This is not Propaganda

Peter Pomerantsev

As the old joke goes, ‘Truth will prevail’, but no one said whose truth! I think if there is one book you should read to understand the sociopolitical information warfare on social media happening daily, this is it. From Mexico to Manila and London to Kiev, there is a playbook that is being followed to distort reality. The same tools that were originally used to create revolutions are now being used by autocrats to gain and hold power. More information was supposed to be more power, but it also provided new ways to silence dissent. Censorship through noise. And where did it all begin? In Russia. Peter Pomerantsev has a first-hand experience of how it all started. Forty years ago, his parents were forced out of Kiev (then part of the USSR), and their journey since then serves as a great narrative guide. 

The book is divided into six parts. The first part uses examples like Rappler vs Duterte (Philippines’ version of Trump in the US and Bolsonaro in Brazil) and Lyudmilla Savchuk, who exposed Russia’s troll farms, to show how new instruments of information are being used to break people. Russia denies connection with the troll armies, like every other state – Turkey, Bahrain, Azerbaijan etc – that uses similar means. 

The second moves to Latin America and EU to show how entire resistance movements have been dismantled. Clever rulers have found ways to remove the clarity around the ‘enemy’ by coopting the language and tactics as those who fight oppression. Srđa Popović knows a thing or two about the original playbook. A Serbian political activist, he was a leader of the student movement Otpor!, which was instrumental in toppling Serbian president Slobodan Milošević. He has since then trained activists in Georgia, Ukraine and Iran. It’s an irony that his manuals and courses are being used against the very purpose for which they were created, and it’s now come down to an arms race of tactics and technology between guys like Alberto Escorcia and Mexico’s corrupt politicians. Russia invaded Estonia in 2007 without setting foot in it by mimicking the entire playbook and using Estonia’s own pro-Russian citizens in protests. Another trick is to state that genuine protesters are being paid by the US. From Facebook to Discord there are people being recruited and systematic strategies being used to undermine pro-democracy efforts.

The third part is on how one nation is able to ‘invade’ another without real contact by blurring the idea of war vs peace and domestic vs international. War is no longer in just physical space, it is hybrid, non-linear, full-spectrum (all terms used by experts) and is focused on decaying the opposing group/country from within. Information warfare is the first play and the military follows, if required. Russia’s attack on Ukraine in 2014 is the classic example. “Faced with wildly conflicting versions of reality, people selected the one that suited them.”

The fourth explains how, without a tangible idea of the progress and future, anything goes! When Putin invaded Crimea, he first said there were no Russian soldiers there, and then later casually said there were. Replaced one reality with another. Another example – 76% of Trump’s statements in the election were mostly false or untrue! The case made for these distortions is that objectivity anyway doesn’t exist. Related to this is the glorification of the past. ‘The twentieth century began with utopia and ended with nostalgia. The twenty-first century is not characterised by the search for newness, but by the proliferation of nostalgias’. And in the era of ‘soft facts’, we can know everything happening in Aleppo and pretend to not see it.

Pomerantsev sets a prelude for Chapter 5 with his own confused identity in childhood – British or Russian? When old notions of identity around demographics and religion get blurred, all politics now revolves around ‘identity’ they can create and use for their own ends. The story of Rashad, one of the founders of Hizb in the UK, who was early into this game but now works to dismantle it, is fascinating. This part also has the working of the Brexit campaign. Eighty types of targeted messages for 20 million people. Animal rights, environmentalism, gay rights, potholes all somehow made to connect with Brexit. And it all began in Russia. Starts by Pavlovsky for Yeltsin, but polished by Putin. 

The final part is about the future – China, but begins with Nigel Oakes, founder of SCL, whose game was repurposed by one of its other founders to create Cambridge Analytica. China is well on its way to target people with demographic, psychographic and behavioural patterns. The book ends with a brilliant closure – of the subject as well as the personal history.

While the wiring is clear, what remains to be seen is the second order consequences of this combination of trolls, psyops, dark ads, bots, soft facts etc. Not just at an individual or societal level, but at a species level. The book is extremely well-researched and has a narrative and language that is easily accessible. The interweaving of the personal narrative is at once sharp and seamless. This is a book I’ll hugely recommend. 

P.S. I wish he had also covered India too, the playbook is being religiously followed here!