This Is Not Propaganda
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4.0 • 6 Ratings
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
Learn how the perception of truth has been weaponized in modern politics with this "insightful" account of propaganda in Russia and beyond during the age of disinformation (New York Times).
When information is a weapon, every opinion is an act of war.
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.
Peter Pomerantsev 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.
Blending reportage, family history, and intellectual adventure, This Is Not Propaganda explores how we can reimagine our politics and ourselves when reality seems to be coming apart.
Customer Reviews
Most relevant book I’ve read in a while
Many thanks to the author for making these dynamics explicit. They are so pervasive that academic departments touting the virtues of this book actually deploy the described misinformation and disinformation strategies to cover up sexual misconduct, hacking, surveillance, and harassment of students while recruiting future victims and collaborators. Some social media accounts I found as a result of having associated with these dubious academicians seem to be produced by trolls and to have many contributors spouting nonsense. I don’t know what their ultimate aims were except that their malice has had a chilling and disenfranchising effect on me as an activist and student. They have this IP address, so I don’t know if anyone will be able to see this, but I hope those who read this book before being targeted will recognize such tactics when they see them emerge offline as well.