Manufactured Discord: Memetic interruption of the social determinants of health.

The world as it is
When Lee Stawicki walked into Cafe Racer and killed my friends Joe and Andrew, he was not a right wing mass shooter. He was a mentally ill man with a black market pistol. When half of my friend Hudson’s family died in Texas from Covid, it was not because they were particularly frail; it was because they chose to not vaccinate. When my friend Steve killed himself and his wife mid pandemic, it was not from guilt or escape, it was because he believed there was a coming civil war and he simply had lost hope. It seems more and more often as I watch people I know die, it is not simply from things that could be prevented, it is from thoughts or ideas that should be astoundingly simple to prevent.

Two years ago I published an article on Medium and in the Seattle Star titled “Confronting Memetics 20/20; Are You Even You Anymore?”1 , there I reviewed the current status of memetic propaganda that had cost us an election, incited useless violence on the streets of my hometown and I examined in depth the organizations using psychometric analysis to generate “data driven behavior” (DDB). While in that prior article I was analyzing the effect of memetics upon social dissent, as I proceed into healthcare I begin to realize how terribly susceptible the social determinants of health2 are to data driven behavior. And further, the organizations producing these memetics are grievously affecting not just those at risk, but also the networks of caregivers that rely on information to make a basis for care. The foundations of primary prevention are community involvement and patient education. Psychometric memetics undermine the foundations of the essential role of prevention in community health and pose imminent threat to the most at risk populations. In the following discussion, I will examine this phenomenon of memetic based data driven behavior with contrasting factuals that will be at times challenging to contemplate. By the end, I hope to have created a construct that will make one reflect upon the tenuous place we exist in the current consensual reality for public health.

In his seminal work Language in Thought and Action3, linguist S.I. Hyakawa said “judgment stops thought”. He also went on to say that words of primary potency will induce a judgment state, these words when loaded into a conversation will bring a conversation to a “nonsensical argument.” where no resolution can be attained due to the oppositional constellation of both parties. When we allow a conversation to drift into charged connotations, the capacity to communicate degrades to a constellated unwinnable opposition. In debate, this can lead to a general breakdown in resolution and growth. When complexed with the social determinants of health, such breakdowns become a public health emergency.

For me the canary in the coal mine came in 2015 when Vox editor Emit Rensin wrote an editorial titled “The smug style of american liberalism’4 and while this klaxon all to the behavior of the educated fell mostly upon deaf ears at the time, in retrospect Emit perhaps was witnessing a cultural inflection point; from ‘Hyakawan’ polarized words of primary potency to enculturation and manipulation of said culture by third parties. While the democratic candidate was looking at national cameras and declaring the other side to be “deplorables,’’ social scientists were crying out ‘wait, something’s wrong, we have to stop this.’ As seen in the reports by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, we no see there was something terribly wrong, and it was not just a spiral into inhumanity, it was a global manipulation that affects the world population on every aspect of decision making to this day.

Outside this wall of oceans that surround the United States, the dissent we had been fomenting for the past two decades was being carefully observed. One would say that ‘the strength of democracy is compromise; to allow all voices to be heard and addressed.’ Regimes seeking the removal of democratic process began to look at our internal dissent and the evolving arena of social media; as history shows they have taken this opportunity and exploited in ways we perhaps have still not fully realized. We can not be sure when propaganda transitioned from single author to psychometric generated memetics, however we have a few clues.

The Belligerent Entities
Within this writing, there are three clear belligerent nation states that have presented observables to create a significant body of research; Russia, China and Iran. However, these techniques are slowly evolving to be used by many small autocratic regimes. What is disturbing is how malignant this effort is on a global scale and the complete absence of ethos these nation states exhibit. What is most concerning for the nurse is that “memetic warfare” is not strategic warfare, but actual “Total War”5. This is an important distinction, for it centers this issue upon public health, as in “Total War” targets are not the opposition’s military but the civilian population. Until now the horror of “total war” has been mostly seen as depopulation through nuclear attack, but it appears the strategy is now a degrading of what we in the West refer to as public health, and the tool is psychomemetics and Memetics.

