Pitch: Counter Disinfolklore ~ Controlling War Magic
As a diplomat operating inside Russia-occupied eastern Ukraine (2015-2022), I coined the term “Disinfolklore.”
Disinfolklore describes a type of emotion-moving propaganda that uses stories / tales / memes as a strategic means of manipulating its consumers, through inducing fear.
At its simplest, Disinfolklore is a device through which linguistic, audible, or visual memes transform the intentions / motivations / attitudes of its consumers.
The precise ways in which Disinfolklore’s designers reorientate our intentions can be controlled using strategies such as Coercive or Reflexive Control.
Disinfolklore is mainly initially conveyed through “News” and other every day interactions.
Those who, unknowingly, consume such Disinfolklore, often unconsciously, propagate Disinfolklore memes as truths inside their own communities.
Disinfolklore works quite as well as folklore did in the nineteenth century.
The folklore movement model of creating cohesive national cultures which was launched by German nationalist Herder in 1777 was copied all over Europe.
Folklore became a dominant culture-forming medium and was communicated through stories and songs (e.g. Asbjørnsen’s troll tales, Ibsen’s troll plays, Goethe’s Faust, Wagner’s operas, Taras Shevchenko or WB Yeats’s poems).
This folk literature purposefully created a sense of national self-identity from which modern nation states like Germany, Ireland, Greece, India, Italy, Ukraine, Spain, Norway, and Belgium were wrought.
Disinfolklore’s diabolical aim is the opposite of positive nationalisms’ goals: Disinfolklorists like the Chief Sorcerer Putin, Shaman Trickster Trump or the Chef of Disinfolklore (Putin’s chef Prighozin, who financed the Russian army’s “Wagner” division, as well as the troll farms that helped Trump get elected in 2016 and Brexit done) aim to turn our democratic world into Handmaid’s Tale.
Disinfolklore promotes division, rather than the cohesiveness that positive nationalisms set out to forge.
As one of very few Westerners ever to live in Russia-occupied Ukraine (and survive), I watched how Russia used Disinfolklore to create a compliant, hungry, dependent slave society inside Russia-occupied Ukraine 2015–2022.
This is what is at stake: our free societies that aspire towards equality between all members of our community.
My first Tweet on Disinfolklore garnered 754,000 views, 177 reposts, 509 likes, and 102 bookmarks: https://x.com/decodingtrolls/status/1626875001461784577?s=46.
Byline Times published an early summary draft of my “Counter Disinfolklore ~ Controlling War Magic” manual in May 2023, under the byline: “Stephen Douglas reveals a brilliant new analytical method to parse Russian disinformation and ‘War Magic’” (https://www.bylinesupplement.com/p/disinfolklore). In May 2024, I was interviewed by the Silicon Curtain podcast about Disinfolklore on YouTube - that interview garnered 24,000 views, 1,700 likes, and 435 comments:
On Substack (https:///www.Disinfolklore.net) and DecodingTrolls on Twitter / X (see ‘Highlights’ tab, in particular), I apply the “Counter Disinfolklore” analytical method continuously to help my one million+ weekly readers to detect, interpret and counter propaganda, in real time, across our social, news and Disinfolklore distribution media.
[1] “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.
[2] “An Independent Legal Analysis of the Russian Federation’s Breaches of the Genocide Convention in Ukraine and the Duty to Prevent”(https://newlinesinstitute.org/an-independent-legal-analysis-of-the-russian-federations-breaches-of-the-genocide-convention-in-ukraine-and-the-duty-to-prevent/)
[3] https://osce.usmission.gov/the-russian-federations-ongoing-aggression-against-ukraine-27/
[4] https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/europe/100000008299178/ukraine-bucha-russia-massacre-video.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare