HARPER AND DECAMERON: CONTROLLING THE NARRATIVE

Several years back--in the pre-Trump era--a friend attended a forum at the Brookings Institution on
the subject of US-Russian relations.  During the question and answer portion of the event, she asked a question about American and European meddling in Ukraine, leading to the ouster of the Yanukovych government and the subsequent Russian re-annexation of the Crimea.  She cited the open admission by then-Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland, about the US having spent $5 billion to build the democracy movement in Ukraine, suggesting that the Russians may have had cause to view the Ukraine regime change events of 2013-2014 as a Western effort to drive a wedge between Moscow and Kiev, and possibly deprive Russia of its only Black Sea naval facility..

One of the speakers responded to the question by declaring that the questioner was clearly presenting a narrative that had been "written in Russia."  The panelist went on to elaborate that the real issue is "which side controls the narrative."  At no point did any of the panelists challenge any of the facts presented in the question.  Those facts, or any other facts challenging the conclusion that the entire Ukraine crisis was strictly the work of imperial adventurers in Moscow, were simply to be dismissed as "their narrative." 

Control over the narrative has more and more replaced truth seeking.  It is the old Goebbels dictum:  If you repeat the same lie over and over enough, it becomes the truth.

Recent examples abound, but the golden egg prize goes to the claim that Russia interfered in the 2016 Presidential elections to secure a victory for Donald Trump.  This narrative was presented in January 2017, after the Trump victory but before his inauguration, in an intelligence community assessment.  Go back and re-read that 25-page "narrative" today and you will be shocked.  It contains no evidence, but relies on a pseudo-psychological profile of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was presumed to have been angry at Hillary Clinton since 2011 when she made some nasty personal comments about him.  "Putin most likely wanted to discredit Secretary Clinton because he has publicly blamed her since 2011 for inciting mass protests against his regime in late 2011 and early 2012, and because he holds a grudge for comments he almost certainly saw as disparaging him."

The assessment accused Putin of--heaven forbid--seeking a partnership with the United States to defeat the Islamic State:  "Moscow also saw the election of President-elect Trump as a way to achieve an international counter-terrorism coalition against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)."

Originally, the document was presented as an all-intelligence community consensus document, prepared by representatives of the 17 organizations that comprise the US Intelligence Community.  Later it was acknowledged that the report was prepared by two analysts.

They cited the CIA and the FBI, headed at the time by John Brennan and James Comey, as having "high confidence" in the judgment that the Russians attempted to interfere in the 2016 election.  The NSA, the agency with the greatest technical capacity to "read Moscow's mail," gave only "moderate confidence" to the judgment of Russian interference.

In a methodological annex to the report, the authors acknowledged that they had no facts to back up their conclusions:

"Estimative language consists of two elements: judgments about the likelihood of developments or events occurring and levels of confidence in the sources and analytic reasoning supporting the judgments.  Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact.  Assessments are based on collected information, which is often incomplete or fragmentary, as well as logic, argumentation, and precedents..."

The authors of the assessment claimed that there was much more evidence in the classified version of the report, but that intelligence had to be withheld from the public. 

Last month, at the behest of President Trump, CIA Director Mike Pompeo met with a former NSA official, William Binney, who had conducted his own investigation of the allegations that Russian hackers had obtained Democratic National Committee emails, showing a systematic campaign by the DNC to secure Hillary Clinton the nomination over Senator Bernie Sanders.  Binney concluded that the emails had been obtained by someone working at the DNC headquarters and were "leaked, not hacked."  Now, former acting DNC Chair Donna Brazile has come out with a detailed, fact-filled book-length account, confirming that Hillary had, indeed, rigged the primary outcome to secure the nomination by buying off the DNC in 2015.

Binney's report got marginal coverage in some left-of-center and right-of-center publications, but no one in the Mainstream Media (MSM) touched the story--because it contradicted the narrative.

