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Tag Archives: information warfare

How Power Manipulates Media

16 Monday Nov 2020

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Political Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

How Power Manipulates Media, information warfare, Mass Hypnosis, Official Disinformation

Published in 2015 to tell how Putin’s power manipulates media and through it information in Russia, the same may be applicable today on the Far Wrong Right in what is still, for a while, Donald J. Trump’s now perverted pseudo-democratic America.

HE lies.

HE has lied to his business associates, his followers, and his wives.

HE has lied about Americans and about The Press.

HE has lied about America’s Democracy and Freedom by making up enemies out of whole cloth and by demanding from defense and security officials (and possibly military officers — remember Colonel Vindman — as well) loyalty not to the Constitution of our nation, but to himself.


https://t.co/Oe80a2gPei https://t.co/pIxmOlMMWt https://t.co/j8d8LiDOjz

Every "Great Leader" seeks absolute control of his surrounding "Information Space". https://t.co/GMDzb73mUb

— J. S. Oppenheim (@JS_Oppenheim) November 15, 2020

Yeah, well, a couple of days ago, HE had his minions hot on dead voters with mail-in ballots.

Since yesterday: rigged voting machines!

Whatever.

The main thing for Trump is that HE bend reality (for HIS fervently hopeful faithful) to make it look like HE — and THEY — were cheated and HIS seizing office through THEIR violence (with help from HIS government’s forces) would be just.

Enough with “HE”, “HIS”, “THEY”, and “THEIRS” — you get the diabolical picture.


While Trump may develop his own private media empire, he would have other options as a Putinesque dictator. He could, for example, simply have an assign mention to a publisher — or a publisher’s confidante — a preference for the hiring of one editor or journalist over another. Word gets through (from The Boss), and that’s that.

In the fashion of television drama, Trump’s kind of slick underhanded power (remember–and give it your best smoked gravel voice: “it’s only business”) might help an ambitious journo miss a career (and potentially history-altering) meeting (“you know what I mean?”).

Peter Pomerantzev’s book tells of a world in which Power designs and orders “reality” — or its perception — sufficiently to keep Putin & Co. in loot while the public has its thoughts, which then matter not so much.

If you’re in with power, life’s good!

Or at least it will look good.

If you’re out of the “systema” — as Russia’s hoodlums refer to it — not so great . . . and the reality on the outs ain’t about looks.

Related on BackChannels

“A Note on the Far Right’s Epoch Times” – 11/9/2020.

“Fake News! Genuine Fake News! The Real Fake News! Get Your Fake News Here!” – October 23, 2017.

“FBI, ANTIFA, and Swamp Gas” – 7/1/2020.


–33–

Relay: “Senate Intel Hearing on Influence on Social Media” – Live at Posting

01 Wednesday Aug 2018

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Political Spychology, Russia, United States of America

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Active Measures, digital barbarism, feudal political absolutism v democratic checked and distributed power, information warfare, integrity in political information, integrity in politics, medieval v modern, Moscow, Russia, Social Network Influence


–33–

Live at Posting: Addressing Disinformation — “RIGA STRATCOM DIALOGUE 2018 | Day 2 Evening session”

13 Wednesday Jun 2018

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Free Speech

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

combating active measures, disinformation, epistemology, information integrity, information warfare, NATO


The event may be wrapping up, but it should persist on YouTube and remain here in the BackChannels’ record of witness.


–33–

From Correspondence: Power’s Tool: Ideology (Any): And the Journalist’s Predicament

29 Thursday Mar 2018

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Asides, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Free Speech, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Journalism, Political Psychology, Political Spychology, Politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

despotism, dictatorships, information warfare, journalism, perceptual control, political manipulation, political power, propaganda, public relations, war reporting

I don’t know how far back in modern history the penchant for exploiting or killing journalists go, but as much has been a part of the peril for the intrepid since I signed on here in 2006/7.  The evildoers haven’t the innocence required to boast their programs with authentic faith; instead, they manipulate their programs — the Communism, the Islamism, possibly the Capitalism as well, and all other such — to assault their enemies while corralling their believers. Power has become a deeply cynical game beloved of dictators. They will say anything to direct, focus, and incite their mobs. It’s into that environment that it seems modern “war reporters” now walk. They are no longer “telling the other side of the story” — they’re either helping the other side produce their “optics” — or they’re getting whacked.

