Soviet Active Measures (1984)
youtu.be/ALfDhs-_ce4?...

Question everything — but verify before you share.

Don’t feed the algorithm. Feed your mind.

Critical minds are harder to hack.

Misinformation hates curiosity.

Awareness is resistance.

Belief should be earned, not engineered.

Truth is the quietest rebellion.

🧩 The KGB realised decades ago that fear can rewire the human mind.
If you flood people with panic and outrage long enough, they’ll believe the lie — and reject the truth.
That’s how modern hybrid warfare works.
It’s not propaganda anymore. It’s psychological control.

8. Remember:
What looks like random chaos online is part of a strategy.
Modern hybrid warfare doesn’t need bombs.
It only needs us to stop believing in one another.

7. The real goal
To fracture communities until people retreat into isolation or extremism.
You stop trusting journalists, leaders — even your own judgement.

• It spreads faster through emotion
• It desensitises over time
• It removes empathy from debate

6. Weaponising disgust
Posts designed to provoke disgust (one of the brain’s strongest emotions) hijack our logic.
When disgust is triggered, the rational brain quiets and the emotional brain takes over.
They use shock language — often violent or sexualised — because:

5. Why it’s effective
Hybrid ops combine:
• Disinformation (fake news, edited clips)
• Psychological tactics (ragebait, trauma triggers)
• Algorithm exploitation (outrage = profit)
• Real-world infiltration (fringe movements, culture wars)

4. Emotional warfare = hybrid warfare
The aim isn’t to make people “love Russia.”
It’s to make Western societies hate themselves, distrust each other, and lose faith in democracy.

When people believe “all sides lie” and “nothing’s real,” authoritarian regimes win by default.

That’s why it feels like mental abuse. Because it is.

3. The Gerasimov Doctrine: mental war
Russia’s modern doctrine describes war as a blend of psychological, informational and cyber operations.
“To erode the enemy’s sense of reality and identity until truth itself becomes meaningless.”

2. After the USSR collapsed
Those same tactics didn’t disappear — they moved online.
The modern FSB and GRU (military intelligence) adapted them for social media.
They no longer need to plant spies in parliaments — they manipulate digital ecosystems.

• Spreading forged documents or rumours
• Infiltrating movements
• Seeding moral panics
• Turning citizens against their own institutions

1. From KGB → FSB → Online Influence Ops
During the Cold War, the KGB used “Active Measures” covert influence tactics meant to destabilise opponents without firing a shot:

🧵 KGB-style psychological warfare, modernised for the internet age.
How the old Soviet “active measures” evolved into today’s hybrid information war and why it feels like mental abuse.

Anna's History Class threads

Part 1 Russian colonisation
threadreaderapp.com/thread/17945...

Part 2 Holodomor
threadreaderapp.com/thread/17947...

Part 3 Nazism
threadreaderapp.com/thread/18216...

In today’s Vatnik Soup video, I discuss Russia’s abduction of Ukrainian children.

This was by far the most difficult video I’ve ever made — but also the most important.

youtu.be/C8BSPZn5RJs