The Enemy in your Pocket
Capital Thinking • Issue #1126 • View online
Late in the Revolutionary War, Benjamin Franklin published a report detailing how the British army had enlisted Native American tribes to commit atrocities against settlers.
One tribe, he reported, had provided its British paymasters with 102 scalps, including 18 marked with flame — the scalps of children whose parents had been burned alive. The story appeared in the Boston Independent Chronicle and was picked up by the English press, dampening support for the war.
Historical footnote: Franklin made the whole thing up.
TikTok: Trojan Stallion
Scott Galloway | No Mercy/No Malice:
Made up the reporting, forged the copy of the paper it was “published” in. Franklin wasn’t even in Boston — he published his fake paper in Paris.
Propaganda and Pessimism
We tend to think of propaganda along the lines of what Franklin did — falsehoods designed to smear an opponent or build up a leader.
Mussolini claimed he could only shave with Italian razors, because his beard was too tough for flimsy American steel. The U.S. invaded Iraq because Colin Powell assured us, waving a vial, that Saddam had “weapons of mass destruction.”
However, the state-of-the-dark-arts strategy is to destabilize opponents from within, supporting divisive figures and topics, promoting messages of fraud and corruption in a “firehose of falsehoods” that atomizes the enemy (the citizenry).
Volume and tone are everything, specifics are irrelevant. It works best when the firehose has no visible connection to the water supply.
Just like attack aircraft and bombers, propaganda has another new feature that makes it more lethal: stealth. It’s the propaganda of influence without fingerprints, leaving people with the illusion that they’re making their own decisions.
In Western media, messaging has gone stealth with anonymous accounts, bots, and outlets whose mission isn’t news, but shaping the news to buttress a predetermined narrative. Mental health is in the news today, as it’s being used as a weapon of mass distraction by actors who want to shift the conversation away from gun control.
“News” is increasingly about persuasion instead of illumination. Which means what most of us believe is news isn’t really news.
“News” is increasingly about persuasion instead of illumination. Which means what most of us believe is news isn’t really news.
The key to a sting (con) is that the mark never believes they’ve been conned.
Just as 80% of people think they’re above-average drivers, few people believe they’ve been manipulated at a cost to their country. The reality: Half of us are bad drivers.
Ben Franklin, way ahead of his time, didn’t put his name anywhere on his forged newspaper and included a (forged) letter from real-life naval hero John Paul Jones.
Vladmir Putin is a seventh-level wizard at this.
He has poured state resources into high- and low-tech means to pit Americans and Europeans against one another, with only a fraction positioned as official state messaging, or even connected to Russia.
His objective isn’t to win an argument, it’s to defeat our will. To generate pessimism, not popularity. And the launch vehicle for this weapon is the guy/gal next to you in the foxhole (your neighbor, aunt, etc.).
Mendacious
The most mendacious enemies hide in plain sight. And this enemy is in your pocket.
The most mendacious enemies hide in plain sight. And this enemy is in your pocket
Social media now captures and holds more of our attention than all traditional news outlets. The hand that holds the social graph has its grip on how the next generation of Americans and Europeans feel about capitalism, democracy, and BTS.