Military Meme Warfare

Why is Military Intelligence so Obsessed with Memes?

From NATO to American Intelligence there is an odd focus on political meme suppression, creation, and counter-meme propaganda that seems almost silly at first glance. Recently, Vermont native Douglass Mackey was sentenced to 7 months in prison for circulating a meme back in 2016, categorized by many as a “shit-post,” which joked that people could vote for Hillary Clinton via text message.

It is shocking to hear such a conviction could possibly happen in America, but it did. Humor is protected free speech, isn’t it? Mackey didn’t create the meme, according to an interview he did with Tucker Carlson, but merely shared it on Twitter, and the government was unable to find even one person who actually believed the “shit post” and thus tried to vote via text. The government’s case rested on the argument that the meme was a deliberate attempt to disenfranchise voters by confusing them into thinking they could submit a valid vote via text message.

But the Government likely does not believe that anyone thought the meme was real. What the Government does believe is that the meme is king in the postmodern world – an extremely potent form of propaganda. The prosecution of Mackey is a warning to any would-be memers out there in the X-verse (formerly the Twitter-verse). But not all memers can be prosecuted like Mackey, so Big Government must have its intelligence apparatus actively engaging in meme warfare.

“Who controls the memes, controls the universe” - Elon Musk

Musk is constantly posting memes on his X (formerly Twitter) account, just as millions of human beings do. But very few of us have over 164 million followers. Musk is at odds with Big Government in regards to censorship but not in the fundamental belief that the meme is now king of propaganda. In the 2020s, it could be argued that the postmodern human thinks in memes. We process complexity in memes, or rather, we do not process complexity at all so the meme helps our minds substitute deep analytical thinking with “hahaha! that’s so funny it must be true.”

Perhaps the last meme to hit the mind… wins?!

NATO and memes

Former State Department Assistant Secretary Mike Benz recently broke down recruiting information from the Integrity Initiative which started as a British MI6 intelligence project that eventually combined with the American State Department and fifteen other NATO countries. Back in 2014 through today, the Integrity Initiative has been surveilling people and pursuing research tracks such as Myths, Narratives and Memes: Political Warfare in the Information Age (as seen in the above video), and The EU Can’t Meme: Why the EU is losing the political battle of the narratives. 

Benz states, “The Integrity Initiative was set up to stop the rise of right-wing populist parties that were NATO-skeptical in Europe.” This concern applies in America towards Trump and the MAGA movement as well, most notably uncovered in the Hamilton 68 deception. However, it is not just right-wing movements that the global intelligence apparatus is trying to thwart; it’s all populist movements that virtually all governments want to crush.

Radicalization: The World Is a Stage and Everyone is a Target

Essentially, what has been openly documented by NATO et al. is that there are “bad guys” out there who use memes to accomplish their goals. Therefore, the “good guys” need to do the same thing. The implication is that the “good guys” will only be targeting those “bad guys,” but when you read deep enough into their documents they don’t expressly say that; not at all.

It is left wide open that everyone is a potential “bad guy.”

We now have hard evidence from journalists Michael Shellenberger, Alex Gutentag, and Matt Taibbi in the CTIL whistleblower documents showing that the US Intelligence apparatus is actively engaged in offensive operations on the Internet in the form of memes and much more! It is not just suppression of speech and stopping different opinions, but manipulating and creating narratives, and intervening into the very perception of reality itself.

It isn’t so much the creation of the meme itself as it is the functional use of it. The right meme in the right place at the right time can help stoke flames and radicalize a community in a way that damages the enemy and helps the operation. Such an operation is actually quite similar to what the American government prosecuted and convicted Douglass Mackey for allegedly doing with his Hillary Clinton text-your-vote meme.

However, when it comes to Mackey there is no real evidence that he was truly attempting to deceive or radicalize anyone. But that’s not important to Big Government because he is still a potential “bad guy,” and therefore a valid target.

As is everyone.

Psyops by the Military Intelligence Apparatus today are pervasive and do not simply target “bad guys,” but rather they target any-and-everyone. If you watch the US Military propaganda video GHOSTS IN THE MACHINE close enough, you will see that the government believes the world is a stage and we are all actors (and thus targets) on that stage.

GHOSTS IN THE MACHINE asks if you’ve ever wondered who is “pulling the strings…born from the ashes…of a world at war…you’ll find us in the shadows…at the tip of the spear…a threat rises in the east…warfare is evolving…and all the world is a stage…” And the video sends people to a website promoting “VERBUM VINCENT” (which means The World Will Conquer) 4th Psychological Operations Group asking you to consider a career with Special Forces PSYOPS.

It’s worth watching this short video for yourself: