Reddit mentions of Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia

Chaos and Confusion

Book : Nothing is true, everything is possible

RAND Paper

>I'm going to continue to recommend this book on any relevant threads I see (unless a mod tells me to stop for spamming reasons): Nothing is True and Everything is Possible is a book I think anyone who cares about this should read or listen to.

The Kremlin is known to behave in the same way you just described and the author of Nothing is True and Everything is Possible does a really good job of describing in length the effect that has had on the Russian society.

>Ein nicht zu vernacchlässigender Teil der Bevölkerung wird hier Stück für Stück, Überschrift für Überschrift, von jemandem der Merkel nicht und sich eine Strengere Flüchtlingspolitik wünscht; zu einem der allen traditionellen Medien nicht mehr traut (da sie nie über diese News berichten!) und empfänglich für Verschwörungstheorien ist.

Ein ganz wichtiger Punkt! Zu dieser Entwicklung hat der Journalist Peter Pomerantsew ein Buch mit dem passenden Titel "Nothing is true and everything is possible." geschrieben.

Die Strategie heutiger Propaganda ist nicht mehr, die Menschen auf die eigene Seite zu ziehen. Es reicht schon, das Vertrauen in die Medien der Gegenseite zu erodieren.

Dazu auch ein sehr lesenswerter Artikel von Marina Weisband in der Zeit, Zitat:

> Widersprüchliche Informationen sind deshalb so unbeliebt, weil sie kognitive Dissonanz erzeugen – die auszuhalten Ressourcen kostet. Das ist besonders zum Problem geworden, seit Informationen im Internet gesammelt werden können. Im Netz kann jedes Foto verfälscht sein, kann völlig aus dem Zusammenhang gerissen worden sein. Die Verwirrung und Belastung durch die Vielfalt der widersprüchlichen Information in den sozialen Medien sind ohnehin gewaltig. Nun kommt der Kniff der Lügner hinzu, dieses Potenzial bewusst zu instrumentalisieren.

>Wenn ich Ihnen sage: "Der Himmel ist grün", dann ist es gar nicht so sehr mein Ziel, dass Sie mir auf Anhieb glauben. Mein Ziel ist es vielmehr, so häufig zu behaupten, der Himmel sei grün, bis Ihre Ressourcen, den Widerspruch auszuhalten, erschöpft sind und Sie einlenken und sagen: "Das ist Ihre Meinung. Ich denke, der Himmel ist blau. Es gibt wohl keine Möglichkeit, die Farbe des Himmels objektiv festzustellen." Steter Tropfen höhlt den Schädel. Das Ziel offensichtlicher Lügen ist der Beweis der Machtlosigkeit von Wahrheit; die Verschiebung des Diskurses, sodass alles plötzlich infrage gestellt wird.

I strongly suggest Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, Peter Pomerantsev's exploration of his time as a television producer in Russia.

They've lived under dictatorships and tsars for over a century. Every single Big Promise for the last hundred years or more has gone to the same conclusion, every power vacuum was filled quickly by worse, or at best the same as before. Organized crime is referred to as 'authority'. When the only organization of any kind was criminal, they became the de facto pseudo-government.

This has affected the culture deeply. There's a special kind of permeating philosophy in the day to day mindset, in their relationship to truth, power and certainty.

It's fascinating.

Edit: Ok, thanks for taking my Gold Virginity, random stranger :)

More links: Red Notice by the recently headlined Bill Browder, on the Magnitsky Act and its gruesome origins. I haven't, but I will read this soon.

Bill Browder's lecture on How he became Putin's No.1 Enemy. Basically a longer version of his opening statement to the Senate Judiciary.

Putin's Kleptocracy, a promising but so far a bit dry look into how Putin steals everything.

Just an FYI this is exactly how Russia works.

>> Due to my Russian surname no one had yet noticed I was British; I kept my mouth shut. There were more than twenty of us in the room: tanned broadcasters in white silk shirts and politics professors with sweaty beards and heavy breath and ad execs in trainers. There were no women. Everyone was smoking. There was so much smoke it made my skin itch.

