Vocabulary Lesson

Active Measures

Disinformation

Fake News

Hybrid Warfare

KGB Theater

Information Warfare

Kompromat

Orwellian

Perceptual Control

Reflexive Control

Troll Farm

Now there’s New Speak indeed!

And much better than “Newspeak” (revisit Orwell): how dumb I / you / and we may be may be entirely up to ourselves!

We may wish to become aware, however, of our own “dumbing down” through allocation and curriculum priorities in general education and perhaps through our own penchant for entertainment without much critical demand on our own part except to be . . . well, entertained far more than informed or otherwise intellectually engaged.

That’s okay, of course

Allowing ourselves to be entertained is part of how we retreat from other engagements and find rest and restoration for the mind.

Still, perhaps all good citizens would do well to apprise themselves of the following concepts in greater depth as we globally ride out squawking of the discreditable, dishonest, disingenuous, despicable, and entirely disreputable (scorecard: D) among the world’s politicians and their hacks.

---

Active Measures: from Russia with the high-handed contempt associated with imperious narcissistic state leadership personality, think of “active measures” as the full suite of assaults on the cultural and intellectual framework of the liberal democracies of the world (and nix the “illiberal democracies”, even if members of NATO, for there ain’t no such thing as an “illiberal democracy”).

So there.

🙂

Active Measures Primer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_measures

---

Disinformation: what comes of defaming, framing, lying, misguiding, spinning.

Primer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinformation

KGB defector providing best insight into the dark art of creating and sustaining mass illusions: Ion Mihai Pacepa.  On BackChannels: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/28/a-short-page-referencing-works-by-or-associated-with-ion-mihai-pacepa/

---

Fake News: banner term relating well to the American homily that he who points the finger . . . .

Related Online

https://www.cjr.org/
http://ethics.npr.org/
http://handbook.reuters.com/index.php?title=Integrity
https://www.poynter.org/
https://www.publicintegrity.org/
https://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp
http://www.timewarner.com/company/corporate-responsibility/telling-the-worlds-stories/journalistic-integrity

https://www.britannica.com/topic/agitprop
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_measures

State Controlled Press History

https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007655
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-17840134

---

Hybrid Warfare: every form of sub-nuclear and sub-conventional warfare that might be (is) launched against a target (like Ukraine) so as not to resemble “direct engagement”.  From the fielding and infiltrating of agent provocateur to mixing armed men without insignia (“Little Green Men”) in with partisan recruits to denying aggression at all . . . it’s all perfectly surreal bullying and combative bullshit that must draw a firm response from the land and people (and state) so viciously assaulted.

---

KGB Theater: political events, especially warfare, treated as a show one may produce and control for the delectation of military and political elites and the misguidance of the masses.

Reference on BackChannels: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/12/09/syria-assad-isil-background/

---

Information Warfare: if you’re here, you’re in it.

---

Kompromat: see online “Felix Sater“.  Applicable American homily: “Sleep with dogs — wake up with fleas.”  If in office, wake up under investigation.

Primer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kompromat

Update: related on BackChannels: “Kompromat – A Compilation“.

---

Orwellian: what happens when powerful political elites rule the world so as to forestall change, manage war as if it were a fireplace, dispense with the very idea of human dignity, and wreck forever even the hope of freedom, free will, and the possession of integrity.

Primer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orwellian

Nifty Ted-ed —

---

Perceptual Control: political rhetoric and stagecraft produced so effectively and pervasively as to channel public perception where the politician — or, perhaps tomorrow, the “political technician” or “political technologist” — may with fair predictive capability produce effects as desired.

Fair example: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/439060/vladimir-putin-1999-russian-apartment-house-bombings-was-putin-responsible

Recommended supplemental reading: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo3617244.html

---

Reflexive Control: sneak up on someone working quietly in their own little world and say . . . “Boo!”

Fair example by way of BackChannel’s observation: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/03/11/reflexive-control-process-allahu-akbar-terrorism-new-nationalism-neo-feudalism/

There is as yet no primer for “Reflexive Control” as the same has been a term of military art involving getting one’s enemy / target to behave in a desired fashion.

As now often noted on BackChannels (or on Facebook), the technique has been used to amplify or reinstall the feudal mentality and related political processes in the EU / NATO states in order to produce the kind of world in which autocratic systems — flat out or my measures — may thrive.  In the KGB method as perceived by BackChannels makes short work of manipulating Islamic Terrorism to produce in targeted states a “New Nationalism” (strong reflexive patriotism) suited to the political absolutism of the medieval world.

---

Troll Farm: Moscow-sponsored factories for financially enslaved writers.

Related: “Ministry of Truth” – 😉

http://www.businessinsider.com/russia-internet-trolls-and-donald-trump-2016-7

https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-trolls-headquarters-media-internet-insider-account/26904157.html

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/02/putin-kremlin-inside-russian-troll-house – 4/2/2105

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_brigades

–33–