"Firehose of Falsehood" Propaganda Model

[Gilberto de Piento]

Misinformation is being used effectively in politics right now. The paper below does not address whether or not Russia is influencing US politics but rather describes the model that Russia is using and why it is difficult to counter. Although the model below is being referred to as "Russian" I see a lot of what is described being used by domestic US influencers as well, such as Trump:

Distinctive Features of the Contemporary Model
for Russian Propaganda
1. High-volume and multichannel
2. Rapid, continuous, and repetitive
3. Lacks commitment to objective reality
4. Lacks commitment to consistency.

https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/p ... _PE198.pdf

[Dragline]

Gaslighting on a grand scale with crowd psychology.

[FBeyer]

The lack of consistency is clever!
If you could easily spot what is propaganda, based on it looking like something you've seen before, pattern recognition kicks in and rejects the propaganda. If it's all over the place people will be completely unable to form a pattern unless they have an trained bullshit detector.

To quote the movie Snatch:

Sneaky fucking Russians!

[Ego]

@Gilberto, fabulous find. This should be required reading for everyone.

[almostthere]

Excellent reminder about the need to guard what enters the mind because I am not as good as I think I am at discerning objective reality.

[Papers of Indenture]

I saw this linked on Facebook and just dropped it in the Trump thread. Good read.

Read this and then watch Hypernormalisation. Might need to set aside an enitre afternoon.

I'll also drop this here. Elkus is a good strategy writer with his roots in the Boyd community.

The Strategy of (Subversive) Conflict

[Spartan_Warrior]

It is an informative article, particularly when you apply the same critical thinking toward it as any other propaganda. In reading it, I found it remarkably easy to mentally substitute the word "Russia" with "America" throughout. Compare:

"The Kremlin’s spin machine wants to portray Russia as a besieged fortress surrounded by malevolent outsiders."

"Washington's spin machine wants to portray America as a besieged fortress surrounded by malevolent outsiders."

Particularly telling that their fourth and fifth recommendations were, in layman's terms rather than their ironically manipulative couching phrases, "(pre-emptive) counter-propaganda" and "censorship".

[Gilberto de Piento]

The ribbonfarm article has a link to another good one: http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016- ... -election/.

How to Hack an Election
Andrés Sepúlveda rigged elections throughout Latin America for almost a decade. He tells his story for the first time.