Status
Available
Call number
Publication
FABER ET FABER (2020)
Description
We live in a world of influence operations run amok, where dark ads, psyops, hacks, bots, soft facts, ISIS, Putin, trolls, and Trump seek to shape our very reality. In this surreal atmosphere created to disorient us and undermine our sense of truth, we've lost not only our grip on peace and democracy--but our very notion of what those words even mean. The author takes us to the front lines of the disinformation age, where he meets Twitter revolutionaries and pop-up populists, "behavioral change" salesmen, Jihadi fanboys, Identitarians, truth cops, and many others. Forty years after his dissident parents were pursued by the KGB, Pomerantsev finds the Kremlin re-emerging as a great propaganda power. His research takes him back to Russia--but the answers he finds there are not what he expected.… (more)
Media reviews
In het boek blijven 'de grote structurele systeemfouten....vrijwel onbenoemd.
User reviews
LibraryThing member DavidWineberg
This Is Not Propaganda is an alternate history of the present, a different view of the world. There is some irony in this, because it is all about how nothing is what it seems. The reason is the information revolution, and specifically social media. All sides and all factions make their biggest
The result is so much noise that lying is not just routine but acceptable, and “no amount of proof leads to accountability” says Peter Pomerantsev in his most revealing statement. He cites Donald Trump as the poster child for getting away with absolutely anything, lying continually, backtracking, doubling down and going his own way despite laws, tradition, the Constitution, or morality. But Trump is just the tip of the iceberg in this telling.
Pomerantsev escaped the USSR as a child. His parents were persecuted for reading the wrong publications and fled to the west via a tiny program that allowed some Jewish emigration to boost the USSR’s chances in trade negotiations. He grew up in Germany and England where his father could continue the good fight, legitimately and openly, on BBC overseas radio services.
The bulk of the book reveals the extent of the noise in attempts to manipulate the populous. He cites the stated strategy in Russia towards other nations: “The population doesn’t even feel it is being acted upon. So, the state doesn’t switch on its self-defense mechanisms.” This comes from the actual manual, published in 2011, Information-Psychological War Operations. It is one of the bases of Russia’s massive and ubiquitous intervention machine. It fills the internet with lies in numerous countries, in countless forums, employing thousands to publish drivel continuously. The result is the locals can’t trust anything they see, and lose faith in their institutions, their leaders and their countries. That is precisely the goal.
It’s not just Russia, either. The whole world is onto this game and pushes for everyone to employ it. “On parts of Reddit and 4Chan,” Pomerantsev says, “anonymous administrators provide crash courses in mass persuasion that in the Cold War would have been the provenance of secret services and their civilian psy-ops.” Misinforamtion and disinformation have been democratized to do-it-yourself universality.
On the inside, the process is called advanced meme warfare and Successful Guerrilla PR. While it once applied to launching new products, today it is ideologies that are the leading users. The signal-to-noise ratio has gone negative on a global scale.
Pomerantsev also tackles the problem of people all over the world being converted to Islamic fundamentalism. It is of course a conscious, organized and aggressive campaign. It employs the same tactics: find a topic that resonates because of all the confusion, exploit that weakness to get a foot in the door, and convert the lead to a sale.
There are people on the other side as well. Pomerantsev cites a Muslim school chum who went through the whole process and now tries to salvage lives. He has become a globally respected expert is Islamic teachings and teachers worldwide, and calls a lie a lie when he sees it. And he sees it all the time. He tells converts that “ISIS is to Islam what adultery is to marriage.” Sometimes that works.
The book weaves the present ocean of lies and manipulation with his parents’ voyage of escape from Soviet-controlled Ukraine to careers in the west, speaking to those left behind. These are Peter Pomerantsev’s credentials. He has leveraged them, followed in his parents’ footsteps in the media, and has made himself an expert in global media manipulation, amply demonstrated in this book.
One large weakness in This Is Not Propaganda is the credit. Pomerantsev gives credit to all kinds of claimants. One firm took credit for the Brexit referendum “victory” by claiming to have offered so many vague promises that there was something for everyone. The truth is, only 24% of eligible Britons voted Leave. There are similar claims for one man vaulting Putin to power because the data said Russians wanted a superspy as leader. Corruption played no part in this telling. Then there is Trump and the Facebook Cambridge Analytica scandal. It is not only inaccurate but silly to say these single efforts turned the tide of history. Correlation does not imply causation, as we keep forgetting. Things aren’t as simple as claiming to have changed millions of minds with Big Data. Were it that straightforward, every company in the world be using it to sell product, since that’s where the theory and the methodology originated.
