Politics
Old but Outrageous Russian Warfare of Disinformation That the World Still Struggles to Deal With.
George Kennan, in his famous ‘long telegram’ to the secretary of state, while explaining how to deal with Russia’s schemes based on disinformation, wrote, “Much depends on health and vigor of our own society. World communism is like malignant parasite which feeds only on diseased tissue.. If we cannot abandon fatalism and indifference in face of deficiencies of our own society, Moscow will profit…Moscow cannot help profiting by them in its foreign policies.”
Disinformation differs in its meaning and impact from misinformation. Misinformation is part of official propaganda, so is disinformation, but the former is generally limited to official news outlets; it is more of routine propaganda. Disinformation, on the other hand, is making ‘misinformation’ public — accessible by the people through public media and not just limited to official documents, and the spread of that information is also attributed to someone else. The damage done by the latter is way more than what’s done by misinformation. Nonetheless, both are undertaken to promote particular ideologies or to challenge one. It’s done to influence and control the minds of their citizens and destroy the political careers of their competitors, both at home and abroad.
