In Stories Are Weapons best-selling author Annalee Newitz traces the way disinformation
propaganda and violent threats-the essential tool kit for psychological warfare-have evolved
from military weapons deployed against foreign adversaries into tools in domestic culture wars.
Newitz delves into America's deep-rooted history with psychological operations beginning with
Benjamin Franklin's Revolutionary War-era fake newspaper and nineteenth-century wars on
Indigenous nations and reaching its apotheosis with the Cold War and twenty-first-century
influence campaigns online. America's secret weapon has long been coercive storytelling. And
there's a reason for that: operatives who shaped modern psychological warfare drew on their
experiences as science fiction writers and in the advertising industry. Now through a
weapons-transfer program long unacknowledged psyops have found their way into the hands of
culture warriors transforming democratic debates into toxic wars over American identity.
Newitz zeroes in on conflicts over race and intelligence school board fights over LGBT
students and campaigns against feminist viewpoints revealing how in each case specific
groups of Americans are singled out and treated as enemies of the state. Crucially Newitz
delivers a powerful counternarrative speaking with the researchers and activists who are
outlining a pathway to achieving psychological disarmament and cultural peace. Incisive and
essential Stories are Weapons reveals how our minds have been turned into blood-soaked
battlegrounds-and how we can put down our weapons to build something better.
