Message to Meme-Wielding-Gunfighters on the Digital Battlefield
Memes are key tools to win the ideological metaphysical fight.
Memes influence ideas.
Ideas influence and form beliefs.
Beliefs generate and influence political positions combined with feelings and emotions.
Feelings and emotions produce actions, which inform and influence behavior.
Never retreat from the battlefield [Twitter, FB, etc.].
Contact with the enemy, ‘friendlies’ or the community at large provides a vehicle or medium for memes to travel and replicate.
Without contact the conditions for meme transmission are severed.
In the absence of contact, memes are not transmitted, replicated, or re-transmitted.
Information warfare.
Attacking an ideology is among the most difficult assaults known to conventional warfare practitioners.
Meme-warfare enters into the hotly contested battlefields inside the minds of our enemies and particularly inside the minds of the undecided.
Memes can and should be used like medicine to inoculate against the enemy and generate popular support.
“Our enemies have skillfully adapted to fighting wars in today's media age…. The violent extremist[s] have established ‘media relations committees’—and have proven to be highly successful at manipulating opinion elites. They plan and design their headlinegrabbing attacks using every means of communications to intimidate and break the collective will of free people.”
Welcome to the Digital Battlefield.
https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a507172.pdf