and Democrats reproduce the same frameworks that were built at the university and foundation level. It doesn’t matter whether these candidates understand upper levels or not. In fact, it is more convincing if they don’t understand what they are doing because it appears that they are making up their own minds in what they say.

    1. Accommodate informational needs and habits of professionals

    Aiming propaganda at a mass audience is often wastefully ineffective.  It is a shotgun approach because the cynical Patrick says the masses are more likely to be apathetic and inattentive to anything other than sex and food. As Jacques Ellul has revealed, it is not the ruling class that creates propaganda. It is the upper-middle classes that are the explainers of capitalism to the rest of the population. That means that propagandists have to create, package and distributute propaganda in ways that suit the informational requirements and professional routines of journalists, editors, script writers, interest groups, voluntary associations, churches, trade associations, blogs,  and news media.

    For the past 100 years since the development of modern mass media, propagandists have provided pre-written news articles for use of journalists known as “press releases which benefit media organizations because fewer journalists are needed to process stories. (123)

    Most quotes from officials found in press releases are simply made up by the propagandists who write the releases. (124)

    What Would Jacques Ellul Say?

    Personalizing events

    One of the things that would have surprised Ellul is the power that personalization has in moving people. France is less individualistic than Mordor’s ideology  and people living in Mordor have become more individualistic in the past sixty years since Ellul wrote his book.

    Propaganda in black and white

    Ellul was more interested in the subtleties of propaganda. While he did make a distinction between propaganda designed to rile people up (which he called sensibilization) and to cool people out (which he called mithridatization), he was more interested in propaganda that pacified people.

    Horizontal propaganda

    Ellul did have room for horizontal propaganda in his system but he might have been surprised by the extent it has been developed in adding members of cults and AAA to the mix.

    The post Thirteen Commandments of Propaganda first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • For students of official propaganda, mind control, emotional coercion, and other insidious manipulation techniques, the rollout of the New Normal has been a bonanza. Never before have we been able to observe the application and effects of these powerful technologies in real-time on such a massive scale.

    In a little over two and a half years, our collective “reality” has been radically revised. Our societies have been radically restructured. Millions (probably billions) of people have been systematically conditioned to believe a variety of patently ridiculous assertions, assertions based on absolutely nothing, repeatedly disproved by widely available evidence, but which have nevertheless attained the status of facts. An entire fictitious history has been written based on those baseless and ridiculous assertions. It will not be unwritten easily or quickly.

    I am not going to waste your time debunking those assertions. They have been repeatedly, exhaustively debunked. You know what they are and you either believe them or you don’t. Either way, reviewing and debunking them again isn’t going to change a thing.

    Instead, I want to focus on one particularly effective mind-control technology, one that has done a lot of heavy lifting throughout the implementation of the New Normal and is doing a lot of heavy-lifting currently. I want to do that because many people mistakenly believe that mind-control is either (a) a “conspiracy theory” or (b) something that can only be achieved with drugs, microwaves, surgery, torture, or some other invasive physical means. Of course, there is a vast and well-documented history of the use of such invasive physical technologies (see, e.g., the history of the CIA’s infamous MKULTRA program), but in many instances mind-control can be achieved through much less elaborate techniques.

    One of the most basic and effective techniques that cults, totalitarian systems, and individuals with fascistic personalities use to disorient and control people’s minds is “gaslighting.” You’re probably familiar with the term. If not, here are a few definitions:

    “the manipulation of another person into doubting their perceptions, experiences, or understanding of events.” American Psychological Association

    “an insidious form of manipulation and psychological control. Victims of gaslighting are deliberately and systematically fed false information that leads them to question what they know to be true, often about themselves. They may end up doubting their memory, their perception, and even their sanity.” Psychology Today

    “a form of psychological manipulation in which the abuser attempts to sow self-doubt and confusion in their victim’s mind. Typically, gaslighters are seeking to gain power and control over the other person, by distorting reality and forcing them to question their own judgment and intuition.” Newport Institute

    The main goal of gaslighting is to confuse, coerce, and emotionally manipulate your victim into abandoning their own perception of reality and accepting whatever new “reality” you impose on them. Ultimately, you want to completely destroy their ability to trust their own perception, emotions, reasoning, and memory of historical events, and render them utterly dependent on you to tell them what is real and what “really” happened, and so on, and how they should be feeling about it.

