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A review by laura_sackton
Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind by Annalee Newitz
This was very good and quite chilling. I would have been happier if it was twice as long. Newitz delves into the history of psychological warfare—not just disinformation and misinformation and propaganda, although all of those are part of, but the very specific ways in which the U.S. military has used it, and how the US government and various corporations and private companies and orgs now use it against US citizens. They write about how the term psychological warfare really came into common use during the Cold War, but they go much further back, talking about how the US government fostered anti-Indigenous racism during the Indian Wars using psychological warfare.
This book made me think a lot too about stories and words and language and how we use them. Stories—any stories—can be used as weapons. Newitz talks about comic books and how in the 1940s people thought comic books were destroying children and people tried to ban them. They talk about stories that can provide information or hope or help us imagine new worlds. Basically, they get into how stories can be use to further violent racist ideas and they can be used in support of movements. The essential fact is that we need to pay attention to all of this, not just know how to identify or be aware of propaganda and misinformation online, but understand the fact that stories are neutral, can be manipulated and used for all sorts of purposes, and that while they play a role in propaganda and psychological warfare, they can also play a role in justice and building a new world. They do a really good job not making generalizations like “art will save us” or “all propaganda is bad” or “poetry is about our humanity”. Instead, they make the argument that stories matter and are complex tools that shape how we understand the world, and to avoid psychological warfare we need to understand how they work.
This book made me think a lot too about stories and words and language and how we use them. Stories—any stories—can be used as weapons. Newitz talks about comic books and how in the 1940s people thought comic books were destroying children and people tried to ban them. They talk about stories that can provide information or hope or help us imagine new worlds. Basically, they get into how stories can be use to further violent racist ideas and they can be used in support of movements. The essential fact is that we need to pay attention to all of this, not just know how to identify or be aware of propaganda and misinformation online, but understand the fact that stories are neutral, can be manipulated and used for all sorts of purposes, and that while they play a role in propaganda and psychological warfare, they can also play a role in justice and building a new world. They do a really good job not making generalizations like “art will save us” or “all propaganda is bad” or “poetry is about our humanity”. Instead, they make the argument that stories matter and are complex tools that shape how we understand the world, and to avoid psychological warfare we need to understand how they work.
One thing I really love is how they talk about the idea of applied science fiction, the ways in which sci-fi and speculative writers use sci-fi as a way to explore ideas it is hard to explore in real life, and how those story laboratories, so to speak, can be then used, in various ways, to think about the real world we live in.