British Conservatives in Paris Blog

The Strategic Research Institute of the Military School (IRSEM), which was founded in 2009 in Paris, issued a report on ‘Chinese Influence Operations’ (P. Charon, J-B Jeangène, 2021). Concerning this Chinese influence in France it’s overwhelming and worrying, particularly the threats to security and the economy which should concern the political elite.

I fully agree with Michael D. Matthews, a high-ranked US officer and psychologist, teaching Military Psychology at West Point, and with what he wrote in his book (2020) ‘Head Strong. How Psychology is Revolutionizing war’: ‘(…) the very success of military operations in the twenty-first century depends more than ever before on psychology’.

Also as a former French Naval Officer and Psychologist I discovered that Military Psychology and Political Psychology go hand-in-hand; it is called ‘Operational Psychology’.

Political Psychology is mainly driven by collective representations deeply grounded in an ‘basic personality’ (H. Deutch) as a norm to assess our own personality or other’s as westerners or easterners for instance. This feeling of belonging is also reinforced by familial, cultural, religious, ideological and historical representations of the motherland. The Operational Psychology may be aimed at using these representations to facilitate collective trust or on the contrary collective distress by the means of all necessary psychological knowledge.

However this viewpoint is still a controversial topic between civilian psychologists and military ones in our democracies. According to the American Psychological Association psychological knowledge should be used only for the benefit of human beings. It is self-evident in peacetime.

It is less relevant currently with China which plays out internationally the ‘game of Go’ as we’ll see.

Although traditionally the French culture in the military is reluctant to consider operational psychology as armed force, the IRSEM report seems to take into account this practice of psychology in modern warfare. Previously the psychological context of military operations (psychological strength and weakness of the target population as well as those of military personal involved in it) was seldom assessed as information of first value.

Moreover officially there is no task force dedicated exclusively to war psychology with ‘spin doctors’ (even the ‘Scientific committee’ for the sanitary crisis management has no shrink!) .

However ‘here we go again’ (Afghanistan, Mali and now…….Taïwan).

While I feel comfortable with the U.K’s envisioning of the geo-strategic horizon for 2030- 2050, based on the rise of continental power–blocs and their political influence (BRIC’s), especially in the Indo-Pacific zone or in Africa, I feel uneasy about the E.U. and French attitudes. Indeed, while the Royal Navy is already manoeuvring in the Indo-Pacific zone and Taïwan is ready for a confrontation due to Chinese intimidations, nothing significant seems to be moving in my country apart from some mixed- messaging as described below.

Indeed Matthew Strong wrote in Taiwan News (2021/10/13) “French Defense Minister Florence Parly acknowledged on Tuesday (October 12) that the country had sent a naval signals intelligence vessel into the Taiwan Strait.

Although Florence Parly did not reveal details on the timing of the ship’s voyage, the 3,600-ton Dupuy de Lomé was sighted in Guam in August and left Japan on October 1, according to a Naval News report.

She pointed out that the recent increase in the number of Chinese planes violating the Taiwan Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) has caused an increase in tensions that could have serious consequences. According to Florence Parly, the mission of the French ship should be understood as an expression of support for international law and freedom of navigation.”

Unfortunately, psychologically speaking, the ‘mixed-messaging’ is the worst strategy of communication because it conveys a conflict avoidance attitude and therefore a potential surrender.

It is how Jacob Benjamin understands the situation (« French naval activity in the South China Sea on the rise », July 7, 2021): « While it is undeniable that France was active in the South China Sea in the first half of 2021, it is important not to « exaggerate » these naval operations. First, naval trips do not really stop China or anyone else from expansionism in the South China Sea, although they do show renewed determination and strategic interest in the water body. Second, a country’s navy can be used primarily as a means of strengthening relations with friendly powers in the region like Indonesia. Third, the Chinese state has been relatively silent on the French crossings of 2021, especially in relation to Beijing’s sharp reactions to US FONOPs. France, like most Western countries, has mixed messages about China. Is there a trend of increasing French naval activity in the South China Sea? Yes, but it is important not to overestimate this evolution’.

Meanwhile China is determined in its use of operational psychology as an armed force to deter or eliminate whoever is a hurdle for its hegemony. This is why I present a sample of both (i) a relevant analysis on China as a master of psychological warfare and (ii) the illustration of the French military attempt to stop underestimating psychological processes at work in the modern war.

A small but useful extract from the IRSEM report (‘III- Psychological Warfare, in ‘Chinese Influence Operations, p. 47), has been translated by me into English below. It’s short but summarises ‘Operational Psychology’ as the constant mix between psychology and war, as well as including a description of China’s current influence, viewed through the lens of French specialists (and their thinking mode). The whole document of 646 pages is available on open access on the web.