The Internet Research Agency (IRA) is the known belligerent of the Russian Federation. Beginning in 2011 in St. Petersberg as a response to anti-government protests that were being organized on social media6, it soon grew to a multi-city organization that undertook propaganda where it would increase Russian Federation interests using several thousand “trolls” sowing discord and memetics that would inflame readers7.

The second agency we will discuss is still relatively unknown due to the religious curtain used by the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRoI). During the creation of their National Information Network in 2012, a “Pure Network” free of western influences; a similar set of events began to take place. Memetic warfare began to radiate out of the IRoI under ephemeral identities such as “Mona Rahman” and many others. These “personalities” were carefully crafted artificial news informants that have been traced to the Regime. There was no Mona Rahman that ever existed, however many top tier reporters from NYT, BBC, AP and Rueter’s were manipulated into using these “Endless Mayflies” as opinions skewing the direction of their reporting8.

The final and arguably largest memetic warfare campaign is known as the “50 cent league” or Army of Wumao(AOW) out of mainland China. This organization produces approximately 1.2 million posts a day and is suspected to have members in excess of 50,000 operators9. The original role once again was to undermine pro-democracy protesters in the nation, but grew to attack democratic nations globally, focusing on destabilizing the expansion of human rights in countries bordering the PRoC.

We learn something very important from the investigation of the Army of Wumao, interviews with the researcher can elucidate what has made this so very toxic to society. The AoW changed from aggressive adversariality into an organization that fed a “cultural push”10 where the voices that were opposed to western agenda would drown out activists. The media space became saturated by agenda and those looking to the internet for information would thereby see only one opinion. The 50cent league generated apathy and distraction.

And their affection upon the social determinants of health
While the original intention of the war of memetics was to obtain political power and suppress domestic freedom, what the three primary belligerents have learned is how they can affect almost all contentious issues in democratic free speech states. And while the parties are not using our language of the social determinants of health, these social constructs are the soft underbelly of a large population to which a memetic affector can have the greatest capacity to harm the population of a nation. Now, as this article started with gun deaths we will look first at gun control and how memetic insertions have fractured a population that I feel would be finding pathways forward on this issue.

The original Oxford report on the Russian IRA found that the memetic injections on gun control were consistently present in the top 5 posts categories from 2012 through 20187. Further investigation after multiple shooting events such as the Parkland shooting11, you can find using the Hamilton 68 analysis software12 surges of posts to promote gun violence, The strategy is “to push fringe ideas into the slightly more mainstream”13. By saturating the sphere of social media with ideas that push the extremes, the IRA manufactured dissent. The increase of dissent breaks down the democratic process of compromise that would allow the movement forward on successful gun control legislation.

For the past 40 years the United States has been attempting to find some way to curb the outbreak of firearms violence. In the past 3–5 years researchers from The Violence Project14 and various other epidemiologists have been elucidating a new way of looking at this. To return to the introduction, these researchers have used revolutionary data modeling in ways that would have kept my friends alive. In their revolutionary work on gun violence this team of Farris and Emmet, a criminologist and epidemiologist found peer aggression and status motivation15 to be the driving factors that instigate mass shootings. Beyond the scope of this paper, but the work of The Violence Project espouses that the cause of nearly all mass shootings, is the same form of dissent that the Russian IRA has been using to create dissent in Congress to prevent movement on Gun Control. Strife breaks down democracy, creates adversarialism, and manifests violence. So not only was the IRA creating dissent to generate a breakdown in legislation for gun safety, but in the process they were amplifying the factors that are observed by Farris and Emmet to be the root cause of the disease.

Strife is the intent of the Russian IRA. One of their primary avenues of attack is the unstable race relations of the highly at risk African American community. (supplemental 1) As early as 2010, three years before the Black Lives Matter movement was coined. Russian Botnets and by 2013 the IRA were purchasing and propagating many terms that became BLM slogans and websites15. Between 2010 and 2016, such hashtags as ”#BrownLives”, “#BlackLives” “#blackthebadge” (inferring execution of police officers) were propagated in over 3,000 advertisements with circulation over 100,000 shares17. At the University of Michigan, William Aceves in 2019 published an indictment of the IRA that concluded this to be a clear violation of hate speech with the discrete intent to instigate a race war during or following the 2016 election18. In his indictment, he finds that the IRA violated The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights Article 20(2) provision“[a]ny advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.”19 In that the nation state of Russia actively sought to instigate bi-directional hatred with intent to foster violence(ICCR).

