Assessing Memetic Weapons Capability Of Neoconservatism (REDUX 5/6/08)

Use of radio as a form of memetic warfare has long been known and exploited (Voice of America, Radio Free Europe). The early innovations of memetic warfare are evident in spam, now reaching 80% of internet traffic -- possible to justify future implementation of severely restrictive counter-measures. In contrast to the threat of viruses, spam has a cognitive component. The focus on sexually explicit imagery, together with performance improving drugs and devices, is clearly associated with evocation of lust as a memetic weapon. It is no coincidence that a high percentage of such spam originates in the USA -- where even the highest ranked hotels offer "adult movies". Only the naive would fail to recognize the offensive function of such memetic weapons against other cultures, such as Islam.

Whilst such spam may be understood as a memetic analogue to biological warfare, there is a case for anticipating the development and deployment of memetic analogues to tactical and strategic nuclear weapons. There is also a case for recognizing the probable nature and targets of such weaponry and the appropriate modes of defence.

 

Nuclear weapons -- with their emphasis on mass destruction -- have proven to be a fundamental revolution in warfare. They are destructive not only of mass in the physical sense but also of masses in the demographic sense -- as well as of ecosystems on which life depends. It is therefore useful to question whether any memetic analogue would be equally fundamental in its effect on the:

    "nuclear family", as it has come to be understood in its more restrictive sense
    "nuclear community", as it it is understood in the neighbourhood or quartier sense
    "nuclear culture", as it is increasingly understood, especially by threatened minorities and ethnic groups, and it is becoming framed in the case of "Christian civilization" or the "Muslim Umah"

What are the consequences on these "nuclear" bonds of the emergent possibilities of memetic nuclear warfare? Already the effects of "information warfare" are apparent and a feature of Psy-Ops. Censorship and the control of information on problematic issues can already be understood as "nuclear shields" (cf Missiles, Missives, Missions and Memetic Warfare: Navigation of strategic interfaces in multidimensional knowledge space, 2001). Intriguingly the manipumation of statements regarding "sins" and "virtues" seem to be used in such warfare rather like "binary weapons" -- composed of two ingredients that become lethal only when combined at the last minute before detonation. The art would appear to be ensure the implosive deployment of memetic components based on "sin" (its recognition, evocation of guilt, etc) in conjunction with deployment of "virtue" (occupying the vaccum created). This might be seen as analogous to the deployment of thermobaric weapons.

The challenge for fundamentalists in engaging in such memetic warfare is that even after such deployment, as is evident in Iraq, the population remains highly resistant to replacing Islamic virtues, framed as sinful by the crusading occupation forces, by Christian virtues. In memetic terms, destruction of nuclear bonds in order to reform a culture through "nation-building" processes (conceived as analogous to interrogation, brain-washing, indoctrination and re-education techniques) has proven to be far from successful -- despite the arrogance with which it was envisaged sending an army of missionaries into Iraq to follow the invasion by the Coalition of the Willing [more].

What would seem to be required in relation to community building, nation building, and building a viable planetary culture, is a memetic analogue to nuclear "fusion technology" -- rather than the "fission technology" through which the bonds of the "pattern that connects" are broken. This would call for investment in a degree of imaginative "memetic innovation" analogous to that currently deployed internationally in relation to nuclear fusion [more]. In this light the "clash of civilizations" would be designed into a framework capable of holding their interaction so as to reinvigorate humanity through the rich pattern of energetic relationships the "clash" engendered. Can humanity control its own functions as a memetic nuclear fusion reactor? Is the design challenge analogous to that of avoiding plasma "quenching" in order to ensure sustained fusion? Perhaps "sin" is best to be understood in terms of "quenching" the spirit?

This approach is to be contrasted with fundamentalist efforts to eliminate the difference which enables that memetic energy release in order to create a homogeneous hegemony in which everyone sings from the same hymn sheet -- composed in Washington. Is it possible that models deriving from fusion technology would point to radically new approaches to fusion at a far more fundamental level between contrasting faith perspectives -- a level respectful of both the differences (that are otherwise expressed so violently) and the inspiration that sustains them?

It is the memetic technology required to work with requisite difference that would enable civilization to enegage more effectively with questions of a higher order (Engaging with Questions of Higher Order: cognitive vigilance required for higher degrees of twistedness, 2004).

