Australia at risk from weaponized narratives
Peter Janssen
Experienced legal counsel for business people. Author and social commentator. The opinions expressed on Linkedin are my own and not that of the firms with which I am associated.
Whilst we can rely on our diggers to protect our 'wide brown land girt by sea' in the pitiless deserts of far away lands where malevolence stalks the free world, increasingly we are in a war for hearts and minds right here in our own backyards.
Once an adversary holds the high ground of public influence whether through terror, money, fake news, troll dominance of social media pages, compliance with the aggressors agenda surely follows.
We as Australians must defend our democratic political and social discourse against not only fake news and political correctness but also against malign social engineering happening in the electronic shadows.
Written in 2018 an article at ANU's National Security College was more than prophetic when it said:
"Like viruses engineered for maximum damage, weaponised narratives can be engineered to increase speed of transmission and disorder within a society"
"Unlike cyber attacks aimed at digital networks, weaponised narratives target the human mind’s cognitive biases.... Overly simplified narratives of a nation’s relative rise or power can sap Australia’s will to fight for its political, social and legal values.
Weaponised narratives within the scope of Australian politics can sow enough discord to make federal politics dysfunctional and less able to respond to emerging threats.
In this environment, Australia should be prepared to fight for the primacy of its internal democratic discussion in a globalised information space.
The decline of traditional print and TV news has ended the traditional news cycle. Consequently, weaponised narratives elude a central news summary and can also thrive undetected in separate and discrete sections of society. Being largely undetected, they can shape the thinking of the electorate without generating a response from stakeholders in media, government or the public.
Australia should not be shy about offering guidance relative to its own strengths and experiences. Nor should we be discouraged from reaching out to other like-minded nations to assist in countering this fast-evolving threat."
Quotes taken from Chris Zappone (Foreign Affairs Editor The Age) and Associate Professor Matthew Sussex ANU National Security College Academic Director and Crawford School of Public Policy.
The West is in a new cold war with authoritarian regimes and radical ideologies from without and an intellectual civil war with elitist self-loathing of traditional values from within.
"This form of warfare is all about influence. Information consists of facts—raw data. Narratives do not tell the facts.
Narratives tell the meaning of the facts.
When narratives are weaponized, they can undermine homeland security by shaking the faith of citizens in democratic institutions and the rule of law causing civil unrest.
Weaponized narratives on social media are the extremist recruiter’s favourite tool. To stem the rise of extremism, eliminating extremists themselves is a temporary fix. The comprehensive long-term fix is to render extremist narratives obsolete...."