Information Warfare and Protest

The Pittsburgh G20 Summit isn’t an ordinary protest under ordinary circumstances.  There is an active militarized information warfare effort underway.  Everything we say can and will be used against us, to justify state activities including violence and to denounce our activities and responses.  For example, the architect of the information warfare plan at the 2004 RNC in NYC was the same person who created the Jessica Lynch fabrication: Jim Wilkinson, the former director of Strategic Communications at U.S. central command.

Consequently we need to develop our own strategic communications plan. We are underfunded, understaffed, underresourced; so we must use every tool at our disposal. We have the moral high-ground, the people power, and the ability to be thoughtful and compassionate with each other and with those who we are communicating to.

WHAT IS INFORMATION WARFARE?

Information warfare is more than just propoganda, it is an active strategy to achieve full spectrum dominance of land, sea, sky and THOUGHT. Military strategists call it "weaponized information" and it is considered a main component of urban warfare and crowd control operations like the militarized protest control plan known as the Miami Model.

The use of information warfare in social movements and political conflicts has been studied by Rand Corporation researchers John J. Arquilla and David F. Ronfeldt. They write about "netwar," defined as: "trying to disrupt or damage what a target population knows or thinks it knows about itself and the world around it...It may involve public diplomacy measures, propaganda and psychological campaigns, political and cultural subversion, deception of or interference with local media." Information warfare has two main goals:

1. to build up and protect "friendly" information communicated from the government, law enforcement, partner corporations, and other supporters.
2. to degrade, deny, and destroy enemy (protestor and opposition) information such as the public attempts of demonstrators to "explain a rationale for their actions/positions, influence others, and share the facts."

THE EFFECTS OF INFORMATION WARFARE ON PROTEST

• Demonizes/isolates protestors and discredits the reasons for protest
• Reduces and marginalizes the appearance of dissent from the status quo
• Attempts to create apathy, confusion, internal conflict and disempower participation
• Creates the image of overwhelming support for State policies
• Justifies repressive (often violent) responses to protest and dissent
• Attempts to control all aspects of the environment including "thought"

COMMON INFORMATION WARFARE TACTICS

• Create fear through media messages and community presentations: Violent anarchists vs. well prepared police
• Celebration of military police force on TV – the public is “fascinated” and “thankful.”
• Surveillance, arrest, detention, and harassment of independent media spaces, reporters and videographers
• Law enforcement steals or destroys independent media cameras, film, phones, and journals
• Attempts to contain dissent to Free Speech Zones/Protest Pits
• Police actions against demonstrators timed to noon or late afternoon news cycles.
• Law enforcment in direct communication with TV and print editors effecting articles & headlines
• Undercover agents acting as news reporters, use of visible military journalists
• Success of the crowd control plan trumpeted to media starting before end of event and continuing well after

IDEAS FOR ACTIVISTS INTERVENTIONS

• expand the use of independent media coverage
• build effective collaboration across the protest movement prior to crisis moments
• use clever props, puppets and street theatre duplicate efforts – don’t centralize
• anticipate attacks – be smart
• collect yourself, make injuries available to media
• increase street/same day production capabilities
• use media watch, media zaps, text mobs, & twitter to build grassroots media accountability
• fight, ignore free speech zones or pits
• make activist spaces open to members of media when possible
• use positive and empowering messages early and often among activists and public to combat fear-mongering

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--> Read "Information Warfare in Miami" by By Ilyse Hogue and Patrick Reinsborough, AlterNet.

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