I’ve read many discussions in which certain ideas are denounced as CIA sabotage. I find myself torn between the two camps that form whenever this happens, usually because I have no idea what a CIA psyop actually looks like and have no reference for what a Marxist solution to, say, the question of what anti-colonial society actually looks like. It’s not an easy question, and it’s made all the more murky with the knowledge that plants and saboteurs absolutely exist.

Is there an ascribed methodology to identifying CIA propaganda?

  • @freagle
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    1 year ago

    https://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm

    Also search for cointelpro techniques and read up on them.

    Also read up on things that the CIA actually did and draw parallels to what you see around you. For example, we know the CIA promoted modern art and postmodern philosophy. We have evidence from former agents, leaks, etc. These sources provide us a glimpse into the motives. Analyze the motives, use them as a lens to interrogate behaviors you observe.

    The person you see posting a thing may not be an agent but still propagating an operation without knowing it.

    Also, in case it’s not clear, a psyop is literally anything where the mission objectives are confined primarily to the mental battlefield and not the physical one. Getting people to believe something is a psyop. Getting people to doubt something is a psyop. Get people angry, or sad, or excited is a psyop. The term differentiates operations based on their battlefield. A nonpsyop is a physical change in the world, whether it’s building or destroying a structure or object, killing or saving some humans, acquiring information, turning off or on technology systems, etc, etc. So, getting a group of people to argue about something is a psyop, getting people to make a decision to fire or hire someone is a psyop, and on and on.

    • relay
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      11 year ago

      Does that just mean that any attempt to change the superstructure at all is a psyop?

      • @freagle
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        11 year ago

        That’s an interesting question. Is changing a law a psyop? The law exists outside of the mind, so to speak, but also it doesn’t create a physical battlefield change, so it could be.