The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is soliciting bids from NGOs, universities, public and private think-tanks in all its member states.

The official purpose is to develop tools that increase the resilience of populations to “enemy” (read “Russian”) disinformation. But the problem is that in order to fight against propaganda, it is necessary to target all propaganda, including NATO’s.

In practice, therefore, the tools will only serve to discredit reactions to NATO propaganda: for example in the context of flight MH17, the poisoning of Sergei Skripal or that of Alexey Navalny.

It is known since ancient times that propaganda is all the more convincing when it does not run up against contrary arguments. For a century, scholars have wondered how to bring about a situation where only one channel of information would be available. Some postulated that the message to be conveyed should be relentlessly repeated until all dissent is stifled; others argued in favour of selecting those who take part in the debates. In this age of social networks NATO is adopting a third approach: to build a consensus that relays the message and belittle the intellectual capacities of those who challange it.