While little analysis of recent activity has been released, in my own 2020 article I mention above, I personally witnessed a local protester firebomb several police cars on May 30th 2020 during the Westlake march. What had originally been intended as a peaceful march that was permitted and working with Seattle Police, rapidly devolved into a riot that led to a city wide shut down and at least half a dozen fatalities over two months20. The violence was initiated by several twitter feeds that broadcast a call to arms

and gave direction for firebombing and storefront attacks. The tragedy of this is that the “antifa:America” twitter account that was responsible for thes broadcasts was immediately unmasked to be owned by neo-fascist organization Idnetiy:Evropa a domestic terrorist organization with suspected ties to Soviet SVR1. Reportedly, the Russian IRA has been shut down by GRU, however, whether they are gone or simply more hidden, the effects are still occurring creating a rift in racial relations and community relations that is literally killing people.

While I was for the most part quarantining at home during these protests, I encountered the next and arguably the most malignant facet of memetic warfare in a rather tragic moment; where a city council member when asked in interview if they were concerned that the protests in Seattle would be a mass spreader event, responded that “this was larger than Covid”. At King County Public Health where we were testing, our positives immediately increased by an order of magnitude, the unhoused bearing an unfair share of the burden of the localized outbreak from citywide protests. This segues to a tragic and blatant expression of what is the most egregious and clear assault on the social determinants of health by memetic insertion. Direct interference with healthcare information on vaccinations.

One can not help but think this councilmember is a prime victim of racially targeted saturation of misinformation of public health issues. The skewing of racial subgroups away from accurate public health has been an effort that has been from far more than just bots. A global example was Dmitry Sudokov’s article in Pravda in 210421. The assertion that clinics in the DRC were spreading ebola, led to healthcare workers being attacked by mobs just days later22. This trend of actually attacking doctors has continued with the recent attack by militant groups in the Congo leading to the death of a WHO epidemiologist23. The pattern has been exploited globally and domestically as a race based issue. As well shown in 420 readings, the US has a long history of the US experimentation of minority communities, while much has changed, the memory has been is continuing to be exploited by both covert and overt propaganda from at least the Russian Federation 24 and likely the Chinese 50 cent network25; more often than not to deprive at risk minorities from seeking healthcare options that are available to them.

In the era of Covid-19, it may be said that the greatest healthcare threat that exists in the information space is the promotion of anti vaccination propaganda. This core issue has been exploited as far back as the KGB aids propaganda of the 1970s26 through the post soviet media expansion to the vast complet troll and bot networks of the current pandemic27. It makes sense that the most complex effort of the IRA and potentially 50cent network have been on the topic that has over three decades of success in splitting the populations of western nations.

From our assessments, we can begin a rough diagnosis of the current model of disinformation; a complex multi-tiered model for social engineering, the disinformation network does not simply feed propaganda to a dissenting audience, but uses variegated memetic insertions to polarize and calcify disparate parties to be unmoving in opposition. The most recent analysis of anti vaccination memetics elucidated by researchers at George Washington University found that human agitators and bots interfaced at different levels of debate. The base level “bot” would circulate propaganda (often while inserting malware in the networks). Aggravating this situation, human operators in the role of “Trolls” would facilitate both sides of the debate, focusing on manifesting toxic hostility of voice, accentuating debate that as Hyakawa would say “be filled with words of primary potency”. Finally, advanced cybernetic bots that would be indistinguishable from human trolls, would present a strong, seemingly logical anti-vaccination stance. This complex model was designed to both generate strife and stop thought, constellating socio political divisions and choices on vaccination.

