{"id":300,"date":"2024-02-02T07:25:20","date_gmt":"2024-02-02T07:25:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/answerfaqpro.com\/?p=300"},"modified":"2024-02-02T07:25:20","modified_gmt":"2024-02-02T07:25:20","slug":"taylor-swift-conspiracy-theorists-get-psyops-all-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/answerfaqpro.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/02\/taylor-swift-conspiracy-theorists-get-psyops-all-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"Taylor Swift Conspiracy Theorists Get Psyops All Wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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When the Kansas City Chiefs romp to a Super Bowl victory on February 11, tight end Travis Kelce will bring his superstar girlfriend onto the field, drop to one knee, and propose. Their engagement will unleash a media maelstrom and create the conditions for\u00a0Taylor Swift\u2019s hugely significant endorsement of embattled president Joe Biden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is, according to a network of prominent conspiracy theorists, the plan hatched inside the Pentagon to keep the president in power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a>Fake Taylor Swift Quotes Are Being Used to Spread Anti-Ukraine Propaganda<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\u00a0far-right\u00a0broadcasters\u00a0behind this very specific prediction have offered no proof for it, nor do they have the most sterling track record. Jack Posobiec, a longtime booster of\u00a0white supremacist and neo-Nazi figures\u00a0and a key figure in the outlandish\u00a0Pizzagate\u00a0theory, tweeted in December that Swift and her \u201cvaccine shill boyfriend\u201d were being weaponized by the Democrats to ensure Biden\u2019s victory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

FEATURED VIDEOHow Online Conspiracy Groups Compare to Cults<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Posobiec had a very specific way of describing it: \u201cThe Taylor Swift girlboss psyop has been fully activated.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Swift may not have actually waded into the 2024 election cycle, beyond a generic appeal to\u00a0register to vote, but the fury around her supposed deep-state-backed influence operation has the Trump campaign plotting \u201choly war\u201d against the \u201cBlank Space\u201d singer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The allegation that Swift is a \u201cpsyop\u201d is ludicrous, and it showcases a complete lack of understanding of what psychological operations actually are and how they work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If there is a psyop going on, it\u2019s being run by those crying wolf.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A Short History of the Psyop<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fixation on psychological warfare dates back at least to Sun Tzu: \u201cThe opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the field really came into its own in the 20th century, when the great powers turned to modern psychology to understand and defeat their adversaries through propaganda and trickery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Paul Linebarger explained in his seminal 1948 book on psychological warfare, there are two main types of psychological operations: white propaganda, which is honest and direct, and black propaganda, which \u201cpurports to emanate from a source other than the true one.\u201d Linebarger, who died in 1966, served in the Office of War Information during the Second World War and helped establish the US Army\u2019s psychological warfare section.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Army focused on the white and gray,\u201d Jared Tracy, the deputy command historian at the US Army Special Operations History Office, tells WIRED. Initially, the military\u2019s psychological operations focused on how best to deliver information\u2014\u201dleaflet warfare\u201d and \u201cloudspeaker propaganda,\u201d he says. But the military soon found creative new ways to speak to the enemy. That included the tactical, meant to gain a specific and immediate benefit on the battlefield; and the strategic, which has a longer-term, more general aim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If there is a psyop going on, it\u2019s being run by those crying wolf.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Black propaganda can be effective, but it is notoriously hard to do right, Linebarger writes, as it \u201cneeds to be written so as to fit in with what the enemy is reading, listening to, or talking about in his home country.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the Vietnam War, Tr\u1ecbnh Th\u1ecb Ng\u1ecd\u2014known commonly as Hanoi Hannah\u2014delivered regular broadcasts aimed at American GIs. Her shows, written by the North Vietnamese Army, mixed popular Western music with clunky and clumsy propaganda about the futility of the war. While Hanoi Hannah\u2019s shows may have contributed to low morale, it is\u00a0unlikely\u00a0she prompted any more than a handful of desertions or defections. The US later scaled up this technique through Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, which broadcast news and culture behind the Iron Curtain, with some covert help from the CIA\u2014millions listened to the jazz programs and news broadcasts, but the broadcasts\u00a0utterly failed\u00a0at spurring open rebellion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Public perception of psychological operations soured in a big way in the mid-1970s, when details of the CIA\u2019s\u00a0MK-ULTRA\u00a0program were first released, detailing a plot\u2014more based in science fiction than science\u2014to brainwash subjects using psychoactive drugs. Further revelations that the US had supplied Nicaraguan death squads with\u00a0psychological warfare guides\u00a0would not help that public relations problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A lot of the paranoia about psychological operations stems from \u201cmisapprehensions of what it is, what it is capable of,\u201d says Tracy, who wrote one of the\u00a0definitive books on the subject.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While there may be grandiose ambitions of changing \u201chearts and minds,\u201d Tracy says, the actual effect of this work is more modest: \u201cReally, what you\u2019re looking to do is affect peoples\u2019 decisions of what to do and what not to do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1994, reports emerged of one particularly musical innovation from the Pentagon: During the Gulf War, the US military would boost morale by cranking up Pat Benatar\u2019s \u201cHit Me With Your Best Shot\u201d when responding to Iraqi SCUD missile attacks, for example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These techniques would later be adapted by the CIA to torture inmates captured in the War on Terror, a program now widely regarded as a\u00a0complete failure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Makes a Good Psyop?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhich is more effective: Tokyo Rose, in lovely, clear English, but \u2026 very much falsehood-based; or Voice of America and Radio Free Europe?