An attack on National Memory

An Attack on Our National Memory, Our Culture, Our Principles, Our Values, and Our Ideals

Joshua Drew Plovanic

February 15, 2016

            In regards to operations that can be carried out against a nation like our own that includes an attack on our memory and mind, some may think this form of attack is not realistic and improbable. I highly disagree. For one, the spreading of an ideology or belief system that runs counter to the preeminent belief systems within a nation can act as an affront to the mind and collective memory of that nation. For instance, let’s use an old ideology like fascism for an example. Imagine adherents of a fascist belief system gain access to our education system. Common sense would tell you that a national memory, which includes our history, our entertainment and culture, and the significant events of our common experience as Americans, start in our youth and our upbringing as children in this country. As we are educated, the culture and memory of our ancestors is introduced to us, like the “George Washington Chops the Cherry Tree” story or the “Johnny Appleseed plants Apple Trees across America.” These stories, and the many like them, have been told for generations in our schools. They form an integral part of a child’s ability to begin to relate to the culture of the nation he or she was born into, as well as an innocent introduction to the nation’s history.

Imagine if a foreign enemy, whether this enemy be another nation or a non-state player, were able to corrupt and attack the cultural heritage of our ancestors, altering and perverting the memory of historical events, changing our understanding of said events and warping the significance of them by either minimizing the significance of priority events, or enhancing the significance of events that should be considered lightly. Imagine if, through information and psychological tactics, this foreign threat destroyed our values and the things we hold so dear by convincing us that they were no longer relevant and by spreading their ideology into our country and into the minds of prominent individuals who are in positions of power. These prominent individuals, under the influence of a foreign ideology, begin to break down and dissolve our history and culture and replace it with the altered history and culture that suits the interests of the foreign actor that they are being influenced by and our nation is being conquered by. An attack like this would be systematic and a step-by-step process. It would not be possible for it to be sudden.

An example of an attack on our values, for the sake of grounding this paper in relatable terms, would be how Al-Qaeda and its worldwide affiliates circumvented the conventional laws of war and put our soldiers in the position of being forced to harm women and children. Our values dictated that we do our best to not harm noncombatants in warfare, but when the enemy barricades themselves in mosques or operates within a civilian population and essentially uses them as human shields, we are forced to defend ourselves with unconventional measures that may cause collateral damage. The fact that the enemy dressed in civilian clothes didn’t help matters either. The enemy was, in effect, baiting us to kill civilians to kill them, forcing us to forgo our values in order to defeat the enemy. This tactic was then used as propaganda against us, with the enemy telling the population we were indiscriminately killing civilians. This boosted recruitment for the enemy as well.

Propaganda and information warfare are often the tools used to attack a nation’s culture, values, principles, and memory. To use information to change the mind of a target audience, you must present it in a way that appeals to the core senses and values of the audience, and gradually isolate and chip away at their core values and beliefs. Often this requires a lengthy process, and it is very difficult to do in adults, as core values are solidly established in many adult minds. It is not impossible to change values and beliefs in a populace, however. It is gradual and methodical, and it entails a little bit of social engineering. The easiest way to do so is to have relatively strong social and physical influence on the population, but if this is not plausible, a roundabout approach becomes necessary. This is where sophisticated and advanced propaganda techniques come into play, usually broadcasted through media outlets such as television and social media, the internet, newspapers, entertainment, and education. Targeting these fields with deceptive, distorted, misleading, or destructive information is a process that requires someone with a large amount of financial influence whose agenda is heavily influenced by the ideology and belief system that controls them. If they are more right wing, they will use their influence over the media they control to advance the right wing agenda, and they will attempt to distort a historical or current event to suit the agenda of the ideology that has infected the mind of the host individual, or outright eliminate the event from memory or destroying its significance in history.