During my morning routine of hunting through hundreds of articles to determine what to add to the "Hot News... Around the Web" section of All News PipeLine's front page, I ran across a piece of at Rumor Mill News that gave me what many will understand as an "AHA" moment where pieces of a puzzle, the big picture so to speak, simply assembled itself in my head, showing an insidious, long term plan and implementation of that plan, to destroy Alternative Media from within.
The article in question is from a member of the Alternative Media and while it touches on the topic of the internal strife at an Alternative News Site, that is not what caught my eye, nor the topic of this article, since we in no way have a clue what happened, nor have we had any interest to untangle the "he said, she said," issues.
What caught my eye was the following sentence "What Mike has done, however, is apparently misread what I wrote, or been prompted by "friends" (as he wrote), to construe what I wrote as being in some way an attack on...."
This has been a common refrain I have been hearing from other Alternative News website owners over the last year, whom I am not naming because there is a fine line in reporting a problem and feeding into it, but I have been told that each of these Alt Sites owners were informed by their trusted associates that "friends" or "colleagues" or "sources" have informed them of (insert false claim here against the site owner), and in each case it has caused strife between the site owner and the trusted associate. Some issues were resolved through open communication, but others left lasting scars.... aka dividing them, separating them from each other.
According to Matthew 18:15 "If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector."
In other words communicate, be clear and identify the source of the rumors, lies or character assassinations openly to the person you are accusing, because if you are made to feel you cannot be truthful about the "friend," or "associate" or "source," then that should be a large red flag that they are agents, shills and/or are on someone's payroll otherwise known as professional agitators.
THE COMMON DENOMINATOR
In the past year I have seen InfoWars attacked in an attempt to cause divisions from within, I have seen Rick Wiles of TruNews attacked for his interviews and beliefs, The Hagmanns and Steve Quayle attacked and accused falsely, just to name a few.... and what they all have in common is they question the official narrative, the "message" pushed by the mainstream media and government officials, they link to sources unlike the MSM, rather than referring to them then asking readers/listeners to simply believe their interpretation of them.
Notice I am not linking to these attacks because to do so would be to perpetuate them and ANP will not do that, the point being, someone, or many someones, are deliberately attempting to cause divisions between friends, within Alternative websites internally, as well separate websites, to separate them so they will not share information with each other that helps to connect the dots and put the puzzle pieces together.
As seen below, this is a strategy based in Psychological Warfare that has been used throughout history and is now being used against Alternative Media, to the nth degree.
MILITARY PSY-OP STRATEGY
Wikipedia describes Psychological Warfare as "Psychological Warfare (PSYWAR), or the basic aspects of modern psychological operations (PSYOP), have been known by many other names or terms, including MISO, Psy Ops, Political Warfare, "Hearts and Minds," and propaganda. The term is used "to denote any action which is practiced mainly by psychological methods with the aim of evoking a planned psychological reaction in other people."Various techniques are used, and are aimed at influencing a target audience's value system, belief system, emotions, motives, reasoning, or behavior. It is used to induce confessions or reinforce attitudes and behaviors favorable to the originator's objectives, and are sometimes combined with black operations or false flag tactics."
In 2005, in a 244 page Air Force Law Review PDF, on page 235, we see "ruses" which are considered lawful deceptions which goes on to explain in Article 37, examples of permissible ruses, which includes “the use of camouflage, decoys, mock operations and misinformation."
DISINFORMATION
According Merriam Webster Dictionary, disinformation is defined as "false information deliberately and often covertly spread (as by the planting of rumors) in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth."
There are entities, whole websites, dedicated to pushing massive disinformation with just enough truth interspersed to make the person or the site appear legitimate. What they count on is the reader/listener/viewer will not do their due diligence to verify and separate the truth from the hoaxes and false information.
These sites are created with the sole purpose of destroying Alternative Media as a whole.
