This Is Not Propaganda - by Peter Pomerantsev (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Learn how the perception of truth has been weaponized in modern politics with this "insightful" account of propaganda in Russia and beyond during the age of disinformation (New York Times).

Winner of the Gordon Burn Prize

When information is a weapon, every opinion is an act of war.

We live in a world of influence operations run amok, where dark ads, psyops, hacks, bots, soft facts, ISIS, Putin, trolls, and Trump seek to shape our very reality. In this surreal atmosphere created to disorient us and undermine our sense of truth, we've lost not only our grip on peace and democracy -- but our very notion of what those words even mean.

Peter Pomerantsev takes us to the front lines of the disinformation age--from Kiev to Manilla--where he meets Twitter revolutionaries and pop-up populists, "behavioral change" salesmen, Jihadi fanboys, Identitarians, truth cops, and many others. Forty years after his Ukranian dissident parents were pursued by the KGB, Pomerantsev finds the Kremlin re-emerging as a great propaganda power. His research takes him back to Russia -- but the answers he finds there are not what he expected.

Blending reportage, family history, and intellectual adventure, This Is Not Propaganda explores how we can reimagine our politics and ourselves when reality seems to be coming apart.

Review Quotes

Winner of the Gordon Burn Prize

"[Pomerantsev] describes in detail how social media have been weaponized by the bad guys. . . . The contrast between the tight regulation of information by repressive regimes in the 20th century, and the free-for-all of today's media environment, gives the book its disconcerting force." --The Economist

"Groundbreaking . . . Every Democratic candidate should have a plan for how to counter disinformation and misinformation in American politics. Pomerantsev's book should be required reading for each of them." --CNN.com

"In this moving, unusual, and carefully reported book, Peter Pomerantsev reminds us that propaganda is not just a political tool: it can also shape individuals, their relationships with their children, their friendships, their marriages. Far more than just another take on today's chaotic information wars, this book argues that we will have to understand how propaganda seeks to shape our deepest thoughts and feelings before we can confront it." --Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gulag

"Insightful . . . Diagnoses our fact-distorting age with understanding and acuity." --The New York Times

"The truth was supposed to set us free. But Peter Pomerantsev's brilliant This Is Not Propaganda shows how the very idea of truth has been weaponized by dictators and other enemies of liberty. These techniques, first used against us in Russia, have spread around the globe like a toxic cloud. Taking us from the Philippines to Ukraine to MAGA-land, Pomerantsev is an unparalleled tour guide of our post-truth world-and what we all must learn to survive in it." --Garry Kasparov, author of Winter Is Coming

"Vivid and chilling reports from the frontlines of the disinformation wars." --Foreign Affairs

About the Author

Peter Pomerantsev is a senior fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of This Is Not Propaganda and Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible. He writes for publications including Granta, The Atlantic, Financial Times, London Review of Books, and Politico, among others.