Some of this will retread some past ground, but that is intentional; this piece is intended to serve more as an action guide than commentary or an argumentative piece.
To begin, we all have to understand that this is about being but one piece in a currently decentralized form of resistance to competitive authoritarianism. My personal view is pulled from history in that a broad, anti-fascist coalition is needed. While there is hindsight criticism of this approach to WWII and its impact on the post-war order, I tend to reject the implied conclusion that it was a faulty mindset. The application of the mindset was less than perfect, true, but that mentality was necessitated by the crisis AND proved effective. The United States and the British Empire had effectively combined their armies and broader military infrastructure in the Atlantic into a unified command structure, operating as a generally cohesive entity— this is a generalization, as some parts operated more independently than others, say Air Command and the Royal Navy, but even then, these are measures of integration more than anything. And on top of that, there was massive coordination between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union, effectively launching the largest pincer movement in world history— a pincer movement is when forces simultaneously attack both flanks of an enemy formation. In World War II, it was the launching of D-Day and the USSR's launching of Operation Bagration a week after, serving as a blow to the entirety of the war machine of Nazi Germany.
The point being, crisis makes strange bedfellows, and to create the best conditions for continued change, this international fascist and anti-democratic movement must be defeated.
To do so, every piece, no matter how small, matters, ever resistance cell, tweet, act, pushes us towards victory and a time of reconstruction. The Allies during WWII understood this, from leaflets dropped on troops and civilians to posters on the home front, to the rationing of sometimes the most mundane of supplies; at no point did so many nations put so much economic and human weight behind an effort.
When I say adopting a war mentality, this is exactly what I mean. We must all find our roles and play our part, no matter how small, and our minds must be resolute in the task before us, focused on each step forward towards the casting aside of this social cancer.
One of those core pieces is fighting the information and psychological fronts, and these two fronts go mostly hand-in-hand. And while this serves as a guide, conducting these types of operations is as much an art as a science.
Paul Linebarger, who wrote the USA's first Psychological Warfare (PSYOP) guide, tells us, “Psychological warfare in the broad sense consists of the application of parts of the science called psychology to the conduct of war; in the narrow sense, psychological warfare comprises the use of propaganda against an enemy.
While the practice has expanded beyond propaganda in the 21st century, it now includes operations we might recognize as spycraft or political warfare—such as infiltration, disruption, and information gathering, to name a few. The definition largely holds.
Propaganda itself is far-reaching, too; it is far more than disinformation, misinformation, and lies. It all depends on what your goal is, what you’re trying to accomplish, but what is important is that the plan cannot define the goal. And as Linebarger warns, “The propagandist must tell the enemy those things which the enemy will heed; [they] must keep [their] private emotionalism out of the operation.” It can be easy to hurl insults at the enemy, but all that does is stiffen the opposition.
Before getting into the process, Linebarger gives us the outline: “Propaganda can be conducted by rule of thumb. But only a genius can make it work well by playing his hunches. It can become true psychological warfare, scientific in spirit, and developed as a teachable skill, only by having its premises clearly stated, its mission defined, its instruments put in systemic readiness, and its operations subject to at least partial check, only by the use of techniques borrowed from science.”
War is politics by other means; psychological warfare’s goal is to achieve those political means without military force.
A Note On Friction:
A vital aspect of our current situation that we all must understand is the importance of friction—authoritarian regimes, especially fascist ones, do everything they can to reduce friction in implementing their agenda. Creating friction is a core function of well-executed propaganda and PSYOPS. While creating your goals and operations, keep the question “how does this create friction?” in mind.
A Note On Designing Operations:
I want to make a note before diving into design, where I’ll provide some examples of operations. While you might think of simple ones like creating videos and graphics, I encourage you to think creatively about more action-oriented options. It's not to say avoid simple operations, but rather to avoid limiting your imagination regarding what an operation can be. With that said, simple can be effective, and many times is.
Assess Your Capabilities: Because you, your grassroots organization, or your group of friends are not a well-resourced national government, your goal or mission should be informed by the resources you can bring to bear.
Take an assessment of the available skills and resources
Are you an artist able to do screen prints?
Good at video editing?
Know how to navigate the depths of the internet?
Who do you have relationships with? Who can help, and in what way? Reporters? Politicians? People in key areas?
Graffiti artist?
Writer?
Making social media content?
Researcher? What can you dig up on other people? Can you find financial records, connections between people?
Are you a people person who builds relationships easily?
What technology do you have? Who is in your network?
Do you have a small social media footprint? If so, might be a good infiltration.
Did you come from a Christian conservative or Evangelical background?
What Is Your Mission: Create a clearly defined mission of what you are attempting to accomplish. As previously written about, propaganda and PSYOPs, one of the main goals of these missions, is to impact behavior. Whose behavior are you trying to affect, and what is the behavioral outcome you want to create?
Design your aims.
Informed by the aims, find your target audience.
Use the previous two for your operational design (your “project plan”)
Then, lastly, design tactics for executing the operation.
Think about:
How does this create friction?
Who or what is your target or target audience?
What are you trying to accomplish by targeting them?
What behavior are you trying to impact?
Are you trying to inform? Disrupt? Infiltrate? Build a relationship for a specific end? Influence someone to do something of value or take a specific action? Gather information to use? Spread disinformation?
Is it overt or covert?
Spectrum of legality
If targeting the opposition or allies, how does this advance our pro-democracy goals?
Do you want to build allied capacity or reduce oppositional capacity?
Pillars of Power:
Pillars of power are the main infrastructure that keep an institution running. By targeting pillars of power, you undermine their ability to operate, which could be an individual like Elon Musk, or even laws such as a state passing legislation to make direct-to-consumer car sales from car manufacturers, undermining local car dealerships, which are a core pillar of local, state, and regional GOP monied infrastructure.
Work to identify a pillar you can undermine; larger ones, like Elon Musk, typically require a more resource-intensive effort, but with creative thinking, you might be able to design an operation to weaken him.
Do you want to target a pillar of the opposition? What are the weaknesses within the pillar? What are the ways to target the pillar?
Pillars of Power:
Legislature
Labor & logistics
Corporate/economic power
Media
Bureacracy
Religious institutions & educational institutions
Security forces
Spectrum of Allies:
This general spectrum can be changed and shifted, but this is what it could look like. I’m breaking a “rule” here, as, again, this isn’t a hard science. Sometimes your target audience will dictate the mission; other times your mission will dictate the target audience.
When targeting a specific audience, do your best to create a psychological profile. Think about the people you know who fit this profile. What do they share? How are they activated to take action? What discourages them from taking action? What impacts their behavior? How do they get their information— what information ecosystems do they exist in? And so on.
Do not target them with what you want to tell them, but what you think would be effective in meeting your goals. And within all of these audiences are sub-audiences.
E.g., two people on the “Active Support” on the spectrum might be different ideologically: one might have a more traditional “liberal” background, another might identify as a “leftist,” and that is before we take into account demographics.
Model Spectrum:
Active Support: These are our most active supporters; not only do they vote, but we can count on them to volunteer for campaigns and show up to protests. They would be ideal targets to encourage further activation or active support behaviors: a simple one is to show up to a protest, but maybe you want them to knowingly or unknowingly spread propaganda, or take a more active approach to their support.
E.g., in a past piece I wrote about how people can infiltrate and take over local party structures, and other institutions. Creating a pamphlet, digital, mailed, etc., with instructions on how to do so, targeting this audience, would encourage members of this audience to take such an action.
Ritual Support: In most instances, these people will vote for Democratic candidates, put up yard signs, and encourage others in their network to vote, but tend not to do much else. They’re aligned but take minimal action beyond voting, making them a good audience to further radicalize into action.
Loyal Neutrality: They see themselves aligned and generally agree with our worldview. A likely voter, especially when motivated, but that’s where it ends. Like Ritual Support, you want to further activate them and change their behavior.
Discontented Allies/Support: Active and pay attention to politics, will attend protests, might vote for third-party or anti-establishment candidates. Dissatisfied with the party, but might be politically active in other ways. They could be community members who are leftists, show up to protests, but don’t vote or engage in party politics.
