Disinfolklore

Decoding Trolls
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Disinfolklore is a new analytical method for parsing Russian, MAGA and, indeed, all forms of emotionally resonant Disinformation. Disinfolklore is a particular form of story telling. Disinfolklore communicates mean Mana / energy directly into our mindstreams. Disinfolklore gets us to think and do what the Disinfolklorists want us to. They want us to check out. To lose hope. Abandon Ukraine, and what Ukraine’s victory symbolises: The security of the post-WWII legal and social order. For Disinfolklorists, human rights, like participating in communities' decision-making, and aspirations towards non-discrimination on the basis of sex or other protected characteristics is anathema. Disinfolklorists intend to trick us into destroying the democratic basis of the sovereignty, security, prosperity / fertility of our communities. Disinfolklore's means of affecting our Moods / Attitudes / Intentions / Motivations are visual, audible, or sensory memes, usually communicated through the medium of stories, in text, film or new media. Counter Disinfolklore is our means of defeating Disinfolklorists' attempts to hack our minds, and reflexively control our Moods / Motivations / Intentions / Attitudes. Trolling Disinfolklore provokes us into sharing onwards their trolls, so that we destroy our civilisation. But we won’t allow trolls to annihilate our communities. You and I are going to see to that. www.disinfolklore.net

  1. 6D AGO

    Podcast | Battling Archetypes: Why Disinfolklore?

    Ukraine as a Character Why is disinfolklore an appropriate moniker? In disinfolklore, we look at characters in the stories we’re served up. Ukraine is a damsel in distress who must be rescued by Donald—this is how he’s trying to archetype Ukraine. We know it’s obviously false. Ukraine is a damsel in distress who must be rescued by Russia because of the coup and all of these trolls. Or Ukraine is a damsel in distress who must submit. We go back to coercive control. We go back to the people many of us might have met in our lives who come from the perspective of realpolitik. They say, oh yes, isn’t it awful what Russia is doing? But honestly, it’s time to just—you know, Ukraine just needs to give up Donbas and everything will be fine, and we’ll be able to get back to our cappuccinos and whatever. I’m going through a thorough reorganisation of my work and approach to teaching. Watch this space. Here’s a sneak preview of part of my new homepage, and of what is coming: What’s going on there is Ukraine is being archetyped as a character. Ukraine is a country of 42 million people, a very complex concept. It’s a geographical space. It’s a historical context. If we take the disinfolklore lens, then it’s quite natural for us to see anything in a meme as a character. Abstract Concepts as Characters Obviously when we’re looking at Netflix or a story in the news or any art or play, we have characters manifesting as individual humans. What the disinfolklore analytical method allows us to do is perceive how abstract concepts take on the characteristics of characters, of personalities. This is one of the main means by which Russia’s disinfolklore manipulates us—because we don’t notice it. We’re not looking for it. We’re not looking for the energy of character in an abstract concept like Ukraine. Putler then can talk about Ukraine as a corpse, as a dead corpse, as a dead woman who is worthy of becoming a victim, as in that song by Red Mould which I’ve talked about before—*Sleeping Beauty in the Coffin*. International lawyers use it as evidence of Putler’s intention to genocide Ukraine, because he quoted this disgusting lyric which I’m not going to repeat here—*Sleeping Beauty in a Coffin, I Walked Up and XXXX her…* This archetyping through characters is a phenomenon that very few other so-called disinformation researchers, or people watching propaganda, or people interpreting data have noticed. I’ve not only noticed it—I’ve tried to think about it, work it out, and articulate what is going on. It’s quite natural, if you look at disinfolklore as a narrative form, to see how Ukraine is being archetyped as a particular character with characteristics. Don’t Poke the Bear Russia does it when it calls itself a bear and promotes this troll. I first came across this with an American senior officer, a colonel, who once in eastern Ukraine just mentioned to me about the bear—“don’t poke the bear.” That was the first time I came across this meme. What this actually is, is archetyping Russia as the strong bear, which you can’t do anything about when it pokes you—you can’t poke it back. If it pokes you, then it’s your fault for poking it. It’s a really complicated, psychologically manipulative set of mental routines it sets off in our minds. That is concealed by the use of a bear, which we think of—well, those of us who didn’t grow up in Central and Eastern Europe with bears running around, or in Pennsylvania where bears are actually running around. Those who grew up in bourgeois Western Europe haven’t come across bears except in fairy tales and folk tales. That for me was a clue of how Russia uses character in stories. Donald uses the same trick, and many propagandists use the same trick. It’s also a means of critiquing what they do. Russia is the implacable bear—better get over it, Ukraine. Stereotypes versus Archetypes Stereotypes are delivered through the storytelling and newsy memes every time Druidy Don, Donald, Duncy Putin, or their henchmen and women speak in disinfolklore. When I speak of archetypes, it’s much deeper than mere stereotypes. I’m not just saying we’re reifying reality, aggregating components into a trope. Archetypes connect deep Indo-European cognitive structures with particular aggregated ideas—like the data-resistant archetype of a Potemkin state. Data-Resistant Archetypes I was reminded this week, reading a politician’s speech from a formerly occupied part of the former Soviet Union, where they were talking about NATO as if the past three years hadn’t happened, or as if America’s threats to invade NATO hadn’t happened. They were talking about how the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, which is Russia’s fake NATO, has Russia as a necessary component in it. Have you not seen anything in the past three years? Have you not picked up the data? Have you not updated your archetype of the CSTO, of Russia, of NATO, of the past few years? These characters have changed. They’ve been transformed. You’re talking about NATO and Russia from Act One of the play. Those of us who have been watching avidly for the past four years, day by day—these characters evolve and develop. We are now in Act Six, and the character of NATO is not what it used to be. Some of us will have seen reference today to how a drone, suspected to be a Russian drone, penetrated Polish airspace and crashed quite far into Poland, right near—or maybe it didn’t even crash, maybe ran out of juice—near a Polish base which is rumoured to be one of its main electronic warfare facilities. Nobody there knew how to shoot it down. They couldn’t shoot it down. This idea of NATO as a bear has to develop, just as the idea of Russia as the bear has to develop. When I talk about data-resistant archetypes of a Potemkin state, I’m using literary references with the idea of a character to articulate how these signifiers like Russia or NATO—their actual contents can transform. Too Much, Never Enough When I speak of disinfolklore’s archetyping, I’m talking about a process that takes many different words and meanings, imbues them with dynamic characteristics, then does it again and again and again—too much and never enough. That phrase is basically the title of the biography of Donald by his niece, but it’s also what characterises hyper-modernity as distinct from post-modernity, modernity, or the classical period. Too much, never enough—acceleration and insufficiency. Before we know it, we’re inside a MAGA universe wrought by disinfolklore. It’s the system effects of all of these aggregating characters in the stories that we are embedded in, which are broadcast through the news, repeated by Donald and by many others all the time—including ourselves. The aggregating effect is that we’re put inside this MAGA universe. Inside the Usurpers’ Universe I’m using a metaphor here—the idea of being put inside a universe, a MAGA universe, but also inside a Russian universe. This goes back to what I talked about at the beginning and what James was talking about at the beginning. The whole point of the Kennedy Center is just one of tens of thousands of vectors for each of us which could have the impact of transforming our identities and our surroundings and turning the usurper’s reality into an irreversible reality. As it goes, I think the disgustingness of what we’re gradually learning about the whole Epstein stuff—the enormity of it, Donald’s complicity in it, Putler’s complicity—it would be somewhat ironic if Epstein brings them down. Out of all Putler’s crimes, this is the one that ends him. International Relations as Storytelling The stock in trade of international relations professionals is storytelling, as if the phenomena they speak of are more real than characters in a folktale. The West, NATO, Russia, strongmen, spheres of influence. As many of us see and understand now—this great German word for Putin understanders—they impute intention to this character called Putler who doesn’t correlate in any way with the biological human called Putler. It’s layers and layers away from the biological human biped, yet they write very earnest essays in *Foreign Affairs* and their escalation management logic dominated and colonised the minds of the people in former President Biden’s administration, as all of us understand so well. This whole discourse in international relations—IR itself—is a form of storytelling. If you’re coming from a disinfolklore analytical method point of view, you can look at it just like storytelling. You look for the characters they’re talking about—don’t poke the bear—and all of this chatter about Westphalia and all that fascist civilisations stuff. These are all just storytelling, which has the same value, effect, potential for manipulation, and status, in my humble opinion, as any piece of news or anything coming out of Donald’s mouth. I reference Donald a lot because he’s a fairy tale character we’re all very familiar with—he’s sadly part of our everyday reality. I could just as easily be referencing someone else if this were a different age or a different moment. The Gideon Rachmans’ Problem Quite serious people impute into the character I call Duncy Putin, or Russia, the characteristics of a bear—they do it unconsciously. They’re earned archetypes or reputations. Ukraine as a lion—that’s a weak encounter archetype in that sense. This guy Gideon Rachman—I’ve mentioned him before, just because he’s a good example of how this old guard don’t have a disinfolklore perspective. They can’t see how they impute these ridiculous thought routines to Putler. For instance, as we’ve seen when the United States began to occupy Venezuela, even though it doesn’t seem to be admitting this or understanding it, and started to trigger a whole set of legal obliga

