A recent article in The New York Times broke with current conventional pack journalism and covered the long history of CIA meddling in foreign elections.
The February 17, 2018, article, titled, Russia Isn’t the Only One Meddling in Elections. We Do It, Too, authored by Scott Shane reported the US has interfered in foreign elections for decades.
However, when the US does it we do it for "altruistic purposes" and when Russia interferes in foreign elections they do it for purely malevolent purposes. The belief that American interference in global elections was to promote liberal democracy could not be further from the truth.
“We’ve been doing this kind of thing since the C.I.A. was created in 1947,” said Mr. Johnson, now at the University of Georgia. “We’ve used posters, pamphlets, mailers, banners — you name it. We’ve planted false information in foreign newspapers. We’ve used what the British call ‘King George’s cavalry’: suitcases of cash.”
The United States’ departure from democratic ideals sometimes went much further. The C.I.A. helped overthrow elected leaders in Iran and Guatemala in the 1950s and backed violent coups in several other countries in the 1960s. It plotted assassinations and supported brutal anti-Communist governments in Latin America, Africa and Asia. source
America is no stranger to interfering in other countries. The U.S. has attempted to influence elections around the world for years. But when it comes to disinformation Russia is in a class all by itself with unmatched scale and sophistication. And unlike the U.S. with its myriad of investigations, Russia does it without even a shred of public or historical accountability.
There's actually a playbook that's been around for a very long time on how to create disinformation and is used by disinformation analysts to find fake news.
By knowing what the rules to this ugly game are you can better identify fake news for what it really is and not buy into the trap designed to divide us.
The 7 Commandments Of Disinformation
These 7 rules are a time-tested, step-by-step recipe for creating the perfect fake news story.
Rule 1 Look For Cracks
Look for cracks in the target society, social divisions you can exploit and wedge open.
They look for economic, social, demographic, linguistic, regional, ethnic, any sort of division. Look for ways to emphasize those divisions and make people lose trust in one another.
They look for those types of weaknesses and instead of trying to make it better they try to make everything worse.
Rule 2 The Big Lie
Create a big, bold lie. Something so outrageous no one could possibly believe it was made up and also so egregious if they could get people to believe it would be totally damning.
Rule 3 Kernel Of Truth
Wrap that lie around a kernel of truth. Propaganda is most effective when there's a little bit of truth in it. The most successful operations of this kind contain some truthful element so that the disinformation is eventually accepted as a whole.
Rule 4 Conceal Your Hand
Conceal your hand making it seem like the story came from somewhere else. When people start searching for the origin of the story make sure they never realize you started it. Always have someone else publish it first.
Rule 5 The Useful Idiot
Find yourself a useful idiot, essentially people you can identify who unwittingly take your message and push it into the target audience of the population you want to reach.
and what happens when those pesky truth-seekers try to debunk your fake story? Then you resort to;
Rule 6 *Deny Everything
Deny, deny, deny even if the truth is obvious. This works so well because they have realized that our attention span is quite short so denying everything usually buys them enough time until the next news cycle comes and the people will forget.
Finally, and this is a really important one.
Rule 7 The Long Game
Play the long game. Be willing to play the long game and put large resources into things that may not bear fruit for many years to come. The accumulation of these operations over a long period of time will result in a major political impact.
If you think about it as a drip on a rock, today the drip doesn't have any impact. If that drip hits the rock for a long period of time eventually there will be a hole in the rock.
These 7 simple rules were a powerful weapon for the KGB and they applied them again and again and again, but then something came along which changed the game entirely.
The internet has brought anonymity, ubiquity, and immediacy in combinations that we didn't have in the era of telex machines, shortwave radio, and printing presses.
During those times a disinformation campaign could reach 100,000 people depending on the paper's circulation it was printed in. Now, with the help of the internet, it can reach millions.
Now that you know how a fake news story is constructed you can see how effective it really is.
The big takeaway here is question more; answer less. 80% of the news coverage is more than likely excellent coverage and because 80% of the time the media are doing good journalism, but when 20% of the time they are not it enables people to question the validity of any story.
The goal of all of these fake news stories is to shift the balance of world powers by turning western countries on themselves. We are facing sophisticated weapons designed to bring down democracies from the inside, just as the KGB envisioned all those years ago.
Fighting wars on the battlefield is the most stupid, costly, and primitive way of fighting a war. The highest art of warfare is not to fight at all, but to subvert anything of value in your enemies country. Anything.
Turn white against black, old against young, wealthy against poor. As long as it disturbs society and cuts the moral fiber of a nation it is effective. Then when everything is subverted and the country is disoriented and confused, when it is demoralized and destabilized you just take the country when it is in crisis.
The next time you hear or read a story that shows the telltale signs of dividing us as a people, think of these 7 rules and see if you are being lied to. Just because a story is all over the news makes it popular, but it does not make it true.
My friends share stories with me all the time that with just a little research can be debunked easily, but they share it without even checking before hitting the share button. Before sharing a story on Facebook do a little research and find out where the story comes from and you can do your part to stop spreading fake news.
For further reading on the subject check out The 25 Rules of Disinformation
