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Synthetic Controversy
Synthetic Controversy
Regarding modern psywar application of the divide and conquer strategy
Chapter 7: Competitive Strategy
In war, the army succeeds by deception(surprising the enemy), by moving the enemy with benefits, and by divide or concentration of forces in variation.
Sun Tzu, The Art of War
In his first Italian campaign in 1796 and 1797, Napoleon was outnumbered by nearly 20,000 troops by the Piedmontian and Hapsburg armies. He was able to defeat them by using rapid, forced advances which separated the two armies, allowing him to fight them singly.
The American Civil War provides an excellent example of the “divide and conquer” strategy with Stonewall Jackson’s Shenandoah Valley Campaign. While fielding only 17,000 men, Jackson was able to defeat three Union columns (60,000 troops) by using the difficult to terrain to ambush and fight each singly rather than facing all at once.
In warfare, dividing and conquering is a common tactic. It involves splitting the enemy forces into smaller groups, isolating them, and attacking each group separately to weaken their overall strength.
In politics, divide and conquer tactics typically involve creating divisions among opponents or within rival groups to maintain control or gain an advantage. By sowing discord, exploiting existing divisions, or creating new divisions using the method of synthetic controversies it becomes much easier to weaken opposition and consolidate power.
But how are divide and conquer tactics deployed during modern PsyWar and hybrid warfare?
In media, including legacy/mainstream, social and other alternative media, controversy sells. And it often seems like all media has become much more about sales than about sharing factual information. Controversy generates clicks, re-posting, and message amplification. The controversy can focus on either a substantial or a trivial issue. In modern PsyWar, with its emphasis on censorship, propaganda, and psychological shaping or manipulation, facts and reality are increasingly irrelevant. It is no longer necessary for the controversy to be fact-based…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Video from 1947 – Don’t Be a Sucker
This old film from 1947 serves as a warning — do not allow the government to divide us.
The video discusses how the people came together as the German people until Hitler came to power. The people were then divided by race and religion, separated, and no longer allowed to identify as simply “German.”
“If those people stuck together, if they had protected each other, they could have resisted the Nazi threat. Together they would have been strong, but once they allowed themselves to be split apart, they were helpless. When that first minority lost out, everybody lost out. They made the mistake of gambling with other people’s freedom,” the narrator said.
“You have a right to be who you are and say what you think because here we have personal freedom. These are not just fancy words, this is a practical and priceless way of living. But we must work it. We must guard everyone’s liberty or we will lose our own.”
How to Beat Internet Trolls
How to Beat Internet Trolls
In Order To Beat ‘Em, You Have to Know Their Game …
In order to beat Internet trolls, you have to know their strategies.
Below are 17 common games played by trolls to disrupt our power to learn, inform, and organize on the web …
1. Threaten those who speak out, to try to intimidate them and their readers into silence.
2. Misquote the Bible to pretend that God commands us to be obedient slaves to authority … even if the powers-that-be are downright tyrants.
3. Start a partisan divide-and-conquer fight or otherwise push emotional buttons to sow discord and ensure that cooperation is thwarted. Get people fighting against each other instead of the 3corrupt powers-that-be. Use baseless caricatures to rile everyone up. For example, start a religious war whenever possible using stereotypes like “all Jews are selfish”, “all Christians are crazy” or “all Muslims are terrorists”. Accuse the author of being a gay, pro-abortion limp-wristed wimp or being a fundamentalist pro-war hick when the discussion has nothing to do with abortion, sexuality, religion, war or region. Appeal to people’s basest prejudices and biases. And (as explained by H. Michael Sweeney’s 25 Rules of Disinformation) push the author into a defensive posture:
Sidetrack opponents with name calling and ridicule … Associate opponents with unpopular titles such as “kooks”, “right-wing”, “liberal”, “left-wing”, “terrorists”, “conspiracy buffs”, “radicals”, “militia”, “racists”, “religious fanatics”, “sexual deviates”, and so forth. This makes others shrink from support out of fear of gaining the same label, and you avoid dealing with issues.
(The person trying to smear reputation may not be a random knucklehead … he may, in fact, be a government agent, or a member of the group he’s smearing.)
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
