How to Spot a Psychological Operation

A beginner's guide to psyops and the Pied Piper Conspiracy Theory

Long-time readers of mine, as well as newcomers who fell in love my writing to the point of voraciously reading everything I’ve ever written (I see you, don’t worry, your secret is safe with me), are aware that I have a few articles containing the question “stupid or psyop” in the title. Let’s be honest, however: if a conspiracy theory smells like a psyop, then it probably is one. In order to determine this, there are four simple questions that need to be answered.

Question № 1: cui bono (who benefits)?

Should the theorised conspiracy benefit a large organisation if true, then there is a strong possibility that the conspiracy is real, and the large organisation invented the notion of it being a “conspiracy theory” to begin with in order to discourage investigation and thus cover its tracks.

Question № 2: is there a diverse group of people who share a singular bizarre belief?

One of the things that large organisations, including governments, like to do in order to hide their nefarious activities, is to misdirect anyone investigating them. Critics from all directions will thus be led down an artificial rabbit hole following a trail of red herrings. In other words, people on the periphery¹ will have vastly differing beliefs save for this singular conspiracy theory.

Question № 3: are there any unreasonable assumptions that must be made in order for this conspiracy to be real?

Some conspiracy theories are logically consistent, and some are not. A conspiracy theory that is logically inconsistent may be easily dismissed, whereas one that is logically consistent and otherwise well thought out has an excellent chance of being true.

Question № 4: is the conspiracy theory used as a dismissive or divisive talking point?

If a conspiracy theory is used by political polemicists in order to dismiss their opposition in an obvious guilt-by-association/strawman compound fallacy, then there is a good chance that said conspiracy theory is a psyop. Remember, regime apparatchiks aren’t necessarily given a list of things to say, but in their competition with each other, they have the same set of talking points, and whoever can cram the most polemicist talking points into an opinion piece wins the most prestige within the Cathedral.

With those out of the way, let’s look at two examples, neither of which have a “smoking gun,” and thus haven’t been confirmed, as far as I know, to be psyops. The first potential pysop is the Flat Earth Society, and the second is the military reformist movement. Let’s see how they fit the pattern, shall we?

Answer № 1 is the same for both: the government benefits from people believing in this nonsense, because it keeps dissidents distracted by stuff that isn’t real, and easily discredits critics of the establishment. Bear in mind that not all psyops are government projects; some are the projects of large corporations or other NGOs.²

Answer № 2 is also the same for both: a resounding “yes.” Neither flat Earthers nor military reformists are politically partisan. Flat Earthers in particular are constantly injecting themselves into dissident circles, so leftists, conservatives, libertarians, anarchists, and third positionists alike are constantly refuting flat Earthers. Military reformists are not as infamous because their beliefs don’t sound nearly as ridiculous at first, but they can also be found in leftist, conservative, libertarian, anarchist, and third positionist circles.³ Military reformists aren’t even reliably anti-war, some are pro-war, and blame over-reliance on technology for the decline of the GAE,⁴ along with whatever new policy within the military that they don’t like.

Answer № 3 is twofold for the Flat Earth Society. One of the reasons that we know that the flat Earth conspiracy is nonsense is because flat Earthers first of all cannot agree on the actual shape of the Earth. There are multiple versions of the flat Earth map, not just the one that looks like the United Nations flag. Flat Earthers cannot even agree on whether or not Australia exists. Furthermore, flat Earthers are constantly re-inventing the conspiracy behind how the government deceives people into thinking the Earth is round, or otherwise making up excuses as to why they cannot actually prove their case. On the other hand, the idea that the Flat Earth Society is a government psyop is pretty simple and consistent: in order to keep people divided and distracted, the government amplifies this particular conspiracy theory in all its forms in order to waste everyone’s time. Does this mean that every flat Earther is a government agent? No, because that isn’t necessary for the psyop to work. Even the surveillance state, which is demonstrably real, doesn’t rely entirely on government agents, but on the innumerable moral busybodies who will happily rat out dissidents to the State.

