The Founding Act of Modern Disinfolklore

I first noticed the Disinfolklore Universe now spreading through our neural networks, like triffids rewilding the garden of Eden, when it was in a more primitive form. In 2016, I was a diplomat posted to eastern Ukraine. Russia’s army, cosplaying as Little Green Men, Polite Folk and Odin-worshipping soldiers from the Nazi-inspired “Wagner” corps, had occupied part of Ukraine in 2014.

Working in that Steppe-land, I realised that I perceived part of reality through cognitive lenses — archetypes — that had entered my mind as a small child from folktale-inspired stories. Russian Disinfolklorists were leaning into this aspect of Indo-Europeans’ cognition and riffing off what Karl Jung suggested are primordial archetypal identities.

Source: Disinfolklore (1)

This is the origin story of the entire Disinfolklore framework. The author’s detection of the “Little Green Men” troll — soldiers in unmarked uniforms, given folkloristic names by Russian propaganda — was the moment the analytical method was born. The recognition that Russia was weaponising the same archetypes we encounter as children in fairy tales.

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