Restoring The Narrative: The Political Logic Behind The Campaign Against Disinformation.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Political Narratives: A sovereign state is not characterised solely by the monopoly it enjoys over organised violence. Of equal importance (some might even say of greater importance) is the monopoly it is also supposed to enjoy over the creation and control of the stories that the nation tells itself. A state that loses control over these core political narratives hasn’t long to live.

PERHAPS JIM MORRISON’S HOSTILITY toward Establishment America was born out of his father’s role in the notorious Tonkin Gulf Incident. Not many people know that The Doors’ lead-singer’s father, George S. Morrison, was an admiral in the United States Navy. Even fewer realise that he was one of those commanding the US naval force patrolling off the North Vietnamese coast in 1964. The very same naval force that was “attacked” by non-existent North Vietnamese gunboats in an “incident” that never happened, but which served as the pretext for Congress’ “Tonkin Gulf Resolution”. The very same resolution that gave President Lyndon Johnson the authority to escalate American involvement in South Vietnam to the level of full-scale war.

Jim Morrison wrote about “weird scenes in the gold-mine”. Today, we’d call the completely fabricated story that kicked-off the vast American tragedy of Vietnam “disinformation”. And the thing to remember, right from the start, about the Tonkin Gulf Incident is that it was official disinformation – i.e. deliberate lying by the state.

Too long ago? Ancient history? Okay. So, let’s bring everything right up to date.

Elon Musk buys Twitter and discovers that for years its previous owners had been operating hand-in-glove with the United States security apparatus in a massive effort to rein-in what the state deemed to be “bad actors” using social media to spread misinformation (unintentional lies) and disinformation (deliberate lies) across the Internet. Musk copies the celebrated American investigative journalist Matt Taibbi into “#Twitter Files”, and pretty soon the whole world knows what Establishment America has been up to.

Which is what – exactly?

Perhaps the easiest way to characterise what the United States Government has been engaged in is “patch protection”. Because a sovereign state is not characterised solely by the monopoly it enjoys over organised violence. Of equal importance (some might even say of greater importance) is the monopoly it is also supposed to enjoy over the creation and control of the stories that the nation tells itself. A state that loses control over these core political narratives hasn’t long to live. Exposed in #Twitter Files are the lengths to which the American state was prepared to go to shut-down the purveyors of alternative political narratives – to protect its patch.

Controlling the narrative was obviously of enormous importance in the circumstances of a global pandemic. Alternative versions of the significance of Covid-19 raised the spectre of large chunks of the population becoming convinced that the demands of the state, especially the measures it mandated to keep the population safe and to protect the public health system from being overwhelmed, were, in light of their “research”, unreasonable, unwarranted and unwise. For the scientific community, in particular, it was vital that this sort of misinformation and disinformation be countered with all the resources at the state’s disposal.

But, if the Covid Pandemic was the proximate cause of the US Government’s full-court-press against misinformation and disinformation, it was far from the only one. Those responsible for maintaining the national security of the United States were becoming increasingly uneasy about the capacity of the Internet – especially social media – to empower its adversaries. By making it possible for non-state actors to engage in the same sort of subversive and destabilising activities that had, hitherto, been the sole preserve of the US Government, social media was fast becoming an enormous and existential threat.

Brexit, and Trump’s election as President, had a worryingly familiar smell to them. Both countries’ spooks began to suspect that the United Kingdom and the United States had been subjected to something alarmingly similar to the sort of “colour revolutions” the US had unleashed on Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine. In the case of both Brexit and Trump, the state had lost control of the political narrative, with dramatically and irrevocably destabilising consequences. Cui bono? The Americans and the British were convinced that the bodies responsible were in some way linked to the Russian Federation – they just couldn’t prove it.

What they could prove, however, was the extraordinary impact that well-directed hate could have upon the minds of the ideologically and psychologically vulnerable. The exploitation of the Internet and social media by the ISIS terrorist organisation set new bench-marks for hateful propaganda. In the name of its “holy” cause, ISIS demonstrated repeatedly its followers’ willingness to carry out the most daunting atrocities. Hate proved to be a great mobiliser. Hate made things happen.