If someone in the USIC had a sense of humor, they would have probably named this "narrative control program" "Operation Gossamer Shield."  Gossamer is defined as:  "a fine, filmy substance, consisting of cobwebs spun by small spiders... Used to refer to something very light, thin, insubstantial or delicate." 

Comments

[Bill Herschel]

To my mind, with the appearance of Brazile's testimony, because that is what it is, what has happened is clear.

The true narrative that Hillary Clinton lost because she, herself, was a ghastly candidate without the slightest idea how to campaign or organize a campaign (cf. Barrack Obama who should never have defeated her) and because some of her "ideas" such as "We came, we saw, he died," were so mentally ill that many people recognized she should not be President. The reason Hillary Clinton lost was Hillary Clinton. It is worth noting in passing that it is also almost certainly true that the U.S. is not ready for a woman President (cf. John McCain's running mate).

But that narrative was completely unacceptable to the Democratic establishment. So the Russian interference narrative, which also served the interests of the U.S.'s allies in the Middle East, Israel and Saudi Arabia, was promoted in truly as Harper points out Goebbelian grandeur.

Think of the utter contempt the Democratic establishment (and the Republican establishment) has for the American people that lies are the only things they can serve up to their constituents.

[Richard]

I still wonder: Do the foreign policy Borg and the Clintonistas push "the narratives" while knowing that they are false but rationally calculating that doing so makes it most likely to achieve their goals? Or are they genuinely believing in their own narratives, no matter how many facts exist that contradict the narratives?

[John Merryman]

Narrative does go to the core of conscious thought. The fact is that time is not really the point of the present, "moving" past to future, but change turning future to past. As in tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth turns. as such, it is an effect, like temperature; rate of change and level of activity.
Yet it is our ability to escape the present, through narrative, history and culture, which rises us above animals.

[Bandit]

Unfortunately, right behind the controllers of the narrative are a legion of willing and self-serving sycophants, "useful idiots", and deliberately tone deaf citizens. With that mass infestation, how can facts and truth prevail? The nail in the coffin will be when all alternate media, i.e. "fake news" is silenced, subverted or controlled. That is the next item on the elites' agenda and the true death of any semblance of democracy in this country or those of its western allies.

[Fred]

Bill,

Missing from your analysis are the words "corruption" and "immigration".

[The Twisted Genius]

Harper and Decameron,

Kudos for pointing out the centrality of "controlling the narrative" in political activity. I am in full agreement. I was present at the birth of the rebranding of that concept by our DoD as information operations and am a longtime student of the Soviet/Russian implementation built around the concepts of reflexive control.

I can't help but think the genesis of this article was in Trump's declaration that he believes Putin when he said Russia did not attempt to interfere in the 2016 US elections. This is the competing narrative. As I have said for months, I don't buy that competing narrative. One of the central points of that competing narrative focuses on the idea that forensic analysis of files released by Guccifer 2.0 proves there was no hack and the files were leaked by a DNC insider. The VIPS memo mostly written by Binney relies on this forensic analysis. Even less publicized than this VIPS memo were the counter responses by Scott Ritter and later by Ritter and other VIPS members including Thomas Drake disputing the evidence and conclusions in that first VIPS memo. A good discussion of this internal VIPs dispute is in a 1 Sep 2017 article in "The Nation." The bottom line of that article is that the Forensicator/VIPS theory that the DNC hack was a local leak is exceedingly flimsy.

[jjc]

They know they are false but rationally calculate doing so makes it most likely to achieve their goals.

[The Twisted Genius]

Bill Herschel,

The idea that Hillary Clinton was a seriously flawed candidate who ran a horrendously inept campaign is something that is pretty clear to me. I'm surprised she managed to win the popular vote by several million. Another factor which is becoming clearer is the fact that the Trump/RNC campaign machine was vastly superior to the outdated effort put forth by the DNC. It was comparative to the superiority of the Obama/DNC machine against the outdated RNC efforts in 2008 and 2012. I think this was a far more important factor that any Russian influence operation.

[The Twisted Genius]

Damn! Forgot to add the links to my first comment about the VIPS memo.

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/time-to-reassess-the-roles-played-by-guccifer-2-0-and-russia-in-the-dnc-hack/

https://www.thenation.com/article/a-leak-or-a-hack-a-forum-on-the-vips-memo/

[DavidKNZ]

The interview with William Binney is worth watching...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=137&v=_4DVhmr19LI
He seems , at 74, still on top of his game technically, and concerned with evidence and truth, wherever it leads. Its good to see an honest face :-)

The "science" of the alternative - narrative control, AKA "Framing"- has been spelled out by George Lakoff - intro at
alternet.org/story/15414/metaphor_and_war,_again

If you look up his Wikipedia entry, it is littered with snide innuendo, somewhat disparaging inferences, and substantively neglects his stellar cryptographic / mathematical contribution to his nations security. To me a sure sign that he upset those in power, those who are uncomfortable with sunshine :-)

[blue peacock]

Harper

I'm not a political analyst, however, my observation is that the Russia handed Trump the election victory meme is believed by those whose bias is towards that. Primarily Democrat partisans and many in the GOP establishment as well as those that just can't abide Trump as President. OTOH, it seems those that did not buy into that narrative are folks on the other side of the political spectrum, in particular the core of Trump voters because they know why they voted for him.

In my opinion, which should be taken with a grain of salt on these political matters, Trump was just a symbol, a vessel, for the discontentment felt by many voters for the establishment of both parties and their collusion with the MSM and the political punditry who pitched a specific narrative during the election campaign. When Republican leaning newspaper editors who have not endorsed a Democrat for POTUS in a century, endorsed Hillary, it should be obvious that the narrative against Trump both as a person and as a POTUS candidate was pitched very hard. What was shocking to these people is that the voters in many states didn't buy that pitch, despite their confidence that their onslaught was working, which was further reinforced by the polls.

They had to come up with a narrative to explain their loss. They could not be candid that ordinary Americans in many states are deeply dissatisfied with the status quo establishment, which would then require reflection and change. It was a lot easier for them to blame an externality and Putin was a convenient scapegoat. It had the added benefit that they could continue their Cold War rhetoric and policy framework.

The comments of the SST correspondents during and after the election mirrors this. Some did not buy the Russia dunnit, while others are convinced that Trump could not have won the election without Putin's alleged manipulation.

[Prem]

An ex-NYT reporter wrote an interesting article last year:

http://deadline.com/2016/11/shocked-by-trump-new-york-times-finds-time-for-soul-searching-1201852490/

"By and large, talented reporters scrambled to match stories with what internally was often called “the narrative.” We were occasionally asked to map a narrative for our various beats a year in advance, square the plan with editors, then generate stories that fit the pre-designated line".

Amd they wonder why people have stopped believing them.

[jpb]

How will we know what happened, without knowing what happened if the script writers, news editors, and historians don't tell us? http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/11/opinion/the-public-knowledge-of-911.html

Phillip D. Zelikow is the expert on the Creation and Maintence of Public Myth.
http://qlipoth.blogspot.com/2006/10/creation-and-maintenance-of-public.html

Christopher Bollyn's War on Terror Among Truth Seekers explores the evidence ignored by the narrative carefully created for us, American citizens and soldiers. We are carefully primed and entrained by controlled official history to not rise above animals, but to be domesticated animals. The 9/11 official narrative is brought to you by many of the same actors and interests who create and maintain the Russian's did it myth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=141&v=PuOsiMVlMBw

[Dubhaltach]

In reply to Bill Herschel 11 November 2017 at 07:37 PM

"some of her "ideas" such as "We came, we saw, he died," were so mentally ill that many people recognized she should not be President.""

Fixed it for you:

some of her "ideas" such as "We came, we saw, he died," were so downright evil that many people recognized she should not be President.