>> At the end of the table sat one of the country’s most famous political TV presenters. He is small and speaks fast, with a smoky voice:
We all know there will be no real politics. But we still have to give our viewers the sense something is happening. They need to be kept entertained. So what should we play with? Shall we attack oligarchs? [He continued,] Who’s the enemy this week? Politics has got to feel like . . . like a movie!
The first thing the President had done when he came to power in 2000 was to seize control of television. It was television through which the Kremlin decided which politicians it would “allow” as its puppet-opposition, what the country’s history and fears and consciousness should be.

>> And the new Kremlin won’t make the same mistake the old Soviet Union did: it will never let TV become dull. The task is to synthesize Soviet control with Western entertainment. Twenty-first-century Ostankino mixes show business and propaganda, ratings with authoritarianism. And at the center of the great show is the President himself, created from a no one, a gray fuzz via the power of television, so that he morphs as rapidly as a performance artist among his roles of soldier, lover, bare-chested hunter, businessman, spy, tsar, superman.

>> “The news is the incense by which we bless Putin’s actions, make him the President,” TV producers and political technologists liked to say. Sitting in that smoky room, I had the sense that reality was somehow malleable, that I was with Prosperos who could project any existence they wanted onto post-Soviet Russia. But with every year I worked in Russia, and as the Kremlin became ever more paranoid, Ostankino’s strategies became ever more twisted, the need to incite panic and fear ever more urgent; rationality was tuned out, and Kremlin-friendly cults and hate-mongers were put on prime time to keep the nation entranced, distracted, as ever more foreign hirelings would arrive to help the Kremlin and spread its vision to the world.


Fake news is exactly how Russia operates, smears, fake news, blatant propaganda.

This is from a great book:https://www.amazon.com/Nothing-True-Everything-Possible-Surreal/dp/1610396006

Gish Gallop is what your friends were doing.

Important to understand what Trump is doing ...

Chaos and Confusion - 10 min video

RAND Paper - 10 page paper

Book : Nothing is true, everything is possible

creating a post-fact world where nothing can be trusted and nothing is true is the first step towards an illiberal, anti-democratic society. It's step 1 in the neo-fascist handbook. It's literally the method Putin used in Russia. See the book Nothing is true and Everything is possible

In other words, Russia.

You might see the first AG (attempted) appointee that isn't even an attorney. As crazy as this circus is, you might see Alex Jones on the list. Uncharted territory here everybody.

Nothing is true and everything is possible

> I’m interested in learning more about this. Do you have sources for these or other tactics that are being employed?

There is a book that was published after this story:, same author https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/09/russia-putin-revolutionizing-information-warfare/379880/ (story 2014, book 2015): https://www.amazon.com/Nothing-True-Everything-Possible-Surreal/dp/1610396006

A lot of it comes from my personal observations, which I have basically been doing full time now since 2015 when I personally realized what was going on. my central education is Joseph Campbell's Comparative Mythology, about 8 years of learning on that, and I saw Middle East hate brother-vs-brother MEME patterns (weaponized) being pushed which I recognized from Campbell's teaching. From there, I found out about what Russia has been like the past 10 years, the media of their homeland. Then I also discovered Howard Bloom's year 2000 book about the "Mass Mind". Further, I found a 1993 theory from Duke University Rick Roderick describing a 7-hour idea that I have studied for about 400 hours in total. Roderick was worried about the future of his children, and put forth how he saw human minds could be exploited in various ways to give up their personhood (he called "our fractal selves") through media and ideas. Adam Curtis called out Surkov too, and his December 2014 declaration of the forthcoming British-Exit-EU assault I found.