The ingredients had been gathered for the worst sort of state-sponsored stupidity.

Before the arrival of the Internet, both the British and American states had been superb manipulators (and, if that failed, intimidators) of the news media. Publishers were courted, editors were co-opted, journalists’ careers advanced (or retarded) by stories planted and details leaked. Certainly, there were always small outfits digging away in places they had no business sinking their little spades, but they could be handled. A bloke in a bar would suggest to his “reputable” media contact that the offending muckraker was an unstable “conspiracy theorist”. That usually did the trick.

But, the Internet – the f**king Internet! Now there weren’t just a handful of publishers to get on side. Now any fool could become a publisher – free, gratis, and for nothing. Now there were no properly-briefed editors to spike “irresponsible” stories, no ambitious journalists to steer into safer pastures. Now every bastard and his brother was a “citizen journalist” with audio and video capabilities yesterday’s hacks would have given their eye-teeth for. It was out of control!

So, of course, the spooks decided to set up special misinformation and disinformation entities to identify and neutralise the offending misinformers and disinformers. Matt Taibbi’s stories set out in jaw-dropping detail how the US national security apparatus recruited a small army of academics and techies to staff a host of “arms-length” research facilities and think tanks. Using the “data” amassed by these bodies, the spooks then attempted to turn the equivalents of the publishers and editors of yesteryear, Google, Facebook and Twitter, into their secret censors. And, God help us, it worked!

Even in the Shire, even in little New Zealand, the long arm of American spookdom – operating through the Five Eyes Network – found mischief it could make. The trusting Kiwis bought the warnings about the danger of misinformation and disinformation during a pandemic. That made sense. It also seemed sensible, at least to some, that following the Christchurch Mosque Massacres, something needed to be done about hate. In the absence of ISIS, Action Zealandia would have to do.

Following the American model, our very own “Disinformation Project” was set up by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. Once established, it was shucked-off to the University of Auckland, from which it could take on an “independent” academic lustre. The Americans had warned their Kiwi mates that too close an association with the state would only encourage the conspiracy theorists to (rightly) accuse the government of abrogating the civil and political rights of its citizens. Suitably separated from the powers that be, however, this sworn enemy of unacceptable political narratives would find it pathetically simple to sell its wares to a new generation of journalists who had never heard of the Tonkin Gulf.

And how eager they were to buy them! When the genuine victims of misinformation and disinformation turned up on Parliament’s front lawn, filled with anger and consumed by hate, the Press Gallery’s terrified journalists couldn’t heap enough dirt on the unruly protesters and their shadowy sponsors. Or do enough to ensure that the New Zealand state’s monopoly over the creation and control of the nation’s political narratives was restored.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 13 April 2023.

Keeping Things Simple.

Cut Through: A complex world is incompatible with a simple world. Explanation is incompatible with acceptance. Contrariwise, the ability to distinguish the majority view of reality from reality itself is arguably the most vital adaptation of human evolution, it’s what drives our species forward.

TO EXPLAIN IS NOT TO JUSTIFY. How astonishing, that in 2022 so few people appear to grasp this simple truth. It’s as if expending the mental energy required to understand what is happening in the world will, in some mysterious way, rob us of the capacity to make judgements about it.

And, therein, lies the problem: judging the world is now much more important than understanding it. Complexity has become the enemy of clarity – especially moral clarity. “Keep it simple, stupid” has become the motto of the modern politician: proof of just how dangerous complexity is now perceived to be. Such fetishization of simplicity certainly explains that other great political motto: “Explaining is losing.”

If the world really was a simple place, then the demonisation of those who attempt to explain it would not be necessary. It has always been a problem for those exercising authority over us that the longer we live in the world the more obvious it becomes that it is very far from being a simple place. The more ordinary people begin to appreciate the world’s complexity, however, the harder the job of ruling them becomes. While philosophers may argue that to know all is to forgive all, most rulers take a very different view. In their experience, the more people learn about the reasons behind the rules, the angrier they become.

