This is Not Propaganda

Stunning and much anticipated follow up to the acclaimed, prize-winning, Nothing is True and Everything is Possible

The TIMES, OBSERVER and EVENING STANDARD BOOK OF THE WEEK 'The world's most powerful people are lying like never before, and no one understands the art of their lies like Peter Pomerantsev.' Oliver Bullough, author of Moneyland: The Inside Story of the Crooks and Kleptocrats Who Rule the World When information is a weapon, everyone is at war. We live in a world of influence operations run amok, a world of dark ads, psy-ops, hacks, bots, soft facts, ISIS, Putin, trolls, Trump. We've lost not only our sense of peace and democracy - but our sense of what those words even mean. As Peter Pomerantsev seeks to make sense of the disinformation age, he meets Twitter revolutionaries and pop-up populists, 'behavioural change' salesmen, Jihadi fan-boys, Identitarians, truth cops, and much more. Forty years after his dissident parents were pursued by the KGB, he finds the Kremlin re-emerging as a great propaganda power. His research takes him back to Russia - but the answers he finds there are surprising. Part reportage, part intellectual adventure, This is Not Propaganda is a Pynchon-like exploration of how we can reimagine our politics and ourselves in a time where truth has been turned topsy-turvy. 'Through our current smog of smouldering bullshit, This is Not Propaganda shines a necessary, humane and dissident light.' Nick Rankin, author of Churchill's Wizards: the British Genius for Deception 1914-1945 'Groundbreaking.' CNN

Auteur
Peter Pomerantsev is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Global Affairs at the London School of Economics, studying 21st century information manipulation and how to fix it. An author and TV producer, he is a widely-cited expert on disinformation and media, and writes for publications including Granta, The Atlantic, Financial Times, and many others. His first book, Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, won the 2016 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, and was nominated for the Samuel Johnson, Guardian First Book, Pushkin House and Gordon Burns Prizes. It has been translated into over a dozen languages.

Texte du rabat

The follow-up to the acclaimed "Nothing Is True & Everything Is Possible" is reminiscent of Thomas Pynchon's novels in its investigation of the complex affronts to democracy, stability and traditional power as posed by technology and the influence of populists, dissidents and mischief-makers it allows.

Résumé
Perhaps the most important global trend of the last few years has been the rise - and transformation - of information warfare.