Podcast | Contaminating our Information Environment

I’m 100% comfortable with using the term ‘meme.’ I use the term ‘meme’ interchangeably with the term ‘informational unit’ and also with the term ‘troll,‘ where troll is describing the item of Disinfolklore or the item of information.

So ‘meme,’ for me, is more than simply the visual image that we have come to think about it as being. Obviously, when the term ‘meme’ was coined in whatever was 1976 by by that English philosopher Dawkins, it described ‘informational unit.’ What I call informational units (which are communicated in cultures in the same way that genes, or the genome are communicated biologically).

I discovered Disinfolklore as a narrative form in eastern Ukraine, where I gradually realized—while working in Russia-occupied Ukraine between 2015 and 2018—that what I was observing were particular items of Disinfolklore, usually recurrent memes or “units of information.” The quotidian, daily ebb and flow of news and “newsey” content made me wonder: was there a system behind it?As I looked more deeply, I realized that Russian military strategy includes the concept of Information Confrontation. According to Russia’s military doctrine, Information Confrontation comprises two elements:1. The means (instances of information such as memes, trolls, and informational units).2. The Information Environment.This led me to what I now call a Disinfolklore galaxy—a system Russia created inside occupied Ukraine. Every thought, every movement, every aspect of reality—from where you work to how you commute, to the people you talk to, whether family or colleagues—is injected with what I call Disinfolklore. Ideas meld with the texture of life itself.

Unless you profess certain memes, beliefs, or informational units, you risk consequences. If you get it wrong, you might lose your job—like the ABC News journalist who called Donald Trump’s deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, “full of hate.” That journalist lost his job. This is a perfect example of how the Information Environment impacts every aspect of life: you say something, and you lose your job.That was eastern Ukraine, where I discovered what I now call the Disinfolklore galaxy. Today, I conceptualize the Disinfolklore universe as being made up of many different galaxies. The MAGA Disinfolklore galaxy shares many continuities and similarities with what I saw in Russia-occupied Ukraine.In early November 2024, just after the U.S. presidential election—which Donald Trump reportedly won—I had a vision. What happened to MAGA, to those who are part of MAGA, was going to happen to all of humanity, starting with America. This vision became the basis of my talk at the Pirate Party Conference in Munich during the Munich Security Conference: Welcome to Our Disinfolklore Universe.

Today, we see the same melding of reality in America’s relationship with Ukraine, which is why we’re here. We want Ukraine to win, but most of us understand America will never tip the scales in Ukraine’s favor. Now we just hope it doesn’t tip them against Ukraine. Ukraine has been central to U.S. politics since 2016.The Republican National Convention in August 2016 marked a turning point. Paul Manafort, whose work contributed directly to this war in Ukraine, was later imprisoned for operating as an unregistered agent for Ukraine’s former president. Manafort had the commitment to deliver military support for Ukraine removed from the Republican platform.

I have posted before about the exact moment when MAGA shifted to a pro-Russia stance. Recently, Reuters reported evidence that the United States may not fund Ukraine militarily next year. This path—from secretive policy changes to mainstream acceptance—illustrates how thousands of memes invade our information space, forming what I call the Disinfolklore galaxy.My main teaching, for lack of a better term, is that when we tune into individual memes and informational units daily, we fail to see the larger structure: a Disinfolklore galaxy as powerful as the one that surrounds those who embraced MAGA. This phenomenon is not about intelligence or education; it is a deliberate attempt to hack minds and surround people with an information environment designed to influence behavior.Paul Manafort remains a dark force behind much of Ukraine’s division between 2004 and 2014. The irony is stark: those he worked for—and MAGA—claim the Maidan uprising was engineered by the U.S., even though Manafort supported Yanukovych, who, according to leaked texts from his daughters, arranged the massacre on the Maidan in February 2014. At that time, European leaders were in Kyiv urging demonstrators to accept a deal with Yanukovych, but he fled. Manafort later worked for Donald Trump. Though not prominent publicly, he appeared at the national convention, and his influence persists.

Today, figures like Tulsi Gabbard amplify narratives reminiscent of Russian disinformation playbooks. Her recent video about nuclear war exemplifies Disinfolklore: carefully crafted aesthetics, deliberate archetyping, and messaging designed to evoke fear. The imagery—dark tones, ashes, and even her gray hair—suggests archetypes of witches and doom. This is not accidental; it is psychological warfare.Applying my Disinfolklore analytical method, I interpret her message as a statement of power: surrender to us, and we will protect you from elites who allegedly seek nuclear war. For those who resist, the underlying message is intimidation—“You are powerless.” This aligns with decades of narratives portraying cities as lawless and elites as corrupt, themes deeply embedded in American discourse.The method I use draws on cognitive models like Paul Ekman’s Atlas of Emotions: trigger, experience, reaction. Every day, we undergo countless emotional journeys triggered by stimuli—tweets, images, videos. Separating experience from reaction helps us resist manipulation. Gabbard’s video triggered curiosity in me; my reaction was analysis, not amplification.Ultimately, Disinfolklore thrives on fear, negativity, and archetypes. Whether through memes, videos, or orchestrated spectacles like Russia’s missile strikes or human safari footage shared on Telegram, the goal is the same: to create a distorted reality. This is what I observed in eastern Ukraine, and it is what we see now globally. Unless more of us wake up to these tactics, their influence will deepen.