    21 min

  2. JAN 29

    Battling Archetypes: Episode Six

    Some of you may remember last week I talked about Donald archetyping himself as mad, and my archetyping of my experience on the bridge at Stanytsia Luhanska as something folkloric—that leading to an accidental insight which in turn led to my discovery of disinfolklore. Today I wanted to keep on going. ## Inside Russia-Occupied Ukraine Inside Russia-occupied Ukraine, in occupied Luhansk, where I crossed into every day from government-controlled Ukraine, I would take a journey from now-occupied Severodonetsk—about 150 kilometers on terrible roads, but really beautiful landscape—all the way there from my hotel, the Hotel Mir (Peace), which had been bombed in 2014. The last time I saw photographs of it, Severodonetsk, like many places I stayed in Ukraine, is now in ruins. I lived in the Hotel Mir for a year, then moved into a beautiful house with a swimming pool and underfloor heating in Severodonetsk. That house isn’t quite a ruin, but it has been damaged. The family I lived with sent me photographs recently, and I can now determine when places have been looted repeated times—walls are missing. At the time, Severodonetsk was a bit of a haven. Gradually, as I was there from February 2015 onwards, as I got my eye into what for me was the first former Soviet city—and it was a real Soviet city, the largest producer of ammonium in the former Soviet Union—it looked very like Soviet cities. But gradually, as I was there, it became more colorful. People became richer. Avocados appeared in the supermarket, as did hummus. Those supermarkets are now in ruins. At the time, I was going from this haven. Severodonetsk’s best days may have been in the Soviet era, depending on one’s viewpoint, or I would claim that its best days were during the years I was there, up until 2022, as it experienced being the de facto capital of Luhansk. ----- ## Crossing Into the Matrix Each day, going to Stanytsia Luhanska was like passing into another world through this long journey along very rough roads, which we got to know extremely well because I did it five days a week for three years. Crossing into that bridge was a bit like crossing into a matrix. Here I’m using the matrix from the movie as a metaphor. Russia’s archetyping system inside Russia-occupied Ukraine consisted of hundreds of media outlets intermeshed with coercive force, coercive control, and so-called institutions which did not actually mediate reality. All of these means—the media outlets, the coercive force, the coercive control, and these fake institutions which only existed on paper in the media outlets—I mentioned this last week. For the first few months, I was reading stories about how the Russian occupiers were establishing a central bank and courts and a parliament and all of these normal institutions of foundational democracies. They were fake. They only existed on paper. It took me a few months to realize that. None of these means really mediated reality. They forged reality. I use the word “forged” there as a double entendre—in the sense that they forged it like you might forge a horse’s shoe in a forge, hammering it away, putting it in the fire, taking it out, hammering it away—and then forged it in the sense of forgeries, art forgeries or fake reality, which is the essence of the disinfolklore metaphor. ----- ## Understanding Russian Objectives I didn’t then understand what the Russians were doing. I didn’t understand what their objective was. At the time, March 2015, the Council of the European Union—the supreme government’s part of the European Union, as distinct from the European Commission (civil servants) and the European Parliament (directly elected parliamentarians)—at the end of March mentioned disinformation for the first time. There wasn’t really a vibe of disinformation. Of course, I had the memory of Russian propaganda from my school textbooks and a bit at university, but I didn’t realize that what I was being embedded in was something completely new, which required new language and new terms to describe, and which had—and this is key to the battling archetypes aspect of disinfolklore—system-wide effects. We’re not just looking at individual memes or stories, days, tweets. We’re looking at the system-wide effects of thousands or millions of those. I got that insight from seeing how this matrix-like enmeshing of the humans living inside Russia-occupied Ukraine worked. Here I’m using matrix in the geometric sense, where you have this enmeshing of different media outlets. Those of us who listen to Chuck Farah and Alan regularly—they have a good new show this week I listened to a couple of days ago—one of Chuck Farah’s many aphorisms is “one is none,” which I’ve taken quite to heart. In the past, I would try to only have one item, one charger for instance, that could do everything. Now I’m going for redundancy—having loads of different chargers. It’s quite liberating actually. This “one is none” ideology is practiced by the Russians. They have constant redundancy, whether in their operations overseas. They’ll flicker between using church groups, diplomats, propaganda outlets. There’s this kind of enmeshing. This principle of enmeshing of a matrix in the geometric sense is something that we may not notice when we’re looking at particular memes. ----- ## System-Wide Effects What I’m trying to articulate always with the battling archetypes aspect of the disinfolklore analytical method is the system-wide effect of Donald saying certain things. It’s not just about Venezuela or Greenland or Ukraine or the Epstein files—it’s a whole system that has persistent effects on us. At the time in 2015, I didn’t see that this was what they were doing in Russia-occupied Ukraine, but I was gathering data points which I then spent years parsing for patterns. They were weaving reality in there. I didn’t know why they were doing it. They were changing the identities of the consumers of disinfolklore. This is what MAGA does, what Donald does, and what the Russians are still doing. Coming up to the anniversary, I think Volia is doing a 24-hour thing, which is great. Hopefully I’ll be able to participate in that. One of the things I’ve been reflecting on is how the war has changed me. I started out with a set of beliefs or thoughts—that the West would intervene, that NATO was useful. Those external perceptions have then moved right into the depths of my mind, how things have changed in my own mind. My identity in many senses has been changed, and perhaps many of our identities have been changed, where our identities are a function of what we think and do day after day. ----- ## Algorithmic Identity I was interested to read recently about the X algorithm because I noticed this. Up until the 27th of February 2022, I never tweeted about Ukraine because I was still working there and didn’t want to be talking about what I was working in. I was very engaged in trying to raise awareness about COVID, so my timeline was full of doctors and medics. Then that changed really quite quickly—I was put into the Ukraine category. I was interested to read recently that my lived experience backs up that this is true: your categorization by the Twitter algorithm can change quite quickly according to what you like and what you post on. In some ways that’s a metaphor or example of how our online identity can change quite quickly. We’re not stuck in boxes. After he who shall not be named bought Twitter, there was a thing about how Ukraine people in the pro-Ukraine group were being discriminated against when the algorithm was released. Maybe when you got into the pro-Ukraine group, it became more of a fixed identity. This is again how quickly our externally perceived identities can be seen to change. I saw the same thing happen—many of us have—with MAGA people, and in Russia-occupied Ukraine through this enmeshing matrix of hundreds of different media outlets, the interaction between them and reality, and of course brutal violence and coercive control, and the reestablishment in people’s minds of patterns that had been very common prior to the end of the Soviet Union. ----- ## The Insight from Luhansk That kind of insight is what I bring to you today from Russia-occupied Luhansk. At the time, my thought was always, “Oh God, this would never happen at home.” This was before Brexit and before Donald Trump. What a strange place, that this can happen to Ukrainians by the Russians. I came from another type of place where this could never happen. Now, over the course of those nine years, what I saw there in this small province, which felt like it was the edge of the world, the edge of Europe—and has been for millennia—that has seeped into every person, not just in Europe and America, but across the world, through the means of, for instance, the economic impact of the war in Ukraine. Everyone everywhere is paying more for everything. Through memes, through Donald becoming elected by the help of the Russians, and now through Donald’s zigzagging through our brains and minds fifty million times a day. There’s this great phrase: “The future’s out there, it’s just not evenly distributed.” That idea, which actually animates Silicon Valley, suggests that on the edges you have existences and manifestations of reality which will take over the world and take over humanity and take over the mind—whether it’s Facebook or TikTok. It also applies to what happened in Ukraine after February 2014. It will continue to happen because Ukraine is the center of our civilization. My other project, Finding Manuland, investigates why this is the case and finds the empirical evidence for it. We can see it in our lived experience—this may have been the case when Indo-European languages and mythology and religions first evolved from 6,000 years ago in Zaporizhia. It’s also the case since 20

