Propaganda, PR or informational education
PSYCHOLOGICAL FIGHTING
However, as Alexander Dumas correctly noted, “ideas cannot be fought in the same way as people”. The fact that the war of the future will be fundamentally different, and its main front will be the information front, in the 50 – 70-s of the last century warned the former colonel of the General Staff of the Russian Imperial Army, Professor Yevgeny E. Messner (1891 – 1974), famous as the author of the very concept of pasty. It seems appropriate to quote some of the fundamental tenets of the relevant doctrine concerning the confrontation of the parties in the area of what Messner himself called psychological warfare (see “NG” from 05.11.99).
“In former wars, the conquest of territory was considered important. Henceforth, the conquest of souls in a warring state will be revered as the most important ...
In a future war they will fight not on the line, but on the entire surface of the territories of both opponents ... Fronts will arise behind the armed front - political, social, economic; they’ll fight not on a two-dimensional surface, like in old times, not in three-dimensional space, as was the case since the military aviation, and in four-dimensional, where the psyche of the warring peoples is the fourth dimension ...
The most important task in the pastry days are the unification of their people and the attraction to their part of the people of a hostile state. In former times, for the formation of the ideological, political base of the war, it was enough to gain the support of the leading stratum among the people. Now, every warrior and every citizen comes into contact with hostile-minded, with defectors, provocateurs, with enemy propagandists, with passing, but dissident people, and therefore psychological treatment should apply to all classes of the people ... Myatozhevoyna is a war of all against all, and the enemy is and tribesman, and an ally - and a tribe. Each person must have a quiver with psychological arrows and a psychological shield.
The task of psychological warfare is to bring panic into the soul of the enemy and to preserve the spirit of his troops and people.
In the past, the choice is very difficult due to the abundance of goals and the difference in their specific weight (purely psychological, material with a psychological tint, purely material). You can establish a hierarchy of goals: 1) the collapse of the morality of the enemy people; 2) the defeat of its active part (the armies, guerrilla warfare, fighting popular movements); 3) the seizure or destruction of objects of psychological value; 4) the seizure or destruction of objects of material value ...
To excite, to excite, to inflate the nerves of the people is tantamount to giving them stimulants: from time to time - perhaps it is useful, but incessantly - more harmful than cocaine and marijuana. Nevertheless, agitation should be considered one of the main means of conducting rebelliousness: offensive agitation helps to weaken the enemy, defensive agitation strengthens our spirit (defensive does not dare to defend, defend, apologize, but must actively activate the emotions and thoughts of our ... wrestlers and non-wrestlers) ...
Agitation during a war must be two-faced: one half-truth for its own, the other for the enemy. But there is also little duplicity - so many different things are required, so to speak: for each level of consciousness, for each category of morals, aptitudes, interests - a special logic, sincerity or deceit, intelligence or sentiment ...
All this makes the conduct of psychological warfare a very difficult art. ”
The art in which the very concept of propaganda, which has received a more euphonious naming as PR, has reached a qualitatively new level, becoming the key tool of the military-political struggle. Undoubtedly, it would not be an exaggeration to claim that the 21st century was the century of information wars, that is, the era of confrontation aimed at achieving political, economic, military and other goals not by external subordination, but by winning dominance over the minds, hearts and souls of people.
NEW REALITY
One of the first wars of this kind was the campaign of the armed forces of the United States and other NATO countries in Iraq from March 20, 2003 to December 15, 2011. Actually, the fighting in it, according to many experts, mainly played an auxiliary function. Moreover, their very course was to a large extent built in accordance with the information and propaganda plans of the advancing side. Reality itself in this war often became only a product of news scriptwriters and existed according to the laws and rules of a news television picture (remember the notorious "rescue of private Jessica").
In fact, the reality was not even tailored to the templates - it was simply formed in such a way that the news provided by the global mass media and propaganda system was as expressive as possible and had the necessary effect on the target audience. And the main target audience of propaganda in the modern rebellion for the “forces of good” (due to the specific gravity ratios themselves) became precisely “their own”, and not “enemies”. Worldwide coverage of what is happening on the territory of the same Iraq was aimed primarily not at the inhabitants of this country, but rather at the citizens of Western countries. In which it was necessary to arouse a sense of inner cohesion, sympathy and involvement in the noble liberation mission of the "paladins of freedom" ...