Elon Musk dresses up in superhero costumes, the Pirate Party began as a party of protest, and pirates from literature, from art became their part of their their moniker, their folk the folk heroes of pirates. They were going to be the pirates. So it was appropriate, but I made the speech there, and then, since then, I’ve worked carefully on detailing the whole idea, this whole aspect of the Disinfolklore narrative method / narrative form and Disinfolklore, analytical methods. So it’s many different things, which concerns the Disinfolklore universe.

When I saw Tulsi Gabbard’s “Nuclear Ashes” speech in the run-up to America’s bombing of Iran, I decided to apply the method—a 12 tool algorithm designed to help us interpret any Informational Unit. Any meme, whether it’s a photograph or an image circulating in the English information space.

We’re likely seeing similar patterns in Northern Ireland right now, where riots have erupted following allegations that two immigrants allegedly attempted r***. This turmoil reflects a perennial theme in Disinfolklore—and in Indo-European thought—where outsiders enter the inner realm and threaten its fertility, sovereignty, or security. These three archetypes recur across Indo-European societies, as noted by leading theorists of language, linguistics, and religion.Since recognizing this pattern, I’ve used it as a tool for analysis—whether examining riots in Ballymena or other unrest. I wouldn’t be surprised if Telegram is involved in amplifying hatred. Applying these methods helps us understand what leaders and influencers are trying to do—whether in Ukraine, Russia, or elsewhere. Russia demonstrates the endgame: a nightmare reality, mirrored by the CCP, North Korea, and Iran—societies deeply embedded in Disinfolklore, using stories to hack minds.Tulsi Gabbard’s video is archetypal Disinfolklore. The aesthetics immediately reminded me of a strange artifact a Ukrainian friend sent me during the war: a man in 1970s-style visuals discussing hypermodern issues like global warming and environmental catastrophe. Gabbard’s video evokes a similar mood—dark, foreboding, like being lost in a forest. It is cynically and carefully produced, down to details like her gray hair strand, reminiscent of a character from The Munsters. This deliberate archetyping casts her as a witch, placing viewers in a negative psychological space.The imagery—dark backgrounds, ashes—reinforces this mood. For someone like me, who filters what enters my mind, the video felt abrupt and unsettling. Was it responding to something in the news cycle, or was it simply injected into our space as a deliberate artifact? Either way, it signals intent. Combined with events like the activation of the National Guard and military parades in D.C., it suggests escalation—a coup in motion since the disputed 2020 election, now accelerating.Applying the Disinfolklore literacy tools, I see deliberate archetyping: Gabbard as a witch-like figure, invoking nuclear war, ashes, and elites. The message is layered but clear: fear. This negative mood bypasses rational filters, embedding itself in our minds and triggering routines and traumas.

Coming from someone tied to U.S. intelligence circles, the irony is striking—she positions herself as anti-elite while claiming elites want nuclear war because they have shelters. This is nonsense, of course, but effective as psychological manipulation.The third tool—finding the Mana in the meme—asks: what energy does this convey? So Mana, for me is an energy, and the energy in the meme. So you just look for what it what is the energy? The different levels. Layers. Is it negative? Positive? What’s it saying? What’s it doing? What’s the intention? Mens rea.

For me, the intention there is to say, we are going to protect you. If you surrender to us, we’ll protect you from this nuclear war which the elites, which the outer realm people, want to spark. For those of us who don’t fall for that, the message is: we’re so powerful that there’s nothing you can do. There’s nothing you can do anymore. You’re powerless. We will arrest you. The army will shoot you. For me, the ultimate energy is a statement: “We will protect you if you surrender.” For those who resist, the message is intimidation: “You are powerless.”

The fourth tool—inner/outer realm immanences—reveals another layer.

Every Disinfolklore artifact plays on this tension: Insiders versus Outsiders. Fertility versus Threat’s to your community’s children. It’s women. Guarantors of any community’s persistence over time. Migration tropes in English info-space often depict outsiders as corrupting the Inner Realm’s purity. Gabbard’s message embeds this archetype: elites as the Outer Realm, stirring chaos.

