How the Putins and Trumps of the world weaponise our perception of reality

Bronwyn Williams (Flux Trends) reviews "This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality" by Peter Pomerantsev.

Every week The Money Show’s Bruce Whitfield asks someone to review a trending business book.

This week Whitfield interviewed Bronwyn Williams, Trend Translator and Future Finance Specialist at Flux Trends.

Williams reviewed “This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality” by Peter Pomerantsev.

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The world's most powerful people are lying like never before, and no one understands the art of their lies like Peter Pomerantsev.

Oliver Bullough, author - Moneyland: The Inside Story of the Crooks and Kleptocrats Who Rule the World

The perception of truth has been weaponised. 'This Is Not Propaganda' is an insightful account of propaganda in Russia and beyond during the age of disinformation.

New York Times

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The description on Amazon:

When information is a weapon, every opinion is an act of war.

We live in a world of influence operations run amok, where dark ads, psyops, hacks, bots, soft facts, Isis, Putin, trolls, and Trump seek to shape our very reality.

In this surreal atmosphere created to disorient us and undermine our sense of truth, we've lost not only our grip on peace and democracy - but our very notion of what those words even mean.

Peter Pomerantsev takes us to the front lines of the disinformation age, where he meets Twitter revolutionaries and pop-up populists, "behavioural change" salesmen, Jihadi fanboys, Identitarians, truth cops, and many others.

Forty years after his dissident parents were pursued by the KGB, Pomerantsev finds the Kremlin re-emerging as a great propaganda power.

His research takes him back to Russia - but the answers he finds there are not what he expected.

Blending reportage, family history, and intellectual adventure, This Is Not Propaganda explores how we can reimagine our politics and ourselves when reality seems to be coming apart.

Listen to the review in the audio below.

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