    Anyone who has ever experienced gaslighting in the context of an abusive relationship, or a cult, or a totalitarian system, or who has worked in a battered women’s shelter, can tell you how powerful and destructive it is. In the most extreme cases, the victims of gaslighting are entirely stripped of their sense of self and surrender their individual autonomy completely. Among the best-known and most dramatic examples are the Patty Hearst case, Jim Jones’ People’s Temple, the Manson family, and various other cults, but, the truth is, gaslighting happens every day, out of the spotlight of the media, in countless personal and professional relationships.

    Since the Spring of 2020, we have been subjected to official gaslighting on an unprecedented scale. In a sense, the “Apocalyptic Pandemic” PSYOP has been one big extended gaslighting campaign (comprising countless individual instances of gaslighting) inflicted on the masses throughout the world. The events of this past week were just another example.

    Basically, what happened was, a Pfizer executive confirmed to the European Parliament last Monday that Pfizer did not know whether its Covid “vaccine” prevented transmission of the virus before it was promoted as doing exactly that and forced on the masses in December of 2020. People saw the video of the executive admitting this, or heard about it, and got upset. They tweeted and Facebooked and posted videos of Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, Bill Gates, the Director of the CDC, official propagandists like Rachel Maddow, and various other “experts” and “authorities” blatantly lying to the public, promising people that getting “vaccinated” would “prevent transmission,” “protect other people from infection,” “stop the virus in its tracks,” and so on, which totally baseless assertions (i.e., lies) were the justification for the systematic segregation and persecution of “the Unvaccinated,” and the fomenting of mass fanatical hatred of anyone challenging the official “vaccine” narrative, and the official New Normal ideology, which hatred persists to this very day.

    The New Normal propaganda apparatus (i.e., the corporate media, health “experts,” et al.) responded to the story predictably. They ignored it, hoping it would just go away. When it didn’t, they rolled out the “fact-checkers” (i.e., gaslighters).

    The Associated Press, Reuters, PolitiFact, and other official gaslighting outfits immediately published lengthy official “fact-checks” that would make a sophist blush. Read them and you will see what I mean. They are perfect examples of official gaslighting, crafted to distract you from the point and suck you into an argument over meaningless details and definitions. They sound exactly like Holocaust deniers pathetically asserting that there is no written proof that Hitler ordered the Final Solution … which, there isn’t, but it doesn’t fucking matter. Of course, Hitler ordered the Final Solution, and, of course, they lied about the “vaccines.”

    The Internet is swimming with evidence of their lies … tweets, videos, articles, and so on.

    Which is what makes gaslighting so frustrating for people who believe they are engaged in an actual good-faith argument over facts and the truth. But that’s not how totalitarianism works. The New Normals, when they repeat whatever the authorities have instructed them to repeat today (e.g., “trust the Science,” “safe and effective,” “no one ever claimed they would prevent transmission”), could not care less whether it is actually true, or even if it makes the slightest sense.

    These gaslighting “fact-checks” are not meant to convince them that anything is true or false. And they are certainly not meant to convince us. They are official scripts, talking points, and thought-terminating clichés for the New Normals to repeat, like cultists chanting mantras at you to shut off their minds and block out anything that contradicts or threatens the “reality” of the cult.

    You can present them with the actual facts, and they will smile knowingly, and deny them to your face, and condescendingly mock you for not “seeing the truth.”

    But here’s the tricky thing about gaslighting.

    In order to effectively gaslight someone, you have be in a position of authority or wield some other form of power over them. They have to need something vital from you (i.e., sustenance, safety, financial security, community, career advancement, or just love). You can’t walk up to some random stranger on the street and start gaslighting them. They will laugh in your face.

    The reason the New Normal authorities have been able to gaslight the masses so effectively is that most of the masses do need something from them … a job, food, shelter, money, security, status, their friends, a relationship, or whatever it is they’re not willing to risk by challenging those in power and their lies. Gaslighters, cultists, and power freaks, generally, know this. It is what they depend on, your unwillingness to live without whatever it is. They zero in on it and threaten you with the loss of it (sometimes consciously, sometimes just intuitively).

