species.

We think and process events in narrative form.

But today's guest says those events have been weaponized.

They are Annalee Newitz, this week on "Story in the Public Square."

(lighthearted music) (lighthearted music continues) (lighthearted music fades) Hello and welcome to "Story in the Public Square," where storytelling meets public affairs.

I'm Jim Ludes from the Pell Center at Salve Regina University.

- And I'm G. Wayne Miller, also with Salve's Pell Center.

- And our guest this week is Annalee Newitz, a writer of science fiction and non-fiction, an award-winning podcast host of "Our Opinions Are Correct," and author of an important new book, "Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind."

They're joining us today from their home in California.

Annalee, thank you so much for being with us.

- Yeah, thanks so much for having me on.

- You know, so, "Stories Are Weapons" is one of the more provocative books that I've read in some time.

Why don't you just give us a brief overview?

- Yeah, basically it's a historical look at how psychological warfare evolved in the unique landscape and history of the United States.

And so it goes all the way back to the very first fake news in this country, which was actually written by Ben Franklin to gin up support for the British leaving the Revolutionary War and letting the US become independent, and it goes all the way up to the present day.

And one of the really important things I discovered as I was researching psychological war in the US was that it actually has a kind of spillover effect into culture wars and the kinds of really vicious debates that we're seeing in this country right now.

And so there's really a kind of unbroken history from military operations in the area of storytelling and psychological affect and culture war that we're seeing online and between politicians today.

- You know, maybe we should start with a little definitional work in terms of when you talk about psychological warfare, what are you talking about?

- Yeah, so psychological warfare is technically a weapon that is used by the military to undermine morale in an adversary.

Usually it takes the form of some kind of messaging.

It could be written, it could be, you know, leaflets thrown out of an airplane, it could be memes on the internet.

And oftentimes the hallmarks of a psyop, as it's abbreviated, is that it contains violent threats, it contains lies or misrepresentations or decontextualization of actual facts.

And again, the goal with this kind of messaging is always to undermine the adversary's faith in their own position, and oftentimes to incite or seduce them to come over to the American side of things.

And so in this book, I've really exclusively looked at how America crafts its psyops, and I think that was part of what was so interesting for me about the project.

- So, let's get back to Franklin.

In his case, he used a narrative that persisted about what he would've called the disappearing Native population.

That narrative, you argue, was weaponized.

Can you break that down for us?

What was going on there?

- Yeah, one of the things that we see in psyops within the United States is that they kind of come of age during the 19th century, during the hundreds of wars that the US government waged with Indigenous nations and tribes.

And one of the ways that that, I mean, those wars obviously were violent kinetic wars, but there was a lot of messaging coming from both politicians and also pop culture writers about how the progress of Europeans across the country to eradicate Indigenous nations was a kind of inevitability, borrowing from, say, scientific language, you know, they would say things like, "Well, it's inevitable that Indigenous nations die out because they can't compete in this national stage."

And for example, the novel "The Last of the Mohicans," which comes out in the 1830s, which I think a lot of American schoolkids had to read, is part of this kind of culture war psyop that's going on to convince Americans that, indeed, the Indigenous people are dying out, there's a last Mohican that, you know, we all feel sad about.

And of course, you know, Mohicans today can laugh at this because there's never been a last Mohican, it hasn't happened, and it didn't happen then either.

But yeah, this idea of the disappearing Indian, the notion that, you know, one culture will just give way to the other, we see that happening even now in our discussions of how America should forge its future.

You know, a lot of the language that you hear from politicians about how certain groups, immigrants, GLBT folks, are just gonna kind of fade away and, you know, White men and White people will kind of become the dominant group in this country again.

I mean, that's still borrowing from that kind of idea that there's a kind of natural inevitability that some groups rise to the top and other groups should be marginalized or not even permitted to enter the country.

- So, let's go back again to the 1800s.

And I believe "The Last of the Mohicans" was by James Fenimore Cooper, is that correct?

- Correct.

- See, I remember my English- (laughs) - Nice.

- My English classes I took.

Did the non-Native population in general buy this narrative?

- There's a lot of evidence that it was very persuasive, especially for voters in New England, 'cause remember at the time this book comes out, really that's the United States, it's what we think of as now the Eastern Seaboard.

