‘Disinformation” and the search for truth: more Twitter files
I was about twelve years old when I first read Orwell’s masterpiece Nineteen Eighty-Four. It scared me more than anything I’d ever read. Did I understand every single bit of it? No, but I understood a surprising amount.
And it wasn’t just Room 101 and the rats that scared me – although they certainly did scare me. It was the pervasiveness of the thought control and the replacement of truth with lies. In fact, Newspeak – the language of Orwell’s dystopia, which may just have been his most brilliant and insightful invention – was designed not only for thought control but for using words that meant the opposite of what they purported to mean. And the society depicted by Orwell not only instituted Newspeak but also was engaged in overwriting truth with falsehood, in particular regarding historical events. There was no news and no history that was not propaganda.
We have gotten very close to that obliteration of truth and its replacement by propaganda, and the internet – originally thought to help foster truth – has facilitated that propagandist process, especially through the dominance of social media. I’ve written about this phenomenon before, here and here. But I’m revisiting it, in the light of the most recent Twitter files episode, which is discussed here by Andrew Lowenthal, who is a somewhat old-fashioned leftist (in other words, a free speech advocate). The article focuses on the campaign against “disinformation,” which is often a form of “disinformation” itself:
Long before the #TwitterFiles, and certainly before responding to a Racket call for freelancers to help “Knock Out the Mainstream Propaganda Machine,” I’d been raising concerns about the weaponization of “anti-disinformation” as a tool for censorship. For EngageMedia team members in Myanmar, Indonesia, India, or the Philippines, the new elite Western consensus of giving governments greater power to decide what could be said online was the opposite of the work we were doing…
Before being put in charge of tracking anti-disinformation groups and their funders for this Racket project, I thought I had a strong idea of just how big this industry was. I’d been swimming in the broader digital rights field for two decades and saw the rapid growth of anti-disinformation initiatives up close. I knew many of the key organizations and their leaders, and EngageMedia had itself been part of anti-disinformation projects.
After gaining access to #TwitterFiles records, I learned the ecosystem was far bigger and had much more influence than I imagined. As of now we’ve compiled close to 400 organisations globally, and we are just getting started. Some organisations are legitimate. There is disinformation. But there are a great many wolves among the sheep.
I underestimated just how much money is being pumped into think tanks, academia and NGOs under the anti-disinformation front, both from the government and private philanthropy. We’re still calculating, but I had estimated it at hundreds of millions of dollars annually and I’m probably still being naive – Peraton received a USD $1B dollar contract from the Pentagon…
Twitter emails show consistent collaboration between military and intelligence officials and elite “progressives” from NGOs and academia. “They/them” signatures mingle with .mil, @westpoint, @fbi and others. How did the FBI and the Pentagon, once the avowed enemies of progressives for their attacks on the Black Panthers and the peace movement, their war-mongering and gross over-funding, begin to fuse and collude? They join together in election tabletop exercises and share hors d’oeuvres at conferences put on by oligarch philanthropists. That cultural and political shift was once a heavy lift, but now it is as simple as cc’ing each other…
The Twitter Files also show just how much the NGO and academic set had been absorbed into the inner Big Tech elite, upon whom they pushed their new anti-free-expression values…
The Files make plain egregious acts of censorship were enabled or ignored by NGOs and academia, often not because they were wrong, but because the ideas came from the wrong people.
Lowenthal goes on to add that the left used to champion free speech, and needs to do it again because:
The shoe will one day again be on the other foot. When that day comes free speech will not be the enemy of liberals and progressives, it will be the best possible protection against the abuse of power.
Here Lowenthal shows that he’s naively living in a dream world. He’s a leftist, but – if he is sincere in what he wrote, and I believe that he is – he doesn’t seem to understand the nature of the left, although Orwell (also a leftist, by the way – see this) certainly did. The hardcore left is not for truth or for free speech; that was just a pose, necessary until it took power. The left is interested in power, and it intends to obtain it and change the rules so that it will never lose it and the shoe will never be on the other foot. Then it will control the flow of information and can smother truth entirely if it is threatened by that truth.
As Orwell wrote:
‘You are ruling over us for our own good,’ [Winston] said feebly. ‘You believe that human beings are not fit to govern themselves, and therefore-‘
He started and almost cried out. A pang of pain had shot through his body. O’Brien had pushed the lever of the dial up to thirty-five.
‘That was stupid, Winston, stupid!’ he said. ‘You should know better than to say a thing like that.’
He pulled the lever back and continued:
‘Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?’
This is a very bleak vision of the future. I think many on the left still tell themselves that their motives are good; in fact I know many who, like Lowenthal, do tell themselves that. The trouble is that those people will not be in charge when the transition happens, as it is already happening. The hardcore ones will be in charge, the ones who are only interested in power for power’s sake. That’s what gives them their utter ruthlessness.
I will add one more thing: even those hardcore people actually are interested in ‘wealth or luxury or long life” – it’s just that the wealth and luxury and long life in which they’re interested is their own.
I have never read Nineteen Eighty-Four, but I do understand the concept. We are perhaps even past what was in the book
SHIREHOME:
Technological advances have made it possible to go beyond what was in the book in terms of thought control. Now, though, it’s done more outside of most people’s awareness, and in that way it more resembles Huxley’s Brave New World. Right now I believe we’re in some odd hybrid of the two.
You might want to read Orwell’s book – and Huxley’s also, if you never have. Both are extraordinary, although very different.
Indeed! Hard-leftists and so-called “progressives” (with a few noble exceptions) were in favor of free speech as a means to an end– power, control, and one-party-rule, the goal of yesterday’s Bolsheviks and of today’s Neo-Bolsheviks. The amusing (and dispiriting) joke on the right is that for leftists, 1984 (written, of course, by a man of the left) is not a cautionary tale or a warning about the evil of totalitarianism, but an instruction manual.
I see so many of my acquaintances who could fill the role of the haters in the “Two minute hate” extremely well. The leader of the modern daily hate session is of course eagerly played by the media, and we all know who plays Emmanuel Goldstein don’t we?!
I think many on the left still tell themselves that their motives are good; in fact I know many who, like Lowenthal, do tell themselves that.
Sorry I haven’t read the whole piece yet. Hopefully tonight. I’m thinking of Atbashian’s “Shakedown Socialism.”
In it, he recounts the activities of the labor unions, or equivalent, in the late-stage Soviet Union. Early on, the militant leadership uses the labor leaders to gain power, and once attained, the labor leaders become powerless. But they are still useful as propaganda tools. So the fiction of empowering the working man and woman is maintained. Even in that scenario, some of those labor leaders may still wish they could help the working class, but don’t really have any options at that point.
So maybe Lowenthal is merely saying, I know something like the above is going to happen, and those of us who are not powermongers need to wake up before it is too late.
Put another way, I suspect that many do have good motives. It’s just that they don’t understand the superstructure of the thing they are involved in. And maybe Lowenthal is saying “This is what the superstructure really is, and this is where it leads.”
The leader of the modern daily hate session is of course eagerly played by the media, and we all know who plays Emmanuel Goldstein don’t we?!
Good morning, Citizens.
Today is April 26, 2023.
E. Jean Carroll, please report to The People’s Megaphone. Citizen Carroll to The Megaphone, immediately.
Did Orwell invent Newspeak as a concept or just the term to describe it? I ask, because one of the things that give me hope for the future is that this phenomenon we are seeing today happened in the past. It happened, and people like Orwell and Solzhenitsyn wrote about it. (I would include Ayn Rand, because what the media does to Rourke in Fountainhead can be seen with Trump and Musk).
Of course, one problem with the hope I have is that it got much worse before it ever got better.
The silly true believers with the best intentions are always among the first to die at the hands of the barbaric dictators who are more than willing to use torture and murder to secure power. In Cuba, they were treated to batting practice up close and personal by a baseball bat-wielding Che.
In a democracy, the corrupt candidate has an enormous advantage because they can raise vast sums selling from a nearly limitless inventory of all government has, or may do, or may not do. The honest candidate has almost no chance. None at all when the news media is in bed with the corrupt.
In a socialist revolution, the morally inclined “good socialists” are defenseless against the violent sociopath. This is why everywhere communism is tried violent dictators emerge. Having mowed down all the trees of the rule of law in the successful revolution, the morally inclined are defenseless when the devil turns round for them.
Franklin’s republic is not guaranteed for us to keep. Moral character and the checks and balances of divided government are its only protection.
