Thread by @infinite__jaz

🧵My jaw is still on the fucking floor after reading Jenn Counter’s “Rules of Offensive Influence” — an unapologetic playbook for psychological warfare — that is published on Columbia’s website.

I'm going to share some excerpts, then post the whole thing.

As you read, keep in mind, Counter serves as both a “Subject Matter Expert” for Safe Reach Solutions — the firm overseeing GHF’s operations in Gaza — and, according to Columbia's website, a “Course Associate” in the Strategic Communications department at the School of Professional Studies.

She introduces her 16 rules for "strategizing and implementing an influence campaign" by clarifying that "even tactical military propaganda should support a longer-term strategy and goal to be most impactful."

Rule 1 is "Respect your adversary." Two is "Have a long-term strategy." Three is where it gets interesting: "Identify ways to overcome the positive emotions, defensive positions, and the audience’s 'lizard brain.' Use emotion to capture the audience and bring them in."

Four through six, you can read on your own. Here's seven: "Establish 3 to 5 concepts that will be used to drive a wedge in your adversary’s efforts to grow their base of support, maintain control, garner funding, and operate freely. Concepts should be based on historical ills that plague the group, community, or society and tied directly to your adversary. These concepts are used to discredit the adversary and their place within the community."

8: "Know your enemy, their culture, their society and history ... In an American context, race/ethnicity, north vs. south, pro-life vs. pro-choice, and big government vs. libertarianism are all concepts which cause division. Other societies have similar divisions which are both emotional and deep seated. The key is to work with local actors to understand these divisions and how they
can be leveraged to meet your goals."

Nine is about "Hope." Ten is about "layering" your concepts across outlets and groups. Here's 11: "The goal is not to counter your adversary. Your goal is to
dominate your adversary. This is done by keeping them on the defensive. Do not give them the time, bandwidth, or opportunity to go offensive. By rotating concepts and messages, the adversary is forced to keep up with your timeline, your message, your pace of operations and not their own. By constantly responding to your messages, they are unable to project their own and (hopefully) use up their valuable resources trying to convince audiences your message is wrong."

Twelve is about "welcoming defectors from the other side." As you read thirteen, remember that Counter works for the group that replaced the UN's aid distribution system after helping to smear it as Hamas (and continues to do so). 13: "Plan to fill the power vacuum. Toppling the adversary is one thing, having a plan to backfill them is another. People need to know and buy into the new leader, structure, organization, etc prior to the adversary being overtaken. In best case scenario, the option you provide should instill hope in the future and inspire people to overcome the adversary. The backfill needs to be established and ready to go well before the adversary is on the decline or removed all together.

The rest are relatively innocuous—though as I read sixteen--“adjust the strategy based on evaluation"--I'm thinking about the GHF’s abrupt messaging pivot this past week: suddenly acknowledging the deteriorating hunger crisis while blaming the UN for “abandoning 950 trucks of aid to rot in the sun”—a line blasted out thousands of times on Twitter.

Those are Jenn Counter’s sixteen rules of offensive influence—perfect for indoctrinating young minds at Columbia, or running a propaganda campaign for a murderous “aid” operation in Gaza. Here's the whole article: sps.columbia.edu/news/rules-off…

Apologies if that was messy or hard to follow—I wrote it in a bit of a huff. I’m going to take a step back and contextualize all of this against what’s happening in Gaza in my newsletter this Sunday: infinitejaz.substack.com

Two final things. First, props again to the Twitterless Jack Poulson, whose Substack deep dive into the PR machine behind UG Solutions kicked off my own inquiry — and who flagged Jenn Counter as someone worth looking into. You can read his piece here: substack.com/@jackpoulson/p…

And finally, POWER to the young student activists at Columbia who put their entire futures on the line to stand up against genocide, in the face of an institution that sought to absolutely crush them. You are all genuine heroes, and one day that will be conventional wisdom.