Damned Lies and Disinformation
Everyone is fake news
Disinformation is not new. Despite the term's mainstream popularity and eventual overuse in recent years, it’s not some unique development that emerged out of the 2016 US election, an event the NYT calls the Pearl Harbor of the social media age.
Truth is, disinformation has always been there, it's not creeping in your bedroom to get you but, you are slowly realising it's been there all along.
The term Dezinformatsiya was coined in the 1920s by a part of the USSR intelligence apparatus tasked with deceiving enemies and influencing public opinion. This was not revolutionary. Deception is not new, after all as Sun Tzu said all warfare is based on deception. Indeed, many great movies and books circle the subject.
There is a lot more to disinformation, misinformation and misinformation, which you can learn about here.
The word dezinformatsiya was anglicized to disinformation during the Cold War and was mostly considered part of the counterintelligence web along with all activities conducted to protect against intelligence collection. But disinformation also known as deceit, was not new then, it's what an older person might just call a lie.
Here is some famous disinformation you may recognise.
- “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” — Bill Clinton, 1998
- “There was no Christmas party. Covid rules have been followed at all times” — Boris Johnson, 2021
- “I’ll hold you until you die” —Alanis Morissette’s boyfriend, 1995
- “Carrots can help you see in the dark” — Allied Governments, 1940
- “What we’re about is the belief that access to affordable and real-time health information is a basic human right”— Elizabeth Holmes, 2014
There have always been lies, always been disinformation regardless of the medium — do you still believe old textbooks aren't full of shit? Think of the nonsense generations above were taught in school! When the evening news was the only source of truth, how did you even know it was a lie? Your knowledge of events and your knowledge of the world has always been subject to the agenda of others.
So what changed to make us think disinformation is new? Social media is a mechanism to spread lies, but it doesn’t inherently lead to lies. It is our relationship with information that has changed, people are aware that information has always been politicised (not US politics, politicised as a general concept) and it is no longer seen in the same way. We conversely have access to the majority of total human thought and knowledge, yet we are still ignorant of the truth.
Information is not a resource, it is a tool. It's a tool that more and more people, companies and organisations know how to use.
A tool to sell you things, a tool to get you to vote, a tool to make you think a certain way, make you angry, make you do things. A tool to shape, influence, convince, deter, reassure, demonstrate and deceive you — Hello to the military planning lexicon that still finds itself in my work.
So What?
Disinformation isn’t a popular term because of Trump, Fake News and Clinton, it’s popular because more and more people are realising that information has been used to manipulate them their entire lives, and it's becoming widespread because of social media.
No one likes being lied to, and no one ever did. But it didn't used to be as obvious and it’s becoming too much. Our relationship with the truth has been politicised and monetised palpably — and we don't like it.
On one end, you buy a product that is not very good because an Instagram post promised you the world, or you are not sure what actually happened when you see a story on the news. On the other end, you are tricked into voting against your own interests, and you support the invasion of a sovereign state over lies, damned lies, and disinformation.
Look at that, another article that comes back around to the War in Iraq. For more on Iraq, Saddam and the events that led to war, read my six-part series on the State of Iraq to level up your information.
