The "culture wars" raging around us with white-hot intensity are better understood as psychological warfare. So argues journalist and science-fiction author Annalee Newitz in their new book “Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind,” a sweeping look back at how we got into this heightened state of war and how we might be able to escape it.
The avalanche of lies, disinformation, demonization and conspiracy theories ushered to center stage by Donald Trump was hardly his own creation and shows little sign of letting up, even if Trump himself appears somewhat diminished. To gain a foothold to make sense of it all — to “stop feeling the dread” and gain a deeper perspective — Newitz turned to history, especially to World War II and the early Cold War era, when the practice of psychological warfare was formalized as a permanent facet of American military doctrine, and also further back to the "Indian wars" of the 19th century, which "created a uniquely American paradigm for psychological operations" and also called forth a powerful counternarrative of resistance — the Ghost Dance.
