Dear Mr. David Barnea,
Congrats on your new appointment! I hope you’ve settled in.
There are a hundred people employed by your agency who know more about the moral psychology of propaganda than I do. Perhaps more in your office alone. I’ve spent 50 years living near the center of North America with no horse in the Israeli State.
My politics are not important. If you’re interested, I have none. I’m Anti-State and Anti-Coercion.
It makes me generally distrustful of all politics, intelligence, and government agencies.
I’m writing to you today in your capacity as Director of the Mossad. I really couldn’t care a sausage about the State of Israel, that’s your job, but we do both have concern for the safety of the Jewish people.
A wolf in sheep’s clothing has inculcated the Anglosphere. Other than Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, no one else examining wokeness understands it for the threat it actually is.
Wokeness is a legitimate threat to Jewish citizens everywhere.
More operations and power are attributed to your agency, by the public, than your budget would ever allow. There’s a case to be made that this is exactly the strategy an intelligence agency should make.
That’s not my business, obviously, that’s your business.
We both have an interest in what the Chinese intelligence agencies might refer to mockingly as the “Baizu” (the White Left) refers to a seemingly innocuous trend that looks like a silly new strain of Marxism.
Wokeness looks, to many people on the American Left as silly and to the American Right, it looks like a Jewish Conspiracy.
Many Jews in the United States are Jew Baizu.
If my theory is correct, wokeness is a much less sophisticated, passive-aggressive, pseudo-Marxism which spread through the American Left (Jew Baizu) via the Civil Rights Movement and through the Jewish American Right, via the Pro Life Movement.
Rather than traditional theories that “The Jews” created Wokeness, I maintain it was actually the German speaking Minnesota Hutterites, which explains some of its striking Puritanical similarities.
In either event, the Jew Baizu countries were ripe for inculcation via unscrupulous elements within the Civil Rights and Pro-Life Movements.
Both of which are Puritanical and Totalitarian movements.
People within these moral movements are blinded to the bad actors or malignant outcomes from their Puritanical beliefs.
Their self-replicating belief systems hijack human organizations by exploiting victim sanctity taboos.
The moral certainty and totalizing groupthink hijacks intellect, moral compassion and overrides ethical structures making post war Baizu Jews particularly susceptible to woke takeover.
Red and Blue they become part of a mindhive particularly susceptible to certain propaganda.
I’ve read significant analysis of “wokeness” and believe it has a precise parallel in the QAnon phenomena. Recent books by Andrew Doyle and Noah Rotman make similar observations.
In each case, the Oppressor | Conspiracy class struggle will inevitably target “The Jews” (™), Israel, and the Jewish People. For that purpose alone, it’s worth exploring Wokeness as a Puritan totalitarian expression of still unlearned lessons from the 20th Century.
Perhaps most disturbingly, it targets moral agency which means men and Jews will be early targets. I’ve spent years cataloging the legal and social derogation of men in United States law and culture.
Of all the analysis I’ve read and decades of observations, no book I’ve read better illustrates the pervasive nature of the #woke_mind_virus as David Bernstein’s Woke Antisemitism.
My assumption is any intelligence agency in the world will have pro-woke and anti-woke sympathies and operations. Agents or partners of your department on either side of that divide would do well to read and analyze Bernstein’s book.
For the pro-woke, you may be able to get ahead of the impending right wing backlash armed with Bernstein’s persuasive “wokeness = antisemitism” messaging.
For the anti-woke, Bernstein provides keen insights into the audience he’s trying to reach and perhaps inadvertently, reveals the precise mechanisms this Puritanical hivemind has used to exploit the sympathies of Jews.
While right-leaning Antisemitism tends to be easy to spot, left-leaning variants can be less less transparent, due to their use of language obscuring opaque bigotry. Opaque, of course, until it’s too late. For the woke and anti-woke camps alike, Bernstein shows how Jews themselves can be used to generate Antisemitic attitudes.
Bernstein and the mostly Baizu American Jews he profiles in his book show very specific values and moral compassion that makes them uniquely susceptible to woke messaging and visual propaganda.
More importantly, Bernstein, more than anyone I’ve read, has effectively highlighted implications of the woke takeover of legal policy.
Legal policy is a complex and critically important, under-explored area of concern among critics of wokeness. Not just because of its impacts but because of the inductive power within Bureaus and Agencies. Agencies with a high preponderance of women are more susceptible to woke takeover.
Thiel, Musk, and former US Security Analyst Stephen Coughlin at Unconstrained Analytics all have an understanding of AI’s use in propaganda. This is the where I see the largest opportunity to reduce antisemitism, as well as reducing Jew hatred, and make the Jewish people and even the State of Israel safer.
Thiel, Musk, and Coughlin do not underestimate the power of this AI-driven socially generated pseudo reality, nor do I.
Humor
I actually don’t know how real this observation is, but in the last few years, the Mossad and the Israeli Govt. seem to have stepped up their use of humor in their operations, messaging, and diplomacy.
If so, keep up this investment in humor. It’s a good investment.
Humor can create very effective and sticky propaganda. Obviously, its creation and dissemination can be mechanized to varying degrees with AI. You’re obviously aware and have AI teams testing natural language processing for sentiment analysis.
Hypnotist Scott Adams predicted that AI art would objectively surpass human art very quickly, because it’s made of formulas. Adams’ 35-year career as a professional daily joke writer qualifies him as an expert on vectors of those humor formulas.
I would imagine several members of the Israeli govt watch Scott Adams’ Daily Podcast on persuasion, predictions, and politics. He was the best predictor in the world during the pandemic.
He brings receipts.
Adams would be a perfect asset to brief your AI team on how to use and program Jewish humor.
This is No Joke.
If I had $10,000,000 to spend on a single propaganda operation, I would spend it on a remake of Alan Zweig’s When Jews Were Funny.
I’d capture interviews of Jewish comedians talking about the history of older Jewish Comedians. I’d study Jewish humor as far back as I could go.
An in-depth study of tested Jewish jokes and humor would reveal a surprising amount of insight into attitudes about Israel and the Jewish People.
The clincher would be just before releasing the funds, you release an official statement denying your involvement in the project and never back down from this position.
It would be the funniest joke in the history of statecraft.
More importantly, the entire project can help design an AI modeling database for not just sentiment analysis, but sentiment generation at scale.
There is a silent warning in this article. The alarm bell I’d like to ring and the opportunity I believe it represents for the Mossad, the State of Israel, and/or the Jewish people.
Someone is going to design, test and deploy AI robojews and jewbots to shape global public opinion about the Mossad, Israel, and Jews. It will not take long for them to pass a Turing Test.
Anyone who believes otherwise is not up to date on natural language processing.
Someone is going to design and deploy bots (Jewbots and Robojews) to sway public opinion for any number of intentions, creating intentional, iatrogenic, and paradoxical effects in the process.
If someone is going to model and design robojews to shape public opinion, it should totally be the Mossad.
I can not think of any better freshwater diplomacy than for the Mossad or the State of Israel to weaponize Jewish Humor.
Because it would be funny.
