Thread by @letsgoeugene

With the far-right spreading ridiculous rumors about “ANTIFA” starting the forest fires, this might be a good time to reflect on rumors and disinformation as a tactic of disruption.

THREAD
#Eugene #EugeneProtests #HolidayFarmFire #antifafires

The far-right is adept at weaponizing rumors and misinformation. Donald Trump is exemplary of this: he’s always just saying random shit that he himself may or may not believe is true, and that BS is reported as if it were fact by the right-wing media apparatus.

And of course his disciples and peers follow his lead, spinning conspiracy after conspiracy—from QAnon to “antifa wildfires”. Right-wingers then use this batshit info to craft their worldview, and orient themselves towards certain actions. In response, the centrist and left media

apparatuses jump in to factually disprove these statements. Which, needless to say, is easy enough to do. However, they miss the mark by mistakenly believing that what is at stake is Truth. Liberals (including those who call themselves leftists) imagine that correcting false

information will take the wind out of the sails of the right, but this is simply not the case. This is because the effectiveness of the right’s misinformation doesn’t adhere to its factuality or lack thereof, but rather is proportionate to how deeply it can resonate through the

social body. In her book “Extrastatecraft,” Keller Easterling talks about rumor and gossip as political tactics. Speaking of the disinformation campaign against Barack Obama by Rush Limbaugh et al, she says that “since it was very easy to demonstrate that Barack Obama was a

Christian, claiming that he was a Muslim was a very effective rumor. (...) Being false, it was kept alive even longer and repeated twice over—first to spread the falsehood and then to refute it.” She goes on to add, and this is important,

**“Rumor and gossip are less reliant on content than on the way that content behaves”**

These recent fabrications about antifa starting fires work the same exact way: regardless of their truthfulness, these rumors sharpen antagonisms against antifascists and other anti-racist and anti-capitalist groups. And the liberal/left media is falling into the same trap of

trying to refute them at the level of truth and factuality, ensuring their further viral spread. Hell, this thread is ensuring the same spread, but I’m hoping that I can least offer y’all a critical analysis and understanding of this set of tactics. Because the thing is,

gossip and rumor and misinformation do not belong exclusively to the right. These tactics do not belong to anyone.

One way of engaging with the far-right’s propensity towards misinformation could be to see how we can make their rumor campaigns spiral in such a way

that it affects their operational capacity. Because the one arena where accurate information is of absolute importance is within terrains of conflict and the complex maneuvering—physical and otherwise—that make effective engagement in combat possible. We’ve seen what a crucial

issue this can be on the ground when people say wild unconfirmed shit like, “there’s 50 Proud Boys coming our way!!1!” or say scaremongering shit about people getting menaced by cops, or talk about ‘inside agitators,’ etc.

We call the importance of correct info “informational hygiene.” Well, the right has terrible informational hygeine. They’re prone to turning 40 sign-waving peaceful protestors into a vicious, weapons-toting mob 100-strong in their minds. We can use this to our advantage!

We can utilize rumor and gossip to spread disorder within their ranks! If they’re gonna overreact to everything we do, why not say we’re doing a bunch of shit everywhere? Why not make them think we’re everywhere at once, behind everything that goes down? Who’s to say we’re not!

They can’t operate if they’re always chasing ghosts. We can also spread rumors that empower ourselves, invigorating fictions that give us a larger sense of our collective power and, who knows, maybe make that fiction materialize. Now we of course do need to retain our own

informational hygiene, and the precise method of compartmentalization that would allow for both good faith information sharing and disruptive rumormongering to be effectively utilized could take some coordination. But I know it can be done.

We need not be the joyless defenders of a Truth that never asked for protection. We can be the devious tricksters, the smirking deceptive imps haunting the bad dreams of White America.