Every day is a good day to remember that Russia's "firehose of falsehood" propaganda model has been adopted by the likes of Trump, Steve Bannon, etc., and we are all targets of it. The goal of this style of propaganda is not to convince you that any particular narrative is true, but to exhaust your cognitive resources and make you question whether the truth really exists at all.

This style of propaganda is part of a doctrine of asymmetric information warfare, which uses our information channels and spaces to wage an endless cycle of chaos and confusion.

Chaos is the strategy, confusion is the result.

The purpose is to overwhelm you, distract you, and exhaust you with constant information overload so you don’t have the clarity to see the big picture or the energy to fight the real battle against fascism.

Asymmetric information warfare takes place on a battlefield with no rules and no consistency — it seeks to confuse you to the point where you don’t know what your enemies are doing or even who your enemies are. It seeks to overwhelm you and break you down by subjecting you to an ever-shifting state of reality.

The ultimate goal is to undermine your perceptions of the world so you never really know what is happening. It’s a strategy to maintain power by keeping you constantly confused and overwhelmed.

Because it is undefinable, it often seems unstoppable. But it's not unstoppable -- you just have to know what you're up against.

And that's my goal: To help you see it, characterize it, and develop the cognitive resilience you need to fight it, so you can save your energy for the real fight ahead.

And I would just like to emphasize that 1) you are not crazy, 2) you are not alone in feeling like we’re spinning out of control, and 3) our collective experience with asymmetric information warfare has been greatly complicated and resulted in far more trauma than it should have because we were betrayed by people and institutions that were supposed to protect and support us. That’s called institutional betrayal, and the result is betrayal trauma.

You are not crazy. You will heal from this.

@rvawonk Thank you, Caroline, for this necessary thread. In examining my own feelings about the irreality imposed on us by the global collusion of fascists, fossil fuel oligarchs & billionaire capitalists, I recognized a familiar framework. As a survivor of CSA, I grew up among adults who practiced denial and deception to distance themselves from the reality of abuse in our home. Everyone seemed committed to zero gravity.
@rvawonk 2/ Facts were malleable. The people who were supposed to protect me were plagued by an inability to accept what was happening under their noses. My trauma was visible, but unexplored. Threats kept me silent. My perceptions of reality were constantly thrown into question — not unlike now.
@rvawonk 3/ We are all currently traumatized, not only by existential threats of pandemic, climate change and potential nuclear war; but also by the sophisticated, war grade psyops you describe, perpetuated by bad actors with the complicity of leaders and institutions we thought we could trust. Essentially, the whole world has become my original, dysfunctional family, and I admit, I’m struggling to keep my balance and remember I’m not that powerless little girl I once was.
@GJGreenlea @rvawonk
Thank you so much for this.
@JDignum @rvawonk I’m so glad you found it helpful. 🙏🏽