The mission, which, strictly speaking, in terms of stated goals, ended in complete failure. Following the withdrawal of troops of the western coalition (which was never able to win the terrorist war that began immediately after the overthrow of Saddam, the death toll during which, by the way, has long exceeded the number of casualties of the almost 30-year Hussein rule) The Islamic State (IG is an extremist organization banned in Russia), very quickly subjugating almost the entire western part of neighboring Syria, which by then became the field of another experiment to promote "democratic goals all the same mint-beige. In Russia, the IG realized the danger rather quickly - and promptly banned the activities of this organization, and then began a systematic (and completely within the framework of international law) fight against this organization and similar terrorist communities. For a long time, the West has divided terrorists into "bad" and "good" ... The whole world has already seen the results of this kind of division many times - New York, Paris, etc.
It would seem, what have the propaganda or PR? Given that this whole situation has shown the obvious danger of the social and psychological consequences of the impact of modern propaganda on its own target audience. The most dangerous of these was the massive loss of the ability to adequately perceive and realize what was happening, which, in turn, resulted from the most powerful autohypnosis of both the broad masses and the elite strata of society. The mentioned autohypnosis, which allows to interpret any events taking place exclusively “in one way”, ultimately leads to an avalanche-like loss of the ability to think and act independently and, in essence, turns people into the most real information zombies.
With all this, the public in conditions of this kind are not even “washing”, but rather “brainwashing” is ready (with the appropriate “information pressure”) to make and justify almost any decisions. In fact, the same psychological mechanism works, which is formed by adherents of totalitarian sects who are not able to doubt the correctness of the next “only true and true teaching” of their “gurus”, no matter how absurd or cannibalistic this teaching is.
Necromancers, zombies and cragles
Of course, it is naive to think that this kind of degradation does not come back as a boomerang. Of course, it is returning, and, for example, the development of events in neighboring Ukraine convincingly testifies to this. But for us the other is more important - the need to learn even from someone else’s negative experience. Indeed, in this case it is not just a crisis, but about the psychological health of people. And in the end - about the future of the society and the state itself. After all, informational zombies incapable of conscious creative activity due to certain events can very easily get out of control. And to become easy prey for the enemy's "necromancers" intercepting the administration, turning its own people, including its armed part, against its enemy ...
Defeated in 1940, France, according to supporters of General de Gaulle, lost from a military point of view because it looked like a knight clad in armor (the Maginot Line) who did not have a sword (mobile mechanized offensive units and formations). Other adherents of the modern “total propaganda” or “total military PR” remind us of supporters of the opposite approach - information berserks who are ready to rush into battle without armor, with one sword in their hands. The problem, however, is that often the berserks, intoxicated with the “divine drink” from the fly agarics, did not return from the battlefield alive ... And sometimes the berserkers who entered the "battle rage" were forced to kill their own - for when the enemies were drunk with excitement and blood berserks threw themselves on their own ... In conditions when, according to medical research, more than a quarter of Americans and some mental problems are experienced by about a quarter of Americans and about 40% of EU citizens, the issue of ensuring the primary protection of psychological health information rd population becomes critical. For when in 1990 – 1991 the level with “insufficiency” in the field of psychological health reached the 50-percentage among our fellow citizens, the country suffered a sad fate ...
But in modern conditions, the entire population of Russia is joining the struggle on the fronts of the global rebellion. And by virtue of this alone, neglecting the issues of information protection (including from the negative consequences of the unconditional necessary “propaganda stimulation”) is completely unacceptable! Especially since these effects have already manifested themselves in the fate of other nations and states! Is it not time to recall the words of E.E. Messner that people should be excited only on a case by case basis, and should propaganda activate not only feelings, but also thoughts?
How can this kind of balance be achieved?
GIVE IT ALLOWN
It seems that in modern conditions it is absolutely necessary to quickly develop and adopt the concept of a kind of “information all-education” - mass education of the population in civil defense (civil protection) skills in the field of information security. In zones contaminated with radiation or poisonous substances, special protective measures are necessary - but the same applies to the “information-toxic” zones, and they are a significant part of the “four-dimensional global gloom space”. Under these conditions, one of the tasks of our own propaganda should be the formation of a kind of “protective ideological and logical field” capable of playing for all our people the role of an “armored dome of solidarity” in the entire psychological space of informational confrontation.
To some extent, such “defensive propaganda” is even more important than offensive propaganda. And, of course, its all-encompassing character can only be achieved using the domestic media system. Who should remember that in addition to the function of informing and the function of forming public opinion, they also have the function of mass social education. But besides the media, our state, undoubtedly, should always remember this, as it strives to protect its people from modern global threats ...
Information