Defence Against PsyOps
“In war, truth is the first casualty.” - Aeschylus
What are Psyops?
After interviewing dozens of survivors of concentration camps run by Nazi Germans, Soviet Russians, and Communist Chinese, psychiatrist Joost Meerlo noted that many of the survivors testified that after all the mistreatment and torture inflicted upon them it was the “loss of logic” that upset them the most. They had been “reeducated” to the point of not knowing what was and wasn’t real. It was as if their minds had been wiped clean and they were purged of all that formed who they previously were. I would never diminish the terror of physical torture but there is something specifically sinister about inducing a deep and profound confusion about one’s sense of self and the world around them. This is done through psyops.
Psychological Operations, or PsyOps, is the term for militarized and operationalized psychological warfare and it includes the use of propaganda, threats, and other psychological techniques to mislead, intimidate, demoralize, or otherwise influence the thinking or behaviour of an opponent. For the purposes of this book we will also include in its definition more individualized tactics like interrogations, brainwashing, and bullying. Whether directected to the masses or an individual person, its aim is to create a universe in which the target will voluntarily do what you want them to do and believe what you want them to believe. When a military force can influence the enemy’s state of mind through non-combative means, there is a hope that victory can be obtained before a single bullet is fired.
While the term psyop is relatively new the concept is as old as warfare itself. The great strategist Sun Tzu believed that the ideal victory was achieved without bloodshed in “breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting”. One can play on an enemy’s psychological weaknesses and cause them to break down without unsheathing a single sword. By placing your opponent in precarious positions and inducing a sense of confusion and demoralization you can win before the fight has even started.
In the Korean War, Chinese forces attempted to brainwash American prisoners of war. After physical torture and consistent mental attacks they coerced prisoners to write confessions that the American military had engaged in germ warfare. This campaign was largely unsuccessful. The prisoners recanted after being released and barely anyone in the global community believed it but in an alternate universe this tactic may have worked and turned America into a villain in the eyes of its allies and other neutral forces, changing the tide of the Korean War entirely. This demonstrates psyops both at the individual level and an attempt at mass operations.
Psyops can be an attack on a specific person. An adversarial force that tries to demoralize and confuse a target until they conform to their side. There is a civilian version of this as well. We all experience people who at times might try and suppress a certain point of view or impose an orthodoxy. People subvert, bully, and manipulate. There is always someone trying to convince us of something and the lines between persuasion and its darker forms sometimes get blurred.
They can also be employed to the masses. Propaganda campaigns and manipulative advertisement strategies look to change the mind’s of entire populations at once. These strategies can be more difficult to carry out, primarily because we are mentally stronger in a pack. So in order to effectively execute a psyop on a crowd you have to either convince the entire crowd (or most of it) or first induce a sense of isolation. Divide and conquer. We are much more manipulable, more susceptible to conditioning when we are isolated. This is why totalitarian governments do not allow their citizens to travel freely.
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