    1h 8m

  3. JAN 24

    Podcast | Don’s Archetyping as Mad

    The Soviet Union was so mysterious for many of us, as was Eastern and Central Europe. I was 17 when the Berlin Wall fell down. I went as soon as I could - spent time hitchhiking to Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary, went around those places several times because I was just fascinated by it. What is it like? How do they live? So I always imagined it would be really interesting working in the former Soviet Union, because it was such an interesting and alien place. And I think we, certainly in Ireland at the time, we did learn a lot about Russian politics. I think we learned more truth about Russia and the five-year plans and Stalin and all that than they learned about us when it comes down to it. So it was planted as a seed of interest. But I never thought I’d end up going around villages and being able to just talk to people. And the joy in that never left me, no matter how hard some experiences were there - when it was really cold, when it was minus 20 and having to be out on the bridge for seven hours or fiddling around with camera systems and thermal shutdown computers and all that. Having said that, it was one of many ambitions I had, many of which I’ve achieved. So it wasn’t like I was obsessed by it because I’d never looked for it. It just kind of landed on my lap through accidental events - like a Grail Tale or Don Quixote. My life in that sense has been more picaresque than a tightly planned novel. I didn’t decide when I was eight I was going to work in Ukraine and got there in the end. That isn’t what happened. But then when it did happen, I was aware that this was one of the many things that I really wanted to do. Episode Five: Battling Archetypes and Disinfolklore So this is, I think, episode five of going over the basics of battling archetypes - disinfolklore analytical method. We were on the bridge and we went through the luxury sausage troll saga. And then last week we went through some of the folkloric resonances of my experience as a diplomat on that bridge at Stanytsia Luhanska, the passage to the other world. So I wanted to move onwards with archetyping. Donald Trump and the Madman Archetype I had an interesting discussion with someone today about whether or not Donald is compos mentis. And some of us may be aware there’s been a bit of a divorce between Michael Cohen and the liberal media this week. I don’t quite fully understand it, but I think it’s something to do with one of the documents that was released in the 1% of documents released in the Epstein files. That document attests, apparently, to Michael Cohen’s lawyers offering something to the New York DA and/or AG during his case - I think this was during the case in 2018 when he ended up in Otisville, in prison for campaign finance violations. And unindicted co-conspirator number one is Donald. Basically, Michael Cohen has been, in his podcast for the last couple of years, promoting the narrative that he knows for certain that Donald knew nothing about Epstein - because, as is true, Epstein and Donald had divorced before Michael Cohen came on the scene. But also Michael Cohen was very strongly attesting to his very strong belief as the person he believes who knows Donald best of practically anyone in the world, that Donald was not involved in really bad stuff in the Epstein files. And anyway, there’s been this divorce. And so I’ve had to reassess almost everything I learned about Donald from Michael Cohen and try and think about it and think about whether he was lying about that or not, whether he was trolling us. There were a few things I was pretty clear he was just banging on about, but it doesn’t mean everything he ever said about Donald is incorrect. And one of the things he’s been very clear about Donald is that he is acting. He does not have dementia - that he is acting this role of someone who’s completely nuts. So as in the background of my mind, I’m recomputing all the data I collected over listening to Michael Cohen’s podcast every now and again over the past couple of years. And I had this discussion earlier today. And certainly what Donald is doing, he is archetyping as the archetypal madman. Game Theory and the Madman Strategy Any of us who studied - who had the misfortune, even though I did have a good teacher - to study game theory at college, will know the kind of archetypal example of the madman is Khrushchev at the United Nations in 1961, banging his shoe during the Cuban Missile Crisis (which seems like a very tame crisis, to be honest with you, at this point). The people who established game theory as a science in political science - I think basically Harvard is the beginning of all of that, and it’s a big player still in IR, in international relations - they established this idea that you could play the madman. And Donald is certainly a very convincing actor in that role, whether or not he has dementia or is at death’s door, I just don’t know. And I’m not convinced he is. Obviously, we all wish he would just retire peacefully somewhere, preferably somewhere else. But I was pretty sure after Jan 6th that we wouldn’t have to deal with him again because he seemed so unhealthy. The Epstein Connection And if you set out in your political career to try and gain immunity from whatever is in the Epstein files - and I do kind of think that the Epstein, his experience with Epstein and his knowledge that the stuff would come out, is possibly the main motivating factor in his entire political career. Again, Michael Cohen is a source for this: Donald did not intend to win the presidency in 2016. He was doing it to build his brand and it got out of hand and he won it. But if in the course of running for the 2016 elections - the Epstein case, certainly in 2018, I think that’s when it kind of broke really, early 2018, mostly, but obviously people in the know knew about it - and he appointed as his minister for the economy, Acosta, who as I understand it, arranged the plea deal with Epstein in Florida. So Epstein and all that stuff was very much on his mind. And if Donald is willing to threaten to invade Greenland over whatever there is in those files and sacrifice the whole of Ukraine, then it might be pretty horrific. And if he knows this is there, then that could well have motivated his going with the political career. Ukraine at the Center But I think the other thing is Ukraine has been central to Donald and to republicanism and to American democracy since 2015 and certainly since 2016, when it’s always been my belief that Russia bet everything on Crimea. And then it doubled down again on Luhansk and Donetsk. And then it doubled again on Syria. And then it kind of ten-tupled its bets on the full-scale invasion. But I think everything Russia does and has done really over the past decade has been motivated by its animal and completely irrational desire to subjugate and kill and destroy Ukraine - which of course is the vulnerability which President Zelensky and General Budanov and everyone and the Ukrainians, I think the leadership in Ukraine have been using, trolling, knowing this vulnerability, trolling Russia to its doom. Introducing Archetyping So all of this is a way of introducing one of the central ideas in disinfolklore and the battling archetypes. Part of it is the idea of archetyping. And I’ve spoken before about how Donald used Alphonse Capone - he would always say Alphonse Capone as part of his campaign speeches - and how Melania’s meme chic costume at his inauguration earlier this year (feels like eternity away) were deliberate acts of archetyping, as was all that stuff with Batman and Robin and Musk and him and “Daddy” in the White House earlier this year. And so if Donald is archetyping himself as the archetypal madman from game theory, then yes, he’s very convincing at it. And he may well be suffering dementia. But when I reflected on it, I’m not sure I’d even heard of narcissism until maybe 2017, 2016 as a psychiatric disorder. And so basically everything I know about narcissism is from him. And you know, when I reflect on it, he could just be playing that role. So I just don’t know. But all of this is introducing the idea of archetyping. And if Donald is archetyping himself as the dementia-ridden, Alphonse Capone admiring, kind of crazy guy, and now he just has to keep on doubling down and tripling down - again, parallels with Russia - then my idea of the element in archetyping which applies to memes and overall strategies, I think is central to understanding what is going on. It’s even central to having a conversation about it. And my jury, you know, I swing both ways. Like yesterday, I was arguing with this particular person that Donald was strategically illiterate because there is this argument: he just goes for things like the dog who catches the car - Venezuela, then what? And then they kind of ad lib, improvise. But of course, improvisation is a central part of modern… And there was a lot of improvisation, I assume, in The Apprentice as well. The Reciprocal Nature of Archetyping But we can have a conversation at least, if we’ve got this vocabulary, about archetyping. And I give, as the example: archetyping is a reciprocal process. It’s reflexive. It works both ways. So I imputed into that scene at the bridge at Stanytsia Luhanska, where I worked between January 2015 and January 2018, I imputed into that scene at the bridge folkloric tropes. Long before I thought deeply about folklore - as I kind of talked about last week - and I looked into what folklore is, and I looked into my immediate impression that there was something folkloric about the situation, but I didn’t really know what it was. And all I knew about folklore was my memory of tales read as a child about forests and Hansel and Gretel and all of that. And as I talked about last week, it’s actually a lot deeper than that the more I looked into it and unraveled what was

    57 min

  4. JAN 15

    Podcast | What's 'Folklore' about Disinfolklore?

