We have a malignant narcissist-afflicted authoritarian in the White House who thrives off chaos and uses information warfare to bring chaos to the masses. If you see people engaging in similar behaviors online, there’s good reason to be suspicious of their motives & allegiances.

Chaos is a strategy for some. The purpose is to overwhelm you, distract you, and exhaust you with the drama of the day so you don’t have the clarity to see the big picture or the energy to fight the real battle against the fascism that is taking hold right in front of our faces.

Authoritarians maintain control by promising to restore order & stability after thrusting us all into a state of disorder & chaos. But doing so requires help — from complicit lawmakers, paid operatives, & a lot of foot soldiers tasked with infiltrating & disrupting online spaces.

This is the essence of non-linear warfare, which seeks to overwhelm you and break you down by subjecting you to an ever-shifting state of reality. As you try to figure out yesterday’s lies, they throw another curveball and create tomorrow’s new reality. It’s an endless cycle.

Non-linear warfare takes place on a battlefield with no rules and no consistency — it seeks to confuse you to the point where you don’t know what your enemies are doing or even who your enemies are. This should sound familiar, because it’s taking place on this platform right now.

The aim of non-linear warfare is to undermine your perceptions of the world so you never really know what is happening. It’s a strategy to maintain power by keeping you constantly confused and overwhelmed. Because it is undefinable, it often seems unstoppable.

Bannon didn’t invent non-linear warfare, but he’s a skilled practitioner. Here’s how he described it in 2016:

“Darkness is good. Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That’s power. It only helps us when they get it wrong. When they’re blind to who we are and what we’re doing.”

I’m bringing this up now for a few reasons. First, as impeachment hearings continue, Trump’s efforts to maintain control of the narrative will ramp up & become more intrusive & unpredictable. We need to be prepared for the coming storm. It will be worse than anything we’ve seen.

Secondly, I want to make sure you know what to look for. Some of the tactics and actors are obvious — but as Bannon made clear, the most effective tactics in information warfare are those that you never see. And I want to help you see them, so you aren’t left chasing shadows.

I’ve been observing & documenting online conflicts for years. I’ve also been the target of a psyop that started in April 2017 and continues to this day. I have become intimately familiar with who these actors are, and how they operate. I don’t want you to go through what I have.

I’m not going to mention anyone by name (yet), but I will describe their tactics. And I will start by warning you that so-called “Resistance Twitter” has been infiltrated very effectively by right-wing actors seeking to sow chaos and turn people against each other.

In terms of the tactics, this gives you an idea of (some of) what they’re doing: Infiltrating left-leaning spaces with sock-puppet accounts, befriending people and gaining their trust, identifying people to use as pawns, and then unleashing chaos to stifle effective resistance.

This thread by @_WhyzGuy_ has more info on some of the mid- and lower-level right-wing chaos agents. They’re open about what they do; I want to focus more on the accounts that act in a covert manner — the “friendly” faces who seek to destroy from within.
https://twitter.com/_whyzguy_/status/1114315711986401280?s=21

So what are some of the tactics you should watch for? One such tactic is placing increasingly strict and unreasonable demands on who you “should” associate with on Twitter. Trying to force you not to engage with certain people is a way of controlling your information environment.

“Guilt by association” is a similar tactic. This is often used to try to discredit people with valuable info to share. It involves calling into question the veracity of that info based on the source’s interaction with another person(s), rather than addressing the info itself.

Other tactics seek to harness the power of social norms to manipulate your behavior. Deindividuation describes a process in which a person is encouraged to shed their own identity and replace it with the identity of a group. It’s a form of indoctrination & behavioral control...

Humans are social beings, and we all seek to be part of an “in-group.” But this also makes us vulnerable to manipulation. Bad actors leverage this by promising acceptance — at a price. Often, that price includes participating in attacks against perceived out-group enemies...

Now, imagine if right-wing actors effectively infiltrated “Resistance” groups and used these tactics to label certain people as part of the “out group”, and started encouraging group members to attack those people as a way of showing loyalty to the group.

That is happening now.

Now, imagine if those same right-wing infiltrators started encouraging group members to listen to/share information from dubious sources or conspiracy theorists as a way to make “The Resistance” look gullible or hysterical.

That is also happening now.

I‘ll add to this with more examples of specific tactics, but my purpose in writing this is to warn you that information warfare comes in many different forms, and some of the most effective strategies come from “friendly” faces. Not all “Resistance” accounts are what they seem.

As I said earlier, I’ve been targeted for over 2.5 years by a group of accounts purporting to be part of the “Resistance.” Some of them are people who’ve been duped. But the effort is spearheaded by a group of right-wing accounts that have infiltrated “Resistance” groups...

The purpose of infiltration is to manipulate behavior from within — it’s akin to controlled opposition. When it’s done effectively, it has the ability to create division, control the flow of information, disrupt communication and organizing, and kill effective resistance.

We are facing some incredibly serious and unprecedented challenges right now. Fascism is at our doorstep, and we‘re the only ones who can stop it from creeping in further.

Social media can be a great tool to facilitate communication and mobilization. But it’s also a battlefield.

The goal of non-linear warfare isn’t to win the war — the goal is to use ongoing conflict to create a perpetual state of destabilization, chaos, & altered perception of reality in order to maintain control. Those who contribute to that conflict are pushing us closer to the abyss.