
Keir Giles is pictured with NAFO meme mascot, the NAFO doge. Photo: MintPress News.
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Keir Giles is pictured with NAFO meme mascot, the NAFO doge. Photo: MintPress News.
By Kit Klarenberg – Feb 29, 2024
In November 2023, NATOâs âCentre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threatsâ published a disturbing âworking paper,â âHumour in online information warfare: Case study on Russiaâs war on Ukraine.â It received no mainstream attention. Yet, the contents offer unprecedented insight into the military allianceâs insidious weaponization of social media to distort public perceptions and manufacture consent for war. They also raise grave questions about online âtrollingâ of dissident voices over the past decade and beyond.
The working paper ostensibly âconsiders instances of humour put to effective use to counter disinformation and propaganda in online spaces, using Russiaâs war on Ukraine.â It concludes, âhumour-based responsesâŚin the information space and in the physical domain have been found to deliver multiple clear benefitsâ for Ukraine and NATO.
Avowedly a âpractical review seeking to identify examples of best practice from both government and civil societyâ for wider future application, the paper recommends Western states, militaries, and security and intelligence services master the art of online ridicule under the aegis of âcounter-disinformation.â
It contends, âhumourâŚreaches the parts that other countermeasures â like fact-checking or media user education â cannot.â Mass deployment of memes, moreover, âhas the advantage of exploiting social media platform algorithmsâ and addressing âaudiences that are not inclined to consume âboringâ products.â
As we shall see, the true value in weaponizing âhumourâ for NATO is distorting the battlefield reality in Ukraine â and future theaters of Western proxy conflict â for public consumption. Meanwhile, any social media user deviating from NATO-endorsed narratives can be subjected to intensive harassment, discrediting them and their message âamong a wide sector of online audiences,â if not scaring them away from digital information spaces entirely. The working paper advocates the creation of an army of âprivate citizensâ for the purpose.
âINCREDIBLY SERIOUSâ
The paper begins by noting that âstate-backed parody and mockery of the enemy in conflict are nothing new,â citing satirical newspaper Wipers Times, distributed to British soldiers fighting in Western Front trenches during the First World War, and the BBC German Service, which âfought Hitler with humour.â Today though, âsocial media has democratised access and audience,â therefore â[opening] the playing field to self-motivated private individualsâ while â[facilitating] their joining forces in informal collectives for greater effect.â
Multiple footnotes indicate weaponizing mockery is a longstanding NATO objective. A report published by the military alliance in 2017, âStratCom Laughs: in search of an analytical framework,â is cited, while an academic study, âBuilding a meme war machine: A comparative analysis of memetic insurgencies in cyberspace,â is said to be âforthcoming.â The former caused a mainstream stir upon release. It was, in turn, inspired by a NATO-sponsored paper authored two years earlier by Jeff Giesea, tech guru and Peter Thiel associate, which declared:
TrollingâŚis the social media equivalent of guerrilla warfare, and memes are its currency of propaganda. Daesh is conducting memetic warfare. The Kremlin is doing it. Itâs inexpensive. The capabilities exist. Why arenât we trying it?â
âStratCom Laughsâ was highly influential. In May 2021, the Ukrainian governmentâs Centre for Strategic Communication and Information Security wholeheartedly endorsed its findings while listing the benefits of âpropagandistic humor.â
These included; â[making] perception less critical; [using] common contexts to convey messages with which the audience agrees; [simplifying] everything to the âobviousâ; [creating] clear groups: strong and intelligent âweâ and clumsy and stupid âthey.â Of course, the audience associates itself with the former and begins to despise the latterâ:
Simplified managed understanding is easily disseminated by the audience and creates the necessary social context for propagandists.â
Itâs a highly serendipitous coincidence that the North Atlantic Fella Organization (NAFO) was formed following Russiaâs February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The vast, supposedly grassroots Twitter troll collective, identifiable by âdogeâ profile photos, inexorably blitzes âvatniksâ â Russian officials and anyone failing to toe NATOâs line on the Ukraine proxy war â with a vicious blend of absurdity, ad hominem, memes, and ridicule, while raising money for Kievâs war effort. The group embodies the pronouncements of âStratcom Laughsâ to a T.
NAFO features prominently in the working paper, with some activists quoted at length. It notes that the collective âgrew from a fundraising initiativeâ for the Georgian Legion, a brutal paramilitary faction active in the proxy war. Unmentioned is that independent financing efforts are necessary because formal Western government backing for the group is politically and legally unfeasible. Its members openly boast of committing hideous war crimes, in particular, executing unarmed, bound Russian prisoners of war in cold blood.
NAFO founder Kamil Dyszewski is a Hitler-admiring antisemite who has heroized white supremacist mass murderers. The NATO paper quotes him saying, âall [Russians] see themselves as incredibly serious and important,â so they âstruggle with being made fun of.â This perspective tallies perfectly with the military allianceâs perspective on online psychological warfare. The working paper repeatedly argues, âRussian and pro-Russian individuals and entities are intensely sensitive to mockery and show an inability to cope with being the object of derision.â
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âCOURAGE AND RESOURCEFULNESSâ
The working paper judges NAFO to be an âideal structure and formatâ for âcountering disinformation, largely through the application of humour and mockery.â The groupâs efforts were moreover found to âprovide the base material for memes in the form of first-hand images and videos of Russian failures or Ukrainian determination.â This capability augmented âthe responsiveness and impactâ of Kievâs âinformation campaigns,â which were, for example, âinstrumentalâ in securing âUS-made F-16 combat aircraftâ in August 2023.
These excerpts are striking, for throughout the first 18 months of the proxy conflict, âRussian failuresâ and âUkrainian determinationâ absolutely dominated Western media coverage of the war. The narrative that the invasion was an unmitigated disaster and huge embarrassment for Moscow in every way, and Kiev could pull off a spirited underdog victory and repel the invaders, if not ultimately march upon the Kremlin, as long as sufficient Western Wunderwaffe arrived, was universal and indomitable.
In reality, while there were undoubtedly âRussian failuresâ and âUkrainian determinationâ aplenty from the start, Kiev was economically and militarily crippled within weeks. The âSpecial Military Operationâ was concerned not with conquering every inch of the country but with compelling Volodymyr Zelenskyâs government to implement the Minsk Accords and declare neutrality. This was almost achieved in April 2022 via Turkey-brokered peace talks. But then-Prime Minister of the UK Boris Johnson flew to Kiev, offering the Ukrainians the blankest of blank cheques to keep fighting.
The scale of Ukraineâs losses, the dire situation for the country from day one of Russiaâs invasion, and British and American intelligence connivances that produced the conflict, concealed from Western audiences by their governments and media, meant siding with and arming Kiev appeared to be the objectively sensible, reasonable, moral position. After all, they were fighting an enemy that embodied absolute evil and incompetence. Helpfully, NAFO was always on hand to relentlessly remind the public of both qualities â particularly the latter.
âStratcom Laughsâ had triumphed. Public perceptions were rendered âless critical.â Serious, complex questions were simplified to âthe obvious.â âClear groupsâ were created â âstrong and intelligent âweâ and clumsy and stupid âthey.ââ And Western audiences, âof course,â associated themselves with the former while âdespisingâ the latter. Fast forward to today, and mainstream polls indicate that just one in ten Europeans believe Ukraine can win, with most believing a âcompromise settlementâ is the only way to end the conflict.
In June 2023, Ukraine launched a âcounteroffensive.â Originally intended to start months earlier, it was much delayed due to adverse weather conditions and late weapon deliveries. Officials in Kiev, many Western journalists and pundits, and NAFO all heavily hyped the effort in advance. The group published many memes â some promoted a beach party for âfellasâ in Crimea that Summer and others depicted âorcsâ fleeing from swarms of leopards.
The latter played on a trope that Ukrainian political and military chiefs and the Western media were extremely keen to perpetuate â that Moscowâs soldiers, terrified of German Leopard 2 tanks, would abandon their positions as the armored vehicles advanced. Instead, they were easily blown to smithereens by extensive minefields created by Russian forces while they waited for the counteroffensive to commence and low-cost lancet drones.
Within just a month, Ukraine had lost 20% of the vehicles and armor supplied by the West, with nothing to show for it. This remained the case when the counteroffensive fizzled out at the end of 2023, with just 0.25% of the territory occupied by Russia in the initial phase of the invasion regained. Meanwhile, casualties may have exceeded 100,000. This can only be considered an absolutely horrendous catastrophe from every angle.
The Washington Post published an extensive post-mortem on the counteroffensive in December of that year. It is clear that among other failures, a fatal error in planning for the effort â overseen by the Pentagon â was the assumption that the Russians would flee in many areas. No alternative scenarios were considered. The Wall Street Journal has also highlighted other egregious strategic shortcomings, which made the counteroffensiveâs calamity inevitable:
Western military officials knew Kyiv didnât have all the training or weapons â from shells to warplanes â that it needed to dislodge Russian forces. But they hoped Ukrainian courage and resourcefulness would carry the day.â
It seems Ukrainians were dispatched on a suicide mission because Western military apparatchiks bought into the simplistic, misleading propaganda narrative of âRussian failuresâ versus âUkrainian determination.â Courage and resourcefulness are admirable qualities that Ukrainians have consistently exhibited since February 2022. But they are no match â let alone substitute â for landmines, tanks, fighter jets, artillery shells, and other weapons of war. That confirming this self-evident fact came at the cost of so many lives is a criminal tragedy.