Perhaps that is why it was generally considered wise, by the rulers, to bolster the authority of the state with the authority of organised religion. Nothing beats organised religion for whittling down the awesome complexity of the world to a few hard, fast, and – most importantly – simple rules. Moses made do with just ten!

Enslave people to the simple “truths” of their faith, and any need for them to come to terms with the complexity of human existence is averted. Omniscience is restricted to God. Only He is able to comprehend the entirety of His universe. Men and women need only know that the Lord moves in mysterious ways his wonders to perform. Keep his commandments and all will be well. (Oh, and it’s probably a good idea to keep the commandments of your earthly rulers as well!)

A partnership made in heaven, you might say. Or else, that heaven is the partnership’s most successful invention. Works either way.

The problem with organised religion and its simple truths is that the human imagination, combined with human species’ insatiable curiosity, are forever throwing up individuals who refuse to believe in the comforting fictions of their secular and religious rulers. They can, of course, be suppressed. (Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!) But the irritating thing about these seekers after knowledge is that they all-too-frequently come up with ideas and techniques that are simply too useful to ignore. Organised religion takes a hit. Living gets more complicated – and so does the whole business of governing an increasingly complicated population.

The answer to this new problem turned out to be relatively simple. Replace the voice of the priest in the pulpit with the voice of the teacher at the front of the class. Replace the wonder of God’s creation with the “nothingbutism” of science. Human-beings are “nothing but” the product of millions of years of evolution. Morality is what works. Evil is what works in ways that make no evolutionary sense. Bad equals broken. Good equals the absence of damage – and difference. The best thing to be is the same as everybody else. Uncomplicated.

The Internet makes simplicity easy. Thanks to social media, the voice of the teacher at the front of the class can be retired in favour of the voices on the individual’s Twitter feed, Facebook Page, Instagram or Tik-Tok. Sophisticated algorithms ensure that practically all of these voices are saying exactly the same thing – keeping the conversation as simple as possible. Never has it been easier for people to know what they think. Never have people had less cause to be tolerant of those who think for themselves.

Attempting to explain to others why they may be mistaken in their thinking is fast becoming a dangerous exercise. For many people, being wrong is an outright impossibility. How could it be otherwise when everyone they know is telling them they’re right?

Introducing the concept of complexity: the idea that in any given situation there are a host of competing factors at work; is interpreted by an increasing number of twenty-first century humans as a criticism of both themselves and their friends. Moreover, since they and their friends are always right, the person “explaining” can only be trying to justify being wrong. And pretending to be right when you’re not right, doesn’t just make you wrong, it makes you bad.

A complex world is incompatible with a simple world. Explanation is incompatible with acceptance. 

Contrariwise, the ability to distinguish the majority view of reality from reality itself is arguably the most vital adaptation of human evolution, it’s what drives our species forward.

Unfortunately, it can also get you killed.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 24 March 2022.

Turning Up Angry.

Goin' Full Cray-Cray: The vandalism of a Panmure Vaccination Centre came just a day after an estimated 5,000 anti-vaxxers staged an impromptu march from the Auckland Domain to Newmarket and back. Clearly, the maintenance of social cohesion in Auckland is fast becoming a critical issue for the authorities as the Covid-19 Delta Outbreak intensifies across New Zealand’s largest city.

AROUND MID-DAY on Sunday (31/10/21) Auckland City Councillor, Josephine Bartley, tweeted. “Anti vax now turning violent smashed shop front of our local pasifika provider here in Panmure after our successful community vax yesterday and the online abuse they been receiving unacceptable.” Half an hour later, the Councillor tweeted again. “Oh boy pacific leaders turning up here angry that’s not helpful. Just waiting on police and have sorted business Association for camera footage. I know we have strong anti vax movement here in my area but what we don’t want is for this to become violent and for retaliation.”