    I forged the word Disinfolklore out of disinformation and folklore in February 2023. **The Origins of the Folklore Folder** I established a folder on my computer in February 2020 called Folklore. And that folder, that’s where I was putting all these texts that I was reading to try and understand what trolls and trolling was about. And then that, out of that initial attempt to look at how those terms were being used in the media and had been used, tracing them back, going back to the, that led me on this massive journey, which I’m still on, into the origins of Indo-European languages, but also particularly through this data set from which I got from Factiva of tens of thousands of references to trolls and trolling. So I had that folder on my computer called Folklore. And then disinformation, obviously, was one of the words. It could be misinformation or disinformation. And in February 2023, I was trying to think of a way of how can I archetype everything I have learned since being on the bridge. Obviously that was February 2023, which is a year into the war as well, where I realized I, because of my experience on this bridge from February 2015 onwards, and seeing and looking at patterns and data that I had a particular way of perceiving the daily diet of information that we were receiving through X and through Telegram. At the time I was on Telegram and looking at for the full scale invasion. And I spent the first month of the full-scale invasion collecting information for the OSCE’s Moscow Mechanism mission, which then in April 2022 produced the first, it was charged by 44 countries, nation states, to inquire into Russia’s conduct of the war in Ukraine for the first month. And that report, which was then cited in the definitive, historical, comprehensive 600-page judgment delivered by the European Court on Human Rights about three months ago on Russia’s violations of the European Convention on Human Rights. So I was collecting this data initially to help these four jurists who were producing this report. But I found that I had a particular perspective on it that was worth sharing. But I was looking for a means of naming it, naming what I was doing. And I consciously sat down one day to say, okay, so I wrote down disinformation and then folklore. And obviously Disinfolklore then was pretty obvious then because of the F in Disinfolklore. So that’s where the moniker, the branding was born. **Why Folklore?** But instead of including the word folklore, I could have chosen song or folk song, propaganda, stories, narratives, or a heap of other words to describe the new phenomenon that I’ve identified. And folklore, however, captures best the way of seeing. So it’s a way of seeing in the sense of that brilliant book by Berger on ways of seeing, ways of looking at art. I think it’s from the early 70s. And that really, that title, that idea from Nietzsche as well, all knowledge is perspective. But this idea of ways of seeing, which is as valid today to see described as Disinfolklore, as folklore was in Jacob Grimm or Herder’s times. I mentioned Herder’s call last week in 1777 where he said, you know, it is time we’re under occupation by the French and we need to unite the 10 Germanic tribes. In order to do this, we need our Shakespeare. Where is our Shakespeare? We have no Shakespeare. And that he launched the folklore collection movement in Germany, which recruited the Grimm brothers later and Goethe. And they, riffing off this kind of, I mean, it’s quite, it’s amusing in a very nerdy way that the first, basically, if you’re looking at folklore studies, and since I did a course as a continuing education at Oxford last year just to go through the origins of folklore, which I found very useful and very helpful. But basically the folklore movement, one of the origin stories is in Macpherson’s Ossian Tales, which turned out to be faked. But they, from the 17th century, they brought into the consciousness of the whole of European, Europe basically was convulsed by these stories of peasant wisdom and the found, which is a trope actually across Indo-European culture, including in Tibetan Buddhism, of these documents, which are just suddenly found somewhere under a rock and, and MacPherson is the archetypal Disinfolklorist because he did communicate something very authentic. I mean, they’re mainly based on Irish folklore, but he did it in a deceptive manner but who can blame him because it was that work which then inspired Herder for instance to realise okay we can create a sense of national self-identity by collecting stories and finding the archetypal stories of the German people and for three years I had been researching Indo-European mythology and folklore this is the three years before 2023 and before a year, so a year into the full-scale invasion. For three years, I had been researching Indo-European mythology and folklore as a means of seeing how Russia and MAGA were using stories to create community. And I was looking for that moniker. And then Disinfolklore just suddenly came to me. A bit like that famous, you know, all those famous Eureka moments. **The Folkloric Dimensions of the Bridge** However, when I arrived, the reason I had this folder called Folklore on my computer was, yes, I was trying to look at trolling and trolls. But the, from the very, almost the very first moment I arrived at the bridge in Stanytsia Luhanska, which is on the Donets River, it’s in a biosphere reserve area, beautiful forestry, either side of the river, weeping willows, whose leaves are falling into the river and whose bows are bowed towards the river. And there was a bridge across it. And on either side of the bridge were the Russian occupiers on one side and the Ukrainian defenders on the other side, separated by a kilometre and a half. And then there was all these old houses, beautiful old wooden houses. Typically, the architecture around there, that part of Ukraine, is brick built, first story. And then they have wooden tops of the houses. And this didn’t fit my archetype of of Russia or of the Soviet Union, where I thought everyone lived in these horrible apartment blocks. And that’s from the perspective of a bourgeois Westerner, where these horrible apartment blocks generally aren’t, are kind of the equivalent that Americans see, you know, like projects. But of course, now having traveled a lot around Central and Eastern Europe, I realize that that archetypal meaning of these places is not consistent with the data where you have lovely, well-looked-after apartment blocks to the untrained eye. They just look like like a council estate in South London or something like that. But actually, when you’re getting close to them, you see, okay, there’s a whole community of people looking after them. And you have people from all type parts of society living in them. But at the time, it was quite surprising to me that people in the former Soviet Union would live in, I thought, because I’d learned about collectivization and getting rid of the kulaks and all that. But eastern Ukraine, as we’ve probably all seen in these images, it is a beautiful, just an amazingly beautiful place. But there’s something folklore about it and I saw that the moment I arrived there because I guess my only reference point when I arrived there was folklore and stories which I had read in Lady Bird books or Hansel and Gretel or from Disney films and a lot of the scenes which I saw there that my only, the archetype in my consciousness was folklore. So I had that intuition. I’m not going to say the first time I went to the bridge at Stanytsia Luhanska. You know, we gradually moved there, closer there. The first day I arrived in Severodonetsk in this hotel called the Mir Hotel, which is now no longer with us like so many buildings that I know in Ukraine have been destroyed and looted. And I was only there for seven years. And I often reflect on this, that if so many places dear to me, including hotels I stayed in and my own house in Severodonetsk, which was destroyed and my next door neighbor was torn to pieces by Russian artillery. And then his friend went to rescue him and he was then torn to pieces. And if I have had this experience, even though I only lived there for seven years in this hotel, then what it must be like for Ukrainians to have these whole cities and whole towns disappear from them, it often gives me an idea of the scale of the of the destruction, but sitting in the Mir Hotel in Severodonetsk, where I lived for a year, my first year there, we gradually moved closer to Stanytsia Luhanska from Severodonetsk. It’s about 180 kilometers, and there were terrible roads. And we would drive there each day, there and back each day. But about a month after I arrived there, we finally got to the bridge the first time. But pretty early on, I intuited there was something folklore about the situation. And I had an intuition that folklore was connected to it. So there’s this idea of a bridge and there’s often these kind of, in folkloric tales, something mediating between worlds and other worlds. And a bridge was both a metaphor and an actual fact. **The Wagner Mythology** And also on the Russian side of the bridge, the Russian-occupied side of the bridge, they were Wagner Army or Wanger Army unit soldiers guarding the bridge. So these were the, not only had they, by that time, this was before the mythology of the wanger had really entered the mainstream. And it’s probably a bit hard for us to remember this, but the wanger really didn’t, like most normal people, didn’t really know anything about Wagner Private Military Company until about 2022, 2023. Now, people paying attention to Russia and to Syria would have known about it, would have known about them. But in 2015, this was very close to their beginnings. But from my earliest times there, I was coming across these stories like mythical stories abo