Apathetic: Disengaged from politics for various reasons. Some might not hold a consistent ideology; they are low-information voters when they do vote. Others might have a clear ideology, but are disengaged from electoral politics and organizing in general. Some people might be completely disengaged from politics.
Opposition Neutral: Generally opposed, closer to apathetic, but open to MAGA ideology, will quietly turn out to vote for Trump. Not paying close attention to politics. These are people who can be turned against MAGA, or made to disengage politically entirely; either one is a win. They might also be good avenues for distributing information or other forms of propaganda within the MAGA ecosystem.
Ritual opposition: Regular GOP voters may not be the most MAGA ideologically, but will vote for the GOP and fall in line. You want them disenfranchised, but again, as above, with opposition neutral, they can be used to help execute other types of operations. Be it distributing propaganda unknowingly, or maybe you act the role of a MAGA or Republican individual and develop relationships with them, gathering information.
Active Opposition: Full MAGA. The Goal is to move them into a state of apathy; you want them to lose their faith in the MAGA movement. But this can be done in many different ways: some might be to make them believe MAGA leaders aren’t true MAGA, to highlight the movement's corruption, or to make them distrust one another.
Integration of traditional demographics: Within each ally spectrum, you then integrate the traditional demographic approach. No demographic is a monoculture—they have different subcultures and groups, with their own mix of more conservative and more liberal behavior. Older Black voters might be more churchgoing, a bit more conservative on some issues, more liberal on others, but they vote Democratic. Gen-X male Black voters, especially entrepreneurs, might lean more economically conservative. Some Latine populations might prefer Spanish-only messaging, Spanglish, English, a Spanish dialect, etc.
I wanted to ensure that we create space to talk about specific populations that are in need of targeted efforts for various political and social reasons.
Men: Specifically, young men. Young men are being hyper-targeted by the far-right, and we have no real equivalent on the left. Further down, I have different types of operations, but they should be targeted to pull them to the left or demobilize them from the right, and then slowly pull them in. This will require longer-term, consistent, and relational strategies and tactics. But it is vital we create a pipeline to the left, and a pipeline of demobilization targeting specifically young men who feel isolated— give them a place to be, to join, to be a part of something. Make sure they know that what is going wrong in their life isn’t due to minorities, LGBTQ folk, or women. To note, you can’t just yell at them or throw them, Bell Hooks. There are a lot of ideas floating around on how to target young men, such as through left-framed “how to be a man” channels. But in the end, it takes a constant effort, care, and a pipeline.
Former and Current Military Service Members: While personally, I’m not a big fan of the Bolsheviks, something they did get right was targeting those serving in the military with their propaganda. When it comes to authoritarianism and combating it, bringing current and former military members to your side, or at least making them “neutral,” in such a way that they will not act out the most extreme orders of the regime, is a must.
The type of propaganda will be impacted by your mission design/goal and target audience. One operation can have multiple types of propaganda; if you choose to, plan how they will support each other in your goal.
A Note On Disinformation: Part of the reason disinformation is so effective is that people are exposed to the lie before the truth, so they are more likely not only to believe the lie but also to remember it and to miss the debunking of the disinformation. Do with that as you will.
A Note On Drama and Scandal: We live in an attention-based society; scandal and salacious material grab individuals' attention, and the mainstream media's attention—Sex and drama sell. That is not to say you have to lean into sex and drama, but I wanted to make sure to include this note, as it is something you should consider.
White: Doesn’t hide what it is or where it is coming from, an “acknowledged source,” from an official channel. White can have multiple targets; a simple operation can be a burner account engaging in right-wing spaces to spread information that is counter to the right-wing narratives. This would have to be a high-volume operation, while also following best practices to avoid feeding the trolls or engaging in comments. Or maybe it’s using a similar approach, but instead harassing a GOP representative with news that counters their narrative—this has a downstream impact, in that they might become irritated and spread information supporting pro-democracy frames. Or you get them to behave in such a way that it can create a news story. You might also want to inform low-information people or provide already-activated people with more ways to take action.