The vandalism in Panmure came just a day after an estimated 5,000 anti-vaxxers staged an impromptu march from the Auckland Domain to Newmarket and back. Clearly, the maintenance of social cohesion in Auckland is fast becoming a critical issue for the authorities as the Covid-19 Delta Outbreak intensifies across New Zealand’s largest city.

The biggest concern for the political and law enforcement agencies should not, however, be the behaviour of the anti-vaxxers – deeply concerning though that may be – but how much anti-vax provocation the vaccinated majority is prepared to tolerate. No matter how ugly the anti-vaxxers get, any kind of co-ordinated backlash from the vaccinated is bound to get uglier.

Seized with all the passion of true believers, the anti-vaxxers have yet to demonstrate any awareness of this acute vulnerability. There are a number of reasons for this. Not the least of which is that the communities from which they draw their energy and (mis)information are virtual – not real.

Without social-media, the anti-vaxxers would be unable to escape the reality of their isolation from the broader society’s shared understanding of the Covid-19 crisis and its remedies. Prior to the arrival of the Internet, it required considerable fortitude for a single citizen, or tiny group of citizens, to challenge the accepted wisdom of the overwhelming majority. Human-beings do not like to live outside the social embrace. Ostracism is a terrible punishment.

With social media, however, it is possible for individuals to join communities in which their dissident views are echoed enthusiastically by every member. The natural safeguards against making oneself a social outlier, with all the risks which, historically, marginalising oneself incurs, are simply over-ridden by the twenty-first century’s astonishing communications technology. When everyone you talk to reads the same thing, and believes the same thing, then your outlier status is concealed and your outré convictions strengthened.

This misapprehension of reality is aggravated by the fact that so much of the anti-vaxxers’ world view is bound up with the notion that those who reject their ideas are not simply mistaken, but malevolent. That so many people share a completely different understanding of what is going on in relation to Covid-19, and what to do about it, is taken as proof of the monstrousness of the global conspiracy, of which the virus is but one part. Far from seeing themselves as the deluded victims of disinformation, the anti-vaxxers regard themselves as an heroic minority of truth-tellers. Some go further, describing themselves as “purebloods”. What does that makes the rest of New Zealand society? Zombies?

The problem this poses for the Police is enormous. Although the percentage of hard-core anti-vaxxers may be very small, when manifested in flesh and blood, on the streets of Auckland, even a small percentage can take on an extremely menacing aspect. Five thousand anti-vaccination protesters, many of them vociferously anti-government, have the potential to do a lot of damage: to private property; to their vaccinated fellow citizens; and – not least – to the Police themselves.

There has been much criticism of Police Commissioner, Andrew Coster, for appearing to “do nothing” about obvious and egregious violations of the Level 3 Covid-19 regulations. In the eyes of those Aucklanders who have done everything they were asked to do: stay at home; social distance; wear masks; get vaccinated; the inaction of the Police in the face of anti-vaxxer defiance is intolerable. Many cannot help feeling that the likes of “Bishop” Brian Tamaki and his Destiny Church are laughing in their faces. Why aren’t the Police getting stuck in?

The surprisingly forthright answer of the Health Minister, Andrew Little, when questioned on this matter by Q+A’s Jack Tame was: “Because you can’t arrest 5,000 people.” The Minister is quite correct, and this is Coster’s dilemma. Taking even 500 protesters into custody would require a Police operation of unprecedented scale. The Police Commissioner simply does not command the human and material resources needed to mount such an operation. And, even if he did, he would be most unwise to do so.

The level of craziness in the anti-vax movement is such that an aggressive Police response would, almost certainly, spark a ferociously violent reaction from the hard core anti-vaxxers. Coster will be very anxious to avoid the sort of running battles between protesters and riot cops that took place on the streets of Melbourne for three straight days.

Not the least of these worries would be straightforwardly tactical. To arrest and detain a fully-grown human-being who is behaving aggressively requires at least two – more likely three or four – police officers. Unwilling to deplete their on-the-ground strength by ordering such mass arrests, Police commanders will resort to tactics designed to immobilise and/or disperse violent protesters. Pepper-spray, tear gas, rubber bullets, truncheons: all of these riot-control weapons were deployed in Melbourne. It ain’t a pretty sight.