The outcome of this has been devastating in some populations. The very research that I have discussed in the papers above seems to have been taken up by mainstream media. Efforts by such institutions as the New York Times have appeared to have had some sort of counter propaganda effect on the deaths of african americans as seen in a CDC analysis by the Washington Post

. However, the political divide is still holding on to propaganda. In a recent report out of NBER, Wallace et. al. find that after the release of the covid vaccine, the ratio of republican deaths to democratic deaths was 20% higher29. One may even find an irony in this, as the Russian Federation both attempted to subvert the 2020 election and at the same time may have released propaganda that literally killed off a potential political victory for their presumptive candidate.

Where do we go from here?

With this very brief overview on the facets of misinformation that have led to deaths both nationally and globally, what should we do in the nursing profession? While the nation states have sown discord for political purposes, these purposes crossover far more with the social determinants of health that are the foundation of public health nursing. The supporters of public health are literally caught in the crossfire.

I look at the behavior of the world around me and the effects upon. Just this past month, our Dean asked in multiple meetings “Why has the liberal left abandoned the Iranian people, why is there silence”30 and I think the work of Sepah Al Quods; Endless Mayfly discussed earlier, I ask myself, how are they skewing the public opinion as the New York Times is shown to have circulated propaganda from the regime31.

Russia is of course under a magnifying glass and they are focusing their botnets on fomenting dissent upon the Ukraine war. And on the eastern front of the pending world war, the 50cent net is working to sow doubt on our commitment to Taiwan. Viewing the Hamilton database we see that the primary memetic insertions as of this writing are politics, but when the fighting stops, how long will it be until once again, these agents of dissent bring their focus on undermining race relations, vaccinations, gun safety?

Never before have we seen the intentional sowing of disease states through complex misinformation. The information age has demonstrated the extreme power of memetic warfare in the ability to sow discord at local, state, federal and global levels. The reality is that the C/PHN must be savvy to these effectors in their clients. We are educating against a vast and well designed effort to destabilize social determinants of health at every level.

The Community/Public Health Nurse must not just be aware of the social determinants of health but they must also realize that there is an active attempt to sow doubt into any education that we may provide, any actions we may lobby for. The C/PHN must be aware of the messaging, where it is coming from, and be ready to treat the disease of misinformation. I attribute misinformation to have contributed to the deaths of over a dozen people I have lost in the past decade. If this, nebulous entity of disinformation, were a menacing object sitting in the open for all to see; we would notice the exigent threat and we would perhaps counter it ourselves, but in the ephemeral nature it bypasses our senses and continues to do its awful work. It is a tough road forward.

Faced with this daunting and terrible information, what can we do to make successful interventions for the health of the patients and communities that depend on us as companions forward on the path to wellness? The first and foremost is to be aware of what we are facing. In awareness there will be our own ability to detect these affectors when they appear in our community health environment. My first encounter with state propaganda was in the refugee camps of Iraq, when you see it, you know it; as it goes against what feels healthy.

When we detect this, then we can help the exposed find a path forward themselves. As it stands I would suggest that we continue our focus upon developing trust, to continue and improve our active listening and develop carefully phrased directed questioning that inspires reflection. Questioning that allows the people exposed to memetic insertions to reflect on the aggression that such social engineering creates. In his seminal work “Chaos or Community, Where Do We Go From Here”32 the Reverend Martin Luther King guides us in the internal work; to move forward in community and to not fall into despair that will prevent us from finding peace between all parties. To not fall into sectarianism that forestalls brother/sisterhood between all races and beliefs, but to always reach hands across the table free of acrimony and with positive intent. The purpose of the occult tool is to manufacture discord, so we must bring these issues to light so that we may find the accords to rebuild what community we have lost.