    Gaslighting won’t work if you are willing to give up whatever the gaslighter is threatening to take from you (or stop giving you, as the case may be), but you have to be willing to actually lose it, because you will be punished for defending yourself, for not surrendering your autonomy and integrity, and conforming to the “reality” of the cult, or the abusive relationship, or the totalitarian system.

    I have described the New Normal (i.e., our new “reality”) as pathologized-totalitarianism, and as a “a cult writ large, on a societal scale.” I used the “Covidian Cult” analogy because every totalitarian system essentially operates like a cult, the main difference being that, in totalitarian systems, the balance of power between the cult and the normal (i.e., dominant) society is completely inverted. The cult becomes the dominant (i.e., “normal”) society, and non-cult-members become its “deviants.”

    We do not want to see ourselves as “deviants” (because we haven’t changed, the society has), and our instinct is to reject the label, but that is exactly what we are … deviants. People who deviate from the norm, a new norm, which we reject, and oppose, but which, despite that, is nonetheless the norm, and thus we are going to be regarded and dealt with like deviants.

    I am such a deviant. I have a feeling you are too. Under the circumstances, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. On the contrary, we need to accept it, and embrace it. Above all, we need to get clear about it, about where we stand in this new “reality.”

    We are heading toward New Normal Winter No. 3. They are already cranking up the official propaganda, jacking up the fabricated “cases,” talking about reintroducing mask-mandates, fomenting mass hatred of “the Unvaccinated,” and so on. People’s gas bills are doubling and tripling. The global-capitalist ruling classes are openly embracing neo-Nazis. There is talk of “limited” nuclear war. Fanaticism, fear, and hatred abound. The gaslighting of the masses is not abating. It is increasing. The suppression of dissent is intensifying. The demonization of non-conformity is intensifying. Lines are being drawn in the sand. You see it and feel it just like I do.

    Get clear on what’s essential to you. Get clear about what you’re willing to lose. Stay deviant. Stay frosty. This isn’t over.

    The post The Gaslighting of the Masses first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Listen to a reading of this article:

    There’s a very important question that we all need to be asking ourselves at this point in history, and that question is as follows: how much are we as a society willing to sacrifice so that the US government can win a propaganda war against Vladimir Putin?

    Let me explain.

    One severely under-discussed aspect of the latest round of escalations in Silicon Valley censorship which began at the start of the Ukraine war is the fact that it’s an entirely unprecedented order of censorship protocol. While it might look similar to all the other waves of social media purges and new categories of banned content that we’ve been experiencing since it became mainstream doctrine after the 2016 US election that tech platforms need to strictly regulate online speech, the justifications for it have taken a drastic deviation from established patterns.

    What sets this new censorship escalation apart from its predecessors is that this time nobody’s pretending that it’s being done in the interests of the people. With the censorship of racists the argument was that they were inciting hate crimes and racial harassment. With the censorship of Alex Jones and QAnon the argument was that they were inciting violence. With the censorship of Covid skeptics the argument was that they were promoting misinformation that could be deadly. Even with the censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story it was argued that there was a need to protect election integrity from disinformation of potentially foreign origin.

    With censorship relating to the Ukraine war there is no argument that it’s being done to help the people. There is no case to be made that letting people say wrong things about this war kills Ukrainians, Americans, or anyone else. There is no case to be made that disputing claims about Russian war crimes will damage America’s democratic processes. It’s just, “Well we can’t have people saying wrong things about a war, can we?”

    Ask a properly brainwashed liberal why they support the censorship of someone who disputes US narratives about Russian war crimes in Bucha or Mariupol and they’ll probably tell you something like “Well, it’s disinformation!” or “Because it’s propaganda!” or “How much is Putin paying you??” But what they won’t be able to do is articulate exactly what specific harm is being done by such speech in the same way that they could when defending the censorship of Covid skeptics or the factions responsible for last year’s riot in the Capitol building.