Nobody has all the details but one thing is clear: this counteroffensive will rewrite military history.#Ukraine has stuff in the pipeline the Russians will never see coming. And much of what they do see coming, they wonât be able to stop anyway. #SpringIsComing đşđŚ
— Jessica Berlin (@berlin_bridge) May 6, 2023
âPUNCHING UPWARDSâ
Throughout the working paper, axiomatic reference is made to how weaponizing humor âimposes costsâ on âadversariesâ and âaggressors.â Contradictorily, though, it is conceded that âthe direct impact on Russia itself is hard to measure.â Indeed, it seems implausible that Kremlin officials and Russian soldiers on the frontline suffer any âcostsâ whatsoever from the mockery of anonymous Western social media users. This begs the obvious questions of why this approach is considered effective and who the true âadversariesâ in NATOâs comedic crosshairs are.
A clue is offered by a passage celebrating how âthe overall effect of a community built around humour has been to turn the tables on social media platforms.â As a result, âthe agents of influence and other servants of authoritarian regimes, who for so long held the advantage, are turned into the targets rather than the deliverers of mockery and abuseâ:
This causes both Russian officials and their extended network of influencers, enablers and trolls to realise that if they choose to serve a criminal regime, they expose themselves to mass ridicule and mockery.â
For âinfluencers, enablers and trolls,â read: anti-war, anti-NATO, anti-Empire journalists, researchers, activists, and private citizens who dare express the âwrongâ opinions or expose inconvenient truths online that challenge NATO-endorsed narratives. This is certainly the case in my regard. The working paper cites me curtly, responding to puerile abuse from a detractor on Twitter as an example of how âthose who oppose Russia, China or other hostile regimes publicly face consequences by the hostile regime itself or by its agents and sympathisers.â
Elsewhere, the paper endorses harassment, stalking, doxxing, and creating parody accounts of such âinfluencers, enablers and trollsâ while also warning these are âpotential hazardsâ faced by âindividuals taking on authoritarian propaganda structures.â A NAFO activist is quoted as saying, âIâve seen people get doxxed and harassed, and it doesnât look fun. I want my family to be safe.â This sentiment is no doubt shared by NAFOâs many targets â but as they âserve a criminal regime,â theyâre fair game from NATOâs perspective.
British Ministry of Defence apparatchik Keir Giles authored the working paper. It reveals he âbriefly tried to earn a living as a stand-up comedian,â so âknows what it feels like when a joke falls flat.â An apologia he recently authored for Baltic state Nazi collaborators implicated in the Holocaust, in which he claimed they are misunderstood, was certainly not received with much humor. He has promoted the output of a dedicated parody account of none other than myself for some time.
Ironically enough, I wouldâve found the accountâs posts amusing if they were actually funny. Instead, it has mocked the victims of sexual abuse and also dabbled in antisemitism. In late January, the parody account published a post mocking me for being tormented as a child over my name. Little did I know these lame attempts at ridicule were a dedicated NATO psychological warfare operation.
The latter post gained little traction, and in response, many Twitter users expressed shock and revulsion at such playground bullying behavior. This highlights another shortcoming of NAFOâs approach â the groupâs visceral, unabashed, genocidal hatred of Russia and all Russians is so extreme that they frequently repulse audiences to the extent of making them ask if theyâre supporting the wrong side by backing Ukraine. Moreover, as Aleksei Navalny ally Leonid Volkov has observed, this output actively assists the Kremlinâs propaganda strategies.
Left-wing alternative comedy legend Stewart Lee has written about the paucity of right-wing standup comedians. He attributes this deficit to right-wing politics being overwhelmingly concerned with punching downward, which is simply unfunny bullying when performative comedy is âa heroic little struggle,â which âshould always be punching upwardsâ:
Who could be on a stage, crowing about their victory and ridiculing those less fortunate than them without any sense of irony, shame or self-knowledge? Thatâs not a stand-up comedian. Thatâs just a c***.â
This may well explain why Keir Giles failed in his quest to become a standup comedian and why his âjokesâ continue to fall flat to this day. But for all those who oppose war, his working paper is no laughing matter. It is advocacy for the military alliance to create a permanent online harassment battalion to inflict psychological, emotional, personal and professional damage on them while convincing decent people to hate the oppressed and cheer the oppressors.
Keir Giles was repeatedly approached for comment by MintPress News for comment, but did not respond prior to publication.
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions.