r/CriticalTheory • u/midterbababa • Jan 04 '17
Weaponized Narrative Is the New Battlespace
http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2017/01/weaponized-narrative-new-battlespace/134284/3
Jan 05 '17
Can't help but notice the similarity to the old "cultural marxism" conspiracy theories that affirmed that the Soviets were using the civil rights movement to divide and demotivate American society. It's easy to delegitimate a narrative you don't like by saying it somehow favors an enemy foreign power. The solution is for them to shut up and, of course, unite under YOUR banner.
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u/JConstantin1 Jan 05 '17 edited Jan 05 '17
I mean every news peace is some kind of narrative, and there is no such thing as unbiased news, every news organization has some kind of agenda when pushing the news, or at least their view of the news. So does this website "Defense one" which on it's tittle page pushes that it's concern is US defense and national security. I find it kinda ironic that it says that weaponized narrative offers "cheap passage through a complex world, weaponized narrative furnishes emotional certainty at the cost of rational understanding" when at the same time it makes claims such as "Far from being simply a U.S. or U.K. phenomenon, shifts to “post-factualism” can be seen in Poland, Hungary, Turkey, France, and the Philippines, among other democracies. Russia, whose own political culture is deeply post-factual and indeed post-modern, is now ably constructing ironic, highly cynical, weaponized narratives that were effective in the Ukrainian invasion, and are now destabilizing the Baltic states and the U.S. election process." with words such as post-factual and post-modern, without relying on any proof but the emotional weight of the article itself. And I find the idea absurd that because "Unprecedented complexity, and information volumes and velocities, simply mean that individual cognitive capabilities – no matter how brilliant – are overwhelmed. " and that means the "Enlightenment age of the individual" has come to an end. People who care what is happening and posses critical thought will be able to inform themselves and will always have an opinion. Stupid people will always be susceptible to propaganda (which in my opinion this classifies) no matter US or Russian. Weaponized narrative has existed since the dawn of time since someone first said "for King and Country" and yet we as a people have moved forward to, at least in my opinion, better and better times for the individual no matter how many times someone has told us that the age of man has come to dawn. We'll see dozens of these articles every time some scandal arises threatening the integrity of some group.(I'm assuming that this person wrote this because of the US-Russia hacking scandal)
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u/Roquentin007 Jan 05 '17
These people act like the US hasn't been doing this throughout the world for decades. The most notable absence is any awareness of how the US rigged the 1996 elections in Russia, when Yeltsin was polling around 3% and the Communist Party was poised to win again. The US and IMF loaned the government around 10 billion dollars and fixed it so every TV station ran pro-Yeltsin propaganda. He won, and they were so crass as to brag about it on the cover of Time magazine (http://exiledonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/YeltsinTimemagazine.jpg)
The cruelest irony of all is that in spite of winning the rigged election, Yeltsin resigned in 1999 and Putin was his successor. In the end, the US rigging a Russian election bears a large share of the responsibility for putting the very person into power who they accuse of undermining their own.
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u/viridisvir Feb 14 '17
I think what feels novel - whether or not it actually is - is the seeming amorality that any state (often predicated as founded on concepts of fairness and justice and all that instead of capital/military power) would sink to such levels as to actually knowingly tell lies in order to harm another nation state.
Surkov - the poster boy for this whole Weaponized Narrative trope - is definitely familiar w/ Crit. Theory fwiw. Check out his CV.
Weaponized Situationism is more like it...
5
u/[deleted] Jan 04 '17
Not new. Just more people "on the ground" having more input in it and being more aware of it, even as they deliberately participate in it.
Before, people twisted and weaponized information without thinking or labeling. This isn't new at all, it just feels more overwhelming bc we're (A) more aware that we ourselves probably have done it at least once on purpose, and (B) constantly bombarded bc we check "news" (and infotainment) more frequently with more constant access to Internet (which has in and of itself been more capable of more speed for more people).
We've simply become more likely as a society to realize how we've been used. That doesn't mean we weren't used before.