And we get the sense from local histories that were written by antiquarian societies.

You know, local historians in New England, they're writing histories of their towns.

I talked to an incredible researcher, Jean O'Brien, who studied these amateur histories being written at the time, and almost all of them follow a narrative in which they suggest that as White colonists moved in, the local Indigenous nations just naturally faded away.

And one of the things that O'Brien told me that I thought was really funny was that oftentimes in these histories, after they would describe, you know, "Oh, there was the sad last of our, you know, neighbors who were Indigenous, but also there's, like, Bob, who lives down the street, who's indigenous."

(laughs) And so there was this kind of doublethink, where people knew that there were Indigenous folks still around, that Indigenous tribes were still fighting back against the US government, but they also told themselves this story that there was this kind of natural shift that was gonna happen, where, you know, White settlers would become the true Americans.

- So Annalee, in the era that we're discussing, one of the innovations, as it were, were residential schools for Native populations.

Now, I think contemporary human rights scholars would look at that experience and say, "Look, that's genocidal."

But at the time, they were heralded as progressive and appropriate.

How does that fit, though, into this narrative about psychological warfare?

How do these schools in particular affect the narrative about Native American populations?

- Yeah, I mean, I would say that, you know, perhaps White settlers thought that those schools were enlightened and effective, but of course, generations of Indigenous people were traumatized and, you know, torn away from their families and, you know, their entire lives were destroyed by it.

So it was a very effective psyop from that perspective.

It was a form of, you know, terrorism against Indigenous people and it was a way of erasing Indigenous culture.

And the way that it fits into US history with psyops is that it's really the first example of brainwashing being deployed on a mass scale against an adversary.

And it's really interesting because in the United States in the 1950s and '60s, at the height of the Cold War, this idea of brainwashing became incredibly foregrounded by politicians worried that the Soviets and the Communists were trying to brainwash people in the United States.

But the reality was, we had gotten that myth of brainwashing from our own military's activities and our war department's activities during these 19th century wars against Indigenous nations, where kids were in fact being taken away from their culture, forced to speak English, forced to learn about Christianity and worship Christian gods, and, you know, learn Western ways of agriculture.

And so that's really the original brainwashing program.

- So one of the characters that you introduce us to is Paul Linebarger.

Am I pronouncing that correctly?

Is it Linebarger or Linenbarger?

- Linebarger - Linebarger.

So, who was he and why is he so important?

- Paul Linebarger is such an interesting figure because he comes into the military as someone who has grown up in the early 20th century, the son of a diplomat to China.

His father worked with Sun Yat-sen and was a big supporter of Chinese nationalism.

And so Paul Linebarger kind of grew up in two worlds.

He grew up in the West partly and learned Western languages, but he also, from a very young age, was learning Mandarin and learning about Chinese culture.

And so he became a very valuable asset when he joined the Army during World War II because he was really good at understanding how a Western power might try to send messages to Japan and China to try to push back on the Axis powers.

So he spent World War II as both an academic who was studying Asian foreign policy and as someone working in the burgeoning field of psyops in the US military.

And by the end of World War II, he had learned enough that he produced really the first teaching manual for the Army on how to engage in psychological warfare.

And then he goes on during the Cold War to continue consulting with the war department, consulting with the Army while also teaching, and his ideas about how to wage psychological war in the 20th century really continue to shape how the military strategizes about psyops even today.

And the great thing about him was that he had a secret life, and under the name Cordwainer Smith, he wrote this incredible, surreal science fiction, a lot of which really reflected his interest in how you use storytelling, how you use ideas to undermine an adversary.

These stories are just weird, you know, they involve a lot of, they involve a lot of mind control, for example, and a lot of, you know, interstellar battles, but they're often resolved using some kind of mental power.

So he has this sort of dual life as someone creating fiction about psyops and then someone who's actually crafting psyop practices in real life.

- That's one of the most fascinating details in the book.

And one of the things that I'm still fascinated by is, because he was a science fiction writer, he was adeptly experienced and skilled at world-building.

What's the overlap between world-building as a science fiction writer, of which you are one, and the world of psychological operations?

- So world-building is a term of art that often gets used in fantasy and science fiction to describe how you make a completely fantastical world feel real.