    The one argument you’ll get, if you really press the issue, is that the United States is in a propaganda war with Russia, and it is in our society’s interests for our media institutions to help the United States win that propaganda war. Cold wars are fought between nuclear powers because hot warfare would risk annihilating both nations, leaving only other forms of war like psychological warfare available. There’s no argument that this new escalation in censorship saves lives or protects elections, but there is an argument that it can help facilitate the long-term cold war agendas of the United States.

    But what does that mean exactly? It means if we accept this argument we’re knowingly consenting to a situation where all the major news outlets, websites and apps that people look to for information about the world are geared not toward telling us true things about reality, but toward beating Vladimir Putin in some weird psywar. It means abandoning any ambitions of being a truth-based civilization that is guided by facts, and instead accepting an existence as a propaganda-based civilization geared toward making sure we all think thoughts that hurt Moscow’s long-term strategic interests.

    And it’s just absolutely freakish that this is a decision that has already been made for us, without any public discussion as to whether or not that’s the kind of society we want to live in. They jumped right from “We’re censoring speech to protect you from violence and viruses” to “We’re censoring speech to help our government conduct information warfare against a foreign adversary.” Without skipping a beat.

    The consent-manufacturing class has helped pave the way for this smooth transition with their relentless and ongoing calls for more and more censorship, and for years we’ve been seeing signs that they view it as their duty to help facilitate an information war against Russia.

    Back in 2018 we saw a BBC reporter admonish a former high-ranking British navy official for speculating that the alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria was a false flag, a claim we now have mountains of evidence is likely true thanks to whistleblowers from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. The reason the reporter gave for her objection to those comments was that “we’re in an information war with Russia.”

    “Given that we’re in an information war with Russia on so many fronts, do you think perhaps it’s inadvisable to be stating this so publicly given your position and your profile? Isn’t there a danger that you’re muddying the waters?” the BBC’s Annita McVeigh asked Admiral Alan West after his comments.

    We saw a similar indication in the mass media a few weeks later in an interview with former Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who was admonished by CNN’s Chris Cuomo for highlighting the completely uncontroversial fact that the US is an extremely egregious offender when it comes to interferences in foreign elections.

    “You know, that would be the case for Russia to make, not from the American perspective,” Cuomo said in response to Stein’s entirely accurate remarks. “Of course, there’s hypocrisy involved, lots of different big state actors do lots of things that they may not want people to know about. But let Russia say that the United States did it to us, and here’s how they did it, so this is fair play.”

    Which is the same as saying, “Forget what’s factually true. Don’t say true things that might help Russian interests. That’s Russia’s job. Our job here on CNN is to say things that hurt Russian interests.

    We can trace the mainstreaming of the idea that it’s the western media’s job to manipulate information in the public interest, rather than simply tell the truth, back to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential win. In what was arguably the most significant political moment in the US since 9/11 and its aftermath, the consent-manufacturing class came to the decision that Trump’s election wasn’t a failure of status quo politics but a failure of information control.

    In October 2020 during the Hunter Biden laptop scandal The Spectator‘s Stephen L Miller described how the consensus formed among the mainstream press since Clinton’s 2016 loss that it was their moral duty to hide facts from the public which might lead to Trump’s re-election.

    “For almost four years now, journalists have shamed their colleagues and themselves over what I will call the ‘but her emails’ dilemma,” Miller writes. “Those who reported dutifully on the ill-timed federal investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private server and spillage of classified information have been cast out and shunted away from the journalist cool kids’ table. Focusing so much on what was, at the time, a considerable scandal, has been written off by many in the media as a blunder. They believe their friends and colleagues helped put Trump in the White House by focusing on a nothing-burger of a Clinton scandal when they should have been highlighting Trump’s foibles. It’s an error no journalist wants to repeat.”

    Once “journalists” accepted that their most important job is not to tell the truth but to keep people from thinking bad thoughts about the status quo political system, it was inevitable that they’d start enthusiastically cheerleading for more internet censorship. They see it as their duty, which is why now the leading proponents of online censorship are corporate media reporters.

