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“I saw that yesterday, Donald Trump posted a manipulated picture, which shows Kamala Harris in front of a communist audience. So it pretty much looked like an annual meeting from the Communist Party in the Soviet Union. And that was really awful and absurd. It's a big problem in many ways. First of all, the Democratic Party has nothing to do with communism — it's not a one-party system in the United States. It's a democratic system… What these kinds of memes are doing, they show something horrible. And for the victims of these totalitarian communist regimes, for instance, the Soviet Union but also the CCP in China or North Korea, it's awful to see that, because it's insensitive and it shows huge amount of lack of respect… it shows our democracies in a bad light. To equalize a democratic country to any kind of dictatorship is extremely dangerous… we should get rid of these kinds of rhetorics, because it's very toxic.”—Dietmar Pichler
“We need to build coalitions… strong resilient coalitions… bring all these people together, because the right also unites… They support each other very strongly because they have a common agenda, and this is destruction, division, subversion. And I'm not only talking about the people who initiate these campaigns, I'm also talking about the ones who share them.”—Dietmar Pichler
As part of our series on Building Resiliency, I brought back my Dietmar Pichler, because I wanted some additional guidance to mentally prep for hot memetic warfare.
During election season, active measures are expected to tick up, and I want to offer as many tools as I can find to help keep defenses up and to help pro-democracy forces remain on offense. As we know, ‘weird’ works:
But weird isn’t enough — we need to keep building resiliency and Ep92 of the Bette Dangerous Podcast helps do just that.
Dietmar Pichler zoomed in from Vienna to help us understand how it’s not just social media that has virtual land mines, but also books published by pro-Putin propagandists and word-of-mouth disinformation traveling from those who read the propaganda books and watch the lie-factory networks and channels.
The conversation centered around the growing threat of memetic warfare in election times, particularly in the US, and how manipulated memes are used to undermine democratic countries and disrespect victims of totalitarian regimes. But also, he warns us how much disinfo is spread around water coolers and simply by word of mouth.
Among the to-dos:
Build coalitions across ideological lines focused on democratic values and science
Expose disinformation agents and propaganda outlets like Russian state media more effectively
Demand better from governments and media in countering "hot meme warfare"
More here on Dietmar from a RadPad interview:
Have a listen and enjoy his wisdom and empathy. As he reminds us, those of us who live in a democracy are very blessed.
“One successful agent of influence is worse than a thousand trolls online… These agents of influence — they are academics, politicians — they have a certain amount of trust and are able to influence people more because they think they are reliable sources of information.”—Dietmar Pichler, Ep91 Bette Dangerous Podcast
Here is my previous podcast with Dietmar — also quite important.
More on Dietmar here:
Dietmar Pichler is a Vienna-based disinformation analyst and media literacy trainer, who founded the initiative “Disinfo Resistance Network,” which aims to connect experts from various fields, such as historians, political scientists, security experts, IT professionals, and journalists, to exchange information, network, and develop common strategies to counter foreign influence by hostile authoritarian countries.
To support his work directly, you can make a contribution to his newly launched fundraiser for his Disinfo Resilience Network project:
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Building Disinfo Resilience with Dietmar Pichler — Bette Dangerous Podcast Ep92