So the world-building part of, say, a movie like "Star Wars," it's not the main characters, it's all the little details you see in the background, the things that you learn about the political and economic regimes that are controlling their lives, like the band playing in the background at the bar, which makes you really feel like you're in a space bar.

So that's world-building.

And the reason why it's important for psychological operations is because you want your messages to feel organic.

When you send the enemy a message, sometimes you're trying to make it look like it's coming from within the enemy itself, right?

You want it, it has to have this feeling of realism.

And oftentimes it's little details that allow those messages to take hold.

And the little detail might be an actual fact that you then wrap into a story about good and evil.

The other observation about world-building that Paul Linebarger makes, that I think is really worth thinking about now, is that he kind of looks back at psyops of the early 20th century and he says what we've learned from World War II is that psyops that involve, say, a strong-jawed man telling you important things about agriculture, that doesn't work.

He says what a psyop should be is more like a Laurel and Hardy movie, something that people enjoy and that kind of gets into the, you know, gets into their mind, and then you can implant your message.

And so I think that was where storytelling and world-building for him really helped shape his approach to how he would speak to US adversaries.

- So let's return for a moment to Native populations.

You know, the US government, as you've talked about, was using psychological warfare against them.

But there were some populations who used something similar called the Ghost Dance.

What was the Ghost Dance?

- Yeah, I think one of the things that emerges from that long 19th century of US war on Indigenous nations is also a very specific kind of subversion and rebellion and basically counter-revolt that you see developing in the late 19th century with the Ghost Dance.

So the Ghost Dance was a movement among western nations and tribes that involved a dance.

It was a song, it was a story, and it was about what the world would be like after the White settlers were gone.

And it imagined, you know, the industrial settlements, the railroads, the towns with their sedentary farming just kind of rolling back.

And then what would reemerge would be the buffalo and the older traditions of Indigenous tribes that were nomadic and lived very differently within our ecosystems.

And it became this powerful message that each nation passed to the other.

And the US government responded to it as a threat, even though it did not involve any kind of violence.

It was just a piece of pop culture essentially, and a very spiritual piece of pop culture.

And so it was outlawed.

Indigenous groups were not allowed to engage in the Ghost Dance.

And in fact, in 1890, it was a fight over the Ghost Dance that led to police shooting Sitting Bull, who was the great Lakota war leader who was really beloved both in the White settler community and in Indigenous communities.

He was a hero, and he was permitting his band to engage in the Ghost Dance at Standing Rock Reservation, and he was killed by the police, as were some of his followers.

And it led, of course, to a horrible massacre that became an international scandal.

And that became, I mean, not only did that make Standing Rock into this incredible symbol that still resonates today, obviously, with the No Dakota Access Pipeline Protest that we just saw, but also it kind of teaches not just other Indigenous nations, but also Western groups, White settler groups, how to have a really effective way of pushing back, protesting the government, using not just political rhetoric, but using song and dance and storytelling.

And we've seen that taken up by a number of different groups throughout US history, but it really starts with the Ghost Dance and the Western Indigenous nations.

- Yeah, Annalee, we chatted a little bit about this before the broadcast, but when I started learning about psychological warfare and influence campaigns, an old Army veteran explained to me that there was a vast reservoir of talent for this stuff in the United States, in the community of folks who run advertising campaigns and who run political campaigns.

I'm curious, can you, for our audience, sort of sketch out particularly the relationship between the skills that are necessary for psychological warfare and advertising?

- Yeah, advertising really strongly influenced the military's approach to psyops in the 20th century.

You know, advertising as a professional field really comes into its own in the 20th century.

And there was actually always a lot of overlap between people who worked in advertising and public relations and people who worked in intelligence.

And one of the things that the military does that it has borrowed from advertising is that when they plan a psychological campaign, they think about it almost as an ad campaign.

And they talk about, for example, target audiences and how are they gonna reach their target audience.

Again, this is language borrowed from advertising.

And they talk about a psyop, like a message, as a product.

And I know this because I actually took a class from a guy who has taught psyops for many years to the Army, and he kind of took me through their textbook and all of the different things that he would teach to his students.

And indeed, it's basically like taking a marketing class.

- Wow.

- And it's because advertisements are intended to be persuasive, fascinating messages that will change your behavior, and that's exactly what a psyop is supposed to do.

It's supposed to not just give you a feeling, but actually inspire action.

