ICYMI: Active Measures 101 with Zarina Zabrisky — RadPod Ep83 — An Urgent PowerPoint
Please watch and share RadPod’s Ep83 from February with war correspondent Zarina Zabrisky, who walks us through a powerpoint that explains combat propaganda’s war on the psychosphere—it’s most urgent
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Originally published February 5, 2024. Reposting due to the urgency of the information warfare we are facing.
“In psychological war, the battlefield is the human mind… He/she who wins the thought, wins the war.”—Zarina Zabrisky
An Urgent PowerPoint
Every RadPod episode is urgent. We bring our viewers the greatest minds of our times in this fight for truth. We are in a hot psychological war, and yet many millions in the West are still oblivious to this fact. They see their family members adopting pro-Kremlin viewpoints which they misinterpret as patriotism but don’t understand the origins.
As we have learned repeatedly from Russia’s War On Everybody author Keir Giles, Western leaders have to acknowledge the information war to their citizens for inoculation against mind war. RadPod’s team took the time to write a letter to President Joe Biden encouraging him to address the invisible war.
We have zero days to waste to raise awareness so we brought our friend Zarina Zabrisky back to RadPod to give us a powerpoint explainer on Active Measures and Disinformation. Zabrisky is in Kherson, and it wasn’t lost on us that she was recording this tutorial for us as Kherson was being shelled.
Despite hosting an investigative show on disinformation, Jim, HiFi, and I took copious notes, we learned so much from Zabrisky’s excellent explainer.
As she explained it, she was forced to take a course in combat propaganda in order to graduate from Leningrad State University as a literature major. Although she is a US citizen and has lived in America 25 years, she chose to go back to Ukraine where she spent the summers of her youth in order to report from the frontlines.
She has been writing about the information war for a decade. As she told us, “In psychological war, the battlefield is the human mind.”
Please watch our Ep83 with Zabrisky and please share with your networks:
“He/she who wins the thought, wins the war.”—Zarina Zabrisky
Here Zabrisky explains who does this work and why they do it:
“Who are the people who do this work? In Russia, there is a professional which is widely known — everybody knows it just as a plumber, a teacher, or conductor — it’s called a political technologist. This profession does not exist in the United States or the European Union. A political technologist develops sophisticated techniques based on psychology, history, and cultural and linguistic studies — that’s what they were trying to teach us in this classified political course — they sought journalists and philosophers to do this work called combat propaganda or black propaganda. Covert propagandists work with the myths embedded in people’s minds… the art of sowing discord in the ranks of the enemy by means of disinformation and manipulation of consciousness.”
The main goal, she explained, is demoralization of the army and population of the enemy in order to break down societal cohesion. She said it’s all engineered to undermine and lead to our weakening.
Demoralization
Stress
Discord
Confusion
Please listen to the entire explainer, and just a few notes from me.
As she spoke of Russians launching myths in narrative warfare, I heard it as Russians launching missiles aimed right for our brains.
And 38 minutes in she explains the rotten herring smear campaigns designed to cast long shadows on targets such as Hillary Clinton and her hacked emails. No one bothered to read the emails or they would have discovered a hard-working staff who respected their candidate. They would have also discovered the cell of US white supremacists who made up lies as they trafficked the GRU’s stolen goods.
I also got confirmation that MAGA is active measures, as she described that Russian mind attacks create stress, confusion, and discord, which mirrored what Rich Logis of Leaving MAGA told me about how Trump nationalists are kept in a constant state of trauma, desperation, and panic.
I have written many times about the fact that I have not had a television for nearly two decades. I suffer from post-traumatic news syndrome due to 20 years in broadcast news. I believe it’s reduced the attack surface of my psychosphere — the realm of consciousness. I’ve eliminated a major conduit used to deliver mind war from my life.
Please as you listen to Zabrisky, also take notes on the solutions. There is a lot we can do to reduce our collective attack surfaces.
Stop. Breathe. Do not respond on impulse. Think critically. Check sources. Be aware. Self care, stay fit and healthy. Stay polite. Focus on the positive. Focus on freedom and value of human life.
“We need to retain our democracy, imperfect as it is.”—Zarina Zabrisky
Take it from someone who lived in a totalitarian state. She said there’s no air, no space to breathe in a totalitarian society, it’s a place that makes slaves of their children, and that is why Ukraine is fighting so hard for freedom — and truly, for all our freedom.
“My main desire is not to teach this Hybrid Warfare course from war zone to war zone, I don’t want my home — the United States of America — to become a war zone as this beautiful country, the home of my ancestors, became. And it’s being torn apart by… these creatures. I don’t want them to break the US, Europe, Great Britain. Please take this seriously. You are under attack by an aggressor.”—Zarina Zabriksy
Listen to her. Pay attention, forewarn, and help deliver this information.
I’m glad you are here.
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