    1h 5m

  5. JAN 10

    Podcast | Paradoxes' brainwashing qualities in ordinary news

    What I look at in Disinfolklore is particularly the system effects of specific memes. I’m also interested in how they affect us—our motivations, intentions, and attitudes. The Disinfolklore universe is unique because it wraps the world in a narrative, much like how Russians wrap everyone in Eastern Ukraine. It’s an all-encompassing system, like being in love or grief, where memes aggregate to transform your mind. This transformation is akin to being in a cult, where you start believing things like Greenland or Venezuela belonging to America, or Ukraine to Russia. It’s the result of thousands, millions of memes. I’ve been working on what I call paradoxical brainwashing. For example, being a Ukraine supporter but believing Ukraine will lose. This paradox was evident when a caller on the show was consistently negative, despite factual arguments from others. The paradox extends to statements like “Putler wants Ukraine to succeed,” even while bombing Ukraine. These contradictions are part of cult formation and brainwashing, not just rhetorical ticks but powerful weapons. The hesitancy in such statements indicates an understanding of their paradoxical nature, yet they are swallowed by the gullible. Imagine someone exhausted from two years in a bomb shelter in Ukraine, susceptible to the paradox of surrendering for peace. The generosity Donald spoke of is like that of a wife-beater, using apparent contradictions to brainwash and soothe. Over time, we become habituated to these contradictions. Disinfolklore isn’t just one story; it’s hundreds, day after day. Paradoxes become more than rhetorical tricks; they’re powerful weapons. The charge of hypocrisy is part of these paradoxes, often seen in propaganda. They aim to get people used to paradoxes and inconsistencies. We’ve seen commentators sort confusing data through rhetorical flourishes, like Gideon Rachman of the FT. They reveal a lack of attention to the nuances of global events, viewing Ukraine as a mere news story. However, the situation in Ukraine is a result of Russia’s decision to go all in on Ukraine in February 2014. These hypocrisies and paradoxes are pointed out in statements like “European politicians care about human rights, but look at us, they won’t let Russian newspapers in.” It’s hypocrisy. Once you notice this, you see it everywhere. Many people do it out of habit, without thinking it through. I’m making a plea to pay attention to these paradoxes and avoid them unless they’re truly interesting. They have brainwashing effects. All politicians are corrupt, Europeans are corrupt, Russia just wants peace. If we can scan for paradoxes and contradictions inside memes, it becomes a valuable discipline, helping us interpret data more insightfully. I awarded the 2025 Positive Trolling Award to Tweet for Anna for her comprehensive threads, embodying positive trolling elements like generosity, ethical discipline, patience, joyous perseverance, focus, and insightfulness. Her work, like Mocker’s, interjects humor and mocking laughter into the horrific things we encounter daily. Another idea I’ve had is the Ukraine bridge drop backstop. Putin’s residence troll was a premature ejaculation, born of panic. The Russians sabotaged the peace process, fearing it was moving too fast. The premature aspect was brilliant, as it preempted Ukraine’s potential sabotage. Ukraine’s relentless destruction of Russia’s capacity continues. It’s a once-in-a-millennium opportunity to complete what began in 1990, with the destruction of Russia’s capacity. Five to six sovereign states will succeed the Russian Federation, whether Donald or others like it or not. President Zelensky is a 21st-century troll, operating on frequencies 20th-century trolls like Donald and Putla can’t conceive. His ability to move emotions with a facial expression is remarkable. He maintains integrity, ensuring that Ukrainians understand he doesn’t subscribe to the idea that Putla wants Ukraine to succeed. The bridge drop remains a strategic option for Ukraine, a backstop in their plans. Someone responded to my writing, saying everything said about Russia could be said about the West. I replied with the code of positive trolls, emphasizing ethical discipline and the post-World War II legal order that upholds Ukraine’s territorial integrity. The danger of American troops in Ukraine seems unlikely, but Russia’s weakness provides a security guarantee. The shape-shifting aspect of invasion rationales, like in Venezuela, disorients and confuses. Disinfolklore’s complicity lies between storytelling and actual events, creating new realities in people’s minds. MAGA, founded on America First and no foreign entanglements, has shifted to invade Venezuela and Greenland, wrapping us in a Disinfolklore universe. This complicity between storytelling and events is evident in the luxury sausage troll saga, where misinformation spiraled into a narrative used for brainwashing. Understanding Disinfolklore’s impact on identities is crucial. It changes people, much like the Brexit saga did. Most people eventually snap back, but strategic Disinfolklore can permanently alter identities. It’s an operation that must be understood to prevent its effects, just as the Soviet Union failed to erase Ukraineness. Our identities will be changed by the Ukraine war, hopefully not negatively. We need to gently educate those who weren’t paying attention. The Venezuela and Greenland situations might draw mainstream attention. Mocker’s stories illustrate this, as her brothers now acknowledge Russian threats they once dismissed. The complicity of Disinfolklore, Don’s shape-shifting folksy stories about Venezuela and Greenland, moves people along with different reasons for doing it. This complicity between storytelling and events is evident in the luxury sausage troll saga, where misinformation spiraled into a narrative used for brainwashing. The narrative is like a spiral, mutating and like a DNA helix, twisting between reality and creating new realities in people’s minds. The complicity we had when we saw this on Sunday is a great case study to try and work out what’s going on and how it impacts people we know. MAGA was founded nine years ago, America First, no foreign entanglements, yet now they invade Venezuela and Greenland, with a vast trove of ready-made Disinfolklore. This battering goes back to paradoxes, brainwashing, and cult formation. What I’m trying to do is give us a frame for looking at these events from a distance, hopefully having a positive psychological impact. We can look at it as a piece of art on a wall rather than something visceral that we feel, because I’m sure we all feel it viscerally. It’s a real downer. Understanding Disinfolklore’s impact on identities is crucial. It changes people, much like the Brexit saga did. Most people eventually snap back, but strategic Disinfolklore can permanently alter identities. It’s an operation that must be understood to prevent its effects, just as the Soviet Union failed to erase Ukraineness. Our identities will be changed by the Ukraine war, hopefully not negatively. We need to gently educate those who weren’t paying attention. The Venezuela and Greenland situations might draw mainstream attention. Mocker’s stories illustrate this, as her brothers now acknowledge Russian threats they once dismissed. The complicity of Disinfolklore, Don’s shape-shifting folksy stories about Venezuela and Greenland, moves people along with different reasons for doing it. This complicity between storytelling and events is evident in the luxury sausage troll saga, where misinformation spiraled into a narrative used for brainwashing. The narrative is like a spiral, mutating and like a DNA helix, twisting between reality and creating new realities in people’s minds. The complicity we had when we saw this on Sunday is a great case study to try and work out what’s going on and how it impacts people we know. MAGA was founded nine years ago, America First, no foreign entanglements, yet now they invade Venezuela and Greenland, with a vast trove of ready-made Disinfolklore. This battering goes back to paradoxes, brainwashing, and cult formation. What I’m trying to do is give us a frame for looking at these events from a distance, hopefully having a positive psychological impact. We can look at it as a piece of art on a wall rather than something visceral that we feel, because I’m sure we all feel it viscerally. It’s a real downer. The whole thing is a big downer. So, I’m looking for ways to help us understand what’s going on, deal with it in real time, and find ways to prevent becoming overcome by it because we’ve got a long war ahead of us. A bit of humor was the picture of Hegseth with Twitter. Someone pointed out a Smiley meme when they were trying to recreate their Bin Laden raid photographs in Mar-a-Lago. Let’s take joy where we can. The bridge is down in Silhanska and the Donetsk River. Russian occupiers on one side of the bridge and us on the other. I used the luxury sausage troll saga, where two and a half tons of sausages were mysteriously dumped, leading to a potential escalation. The Russians said they’d annihilate them with artillery, but decided not to. It was a ridiculous situation that could have escalated into war. We navigated this situation, and it became part of the Disinfolklore. The storytelling spun into a narrative that the OSCE was smuggling sausages, then poisoned ones. A French army officer reasoned it wasn’t a sanctioned operation but was spun into brainwashing. This was one of thousands of stories I encountered that helped me see the archetypal Disinfolklore universe. The purpose of this storytelling, like Donald’s, is to transform from the inside out by affecting moods, motivations, intentions, and attitudes. It’s a way of seeing operations like Venezuela’s and ho