III- Psychological warfare (IRSEM, 2021, Chinese Influence Operations, pp 47):

 ‘Psychological warfare is used to demoralize enemy forces, to dissuade them, make them doubt, even terrorize them in order to undermine their capacity and their will to fight.

It is used to break the bond of trust between rulers and ruled, disrupt the decision-making process of the enemy country. In other words, it is used to defeat his enemy without even having to fight him.

Strictly speaking, psychological warfare is used more in wartime than in peacetime, unlike public opinion war which is constantly implemented, whatever the level of tension.

A work published by the APL distinguishes four types of psychological warfare:  » coercion « (威慑), which seeks to force the other to adopt a certain behaviour; «  the mystification ”(欺 2 诈), which confuses and misleads; « The division » (离间) in exploiting all the potential loopholes and dissensions within the enemy country and paralyzes the decision-making process, breaks the motivation of the resistance and the confidence of the people; and finally, « defense » (防护) to guarantee the morale of its own troops, when they are the target.

All these actions carried out against the ethnic Uyghur minority in China and abroad by the Chinese Communist regime are an example of psychological war as well as chemical one (but also a physical one), which might mainly correspond to the coercive type presented above.

Random arrests, mass internment, forced labour, digital tracing, frequent checks, forced sinization, “re-education” of children, destruction of places of worship, harassment, sedentarization

… ……the Uyghurs, a Turkish-speaking ethnic group predominantly Muslim, are the subject of violent repression, in the name of the fight against religious extremism. It is estimated that three million Uyghurs are now interned. Women undergo forced sterilization, and other “measures intended to prevent births within the group” which are part of the acts constituting a crime of genocide. The prisoners would also be victims of organ harvesting (as Beijing openly did on its death row inmates until 2015) used to fuel a vast traffic in « halal » organs destined to Gulf countries. There are many given evidences that prove that the Uyghurs are terrorized, feared that their slightest word or gesture could be used against them, do not dare to address and speak to strangers, do not know if they will ever be able to see their missing loved ones again.

Their fear of central power follows them beyond Chinese borders, even when some of them manage to flee to another country. This psychological warfare aims to force the Uyghurs to adopt the behaviour that the central power wants: to be submitted to it.

This example reminds us that the « Three Wars » are not addressed only by external threats: any threat to the Party, whether internal or external, must also be annihilated.

Another example: actions taken by Beijing to paralyze enemy decision-making power during the Sino-Indian confrontation on the Doklam plateau in the summer of 2017 is also an illustration of different types of psychological warfare presented above.

The Party-State has not hesitated to utter threats such as: « The conflict will escalate if India does not withdraw its troops”….“Indian provocations will trigger an open conflict”….“ The countdown has started ”, in particular via its media, the Global Times.

This newspaper also claimed that the Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj lied to the Parliament when she claimed that India enjoyed the support of the international community.

China did not limit itself to mere words in an attempt to intimidate its adversary: videos showing Chinese military exercises in Tibet, not far from the border with India, were broadcast; military equipment and logistics material have been moved near the conflict line, thus suggesting a possible escalation of hostilities; and memories of Chinese victory in the 1962 Sino-Indian conflict were revived to demoralize the fighters. The role that this psychological warfare campaign played in resolving the conflict remains uncertain and difficult to measure.

There is also a third example of psychological warfare instrumentalising the exercises of the Chinese military in the Taiwan case’.

Conclusion:

Nowadays there is no more a clear dividing line between wartime and peacetime. ‘Hybridization’ (Jean-François Gayraud, 2017) is the new concept to define our modern warfare (info war, terrorism, PMCs, …).

It is a cognitive distortion to believe that the nuclear threat deters potential enemies. The new target is the citizen’s mind with thoughts, emotions and behaviours. The goal is to win before any kind of armed confrontation and shape the targeted ‘public opinion’ to accept the defeat or to wrongly think that predatory behaviour is a kind of friendship.

Trust in our values, representatives and institutions is the main asset of democracy but also the central target of psychological war because commitment, competence, caring and predictability are hard to put together at the same time.

It is commonly accepted that when we are dealing with uncertainty and risk (Psychology of Risk, G.M. Breakwell, 2014), personality, motivation and communication are key elements in building trust and make resilience effective.

Conversely, operational psychology sometimes is aimed at putting people in a stressful situation by manipulating (1) the perception of risks (psychological framing) and (2) their feelings and emotions which are linked to them (psychological distress).

The “Asch effect” is a well-known phenomenon in social psychology based on cognitive dissonance: people have less and less confidence in their own perceptions. Prof. Cialdini studied the ‘social proof’ phenomenon which is a confirmation of it at a wider scale.

At the extreme end of the spectrum of reverse psychology, there is the « learned feeling of helplessness » (Prof. Seligman): people give up fighting or surviving.

This is what the Chinese influence operations highlight and it’s time to be aware of this strategy of psychological grip. The time has come to think out of the box.