Gray: Gives plausible deniability, a wink, and a nod. It does not identify the source. This could be a once-a-month printed paper, designed to look like a newspaper. You don’t make it explicit that it is coming from a leftist source; you use a more mainstream frame in the presentation of information, etc. You can target people who might feel uneasy reading leftist information sources to consume such information. Or you use a more right-wing presentation for leftist information to give plausible deniability to people in deep-red areas to engage in outside information.
Black: Hides its origin, think sock puppet accounts. “Acts as if it is coming from a source other than the true one.” This can be spreading rumors among MAGA social-media environments, as if you are a MAGA person about things going on within MAGA, or even within, say, the Democratic party, with a specific behavioral goal in mind that aids pro-democracy forces.
E.g., A personal idea for creating AI Videos targeting Trump on TruthSocial. These videos would show anti-fa causing chaos in small, deep-red towns. The goal of this would be to further highlight how deranged Trump is for a national narrative. And while we know the mainstream press doesn’t like writing about his mental state, there is always a point at which the dam breaks and the narrative wins out.
Personal note: Fuck AI, I’m just using this as an example. That said, winning will take doing things that do cross our moral boundaries. The question each individual must ask themselves is how far is too far for them, and when they will become too compromised.
E.g., Der Chef: der Chef, a black propaganda radio channel. Where the person hosting it, Der Chef, presented himself as a Prussian soldier and uber-nazi. The radio station and Der Chef would defend German generals. The aim was to push “Nazi ideology...further into the ridiculous, where it is harmful to Germany.” But avoided satire. It used rumors, salacious hooks, and highlighted corruption within the Nazi party, while not attacking Nazisms.
Further Types of Propaganda
Strategic: “Directed at (a target) in their entirety, and— in coordination with strategic planning— is designed to effectuate results planned and sought over a period of weeks, months, or years.” This is about the larger strategic picture, so this might be a campaign designed to build support for defunding ICE or holding the Epstein Class accountable.
Tactical: “directed at specific audiences, usually named, and is prepared and executed in support of localized (operations).” This could be an operation where a person who comes from an Evangelical background infiltrates an Evangelical Church to gather information, and then uses that information to sow chaos within the church. This type of operation is about a localized impact, a specific community. It could be an online space, political education for union members, or workplace unionization, all aimed at activating a specific, “localized” population to take action.
Conversionary: “Designed to change the emotional operational allegiance of individuals from one group to another.” Maybe you infiltrate an affinity group, a rec league, or a workplace—such as Plantir —and cause a revolt. Maybe there’s a local mainstream organization you want to target to further radicalize.
Divisive: “Designed to split apart the component subgroups of the enemy and thereby reduce the effectiveness of the enemy group considered as a single unit.” The infiltration of an Evangelical group is a great example of this, but there are many ways to run such an operation. Maybe you’re designing an operation to target ICE officers, grow discord within the ranks, or gather intelligence that can be weaponized against them as an organization or against a specific officer to then use them to advance your operation.
Consolidation: A consolidation effort would target a population to consolidate support. An example would be targeting neighborhoods and surrounding areas being targeted by ICE to consolidate anti-ICE efforts.
Counterpropaganda: “Designed to refute a specific point or theme of enemy propaganda.” Many populations can be targeted with counterpropaganda and can serve many purposes.
Linebarger further adds, “Most of the distinction can be forgotten; the basic distinctions are those determined by the task involved, and not by the propaganda content.” Again, highlighting designing your tasks first, then sorting out the rest.
“For Psychological warfare purposes, it is helpful to define the enemy as:
Ruler
Or the ruling group
Or unspecified manipulators
Any definite minority: Evangelical Christian nationalists are a minority.
Example Of Types Of Operations
This is a rough list, and many of these aren’t mutually exclusive; some can serve as tactics for others, or as an operation in and of itself. But do not limit yourself to this list; I’d even challenge you to design operations that are not based on it.
Active Measures: Historically, active measures were a strategic operation deployed by the USSR “designed to give them a diplomatic and political advantage over the United States by undermining United States credibility with our allies throughout the world and advancing their own foreign policy objectives.”