    52 min

  6. 12/25/2025

    Podcast | Færy Tale Beginnings - the Training Data Set

    I am keeping a grip on where we are. This is episode three of a series I started four weeks ago. As some of us might remember, there were technical issues in the second week. So, this is episode three, where I am going through the paper I delivered at the Pirate Party Security Conference at the time of the Munich Conference last February. The words from the United States Vice President at that conference are continuing to resonate, with new policies being released all the time. Most recently, the attempt to sanction the European Union—specifically several former senior European Union officials—for so-called free speech crimes. So, this is the Disinfolklore universe that I had an intimation we were moving towards. It is provoked into being by such actions as we have seen today. I am also aware of my promise to Iona about six weeks ago that we would deal with truth, and I am moving towards that as well. It will be a few more episodes where I move towards that point. Last week, we saw the continued reference to the territorial integrity of Ukraine. Some of us might remember in the prehistoric past—which, when I looked back on my writing over the past few months, was actually only a month ago, believe it or not—that five weeks ago I got the first intimation that this new round of so-called capitulation, or peace talks, was beginning and the pressure was on. My first intimation of it—some of us will remember picking this data point up on our timelines—was when the United States had attempted to take the term “territorial integrity” out of the annual United Nations resolution in support of Ukraine’s war of independence and against Russia’s aggression. At the time, that stood out to me like a sore thumb. The reference to sovereignty without the reference to territorial integrity is significant. The sound “right” or “writ” is in both those terms: territorial and integrity. It is also in sovereignty, but it is disguised as the “reign” element—reine in French—originating from this idea of straightness, truth, and the rod. For instance, President Zelenskyy held a rod in his right hand when he was inaugurated as president in the Verkhovna Rada. The current English King, who is sovereign—there is only one sovereign on the island of Britain, and that is the King—also held a straight rod in his right hand when he was inaugurated as monarch. These are very, very old Indo-European rites, and they are integrated into our language and the way we, as Indo-European communities, govern ourselves. This goes right back to Mykhailivka village in Zaporizhzhia, where the Yamnaya community lived between four thousand one hundred BCE and three thousand five hundred BCE. They spread Indo-European languages, religions, and forms of governance into the area between Ireland and India. When I see today the President of the European Commission, the President of France, and Indo-European civilization’s greatest leaders—particularly in Europe—referencing the term sovereignty and digital sovereignty in almost identical terms, it pleases me enormously. We are moving towards the relationship between these concepts and trying to define what is rightful and what is truthful, which is what we try to do every day in real-time on our timelines. I am a great admirer of postmodern philosophy—I studied as a postgraduate at Georgetown—but I am also a little old-fashioned insofar as I do believe there is truth. Truth is not merely a mobile army of metaphors; it can be, but it is not merely that. There is truth: when we sit on a chair, we are sitting on the chair. As we previously discussed with Wendy regarding the idea of emptiness, ultimately nothing does matter. However, in conventional reality, we have elaborated and established certain rules, certain regulations, and certain rights. In that conventional reality that we are living in, for me, the preeminent rights are those established after World War Two and the international legal order for which eight million Ukrainians died, including one million Ukrainian Jews. Eight million European Jews died, and tens of millions of others died. We established this set of rules and regulations after World War Two, and for me, that is the truth—the standard against which we measure any speech trying to incite hatred or division. Sadly, we see the lack of respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty which China, for instance, practiced when it invaded and occupied Tibet, and which Russia has denigrated a billion times. Sadly, we are seeing now the threats—the serious military threats against Greenland, part of the Kingdom of Denmark, and also against the European Union’s digital sovereignty. These concepts and ideas are more important than ever. I see all of this as part of the Disinfolklore universe, which the MAGA administration, as well as Russia and the Chinese Communist Party, are attempting to wrap us up inside. Thankfully, for the time being—and I see no clouds on the horizon on this front—the European Union is holding up what is right, as indeed are Australia and Japan. One of the main means we can use to determine who is upholding what is right—meaning the post-World War Two legal and social order in today’s world—is how they are supporting Ukraine. Some of us might well have friends who do not necessarily support Ukraine or who have had their minds contaminated by Russian Disinfolklore, so that they think they can challenge for the sake of debate or argument, arguing Russian information warfare tropes either knowingly or unknowingly. It is not enough to defend sovereignty alone because the three archetypes which are central to Indo-European communities since the time of the Yamnaya are: Sovereignty, Security, and Prosperity (or Fertility). These three elements are represented today, for instance, in our memory of the Hindi caste system, where you have priests, soldiers, and farmers. The priests are one aspect of sovereignty, the soldiers are an aspect of security, and the farmers are an aspect of prosperity. Again, the “writ” sound is in security, fertility, prosperity, and sovereignty. We have these archetypes very deeply embedded into our language, into the way we think, and into how we govern ourselves. It tickles me to have come across the literature of the French philosopher Georges Dumézil, who discovered these three archetypes imminent in all Indo-European traditions in the nineteen thirties. For many of you, you will know I spent the time from twenty-fifteen to twenty-eighteen in a particular part of eastern Ukraine, in Stanytsia Luhanska. This is the only official crossing point from Russia-occupied Ukraine into government-controlled Ukraine. I worked for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). It was founded after the Berlin Wall fell, but it stems from the Helsinki Final Act of nineteen seventy-six. I had cause to read the Helsinki Final Act this week, and territorial integrity is in every clause. Russia signed up to it and has violated sovereignty and territorial integrity. When you think about it, you can be a sovereign individual yourself, but you need an “area.” The word “area” eventually finds its way into “Aryan” or “Iranian.” You need an area in which to exercise your sovereignty. Unless this area is secure and defined, your sovereignty is compromised. While I was in eastern Ukraine, in Stanytsia Luhanska, I encountered what I call the first Disinfolklore universe. For those who were not there, it is akin to what you saw with MAGA affecting people you knew. It goes from being a joke to actually being an identity-forming element. I engineered the term Disinfolklore from my experience as a diplomat on this bridge in Stanytsia Luhanska. The scene itself was a biosphere reserve, forested, with the Donets River running through it. The Donets is part of a series of “DN” sounded rivers. In my work, there are three sounds which are really important: the “MN” sound, the “RT” or “RIT” sound (associated with truth, Arta in ancient Iranian or Rita in Vedic), and the “DN” sound. We have the Don River, which marked the border between the area protected by the Goddess Europa and Asia. We have a map from Isidore of Seville from about the sixth century defining this. Isidore was basically the Wikipedia of the pre-Middle Age world. Isidore of Seville defines the area protected by the Goddess Europa as being west of the Tanais—the Don River. East of the Don River is Asia. Then you have the Donets River, which is the Little Don. Then you have the Dnipro, the “Don Upper” river. Then you have the Dniester, the “Don Lower” river. And then you have the Danube. You have these great rivers of Europe, all with the “DN” sound in their moniker. I was on the Don. I did not know any of this while I was there, thankfully, or I would have bored my fellow diplomats to tears. But the setting made an impact on me: beautiful forests, willows hanging over the river, and this iron bridge. On one side, about a kilometer north, was the Ukrainian Armed Forces position. On the south side was the Russian occupier position. I arrived there in February twenty-fifteen, just after the bridge itself had been blown up. You could still cross the river, but it was a difficult passage, like in a computer game. It was about fifteen kilometers to Luhansk City, which was and is under occupation by the Ruscists. In this whole scene, it was a beautiful, halcyon, bucolic location with birdsong and trees, yet wild animals would often set off landmines in the forestry. Before twenty-fourteen, it was sleepy. Then, while I was there, each night there were massive amounts of artillery strikes from one side to the other. Each morning I would go down to the bridge, speak to the Ukrainian commanding officer, and write down their stories. Then I would pass thousands of civilians waiting in queues on this