It's a massive topic, and our enemy is extremely powerful. “I am the author, or one of the authors, of the new Russian system,” Vladislav Surkov told us by way of introduction. On this spring day in 2013, he was wearing a white shirt and a leather jacket that was part Joy Division and part 1930s commissar. “My portfolio at the Kremlin and in government has included ideology, media, political parties, religion, modernization, innovation, foreign relations, and ...”—here he pauses and smiles—“modern art.” - https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/11/hidden-author-putinism-russia-vladislav-surkov/382489/

Only this year we found out the 2012 origins and the Cambridge Analytica integration: https://washingtonmonthly.com/2017/11/24/a-trumprussia-confession-in-plain-sight/

As part of my understanding of where we are, I share some thoughts and patterns I am trying to make sense of over on /r/WhiteHouseHyperReal

The book Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia is a really excellent (if terrifying) look at the way that the media operated by Putin's authoritarian state has manipulated and brainwashed entire populations. And it was published a solid year before the 2016 election. It's a rough read but I think it's a book everyone in America should be familiar with.

If you want to follow that path even further, read this book.

It's a journey through how Putin creates exactly the feeling you're experiencing to control Russia, how the strategy developed over time, and what it's like to live in Russia once truth died.

> in that respect, he doesn't seem all that different from the media image of vladimir putin

When I see statements like this, it always reminds me of this excellent BBC article on Russian media tactics.

> Peter Pomerantsev, who recently spent several years working on documentaries and reality shows for Russian TV, argues that Russian state media are not just distorting truth in Ukraine, they go much further, promoting a seductive nihilism.

> "The Russian strategy, both at home and abroad, is to say there is no such thing as truth," he says.

> "I mean, you know, 'The Americans are bad, we're bad, and everyone's bad, so what's the big deal about us being a bit corrupt? You know our democracy's a sham, their democracy's a sham.'

> "It's a sort of cynicism that actually resonates very powerfully in the West nowadays with this lack of self-confidence after the Iraq War, after the financial crash - and that's what the Russians are hoping for, just to take that cynicism and then use that in a military environment."

By the way, if you liked that little blurb, you'll love Pomerantsev's entertaining book, Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible.

EDIT: Linking the BBC article

You need to read this book

RT is indeed a worthless propaganda rag.

Also, check out Nothing is True and Everything is Possible for more on how the Russian society has been led down a hole of pessimistic cynicism through the use of the Firehose. It's sickening to see it happening here in the US, but moreso infuriating that it's coming from the Oval Office and the shitstain with a breathing apparatus they float as spokesperson.

I would absolutely suggest anyone interested in the relationship between the press, politics, and the state, have a read of Peter Pomerantsev's Nothing Is True and Everything is Possible. Presents an interesting view of how things are in Russia, and how Putin gained power by "weaponising" the media.

I've heard good things about Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible to detail the cultural mindset of the "New Russia" but to be frank I have yet to read it.

> nothing matters

> anything can happen

Nothing is true, and everything is possible

I hate that you are being downvoted because there is a very real possibility that this is true. This book is basically all about how manipulative the Russian government is and how their strategy is to create an environment where no one knows what is real or fake.

The guy they interview wrote Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, which goes into far more detail and is a whole lot of fun.

An awesome book on this, "Nothing is Real and Everything is Possible": https://www.amazon.com/Nothing-True-Everything-Possible-Surreal/dp/1610396006/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1484255984&sr=8-1&keywords=nothing+is+true+and+everything+is+possible

Another good one - Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia

> And did you know Healthcare is 1/6th of the economy?

Yes, if you didn't know this and you are commenting on health policy then you are an idiot.

> and voted Stein in the general.

Congrats. You handed Trump his win. The amount of votes going to Stein in the three states that unexpectedly put Trump over the top all received more Stein votes than Trump's margin of victory. I think Stein is right in a few areas but is for the most part a bonehead. And completely unelectable.

> If you cannot hear the war drums beating and almost the exact same trumped up, on wishy washy non-evidence like in the run up/(foist) to the Iraq War

What I hear is a reaction to Russia's obvious malfeasance and aggressive actions against our country.

You should probably just purchase this:

https://www.amazon.com/Nothing-True-Everything-Possible-Surreal/dp/1610396006

If you are pretending Russia isn't an aggressive actor bent on harming the US then you haven't been paying attention.

> I think Stein is even better than Bernie on foreign policy.