What the west may do in conflict is adhere convincingly through doctrine to their own arguably superior ethical and moral codes.

Would only that there were that “Hail Dorothy” moment when the Wicked Witch has melted and the army subjected to the poor bitch is found to have no complaints.


Related in Titles

Committee to Protect Journalists

Dictators Without Borders

Murder Without Borders

The First Casualty


BackChannels trope regarding dictatorships —

“Different Talks — Same Walk!“



–33–

 

FTAC: Absent of Boundaries; Absent of Conscience: Dictatorship

17 Friday Nov 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, China, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Europe, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, North America, Political Psychology, Politics, Russia

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Active Measures, agitprop, aristocracy, authoritarianism, Chinese and Russian Totalitarianism, dictatorship, Global Information Space, information space, information warfare, malignant narcissism, oligarchy, propaganda

The prompt from my conversational partner: “. . . to solve these problems, we need cooperation, not war. And the main question is why does the government not understand this?”

The response:

Paper, scissors, stone,  and “paper” (money) covers and suffocates all beneath it while “liberating” those who have it and, perhaps (I don’t want to find out!), those who might believe themselves above it – or those of merely modest material ambitions.

My personal approach has been “Money Matters!” but is not everything; however, and this especially with our health care industry, there are forces producing polices I can’t field, and of course that inspires a yet impotent resentment.

Our government should be Christian, good-willed, and muscular (academic term “muscular Christianity” works in this regard), but it’s bending toward the criminals in the great mansions and penthouse suites, and I’ not talking about Bill Gates or most “plutocrats” but rather those who believe there are no boundaries between their perfect embodiment of the “isness” (I will find the word, literally) of their state and themselves. The businesses, the courts, the military and paramilitary elements, and legislatures are all theirs to exploit and manipulate on behalf of their preferred . . . associates. That’s dictatorship.

Let me see if I can find the word for existence as the authentic expression of spirit . . . .

“Esse” and “essence” were not what I was looking for but for an esoteric term having to do with the being of the thing within the thing. Believing in the singularity of person and state (as Ceausescu had; as Erdogan and Putin do) may comprise part of the messianic delusion suffered by dictators but unfortunately visited (with fist in the velvet glove, at best) on their subjected people.

I’m finding my reading of Russian history steeped in punitive control, and that doesn’t come with interest in “the masses” half so much as in the developing and sustaining of wealth beneficial to the image and power of the central figure in power.


Related, Recent, and Singular

On today’s Chinese and Russian totalitarian aggression in Global Information Space:

Walker, Christopher and Jessice Ludwig.  “The Meaning of Sharp Power”.  Foreign Affairs, November 16, 2017.

BackChannels maintains a brief bibliography of accessible and general volumes on Russia’s political history in the “Russian Section” of this blog.  For greater insight into the authoritarian-patrimonial experience of the political culture from the 9th Century forward, I would recommend Richard Pipes’ fine history, Russia Under the Old Regime.

Punitive control: in geopolitical space and in the various ages of the “rule of the strong”, including for Russia and surrounds domination by the Mongols, the power to control space produces arrangements with in to produce wealth.  Pipes’ — in the above cited volume — steps off with economic variance in the productivity of Russian land compared to soil fertility to the south to explain motivation for the social arrangements that would ensue in history and effect Russian political arrangements to this day.  What Pipes appears to find essential — and what most concerns this blog — is the prince’s (or equivalent or greater in power) considering the ownership of property and persons the same thing.  Worse — the test of sovereignty becomes the permit to engage in the wholesale destruction of both!

