By Garry J. Moes

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In a world where “information” is so ubiquitous, we often now speak of information overload. TMI (two much information) has become a byword.

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More troubling is the frequent confusion of two information-related terms: misinformation and disinformation. As we encounter these increasingly common terms, we see that they are very often used interchangeably, as if they really mean the same thing.

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They do not. And it is extremely important that the consumer of information thoroughly understand that they do not.

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“Information has real-life consequences,” an online dictionary’s commentary correctly observes. “It can be a literal life-saver—when it’s true. Unfortunately, the opposite is also true. Untrue information can cause great harm. Like a virus, wrong information can spread, causing what’s been called an ‘infodemic.’”

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“Misinformation,” simply, is information that is wrong: false or mistaken information. In our time, everyone in the world is a purveyor of information, but most lack the skills to ferret out the truth or falsity of the information and rumors they spread through social media and similar means of mass communication. As the old maxim says, “Nobody’s perfect.”

 

We can all make mistakes. We all forget things. We mishear or misremember details. We tell our friends something we heard on TV or saw on social media that wasn’t really true. If you are spreading around information that is wrong, but you don’t know it is wrong, then you are, well, technically, spreading misinformation. (dictionary.com)

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The critical distinction between misinformation and disinformation is intent.

Disinformation is misinformation that is deliberately, knowingly, and intentionally spread for nefarious purposes. It means…

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…false information, as about a country’s military strength or plans, disseminated by a government or intelligence agency in a hostile act of tactical political subversion. It is also used more generally to mean “deliberately misleading or biased information; manipulated narrative or facts; propaganda.

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Disinformation is very powerful, destructive, and divisive, and is a common tool of espionage. Countries often have an interest in intentionally spreading fake information to their rival nations, as the Soviet Union and United States did during the Cold War, for instance. When a country or group coordinates a complicated plan of spreading disinformation, it is often referred to as a disinformation campaign.

 

Former U.S. President Donald Trump was well-known for using the phrase “fake news.” In doing so, he was clearly not referring to simple false “information,” but rather “disinformation.”

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The use of disinformation by the communist, socialist, progressive left (its primary purveyor in our times) actually precedes the Cold War by many years. It was a key tool of sinister forces at the beginning of the Bolshevik revolution in the Soviet Union. The Great Soviet Encyclopedia contains a reference to the term, in Russian, dezinformatsiya, defined as having two French roots: dé(s), meaning removal or elimination, and information, meaning knowledge.

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The GSE defines disinformation as the dissemination through press and radio of false data with the purpose of misleading public opinion. It goes on to say that the capitalist press and radio broadly use disinformation to deceive the people of the world and to portray the new war that the policy of the Soviet Union and the people’s democracies [advance] as aggressive.

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This would have been a broadly accurate definition of disinformation if the alleged roles of the “imperialist” and Soviet blocs had been reversed. In fact, disinformation has been used to a varying extent throughout the history of the Soviet Union. (Anatoliy Golitsyn, New Lies for Old, [New York: Dodd, Mead, & Co.], 1984, pp. 291-294)

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Anatoliy Golitsyn, a former Communist Party official and KGB counterintelligence officer, outlined in extensive detail a comprehensive and deliberate effort by communist governments and agents worldwide to mislead and misdirect the western world in its studies, assessments, and policies dealing with the communist world. The technique was that which was defined by the Soviets’ own encyclopedia as the elimination of knowledge — disinformation. The Lie.

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Golitsyn defined disinformation as…

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A systematic effort to disseminate false information and to distort or withhold information so as to misrepresent the real situation in, and policies of, the communist world and thereby to confuse, deceive, and influence the noncommunist world, to jeopardize its policies, and to induce Western adversaries to contribute unwittingly to the achievement of communist objectives. (Ibid. p. 5)

 

As the world knows, the Soviet bloc’s objectives at the time succeeded for a while, but ultimately failed as its own citizens learned the truth about the communist/socialist empire’s character and evil designs. Mankind’s innate desire for liberty won the day.

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For a time.

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The Soviet Empire has fallen, but its diabolical philosophies and impulses remained latent until resurrected within the West itself in socialistic liberalism, capitalistic globalist imperialism, and today’s radical “progressive” movements of all stripes.

