Psychological warfare
A classic treatise on psychological warfare's history and operations.
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29mentions
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14% recommend86% neutral
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What Hacker News says
- was [1] supposed to lead to the recent discussion of the lack of a useful distinction between 2nd person singular and plural in (unlike AAVE) SAE?
come to think of it, maybe my fascination with Linebarger's Psychological Warfare is because (delicately speaking of the indelicate*) he argues high-brow theories whose subject matter is convincing people via low-brow rhetoric?
> "Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. ... Fortunately, in England at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever." —Lady AB
* I'll have to check De Oratore because Uncle Google certainly isn't confirming this belongs to that most famous of the garbanzo-noses?
- Linebarger has a nice history with examples going back to biblical times, in his textbook on Psychological Warfare.
- Linebarger is also the source of my anecdote about making it easier for german soldiers to surrender by giving them a "Surrender Form" to fill out and hand to Allied troops, with all the standard bureaucratic fields they were accustomed to in civilian life.
(His Psychological Warfare is well worth reading; not only does he warn the reader up front that PSYWAR operators are not always to be taken at face value, but I believe both 1948 and 1954 versions can be easily be read between the lines as promoting racial integration in the DoD; compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_9981 )
- I highly recommend Psychological Warfare (and its development from the 40's to the 50's). Read it, and apply its lessons to itself. I think you'll find that Linebarger has more to say, between the lines, and you'll probably also get a more nuanced idea of his views than the writers of TFA had.
- Decades before the internet, in 1948, Linebarger's textbook on Psychological Warfare notes, in its section on propaganda analysis, that:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/48612/48612-h/48612-h.htm#:~...
> The [STASM] formula works best in the treatment of monitored materials of which the source is known. First point to note is the character of the source. There are several choices on this: the true source (who really got it out?) and the ostensible source (whose name is signed to it?); also, the first-use source (who used it the first time?) and the second-use source (who claims merely to be using it as a quotation?). Take the statement: "Harry said to me, he said, 'I never told anybody that Al's wife was a retired strip-teaser.' Mind you, I don't pretend to believe Harry, but that's what he said, all right." What are the possible true sources for the statement of fact or libel concerning Al's unnamed wife? What are the alternatives on ostensible sources? First use? Second use? The common sense needed to analyze this statement is of the same order as the process involved in analyzing the statement: "Reliable sources in Paris state that the visit of the American labor delegation has produced sensational repercussions in Moscow, and that Moscow, upon the basis of the American attitude, is determined to press for unification of the entire German labor movement."
> It is soon evident that the mere attribution of source is a job of high magnitude.
I'm not sure what we were using 2 watts worth of cerebellum for before sophisticated language, but afterwards source attribution sounds like it'd sure soak up the cycles...
(he also has technical terms for what we now call a "sock puppet")
- Given that a large part of the subtext (Linebarger* does implore us to habitually analyse all communication as if it might be propaganda) in Psychological Warfare is that "hey, it might really be better if the US Army didn't practice apartheid" (finally ended in practice ca. the 6.25 전쟁), I'd bet the confederate train was supposed to evoke the US Civil War.
(let's stay silent about: "...the new organization is simply the old one under a slightly different name, but with the old leaders and the old ideas still prevailing.")
* might this be why he seems to have been replaced at Bragg with a very powerpoint-y kind of textbook?
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