“PSYOP Auxiliaries”: The Civilian Irregular Information Defense Group as Proto-5GW

There is a budding practical 5GW-ish thinker in the form of something called the Civilian Irregular Information Defense Group:

PSYOP Auxiliaries must use all available assets to collect the wide variety of opposing information and propaganda existing in media. Avoid being lured by the obvious propaganda and missing the more subtle and potentially effective propaganda being disseminated.

…and….

For about three years I have been carrying this idea of volunteer civilian infowarriors around in the back of my mind…

…and…

We’re going to have to counter the propaganda ourselves.[…] We are going to have to blog swarm and harness the collective wisdom of Been There Done Thats to directly refute the misinformation and disinformation our own Main Stream Media partners with the enemy to deliver to us. They must be fisked, debunked, discredited, exposed, relentlessly between now and September, so that when the enemy pulls off their big mass casualty event just in time for General Petraeus’ Dog & Pony Show for Congress, we have already done an IO Preparation of the Battlefield and conditioned the target audience to be sceptical of the doom and gloom quagmire schtick.

…and…

This war is fought on so many levels. We can help our troops my waging our own counter-propaganda here in the states. Smith-Mundt doesn’t apply to us. Democrat Senators can’t deny us promotion. The House Armed Services Committtee can’t defund our program. We’re irregulars, and we do this on our own time, for free.

…and…

Well, here’s your chance. There is no ASVAB, no PT test, no tickets you have to punch to be a volunteer civilian irregular information defense group operator performing distributed IO in denied battle spaces. All you have to be able to do is recognize bullshit when you see it and point it out to as wide an audience as you can reach.

…and…

IF we are to avoid another psychologically paralyzing loss of will like 1975, and it’s a big IF, the enemy’s supporters must be engaged, discredited, humiliated and silenced. We the People, those of us not subject to military justice, not vulnerable to having our promotions stalled by vengeful politicians, and not constrained by law from targeting domestic audiences, will have to perform the counter-PSYOP mission.

…and…

Are not the 101st Fighting Keyboardists a volunteer militia geek battalion? Could concerned citizens with computers not disrupt domestic anti-war, anti-military, defeatist, seditionist, fifth column message boards and websites that are protected from DoD response? Could a volunteer Army of Davids, unconstrained by the Uniformed Code of Military Justice, the Hatch Act, or fear of being passed over for promotion, in coordination with but not under the control of the DoD PA/IO apparatus, actually be useful auxiliaries in the infowar?

[Cross-posted to Dreaming 5GW]