Ravenwood

Notes on Media Ecology, Disinformation & Propaganda, Pt. III: Geopolitical Propaganda & “Multipolar” Confusionism

I’ve already mentioned imperialist and militarist propaganda: those are part of and intertwine with geopolitical propaganda more generally. In this modern world-system built on social hierarchies, state/colonial violence and the “uneven and combined” geography of capital, so-called geopolitics/international politics is merely the sphere of the cruel and Machiavellian competition and interactions between the representatives/agents of the violent abstractions that rule over human (and non-human) life. State, empires, settlers, genociders, warlords, capital (from finance to arms and surveillance technology), borders, intelligence services and armies, as well as  international diplomacy/treaties/coalitions/institutions: it’s a heartless arena of inhuman games of chess where ordinary poor people the world over get systematically screwed while political forces, private interests and horrendous empires compete for the plundered spoils of the Earth. It moves and works in an almost completely cynical, cruel, inhuman way: pure (military, economic, diplomatic, interimperialist) conflict and competition most of the time[1], and deeply flawed liberal/bourgeois/eurocentric humanitarianism, to a lesser extent. [*]

As Marxian sociologist Alain Bihr wrote, nations are historically specific sociopolitical constructs representing the “fusion” of different classes into a “social bloc” whose structural goal/project is to “defend (…) the interests of a fraction of global capital, by providing the material, institutional and ideological conditions of its development” (Le crépuscule des États-nations, p. 24; translated by me). On top of that, class, gender/heternormative/patriarchal, racist/ethnonationalist, and colonial/settler hierarchies – and the sociocultural hegemonic norms and social relations they rely on – are violently enforced and reproduced both internally and externally. I already explored this in more detail in my post on nationalism/state/etc, but as far as we’re concerned here the point is that geopolitics is this deeply repulsive and cruel game of chess where human and non-human life are used as either/both cannon fodder or economic resources. Geopolitical propaganda is simply the informational/PR front of states and other geopolitical forces to defend and enforce their own interests/aims.

It does take forms such as the ones I mentioned when addressing imperialist/militarist/genocidal/settler propaganda, as well as more (supposedly) “moderate”, “legitimate” or “diplomatic” ones (e.g. the liberal humanitarianism of the UN and NGO’s). I’d say that a major part of geopolitical propaganda consists in (trying to influence and win) the battle of narratives about international politics (i.e. inter-imperialist competition and spheres of influence; reactions to and geopolitical impacts of wars, military interventions and armed conflicts, uprisings, atrocities and genocides, etc; international diplomacy, alliances, rivalries, etc.; international institutions like the UN, IMF, World Bank, etc.).

Various global (e,g, USA, Russia, China) and regional (e.g. Iran, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Egypt, India, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Gulf countries) powers and/or empires regularly try influencing both a) specific elites and elements across the world (diplomats, members of governments and parliaments that might work in their interest, NGOs, powerful institutions like the UN, FMI, FIFA, and so on), and b) the general international public (though it’s not for everything that actors and govts will try to do this, sometimes focusing on a is more than enough and a better use of their time/resources/efforts).

And as we’ve seen previously, there is a variety of actors adjacent to and beyond/outside of specific states that do their bidding, some are overtly or covertly funded/created/backed by the states, but there’s also a lot of “volunteering” by various people and groups on behalf of states (or other international forces) that don’t directly support or “control” them. However, that doesn’t mean said states aren’t aware of this dynamic and aren’t trying to exploit and expand/fuel it.

There would be far too many examples of this, but let’s take just one to illustrate what I mean: there’s a UK-based Lebanese authoritarian on Twitter called Hadi Nasrallah (@HadiNasrallah) that specializes in spreading pro-Assad, pro-Hezbollah and pro-IRI (Islamic Republic of Iran) disinformation and propaganda. He’s gained a big audience (103K followers as of Nov 5 2023) and from available information there’s no evidence that he’s directly connected to one of these . He went to the University of Westminster and then to SOAS in London, and he’s been active online (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram…) throughout the past decade spreading this kind of shit. So there’s no way to know for sure but it seems it’s just a case of pro-authoritarian “volunteering” promoting campist propaganda criticizing the US, Europe and Israel while actively supporting and celebrating the likes of Assad, IRI and Hezbollah.

