English

FNORD - The Factory of "Reality"

This study examines the shift from twentieth-century propaganda, defined as vertical and ideological persuasion, to the twenty-first-century phenomenon of “Cognitive Warfare”, characterized by the horizontal sabotage of sense-making processes. Through an archaeological reinterpretation of Discordianism and the figure of Kerry Thornley, it demonstrates how the “ ontological guerrilla ” techniques that emerged in the Californian counterculture of the 1960s have been exploited and industrialized by state and para-state actors. The concept of fnord is introduced as an analytical category to describe the markers of subliminal anxiety that regulate the contemporary attention economy.

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