Books › This Is Not Propaganda
This Is Not Propaganda
300 pages
A dizzying, globe-trotting descent into the funhouse mirror of modern disinformation and the weaponization of reality.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like stepping into a geopolitical hall of mirrors. It is a brisk, globe-trotting piece of narrative journalism that reads almost like a cyberpunk thriller, yet remains chillingly grounded in our current reality. The prose is sharp and wry, weaving the author's deeply personal family history with surreal dispatches from the front lines of global information warfare. You are plunged into a paranoid, dread-tinged atmosphere where bots, trolls, and spin doctors manipulate the very fabric of truth. Despite the heavy subject matter, the pacing is propulsive, driven by fascinating, often bizarre character studies. It will thoroughly captivate readers who are trying to make sense of our disorienting post-truth era, offering a sobering but intellectually exhilarating journey through the modern machinery of deception.
- Mood
- surreal
- paranoid
- dread-tinged
- intellectually stimulating
- Tone
- urgent
- wry
- analytical
- disorienting
- personal
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- erosion of truth · weaponized information · surrealism of modern politics · historical echoes of authoritarianism · fragility of reality
- The writing
- Sharp, narrative-driven journalism that blends memoir with surreal, almost novelistic reportage.
- The arc
- Moves from a dizzying sense of global disorientation to a sobering, deeply personal reflection on the fragility of truth.
- Who it's for
- Readers who want to understand the psychological and cultural mechanics of the post-truth era through a deeply human, narrative lens.
Content notes
- political gaslighting
- authoritarianism
- state-sponsored violence
- cyber warfare
About the book
We live in a world of influence operations run amok, where dark ads, psyops, hacks, bots, soft facts, ISIS, Putin, trolls, and Trump seek to shape our very reality. In this surreal atmosphere created to disorient us and undermine our sense of truth, we've lost not only our grip on peace and democracy--but our very notion of what those words even mean. The author takes us to the front lines of the disinformation age, where he meets Twitter revolutionaries and pop-up populists, "behavioral change" salesmen, Jihadi fanboys, Identitarians, truth cops, and many others. Forty years after his dissident parents were pursued by the KGB, Pomerantsev finds the Kremlin re-emerging as a great propaganda power. His research takes him back to Russia--but the answers he finds there are not what he expected.
Description from Open Library.
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