Episode Details

Troll, the clue is in the “trol” element of “control.” So again, it's going back to this idea of movement, which if we look in Shakespeare's English, “trole the bowl,” meaning “pass the bowl.”

Troll — the clue is in control. So again, it’s going back to this idea of movement, which if we look in Shakespeare’s English, “troll the bowl,” pass the bowl. One of our speakers here has a bowl. And this is the idea of the pipe being passed around, you troll the bowl.

And so control and patrol — we were on patrols. These aren’t mere coincidences, I realised. And eventually, after a lot of work — I basically started in earnest around February 2020 looking into folklore, really, because all I knew about folklore was I recognised a family resemblance between what was going on at the bridge and folklore, but I didn’t know much about it apart from what I remembered from childhood. And it opened up this whole universe, including this idea of the TR sound, which is obviously in “trans” as well, which the far right love to use. And I think it’s probably the best example of its early use in an Indo-European language is in this idea of ṛta, RTA, which means truth in Sanskrit and means “what is.” So this is also the origin of “right,” the “writ” — right, writ, it’s in authority, it’s in sovereignty, it’s the RNT sound — security, integrity, territorial integrity, and fertility. So it’s this sound, and this is what, by accident or by design, Trump and various very brilliant communicators have managed to use. They’re working on a level below language.

And for me, when I was trying to work out how these people are controlling others, I realised that there’s more to the accidental coincidence — for instance, between ṛta, “what is,” and there’s often a reversal of the R and the T. And so in “control,” it literally says what it says on the tin. It’s sort of moving us together.

And so in terms of coercive control, that is for me the essence of what a lot of this stuff is about, particularly Russian communications. And so I use it — if I can see this energy in particular memes, in linguistic or visual or auditory memes, if I can see this, what I call mana, this energy of coercive control, then I know I’m probably dealing with a paleoconservative. I’m dealing with people who are either accidentally — maybe like Trump — or the people behind him, who maybe don’t understand everything I’m talking about here, but they do understand it works. It’s mechanical. They can provoke — the wife-beater can provoke certain reactions. And the mana of Disinfolklore is unethically disciplined. But it’s usually, if it’s Russian Disinfolklore — and this comes back to your question — it’s coercive control. So it’s manifesting this idea of coercive control, of ransom. This idea of ransom. Everything is a ransom. Everything is held to ransom. If you don’t do this, then we will do that. And that structure is in all of it — the threat. Again, the TR thing in there.

And so what I look for is the mana in the meme. So it’ll always be there. And if you detect, if you’re looking for the mana — again, it’s a bit like the Code of Positive Trolls — most people don’t know there’s an absence in this, but there is an energy inside every meme, whether it’s a whole book or a picture or a sound or your cat meowing at you because it wants food. There’s an energy in there which is affecting your intentions, your mana, your energy.

And so I try to see how the output from the firehose — what’s the energy in there and how is it affecting my energy, my intention? Did I start reading this article thinking I’ve got to do everything I can to help Ukraine resist genocide? But then by the end of the article, I’m thinking, oh my God, I should be paying my money to Navalny or to someone else. It’s changed my intention. It changed my mana. And that’s the interaction between this output.

And once you see that, then you can trace it back — say, like in the case of