Now have another look at Assad’s destruction of Syria and incubation of ISIS as a useful foil and political tool (“Reflexive Control’s” little helper) as well as the very emblem of the worst of the worst of destructive forces.

Who has the control of it?

Moscow-Tehran.


Note: keyword tags are related this time but not directly addressed except beneath the category that is “Dictatorship” and its essential and unfailingly malign narcissism.

–33–

FTAC: A Comment and Declaration on Induced Political Confusion (I Blame Moscow)

19 Thursday Oct 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

information space, information warfare, political language

I would cite the confusion and perversion of political language — what is “Left”; what is “Right”: how do gradations work? What is the new political typology — as very much a part of “active measures”.

When we most need to think categorically and straight, we can’t.

In the modern political ecology, I am liberal, humanist, moderate, and social, and yet by the latest in impression, I have no identification with the Left / Hard Left of the, for example, “J Street” type. They ain’t my people.


Active Measures.

KGB Theater.

Yuri Andropov.

How many of my fellow Americans have the knowledge of or sense for each term?

Whatever the answer may be, it’s certain at this moment to be fewer than would be helpful for democracy.

–33–

Also in Media: J. Michael Waller-“Weaponizing Ridicule” | Military Review | September-October 2017

01 Friday Sep 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Philology, Political Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

dictatorship, diminishment, humor, information warfare, malignant narcissism, narcissistic mortification, political psychology, totalitarianism

Dictators, terrorists, and totalitarian ideologues, almost by definition, cannot tolerate being laughed at. Nor can anyone with an inflated ego and thin skin. Ridicule is their Achilles’ heel. And, humor is a robust underground phenomenon in any society. The Soviet leadership was so fearful of humor that the KGB had what Russian comedian Yakov Smirnov called a “Department of Jokes.” That was not the real name of the department, which had a more anodyne designation as a subunit of the KGB’s political enforcement section, the Fifth Chief Directorate, but Smirnov’s nickname for it made the KGB look all the more weak and bizarre (although all jokes still had to be KGB approved).6

Source: Waller-Weaponizing Ridicule

–33–

Live at Posting: Atlantic Council, “Disinformation Week”

29 Thursday Jun 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

21st Century Feudalism, 21st Century Neo-Feudalism, Atlantic Council, disinformation, Framing, information warfare, KGB methods, Moscow, Russia, Soviet / post-Soviet politics

How Putin’s Moscow and its information  warfare work.

Related on BackChannels: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/23/moscows-rules-a-module/

–33–

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Hillel the Elder

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Oriana Fallaci
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Talmud 7:16 as Quoted by Rishon Rishon in 2004
Qohelet Raba, 7:16

אכזרי סוף שנעשה אכזרי במקום רחמן

Kol mi shena`asa rahaman bimqom akhzari Sof shena`asa akhzari bimqom rahaman

All who are made to be compassionate in the place of the cruel In the end are made to be cruel in the place of the compassionate.

More colloquially translated: "Those who are kind to the cruel, in the end will be cruel to the kind."

Online Source: http://www.rishon-rishon.com/archives/044412.php

Abraham Isaac Kook

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Heinrich Heine
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Simon Wiesenthal
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Anti-Semitism / Anti-Zionism = Signal of Fascism

I may suggest that anti-Zionism / anti-Semitism are signal (a little bit) of fascist urges, and the Left -- I'm an old liberal: I know my heart -- has been vulnerable to manipulation by what appears to me as a "Red Brown Green Alliance" driven by a handful of powerful autocrats intent on sustaining a medieval worldview in service to their own glorification. (And there I will stop).
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Those who make their followers believe absurdities may also make them commit atrocities.

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“Revisionism” is the most contemptible path that power takes to abet theft and hide shame by attempting to alter public perception of past events.

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