He even wrongly claims China won minds all over southeast Asia into thinking all those tiny rock islands in the South China Sea have always belonged to China. That the war of ideas is more powerful than the wars of soldiers. That the direct result was that China never had to fire a shot in their takeover. The simple truth is none of the countries involved was willing to declare war on China to get their rock back. In taking over the islands, China turned them into military ports and landing strips, imposing an overwhelming military presence and advantage for itself. It was naked aggression. It changed no hearts and no minds in the process.
Then, the conclusion doesn’t go nearly far enough (It is a tribute to his parents). From his own description, what has happened is that we have all come full circle. Before there was mass communication, knowledge was scarce, and proof even moreso. Today, lies rule. Anyone can say anything and it doesn’t matter, be they world leaders or teenage trolls. The result is the same: we know little and can trust less of what we choose to believe of it all. For all of information technology and the global village, as truth seekers we are no farther ahead.
Welcome back to the Dark Ages, Facebook edition.
David Wineberg
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efforts misinforming others, while calling their own to glory. Some win by simply sowing confusion in general, and no topic is too trivial to abuse. The book is a survey of this disease all over the world, employed by politicians, religions and haters. The result is so much noise that lying is not just routine but acceptable, and “no amount of proof leads to accountability” says Peter Pomerantsev in his most revealing statement. He cites Donald Trump as the poster child for getting away with absolutely anything, lying continually, backtracking, doubling down and going his own way despite laws, tradition, the Constitution, or morality. But Trump is just the tip of the iceberg in this telling.
Pomerantsev escaped the USSR as a child. His parents were persecuted for reading the wrong publications and fled to the west via a tiny program that allowed some Jewish emigration to boost the USSR’s chances in trade negotiations. He grew up in Germany and England where his father could continue the good fight, legitimately and openly, on BBC overseas radio services.
The bulk of the book reveals the extent of the noise in attempts to manipulate the populous. He cites the stated strategy in Russia towards other nations: “The population doesn’t even feel it is being acted upon. So, the state doesn’t switch on its self-defense mechanisms.” This comes from the actual manual, published in 2011, Information-Psychological War Operations. It is one of the bases of Russia’s massive and ubiquitous intervention machine. It fills the internet with lies in numerous countries, in countless forums, employing thousands to publish drivel continuously. The result is the locals can’t trust anything they see, and lose faith in their institutions, their leaders and their countries. That is precisely the goal.
It’s not just Russia, either. The whole world is onto this game and pushes for everyone to employ it. “On parts of Reddit and 4Chan,” Pomerantsev says, “anonymous administrators provide crash courses in mass persuasion that in the Cold War would have been the provenance of secret services and their civilian psy-ops.” Misinforamtion and disinformation have been democratized to do-it-yourself universality.
On the inside, the process is called advanced meme warfare and Successful Guerrilla PR. While it once applied to launching new products, today it is ideologies that are the leading users. The signal-to-noise ratio has gone negative on a global scale.
Pomerantsev also tackles the problem of people all over the world being converted to Islamic fundamentalism. It is of course a conscious, organized and aggressive campaign. It employs the same tactics: find a topic that resonates because of all the confusion, exploit that weakness to get a foot in the door, and convert the lead to a sale.
There are people on the other side as well. Pomerantsev cites a Muslim school chum who went through the whole process and now tries to salvage lives. He has become a globally respected expert is Islamic teachings and teachers worldwide, and calls a lie a lie when he sees it. And he sees it all the time. He tells converts that “ISIS is to Islam what adultery is to marriage.” Sometimes that works.
The book weaves the present ocean of lies and manipulation with his parents’ voyage of escape from Soviet-controlled Ukraine to careers in the west, speaking to those left behind. These are Peter Pomerantsev’s credentials. He has leveraged them, followed in his parents’ footsteps in the media, and has made himself an expert in global media manipulation, amply demonstrated in this book.
