Review of Annalee Newitz’s “Stories Are Weapons” (opinion)

Annalee Newitz is one journalist who reports on science, technology and culture. They are also an accomplished science fiction writer – a complementary set of pursuits, it seems, given that the distance between science fiction and what’s in the news is shrinking.

That convergence drives Newitz’s Stories are weapons: psychological warfare and the American mind (W. W. Norton). It is a narrative non-fiction work and is inspired by the work of Paul MA Linebarger (1913–1966), author of the original American military manual on psychological warfare, but also – under the pseudonym Cordwainer Smith – one of the science fiction books most imaginative and enigmatic figures.

What the author initially intended as a short manifesto grew into a two-year research project, with an intensive exploration of several rabbit holes. Topics featured in the book include: the American Indian Wars (better characterized as a war against indigenous peoples); the psychology of the authoritarian personality; the War Office’s launch of a Propaganda Section during the First World War; Edward Bernays’ application of his uncle Sigmund Freud’s theories to the field of advertising; the gender politics of early comic books (including censorship campaigns); the role of the Russian state’s Internet Research Agency in the 2016 elections; and the specific qualities and functions of offline libraries.

The heterogeneity of subjects here is evidence of a mind that increasingly seeks context in understanding confusing realities. The author maps a maze. The challenge may be compelling to follow, but the connections made along the way won’t necessarily stick in the reader’s memory.

By reducing the book to its simplest terms, Stories are weapons argues that our “culture wars” are akin to the “psyops” (psychological warfare operations) developed by Linebarger and other professors-turned-military officers in the 1940s.

A psyop is propaganda – although not in the ordinary, civilian view that propaganda is untrue or misleading. Psyops are created with subtlety and finesse to evoke in a target audience specific feelings, attitudes, behaviors, etc. that can be useful in conducting kinetic warfare (that is, the kind that actively engages in killing enemy combatants) .

For example, the radio programs broadcast by both the Axis and Allied countries offered listeners music or other entertainment to suit their tastes, plus messages designed to undermine their confidence in the war effort – including accurate reports of bombings or defeats in battle. who had been suppressed by the authorities. The truth could be demoralizing; the trick was to put it into circulation, to challenge “control of the narrative,” as it is said today.

When the US came in During World War II, Linebarger was a political scientist at Duke University with a fluent knowledge of Chinese (acquired during his unusually peripatetic youth), making him an obvious asset in the Pacific theater. Judging from what little I’ve read about his work, Linebarger seems to have been very sceptical of what the discipline of psychology could contribute to military activities. But he brought something valuable to the psywar strategy: an awareness that cultural differences had to be a factor in any attempt to influence target audiences. Ethnocentrism can make a message ineffective or counterproductive.

Psychological warfare (1948), a textbook summarizing his experiences working on psywar campaigns, was published not long after Linebarger’s return to academia as a professor at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. By the time a second edition was published in 1954, concerns were high – especially in the United States – over the belief that the Communist Bloc had developed powerful mind-control techniques known as brainwashing.

The fear that the enemy might possess such powers also raised public concerns that authorities on their own might develop such methods for domestic use, possibly through mass media. (Television was a particular focus.)

The Cold War was very much a psywar: a war waged both on the geopolitical stage and within the public imagination.

A complex stripping putting history in very schematic terms, that paranoia and free-floating hostility are still alive and well, taking advantage of whatever technological advances are available. Malice and weaponized disinformation campaigns are not only factors in the public sphere, but appear to be a permanent part of it.

Newitz ends on an optimistic note, or at least with the suggestion that a psywar driven by goodwill and respect for others might be possible. Readers’ ability to imagine this may vary and depend on future developments.