Big Brother and the Thought Police presently rule America because the Democrat voters and incompetent news media believe that they will survive the baseball bats and the show trials. Having helped dispatch all of us committed to growing and maintaining the trees which hold up the rule of law, they may be surprised when no one is left to stand for them.
Leland,
Orwell was using the USSR as his model. An example of newspeak can be found in Orwell’s Animal Farm with the pigs slogan, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
I took a Science Fiction and Fantasy English class when I was in high school. We read 1984, Brave New World, Soylent Green, Fahrenheit 451, The Illustrated Man, Animal Farm, C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy and the Tolkien Lord of the Rings Series.
I remember them all to this very day. Of course the 70’s was a time when everyone KNEW the world would be ending soon and we would all freeze and starve on a dark planet destroyed by nuclear war. But even then, I saw that Tolkien had a much more hopeful take on things than any science fiction writers we were reading.
My hubby had never read any of these so I had him read the science fiction books this last year. He was shocked at how accurately these times were pegged by writers decades ago. That Hideous Strength by Lewis is particularly horrifying in this respect. Even if you don’t read the first 2 books in that series, read That Hideous Strength if you haven’t.
I feel like we are at point where it is devoutly to be wished that a hobbit somewhere is nearing the summit of a volcano.
#6: Ours is a world governed by the aggressive use of force.
“The hardcore ones will be in charge, the ones who are only interested in power for power’s sake. That’s what gives them their utter ruthlessness.” neo
Just as with a rabid dog, history demonstrates that when the utterly ruthless hold the power, there is only one way to deal with them.
Question from RFK Jr:
Twitter files reveal that Pentagon partnered with Vanguard in billion dollar project to censor free speech in America. Are any of my fellow Democrats troubled?
Answer: Very few at the grassroots level, practically none among the elected. Welcome to the Democratic Party of 2023.
Related:
Someone who remains hopeful (in spite of everything) and explains why.
And how.
“A Grand Alliance To Overcome The Elite Betrayal Of America”–
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/grand-alliance-overcome-elite-betrayal-america
Nothing lasts forever, nothing.
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The shoe will one day again be on the other foot. When that day comes free speech will not be the enemy of liberals and progressives, it will be the best possible protection against the abuse of power.
Whatever is going to happen, this won’t be it.
Neo – bleak is an apt word.
Twitter being bought by Musk helped a lot.
As is the ongoing lawsuit by the states is unearthing a lot of collusion. Sunlight is a great disinfectant.
Tuckers video mentioned how many topics are verboten: https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1651376097349578753
Robert Kennedy is highlighting forbidden topics, which is positive.
Eu/UK actions are terrifying
orwell took soviet propaganda, and his own experience with the bbc world service to create the world of airship one,
t
How on earth did he miss the part of the iron boot stomping on the face forever? Gotta have that iron boot.
he saw how diligent the left book club, was in suppressing animal farm, even as an allegory, berenson and taibbi and wolf quickly discovered they were not quite non persons but not granted the privilege
Regarding that last, it is not clear to me that you understand. Given two possibilities, where they had more wealth, luxury, and lifespan in option A. but so did you, and in option B. the gap between you was larger, the hardcore would choose option B. every single time.
Even the finest steak would be as ashes in their mouths if they knew that anyone could have it. Having more is a correlate with power, but forcing you to have less is an irrefutable demonstration; so it is even more important to them to deprive you than enrich themselves.
I’ve posted this before, but… in case you missed it:
95% of liberals today are Truman’s “professional” liberals.
SciVo,
What you write at 9:44am has been proven, scientifically. It’s innate. Humans can reason ourselves out of it; Jesus, Ghandi, Dr. MLK, Jr.; many firemen, policemen, nurses, mothers, fathers, teachers, etc… A proper human family unit demonstrates that humans can overcome the reflex. Unfortunately, many do not.
But, yes, the drive is to do better than those around one, no matter what one’s circumstances are, and no matter what their circumstances are.
Castro, Lenin, Stalin and Mao didn’t live in tenement housing.
this is the new feudalism, the time before gutenberg liberated the printing presses, this is why musk threatens them, and tucker, and a few other outlets,
Just Lily wrote “I feel like we are at point where it is devoutly to be wished that a hobbit somewhere is nearing the summit of a volcano.”
Amen to that.
OBloody:
Almost everyone I know is a liberal – tons and tons of them. They almost all are pleasant people on a personal level. So I disagree intensely with your point.