They could include front organizations that publish essays highlighting racism in the United States by respected academics, and forged or real documents leaked to push a specific narrative. An example of what that could look like today is a fake document, designed to look like an official White House document, that is explicitly in its use of Nazi rhetoric. Its potential effectiveness would come from the fact that white nationalist currents sit just below the surface of this White House. This type of operation can also be as simple as spreading gossip.
E.g., an unintentional active measure was JD Vance couch fucking joke, which, because of how weird he was, and surrounding narratives, became something he had to address.
Information collection: Information collection can come in many forms and be useful in many different ways. Cambridge Analytica is a great example of an information collection operation. It used “fun” online quizzes to create different types of psychological profiles to inform how to hyper-target people with different information to influence their behavior, such as demobilizing them to vote, or the language they can use to hook people into a right-wing frame of an issue.
Information collection can be as simple as monitoring social media, identifying who is behind a social media account, developing relationships, and listening to gossip. You can also launch a honey-pot operation. There have been some rumors of organized sex workers using honey-pots to get information from DHS or ICE Agents. Chinese intelligence uses them quite often to target USA defense industry workers.
You can then use the information in many different ways, such as leaking it, informing another operation, or using it in other creative ways to achieve an end.
E.g., You’re an accountant and have the know-how to dig into an individual's financial practices. You can then use that information to leak to the press or push out in a social media campaign.
Disruption: A great example of a disruptive PSYOP operation is anti-ICE protesters making noise outside of hotels where ICE agents are staying. The main goal of a disruptive operation is to create friction within a specific agenda/operation of our opposition—you make it difficult, through various means, the use of information, noise, or other actions, for them to execute what they want to do. These efforts become even more effective when they’re used to further activate allies or to spread pro-democracy or anti-fascist propaganda.
Demobilization: These would be operations targeting the opposition to demobilize them from being active within MAGA or to resign from their positions. It is about weakening our opposition's ability to mobilize and operate.
E.g., designing an operation targeting anti-war MAGA voters, to make them lose faith in the movement.
Mobalization: These are typically information-based propaganda operations designed to create more unity and mobilize allies. An operation can be generalized to focus on activation, mass protest turnout, or disrupting ICE operations.
Chaos & Division: An operation designed to turn our opposition against one another, or to create confusion and chaos.
E.g., Back to the Evangelical Church infiltration, someone could start spreading rumors, or even collect information about the sex life of the Pastor, or their wife, or of other leading members of the church.
Stings: We know what stings are, an operation designed to catch someone in an illegal act. This can be integrated in multiple ways, and how you implement it depends on your goal. An old TV show, To Catch a Predator, is a good example of how things can go wrong depending on your goal. Because of how they designed their stings, many of the offenders were “entrapped.” BUT, while many of the people “caught” got off on legal repercussions, they still faced social and professional repercussions. All that to say, if you want legal-based justice, you will need to ensure the execution of your operation can hold up in court, but that might not be your goal. This type of operation intersects well with active measures.
Infiltration and/or Sabotage: This might be seen as more of a guerrilla operation, but personally, I’m wrapping it under PSYOPS. Especially if paired with information distribution and information collection. Through sabotaging an effort from the inside, with the right collection of information, you can then launch a concurrent information campaign to target the opposition, mobilize allies, sow division, and so on. Maybe you have a low social media footprint and join a local GOP or Turning Point USA chapter. You can collect information, see how they talk and plan behind the scenes, join “secure” group chats, and foil an action or operation. And as you can see, this can have a lot in common with disruption (maybe it could’ve been one bullet point).
Information Distribution: This intersects with many of the above, but is also one of the broadest and easiest. This can be about spreading a left-frame, informing people of actions they can take, and political education sessions. It can be starting a TikTok channel, an IG page, or many different things, and deployed in many different ways. Maybe you start making a social media satire page, or a Black propaganda page. So many options.
E.g., you and your circle can create an AI-based bot farm designed to push a specific narrative and spread specific information, rumors, etc.
E.g., You and your friends are good writers, you can create a targeted mailed, newspaper that looks like the real thing to spread what information you want to spread, in the frame you want to— think back to White, gray, or Black propaganda here.
