Under the guise of foreign assistance the US Agency for International Development has been used to promote US foreign policy and regime change throughout the globe.
A recent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request surfaced a 97-page “disinformation primer” authored by the US Agency for International Development (USAID). The extensive document reveals Washington’s priorities in instituting online censorship and combating so-called “fake news” in the post-Trump, post-Brexit era.
But “much of the organization’s focus appears to be on preventing individuals from finding information online that challenges official narratives and leads to increased questioning of the system more generally,” says journalist Alan MacLeod in an analysis published by MintPress News.
Anthropologist Adrienne Pine joined Sputnik’s Political Misfits program Thursday to discuss the article and shed light on one of the United States’ most underhanded tools of global subversion.
“USAID’s focus relates to “misinformation, disinformation and mal-information,” notes host Michelle Witte, referring to terms which are employed frequently by so-called experts in the field. “Malinformation” has proven to be perhaps the most controversial among the three, referring to factually true information presented in a way to allegedly harm or manipulate.
Malinformation may lead people towards inconvenient narratives for those in power such as the conclusion that Israeli ethnic cleansing is bad or the Iraq War wasn’t about “spreading democracy.”