Bridge to the House of Lies
Counter Disinfolklore ~ Controlling War Magic: Chapter One. Episode I.
Chapter One - Færytale Beginning
My intuition about Disinfolklore first manifested while I was a peacekeeping diplomat. Between 2015 and 2018, I was posted on a bridge spanning the eastern Ukrainian Donets River at Stanitsia Luhanska. That wooden and iron bridge was the only pedestrian crossing place between Russia-occupied Luhansk and the rest of Ukraine. Ten thousand civilians – mostly older women, children and those unlikely to be pressganged into military service by Russian occupiers – traversed it daily.
For several years my job was negotiating local ceasefires between the armed Russian bridge trolls unlawfully occupying the south bank of the river, and with the Ukrainian soldiers defending the northern shore. We whose fate it was to participate in the daily array of diabolical dramas staged there by Russian war lords became like stock characters in a long-running soap opera. The cast of players acting out roles in this tragicomedy included diplomats, mercenaries, traders, soldiers, Russian occupiers, spies, and ordinary folk just like you and me.
The folkloric resonances of the situation were glaring. Most famous troll tales in our culture derive from “Three Billy-Goats’ Gruff,” a Norwegian folk tale collected by Asbjørnsen and Moe.
Three goats set off for a pasture. They have to cross a bridge, beneath which lives a troll.
Their feet go ‘Trip, trap! trip, trap!’ and the troll calls out: ‘Who’s that tripping over my bridge?’
The youngest goat tells the troll not to eat him, but to wait for the next goat, who is fatter.
The second goat says the same, and when the third goat crosses the bridge it announces: ‘It is I! The Big Billy-Goat Gruff!’
It kills the troll…
That fable is itself a folkloric reflex of a much older legend in Indo-European culture. In ancient Iranian religion, at the time of death, we approach Chinvat bridge. Chinvat is guarded by Daenā. If Daenā appears as a beautiful woman, we will pass into the eternal heavenly House of Songs. Yet, if the bridge narrows as we approach it to the width of a sword blade and Daenā is a witch, we shall spend eternity in the hellish House of Lies.
I was a living character in the daily re-enactment of one or other of these stories. Arriving there each morning, I could never be sure which version the Russians had scripted for the day. Amid the trolling artillery and mortar duels that could erupt any time in the one-and-a-half-mile stretch of roadway that ran through no-man’s land to and from the river, I was always on the lookout for Daenā. Some days the Russian army bridge trolls would manifest seductive charm. At other times they epitomized demonic witches with their proud boasts about how they had, overnight, dispatched Ukrainian soldier giants to the House of Lies.
Some days the fates assigned me a walk-on part as one of the first two manipulative Billy Goats who manage to negotiate safe passage through the checkpoints of bridge-guarding Russian army trolls. Sometimes, I found myself in the role of Solomon, accidentally invoking the right formula of words to dissuade the Russian army bridge trolls from devouring Ukrainian civilians.
Nobody would voluntarily cross that infernal bridge. “Coercive control” describes Russia’s main governance technique perfectly.1 Like an ultraviolent spouse or the evilest monarch imaginable, Russia conjured up a state of desperation inside its victims’ minds, usually through physical, economic, psychological, or sexual violence (and often all four). Then, Russia would offer conditional access to a sub-standard escape route from the terror its own actions had wrought. As was the case for those unlucky enough to be forced into crossing the bridge, usually whichever “solution” Russia offered to the hateful predicaments it created for its victims itself involved running a gauntlet of one sort or another.
Russia would always look for credit for salving the pain it has caused. If any damsel Russia’s violent coercive control strategies had distressed had the temerity to refuse their persecutors’ proffered assistance, then Russia used that refusal as an excuse for further violence against its subjects. Russia, as a state, attempted coercively to control Ukraine, by holding to ransom its people living in Russia-occupied Ukraine, the parts of its land it occupied, and by perverting the way other states perceived Ukraine. Russia, by violently and militarily occupying Europe’s largest nuclear power plant and threatening again and again to blow it up attempted coercively to control the whole continent of Europe.
Disinfolklore infused with the subtle energy of Russia’s signature Coercive Control Mana was how Russia pulled off this feat of intimidating our entire civilisation into accepting its genocide of Ukrainians. Each Russian official from its unelected dictator Putin down to its lowliest torturer in one of dozens of torture chambers uncovered whenever Russia retreated from parts of Ukraine it had occupied practised coercive control tactics on individual Ukrainians. Immanent in all their activities, including linguistic and visual memes, was the Mana of Coercive Control.
If you do not recognise the word “Mana,” please do not worry. We will soon turn back to its meaning in greater detail.
Suffice it to say, for now, it is a founding assumption of Counter Disinfolklore that the Mana of folklore is discernible in Russian (and other forms of divisive) propaganda and disinformation! The Mana of folklore from the Indo-European cultural zone that stretches from Ireland to India is, briefly:
Stories that embed an Inner / Outer Realm division in our minds, with invaders from the Outer Realm said to be threatening the sovereignty, security, and prosperity / fertility of our Inner Realm.
Note the R-T- sound immanent in all these words: sovereignty, security, and prosperity / fertility. Certain sounds immanent in Disinfolklore recur repeatedly, and have a certain effect on our minds, that can’t be overestimated.
Those particular R-T- words’ meaning (Mana) corresponds to the three functions in the Indo-European conception of Good Governance; to, say, India’s three castes: Priest/Sorcerer/Magus/Monarch/Lawgiver; Warrior; and Herdsman / Cultivator / Farmer / Feminine Principle…
Continued:
For orientation purposes: this is where we are now:
We’ll go through Chapter One before moving on to Chapter Three - last twelve episodes were Chapter Two!
“Controlling or coercive behaviour” by individuals of other people became a crime in England in 2015. Among examples of what such Coercive Control behaviour involves in English law include the following, which also apply to how Russia acts in occupied parts of Ukraine towards Ukraine and Ukrainians: isolating a person from their friends and family; depriving them of their basic needs; monitoring a person via online communication tools or using spyware; using digital systems such as smart devices or social media to coerce, control, or upset the victim including posting triggering material; taking control over aspects of their everyday life; depriving them of access to support services, such as specialist support or medical services; forcing the victim to take part in criminal activity … to encourage self-blame and prevent disclosure to authorities; economic abuse including coerced debt; controlling the ability to go to school or place of study; taking wages, benefits or allowances; threatening to hurt or kill; threatening to harm a child; threatening to reveal or publish private information; threatening to hurt or physically harming a family pet; assault; sexual assault or threats of sexual assault; reproductive coercion; limiting access to family, friends and finances; withholding and/or destruction of the victim’s immigration documents, e.g. passports and visas; and threatening to place the victim in an institution against the victim’s will.
Hi, I remember that you told the story about this specific bridge when you worked there as a diplomat when you and Jonathan had a conversation over on his channel Silicon Curtain.
(I didn’t know however that the Norwegian folklore about “The 3 Bruse goats” was so well known internationally, it for some reason made me feel happy. Coming from the Nordic countries/Scandinavia sometimes feels like coming from nowhere at all.)
Thank you for sharing all you do.
Kindly, Grace 🩰