One large weakness in This Is Not Propaganda is the credit. Pomerantsev gives credit to all kinds of claimants. One firm took credit for the Brexit referendum “victory” by claiming to have offered so many vague promises that there was something for everyone. The truth is, only 24% of eligible Britons voted Leave. There are similar claims for one man vaulting Putin to power because the data said Russians wanted a superspy as leader. Corruption played no part in this telling. Then there is Trump and the Facebook Cambridge Analytica scandal. It is not only inaccurate but silly to say these single efforts turned the tide of history. Correlation does not imply causation, as we keep forgetting. Things aren’t as simple as claiming to have changed millions of minds with Big Data. Were it that straightforward, every company in the world be using it to sell product, since that’s where the theory and the methodology originated.
He even wrongly claims China won minds all over southeast Asia into thinking all those tiny rock islands in the South China Sea have always belonged to China. That the war of ideas is more powerful than the wars of soldiers. That the direct result was that China never had to fire a shot in their takeover. The simple truth is none of the countries involved was willing to declare war on China to get their rock back. In taking over the islands, China turned them into military ports and landing strips, imposing an overwhelming military presence and advantage for itself. It was naked aggression. It changed no hearts and no minds in the process.
Then, the conclusion doesn’t go nearly far enough (It is a tribute to his parents). From his own description, what has happened is that we have all come full circle. Before there was mass communication, knowledge was scarce, and proof even moreso. Today, lies rule. Anyone can say anything and it doesn’t matter, be they world leaders or teenage trolls. The result is the same: we know little and can trust less of what we choose to believe of it all. For all of information technology and the global village, as truth seekers we are no farther ahead.
Welcome back to the Dark Ages, Facebook edition.
David Wineberg
Show Less
LibraryThing member fegolac
This book is a good introduction on current-day information warfare and how it affects pretty much everything, from governments to our daily lives. It's a bit Russia-centric, not just because Russia plays a large role in the information wars, but also because Peter Pomerantsev sprinkles the book
I thoroughly enjoyed the stories and the anecdotes but even as a non-expert, I can't say I've gained much insight. Pomerantsev's analyses never go much beyond what his subjects tell him. More in-depth research would've of course made the book much longer, but I think the superficial treatment weakens the arguments somewhat. The section on Cambridge Analytica is particularly bad: he essentially reproduces the company's claims on their algorithms and methods, but there's not a lot of real evidence of their effectiveness.
From reading this, my own interpretation is that there's so much psyops these days that looking for more information will only make it harder for you to believe in anything, and this leads you into complete cynicism or misplaced rage.
Some bits I enjoyed: the concept of "manufacturing consensus", done by using bots or trolls to create discourse online that make you change your beliefs on what the mainstream opinion is; the idea of winning in politics by getting your opponent to use your language (which I had seen before in Metaphors We Live By); propaganda as the centerpiece of conflict (military operations nowadays play second fiddle to the information war, rather than the other way around); the way the right wing has coopted leftist social movements' rejection of objectivity and created a reality that favors them.
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with stories of his family (and in particular his father) under the Soviet Union. He also meets with several people all over the globe who have anecdotes of their own battles.I thoroughly enjoyed the stories and the anecdotes but even as a non-expert, I can't say I've gained much insight. Pomerantsev's analyses never go much beyond what his subjects tell him. More in-depth research would've of course made the book much longer, but I think the superficial treatment weakens the arguments somewhat. The section on Cambridge Analytica is particularly bad: he essentially reproduces the company's claims on their algorithms and methods, but there's not a lot of real evidence of their effectiveness.
From reading this, my own interpretation is that there's so much psyops these days that looking for more information will only make it harder for you to believe in anything, and this leads you into complete cynicism or misplaced rage.
Some bits I enjoyed: the concept of "manufacturing consensus", done by using bots or trolls to create discourse online that make you change your beliefs on what the mainstream opinion is; the idea of winning in politics by getting your opponent to use your language (which I had seen before in Metaphors We Live By); propaganda as the centerpiece of conflict (military operations nowadays play second fiddle to the information war, rather than the other way around); the way the right wing has coopted leftist social movements' rejection of objectivity and created a reality that favors them.