E.g., Or maybe you studied journalism, you and your friends can bird-dog targeted individuals.
E.g., Similar to the newspaper, maybe you target a mailer to a specific neighborhood, such as one where the CEO of a company that just sold or is about to sell a warehouse to ICE, letting everyone in their neighborhood know what is about to happen in the most explicit ways possible.
Hooks and deception: A tactic the far-right executed quite well over the years was the creation of affinity accounts for specific target populations, which eventually “Activated” slowly, becoming more political, and accelerating as time went on. An example of this was the creation of NBA Basketball highlight accounts on Instagram and Twitter. Through those accounts, they gained followers, and over time, they gradually integrated more political posts as their audience grew.
Afinity & Passive Consumption: Creating an affinity social media account, say woodworking, and slowly integrating political content into it— such as mentioning the impact of tariffs on materials and supplies. Also, think about passive consumption: most people scroll, not deeply engaging with the content, and it becomes almost background noise. But this background noise seeps into our brains, impacting our thought patterns, creating soft and repeated political content, designed to be passively consumed— an example would be multiple short-ish videos, where in each one you repeat your message, stated simply, a few times over in different ways. You make it catchy, simple, and repeatable, and the rest of the social media channel is filled with it— otherwise known as slop.
Nostalgia: I ran a small experiment with a micro-influencer who created a left-framed nostalgia video. It had massive engagement. Creating an account and pushing something like this could be a great propaganda channel.
Types of Information Outlets
Social media
Pamphlets
Newspapers
Podcasts
Radio
Mailers
Posters
Art
Billboards
Internet forums
Letters to individuals or groups
Letters to the editor
Email and Email Newsletters
Stickers
Further Design Concepts
What is your overarching strategic goal?
What is your opposition?
What is your opposition’s narrative reality/meta-narrative and its pieces? (What narrative are they telling, and what are the stories/messages they are saying to tell it?)
What is the world and reality you want people to inhabit?
What are the different pieces/threads of this narrative? Think of individual stories, messages, facts, and realities to communicate.
What actions do you want people to take to achieve this world? This can motivate someone to take positive action towards your strategic goal or disrupt opposition from theirs. - focus on changing behavior, not ideology, and not traditional calls to action
Dopamine theater: remember it is about taking and holding attention. Zohran is excellent at doing this.
This is simple: when setting up your infrastructure and operations, test things out on a small scale. If you're infiltrating, try a space and audience that your operation isn’t targeting, build those skills, run a shortened operation through its pulses, and adjust from those lessons. If making a bot farm, test it on a topic and target audience that is different from your operation, make sure everything runs smoothly, and you can execute your operation.
Did you achieve your goal?
What worked, what didn’t, what could be improved?
Is it worth adjusting and repeating?
Are there pieces we can take and implement them in a different way for a different operation?
What are any unexpected lessons?
Resource/capabilities evaluation and indexing
What is your goal based on capabilities?
ID and collect resources needed to execute
Lay out the steps to execute the operation to achieve the goal
Project/mission management
Operational goal
Roles & who is fulfilling those roles
Timeline/order of operational steps
Execution of the operation
Ending/Pausing & Evaluating operation
The list below is intended to continue building your understanding of these types of operations and the opposition. Only by studying, practicing, executing, and learning can we become more effective. While I don’t think you need to read from the list, these resources will improve your skills, expand your toolkit, and inform your design of operations.
Psychological Warfare By Paul M. A. Linenarger
Subversion: The Strategic Weaponization of Narratives By Andreas Krieg
Believable Lies: The Misfits Who Fought Churchill’s Secret Propaganda War by Terry Stiastny
Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare By Thomas Rid
The Secret History of PWE By David Garnett
Spinning History: Politics and Propaganda in World War II by Nathaniel Lande
How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler by Peter Pomerantsev
Narrative Warfare By Ajit Maan
Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare And the American Mind By Annalee Newitz
On Strategic Nonviolent Conflict: Thinking About The Fundamentals by Robert L. Helvey
To Catch a Fascist: The Fight to Expose the Radical Right By Christopher Mathias
Mamdani Teaches Us How to Speak the Language of Illegitimacy
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