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Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman are both on the road this week, so for The Weekender Jared talked with weaponized information expert Karl Folk, creator of the Institute of Unreality, about the authoritarian moment, how the Right and their backers are attacking our sense of reality, and get deep in the weeds about this bizarre but necessary topic.
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Hey, everybody, and welcome to the Weekender Edition of the Muckery Podcast.
I'm Jared Yates Sexton.
Unfortunately, Nick Halseman isn't here.
We are both traveling for separate projects right now.
So this episode of the Weekender is actually going to feature an interview between me and Carl Folk, the creator and director of the Institute of Unreality, a researcher in the weaponization of information.
I really enjoyed this conversation, and I wanted everybody to hear it and just learn from it.
Carl is a really special researcher and thinker, and I thought our conversation about what's going on right now in the information space, but also with the documented rise of authoritarianism, I think it's an illuminating one.
It's one I've been looking to have for a long time now.
So, that's coming up here in just a second.
You know, Nick and I are traveling, like I said, and continuing to monitor what's happening in the Middle East and what's happening with the world's reaction in those regards.
It's a tough time.
I think there is A real need when looking at this to sort of zoom back a little bit because we have a tendency, especially when things are really rough and tough situations, to sort of focus on the pain of the moment or maybe the hectic nature of developments and movements.
The world where it stands is in a really strange place.
And I've talked about this in the past on the show in bourbon talks in books, whatever.
I've talked about how There's going to be more turmoil as we reach these moments of truth.
You know, we can celebrate what's happening in the labor space, what's happening in the organizing space, what's happening in the political space.
Those are victories.
But those those conflicts in those sectors are a result of a changing situation as the status quo becomes more and more unstable and as the conflict around what replaces that status quo gains steam.
Stuff like this and the escalation around it, the complications around it, we're going to see a lot.
And it's probably a good time In the midst of all of this, to take a second to center ourselves, to regulate ourselves, and to really remember the things that bring us joy.
Remember the things that we're fighting for.
Remember who we're fighting for.
And to put it all into perspective.
And so before we get to this interview with Karl Folk, I'd like to invite you to do just that, to take a second to consider where you are in life, where you are in the world, why you're in the fight, why you care, why you're passionate, what it is that anchors you to this struggle.
The other things that are happening, the other fights, the other conflicts, the tragedies, those things are hard and we need to recognize that they are hard and we need to recognize that they test us.
They put us through the wringer, but we also need to remember why we care and why caring is so important.
So we're going to get to this interview with Karl Folk.
I invite everybody listening to this free preview of it to join us over at patreon.com slash monkragpodcast.
This interview and this conversation I think goes in a lot of really interesting telling directions.
If anybody, you know, I tried to structure it because I think Karl and I could have You know, like I say in the interview, we could have gotten very, very deep in the weeds.
We could have ended up talking a lot of theory.
But I tried to scaffold it so that it could serve as both an introduction maybe for people who maybe have listened to this podcast or read my work and they've thought about this stuff and they think about authoritarianism and what is happening with the state of things, what is happening with the state of the world.
Like, an introduction, maybe, like, the beginnings of a thesis so people can start listening to the rest of the conversation and start to get into the nuance.
I think Carl and I, both from our backgrounds in the Academy, with, you know, sort of the structure of conversations and ideas, I think we both sort of took to that.
And so I hope that if you are listening to this as a free preview, that you will support the show.
I hope that this conversation is valuable.
I think it is.
I hope that this conversation is valuable.
I think it is.
And yeah, we will be back next week to discuss what is happening in the world and deal with it in a respectful and appropriate manner while giving the historical context and the future forecasting that's we will be back next week to discuss what is happening Right.
Yeah, but everybody, here is Karl Folk, the creator and director of the Institute of Unreality and the weaponized information expert.
Let's go!
All right, everybody, as promised, I'm here.
I'm really excited about this conversation.
This guy I've been looking forward to talking to for forever.
It's funny how the internet works.
You feel sort of a kindredness with people that you have never met.
I've been looking forward to this conversation for a while.
I'm here with Karl Folk, and Karl Folk is an academic and researcher focusing on the far right and both Russian neo-authoritarianism And the creation of right-wing unreality as a weapon to upend democracy and society.
He runs the Institute of Unreality.com, which publishes analysis focusing on the use of novel digital myths and disinformation and cognitive warfare.
Highly recommended, by the way.
Carl is based out of Minneapolis and has been a far-right researcher for almost a decade and has been featured on multiple podcasts, both on the subject of right-wing extremism and information warfare.
Carl, it's so good to have you on the McCraig Podcast.
Great to be here.
And yes, couldn't have said it better, honestly.
Kindred spirits in the fog.
So, you know, because we're doing a podcast here, I think you and I could get deep in the weeds very, very quickly.
But I think we've both had our time in academia.
We understand it's necessary to scaffold things.
I promise you that we're going to get deep into some shit.
We'll bring you along as it goes.
Carl, let's go ahead and get this started.
Can you give a little bit of a thesis to the people about what it is that you're doing, what it is that you're watching, what it is that you're studying right now, so we can start to introduce people and we can get deeper and deeper into those weeds?
Yeah, for me, so my journey into the far-right research world actually started looking at Russian mis- and disinformation.
And the state that Putin had built in his bid to have eternal power.
And And the thing that I started realizing, I think, to my detriment and everyone's detriment, was that these were similar systems.
They weren't the same systems.
It wasn't that suddenly we had a huge market of Russian agents in the country, but that there was a mimicking going on.
between the far right here and more generally abroad in the international movement and what Russia had figured out worked really well to cement its own power but also allow it to press the boot down societally and individually in a very unique and novel way and the Russian state and the Russian misinformation state
utilized this bizarre and really effective synergy between corporate media, their news outlets, their political figures, and then just the people.
And they would kind of do this call and response between conspiracy-minded individuals, their news media, and the government.
And they would all just between each other in an open exchange.
And it does this very interesting thing that I came to call weaponized unreality, that the truth doesn't fit into this.
There's no political bent.
It's not trying to push you towards one thing.
It's trying to make it so nothing is real.
And you question everything to a point where it burns out experts.
It burns out the people on the ground who are trying to figure out what's moving around them.
And since 2016, we're all living in it now.
A much more corralled version of it than some of the other countries that have kind of enacted this techno authoritarian movement.
But it's enough of the similarity that I look at it as a franchised authoritarianism.
It can be set up country to country, utilize known cultural aspects to wedge and crush and break things.
And we're seeing that now in full force here.
So for me, the website and these different kind of trails that I've found through the bullshit have become something more, you know, something more now of a... I'm trying to figure out a guide to show people exactly what happens to them, but also to broader society when The most complicated psychological warfare known to man is waged against you.
So this is one of the reasons I was so excited to have you on this show because I completely agree with what you just said.
It's also really fucking hard to talk about it.
It's impossible.
And that's that's intentional.
Yes.
You know, I one of the things and you know, I think because I I want to have this conversation for a while.
We're pulling back a curtain here about conversations that I think a lot of us have been having.
You know, we have them on podcast.
We have them when I like I can't go on like a cable news channel and talk about this.
It's almost impossible.
right because there's like there's like little shorthand things there's little ways that everybody sort of defines it you know um we're sort of struggling in a way like to say fascistic has its own commentations authoritarian has a larger overarching sort of a thing you know
i think like there's certain there's certain phrases like so for instance i think sarah kinsey's international uh crime syndicate like moves toward a direction of understanding it sort of giving people an idea but what has happened is that capitalism and its inherent authoritarian characteristics include like neoliberalism of course is hyper capitalism takes the brakes off of it takes capitalism to its logical or illogical extent
however you want to say absolutely you reach a point where in russia and and i completely agree with you that to understand what's happening you and this isn't this isn't you and i going on and on about necessarily russian interference in an election which is true yeah Yes.
But we're also talking about the fact that we're dealing with some really bizarre, weaponized things that have come to the forefront that are changing who we are as people.
They're taking advantage of how we have been changed by neoliberalism and capitalism.
And it is so Insidious, because it's brilliant.
It's actually a really brilliant strategy that was started under very particular conditions in post-Soviet Russia.
Exactly.
And it has been cultivated.
For anybody who's interested in learning about this, I recommend, after this podcast, go and look up Vladislav Surkov.
Go in and look up Weaponized in Reality.
And what has happened?
Is that it was birthed and cultured in Russia.
And since then, this new era of capitalism in this new era of expedited accelerated capitalism has started to branch out.
It has found focus and power and leverage in cultural aggrievement.
It's found it in nationalist identity, conspiracy theories, weaponized unreality.
And so what we're actually dealing with, and this is one of the things I've been trying to scream about for years, we are dealing with a cultural, spiritual, reality-based warfare that is almost impossible to articulate if you don't live in it.
And if you don't, if you don't obsess over it, like people like you and me, and it's almost impossible to articulate it in a way that people can grasp and start to realize what they can do about it.
And again, I think it's one of the most dangerous weapons that has ever been created, especially in modern history.
This is as dangerous as an atomic bomb.
I would argue it's more dangerous in some ways because fundamentally, like you said, right, like this is utilizing aspects of Neoliberal atomization, the loneliness that comes from neoliberal hypercapitalism, and they're using those as a wedge against ourselves.
And in some ways, the reason I say it's more dangerous than a nuclear weapon is because this has the fundamental ability to make it so you don't understand yourself, your history, the reality that you existed.
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