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Stories Are Weapons

Psychological Warfare and the American Mind

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

A Book Riot Best Book of 2024
One of Publishers Weekly's Top 10 Politics/Current Events books of Spring 2024

A sharp and timely exploration of the dark art of manipulation through weaponized storytelling, from the best-selling author of Four Lost Cities.

In Stories Are Weapons, best-selling author Annalee Newitz traces the way disinformation, propaganda, and violent threats—the essential tool kit for psychological warfare—have evolved from military weapons deployed against foreign adversaries into tools in domestic culture wars. Newitz delves into America's deep-rooted history with psychological operations, beginning with Benjamin Franklin's Revolutionary War–era fake newspaper and nineteenth-century wars on Indigenous nations, and reaching its apotheosis with the Cold War and twenty-first-century influence campaigns online. America's secret weapon has long been coercive storytelling. And there's a reason for that: operatives who shaped modern psychological warfare drew on their experiences as science fiction writers and in the advertising industry.

Now, through a weapons-transfer program long unacknowledged, psyops have found their way into the hands of culture warriors, transforming democratic debates into toxic wars over American identity. Newitz zeroes in on conflicts over race and intelligence, school board fights over LGBT students, and campaigns against feminist viewpoints, revealing how, in each case, specific groups of Americans are singled out and treated as enemies of the state. Crucially, Newitz delivers a powerful counternarrative, speaking with the researchers and activists who are outlining a pathway to achieving psychological disarmament and cultural peace.

Incisive and essential, Stories are Weapons reveals how our minds have been turned into blood-soaked battlegrounds—and how we can put down our weapons to build something better.

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    • Library Journal

      January 1, 2024

      LJ Best Booked best-selling author Newitz (The Terraformers) examines the ways storytelling is weaponized for bad ends and how stories have come to fuel the culture wars. They offer insight into how misinformation works, its history, and its critical role in psychological warfare. Prepub Alert.

      Copyright 2023 Library Journal

      Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Kirkus

      April 15, 2024
      A long-view denunciation of today's avalanche of disinformation, fake news, and propaganda. Newitz, journalist, host of the Our Opinions Are Correct podcast, and author of Four Lost Cities, among works of science fiction, argues that "weaponized storytelling" has been an American tradition throughout its history. During the Revolution, Benjamin Franklin published a fake newspaper article describing a fictional British officer's delight at boxes of scalps from colonial settlers, women, and children, delivered by Native American allies. Reprinted widely, it produced universal outrage. The author moves on to examine what some scholars proclaim was America's "foundational moment"--not the Revolution but the Indian Wars, when white settlers replaced Indigenous communities with their own. Readers long familiar with the deplorable treatment of Native Americans during the 19th century may be inclined to skim these sections, but matters will not improve as Newitz recounts other outrages. They join the steady stream of debunkers of Charles Murray's The Bell Curve (1994), the bible of scientific racism--though they warn that the audience for deeply satisfying fables is largely impervious to the facts. The author makes a convincing case that the 21st-century epidemic of intolerance, invective, and authoritarian movements is as American as apple pie. In the obligatory how-to-fix-it conclusion, Newitz emphasizes tolerance, agreeing to disagree, and promoting evidence over emotion. They do not ignore traditional pleas to reform public education and the internet, but admit that they haven't caught on. Searching for alternatives, the author promotes spreading democratic ideals through storytelling in "applied science fiction" or a transformed, "rejuvenated" public library. "When we immerse ourselves in the silence of the library," writes Newitz, "we learn the most fundamental defense against psyops. Our minds belong to us." A cogent history and analysis of today's toxic national discourse, joining a host of recent titles in a burgeoning genre.

      COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Booklist

      May 1, 2024
      In this timely and thought-provoking book, nonfiction writer and novelist Newitz (Four Lost Cities, 2021; The Terraformers, 2023) argues that the U.S. has a centuries-old tradition of using the tools of psychological warfare within its own borders. Newitz documents the history of weaponized storytelling in America, from the myth of the "last Indian" during the nineteenth-century Indian Wars to the fight over Wonder Woman in the twentieth century and the culture wars of the 2010s. They also offer up examples of counternarratives, including the spread of the Ghost Dance ceremony and how some sf authors have imagined solutions that can be adapted to real-world situations. Ultimately, despite many instances of psychological warfare past and present, Newitz is hopeful, proposing how Americans can dismantle these systems and find peace. Combining deep research and expertise gained from an Army PSYOP (psychological operations) class, Newitz provides a compelling case that "stories are weapons" but can also be "gifts of peace." Readers interested in politics and modern-day culture wars will find Newitz's work fascinating.

      COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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