In this podcast we are in the Psychological framework. We are talking about Psy War and Psy Op. We want to study the psychological warfare or even psychological operations were weapons in the mental war long time ago and of course before the Cold War. They were used to create a planned psychological reaction in other people. It wasn’t necessary to use the truth. And lies were very efficient against the emotions of the motives, the value system or the belief system. It was a level above the rhetoric. Everything was possible to get a result. False flag tactics or black operations were possible to destroy the morale of enemies. It was a way to mislead the enemy about the presence and disposition of forces. In 1924 a Soviet directive for higher commands stated that operational deception had to be based upon secrecy, imitation, demonstrative actions and of course disinformation. The theory operation maskirovka was one of most important means of achieving surprise. The stunning effect produced on the enemy was a crucial point. They didn’t need the Cold War or even NATO to do this. By this way the term psychological warfare was known in USA only after 1941.

We are talking about something which is a reality and the reality of the Ante Cold War. It’s important to imagine that for the Soviet mind and the Soviet mentation this isn’t something new. It is in their mind from the beginning because they are based on lies. They know that their ideology doesn’t function, it’s not efficient. They don’t care, they just want the power. So from the beginning they use theoretical concepts and they use psychology to convince and persuade the others that they are right. So their tools, their weapons, were created in a kind of mental war. So it’s very close to ideology, not so close to policy. But in fact it’s a good way to do something wrong. I mean if you want to do something wrong it’s not a good idea to use good facts because at the end it will be wrong. But if you are in the wrong place with the wrong timing, you can use lies to create something new which is propaganda. In this new framework you can imagine that if everything is fake on what you do the important thing is if the others are thinking that is true then this is sufficient. So imagine that you know the absence of reality of what you are thinking but you know also tat the others trust this they believe in this, you have created believers of your propaganda. For the others it’s faith. They think that the Soviet Union is like this and you don’t care if it’s not the reality. Your reality is their mentation which was created by you. I reality it’s not only a Soviet principle we can find this in Sun Tsu because he said: It’s not so important to win the other but it’s better if your enemy is thinking as you want. So with the psychological warfare and the psychological operations they were ready long before the US to do these kind of things. And even in Europe we are not prepared for that because we had a very long tradition of diplomacy, policy, political facts but not in a strategic mix which is created on a lie. Everything was wrong. So they use real tactics and of course operations from the beginning. Remember that the beginning of the Soviet Union, in reality, it is in 1922, so in ’24 is really at the beginning, so they had already Soviet directive to use operational deception, to create surprise, to disinform everything. Because in this field they were the best. The problem is that everything is fake even for your own, so your people at the end became believers of propaganda. So if you want to do this it’s easy for a short time but at the end, because Time is with us, it’s impossible. So fake news don’t have duration. In fact as an algorithm they are created to do something wrong for a short time and it’s possible that it is sufficient. But at the end of a period, of an era, it’s impossible to use it. So before the Cold War 30 years to create this. So they were preparing, so imagine that this kind of theory, this kind of tactics, this kind of psychological warfare for USA, the beginning was in 1941,.ie. just 6 years before the official starting point of the Cold War. In reality at that time you had someone who was a specialist of psychological warfare, psychological operations, fake news, fake history and on the other side one who was innocent. And they had to learn all these kind of things. For me it looks like Enigma and the Bomb. Sharp specialist about disinformation with codes and you have to break the code with a real mathematician ,Alan Turing, create a real team and to be better than the best due to your mind. And they did it.