Who cares? She can't get elected.

There's also a book called "Nothing is true and everything is possible".

"Fake news" isn't an accurate or appropriate name for the problems you're describing. It's a term that was originally coined to pick out a very specific kind of social media-driven disinformation that's deliberately designed to undermine the credibility of authentic news providers. The fact that Trump and his supporters have succeeded in hijacking the concept and turning it against the mainstream media (which happens to be highly critical of Trump and his administration) is frankly kinda breathtaking.

Here's the reason why "fake news" recently entered the popular lexicon in such a big way:

>Moscow’s influence campaign followed a Russian messaging strategy that blends covert
intelligence operations—such as cyber activity—with overt efforts by Russian Government agencies, state-funded media, third-party intermediaries, and paid social media users or “trolls.”
Russia, like its Soviet predecessor, has a history of conducting covert influence campaigns focused on US presidential elections that have used intelligence officers and agents and press placements to disparage candidates perceived as hostile to the Kremlin.
>[...]
>Russia’s state-run propaganda machine contributed to the influence campaign by serving as a platform for Kremlin messaging to Russian and international audiences.

That's not a conspiracy theory. It's from the official US Intelligence Community Assessment.

In this video, Senator Jack Reed questions James Clapper, the former Director of National Intelligence, about the Russian influence campaign.

>REED: "One of the aspects of this Russian hacking was not just disseminating information they had exploited from computers, but also allegations of fake news sites, fake news stories, that were propagated. Is that accurate, or was that one aspect of this problem?"

>CLAPPER: "This was a multifaceted campaign. The hacking was only one part of it. It also entailed classical propaganda, disinformation, fake news."

>REED: "Does that continue?"

>CLAPPER: "Yes."

A guy named Peter Pomerantsev wrote a very well-received book called Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible in 2014, right around the time of Russia's annexation of Crimea. You should read that, along with this in-depth article he wrote for The Guardian in April of the following year. Here's a representative excerpt:

>Late last year, I came across a Russian manual called Information-Psychological War Operations: A Short Encyclopedia and Reference Guide (The 2011 edition, credited to Veprintsev et al, and published in Moscow by Hotline-Telecom, can be purchased online at the sale price of 348 roubles). The book is designed for “students, political technologists, state security services and civil servants” – a kind of user’s manual for junior information warriors. The deployment of information weapons, it suggests, “acts like an invisible radiation” upon its targets: “The population doesn’t even feel it is being acted upon. So the state doesn’t switch on its self-defence mechanisms.” If regular war is about actual guns and missiles, the encyclopedia continues, “information war is supple, you can never predict the angle or instruments of an attack”.
>
>[...]
>
>Where once the KGB would have spent months, or years, carefully planting well-made forgeries through covert agents in the west, the new dezinformatsiya is cheap, crass and quick: created in a few seconds and thrown online. The aim seems less to establish alternative truths than to spread confusion about the status of truth. In a similar vein, the aim of the professional pro-Putin online trolls who haunt website comment sections is to make any constructive conversation impossible. As Shaun Walker recently reported in this newspaper, at one “troll factory” in St Petersburg, employees are paid about £500 a month to pose as regular internet users defending Putin, posting insulting pictures of foreign leaders, and spreading conspiracy theories – for instance, that Ukrainian protestors on the Maidan were fed tea laced with drugs, which led them to overthrow the (pro-Moscow) government.
>
>Taken together, all these efforts constitute a kind of linguistic sabotage of the infrastructure of reason: if the very possibility of rational argument is submerged in a fog of uncertainty, there are no grounds for debate – and the public can be expected to decide that there is no point in trying to decide the winner, or even bothering to listen.

It's important to understand that what we've been calling "fake news" isn't just fake news. It isn't The Onion or even The National Enquirer. It's something entirely novel: a potent new kind of propaganda, actively funded and deliberately steered by a hostile foreign power, delivered on a massive scale via open social media platforms that are uniquely vulnerable to it.