There's a very common idea - a cop-out frankly - that when people consistently say or do bad things that they're mentally ill. I suppose people derive comfort from it "oh they're sick". Far less comforting but far more likely to be true is that they're either bad or in extreme cases downright evil. I'd put Clinton on the "evil" end of that scale.

[Ishmael Zechariah]

John Merryman,
re: :"Yet it is our ability to escape the present, through narrative, history and culture, which rises us above animals."

How do you reconcile your statement w/ Santayana's point: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."?

Here are some other quotes, not in any particular order:
1-"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.” Philip K. Dick
2-"And those who have not swords can still die upon them." J. R. R. Tolkien
3-"Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth" Buddha
4-"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." John 8:32
Perhaps transmitted memory (of true experiences) is also a key differentiator in the context you discuss.
Ishmael Zechariah

[J]

Me thinks some 'know' that what they're saying is Fairy Dust, and the others are drunk on the kool-aide. Both flat don't care about truth, all they care about is their own skins and pocketbooks. Goebbels would have luved to have had some on his propaganda team (today's politically term is Public Relations).

Lenin and his bunch had an offiskal (official) branch for their propaganda known as Главное управление по охране государственных тайн в печати при СМ СССР, or Главлит for short.

I view the toadys we have in our today's U.S. Government which includes the what I see as a U.S. version of the NKVD the Department of Homeland Security, and the stellar members of the Congress (Republican and Democrat) who crafted the now official U.S. Ministry of Propaganda which was written into the last enacted Defense Bill. Truth now has an uphill battle in our U.S., just like it was in Nazi Germany, and the former CCCP. Prior to 911, it was illegal to propagandize (lie) to the American people, after 911 the U.S. Government ignored and have looked the other way since regarding it.

Damn it, the Constitution and truth DO MATTER no matter what our U.S. versions of Goebbels and Lenin may think!!!

Now I'll get off my little soapbox and go grab a cup of Joe.

[J]

Oh, one other thing I forgot to mention, that needs to be included the former Soviet Union's Государственный комитет по делам издательств, полиграфии и книжной торговли СССР, aka Госкомиздат which was in charge of censorship and ideology in literature.

Today's U.S. Ministry of Propaganda (written by a Republican and Democrat and slipped into the now enacted Defense Bill) will no doubt one day build heaps of books to be burned just like was done in front of the Reichstag in Nazi Germany, and in the movie Fahrenheit 911.

Truth DOES MATTER DAMN IT! Now I'm off my soapbox again back to my cup-o-Joe.

[turcopolier]

TTG

Her popular vote majority is effectively all in California. Who knows what happened there. pl

[ex-PFC Chuck]

The process of which you write, Harper, can be seen in the Establishment's response to Donna Brazile's revelations themselves. In the Youtube video linked below the snarky news commentator Jimmy Dore cites example after example of well-known, and not so well-known media and internet personalities spread the meme that the agreement between the HRC campaign and the DNC applied to only the general election, not the pre-nomination primaries and other activities. Yet that meme has been thoroughly debunked by referring to the text of the agreement itself by, among others, Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept, also linked below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EHlkAgWk6w
https://theintercept.com/2017/11/05/four-viral-claims-spread-by-journalists-on-twitter-in-the-last-week-alone-that-are-false/

[J]

TTG,

What POTUS Trump has to help him differentiate what are the fact versus what is propaganda, was DIRNSA Adm. Rogers with his reams and reams of real information rushing to the side and aide of the POTUS, has helped Trump and the battle for truth immensely.

Also if you watch Putin's body language, the truth matters to him as well.

[John Merryman]

Ishmael,

Quite often those who do remember the past are condemned to watch it be repeated. It isn't the details which matter so much, as the processes generating them.

