Hi there,
My name is Alex and in addition to being a Big Picture analyst and a lousy multitasker, I'm also a mom of two and have 25 years of experience in the field of communication. Some people say I'm a propagandist. If you want, you can take it that way. In any case, I am someone who, just before the election of Donald Trump, fled my own country in the middle of Europe and, in fear of Russian information aggression, moved his family to Canada. Canada is my second home, and now I live in Massachusetts and even have a third home. All three states have something in common. Canada, a little less so – after all, that's why I moved there – but the Czech Republic has become a testing laboratory for a new silent type of war since 2013.
Here in Massachusetts, people often ask me where my accent comes from because they're afraid to ask where I'm from. I have a name that sounds strangely Russian, and I used to be asked in Canada if I was Russian. I’m not.
We Czechs have become guinea pigs in a war where no rifles are fired, and no bombs are dropped. It is based on knowledge of psychology, data and brainwashing, and the territory that is being conquered is our brain. That weird thing that perceives reality, understands culture, makes voting decisions, tells us what to fear and what to fight against. The purpose of information warfare is to turn peoples' brains into mashed potatoes, to create a lot of parallel realities so that no one will know what the truth is anymore. The aggressors of information operations, hidden behind innocent accounts and identities on social networks, are messing with our heads and trying to implant in us hatred for our neighbors, for each other, for our family and homeland, for the system that keeps us all afloat.
When these natural bonds are broken, we will cease to defend our territory on our own and surrender ourselves like lambs to the aggressors. Domestic and foreign. Because today you can buy information warfare on the net like socks on Amazon. It's a bit more expensive, nothing for ordinary millionaires, but if you can afford it, you control the buying or voting behavior of entire social groups. Young men, older women, pensioners, mothers with babies, whoever you choose. To do this, you need huge amounts of psychological data, which are now mined like uranium in the mines used to be. You need top-notch psychologists, databases where you can store and sort knowledge about people, and marketers or those military guys for psychological operations. When you hire these battalions of experts, you will knock the brains out of any group in the world, even the most educated and cautious. It's not about cleverness, it's about the weaknesses of our brain and psychology. We are all vulnerable, and we are all drowning in this stinking swamp of radicalization operations.
I am one of you, and my family has not been spared. We all have fallen victims in the field of information warfare. We all have someone we can't talk to normally anymore. This is what it looks like when information aggression is put to work. During the Cold War, it was all about lies and confusion about the truth. Today it's more complicated, it's mainly about clouding our brains and free decision-making. We are constantly stimulated, like cows in a stable, to milk the emotions - that ammunition for information weapons. We are tired, confused, and we don't know what's going on with the world around us. Why the neighbor has gone crazy and Grandma doesn't talk to us.
I'm here to help. Propaganda is my field. I understood what was going on. And this podcast is my angry rant who will try to explain. Welcome to the Mutiny of a Mayhem Mother.
This is Alex Alvarova, and this is my educative audio show.
My name sounds Russian. My accent is weird. My soul sings in Czech.