From Anthony Judge's Seven Deadly Sins of Fundamentalism

How Memes got Weaponized: (Why You Can't Have Anything Nice Anymore)

technologyreview | Memes come off as a joke, but some people are starting to see them as the serious threat they are. In October 2016, a friend of mine learned that one of his wedding photos had made its way into a post on a right-wing message board. The picture had been doctored to look like an ad for Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and appeared to endorse the idea of drafting women into the military. A mutual friend of ours found the image first and sent him a message: “Ummm, I saw this on Reddit, did you make this?”

This was the first my friend had heard of it. He hadn’t agreed to the use of his image, which was apparently taken from his online wedding album. But he also felt there was nothing he could do to stop it.

So rather than poke the trolls by complaining, he ignored it and went on with his life. Most of his friends had a laugh at the fake ad, but I saw a huge problem. As a researcher of media manipulation and disinformation, I understood right away that my friend had become cannon fodder in a “meme war”—the use of slogans, images, and video on social media for political purposes, often employing disinformation and half-truths.

While today we tend to think of memes as funny images online, Richard Dawkins coined the term back in 1976 in his book The Selfish Gene, where he described how culture is transmitted through generations. In his definition, memes are “units of culture” spread through the diffusion of ideas. Memes are particularly salient online because the internet crystallizes them as artifacts of communication and accelerates their distribution through subcultures.

Importantly, as memes are shared they shed the context of their creation, along with their authorship. Unmoored from the trappings of an author’s reputation or intention, they become the collective property of the culture. As such, memes take on a life of their own, and no one has to answer for transgressive or hateful ideas.

 

Afrofuturism > Black Speculative Arts > Hip-Hop - More "Arts" Weaponization?

vice |  VICE: What exactly is the Black Speculative Arts Movement 

Dr. Reynaldo Anderson: BSAM is an umbrella term that looks at several different positions [like] magical realism, Afrofuturism, black science fiction, black quantum futurism, Afro-surrealism, ethnography—different perspectives related to this movement. It's a collection of artists, intellectuals, and activists that we have in these conventions.

How did it start? 

BSAM emerged out of the Unveiling Visions: The Alchemy of the Black Imagination project that I co-curated with John Jennings at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. It was during that exhibition that I wrote the manifesto for the movement, which is posted online for people to look at.

Later, while brainstorming with John, he connected me to Maia "Crown" Williams, the founder of MECCAcon, the Midwest Ethnic Convention for Comics and Arts [who] operates a film festival and is a founding member of Ava DuVernay's ARRAY out of Detroit. With her expertise in film and comic conventions, she was very valuable as a co-founder to forming an ongoing convention aspect of the movement.

How long ago did you start thinking about this movement?

We are in the second wave of Afrofuturism, and it's also sociopolitical. When you think about science fiction and what we are doing with Nightlife, a lot of these people who are addicted to drugs have similar behaviors to those of zombies. There is a connection there as a literary or critical theorist. The way I think about science fiction and speculative philosophy happens in real life when people are using all these chemicals and drugs on their body and how it impacts their behavior, as they react like some of these people that we read about in novels. I think it's because society is changing so quickly the only reference we have to understand what happens to us is science fiction or horror. Things that we read in science fiction books used to be unthinkable. Now, they are a reality.

Let's talk about your book, Afrofuturism 2.0. How did you come to be involved in that project?

The book was the result of several years of thinking about the term "Afrofuturism." Many people preceded me in its conceptual development, like Mark Dery, Alondra Nelson, Kodwo Eshun, and others. I first heard of the term in the 90s as a graduate student when I was working on my PhD focusing on the Black Panther Party. The 2.0 project came out of a couple of things. One, I thought about Afrofuturism being different than it was when it was formulated in the 90s.

Afrofuturism 2.0 is the era that we're in now, this era of social media, technological acceleration, globalization, and environmental stress that we are dealing with. I put together a call for papers to put a book around the ideas that really mattered to Afrofuturism from 2005 to now. The other difference is that Afrofuturism is now a transdisciplinary pan-African techno cultural movement. It's global. It's not just American. It takes place in Africa, Latin America—all over the world people are doing it. It was the spirit of those spiritual and intellectual currents going on that led to the book being developed that I co-edited with Charles Jones. 