Yet, she’s as elite as it gets: Director of National Intelligence. And she’s archetype herself as One of Us. If you didn’t have the dark forest end of the world aesthetic provoking your emotions about the end of the world, you might just laugh off the attempt to hack our emotions. Yet, I repeat, this actor is actual director of National Intelligence.She could have blamed Russia or China, but she didn’t. Leaving interpretation open aligns with decades of narratives portraying cities as lawless and elites as corrupt—deeply ingrained in American discourse. that she and the people she’s working for are all working together, whether it’s her boss, the Chinese, the Russians, Iranians, the North Koreans, all of these nuclear all of these nuclear powers. So she could have said that they were the ones who were threatening us, you know, Ronald Reagan type thing, where these are our enemies, or even Axis of Evil type thing. But she didn’t use this. She left it to the interpretation, to the Maga interpretation. And this has been very deeply built on decades of this idea, especially in America, of the cities being lawless lands, where the Maga Maga base living in safe communities, generally speaking, in nice or certainly, the people I know, or my relatives who’ve gone Maga are quite wealthy and quite safe. But even from a young age, they’ve been banging on about how unsafe the cities are. And now I see what’s happening in in LA, or in the information space about LA is built on this decades-long idea that have those in the cities are Outer Realm there and then. The Inner-Outer Realm switching is dizzying. Yet characteristic of Disinfolklore.

The fifth tool—adapted from Paul Ekman and the Dalai Lama’s Atlas of Emotions—maps emotional journeys: Trigger, Experience, Reaction. Social media bombards us with triggers, and our reactions often amplify Disinfolklore. My reaction was analysis, not amplification—a conscious choice.

So then the fifth tool is this idea, which I got from the Dalai Lama and the great psychologist Paul Ekman, who did this amazing work, which is available online, called Atlas of emotions. And in it, they have this, this system, which I adapt into the Disinfolklore analytical method called trigger experience reaction.

So any of the emotional journeys that we go on each day… We go on 1000s of emotional journeys, millions, perhaps each day, whether it’s as we’re going down our timeline is an obvious way of illustrating this. We see pictures. I mean, all of us who are experts at filtering and responding to information in a way that perhaps we don’t understand how, how amazing we are at this. Now, by just being on simply being on Twitter, we have so many different algorithms to filter out things in our mind and not to let them into our Inner Mind, where they might contaminate our own Mana. but Ultimately, we’re being brought on oodles of emotional journeys. Obviously this also goes In Real Life as well. In work. With our spouses or children. Even with our pets or just walking down the street as different stimuli bounce off us. It’s this timeline of emotions that the Ekman Dalai Lama cognitive model of Trigger Experience Reaction.

So there’s a Trigger - a meme. We Experience a feeling of Anger, Fear, Disgust, Sadness, and/or Enjoyment. Then we React to them.

Obviously the Disinfolklore Analytical Method’s message is that you can separate the Experience, the Sadness, from the Reaction. You can avoid actively falling from the trolls. Or, you know, sharing that Disinfolklore. Sharing that image. As we talked about last time of someone who’s trying to, you know, at the moment, there’s a lot of stuff about Elon Musk’s father. This conference in Moscow. Where these famous people have gone to. A lot of us have shared the pictures of them, for instance, which is, from my perspective, part of the purpose of the conference. By sharing that nonsense we’re contributing to Russia’s motivation to stage such events as a means of continuing to wrap us up inside a Disinfolklore Universe. So we choose to react to this experience by sharing it.

So with the Tulsi Gabbard thing, for me, the experience I had was curiosity. My reaction to it is this conversation here today that I’m having with you. Not really a conversation that’s the monologue. Hopefully, maybe we might have questions or reactions to what I’ve triggered. For me, it was when I as soon as I saw it, I was like, Okay, let me apply the Disinfolklore analytical method to it. Then the other six tools, which I won’t go through now, the Code of Positive Trolls. The most important element of the Code of Positive Trolls really in for me is Generosity. There was nothing generous in what she was she was saying. There was nothing positive about it. It wasn’t even a cynical attempt to please us. It was a, was a, it was a cynical attempt to put us at dis-ease. For that reason, it’s a perfect example of Disinfolklore. And what I mean by Disinfolklore. As indeed is what we see when Russia sends missiles into Ukraine and then it shows its own murders and destruction. Russia showing its human Safari training of drone pilots in Kherson on hunan prey, including small children. Russia has killed 1,800 civilians in Kherson then published the First Person View footage of these Crimes Against Hunanity on Russia’s own state controlled social media platform/Disinfolklore propagation apparatus Telegram. Boasting about, creating Disinfolklore. I saw this process in its primitive form in Russia-occupied Ukraine. I’ve spoken about how Russia filmed me and my colleagues then spun bizarre takes for months on end about mythical events. So this is the same thing which I saw in eastern Ukraine, where reality becomes the pictures of burning cars in the tiny area of Los Angeles where MAGA is trying to conjure into being a civil war. Being used and repeated, repetitively, repeatedly or by the mainstream media, and used as pretext to create what I call the Disinfolklore Galaxy.Ultimately, Gabbard’s video exemplifies Disinfolklore: fear-driven, archetype-laden, and manipulative. Similar tactics appear in Russia’s missile strikes and Telegram’s “human safari” videos—spectacles designed to distort reality. This is what I observed in eastern Ukraine, and it is spreading globally. Unless we wake up to these methods, their influence will deepen.

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