Introduction to Narrative Warfare

Notes

  • weaponized narratives attack identities of the target audience, causing disorientation in the way people and authors give meaning to events
  • this seems incredibly narrow, as maldaptive narratives with mislead but affirm identities are much more damaging
  • “weaponized narrative” sounds more like the lies about Russian efforts against the West (ie, narratives by the West against Russia) than actual Russian actions
  • again, the authors reveal their own maldaptive narrative that their actions which harm the US and subvert its sovereigns are virtuous
  • authors seem to view narrative as detached from truth telling
  • authors seem to be unable to see Russian narratives in Ukraine are countering Western weaponized narratives
  • authors seem to overly focus on fear based narratives; explains much of the pathology in Western communication strategy
  • this is deeply flawed in that they seem unable to recognize the pathological narratives around COVID
  • “pathologizing narratives” are exemplified by the Woke
  • authors are unable to see that Western narrative insistence on fact is to counter exactly such “pathologizing narratives”
  • authors are unable to see that Russia is actually countering weaponized and pathologizing narratives with facts
  • authors appear to have a blind spot caused by their identity: “we’re the goodies, not the baddies”
  • authors correctly call out victimization narratives as dangerous
  • authors’ description of terrorist narratives point to US government using “narrative warfare” against the public to foment domestic terrorism
  • point about counter narratives is why you shouldn’t deny being racist, etc
  • counter narratives reinforce adversarial narratives
  • don’t refer to things you don’t want as the subject
  • don’t directly respond, eg “Islam is under attack” should get “Islam flourishes in the US” not “Islam is not under attack”
  • exmple is poor quality; authors seem to be unable to perceive there may be legitimate conflicts to which the resolution is hard power
  • authors prefer pathological narratives to truth driven outcomes

Questions

  1. COVID lockdowns; SOCOM membership is good
  2. COVID lockdown narratives use feat to subvert rights of the public and accurate scientific analysis; SOCOM spins people up with virtuous fables while having them subvert the interests of those they originally intended to protect
  3. “I’m not a racist”
  4. the reinforce the offensive narrative while ceding the narrative frame to the other party