FIGHTING ‘PARASITIZING’ - How to Emotionally Arm Yourself Against the 4-Ds
Together, we will be each other’s allies as we fend off the Kremlin and American traitors’ active measures of dismissing, distorting, distracting, and dismaying. Are we downhearted? A 1000 times no!
***Originally published November 30, 2022, we need this reminder today on how Soviet-era parasitizing works — a twisting of facts to create a parallel reality to exacerbate divides to confuse and weaken the West with chaos and despair — truth poisoned with parasitic lies. Please share with your networks and thank you as always for supporting my work with a paid membership.***
FIGHTING ‘PARASITIZING’ - How to Emotionally Arm Yourself Against the 4-Ds
Twitter has been the best of times and the worst of times. For pro-democracy truth activists and independent investigative reporters like me, I have made global alliances, found my podcast partners, and become part of the incredible Byline Times team. That all happened because of Twitter connections.
I have also suffered psychological trauma from targeted harms. Those harms not only made me an expert in information warfare, but a formidable combatant on behalf of truth and democracy. I wear emotional armor while investigating the global autocratic plots, and have adopted military techniques when entering the Twitter stream.
As we look toward December, a month where I try to spend each day in gratitude, I would like to offer my thread on Parasitizing, an essential tutorial to combatting Kremlin active measures. The thread is based on a 2016 report by StopFake.org, written by its co-founder Yevhen Fedchenko. It documents the history of Soviet era propaganda techniques - the fakes, forgeries, and parasitizing - where disinformation bombs are seeded in media.
The report notes how a mixture of “psychological, media, economic, cyber, and military operations” can occur without any declaration of war. Russia is always at war, and the West refuses to declare war with Putin’s mafia-terrorist state for fear of petro disruptions and nuclear blackmail. #SlavaUkraine🤍
Remember, there is no rear area in information warfare. We are all targets of psychological operations and Musk’s seizure of Twitter will only escalate the release of digital poison.
I will be writing an in-depth historical analysis of this for Byline Supplement in coming days, but I wanted to help you arm yourself emotionally in the interim.
(Author’s note 4.19.2024 — here is that report…
(Continuing original report from November 30, 2022.)
Please mentally steel yourself against the 4Ds—dismiss, distort, distract, and dismay. All are designed to create the fifth and hidden D—despair.
In my thread, you will find quotes from experts in hybrid warfare. Among them:
“Russia’s narrative can be viewed as an offensive weapon: to discredit the West and shift the blame for the Ukraine crisis onto Western shoulders using the four-word weaponization: dismiss, distort, distract, dismay.”
Do not be dismissive of truth, although the propagandists will encourage you to forget reality. Do not be distracted by the propagandists, who will encourage you to “look over there,” rather than at reality. Recognize distortions as fraud. And do not be dismayed when you are mindbombed with the digital assault of all of the above. Stay close to those who share the narrative of truth with you, and who refuse to allow their minds disrupted by these insidious gaslighters.
The Kremlin and American traitors are trying to destroy reality so we live in isolation and fear. Defy them.
I understand that it is difficult to imagine America being under siege in such a way, but we are. I look forward to winning this war with you, but we will have to stick together, and be each other’s allies as we face the emotional pummeling head on and punch back, with our words, our truth, and investigations, which prove their deceit and corruption.
Truth is the daughter of time, as Peter Jukes often reminds me.
I am here for it. I am here for you.
In gratitude,
Heidi 🤍🎄⭐️
*****
Thank you for supporting my Bette Dangerous Substack. Please consider a paid membership, where you will unlock additional stories + receive invites to Zoom events. Coffee tips are always welcome! Thank you so much!