Defending the Truth: An Activist’s Guide to Fighting Foreign Disinformation Warfare

(Dayton, OH) I recommend Maciej Bartkowski’s Defending the Truth: An Activist’s Guide to Fighting Foreign Disinformation Warfare from the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict. It’s free, concise, practical, and inspiring.

Some examples of advice:

Establish local networks that can be rapidly activated to verify accuracy of shared information or legitimacy of online personas that call for certain actions in the community.

Educate, drill, and practice. … Teach how to identify a deep fake and conspiracy theories and ways to react to them.

Be aware of anonymous interlocutors who attempt to draw you to causes that seemingly align with your own activism goals. Ask them to reveal their identities first before committing to anything. … Do your homework by vetting your potential partners. Perform due diligence by asking the following questions: Who are these anonymous personas asking me to join an online protest group or alive street protest? Do they know anything about my community? Who do they represent? …

Insist on a degree of self-control in community interactions. Civility does not preclude a conflict, but conflict must always be carried  out through disciplined, nonviolent means.

Declare your commitment to truth and verifiable facts, including making public and honest corrections if you inadvertently shared inaccurate information or joined actions set up by fake personas. Praise those who adhere to truth or publicly retract untruthful information that they might have previously shared.

Stress the importance of truth in community as a matter of inviolable human rights. There are no human rights without state institutions being truthful to citizens. There is no public truth without respect for human rights.