    49 min

  7. 12/18/2025

    Podcast | Disinfolklore Universe Episode 2

    Decoding Trolls returns for a deep dive into what he calls the “disinfolklore universe”—a constructed reality where propaganda, myth, archetypes, and emotional manipulation replace facts and reason. Building on his Munich Security Conference intervention and years of lived experience in eastern Ukraine, Decoding unpacks how modern information warfare operates not just through lies, but through stories that feel true, emotionally charged archetypes, and psychological paradoxes designed to exhaust, demoralize, and ultimately re-engineer public consciousness. The discussion explores how concepts like peace, security guarantees, and ceasefires are deliberately inverted—how capitulation is sold as peace, aggression as liberation, and coercion as care. From MAGA rhetoric and Russian disinformation ecosystems to Wagner mythology, Valhalla symbolism, and the weaponization of disgust (“migrants eating dogs”), this episode traces how ancient mythic structures are repurposed for modern mind-war. Drawing on anthropology, cultural psychology, and firsthand ceasefire-monitoring experience, Decoding explains why demilitarized zones and ceasefire monitoring fail when there is no political will to enforce them—and why Russia’s long-term strategy has always relied on constant provocation, plausible deniability, and psychological erosion, not compliance… US Presidents could always archætype at scale. Now, they have the capacity to re-encode our minds into their Disinfolklore Universe. If the media repeats your trolls then people truly believe migrants are eating your pet dawg. If you own X and Facebook then you can convince at scale that we are NOT living in a Disinfolklore universe now. We are though. The signs are everywhere, once you get your eye in. And that is my job: to get your eye in, so you can see what is being done. By understanding the Disinfolklore Universe we can engage in conscious memetic warfare. Conscious Counter Disinfolklore. So, two weeks ago, I ended at the point where I was talking about what I was most concerned with in my Munich speech in February 2025: that we would be wrapped up inside what I call a Disinfolklore, or a universe made up of different discrete galaxies all coalescing. And sadly, the attempt to re-engineer humanity through this is ongoing. We see it every day throughout this so-called peace process. And so, how it manifests in our minds and in our timelines is exactly what we’re experiencing at the moment, which is a constant battering of our senses and emotions. Our emotions—most importantly—are battered with hope and with feelings that maybe, for instance, in the case of one of the main characters at the moment, the war in Ukraine, peace is going to arrive in a month or two, or that it is imminent. I think all of us... I’m not going to go through why I don’t think this is true. I could go through each of the peace agreement’s elements and demonstrate it’s not true. But I probably actually will get to that point later, in a few weeks, when I get to the point about my experience in eastern Ukraine. US presidents could always archetype at scale. And by archetyping, I mean something bigger than branding. It’s not a mere imprinting of ideas in our consciousness. It’s something akin to attaching something in the quotidian, in our timelines, to very deep structures within our cognitive frameworks on an individual, but also on a micro and a macro level. So, when President Trump was talking about immigrants eating our dogs, that can be understood on the literal level: “Immigrants are eating our dogs.” And many of us would have spent time fact-checking this. And lo and behold, we discover immigrants aren’t eating our dogs. But when I heard that, it reminded me of one of my great supervisors, Anna Lo, who was a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly. Sadly, she died about a year ago. But she was the first ethnic Chinese member of a legislature in Europe. And I worked for her in Northern Ireland when I was General Secretary of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, an anti-sectarian political party. There is a tradition among those supposedly loyal to the British crown of lighting bonfires in July. Some of us might remember seeing lots of bonfires. And “Anna Lo ate my dog”—I remember seeing that once on a sign on one of these bonfires and wondering, what are they talking about? And I thought of that immediately when Donald was talking about migrants eating our dogs. So there is this element also of an archetypal relationship between dogs and migrants—being eaten and eating our pets—somehow “others.” And that’s quite conventional, clearly, in far-right circles. I happened to come across it once by accident in Northern Ireland, and then it popped up in Donald Trump’s speech that time, and suddenly everyone is going [crazy]. So that’s also an archetypal structure. But it also sounds so bizarre to us as normal human beings who support Ukraine, that it’s like a hidden code, an unhidden code. And somehow it connects with the deep psychological fears of people in their inner minds and motivates them to hate migrants. It motivated enough of a set of people that it was worth Donald airing this in his campaign; that it was worth these so-called loyalists attaching a poster of Anna Lo to their bonfire and then burning the effigy, and burning the sign “Anna Lo ate my dogs.” So this is the kind of thing I’m talking about: archetypal Disinfolklore literacy. We don’t have to learn all of these tropes, because honestly, I think we could end up being brainwashed. But when we hear, when we see the Wagner (or the “Wanger”) propagandist who was killed by one of the first HIMARS strikes in Popasna in July 2022... some of us will remember that incident where he was visiting the front line as a tourist. And it was in Popasna, which is a city I know well, or knew well when I lived in eastern Ukraine. He photographed his arrival there and it was put up online. But there was a label on the building behind him, and HIMARS came to visit, and he was killed. And the person who took over the Grey Zone Telegram channel wrote: “So-and-so has gone to Odin.” Again, this is a very deep archetype in Indo-European history. And in Germanic, ancient Germanic thought—surfaced by Tacitus, recorded first in the first century of the Common Era, and then used by Wagner, the composer, as part of this project to create a German national consciousness movement. This was a response to the call by Herder in 1778 to unify the ten German tribes that Tacitus had recorded existed. Odin became prominent, and as part of that, Wagner the composer played his role—as did Goethe and many other great artists and writers—to form this culture. This is akin to what MAGA and Russia are trying to do using all of these different means. When they use archetypes, like in this case, Odin (”He’s gone to Odin”), these are very deep structures. They attach not just into our culture, but into, for instance, Wednesday. Every time you say Wednesday, you’re unknowingly, perhaps, making a dedication to Odin. Wodanas is the Germanic way of calling Woden the god, but Odin is another name for it. And for the Wagner military guys, it was part of their lore, part of their inner lore, and it is still part of their lore. So when you pick up these things, they’re not mere tropes. They’re not mere accidental. There’s something more about them. So that’s what I mean about archetypes. It’s bigger than branding. It’s more than representation. It’s something much deeper. And that’s what I’m most concerned about. This week, we saw, for instance—well, two weeks ago, and we talked a bit about it last week—we saw the new National Security Strategy. And so when we see... oh, it’s obvious, and this is from my previous work which I’ve talked about before, how “Putler” archetypes Ukraine as a woman. A woman from the perspective of the masculinist. From the perspective of Hegseth, or the head of the FBI, who incidentally, when he talks about Valhalla, is tapping into that white supremacist Germanic lore archetype. So it’s not just the Wagner military. But what I noticed they’re also trying to do in the National Security Strategy is archetype Europe in the same way that they’re archetyping Ukraine. So it’s kind of turning the concept of Europe away from its power, its economic power and all of that, and turning it into—as I talk about characters in Disinfolklore literacy—a character that has the characteristics of a woman, a weak woman. And a “weak woman” is an archetype from the perspective of masculinists like Putler, like Hegseth, like Donald, like all of these paleo-male, paleo-conservatives. They’re trying to create a sense of disgust about it. One friend of mine wrote to me from the United States, and she was like, “Well, how is Europe these days? I mean, it sounds... it’s all very sick to me, everything that’s going on there. You’re just ailing.” And this is the mood which has been spread. I talk about how Disinfolklore works on our manner, on our energy, from which all our motivations come. Our attitudes, our moods emanate. So this is the secret sauce, as it were. We’re looking at the meme, we’re looking at the peace talks—the so-called peace talks—and our mood is being affected. And the mood is a much longer-term mechanism to brainwash us and to turn us, to demotivate us (”What’s the point in voting? Because they’re all the same”). That kind of way that they’re using memes to do this can be effected by archetypes. And so when we’ve had previous, for instance, US presidents who have seen value in trying to inspire us for good or for ill, this is not what we have at the moment. So there are similarities, is basically what I’m saying; for instance, US presidents could always archetype at scale. But that doesn’t m