A basic model of reality is that it is a dichotomy of energy and information. Energy manifests information and information defines energy. Evidence of this is that after a few billion years of evolution, we have evolved a central nervous system to process information and the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems to process energy.
Energy is conserved, which basically means it is always and only present. Being energy it is constantly changing form, which means the information is constantly changing. This creates the effect of time. So if you want to understand the past, study the information, but if you want to understand the future, study the energy.
Given our nervous system is designed to process information, we naturally study the past, but usually for the purpose of controlling the energy. The problem is that we haven’t learned to do this in moderation. Obviously too little energy and we starve and freeze, but too much energy and we get burnt.
So what we really need to understand isn’t so much time, as thermodynamics. We evolved in a thermodynamic environment and it permeates every aspect of our being, including this shallow conceptual linearity of narrative. Narrative is an extension of navigation. For instance, plants don’t move, so they don’t have to navigate and consequently didn’t evolve a rationalizing mind. The purpose of which is to focus in order to move in a single direction.
This gets extended to groups of people. In order to work together, they need a common goal. The simpler the goal, the more people.
Government is effectively the central nervous system of society and there was a time when government was private and hereditary, but that proved to have limits. Our current situation is that we are going through a similar evolutionary process with finance, which is effectively the circulation system of society.
When society was small, economic circulation was reciprocal, but as it grew, methods of accounting became necessary and that is the function of money. Which makes money the social contract commodified, rather than just another form of commodity. As such, its value depends on its quality, as much or more than its quantity. This is trust. Undermine the trust in the community and it collapses.
Much as the nervous system and the circulatory system are separate and serve separate functions, so to are government and finance necessarily separate. Since we experience money as hope(energy) and governments thrive on how much hope they provide, there is an inherent tendency for government controlled money to be inflated. The problem with private sector monetary systems is they will be used to siphon value out of the larger society and kill it that way. What we have today is like the head and heart telling the hands and feet they don’t need quite so much blood and should work harder for what they do get.
The problem with this model is this wealth still has to be stored and so the government borrows it back out, in what amounts to a ponzi scheme, as it is spent in ways that don’t generate more wealth and compete with the private sector, but support private sector growth, thus needing ever more to be borrowed up, for which the public is responsible, creating ever more of a feedback to pull value out of the larger society.
The effect being that enormous hurricane we sense on the horizon…..

[J]

Here is something for your listening pleasure. She has a beautiful voice.

Аж мурашки по телу! Очень сильно!!! Судьи не поверили, что она поет не под фонограмму!!! 1

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=su2rRE1ro8k

[Bobo]

Belief in the Russia Narrative, that Russia had a part in electing Trump, is like a warm fuzzy blanket that one can roll themselves into to ward off the fact that an upstart, loud-mouthed Buffon held off a slate of professional political candidates on the Republican side and defeated Mothers Milk on the Democratic side. What it really asks is what was going on with our Military and Intelligence organizations in defending our country from this purported onslaught. Here you have trio of political hacks ( Brennan, Comey and Clapper) with High Confidence and the NSA with Moderate Confidence in a report as described in the summary above. Our country is politically split and not coming together as we have done in the past to work together for a better outcome because of this narrative as many hang on it as the reason not to accept reality so we all can better ourselves. Thus I hold the trio of Political Hacks responsible as their Narrative falls apart as time goes on. At least Rogers at NSA admitted that Russia interference in elections has been going on for a long time it's just that this time it was a lot more than usual. If Russia escalated was it to defeat Clinton or was it a retort to our actions in Ukraine.
Somehow the American people have now entered that Wilderness of Mirrors.

[Bill H]

You do know that #4 is the motto of the Central Intelligence Agency, right?

[Joe100]

TTG -

Given the sloppy/poor security of SOS Clinton's email system, how likely is it that the Russian security services (and probably those of several other countries) would have accessed all of HRC's emaiIs? And if so, I would guess that the emails not released by HRC's lawyer would likely have revealed seriously damaging information that could have had a much more substantial impact on the election outcome than the DNC emails..