And it's working--not just in the US and the UK, but all over the Western world. The fact that you and so many others are prepared to dismiss credible news sources as "fake" and turn instead to unsourced, disreputable, thoroughly discredited conspiracy theories (e.g. the 4chan thing you mention) is proof of that.

This is a good read: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/apr/09/kremlin-hall-of-mirrors-military-information-psychology

And he adapted his various essays into a book:

https://www.amazon.com/Nothing-True-Everything-Possible-Surreal/dp/1610396006

AKA Nothing is True and Everything is Possible. https://www.amazon.com/Nothing-True-Everything-Possible-Surreal/dp/1610396006

No one is saying you shouldn't maintain your skepticism of the news, but there's a distinction to be made between news outlets, don't you think?

A news outlet that aspires to truth and one that aspires to propagandize shouldn't be falsely equated to one another.

Before claiming this is a false equivalence (or the opposite- claiming they are indeed similar enough to be equated) one should ensure there's substantial evidence supporting this claim. Otherwise the argument only serves to muddy the waters between news outlets.

There are some really dystopian consequences of removing all public trust in the media/press- imagine a country where everyone believes that Nothing Is True And Everything Is Possible.

I think you're thinking of one particular book, which is really good: Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, by Peter Pomerantsev.

No we really aren't. If you're willing to influence an election illegally that's the ultimate insider information. Trading is about calculating risk and reward. Even I as a remainer I could see the value of shorting £ as a hedge. If I knew I could corrupt the campaign I would of invested a lot more! Excuse me for my shortness but you just aren't paying attention. I have given evidence relentlessly on here and you know what? No one listens or even looks at it. So sorry but it's easy find the truth with evidence and see whats happening right now. It's right there if you want to see it. There's plenty of people writing about it.

The billionaire "conspiracy" is a conspiracy in as much as very real people are conspiring to make that a reality hence wealthcare bills in US and tax haven UK. The British tabloid press share foreign weaponised clickbait aimed at weakening our democracy. Their goal? To weaken government and deregulate. It's about billionaires buying up as much of our democracies as quickly as possible. Brexit and Trump is much like how Putin turned Russia into a Kleptocracy.

Some of my sources will require buying and reading entire books. Old school I know.

> All media is full of shit: Belgian, US, Russian and Ukranian.

This is exactly how propaganda machine gets you: Nothing Is True Everything Is Possible

While no media can provide an ideal and detailed account of any event, there is a huge difference between a source that gives you 90% truth with some omitted details and a source that gives you 10% of truth and a bunch of specifically created lies like Russian state-controlled media does.

I would have agreed with you until I read this book. Now I think Putin is worse than he seems on TV.

Nothing is true, everything is possible.

Yes you should be skeptical. Of course that includes the claims I am making.

https://www.amazon.com/Nothing-True-Everything-Possible-Surreal/dp/1610396006

I'm not saying this is 100% everybodys experience or this is only book you shold read but I liked this book. This is written by somebody who is from west and goes to russia for work right after USSR collapsed.

If nothing is true, anything is possible.

It's straight out of Putin's playbook.

Currently reading Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia by Peter Pomerantsev just to learn how Trump's administration will attempt to use propaganda to get away with pretty much everything.

Edit: I'm not the only one. Paperback is sold out on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Nothing-True-Everything-Possible-Surreal/dp/1610396006/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Edit 2: u/Deggit peaked my interest with this book from this comment

I think it's telling that your post references one man's take on Soviet history and your take on "world" history, but that none of your post references the realities of the America that we live in. I wonder: how you would use these ideas to explain why median white home value was nearly 30 times higher than median black home value post-financial crisis? Perhaps you would tell me it's because black people are too lazy and too violent (like the rest of us, right?) to hold down a job. But, not putting words in your mouth: I think you're peddling myths and truisms – not facts – pretty outrageously in what you wrote alone.

If you're interested in subversion through media, check out Peter Pomerantsev's book on contemporary Russia and Putinism. They're our friends now, I guess, so be careful of what you criticize: https://www.amazon.com/Nothing-True-Everything-Possible-Surreal/dp/1610396006