Chronicle of Dissent - The Press On Its Dying Bed

False videos and narratives of Covid-Ukraine suggest the 4th Estate is near death

Press can no longer function being a tamed serf of the police state and corporations.
Media misrepresents rules-based international order; observed only in the breach.
Rules, observers should resolve interpretations — not impose group think.
Instead military censors demand uniform voice, ill-suited to democracy.

See Moneycircus, Sep 2021 — Defend Our Networks: Free and fast-flowing information key to survival
And Moneycircus, Jun 2021 — Journalists! What is to be Done?: The author takes a scalpel to the trade he joined three decades ago
(2,500 words or eleven minutes’ read.)

Johannes Gutenberg, represented 500 years after his birth in 1400

Mar 26, 2022

Broadcaster NBC Photoshopped our leading women's swimmer to soften features to comport with what we are to believe, in our somewhere-over-the-rainbow world. [1]

To he or not to be: That's our gestation.
Whether 'tis nobler from the hind to sever
The arrow that's slung by fate's outrageous womb,
Or take arms against a sea of stubble
And, by opposing, end us?

The latest concept from the mind benders is mal-information. This would be correct information that is inconvenient; that upsets the bureaucrats. Proposed by the Council of Europe it would allow governments to close the door on facts, statistics or knowledge that conflict with their desire to manage outcomes. [2]

Of course, it is a sign that governments are losing the war. Having accused their critics of spreading misinformation (innocently wrong) and disinformation (purposely misleading) this latest confection, malinformation (correct, but spread with malice) is basically admitting: we don’t like that you’re right.

Governments clearly prefer people who are credulous and gullible. There is a long-established, politically correct label for this: low-information voters. It took on greater significance once we realized after Nov 2020 that elections may be manipulated or “saved” to ensure a more propitious outcome. [3]

Low-information was once a euphemism for ignorant. Now it is the unspoken objective of govenrments, who employ hoards of behavioural psychologists and media fabulists to constrain the people’s outlook.

The aim is not to sell a narrative but to stop them listening to any other — how? Destroy their confidence to discuss anything beyond what they are doing in a particular moment.

We've all encountered such banality on the commute. “I'm on the train… coming home... yes... no… drinking a coffee.” If powerful people have their way that might be the limit to all conversation in the future —and wouldn't the rulers feel safe?

Popular confidence is undermined by making topics controversial. People already likely avoid talking about women's swimming, kindergarten story time, what is taught in the classroom, bathroom arrangements, or even previously safe options like the Oscars.

In China the authorities can see whom you are meeting. The West will follow soon. Apple can search your photos — supposedly to monitor sexual abuse — which means they have access to the face of everyone you know and anything you've written or recorded.

If websites can be placed beyond reach why not contacts, distant friends or confidants?

Algorithms could be activated tomorrow to stop you expressing certain ideas by making words untypable or substituting concepts more palatable to the regime. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt proposed exactly such technology. [4]

And if you insist on writing and posting inconvenient stuff, you may be shunted into a lonely silo — solo or with a few friends, where you are observed for your safety and protection. Online safety or “hate speech” bills are being prepared or updated in many countries. These put in place a formidable network of censorship, under the guise of keeping everyone safe. Canada’s version, Bill C-36, would ban suspected intent to commit a hate crime.

It would “allow a person to appear before a provincial court” if some person “fears” (as in suspects) that another will commit a hate offense. [5]

Why are governments doing this? They don't give reasons, only pretexts.

That was then

In the 1960s governments fought obscenity aggressively. Today they tolerate pornography while using it as an excuse to monitor any account. Have we become more tolerant? Does the West no longer fears “subversives” will undermine morality? Or does the establishment think nothing is any longer worth defending?

Perhaps the elite are the subversives. If every means is justified; so is every end.

See Moneycircus, Jan 2, 2022 — The Great Reset As Subversion: A KGB defector warned us about crisis tactics decades ago

The memory hole

“Never again” is going down the memory hole.

The Holocaust cannot be used to prevent another, it seems. “Never again” appears to mean “nothing compares.” It is not a warning but a veneration, as if to cue Sinéad.

The US Holocaust Museum: “Those who carelessly invoke Anne Frank, the star badge, and the Nuremberg Trials exploit history and the consequences of hate.”

It remains a marker for what happened. Yet it may soon be impossible to warn against hate without falling foul of “hate speech.”

The more some double down on ownership of the Holocaust, the more difficult it becomes for today’s conscience to mount the barricades — we care; they don’t.

How do we build resistance: what are the options for Soviet-style Samizdat and online connection, even if government try to take down the net?