Serge Giammertini (PhD)

Member

British Conservatives in Paris (BCiP)

The death of black male George Floyd on May 25th at the hands of a white male police officer, Derek Chauvin, in the United States has led to worldwide protests about police brutality and apparent systemic racism against Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic groups (BAME) in Western civilization.

This is because, of course, as the Left would tell you, in the US they have ‘White Supremist’ Donald Trump as their president and in Britain the fault lies with ‘Mr Brexit’ and ‘Chief Gammon’ himself, Boris Johnson and his army of little Englanders – the Conservatives who are in power.

All of this despite the fact that Mr Chauvin has been arrested and charged with second and third-degree murder.

Consequently however, it seems that all white people are guilty of unconscious bias against the BAME community; a result of their ingrained ‘white privilege.’

This simplistic narrative has, of course, been dreamt up by an ever delusional Left that still hasn’t learned how to console itself over Brexit, and Donald Trump’s and Boris Johnson’s election victories. It further demonstrates an ever-increasing chasm between their neo-Marxist ideology and the people they purport to represent. In fact the whole #BlackLivesMatter movement is making idiots out of many people.

The Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, and his deputy took to their knee in solidarity with the #BlackLivesMatter movement, tweeting “We kneel with those opposing anti-Black racism.” Why kneel? We used to stand up to injustice and cruelty and stand alongside people in our battles.

We’ve also seen white people being chained up like slaves whilst wearing “So sorry” T-shirts and being marched through the streets by black people on some sort of slave parade. Additionally, graffiti was sprayed on to Winston Churchill’s statue in London, claiming ‘Churchill was a racist’; the London Mayor, Sadiq Khan, even tweeted, ‘The sad truth is that much of our wealth was derived from the slave trade…’

All of this completely ignoring the history of the slave trade, and the fact that it was in the Christian West that slavery was first outlawed.

It is fair to say, though, that racism does exist in western civilization. However, it simply is not systemic and it is not always directed from the white majority towards the non-white minority. It is a far more complex issue.

Sadly, we still have antisemitism, and there has been an increase in Sinophobia as a result of Covid-19. There is also very clear anti-white racism.

Yes, in the ever gracious virtue signaling of the Left, they can’t see the irony of their own creed. For it is the Left that promotes the terms ‘white supremacy’ and ‘white privilege’, fundamentally highlighting that it is being white that is the problem.

This is racism, plain and simple.

Furthermore, last year the term ‘gammon’ was used to describe white, middle-aged men. So now not only are the Left racist, they are ageist as well.

If this is inclusion, please allow me to be excused.

On occasion it’s important to try to understand this lunacy; to see if it stands up to scrutiny and logic.

What is ‘white privilege’ one may ask? Is it a privilege to be born in white skin as opposed to non-white? Does being white mean that one can access the labour market more easily? Given the anti-discrimination laws in the UK, these arguments defy logic.

One further argument goes that being white means that one hasn’t had to cope with regular racial harassment or had to overcome additional challenges in society. Therefore, as a white person, one can’t sympathize with these kinds of difficulties a non-white person has had to grapple with and overcome.

However, saying that a white person can’t empathise with the issues of a non-white person is like saying they can’t be human. It’s no different than saying Sadiq Khan couldn’t empathise with Steve Jobs when he was dying of cancer. Or a Prime Minister couldn’t empathise with a school teacher. Or a Human Rights lawyer couldn’t empathise with a drugs dealer.

Coupled with this is the negative effect the rhetoric could have on non-white people, discouraging them from believing that they can achieve great things if they set their mind to it and work hard. Why would they want to try, if they are taught from a young age that the cards are systemically stacked against them? Despite the fact that this ignores the numerous occasions when black people, or people of any race for that matter, have come from a poor background in the western world and made a success of their lives.

No. The ideas of ‘while privilege’ and ‘white supremacy’ are a leftwing mantra slightly adapted from terminology employed by Karl Marx who basically portrayed bourgeois bosses as slave keepers over workers. The new terminology has been deliberately constructed to create the same divisions in society with a supposedly utopian vision of the future as its goal.

Society is not always fair. We are taught this from a young age and all religions teach it in a similar way. But society is not fundamentally cruel even though modern mantras portray it as such. The slogans of ‘white supremacy’ and ‘white privilege’ spread envy and hate. History taught us where this ends at least twice in the last century with the Nazi concentration camps and the Soviet gulags.

If we stopped this identity politics and had real deep and meaningful conversations about the problems our society face we would go a long way towards finding greater harmony in an often difficult world.

