Episode Details

A couple of weeks ago, I started a new series, and this is going to be the third episode of it, where I am going through what I call the Luhansk archive, the Luhansk corpus, which was the data set from which I generated the Disinfolklore analysis. I am going through the different archetypal identities in each of these stories.

This is a core part of the analytical method: this idea I have of mobile armies of archetypes — really, archetypal identities. You have the signifier, you have the surface, the phenomenon. You have the gold in Donald’s office in the White House — that is surface. That is an archetypal identifier. Then you have the identity associated with it, which is what it is supposed to signify on the surface level, but also subconsciously.

I talk in all my work about archetypes and archetypal identities and archetyping, but this mode of analysis was generated from this corpus, which I gathered, collected, and analysed, and tried to understand what on earth was going on when I first encountered it in eastern Ukraine.

Why This Is Relevant to Ukraine: A War of Symbols

Why is this relevant to Ukraine? We are all here for Ukraine. We obviously have the connection between Donald and America and Ukraine, which has just been spoken about. We also have, on the level of the war itself, that it is a war of symbols. It is a war of archetypes.

When we see Russia sending a thousand humans to their doom each day, they are trying to affect and project archetypal identities into the minds of the decision-makers and the non-decision-makers like normal people like us. They are trying to impact the minds of humanity and to persuade us that they are strong. That sacrifice is being made — despite us knowing in this space that they are not strong — to try to convince people that they are strong. Strength and strongman is an archetype, and the archetypal identity is between Putler and a strongman, or between Donald and a strongman. Of course, we understand the true archetypal identity there is between, say, President Zelenskyy with the Ukrainian people and strength. That is also why it is relevant.

The Ballroom: Folkloric Motif Before Architecture

This week, we saw the obsession with the so-called ballroom. This is the relevance of the Disinfolklore analytical method. As far as I am aware, nobody else has noticed this phenomenon yet, despite it being so obvious. You can get your eye in because you have been reading me or listening to me.

The ballroom. The repetition of the ballroom — that phrase, that archetype, which we all remember from children’s stories, from Cinderella: you will not go to the ball, you will go to the ball, the slipper, Disney. That is the payload. It is everywhere in our information space, whether you want the ballroom built or whether you do not want the ballroom built. People this afternoon are sharing photographs of the gold in the Oval Office. By sharing a photograph of this gold in the Oval Office, we are actually participating in the embedding of an archetypal identity that we may or may not agree with. From the standpoint of the intelligence and the people who are trying to affect our moods, our intentions, and our motivations by using these archetypes, this idea of the ballroom — they do not care, because the energy is being continued, and the picture is being continued.

What I try to do in all my work is just give us a bit of a guide, because I see it. I see the same energy, the same tactics that were used in eastern Ukraine, and it can help us understand what is going on in today’s world.

I wrote a piece this week — I have been meaning to write it for a very long time — because of this obsession and this repetition, this mantra, like Hunter Biden. This is the point of it: whether you are for or against it — ballroom, ballroom. Yes, I could fall into that trap, but I am claiming a special exemption. I can use the