This Is Not Propaganda
We live in a world of influence operations run amok, where dark ads, psyops, hacks, bots, soft facts, ISIS, Putin, trolls, and Trump seek to shape our very reality. In this surreal atmosphere created to disorient us and undermine our sense of truth, we've lost not only our grip on peace and democracy--but our very notion of what those words even mean. The author takes us to the front lines of the disinformation age, where he meets Twitter revolutionaries and pop-up populists, "behavioral change" salesmen, Jihadi fanboys, Identitarians, truth cops, and many others. Forty years after his dissident parents were pursued by the KGB, Pomerantsev finds the Kremlin re-emerging as a great propaganda power. His research takes him back to Russia--but the answers he finds there are not what he expected.
Stats for nerds
6recommend
10mentions
7people
2020–2026years
70% recommend20% neutral10% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Naivete and scorn of autism in one short sentence - you're very efficient.
Yandex.com is the international front end to yandex, and not a portal for 'a handful of western autists'.
But on Russia's granular propaganda and disinformation efforts, you ought to read Peter Pomerantsev's excellent "This is Not Propaganda" before making silly sweeping statements.
- ISPs may also be lobbying us through social media. Peter Pomerantsev makes a strong case that moderated forums are for sale in This Is Not Propaganda [1]. For example, he mentions "consensus cracking",
> There are instructions on how to control an internet forum, including tips on “consensus cracking”: using a fake persona to express the ideas you oppose in such a weak and unconvincing manner that you can then use another fake persona to knock them down.
Here is Peter speaking [2] a week ago at a Stanford conference on disinformation where Obama gave the keynote [3].
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41717504-this-is-not-pro...
- This in itself is Kremlin's propaganda 101.
Kremlin's most effective propagandist media and influencers are never as blunt as "Putin is good".
It's more like "we never know the truth". "One side says that, another says that", "we don't know who's credible". "Truth is somewhere in the middle". "Politicians are dirty everywhere". "Everything is propaganda".
It's effectively the leutmotif of Russian media that aims to disorient and pacify domestic audience and they use it a lot on Western audience as well.
A great example was their media strategy on MH17 downing.
First they made sure their network of influencers spat out dozens of theories, no matter how contradicting or bizarre they are. "The plane was already filled with corpses". "Ukrainian jet fighter shot it down" (look up their military briefing on it, it's absolutely hilarious with disproportionally huge fake jet fighter pasted on a satellite image). "Spanish dispatcher saw it". "Ukrainian Buk shot it down". "There was no plane".
Afterwards give airtime to all the theories by saying "we're not claiming it's truth, but sources say this". Make your head spin, make you doubt everything. With such overload you have no other option but to just tune out, turn it off. There is no truth. Any voice is propaganda.
Peter Pomerantes had a great book "This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality"[1] on their tactics, a recommended read.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/This-Not-Propaganda-Adventures-Agains...
- > ... they will simply grow sceptical of all kinds of news sources and retreat further into their own bubble.
This is a central theme of the book This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality by Peter Pomerantsev, which I found thought-provoking.
I've just been looking for a decent review. This is half-decent:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/aug/10/this-is-not-pr...
As is this:
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2019/10/13/bo...
- No, it is very easy to spot. The fake news and comments in social media are consistently identical to what is published in state controlled Russian and Chinese media. At the very least, this is highly suspicious.
But of course, they do it skilfully, plausible deniability is the name of the game.
I recommend reading "The Red Web", "Nothing is True and Everything is Possible", and "This is Not Propaganda" to learn more about this phenomenon.
- Some more reading on this topic:
- This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality -- Peter Pomerantsev
- A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy -- Nancy L. Rosenblum
- Trust, Facts, And Democracy In A Polarized World [podcast ] https://www.democracyworkspodcast.com/pew/
- darknetdiaries EP 65: PSYOP [podcast] https://darknetdiaries.com/transcript/65/ (interview with psychological operations worker)
- Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare -- Thomas Rid
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