Here’s a single example of the type of propaganda he spreads: during the uprising in Iran in 2022 after the murder of Jina Amini by the“religious morality” police, he matched the regime’s own propaganda (he’s sharing a clip from PressTV,  the IRI’s international propaganda operation) by delegitimizing the protests as some nefarious plot against the country. He uses PressTV footage of “pro-government” demonstrations, implying that Iranians were against that movement.

Of course this is just a classic form authoritarian propaganda. Not only is it irrelevant if some people supported an authoritarian regime – even if that were true and reflected reality, that doesn’t mean that they were right or more legitimate than anti-govt protests. But it’s also a very old form of authoritarian PR used by dictators and reactionary regimes across the world for the past century or more. Whenever a popular emancipatory movement emerges, these regimes launch a media/propaganda campaign to delegitimize it – both internally and internationally (if they have the resources/media operations to spread propaganda across the world) – by any means necessary. Also, large pro-government rallies or events in authoritarian regimes are inherently suspicious because regardless of the fact that there’s always a section of the population that does indeed support the regime (it’s of course exaggerated by it or by its supporters internationally), by definition the government can force people – through threats, intimidations, carrot and stick, and so on – to take part in staged media ops. The reverse isn’t true: heroic people who rise against the regime have literally everything to lose and are more often than not knowingly sacrificing themselves to fight for liberation and justice.

So the fact Nasrallah is showing this – and it’s not always staged or fabricated, again even in dictatorships there are always some people who support their oppressive regime – was a disinformation strategy in support of the the IRI. And as this tweet from Maysam Bizaer one day later shows, it directly mirrors and reproduces the regimes’ own internal propaganda (aimed at painting any dissent or resistance as dangerous forces undermining national sovereignty and safety, and pretending that the regime is beloved by the people which is obviously wrong).

The brain rot of conspiracist and campist understandings of international politics has been successfully exploited by the likes of Putin and Assad, in the same way as Milošević or Khadafi did during the 1990s or 2000s. Thus, one can find both the (so-called) left (including ‘socialist’ or ‘marxist’, and even occasionally anarchists) and the far right supporting or doing PR for notorious butchers like Milošević or Assad. Bob from Brockley writes:

The left-right convergence is more of a threat than ever today because it is being actively resourced as part of the soft power influence operations of nation-states including Iran and, most importantly, Russia, in their geopolitical tussle against the US and Europe. Just as the US tried to harness liberal and democratic socialist anti-Stalinism in its old Cold War operations against the USSR, in the new cold war Putin’s government has poured resources into influencing electoral and extra-parliamentary politics globally, and has actively promoted conspiracy theories which bind left and right and actively promoted red-brown political currents. (Matthew Lyons and Alex Reid Ross have documented several examples of this.)

Bob from Brockley: Why horseshoe theory is nonsense.

Though I’ve criticized/have issues with Alexander Reid Ross, this article is useful/important and I include below a few diagrams showing some of these connections/networks (note that this is a few years old, but many parts of it haven’t significantly changed as far as I’m aware). Javier Sethness and Radical Vagabond wrote two excellent pieces on these very dangerous authoritarian, populist, campist and redbrown networks and disinformation/propaganda forces, but check out the list of resources at the end for more stuff.

This mainly applies the US context, but very similar maps/diagrams could be made about other countries or regions, as well as highlighting the transnational ties and diffusion/connections…What’s noteworthy is that all these “volunteers” (i.e. not directly hired/funded by the govts/states in question) often have a kind of parasocial relationship with the regimes (such as PRC, Russia, Assad, Venezuela…) they support: “they take critiques of it as critiques of them, which is why they either play the losing game of denying literal facts or of changing the subject to a game of moral praise & blame” (@yungneocon).

Instead of going through everything myself (to be honest, the cynical manipulations of states and empires is really boring to me), I will be compiling a list of useful reports, investigations and resources/links on these kinds of geopolitical and “multipolar” propaganda campaigns, “volunteers”, etc.

This is an ongoing list that I’ll keep updating when I find new relevant materials/resources.

Russia

China

[1] There’s also alliances, coalitions, “cooperation” and so on, but those are themselves derived from the doctrine/goal of securing national/imperial/state/geopolitical/economic interests. There’s no genuine solidarity and cooperation in this inhuman world system of states and empires; but there’s solidarity between people and peoples fighting against them.

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