According to Fox News, the U.S. government should be investing more heavily in psychological warfare or “psyops” in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. A recently published article on the subject cites expert advice and maintains that Russia is responsible for social divisions in the United States. There is, according to Fox and the experts, a severe shortage of misinformation and psychological manipulation coming from the West at the moment.
Do we have enough psyops?
The idea that the United States has been less effective in psyops and information warfare contradicts the general consensus that has formed in the last month.
If Russia has been secretly pulling the strings in dividing American society then it must have suddenly decided to give up when it decided to invade Ukraine.
Fox News and other Western media outlets have been overwhelmingly hostile to Russia, as has most of the American public across the political spectrum.
If Russia has been successfully masterminding social tension and divisions for years, how is it that Moscow has only united Americans against itself on an issue that concerns it directly?
This should be conclusively burying the habit of blaming Russia for our internal problems; clearly Russian manipulation is not nearly as pervasive and effective as politicians and the media would have us believe.
Instead, the narrative insists that it is actually the United States government that has fallen behind in psyops and information warfare.
Misinformation abounds
Fox News is effectively telling its audience to accept misinformation so long as it comes from the U.S. government and not the Kremlin.
Mainstream Western media happens to be almost unanimous in pushing the sorts of narratives that the government would want the public to believe if they were running their own psyops.
Fox and the experts say that psychological warfare will be directed against the Russians, but any government doing this must be equally committed to manipulating domestic opinion to build public support.
Misinformation and untruthful reporting in the United States serves the purpose of generating public interest in and enthusiasm for entering the war against Russia.
The White House continues to maintain that it is against bringing the country into a new armed conflict, but a good foundation of pro-war support has already been established.
It’s possible that support for war has organically rebounded after the Afghanistan debacle, but it is hard to imagine that the government’s psyops people aren’t working hard right now.
