Library:This Is Not Propaganda
| This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality | |
|---|---|
| Author | Peter Pomerantsev |
| First published | 2019 |
| ISBN | 978-1-5417-6211-3 |
| Role | Analysis |
| Domains | Politics & Elections Technology & Media |
| Tactics | Propaganda Technique Fabrication |
This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality is a 2019 book by Peter Pomerantsev.
Summary
Peter Pomerantsev, a British journalist and researcher born in the Soviet Union, published this book in 2019. Part reportage and part family memoir, it surveys how information is now used as a weapon around the world, and argues that the old frameworks for understanding propaganda no longer fit.
A family story
The book is anchored in Pomerantsev's own family history. His father, a poet and writer, was arrested by the KGB in the 1970s for distributing banned literature, and the family left the Soviet Union for the West. In that era, the struggle was over access to information: censors suppressed, dissidents smuggled. Pomerantsev contrasts that world with the present, in which the problem is not scarcity of information but its overwhelming abundance.
Censorship through noise
His central argument is that modern manipulators rarely need to suppress information. Instead, they flood the space with contradictory claims, distractions and conspiracy theories until people give up trying to tell what is true. The aim is not necessarily to convince anyone of a particular lie but to make the very idea of a shared truth seem naive.
Around the world
Pomerantsev reports from many countries, interviewing people who run influence campaigns and people targeted by them. He describes troll farms and armies of fake accounts, coordinated harassment of journalists and activists, the online recruitment strategies of extremist groups, and campaigns that turn grievances and identities into political weapons. He examines how populist movements build loose coalitions around emotions rather than ideas, and how political meaning becomes so flexible that slogans can mean anything to anyone.
The end of old categories
The book argues that the old categories of propaganda, which assumed a clear sender, a clear message and a clear distinction between information and influence, have broken down. Influence now comes from everywhere, often from people who do not know they are part of a campaign.
Relevance to Bullshitopedia
Pomerantsev describes the environment the site was created to confront: not a lack of facts but an excess of noise. His argument suggests that a trustworthy, durable record has value precisely because flooding the zone works by exhausting people's ability to tell what is real.