Andrew Crawford

The Cakes and Ale ceremony is an annual event, a luncheon that takes place at the Stationers’ Hall preceded by a Bidding Prayer and Sermon at St Pauls Cathedral every Shrove Tuesday following the bequest made in 1612 of John Norton, Alderman of London, Master of the Stationers’ Company.  Stationers file out of the Hall after coffee at 10.45, the Master, Clerk and  the Court Assistants first, followed by the Liverymen then the Freemen, for the short walk along Ave Maria Lane, across Paternoster Square under the watchful eye  of  a modern (Elizabeth Frink, 1975) bronze statue with the same title of Paternoster, but also known as shepherd with a flock of sheep, and down the steps to the crypt of the Cathedral, past the tombs of the Duke of Wellington and Admiral Lord ‘Horatio’ Nelson, into the Chapel of St Faith-under St Paul’s. Organ music by William Byrd 1543-1623 welcomes the arriving congregation to commemorate John Norton commencing at 11.15, the Bidding this year given by the Dean of St Paul’s and the Sermon by the Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields. At 12.15 the procession emerges from the crypt led by the Court dressed in their livery attracting a crowd of on-lookers and on their return this pious assembly with guests enjoy a buffet lunch with pancakes and cakes for dessert (more wine than ale), preceded as always by  a witty version of grace by the Company’s Clerk, William Alden. The Clerk, rather like a CEO, is responsible for the day to day running of Stationers’ that includes the organising of fundraising including charities, participating in and organising the many committees and renting out the Hall for drinks parties, events, lunches and dinners. Aloft as a central feature of the ceiling is a spread eagle and horn in gold and blue, symbols of St John the Evangelist looking down on the Cakes and Ale party, this symbol often appearing of the Saint as it was the bird which could fly highest therefore closest to heaven. At the southern end of the hall, carved in white and gold on the dark oak of the minstrels gallery, are open tomes of the King James’ Bible, reminding us that it was at Stationers Hall that this sacred work was translated by William Tyndale from Latin and edited and read out loud here by the Translating Committee.

In 1608 the Master of Stationers, Robert Barker who was also the King’s printer and therefore tasked with printing the King James Bible, left out ‘not’ from the seventh commandment, “thou shalt not commit adultery”, was fined £2000 and never recovered his health nor fortune, dying in the debtors prison. Copies of the ‘wicked bible ‘ were seized and burned in the Hall’s courtyard also the former churchyard  of St Martin-within-Ludgate, on the site of which now stands a 200 year old plain tree, renowned for its resilience to London pollution of which there was plenty with the burning of coal fires. It not only survived the decades of smoke from coal burning but also the fire and shrapnel of the Blitz, as did Wren’s St Martin’s church and the Hall. It is said that eleven copies of the wicked bible survived and that the Hoho (Chinese Fenghuang) bird carved out on the fireplace provented the destruction of the Hall.

It was on account of the development of printing to publishing that it was considered necessary to protect society against abuses of the press, and this was enforced by ordinances and Acts of Parliament  that also protected authors and publishers against infringement of their rights. The Licensing Act of 1662 was the successor to the Star Chamber decree of 1637 that forbade the publication of books without a licence and these protectionist clauses suited the trade and the Company with a requirement of a copy of every book to be deposited at Stationers’ Hall. The first law relating to copyright was the Copyright Act of Queen Anne of 1710, where infringements could be brought only for titles which had been entered in the Register of the Stationers Company, hence the term ‘entered at Stationers’ Hall’ is synonymous with copyright. It followed that penalties could be incurred by the printer on those books that were deposited, however canny printers only paid to register when they sought copyright protection, so little revenue for the Stationers. One loophole was only to register the first volume of say a series of 12, whilst learned works from universities were not entered because of the procedure and cost. Best sellers were protected and paid for since they would be more likely to attract piratical publication and contributed considerably to the fortunes of the English Stock, a company set up under James 1 that gave the Company a monopoly over certain types of publications in addition to the powerful printing privileges it had acquired through the 1557 Charter granted by Queen Mary. Shakespeare, Marlowe and others appear in the records.

Order and clarity came in 1836 and in 1838 with the international Copyright Act that gave protection to foreign works and British authors published in foreign countries, provided that their works were registered at Stationers’ Hall and one copy sent to the British Museum. The main use of the registry was a means of transferring copyright from author to publisher or publisher to publisher through a simple form of assignment at negligible cost. The proceedings improved after a Commission and the appointment of the Greenhills, London booksellers with a tradition of being Stationers, father George succeeded by son Joseph, a dynasty that lasted from 1797 to 1883. Joseph Greenhill also looked after the purchasing of the wine with an informal team of juniors for ‘blind tastings’ and only he knew which wines were kept and from whom.  His stock last recorded in dozens was, 410 of port, 32 of Madeira, 11 of claret, 15 of Moselle, 110 of sherry and two of champagne. On his demise he was succeeded by a Wine Committee.

In our next edition we shall read about the British tradition for almanacs and astrological predictions that produced annual revenue for the Stationers.

Rafael Pittman