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Communist external policy … is global, ideological, and long-range, and has the final objective of world domination. It is inherently inclined to take the initiative unless forced onto the defensive by an extraordinary combination of circumstances. … Communism is always inclined to, and usually prepared, to take advantage of any crisis in a noncommunist country; it is required to do so by its long-term unlimited objectives. (Ibid. p. 5-7)

 

The media are the primary vehicles for progressivist disinformation. This is why people committed to the truth must learn to be alert to the objectives and tactics of the present world’s increasingly overt Liars. They need to be able to cut through distortions of the global progressive movement’s mass communication efforts. But make no mistake: when the aggressive progressives are put on the defense, as Trump succeeded in doing, they will, and currently are, engage(d) in total warfare. Thus, the intensive, no-holds-barred, hatred and persecution of Trump and his mass of followers who demonstrate that the progressive “jig is up.” The prosecution of Trump before, during, and after his presidency and of the so-called “January 6 insurrectionists” are exhibits No. 1 and 2.

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A LESSON FROM HISTORY

An historic illustration of the use of disinformation is an operation in the early days of the Soviet Revolution known as The Trust. It was a false organization of internal dissent created by the head of the Soviet secret police, Felix Dzerzhinsky, immediately after the revolution. The Trust was given wide credibility as a genuine dissent and secret counter-revolutionary group. It was created deliberately for the purpose of luring emigrés, ex-patriots, and internal opponents of the new Communist regime to return home or come forward for cooperation with the supposed underground organization. Once the trap was sprung on the unsuspecting targets, they were treated brutally, blackmailed into compliance with revolutionary goals, imprisoned, or murdered. Many highly placed and notable opponents of the regime, including key foreign agents, were trapped, enlisted, converted, or eliminated by The Trust operation before Stalin, dedicated to more overtly oppressive measures, ordered it dismantled. There is substantial evidence that this highly successful operation saved the revolution by pre-empting a coup by exiled emigrés led by the shadowy British secret agent Sidney Riley, who headed an alternative underground government poised for the takeover, with himself as the president. According to one account, Reilly saw through The Trust and sacrificed his own life in a last-ditch effort to expose it. He disappeared and his body was never found. In any event, The Trust disinformation operation can accurately be said to have altered the course of history.

 

The tactics of The Trust frighteningly foreshadowed questions that now swirl around the January 6, 2021, alleged insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and the ongoing all-out war against traditional American values so despised by the progressive left. Whistleblowers and others have alleged that government agents were the true provocateurs of the Jan. 6 events.

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The vision of the 27th Communist Party Congress at the height of, but waning, Soviet power seems to still be alive. In 1986, the Congress adopted a platform for the remainder of the century and beyond which, according to Radio Moscow at the time, defined the “contemporary epoch” in these words: “It is an epoch of transition from capitalism to socialism and communism, of the historical competition between the two world social and political systems, an epoch of social and national liberation revolutions, of the collapse of colonialism, an epoch of struggle by the main motive forces of social development — world socialism, the working class and communist movements — against imperialism, aggression and oppression, for democracy and social progress.”

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Listen carefully to the ravings of the current progressive left, and you will hear echoes of these objectives.

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Disinformation activities can be virtually unlimited since law, morality, and authority in the radical leftist system serve only the purposes of the progressive social order and its political and societal reorientation agenda. Art and culture also have become key tools of disinformation.

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Given total control over the communications media, [socialist and progressive] governments need have no fear of adverse publicity; they can say one thing in public and do the opposite in private with complete impunity They can also use for disinformation purposes the facilities of their intelligence and security services, which operate on a scale and with an immunity unparalleled in [history of] the West. (Golitsyn, Op.Cit., p. 8)

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Consider the present state of the FBI and CIA.

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Golitsyn warned nearly 45 years ago that disinformation provides the cloak or screen and also the means of exerting influence. It is, he said, the combination of aggressiveness with disinformation that gives the aggressive left [and we might now add, today’s aggressive capitalist global oligarchy] its conspiratorial character. “This combination is not a matter of speculation but an existing and constant reality … that cannot be arbitrarily ignored … without affecting the accuracy of” any assessments of their designs.

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