    But it shouldn’t be this way. There’s no legitimate reason for the Silicon Valley proxies of the most powerful government on earth to be censoring people for disagreeing with that government about a war, yet this is exactly what’s happening and it’s happening more and more. It should alarm us all that it’s becoming increasingly acceptable to silence people not because they’re circulating dangerous disinfo, nor even because they’re saying things that are in any way false, but solely because they are saying things which undermine the US infowar.

    People should absolutely be allowed to say things which disagree with the most powerful empire in history about a war. They should even be allowed to say brazenly false things about that war, because otherwise only the powerful will be allowed to say brazenly false things about it.

    Free speech is important not because it’s nice to be able to say what you want, but because the free flow of ideas and information creates a check on the powerful. It gives people the ability to hold the powerful to account. Which is exactly why the powerful work to eliminate it.

    We should see it as a huge, huge problem that so much of the world has been herded onto these giant monopolistic speech platforms that conduct censorship in complete alignment with the mightiest power structure in the world. This is the exact opposite of putting a check on power.

    How much are we as a society willing to give up for the US government and its allies to win a propaganda war against Putin? Are we willing to commit to being a civilization for which the primary consideration with any piece of data is not whether or not it’s true, but whether it helps undermine Russia?

    This is a conversation which should already have been going on in mainstream circles for some time now, but it never even started. Let’s start it.

    _________________________________

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    This post was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone.

  • Dear Barbara,

    I hope that my email finds you and Bruce in good health and doing fine.

    I will try to answer your interesting questions, please note that my answers are from my personal point of view, it is built on daily observations, readings, talking to different people, and even watching tv now and then, with no pretenses whatsoever.

    How would you characterize the class structure in Russia in terms of upper class, upper-middle class, middle class, and working class?

    The super-rich and oligarchs: This thin social layer is an entity by itself, it owns assets and shares in the big companies, banks and financial institutions. There is an uneasy peace between them and the government that regularly gathers them and “politely” reminds them of their social responsibilities and where their riches came from. They are at the present untouchable due to the fact that some of them are on boards of companies belonging to the state or near persons holding high positions in the government. That is when the political situation becomes corruptible.

    The upper-middle class include the upper echelons of the government bureaucracy, the top management of companies, banks and financial institutions and people holding valuable assets (immovable and moveable). There is very little upward movement, the danger of moving downwards exists.

    The middle class: mostly concentrated in the cities, professionals, engineers, teachers, doctors, small lawyers, office workers, shop owners, and small businessmen.  This is a relatively new class for Russia. Dynamic with porous boundaries, the danger of slipping to its lower level is higher than making a leap into its higher level or to the upper-middle class.

    The working class is the most interesting and complex class. The classic working class person is in the military industrial complex, metallurgy, auto industry, oil and gas, power generation, and all types of transportation.  The upper classes make a point of a pretense of treating them well which includes salaries, perks and bonuses. Construction is a big part of the economy. Skilled workers are mainly Russians or citizens of the Russian Federation. There is a big part of the low skill jobs that are done by migrants from republics of what once was the Soviet Union. Their numbers are significant, including, janitors and, delivery workers.  They mostly do not integrate and hold on to their religion (mostly Muslim). Some of them are involved in misdemeanors and crimes, which are blown up and generalized to a whole nation or region. This is a sharp weapon in the hands of the authorities, pitting the migrants against locals. There is much more to be said but I will leave it for other occasions.

    How do the different classes feel about “The Oligarchs” (billionaires in Russia) – do they think they deserve what they have?

    I am afraid that my reply to this question is going to be a short one because there are no ambiguities or subtleties. Once again in my opinion it is not just a matter of class but a nearly unanimous negative attitude, especially from the working and middle classes and even from some of the upper classes. The Communists and left are just itching to nationalize some industries or at least have a better tax law. Fortunately, the majority of the people see the oligarchs as acquiring their fortunes like in Gustave Myers book History of Great American Fortunes as not having earned it.

    What’s the range of differences in how the Russian people see the American people?