Citations

1. Murphy John S. https://thetacticalfolklorist.medium.com/confronting-memetics-in-20-20-c43293735c47
2. https://health.gov/healthypeople/priority-areas/social-determinants-health
3. Hayakawa, S. I. (Samuel I. (1949). Language in thought and action. Harcourt, Brace and Company.
4. https://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11451378/smug-american-liberalism
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_war
6. Chen, Adrian (2 June 2015). “The Agency”. The New York Times. ISSN 0362–4331. Retrieved 6 September 2017.
7. Howard, P. N., Ganesh, B., Liotsiou, D., Kelly, J., & François, C. (2018). The IRA, Social Media and Political Polarization in the United States, 2012–2018. Project on Computational Propaganda.
8. https://citizenlab.ca/2012/11/irans-national-information-network/
9. King, G., Pan, J., & Roberts, M. E. (2017). How the Chinese government fabricates social media posts for strategic distraction, not engaged argument. American political science review, 111(3), 484–501.
10. https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/05/19/meet-the-chinese-internet-trolls-pumping-488-million-posts-harvard-stanford-ucsd-research/
11. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/19/technology/russian-bots-school-shooting.html
12. https://securingdemocracy.gmfus.org/hamilton-dashboard/
13. https://securingdemocracy.gmfus.org/hamilton-68-a-new-tool-to-track-russian-disinformation-on-twitter/
14. https://www.theviolenceproject.org/peer-reviewed/group-aggression/
15. Faris, R., & Ennett, S. (2012). Adolescent Aggression: The Role of Peer Group Status Motives, Peer Aggression, and Group Characteristics. Social networks, 34(4), 371–378. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socnet.2010.06.003
16. https://www.justsecurity.org/61142/tactic-strategy-russia-long-exploited-u-s-racial-divisions/
17. https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/NewKnowledge-Disinformation-Report-Whitepaper.pdf
18. William J. Aceves, Virtual Hatred: How Russia Tried to Start a Race War in the United States, 24 Mich. J. Race & L. 177 (2019). Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mjrl/vol24/iss2/2
19. https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/international-covenant-civil-and-political-rights
20. https://apnews.com/article/death-of-george-floyd-george-floyd-race-and-ethnicity-seattle-tacoma-34f55ea93092507d60ef907703635de5
21. Dmitry Sudakov, “U.S. Created Ebola Virus as Biological Weapon?” Pravda, August 11, 2014
22. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/raid-ebola-clinic-sparks-new-fears-infection-patients-flee
23. https://www.kff.org/news-summary/who-epidemiologist-killed-in-1-of-2-attacks-on-ebola-treatment-centers-in-drc-isis-militants-move-into-area-affected-by-outbreak
24. Freimuth, V. S., Jamison, A. M., An, J., Hancock, G. R., & Quinn, S. C. (2017). Determinants of trust in the flu vaccine for African Americans and Whites. Social science & medicine (1982), 193, 70–79. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2017.10.001
25. King, G., Pan, J., & Roberts, M.E. (2017). How the Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction, Not Engaged Argument. American Political Science Review, 111, 484–501.
26. Kata A. (2012). Anti-vaccine activists, Web 2.0, and the postmodern paradigm — an overview of tactics and tropes used online by the anti-vaccination movement. Vaccine, 30(25), 3778–3789. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vaccine.2011.11.112
27. Broniatowski, D. A., Quinn, S. C., Dredze, M., & Jamison, A. M. (2020). Vaccine Communication as Weaponized Identity Politics. American journal of public health, 110(5), 617–618. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2020.305616
28. https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/AH-Provisional-COVID-19-Death-Counts-by-Week-Race-/siwp-yg6m
29. Wallace, Jacob & Goldsmith-Pinkham, Paul & Schwartz, Jason. (2022). Excess death rates for Republicans and Democrats during the COVID-19 pandemic. 10.48550/arXiv.2209.10751.
30. Emami, Azita, Seattle University Teach in on Iran November 3rd.
31. https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/12/05/iran-morality-police-protests/
32. King, M. L., King, C. S., & Harding, V. (2010). Where do we go from here : chaos or community? Beacon Press.

Supplemental Information

1. Summary of findings in Senate Select Committee on Intelligence re: Race

Extensive Operations Targeting Black-American Communities

• The most prolific IRA efforts on Facebook and Instagram specifically targeted Black American communities and appear to have been focused on developing Black
  audiences and recruiting Black Americans as assets.
• The IRA created an expansive cross-platform media mirage targeting the Black
  community, which shared and cross-promoted authentic Black media to create an
  immersive influence ecosystem.
• The IRA exploited the trust of their Page audiences to develop human assets, at least some of whom were not aware of the role they played. This tactic was substantially more pronounced on Black-targeted accounts.
• The degree of integration into authentic Black community media was not replicated in the otherwise Right-leaning or otherwise Left-leaning content.