    59 min

  8. 12/04/2025

    Podcast | Disinfolklore Universe - Episode 1

    It’s exactly a year since I detected the system-wide effects of the aggregatation of MAGA and Russian Disinfolklore artifacts invading our minds, information space and reality. In February in Munich at the Pirate Party security conference I declared what by then I had archætyped as a “Disinfolklore Universe” to be operating inside all of our minds and cultures. Today I want to begin a series of the five parts of the “Battling Archetypes” paper I conceived for the first time exactly a year ago and which I spoke about in embryonic form at the Munich meeting in February. So I wanted to go through the four, I won’t go through the four parts today, or five parts rather, over the next week or two to remind us of the system so that we can, for instance, apply it to this idea of a peace process of which Ukraine isn’t part of. It’s not a voluntary part of it. It’s obviously sticking in there as long as it can to maintain intelligence support for as long as it can. But as I understand it, Ukraine last year spent 5 billion euros on drones and 80 or 70 or 80% of Russian casualties were caused by those drones. So that’s 5 billion. So the amounts of money and the technical needs of Ukraine, they have everything they need, basically, at a minimum. It would be very nice if they can maintain intelligence, support, and other particular munitions. But even the patriots, we see these things, the, what are they called, SMTs or the SPTs, The anti-aircraft thing that the Italians make, I think, is it with the English or the French or some of the Germans, seem to be doing very well with that. So the United States is no longer the indispensable ally. But, you know, I totally admire the patience of the Ukrainian side. They want to keep America on board, mainly because the deep state, if there is one, and the people who will succeed Donald... God willing, they kind of will expect Ukraine to maintain its politeness. And it’s an investment in Ukraine’s future, but I don’t see it as an existential need for them. So then what are the Americans and the Russians doing? They are altering our culture. changing our approach to international law, trying to return us to the social conditions of the 1930s. And this has always been the plan, the people behind MAGA and Donald, which is basically municipal law should be, should trump international law. That for me, if you were to say to me, what is Russia’s game? What is the project? by invading and occupying Crimea. That’s what I would say. I’d say it’s to replace the international law which constrains individual sovereigns from certain activities. It prescribes a certain set of activities, the contravening human rights, contravening various laws, laws of the sea, laws of armed conflict, genocide convention. These are all constraints on the sovereign. And both MAGA and Russia and many oligarchs around the world don’t want any constraint on sovereigns. And so when we hear them trying to talk about recognising sovereignty, Crimea recognizing the taking of a territory. On the one hand, it will be America doing what Russia did when it brought Zaporozhye into its constitution. It just ruins the entire constitutions of America. as it would do with Russia. It will have no effect on other countries like the European Union, other powerful countries, or Japan in terms of recognition. They’re not going to fall. They’re not going to suddenly recognize them. But Taiwan and everyone will accelerate their nuclear weapons programs and it will have real-world... effects on that on all of those but apart from all of that what I see happening and it happens in almost imperceptibly is it changes our realities and normalizes what was previously impossible and so this is what I talk about distant folklore universe and this is why Wendy when I see articles particularly like this one about recognizing Crimea it just kind of jumps out as, oh my God, they are going to do this and this is what the implications are going to be. And in my own small way, I’ll just try to set that, lay those out. But I hope people who have power are trying to... lay this out. And I hope there’s a plan. Maybe the plan involves leaks. Maybe that’s why Whitcoff looked so terrible in Miami, because he was spending nights going through all his conversations for the last six months, which someone has, perhaps, and that they’re all going to leak them. I don’t know. But anyway, So I declared our distant folklore universe in February in Munich. And I thought it was appropriate to be talking about that at a pirate party security conference event. Because those who founded the pirate party get what I’m about to speak to you about now. There’s a flow between, on the one hand, culture, art, films, literature about pirates and geopolitical security. This is especially apt as we see these attacks on Russia-connected cargo vessels at the moment. Those whom we entrust with securing our conditions of civilized life don’t seem to understand this flow between, on the one hand, culture, art, films and literature. and geopolitical security. Donald, of course, does, because he talked incessantly about Alphonse Capone. He talked about Hannibal Lecter. He brought in these archetypal characters from art. He archetypes himself as the Joker or as a magus or seer or... And so he gets it, but many of our leaders don’t. But President Zelensky certainly gets it, and that’s part of my argument. And this is partly why there’s such easy marks for Russian and MAGA distant folklore. So this is, I’m talking about the straight-laced geopolitical actors and commentators who don’t really get this flow between art, culture, and films. And for them, they can’t really understand Donald as a as an artist, as an archetyper, as someone who archetypes at scale. And the same, obviously, with Duncy Putler. They get wrapped up so easily in Russian or MAGA trolls, like flies in a spider’s web. It’s very hard for them even to understand that they’re trapped inside old thinking. And I’m not saying I don’t get trapped. I get wrapped up in these trolls all the time. I’m just trying to develop tools that help me escape the spider’s web and go to when I find myself in a state of confusion. For instance, when... I saw this last Friday night about America recognizing Crimea. And I don’t go into despair or put out tweets going, oh, this is terrible. I just try and think it through and think, what will happen if this happens? What are they up to? Is it likely to happen? So, and today I’m going to offer you a perspective on what I call our distant folklore universe, which is, and I’m also going to offer a means to escape the troll memes, wrap us up inside when we fall for MAGA or Russian distant folklore. None of this is easy. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t have all the answers. And whenever you hear anyone talk about disinformation or disinfolklore as if it happens to other people, as if only stupid people fall for trolls, whenever you hear chatter like that, be certain these people are easy marks for trolls, for MAGA and Russian disinfolklore. You’ll have heard me say that this a lot, most recently with President Biden and his, we’re not going to go for World War III. over Ukraine. We talked about that three weeks ago. So today we live in a true distant folklore universe. The fabric of every dimension of our lives, our work, personal relationships, life choices, fates are fused with aspects of Druid-y-Don and Duncy-Putin’s memetic onslaught. That is as true today as as it was in February when I first spoke about this in Munich. And then you’ll all of course remember the White House visit happened a few days after my Munich speech, which affects all our moods, motivations, intentions and attitudes. So it’s moods. Increasingly, I’m focusing on moods. Because it’s kind of the moods which are affected by this news about peace plans, about Ukraine being forced into capitulation. Oh, can they do that? Is it going to be due? And we’re just depressed by it. And the aggregate of us all being depressed is, oh, Ukraine can’t win. And this is really what they’re attacking on a civilizational scale, on a country scale, this fear. this malaise, they’re trying to create this sense of malaise and these are being formed by what I call distant folklore directly through the media memes we consume or indirectly through our own minds working through these memes and those of others influencing us from archetypes created and evolving from distant folklore. So we had all of the archetyping of Elmo and Druidy Don in the White House that day, those days in January. and the totality of our infospace was occupied by memes like the Department of Government Efficiency, named after a meme coin, but also after the class of oligarchs who ran, I think it was Venice, into the ground, and the baseless meme coins. But it’s had real-world impacts. Some studies have talked about millions of people dying as a result of the cancelling of USAID, And it’s kind of hard to see these institutions being restored. And so there is a permanent, this is what I mean by the permanent change in our culture, the permanent change in the architecture of our lives and millions of lives by these people. So even though we might win certain battles and the Supreme Court might rule that or this, The real world impacts are in many cases permanent. We never return to the world the way it was before. And obviously all of us hope something, some deus ex machina will come on the stage and we’ll just go back to how things were. But obviously that’s never going to happen, how things were in 2014. So we just have to try and... keep control of our perceptions of how things are developing and evolving in my humble opinion. And the totality of our conception of America now is occupied by actors playing leaders in superhero costumes. This character, Jared K

    29 min
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About

Disinfolklore is a new analytical method for parsing Russian, MAGA and, indeed, all forms of emotionally resonant Disinformation. Disinfolklore is a particular form of story telling. Disinfolklore communicates mean Mana / energy directly into our mindstreams. Disinfolklore gets us to think and do what the Disinfolklorists want us to. They want us to check out. To lose hope. Abandon Ukraine, and what Ukraine’s victory symbolises: The security of the post-WWII legal and social order. For Disinfolklorists, human rights, like participating in communities' decision-making, and aspirations towards non-discrimination on the basis of sex or other protected characteristics is anathema. Disinfolklorists intend to trick us into destroying the democratic basis of the sovereignty, security, prosperity / fertility of our communities. Disinfolklore's means of affecting our Moods / Attitudes / Intentions / Motivations are visual, audible, or sensory memes, usually communicated through the medium of stories, in text, film or new media. Counter Disinfolklore is our means of defeating Disinfolklorists' attempts to hack our minds, and reflexively control our Moods / Motivations / Intentions / Attitudes. Trolling Disinfolklore provokes us into sharing onwards their trolls, so that we destroy our civilisation. But we won’t allow trolls to annihilate our communities. You and I are going to see to that. www.disinfolklore.net

Information

  • Channel
    Decoding Trolls
  • Creator
    Decoding Trolls
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    36
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Stephen Douglas
  • Show Website
    Disinfolklore

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