    The range is narrow, and it does not depend on class.  Rather, it depends on age and the change in subtle things like music, art, and clothing.  I think that the average Russian attitude is negative, this is especially true for people older than 25 years. It is also a reaction to the US and western policies in demonizing and humiliating the Russian people. A western person a priori thinks that he is superior, and this not only on official state levels but in the mentality of the ordinary person. It is ubiquitous in art, literature, and Hollywood. From Harry Truman to Joe Biden nothing much has changed.

    The Russian reaction was predictable, I am now mentioning daily stuff – not high politics or economics. It all started by making fun of the Americans and their ignorance about the history and geography of Russia, as well as their traditions and literature. Allow me to tell you one of the more famous stories of a well-known comedian (Mikhail Zadornov) who passed away not so long ago.

    A Russian is traveling to the US to visit his friend, at the customs when they open his suitcase, they find a bunch of small branches (around 50 cm) tied together. The inspectors immediately are very suspicious. The Russian tries to explain that these branches are for the Sauna where they dip them in water and lightly hit each other (this is the Russian way and Sauna for some is like a religion, they can talk endlessly about which trees should be chosen for the best smell). The inspector’s eyes become like saucers. “This guy is not only a narcotic maniac, he is also sadomasochistic.”

    I am not being flippant. I just want to show that ignorance and prejudice from nuclear policy to sauna lead us to making stupid decisions.

    At the present the majority of the Russians, as a reaction to all the Russophobia, sanctions against any kind of activity, from industry and science to art and sport have really stiffened their stance against Americans. There is a set of people, belonging to the TV, cinema as well as some economists, and sports celebrities who are pro-western, which is not exactly pro American.  Anyway, many of them have left Russia after the beginning of the conflict with Ukraine. I should point out that in a real capitalistic society, a filmmaker or a painter is on his own in making his life. In Russia the majority receive help from the government on a regular basis. It is especially galling to the Russian taxpayer, who thinks his money is being wasted on someone who curses his country.

    The Russians reacted coolly to the departure of US brands of fast food and clothes. This left many Americans wondering. Russia is not what it was in the 1990s. This is a different time. Russians now bring up their children not to eat fast food and drink soda pop (not always successfully), just like any sane parent in the US would do.

    How do the different classes in Russia feel about China?

    I do not think it is just a matter of classes. Defining how the Russians feel about China should be according to a number of factors that would include class. At the present there are two more or less evident trends. The first trend is supported by the state, the left, Communists and some of the nationalists who support strong ties with China on many levels. The Russians want to be sure that the Chinese have their backs through the Chinese Silk Road project and the Russian oil and gas supply to China. The liberals and pro-westerners try to find fault in any Chinese initiative.

    However, all that being said, there is the human, psychological factor that broadly affects a significant number of Russians. There are cases when it is definitive and that is race. Many Russians, as most Europeans, cannot easily rid themselves of their racism that appeared after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. They see themselves as superior and have been taken in by the western propaganda. The ignorance and prejudice regarding Russia about China is colossal in dimension.  Culture and humanitarian sciences are Eurocentric. The Yellow Peril of the early 20th century is alive and well. Anti-Chinese propagandists love to bring up the border conflict that took place in 1969 between the Soviet Union and China.

    The Russian Far East regions have a special relationship with China. There are some that welcome trade and financial possibilities while others are afraid that they would swamp their region and take it over. The Chinese buy unprocessed Russian timber from Siberia, and some of the local producers are eager to do this because they get paid in US dollars. The government frowns upon this, and a lot of commotion is raised. Despite their racism, the upper-class businessman is still eager to do business with China. The average man is wary and cautious. It is only the incomprehensible, myopic, bone-headed American foreign policy that is driving Russians to overcome their racism and have more sympathy for the Chinese.

    How do the different classes feel about the European continent around the natural gas issue?

    Soviet gas reached Germany in 1973 and each side signed a contract for 20 years, after lengthy negotiations. The German side noted that in spite of the different ideologies, all the procedures were very business-like. Since then, the Soviet, and afterwards the Russian supply of gas continued more or less smoothly to Germany and most European countries as well. Countries that have natural resources to sell as a policy diversify their routes of outlet. Just by taking a look at any modern map of gas or pipelines of nearly every producing country one can notice that. Therefore, Russia’s Nord Stream gas pipelines were logical and legitimate, especially if your pipeline passes through territory that is unstable.