What’s more, it doesn’t work. Escalation of force on the part of the Police, simply begets escalation of force on the part of the protesters. Whatever moderation remaining among the leadership of Auckland’s anti-vaxxers would be shunted aside by hard-core extremist elements – many of them Pentecostal Christians convinced they are on the eve of the Battle of Armageddon. Better by far to let 5,000 people let off a bit of steam by marching from the Domain to Newmarket and back again, than to have at least some of them running down Queen Street smashing windows and beating up cops.

All well and good, but for how long are people like Councillor Bartley and her Pasifika constituents supposed to put up with abusive and threatening phone-calls and the vandalising of vaccination clinics? If conscious law-breaking is not met with a decisive Police response, then it will increase. All that is ever required to bring out the absolute worst in human-beings is a rising level of confidence that their actions will not bring consequences.

 If it becomes clear to Police commanders (and one hopes that Police Intelligence is in a position to advise them) that such voices of moderation as could be counted on among the anti-vaxxers are no longer being heeded, and that, even in the absence of heavy-handed policing, extremist violence is about to escalate –– then all bets must be considered off.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 1st November 2021.

Ever-So-Slightly Bonkers: Simon Bridges Plays To His Base.

Would You Buy A Used Propaganda Video From This Man? Bridges and the National Party’s strategists have discovered that the ideas and attitudes considered acceptable by today’s editors and journalists are no longer enforceable. The rise and rise of the Internet and the social media platforms it spawned means that the average voter is no longer dependent on newspapers, radio and television for guidance about right-thinking and wrong-thinking.

SIMON BRIDGES may be right. He’s clearly betting everything National has on the New Zealand electorate being neither outraged nor offended by his behaviour. If the polls are to be believed, it’s a wager he and his party appear to be winning. National is only a few percentage points away from winning the 2020 General Election outright. So what if he comes across on radio and television as ever-so-slightly bonkers. Venture out into the “heartland” and it will soon become apparent that he’s not alone.

Time was when the boundaries of political acceptability were pretty tightly defined – and enforced. Back in the days of newspapers and a strictly limited choice of radio stations and television channels. It was a time when editors wielded enormous power. People with complaints about fluoridation might get the occasional letter-to-the-editor published, but unless the editor himself (it was almost always a him) was anti-fluoride that was about it. The same applied across the entire range of social, economic and political issues. There were ideas that it was acceptable to hold and, hence, to read about; and ideas that most emphatically were not.

These boundaries corralled not only ordinary citizens, but their leaders as well. Step outside them and the retribution could be swift and savage. People who look back wistfully to the days when “consensus” reigned, tend to forget the level of exclusion required to give it effect. The state had no need to maintain a strict censorship regime (excepting, of course, in relation to matters sexual) when the finely honed “journalistic instincts” of newspaper proprietors, news and current affairs editors, and television network bosses made state intervention unnecessary. Which is not to say that the occasional maverick wasn’t allowed to make it through the barbed-wire – if only to demonstrate the system’s willingness to tolerate unorthodox opinions. These honourable exceptions, however, served only to prove the rule.

To step outside the agreed boundaries of political orthodoxy required special courage. In the 1950s and 60s politicians enjoyed considerable public respect, which they were careful to maintain by ensuring that their conduct measured-up to the voters’ expectations. Members of Parliament were serious people: much happier to be considered ponderous than over-excited. A performance akin to Simon Bridges’ on today’s (16/10/19) Morning Report would have been career-ending – even in the 1970s and 80s. So, why does he feel so safe in coming across as ever-so-slightly bonkers?