American-British Politicization of Anti-Semitism

counterpunch |  Since the inception of the the State of Israel, one Israeli government after the other has insisted that the Israeli state officially represents every last Jew on the planet – thus conflating nationality and religious identity. The fabricated nature of this claim has become more obvious as Israeli behavior and culture has grown ever more racist and the policies of its governments more blatantly in violation of international law and the norms of human and civil rights.

While much of the rest of the world has strived to increase diversity and tolerance, Israel and a small number of other states (such places as Myanmar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, etc.) go about practicing official discrimination, segregation, and expulsion. As they do so, they inevitably produce cultures that those who support human and civil rights can only describe as ugly and deformed. As a consequence, more and more Jews have responded by disassociating themselves with Zionist Israel.

What then has been the response of the Israeli government? It is, essentially, to spit in the face of Jews supportive of human rights. The Israelis seek to force the issue by using their influence and that of Zionist lobby surrogates to push for new laws in key foreign lands, such as the U.S. and the U.K., to make criticism of the Israeli state legally synonymous with anti-Semitism. The U.S. and British adoption of the suspect portion of the “working definition” of anti-Semitism cited here is a step in this direction, and a consequence of Zionist pressure.

It should be noted that Israel and its supporters, being the “deep thinkers” they aren’t, have created an reductio ad absurdum situation. To wit, anyone who publicly condemns Israeli human rights violations (that is Israeli racist acts) must be anti-Semitic (racist) – even if they happen to be Jewish. That is what you get when you pursue particularistic expediency over the general logic of tolerance and humanitarianism.

One can ask how it is that American and British, as well as other politicians and law makers, who are themselves part of cultures that are even now seeking to overcome racism, can buy into such an illogical argument?

Their doing so seems to be an expression of the electoral marketplace. Politicians need money to survive in their chosen career. As long as it does not cost them an overwhelming number of votes, they will sell their support to high bidders. And, no one bids higher than the Zionists.

This means that democratic politics is most often not a principled activity. It can be idealized, of course, but as long as it is dependent on incessant fund-raising, it will be corrupt in practice. That is why the Zionists can easily arrange for most Western politicians to selectively suppress free speech in their own countries and support racism in Israel.

robin hood: why ayn rand got it wrong

lrc |  For sixty years I have been captivated by the heroic stories of Robin Hood. The Adventures of Robin Hood was my favorite movie as a kid, Errol Flynn my favorite actor. Adventures of Robin Hood, by Eleanor Graham Vance, was my favorite book as a kindergartener. I still have it in my library.

Over the past several days I have once again been reliving my corrupted youth by watching on DVD the 143 episodes of The Adventures of Robin Hood starring Richard Greene. Above is Outlaw Money, one of my favorites with many themes LRC enthusiasts will relish.

The television series was produced in England by Sapphire Films. Sapphire Films was founded by producer Hannah Weinstein allegedly with funds provided by the Hollywood branch of the Communist Party USA. The ingenious Weinstein hired many blacklisted Hollywood writers to write scripts for The Adventures of Robin Hood. She and her conspiratorial cohorts devised a sophisticated covert procedure to keep their identities secret and protected. All this elaborate ruse would seem to vindicate Ayn Rand’s crusading war against these Hollywood Reds and the destructive Robin Hood myth fostered in the series they created. The novelist/philosopher was perhaps the fiercest enemy of these Hollywood Communists and of Robin Hood. She famously testified as a “friendly witness” before the House Committee on Un-American Activities concerning Communist infiltration and propaganda in Hollywood. In one of the most memorable passages of her novel Atlas Shrugged she has one of her major characters, Ragnar Danneskjold, condemn Robin Hood in the harshest and most vindictive manner.

But Rand got it wrong. In the TV series which aired contemporaneously to the publication of her novel, Robin and his band are not the proto-Marxist proletarian plunderers of the productive rich and despoilers of private property but are actually defenders of justice in property titles, the rule of law, and the non-aggression principle. Virtually every episode is replete with imaginative tales of rebellious Saxon peasants battling against Norman tyranny and taxation by the Sheriff of Nottingham and his minions acting as the corrupt arms of the State.

I recommend all Randroids not paralyzed from the neck up “objectively” read Robin Hood: People’s Outlaw and Forest Hero: A Graphic Guide, by the scholar and masterful left-wing propagandist Paul Buhle. It is a delightful, unrepentant, and informative exploration of the Robin Hood legend and why the tales of his exploits have remained popular for centuries.

"treat it like a virus of the mind"...,