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LibraryThing member altonmann
One of three books that I would recommend to get a better understanding of the slippery reality that we inhabit today: The Attention Merchants by Tim Wu, Hate Inc. by Matt Taibbi and this fine book by Peter Pomerantsev. The internet has not only delivered us an overload of information but has also
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created bubbles or artificial realities tailored to the emotional hot buttons of social network participants (ie. nearly everyone) Chapter headings such as Pop Up People and Soft Facts suggest the nature of the disease which has infected nearly every culture and society. Pomerantsev examines Estonia, England (where he currently resides), The Phillipines, China, Russia and the Ukraine (where he was born) with frequent parallels drawn to our recent experience in the US. He deftly interweaves the story of his parents who were expelled from Russia (when Pomerantsev was a child) for reading the wrong “subversive” books. Well worth your attention. Show Less
LibraryThing member PDCRead
The nations of the world always seem to be at war, if it is not a hot war, then it is a cold war, but now we seem to be in a virtual war. But how do you find the people who are behind the denial of service attacks, who are responsible for trolling those that decide to make a stand against the
What is truth in this modern age of fake news and disinformation? It is like we are living in a reimagined version of 1984, and Pomerantsev is well placed to see what is happening. Originally from the Soviet Union, he was deported with his dissident parents, Igor and Lina and ended up living in the UK. The time that they spent there and the ‘truth’ that they were fed on a daily basis under that regime showed him just what a state could do to manipulate everything that we saw and heard. The Russians are now doing to the rest of the world what they have inflicted on their population for decades.
A lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on. – Terry Pratchett
We may have the world at our fingertips thanks to Google, but how do you know what you are reading is true or not? The institutions that we once could trust have become sullied by accusations of fake news. Social media has become the echo chamber where people amplify these untruths and anyone attempting to make a stand against this is often drowned out in the noise generated by the trolls. To stand out in these places people take more and more extreme views. Truth is manipulated and twisted in ways that you could not imagine.
I thought his first book was slightly better written than this one, but that really does not underline the impact that this book should have on the wider discussions on political discourse and social media influence. The Bot and Troll farms that he mentions are just terrifying, not only in what they are doing at the moment but also their potential to disrupt the very foundation of our democracies. The West may have won the cold war but will it win the virtual war in cyberspace… 3.5 stars
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common views and the physical locations of the bot farms that have sprung up.What is truth in this modern age of fake news and disinformation? It is like we are living in a reimagined version of 1984, and Pomerantsev is well placed to see what is happening. Originally from the Soviet Union, he was deported with his dissident parents, Igor and Lina and ended up living in the UK. The time that they spent there and the ‘truth’ that they were fed on a daily basis under that regime showed him just what a state could do to manipulate everything that we saw and heard. The Russians are now doing to the rest of the world what they have inflicted on their population for decades.
A lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on. – Terry Pratchett
We may have the world at our fingertips thanks to Google, but how do you know what you are reading is true or not? The institutions that we once could trust have become sullied by accusations of fake news. Social media has become the echo chamber where people amplify these untruths and anyone attempting to make a stand against this is often drowned out in the noise generated by the trolls. To stand out in these places people take more and more extreme views. Truth is manipulated and twisted in ways that you could not imagine.
I thought his first book was slightly better written than this one, but that really does not underline the impact that this book should have on the wider discussions on political discourse and social media influence. The Bot and Troll farms that he mentions are just terrifying, not only in what they are doing at the moment but also their potential to disrupt the very foundation of our democracies. The West may have won the cold war but will it win the virtual war in cyberspace… 3.5 stars
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LibraryThing member davidroche
The Gordon Burn Prize always throws up an interesting shortlist and an intriguing winner, and this year’s is no exception, and is particularly relevant and suitable for calamitous 2020. This Is Not Propaganda (Faber & Faber) by Peter Pomerantsev spells out the ‘trust no-one’ narrative with
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examples of misinformation operations from all over the world. What makes this really unique is that he weaves the story of his parents and their own story that begins in the Soviet Union in the 70s and comes up to date in London more recently with the author and his family. This adds personal weight to the sheer scale of the war against reality, and with the US Presidential election still in the balance, and the most powerful people in the world lying like never before, it’s a good time to get educated. Show Less
Awards
Gordon Burn Prize (2020)
Writers' Prize (Longlist — 2020)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2019
Physical description
7.8 inches
ISBN
057133864X / 9780571338641