The answer is very simple. Bridges and the National Party’s strategists have discovered that the ideas and attitudes considered acceptable by today’s editors and journalists are no longer enforceable. The rise and rise of the Internet and the social media platforms it spawned means that the average voter is no longer dependent on newspapers, radio and television for guidance about right-thinking and wrong-thinking. Indeed, what social media has revealed to those average voters is just how vast the gulf has grown that separates their own values from those of the “elites”. What’s more, those same average voters are now free to communicate with one another directly. They no longer have to run the gauntlet of their local newspaper editor’s prejudices – or rely upon the news bulletins and documentaries broadcast over “mainstream” radio and television. Today they have their own sources of information – their own news.

This ability of readers, listeners and viewers to go around the “mainstream” has brought about an historic reversal of dependency in the consumption of information. Now it is the editors of newspapers, radio stations and television networks who must absorb the prejudices of their audiences. The advertisers that still pay the bills can no longer be told to take it or leave it when it comes to getting their messages across. When advertising revenue is dependent upon the number of people who “click” an on-line story, editors are required to go after every click they can possibly get. Media content has been democratised in ways not seen since the early years of the printing press. It is no longer a case of “improving” the Great Unwashed by feeding them the ideas of their betters. Today, it is the Great Unwashed who call the cultural shots. Not an altogether pretty picture. As the great impresario and showman, P. T. Barnum, put it: “Nobody ever lost a dollar by underestimating the taste of the American public!”

Nor is it likely, judging by the behaviour of Simon Bridges and his small army of social media creatives, that any politician is ever going to lose votes by underestimating the wit of the New Zealand electorate. He – and they – know that roughly 50 percent (and probably a lot more!) of New Zealanders are not well-off, well-educated and “woke” urban sophisticates. Hell! They’re anything but! Which is why Simon keeps his messages short, simple and brutal, with endlessly repeated stock phrases. “Keys to the Kingdom” anyone?

Ever-so-slightly bonkers? You betcha! Just like his electoral base.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 17 October 2019.

Un-Friending The People.

The People's "Friend": In this masterpiece of revolutionary propaganda, the homicidal political psychopath, Jean-Paul Marat, has been transformed by Jacques-Louis David, the French Revolution's most accomplished artist, into a martyred hero of the ordinary people of Paris. Thanks to Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, the ignorant and the angry no longer need a radical 'friend' with a printing press to amplify their voices. Today they can change the world with a fingertip.

BEN MORGAN IS RIGHT: “This is the first time in history that people with so little competence can so powerfully enter the civic discourse.” The consequences of this undeniable fact, for ourselves as citizens, and for our entire democratic political culture, are huge. When noise equals money, and ignorance has been given such a mighty amplifier as the Internet, then democracy, as a viable system of government, must come under enormous pressure.

The dangers of giving the angry and ignorant their own media outlet was demonstrated most powerfully in the early 1790s, just as the French Revolution was entering its “Reign of Terror”.

The radical political philosopher, physician and noted scientist, Jean-Paul Marat, recognising the rising power of the poorest people of Paris, founded a newspaper dedicated to both arousing and expressing their most extreme political passions. In a sinister anticipation of the very worst aspects of today’s social media, Marat’s Friend of The People turned rumour into fact and gave voice to the poverty-stricken masses most bloodthirsty impulses. To be denounced on the pages of Marat’s “fake news”-paper very quickly became the equivalent of a death sentence. That Marat, himself, was afflicted with an excruciating skin disease did nothing to calm his homicidal fury towards any person or group he judged to be an enemy of the people.

It was at Marat’s instigation that the revolutionary militia – known as the National Guard – carried out the infamous “September Massacres” of 1792. Over the course of a week National Guardsmen, their numbers augmented by the Paris poor, broke into the capital’s prisons and butchered more than a thousand prisoners. Marat had told his readers that the jails of Paris were full of aristocrats ready to assist the counter-revolutionary forces massing on France’s borders. To save the revolution, he declared, they must all be pre-emptively executed. Some of the victims were, indeed, political prisoners awaiting trial. Most, however, were common criminals. Even by the grisly standards of eighteenth century Europe, the grotesque horror of the September Massacres was profoundly shocking.

