Soft power’s dark side

ABSTRACT

This article conceptualizes malign soft power, intentionally harming through attraction. The analysis differentiates benign from malign soft power; explains how flows of information, characterized by their content, velocity, and access, serve as attractors by forcefully engaging emotions; and presents a taxonomy of modes of malign soft power (seduction, amusement, and trickery). To illustrate how malign soft power works, the article examines conspiracy theory as a type of trickery and presents the exemplars of the ‘blood libel,’ which since the 12^th Century has accused Jews of ritual murder, and Pizzagate, which since 2016 has accused prominent Democrats of lurid child abuse.

KEYWORDS:

• Soft power
• information flow
• conspiracy theory
• attraction and political power
• blood libel
• Pizzagate
• QAnon

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. I am grateful for the insights of Sebastian Schmidt, Susan T. Jackson, and Giulio Gallarotti. Special thanks, as well, to Stella Lee, Devanshu Singh, Harvey McGuinness, Emilia Ochoa, and Owen Reed.

2. For example, Gallarotti (2011), who specifically excludes hegemony from the category of soft power because hegemony implies existing conflict. Others disagree. See, for example, Nexon and Neumann (2018).

3. Others works addressing the dark side of soft power include Lebedeva et al. (2016), Roslycky (2011), and Surowiec (2017).

4. Cultural diplomacy by China and Russia should not be confused with their malign soft power practices, See, for example, China’s vaccine disinformation campaign and trolling (Paun and Luthi 2021) and the Congressional Research Report by Lum and Fischer (2021) on Chinese Cultural diplomacy.

5. Note that techniques for amusing and seducing can be either malign or benign. This is discussed further in Section III.

6. The modes are not mutually exclusive categories, nor do they constitute a comprehensive list of all possible modes.

7. Cf. Harold Lasswell, who describes an act of communication as ‘Who; Says What; In Which Channel; To Whom; With What Effect?’ (1964, p. 37, formatting simplified). Lasswell’s intention is to isolate ‘an act as a whole in relation to the entire social process’ (1964, p. 38) for analysis of structure and function. The content-velocity-access framework, in contrast, attempts to capture the dynamic of information flows as practices, processes, and evolving relations along networks of social interaction. See also Sapienza et al. (2015).

8. Sine Just (2019) makes a similar point in her analysis of ‘affective intensification’ and the hostility of Gamergate.

9. Extreme variants of patriotism that valorize the national interests over all other moral concerns can become a source for malign soft power practices. See also Primoratz (2020) and Gutmann (2002).

10. A rich philosophical literature on intention raises questions about intentions and actions. Well-known works include Anscombe (2000); Bratman (1984) and Tuomela and Miller (1988). Setiya (2018) provides an overview.

11. My argument connects with Sara Ahmed’s discussion of affective economies. Ahmed examines how emotions like hate circulate in a society and lead to injustice and violence. She focuses on the victims, those who are hated: ‘the asylum seeker [who becomes] “like” the terrorist, an agent of fear, who may destroy “our home.”’ (2004, p. 136). I have bracketed the victims and instead focus on the targets of malign soft power who are persuaded to hate, to fear, and to do violence.

12. I am mindful of Leonie Jackson’s (2021, p. 1733) concern that media representations of women who join the ISIS Jihadi movement are ‘homogenizing and dehumanizing representations that structured the scope of possibilities for responding to the problem of the “brides.”’ Though women who have chosen to support ISIS do so for reasons that are complex and cannot be reduced to seeking love, seduction plays a part in ISIS recruitment methods.

13. Lying and bullshitting are not moral failures in all settings (Saxe 1991, Ketubot 17a 450CE). Lying in answer to ‘How do I look today?’ is a social emollient, a ‘white lie.’ Satirists make audiences laugh at the outlandish nature of their bullshit to cast light on truth (Jones and Baym 2010).

14. News media (inter alia, Goldberg 2007, Stanley 2007), think tank sources (Khalaji 2015, ADL 2022), and scholarly sources (Israeli 2002, Nirenberg 2013) have reported on the prevalence of the blood libel in the Muslim world and its association with the Arab-Israeli conflict.

15. Numerous histories of the blood libel recount the importance of Thomas of Monmouth’s document, copies of which subsequently moved through and evolved in Christendom. (See, inter alia, Johnson 2012, Rose 2015, Kieval 2021, Soyer 2021).

16. This section draws upon reporting from several news sources, including Robb’s (2017) Rolling Stone investigative report, Aisch et al. (2016), BBC Trending (2016), Sebastian and Bruney (2020), and Silverman (2016).

17. See Barrett and Zapotosky (2020) for a summary of FBI investigations of Hilary Clinton and of the Clinton Foundation.

18. Other possible explanations include that she posted ironically for the lulz (to make a joke), that she received compensation for posting, or that someone had hijacked her account.

19. Russian actions are not surprising. Russia has famously disrupted elections by circulating social media messages, tricking people in the US as well as in other countries into believing falsehoods (Bolton, 2021; DiResta et al., 2019), a malign soft power sabotage practice.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Renée Marlin-Bennett

Renée Marlin-Bennett is a Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD, USA. Her research focuses on the nature of political power, information flows, bodies and emotions, and borders. Previously, she was as a Professor of International Relations and Division Director of International Politics and Foreign Policy in the School of International Service, American University.