\u201d asks Christopher Paul, USMC chair for information at the Naval Postgraduate School and a senior social scientist at RAND Corporation. He answers his own question: \u201cYou can also be effective and persuasive with the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In recent decades, the Pentagon has even tried to rebrand these operations with a more mundane, but more accurate, name\u2014Military Information Support Operations, or MISO. The name hasn\u2019t caught on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paul has spent years studying the effectiveness of psychological and information operations, particularly nefarious and covert propaganda efforts. Fears over how these techniques could be used against Americans are long-standing, he notes, and are exactly why this work is forbidden domestically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Department of Defense has an influence capability,\u201d Paul says. \u201cBut by statute, law, habit, authorization, and permission: It is only ever pointed at selected foreign audiences.\u201d Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, for example, are expressly prohibited from broadcasting to domestic audiences in the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tracy and Paul agree that psychological operations work when they are targeted, clear, and\u2014ideally\u2014honest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paul points to the Russian effort to sway the 2016 presidential election. \u201cDid it change electoral outcomes? No, not as far as we can tell, Did it cause or prevent conflicts? No, not as far as we can tell,\u201d Paul says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was equally ineffective when the Pentagon tried it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2022, social media companies identified\u00a0a fear-reaching campaign, run by the Pentagon, to use dummy social media accounts to spread propaganda targeted at Tehran, Beijing, and Moscow. The effort prompted a backlash and led to a\u00a0full-scale review\u00a0of these operations. (That, seemingly, hasn\u2019t prevented the Pentagon from exploring\u00a0the possible use of deepfakes.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But when researchers at the Stanford Internet Observatory and social media monitoring firm Graphika looked at the campaign, they found this astroturf social media campaign was wildly ineffective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe vast majority of posts and tweets we reviewed received no more than a handful of likes or retweets,\u201d the researchers found. Fewer than one in five of the dummy social media accounts had managed to amass more than 1,000 followers, with most of the content receiving no interaction at all. \u201cTellingly, the two most-followed assets in the data provided by Twitter were overt accounts that publicly declared a connection to the US military.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Pop-Op<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The US government has certainly tried to use popular music for its own ends. And it wasn\u2019t always forthright about its efforts\u2014as Linebarger noted: \u201cThe conviction of the propagandist that he is not a propagandist can be a real asset.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the early Cold War, the\u00a0Congress on Cultural Freedom\u2014a CIA front group\u2014bankrolled American musicians\u2019 tours, including jazz legends Dizzy Gillespie and Louis Armstrong, in hopes of countering Communist influence and promoting American values.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThose who already have established credibility can be a real asset [in psychological operations],\u201d Tracy says. \u201cIf your purposes align.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Gillespie and Armstrong made clear that the CIA couldn\u2019t even control its own people: Frustrated with Jim Crow laws back in the US, Gillespie refused to attend briefings with US officials. Armstrong quit one of his tours in disgust. \u201cThe way they are treating my people in the South, the government can go to hell,\u201d\u00a0Armstrong said in 1957.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2020, journalist Patrick Radden Keefe investigated the possibility that the CIA had a hand in writing \u201cWind of Change,\u201d an enormously popular song by a West German band called the Scorpions that became an anthem for independence movements in the USSR. (The Scorpions\u00a0deny the theory.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So there is ample history of the US government leveraging, or at least trying to leverage, celebrities and cultural icons to amplify its message. But Tracy laughs off the idea that there is a shadowy psychological operations unit inside the Pentagon managing musicians from obscurity to stardom for nefarious ends\u2014and rigging the NFL playoffs while they\u2019re at it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s not a thing,\u201d he says. Organizationally, practically, logistically, the theory falls apart at every turn. Someone in the Democratic Party may well approach Swift for an endorsement, and they don\u2019t need the Pentagon\u2019s help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Good Psyop Deserves Another<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The real psyop may have been staring us in the face all along.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For years, Trump\u2019s supporters have levied the accusation of psyop at anything that contradicts their worldview. Q, the pseudonymous leader of QAnon, cryptically asked their followers in 2017: \u201cWhat is brainwashing? What is a psyop?\u201d Former White House adviser Steve Bannon has told listeners of his\u00a0War Room<\/em>\u00a0podcast that by listening \u201cyou will never succumb to psychological warfare.\u201d Kurt Olsen, a lawyer who helped Trump\u2019s effort to overturn the 2020 election, has said that efforts to deny that the 2020 election was stolen are \u201call a psyop.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mike Benz, a former Trump official who has a history of posting\u00a0racist conspiracy theories\u00a0under a pseudonym, helped popularize the Swift theory. He alleges psyops are everywhere, from the Covid-19 vaccine effort to anti-disinformation programs to climate change education campaigns. He has become a go-to voice for some Republican politicians,\u00a0including Representative Jim Jordan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In that respect, Benz has stumbled onto one of the most effective psyop tactics: Discredit everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Linebarger, in his book, offers a prime example of this strategy: \u201cThe dropping of a few hundred tons of well counterfeited currency would tend to foul up any fiscal system.\u201d This kind of black propaganda doesn\u2019t seek to convince anyone of anything, but merely hopes to foment distrust of everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paul says Moscow is particularly good at this kind of work. \u201cRussian propaganda can be characterized as a war on information, this kind of nihilistic campaign to make everyone skeptical of everything.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While influencers like Posobiec have a habit of\u00a0sharing Russian disinformation, there\u2019s no reason to think they\u2019re being directly managed by the Kremlin. More likely, they\u2019ve simply picked up on the same tactics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So while Swift may well be an excellent psyop if America ever goes to war with Gen Z, it is more likely that the real psychological operation was the distrust we fomented along the way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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