Marat’s next victims were the “Girondins”, a faction of the National Assembly whom he suspected of excessive moderation. The Friend of the People’s relentless campaigning convinced Marat’s readers that the Girondins were plotting against the Revolution. In short order, his allies in the National Assembly, the radical Jacobin faction, had the Girondins arrested, tried before the Revolutionary Tribunal, declared guilty, and guillotined.

Marat’s bloody reign was brought to an abrupt end by a young Girondin sympathiser called Charlotte Corday, who famously stabbed him to death in his medicinal bath, after gaining access to the “people’s friend” by passing herself off as an anti-Girondin informant. Secretly relieved to be rid of their dangerous journalistic demagogue, the Jacobins transformed Marat into the Revolution’s first great martyr. The painting entitled The Death of Marat, executed by the era’s most accomplished artist, Jacques-Louis David, is an acknowledged masterpiece of revolutionary propaganda.

This cautionary historical tale records only the consequences of a single radical intellectual’s decision to align himself wholeheartedly with the least educated and most desperate elements of a society gripped by revolutionary change. The important difference between Marat’s Friend of the People and Facebook is that, in order to work its malign political magic, the former still required the participation of a guiding editorial hand, a printers’ workshop, and a host of newspaper sellers. Contemporary social media has done away with all these intermediaries. Today, the people need no friend, they can speak for themselves.

These individual voices, algorithmically assembled into vast aggregations of the like-minded, now possess the power to dictate the editorial policies of the world’s newspapers and broadcasting networks. Dependent on the electronic devices of these volatile and easily bored consumers for their economic survival, the legacy media has all but given up on the notion that a newspaper, magazine, radio station or television network should lead and inform public opinion. This clear political goal, which Marat, himself, would have endorsed – albeit in relation to the Parisians’ most extreme opinions – has been supplemented by the media’s existential need to fashion itself into a politically agnostic parasite. The new media organism’s only hope of sustaining itself is to feast, with cynical efficiency, on the madness and mania of the masses, and then excrete it back to them.

With the ignorance and prejudices of the masses setting the social and political tone, the desperation and disdain of well-educated and culturally sophisticated managers and professionals – the people who actually keep a modern, technologically-driven society functioning – is easily imagined.

Gone are the days when these folk were able to filter out the masses’ mania and madness from the news media; when the political parties they largely controlled could aggregate a coherent policy agenda with which to guide an otherwise inchoate electorate. Confronted with such monumental stupidity in every sphere: politics, medicine, science; is it any wonder that the technocrats in charge have learned how to transform the self-same social media which has undermined the guided democracy of the past into the undisclosed vector of its destruction in the present?

The covert manipulation of elections by means of social media has now reached such a level of sophistication that those lacking the skills to participate are rendered utterly irrelevant to the electoral process – except as window-dressing. The impact of these techniques is already evident in the deep organic political crisis currently gripping the United Kingdom. Brexit, that great victory of the ignorant and the angry, has set the UK up for a revolution of its own. A similar fate looks set to overwhelm the United States in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential elections.

Will these revolts throw up their own versions of Jean-Paul Marat? Of course. Only this time the people will not see him. And he will not be their friend.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 2 July 2019.

Our Diminishing Capacity For Empathy

 A Failure Of Empathy: The casual cruelty of Barbara Sumner-Burstyn's Facebook posting about the death of Lance Corporal Jacinda Baker offered swift corroboration of Dr Bruce Perry's claim that social media are diminishing our capacity for empathy.

 

ARE SOCIAL MEDIA making us crueller? Dr Bruce Perry, an American neuroscientist currently touring New Zealand, argues that the explosive growth of communications technology is diminishing our capacity for empathy. By undermining face-to-face relationships and weakening the intimate and ethical bonds that hold communities together, claims Dr Perry, social media are changing the way our brains work.
 

