Stories Are Weapons

I don't know what I expected of this book but wow, what a wild ride through history, science fiction, psychological warfare and even alternative libraries. Fascinating, thorough, and one of Newitz's more compelling nonfiction adventures. Recommended for anyone who's lived through recent events and wondered whether they or the world had gone mad.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher W. W. Norton & Company for an advance copy of this history of the rise of disinformation and propaganda, how much of our history has been created by this, and how it can only get worse.

Humans don't like to admit this, but they are easy to fool. Which is fine when it come to sleight of hand magic tricks, much worse when it comes to picking presidents, or believing or not believing medical professionals. Also humans hate to admit that they made a mistake, and will sometimes double down on their erroneous thinking, as I am sure many of us have noticed. Being told that something is real, especially if the story starts small and gets bigger over time is a good way to do this. We see this all the time today. A little story feeds into a larger narrative and soon the narrative has been hijacked. Which leads to problems. People being killed problems. Everything seems to be weaponized now, video games, movies, comics, climate change, wanting fresh water, health and sex. It's draining but it is here. Novelist and journalist Annalee Newitz in Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind looks at the rise of disinformation, how it helped to shape history, and what the future holds.

The book looks at propaganda and disinformation with profiles on a large cast of people, some who I had heard of but not in the ways that Newitz describes them. The book begins with a man with a problem. How to get woman to smoke cigarettes. This man Edward Bernays, happened to be the nephew of Sigmund Freud, so he had a little bit more insight on how the human brain worked. Bernays turned cigarettes into an act of rebellion. Woman shouldn't be told by their husbands not to smoke. They were torches of freedom, and let it burn brightly. Sales went up and I am sure so did cancer rates. Bernays also went on to help overthrow a government, but I won't ruin that story. Benjamin Franklin during the Revolutionary War printed a false newspaper about British atrocities, which was picked up in England as a true account, and came back to America with the imprimatur of truth. Newitz looks at how the idea of brainwashing came about, the programs run by governments, and groups not friendly to governments, and order.

Not only did I enjoy this book, but I learned quite a lot. Newitz has done a tremendous amount of research, and even better has a a style that does not overwhelm the reader. One of my favorite sections was about the science fiction writer Cordwainer Smith. I was familiar with a few of his stories, but had no idea that Smith was really Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger, a scholar of China, and an a Army officer with a background in psychological warfare. As a writer of science fiction, Newitz knows the importance of world building, and this was something that Smith was known for, creating stories that seemed of their time, with an intimacy that was rare. Newitz discusses these stories and how a good disinformationist will make the little bits seem real, with the assumption being that the big bits have to be real too. Newitz uses plenty of examples from history and the present day to explain this manipulation.

Writing a book about disinformation will probably bring out the people who believe the disinformation. Well what abouts, are probably going to fill these reviews. Newitz carefully lays out how people have been fooled since the days of sitting around a fire in a cave. The techniques have changed but not the motivation. This is the thrid book I have read by Newitz, and I think this is the most important. A really clear view at our world today.