EOTO 2: Disinformation

 

Disinformation, as the Merriam-Webster puts it, is "false information deliberately and often covertly spread (as by the planting of rumors) in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth." In other words, disinformation is a concentrated effort by one party to control another party with lies and half-truths. It's a method for populace control. A tool to sway and subjugate.

Historic Disinformation

In the 1980's the Soviet government purportedly perpetrated an elaborate scheme to convince the American populace that  "all victims of AIDS are the result of a monstrous experiment." The Soviet "aktivinyye meropriatia" (active measures) scheme was apparently designed to weaken the "'main enemy' (glavny protivnik), the United States — and to create a favorable environment for advancing Moscow’s views and international objectives worldwide" (source). If what the CIA claims is true, then the deliberate attempt to sway the image of the United States and its policies serves as a classic example of a wide-scale, invasive disinformation campaign.

Targeted Disinformation

While a disinformation campaign is a means of influence and control over a large populace, that does not mean it is limited to targeting a wide audience. The disinformation campaign in Rwanda that instigated the "meticulously planned" Rwandan genocide is once such example of a targeted disinformation campaign. In 1992, the "Hutu Power" political club started "redefining the enemy within" as the Tutsi minority Group: "[T]he class antagonism and the threat of militancy which they themselves faced were converted into ‘ethnic hatred’ and a readiness to kill the ‘real’ – now ethnicised – enemy." (source). 

This campaign, targeted towards the generally lower-class Hutu, painted the Tutsi as evil immigrants who were taking their land and making a "return to feudalism" (source). This entire event shows that disinformation, when targeted, can drastically alter relationships between groups in a society, and ultimately be used to encourage violations of humanity.

Modern Disinformation

The 2020 US Election demonstrates how modern society is not evolved enough to parse between disinformation and truth. After handily losing the popular and electoral vote by wide margins, the Trump campaign began a large-scale legal assault founded in baseless claims of voter fraud. These lawsuits, though almost entirely unsuccessful in any legal capacity, have served as a means of communicating on a large scale to Trump supporters that their candidate has been cheated out of office. Through this, the Trump campaign has solicited supporter donations on its "Election Defense Fund" organization. Donations towards this organization are purportedly designed to combat voter fraud, but are largely instead being used to "help pay down [Trump] campaign debt."

This flurry of legal challenges followed by a collection of donations that are used for unrelated purposes exemplifies the dangers of disinformation.  A large base of American society now believes that the election process is based in fraud and deception. This belief can cause incalculable damage to the integrity of democracy. When a free state loses faith in its own democracy, it is primed for populism and disarray.

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MLA (Modern Language Assoc.)
Pottier, Johan. Re-Imagining Rwanda : Conflict, Survival and Disinformation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge University Press, 2002.

APA (American Psychological Assoc.)
Pottier, J. (2002). Re-Imagining Rwanda : Conflict, Survival and Disinformation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge University Press.