A challenging thesis, but Dr Perry’s disturbing ideas received almost instant corroboration. In an extraordinary outburst on Facebook, the New Zealand film-maker, Barbara Sumner-Burstyn, delivered the following, scathing, ‘testimonial’ to Lance Corporal Jacinda Baker, the young New Zealand soldier killed in action in Afghanistan on 19 August:
 

“Oh, so fallen soldier Jacinda Baker liked boxing and baking – did they forget she also liked invading countries we are not at war with, killing innocent people and had no moral compass. She 100 per cent does not deserve our respect for her flawed choices. We are not at war. We are helping America invade another country for their oil. No more than that.”
 

It is difficult to know where to begin with this thoroughly obnoxious piece of writing. Perhaps with Ms Sumner-Burstyn’s simple errors of fact.
 

Lance Corporal Baker did not invade Afghanistan, she was posted there as a serving member of the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) which was in Afghanistan at the behest of the New Zealand Government, which had agreed to supply the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) with a Provincial Reconstruction Team in Bamiyan province. The ISAF is in Afghanistan by virtue of a UN Security Council resolution authorising UN member states to aid the creation of an effective and democratic Afghan government.
 

Lance Corporal Baker, far from “killing innocent people” was a medic – duty bound to assist all those wounded in combat or injured by enemy munitions – regardless of status or nationality. When she was killed, Lance Corporal Baker was escorting an injured comrade to medical assistance. It is extremely difficult to reconcile these facts with Ms Sumner-Burstyn’s charge that Lance Corporal Baker “had no moral compass”.
 

Ms Sumner-Burstyn’s final claim: “We are helping America invade another country for their oil” is similarly false. Afghanistan possesses no oil fields worth expending US blood and treasure to secure. The Americans are there for only one reason. Because the Taliban Government of Afghanistan had offered safe haven to Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaida: the terrorists ultimately responsible for the murderous attacks of 11 September 2001.

Lance Corporal Jacinda Baker

 

Natural reticence, not to mention fear of instant retaliation, would almost certainly have prevented Ms Sumner-Burstyn from uttering such false and hurtful accusations in front of people who did not share completely her opinions on the Afghanistan conflict. The classical injunction De mortuis nil nisi bonum – Of the dead speak only good – invokes a simpler world in which people confronted one another face-to-face. By placing a computer screen between herself and the family, friends and comrades of Lance Corporal Baker, Ms Sumner-Burstyn lost the inhibitive effect of close human proximity. Without its protection she had nothing to shield her from the full emotional and practical consequences of her actions.
 

These followed with terrifying speed and intensity. Ms Sumner-Burstyn’s comments appeared on her Facebook Page on Friday, by Saturday a new Facebook Page – Sumner Burstyn Give Back Your NZ Passport! – had attracted more than 15,000 followers. By Sunday that number had grown to 20,000.
 

Reading the comments posted on this new page, Dr Perry would no doubt suffer an embarrassment of evidential riches for his diminishing-empathy thesis. If Ms Sumner-Burstyn’s comments were ignorant and insensitive, the response was nothing short of homicidal. The reactive firestorm’s flames leaped across the Pacific Ocean to Canada – where Ms Sumner-Burstyn is working – and she hurriedly took down her Facebook Page and changed her e-mail address.
 

Too late. On the Internet everything is recoverable – including screen-shots of Ms Sumner-Burstyn’s original comments. By Sunday, family members had been driven from their homes by the public fury. Threatened with rape and murder, Ms Sumner-Burstyn fears to return to New Zealand.
 

A recent photograph of Ms Sumner-Burstyn shows a middle-aged woman posed in front of a large book-case filled with academic literature. Studying her face, and reading about her many awards for documentary film-making – many of them on “progressive” themes – it is difficult to fathom how Ms Sumner-Burstyn could be capable of such casual cruelty. As a clearly gifted artist and feminist, it is extraordinary that she was so utterly unable to empathise with Lance Corporal Baker – the first female member of the NZDF to lose her life on active service.
 

By the same token, it is profoundly depressing to read the spittle-flecked responses of her detractors.
 

Lance Corporal Baker lost her life on a mission to re-build and heal a damaged province in a ravaged land. Her empathy merited a much more generous memorial.
 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 28 August 2012.