GOVERNMENT TROLLS AND ARTIFICIAL ENTITIES
The Guardian reported in 2011 on a US spy operation that creates fake online identities to spread propagnada, where the article details software that was being developed that would "manipulate" social media by using "fake online personas to influence internet conversations," most of which would lead people away from the information being exposed by Alternative Media.
The project has been likened by web experts to China's attempts to control and restrict free speech on the internet. Critics are likely to complain that it will allow the US military to create a false consensus in online conversations, crowd out unwelcome opinions and smother commentaries or reports that do not correspond with its own objectives.
The discovery that the US military is developing false online personalities – known to users of social media as "sock puppets" – could also encourage other governments, private companies and non-government organisations to do the same.
The claim was that is would be used against Americans, but revelations by Edward Snowden exposed the governments do hire "internet trolls," to manipulate and control online discourse with "extreme tactics of deception and reputation-destructions."
He cites documents from the “previously secret” Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group in the U.K., which describe injecting “all sorts of false material onto the Internet in order to destroy the reputation of its targets” and to use “social sciences and other techniques to manipulate online discourse and activism to generate outcomes it considers desirable.”
“To see how extremist these programs are, just consider the tactics they boast of using to achieve those ends: ‘false flag operations’ (posting material to the Internet and falsely attributing it to someone else), fake victim blog posts (pretending to be a victim of the individual whose reputation they want to destroy), and posting ‘negative information’ on various forums.”
When you are confronted in a conversation by someone attempting to "change" the topic, or distract from the original message, ask yourself, do I know this person? How well do I know this person? Why will they not address the issue and instead are attempting to lead us away from it.
DIVIDE AND CONQUER
The strategy of Divide and Conquer is described succinctly by WiseGeek in the follow manner:
A divide and conquer strategy, also known as “divide and rule strategy” is often applied in the arenas of politics and sociology. In this strategy, one power breaks another power into smaller, more manageable pieces, and then takes control of those pieces one by one. It generally takes a very strong power to implement such a strategy. In order to successfully break up another power or government, the conqueror must have access to strong political, military, and economic machines.
Furthermore, in order to maintain power and influence, large governments will often work to keep smaller powers and governments from uniting. In fact, this use of the principles within the divide and conquer strategy is most common. It is much easier to prevent small powers from linking forces than to break them apart once they have aligned.
Leaders who use a divide and conquer strategy may encourage or foster feuds between smaller powers. This kind of political maneuvering requires a great understanding of the people who are being manipulated. In order to foster feuds, for example, one must understand the political and social histories of the parties intended to take part in the feuds.
THE PUPPET MASTERS
It is my personal opinion that Alternative Media itself has been infiltrated by "entities" pretending to be friends, sources, associates, then whisper into the ears of their new friends that their trusted old friends are working against them, deliberately planting suggestions, manipulating situations with lies, in order to divide Alternative Media and cause them to attack each other, but more importantly, to separate them so the information cannot flow, the puzzle cannot be put together and finally, to distract them from doing what Alternative Media is supposed to do... which is to report what the MSM won't.
The ultimate puppet masters behind it all are those with the most to gain from destroying Alternative Media, those whose agendas are being exposed by Alt Media, and we will leave it up to the readers to decide who they think that is.
BOTTOM LINE
Alternative Media has made an incredible difference over the years in exposing agendas, providing aspects and points of view that the MSM doesn't, offering links, videos, documentation that asks the reader to think for themselves and to research, but these paid agitators, government shills and artificial entites do the exact opposite, they count on those that do not want to "think," those that will simply accept the "message" these shills are pushing without bothering to double check and verify the information.
After researching, a reader may disagree with the conclusions offered by the Alternative Media site, but that is a good thing, healthy, civil debate often offers others a chance to see another point of view whether it changes their mind or not.
Final thought - If someone is whispering in your ear, but is not willing to back up what they are telling you about someone you have known and trusted for many years, with verifiable evidence.... then chances are they are on someone's payroll and their sole goal is to separate you from those you trust.
Research that person and you may be amazed to find out who sold you down the drain.
