You might be asking yourself "Who the heck is this guy telling me about propaganda and disinformation? Why does he yapp about that stuff?"
And that is a fair question, I am not sure to be honest but I can indulge in some self-gratifying Ad Hominem instead, it is my blog after all!
When I was younger I enjoyed some good old fashioned activism with Greenpeace and protested fossil fuel exploitation extensively.
One of the coolest thing I did as an activist
My friend was Boson on the MV Arctic Sunrise when it attempted to board a Gazprom oil rig. They were immediately arrested by FSB officers that were stationed on the rig. Here is a picture of one of them arresting the activists... with a knife.
And this is me attached to the Burnaby Kinder Morgan Pipeline (unrelated to Gazprom I am self-indulging into a bit of nostalgia) along Keith Stewart wearing arm bands in support of our friends jailed in Murmansk.
For further context, I have worked for a little over 4 years as a fundraising team leader for Greenpeace Canada, as well as a local volunteer group manager and organiser for a little under 3 years on my spare time.
I participated in civil disobedience campaigns aiming to raise awareness about topics such as climate change, sustainable agriculture, nuclear safety regulations, protection of endangered ecosystems... From small time outreach with local communities to NVDA that caused tens of millions of dollars in operational costs to the intended corporations.
Suffice it to say, I know a couple things about propaganda and have put this knowledge into actions many times when I was still mentally stable enough to do so. This is pretty much the moment I started seriously looking into the matter of disinformation and consequently, lead to my decision to walk away from activism although I still carry fond memories of this time in my life.
I have to admit that part of my life was really neat, and progressively detaching from it was a painful experience. It was a mixture of accepting things that I had no control over and creating new paths to regain the will to become something else.