17 May 2024
How To Win An Information War
Richard talks to academic and journalist Peter Pomerantsev about his book about World War II propaganda (but also about propaganda today) How To Win An Information War. They chat about the remarkable life of the beautifully names Sefton Delmer and his part in creating a radio station that would counterbalance and undermine the propaganda of Goebbels and the German war effort, how hard core pornography played a part, the weird and wonderful ways that German soldiers were advised to fake illness, the amorality and immorality required to wage an information war, what all this has to teach us about today and how the world is being slow to catch up with the realities of the internet age and dark times that are yet to come. Is it possible to get out the cluster fuck of internet conspiracy theories and what can we learn from Delmer's work? Plus what it's like to marry a statue (sort of).
