Sleep Walking into a War

“The point of modern propaganda isn’t only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.” -This quote (By Garry Kasparov, originally) from an article by Tobias Stone – in Medium. It seemed to me that it's worth highlighting because it is insightful about what is happening now on the internet particularly social media.

I think it's interesting because it parallels a tactic that governments and corporations seem to operate in relation to pushing through measures that they sense will garner much opposition: they throw loads of information out, make a song and a dance about relatively minor things so that by the time a bigger issue is brought out, opposing voices are muted and energies are sapped. And of course this can work because populations have become passive, soporific and take democracy for granted, forgetting that its price is eternal vigilance. The problem being that eternal vigilance is costly in effort and attention, especially when life is hard, as it is increasingly for our populations.

And then, the other useful thing to note about this is that this is the new war. If war is politics by other means, then disinformation and distraction is politics by other means and that too is war. Actual bombs-and-deaths war is part of the picture but a relatively small part.

So, I'm left wondering what this means for war resistance. It goes way beyond refusing to fight, it goes beyond making the case for resolving conflicts through diplomacy, pressure and legalities. It goes beyond building the capacity of communities to use tactics and discipline to overcome oppression non-violently. No, we are going to have to learn to build capacity for 'eternal vigilance' and for myth busting and understanding what the real issues are to keep an eye on without being obfuscated into obscure and ultimately irrelevant matters.

And I'm already feeling tired just thinking about it. So, how to move forward?



Sleep Walking into a War – Tobias Stone – Medium:



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