    The prevailing opinion about Europeans and gas supply has been formed by the fact that Europe has blocked Russian assets that are counted in hundreds of billion dollars, besides stopping the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. The Russians took a step from their side, dividing the countries that they were supplying with gas into “friendly” and “unfriendly”. The friendly would continue to pay in US dollars or euros while the unfriendly that had blocked Russian assets would pay in Russian rubles. Although the contracts were in US dollars, Russia decided that blocking their assets was a force majeure clause, and they therefore took this step to defend their interests. It is not so much a class issue as it is an issue that affects nearly the whole nation. The majority of the Russians are fed up with Europe, with the gas issue and all the holier-than-thou attitude of nations filled up to their elbows in the blood of the people of the Third World as well.

    With affection and respect

    HCE

    First published at Socialist Planning Beyond Capitalism

    The post How Different Classes in Russia Feel About Yankeedom, China and Europe: More Letters from Russia first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • If firefighters fight fires, what do freedom fighters fight?

    Once upon a time, in a place almost around the corner, a fire brigade arrived in a village in the middle of a snowstorm, at night. The firemen evacuated everyone from their houses crying that the village is on fire. Since it was nighttime everyone was in bed. They were rushed out of their homes with nothing but their bedclothes.

    Everyone was standing in the cold, sub-zero night waiting, unable to see any fire, not even smoke– partly due to the heavy snow. The cold started to take its effect and some asked the firemen if it were not safe enough to re-enter and at least get some warm clothing. No, was the reply.

    But we cannot see any fire, maybe nothing is burning yet. We can’t take that chance was the reply. Daylight appeared and although snow was still falling neither flame nor smoke was to be seen. However, in front of some homes bodies could be found lying on the ground.

    Can we return inside the villagers asked? The firemen pointed to the bodies and answered that there were already some dead from the fire and it was not yet safe to return.

    It was still frightfully cold outside. The villagers were still standing in the snow trying to keep warm. The firemen guarded the entrances to the houses, looking vigilant, hoses in hand.

    About noon, a truck entered the village from the West. The driver stopped in the village square. A tall man wearing glasses and a heavy pink ski-sweater alighted and opened the back of the truck. There he hung a sign, “blankets”.

    By now the villagers were more than desperately cold, some could barely move. A few of them walked slowly through the snow until they reached the truck. Can we have some blankets, they asked, we have been standing here all night because the village is on fire.

    The man with the blankets smiled and said sure, but you must pay for them.  Some then turned quickly and ran as fast as the snow and their frozen limbs permitted to the doors of their homes. There they were stopped by the firemen guarding the houses. You cannot go in there! they yelled and blocked the doors.

    But you don’t understand the villagers replied, barely able to talk in the cold. We have a chance to buy blankets to keep warm but our money is inside!

    We are here to protect you from fire they yelled. You cannot enter; we cannot permit you to risk burning!

    But there is no smoke or fire in my house, said one. I do not see or smell any either, said another. We are firemen, we are trained to identify fires, not you, was the reply. Stay away.

    So they returned to the square where one or two villagers were leaving with blankets. Where did you get those, asked one? We offered him the rest of our home, since it is all burned by now- so we got a good deal. Thus filled with anger they ran, as fast as they could in the snow, back to the truck.

    We have no money now. It is in our homes and the fire brigade won’t let us in to get it. It is so terribly cold. We need the blankets. The smiling vendor said, well, you could sell me your burnt home. But our home isn’t burnt! We just can’t get our money inside, because they say it is too dangerous, that they have to protect us from the fire.

    Well, I see your point. I’ll make a deal with you. I have these shovels. If you will dig a hole in front of your house, I will give you the blankets for free. But it has to be a big hole.

    The biting cold had sapped nearly all their strength but they agreed. Taking the shovels, they again ran, as quickly as snow and frostbite would allow, back to their homes and began to shovel. They felt secure that they had saved their homes until the fire was extinguished. They dug with passion into the night.

    When the sun rose the next morning each was covered with a blanket.

    The post A fiery tale  first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.