Rule By Censor: Talk Is Cheap

U.S. presidential election shaped by multiple vectors; the mind is formed

• Google could shift between 6 and 25 million votes next week

• Politicians sell out to intel & tech, who offer to manufacture the public mind

• Polarisation disguises the process - you think there is (un)healthy debate

• U.S. election will show how (un)free speech can directly impact events

• Is it dangerous to encourage extreme views? Yet polarisation drives compliance

• Shaping media: we're not concerned with technics but political outcomes

Related:
Who Is Afraid Of Democracy? - It’s under attack from those paid to protect it (May 15, 2024)
Just Following Orders: How Media Creates Conformity - Polarization leads people to side with authority (Jan 28, 2024)
The Public-Private Censorship Industry - Official culture of playing loose with the truth could crush fragile trust in media (Feb 27, 2023)

(2,300 words or 11 minutes of your company)

Nov 1, 2024

Already rumbles of trouble with Dominion voting machines and burning ballot boxes. But the biggest manipulation in the coming U.S. general election is in the mind.

The media tells us that we live in a post-truth era. The Oxford Dictionary's publishers declared it international word of the year in 2016.

Since then, politicians have conceded the issue is not so much truth, but trust. And while they blame the people for believing the wrong things, or trusting the wrong information, they admit it is they who have lost the people's trust — or as they put it, the people no longer trust their elites. [1]

Their answer, of course, is to censor critics, and to "flood the zone" with nudges and messaging, intended to shape our behaviour. The World Economic Forum call this the Great Narrative.

The public will be told that We The People are the source of misinformation, to try to shame us into silence.

In a society where politics is polarised the technique is easy to spot: because it is the polarisation!

You will notice the TV anchor or presenter only allows two opinions, which are purposely polarised. I am not making a moral judgement on the following, merely recounting what we observe.

A recent example is the opening question, "Do you condemn Hamas? — the boundaries of interview are set: you are 100 per cent behind Israel, or you are a terrorist supporter. No nuance allowed!

Other issues are polarised by re-framing the debate: sex equality has become gender, kindergärtners are dragged into the debate; race relations becomes privilege and supremacy, reparations demanded; environment and pollution become climate change, an immediate, existential threat of millenarian proportions. [2]

It is easy to make something a pseudo-religious cause: “the world is ending and I'm the man to fix it.” Simply present it as the ONLY problem, to which everything else must be subordinated and sacrificed. That is pure, millenarian religion.

The Guardian has for decades led a campaign to de-platform “deniers.”

The middle ground crumbles like a bridge in a flood; you must commit fully to one of two camps, representing the most extreme views.

Next comes the attack of the bots. They amplify or attack an already polarised argument, scaring away those seeking moderate debate.

This swarm represents half, or more, of interactions. Human use of social media fell to 50 per cent, says the 2024 Imperva Bad Bot Report. Research suggests that 58 per cent of the time humans cannot identify a bot. [3]

The purpose of bots is to influence humans, and that includes those who follow your account; friends and employers.

The editor of the magazine Artforum was fired after he published an open letter from artists calling for “an end to the killing and harming of all civilians." Prominent individuals like Alan Dershowitz called for employers not to hire those who expressed pro-Palestinian opinions. [4]

After the murder of three schoolgirls in Southport in August, British prime minister Keir Starmer declared: "Let me also say to large social media companies and those who run them: violent disorder was clearly whipped up online."

But whipped up by whom?

The U.S. Department of Justice accuses Russia of operating troll farms and in July seized two domain names and 968 social media accounts on X. [5]

Israel also operated hundreds of X accounts posing as Americans to boost support for its actions in Gaza. [6]

Cyber activity is easily disguised. The CIA's Vault 7 hacking tools showed it could add Russian fingerprints to its own activity.

Bots that promoted Nigel Farage's Reform party were investigated by ITV journalists. They seem to have originated in the UK, with name, surname, followed by four digits, but they were shared and amplified from Nigeria.

Edward Snowden revealed the U.S. National Security Administration spying on Americans, but also Britain's equivalent GCHQ and its JTRIG (Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group) which more than a decade ago claimed the ability to infiltrate sites and discussions, up and down vote (and presumably follow and unfollow), change content, delete an online presence or plant compromising information or viruses. A Reddit threat accuses JTRIG of trying to stop discussions or lure participants into direct messages or other fora through honeytraps. [7]

The polarising of social and political debate is orchestrated by broadcasting corporations, owned by the asset managers and billionaires who fund politicians like Starmer.

Why would the government have anything to gain from dividing the people — except to conquer them?

The hand-wringing over polarisation is a distraction. If you study the research, something different emerges: polarisation may drive conformity.

When motivated by an extremely pro-social or antisocial agent, participants conform to what they presume is demanded of them: either to authority (the power vertical) or by following norms among their fellows (horizontal influence). [8]

Polarisation is the cymbal clash of civilisation: setting up people in conflict with each other to drive managed outcomes.

In this caterwauling of epithet-flinging, in which your adversary is a fascist, the erosion of liberties proceeds unnoticed.

Polarisation leads the majority to self-censor, but did you know that it also makes them compliant?

Polarisation is not a bug, it’s a feature. The powers that be may complain it is a source of disunity but in fact they are using it to drive compliance.

See Just Following Orders: How Media Creates Conformity - Polarization leads people to side with authority (Jan 28, 2024)

You may encounter online a rather narrow range of opinions: even a direct search yields limited results. This hampers the use of Twitter or social media as a research tool (though they are still better than the censored search engines like Google).

The so-called filter bubble deliberately concentrates and polarises results, in the attempt to build a profile of your tastes and opinions. (The question is how to counter it. One way is to list a range of interests, public figures and commentators of all shades and follow them.)

The same happens on the other side of the fence: the writer or commentator finds it harder to reach an audience or to receive feedback Please sign up so that you don’t miss the next instalment of this newsletter.