The Complete Guide to Information Warfare Through Disinfolklore

Information warfare is not new. What is new is the scale at which narrative can be manufactured and distributed — and the analytical method that can detect it. This guide traces the arc from 18th-century folklore movements through Russia’s modern troll farms to the Twelve Tools framework developed by a diplomat who witnessed information warfare at the front line.

Part I: How Folklore Created Nations

Herder 1777: The Blueprint

“Great empire! Empire of ten peoples, Germany! You have no Shakespeare. Have you also no songs of your forebears of which you can boast? The voice of your fathers has faded and lies silent in the dust…”

Source: Ways of Seeing Disinfolklore II

Johann Gottfried Herder’s 1777 plea to the German tribes launched the European folklore collection movement. His insight was simple and revolutionary: a people without shared stories has no shared identity. And without shared identity, there is no nation.

The modern nation state was created after Herder’s 1777 plea to unite the 10 German tribes behind a set of stories (folklore or more accurately folksongs) typifying Germanness. The Brothers Grimm, Goethe and later Wagner answered that call. And 90 years later the first unified German state was created. Identity is wholly a function of stories.

Source: Our Disinfolklore Universe

The pipeline from folk song to nation state took ninety years. The same model was copied across Europe: Norway (Asbjornsen and Moe), Ireland (the Celtic Twilight), Finland (the Kalevala), Italy, Greece, Belgium. In every case, folklore collection was the method by which communities demonstrated shared identity and claimed sovereignty. See Folklore Origins.

The Dark Turn: When Folklore Becomes Weapon

Disinfolklore is an artificial means of creating a collective consciousness in any community. By contrast the collection of folktale songs during 18th and 19th centuries was a good faith attempt to record actual existing culture.

Source: Pensees (110)

Here is the pivot. Folklore collection was positive — genuine communities articulating shared identity. Disinfolklore is its dark twin: the artificial manufacture of identity through deliberately constructed stories. Serbia’s use of epic poetry to justify genocide. Nazi Germany’s weaponisation of volkisch mythology. Soviet active measures. Each took the folklore-to-nation-state model and reversed it. See History of Disinfolklore.

Part II: Russia’s Industrial Disinfolklore Apparatus

The Great Insight

Ruschia’s great insight was that an entirely new culture could be created using Disinfolklore. Ruschia set out in April 2014 to hack the identities of Ukrainians living in Russia-occupied Ukraine. Goal was to convince Ukrainians in Ruschia-occupied Ukraine that their fellow Ukrainians across the Donets river were monsters trying to kill them.

Source: Pensees (110)

Russia weaponised the entire folklore-collection model. Where Herder collected existing songs, Russia manufactured new ones at industrial scale. Schools, mass media, universities, the legal system — every institution in occupied territories was infiltrated with rhetoric designed to create a new identity from scratch.

The Internet Research Agency: Disinfolklore at Scale

The Chef’s Internet Research Agency enspelled America and England into voting for Trump and Brexit.

Source: Meta-Disinfolklore (7)

The Chef Saucerer Prigozhin built literal factories for Disinfolklore production. The troll farms operated according to a military-style structure:

Russian troll farms operate according to this distinction between Vectors and Meanings. Each morning, that day’s micro “Meanings” are distributed among the troll farm operators. Then, the trolls are assigned tasks to create or propagate vectors to implant these micro Meanings in the minds of whichever audience they’re responsible for targeting.

Source: Disinfolklore (3)

This is the Disinfolklore Propagation Apparatus — the industrial distribution system for narrative warfare. See Prigozhin Coup Forecast for how analysing this system enabled the author to predict the June 2023 Wagner coup.

Reflexive Control: Engineering Your Enemy’s Choices

The core Russia military doctrine of Cross Domain Coercion depends on what Russian military theorists call Reflexive Control. Using Reflexive Control Russia convinces its enemies (whether states or individuals) to act of their own volition voluntarily in ways which benefit Russia.

Source: (III) Trigger, Experience, Reaction

Reflexive Control is the mechanism behind all Disinfolklore. You do not force compliance — you engineer the stories so that people choose to comply. Russia maps your reflexes, designs a meme to exploit them, and waits for the predictable reaction. “Don’t Poke the Bear” is a Reflexive Control meme so successful that NATO’s own national security advisers repeat it without knowing they are doing a Disinfolklorist’s work. See Provocation Logic Cycle.

Part III: How It Works on Your Mind

Trigger, Experience, Reaction

Every piece of information warfare works through the same three-step process:

Step 1: Something in your environment triggers your emotions. Step 2: You experience a feeling / feelings with a certain (set of) qualities: anger, fear, disgust, sadness, or enjoyment. Step 3: You react in a particular way, either reflexively (automatically) or carefully, to that feeling.

Source: Trigger, Experience, Reaction (I)

The gap between experience and reaction is where your freedom lives — and where Disinfolklorists operate. See Tool 5: Trigger-Experience-Reaction.

The Inner and Outer Realms

Disinfolklore exploits a cognitive division between our Inner Realm (the mind, where archetypes live) and the Outer Realm (the physical world). Information warfare crosses this border: it implants archetypes in the Inner Realm that change how we perceive and act in the Outer Realm.

Coercive Control at Scale

Disinfolklore’s strategic purpose is Coercive Control: the same dynamics that operate in domestic abuse — create dependence, inflict pain, blame the victim — operate at the level of the state.

The negative chain: Coercive Control (strategic purpose) → Provocation Logic (“Don’t Poke the Bear”) → Spectacle (we become passive Watchers).

Part IV: How to Fight Back — The Twelve Tools

The Twelve Tools provide a complete analytical method:

Detection (Tools 1-5)

The Bridge (Tool 6)

The Code of Positive Trolls classifies any meme as Positive (Infolklore), Negative (Disinfolklore), or Neutral using six criteria.

Adjudication (Tools 7-12)

Part V: The Constructive Vision

In Counter Disinfolklore, we consciously disrupt archetypal identities. Or, we forge our own archetypes. We engage in conscious memetic warfare according to certain rules of engagement, which Counter Disinfolklorists like us need to master and mistress.

Source: Our Disinfolklore Universe

The positive chain: Counter-Disinfolklore → Code of Positive Trolls → Adjudication → Rearchetyping → Infolklore

Information warfare can be defeated, but not by fact-checking alone. It requires understanding the narrative structures at play, detecting the archetypes being weaponised, and forging better archetypes to replace them. The Twelve Tools provide the method. The rest is practice.

Go Deeper

• What Is Disinfolklore? — the foundational definition
• Disinfolklore vs Disinformation — why fact-checking alone fails
• My Seven Years Monitoring Disinformation — the author’s field experience
• Archetypes — the framework applied to real-world events
• Advanced Path — for those who want the full depth