Answer № 3 is considerably more straightforward for the military reformists, but I will need to elaborate simply because this conspiracy is not as well-known. First of all, reformists are nearly all former Pentagon insiders, and their accusations of military procurement being a circus designed to funnel money into the pockets of a few generals are usually cases of confession by projection. These people are not whistleblowers who became alarmed at the corruption within the Pentagon, despite how James Burton tried to frame them in his apocryphal memoir titled The Pentagon Wars: Reformers Challenge the Old Guard, which was adapted into a black comedy, and no, the irony is not lost on me that the “old guard” were the ones developing new technology, whereas the “reformers” were (and still are) a bunch of luddites. In short, Burton is no Edward Snowden; Snowden is a hero, Burton is a grifter. The reformists have gotten quite rich pissing and moaning about every new piece of military hardware that they weren’t personally invested in, and the legacy media is happy to lap it all up in order to boost its popularity, something that the media notably doesn’t do with flat Earth because it is unnecessary. The reason for this difference is because flat Earth is meant to ensnare compulsive contrarians and other neurodivergent thinkers, whereas military reformism is meant to ensnare normies and pseudo-dissidents who believe that the system can be fixed; the former can be manipulated only via reverse psychology, whereas the latter are easily manipulated via establishment appeals to their existing values. Remember, any idiot will buy the narrative that the government is currently corrupt; it takes a special mind to believe that government is inherently corrupt.

Answer № 4 is a resounding “yes” for flat-Earth. Regime apparatchiks are quite happy to smear all dissidents as flat-Earthers, reinforcing the notion that only subhuman evil morons could possibly oppose the Glorious State. Oh, you think I’m exaggerating when I say that the apparatchiks smear dissidents as flat Earthers? Here’s an example:

This clown’s blog is an absolute treat if you enjoy progs making asses of themselves.

Answer № 4 is also a resounding “yes” for the reformists. Because there are reformists who are leftist, rightist, authoritarian, libertarian, pro-war, and anti-war, the war machine can always find someone who is opposed to spending money on developing new weapons systems who is also opposed to whatever else the wider regime happens to be pushing at that time.

This pattern, incidentally, conforms to something called the Pied Piper Conspiracy Theory. This is the idea that large and powerful organisations invent wacky stories and put them out there so that people who question their official statements never learn the truth, and instead have their time wasted by following long an convoluted trails of misleading clues. Once again, I will let MentisWave elaborate:

In a future article, I will do a deep dive into the military reformist movement, because chances are excellent that you have encountered it before and not even realised it.

Edit: here it is. A word of warning: you will need half an hour to read through it, jumping up to closer to an hour-and-a-half if you watch the videos contained within:

It’s a lesser-known dissident group, mainly because it’s hiding in plain sight and propped up by the legacy media. I’ve provided something of a primer already, but it’s a fairly deep rabbit hole that requires going over the history of military aircraft development during the early Cold War and what a shit-show that was. One thing to keep in mind is that reformists typically share some other crazy beliefs as well, such as Nazis in Antarctica, Q-Anon, Lysenkoism, white privilege, the wage gap, and genocide denial (and those are just the ones I know about). In addition, a lot of them are outright frauds, taking credit for the work of other people in order to portray themselves as much bigger deals than they actually were “back in the day.” That alone will be enough to turn most people off to the shit they have to say about military procurement, but not only is that a variation on the guilt by association fallacy, there are still plenty of people who are willing to listen to these nutters on their subjects of alleged expertise and uncritically regurgitate their bullshit. Thus, the lies of the military reformist movement need to be debunked on their own merit.

Anyway, rather than prattling on and making this article longer than necessary, I’ll wrap it up here. Now that I’ve hopefully given you some food for thought, have you encountered a conspiracy theory that might be a psychological operation? If so, I’d love to read about it. I love conspiracy theories, and I need some new ones, because the old ones keep turning out to be true.

1. Referring to Alain de Benoists’s “periphery against the centre”

2. Non-government organisations; mind you, a lot of these organisations are not officially part of the government, but are very heavily intertwined with it anyway.

3. One of the prevailing narratives within the military reformist movement is the half-truth of superior Nazi technology. Despite a lot of technological innovations that came about as a direct result of the Nazi war machine, Nazi Germany did not possess an overall higher level of technology than the Allies. For every technological marvel “ahead of its time” that the Nazis produced, you can find one from one of the Allied powers.

4. Global American Empire