And so you can see why these two things would constantly be butting up against each other and kind of working together in the American psyche.

- You know, one of the big questions that I had after reading the book is not whether or not these tools have been used for bad ends, because I think it's hard to argue against that, but people have been using narrative and weaponizing narrative as long as we've been telling stories.

Why is it dangerous in the current American political environment that there are these weaponized narratives that immerse us?

Because that frankly is the central interest of "Story in the Public Square."

- I mean, not all stories are dangerous, right, as you're saying, and I think that one of the things I really am hoping people come away from this book with is a way of recognizing the difference between a story that's being used as a weapon and a story that might be used as a guide or a way of helping you see a new perspective.

And as I said at the top, you know, a psyop has certain characteristics that include violent threats and lies and misrepresentations.

They also often include some element of scapegoating, scapegoating a group that might already be distrusted or a suspect.

So, these are stories that are specifically aimed at harming people.

And, you know, one of the things that I talk about in the book is that we're all comfortable with this idea that there's such a thing as a feelgood movie or a feelgood story, but there's also stories that make us feel bad, that make us more confused, and that paralyze us, make us feel like there's nothing we can do to change our circumstances.

And that's really the danger of a public sphere where we've traded storytelling and the sharing of perspectives, and we've traded those for weaponized stories where we're threatening each other and we're misrepresenting ourselves in order to gain power.

And the danger, of course, is that the public sphere is no longer a place where we can negotiate and debate.

It just becomes an arena of war, and that's not very conducive to having any kind of democratic future.

- So what do we do about it?

(everyone laughing) - [G. Wayne] You've got about three minutes.

(everyone laughing) - So there is a kind of, you know, balanced breakfast of how to deal with psychological warfare in your public sphere.

One of the things that is really important is to remember that these kinds of stories can be recognized.

And so one of the things that a lot of folks who are working in social media, for example, and who are in content moderation, they're just trying to think about how is it that we can flag these kinds of messages when they're erupting across the internet, right?

And there's all kinds of ideas about that.

You know, one idea is to label information that is clearly false.

There's other ways of possibly slowing down the viral spread of information so that we don't get kind of an explosion of conspiracy theories.

So there's that angle.

There's just thinking about, how do we make sure that people understand when they're seeing propaganda versus seeing information or news reporting?

But then there's other ways that we can cope with it through storytelling, through telling news stories that don't involve, for example, violent threats against adversaries, telling stories about how we can mend our differences, whether those are stories in fiction or in policy.

Because of course, I often say, policy is kind of near-future science fiction.

It's a way of thinking about the future, how we're gonna allocate resources, and trying to change that.

So that's another piece of it.

And another big piece for us here in the United States is maintaining access to our history.

Part of the point in my book of going through all of these 19th century wars that the US waged against Indigenous nations is to help readers understand that historical context of where our psychological warfare methods came from.

So, knowing our history, having historical receipts, forming communities through story, labeling propaganda when it's coming at us, all of these are ways that we can repair our public sphere and make it into a place where we actually share ideas.

- That's hugely important work.

Look, we've got about, literally about 40 seconds left here.

You, in the book, you talk about the work of folks like Alex Stamos, Renee DiResta at the Stanford Internet Observatory.

There are a legion, small legion of internet researchers, data researchers, folks looking at these issues across the country.

They are under attack right now.

Those shops are being closed down, folks are being put out of work.

Is that part of a counter, a counter-counter disinformation operation to target the people who are actually drawing attention to this?

- Yeah, I mean, and it's being framed as a culture war, right?

Part of, the politicians, the sort of MAGA politicians who've been trying to take down these operations, like the Stanford Internet Observatory, are framing them as un-American.

And as soon as you hear one group of Americans calling another group of Americans "un-American," that should set off a little alarm bell that that's in the realm of psyops.

These are all Americans.

And so, you know, calling them something else is not helpful.

- Annalee, we could talk to you for another week on this topic, but the book is "Stories Are Weapons."

Thank you so much for sharing it with us today.

That is all the time we have this week.

But if you wanna know more about "Story in the Public Square," you can find us on social media or visit pellcenter.org, where you can always catch up on previous episodes.

He's Wayne, I'm Jim, asking you to join us again next time for more "Story in the Public Square."

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