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.

Too Many Angels And Devils.

 

He’s got the fire and the fury

At his command

Well, you don’t have to worry

If you hold on to Jesus’ hand

We’ll all be safe from Satan

When the thunder rolls

We just gotta keep the devil

Way down in the hole

─ Tom Waits, “Way Down In The Hole”

WHAT’S NOT TO LIKE about Stuff Circuit’s Fire and Fury? It’s a well-made documentary of the sort New Zealand television used to make, but now only produces intermittently. It seeks answers to the questions many New Zealanders have been asking themselves since Parliament Grounds went up in flames on 2 March 2022. The driving force behind Fire and Fury, the highly-experienced journalist, Paula Penfold, has delivered on her promise to go behind the events of that day and name the names of those who were, at least in part, responsible for the disturbing scenes that marked the end of the weeks-long anti-vaccination protest.

Why, then, has the documentary left me feeling vaguely uneasy? And, before you object – “It’s meant to! – my uneasiness has nothing to do with the unsavoury cast of proto-fascist conspiracy theorists and “influencers” whose faces and words feature so prominently throughout the documentary. Sure, these people are loathsome, and their comments teeter alarmingly on the brink of outright criminality, but that is entirely unsurprising. From the get-go, the tone, sound-track, and crepuscular palette of the production cues the viewer for the darkness of its subject-matter.

Borrowing their title from Tom Waits’ Way Down In The Hole suggests that the makers of Fire and Fury see their subjects as being down there with the Devil. Perhaps that’s it? Perhaps it was my unconscious conflation of “Jesus’ hand” with the hands of the documentary’s producers, that gave me the uneasy feeling that I was being led to someone else’s holier-than-thou explanation for the rolling political thunder of our times.

Bluntly, Fire and Fury relies much too heavily on the “expert” commentary of Kate Hannah, a principal investigator and director of The Disinformation Project, a state-funded research exercise run out of Te Pūnaha Matatini at the University of Auckland. In an interview with Dale Husband on the Māori radio station, Waatea, Hannah revealed that The Disinformation Project had been set up in February 2020, immediately prior to the outbreak of the Covid-19 Pandemic, to counter the anti-government, anti-scientific, and anti-medicine narratives that the authorities were clearly anticipating.

What is it that disturbs me about The Disinformation Project? Surely, having people monitor the misinformation and disinformation being spread deliberately during a major medical emergency is an entirely sensible government initiative? Any undermining of the collective effort to protect the population from the effects of a potentially deadly virus is prima facie evidence of evil intent. Many would say that identifying and neutralising such anti-social elements is an important state responsibility.

True enough, but why bury such a unit deep in the dense undergrowth of academia? And why appoint as its director a woman whose Masters thesis was on Nineteenth Century American literary culture, rather than a qualified medical administrator? If such a unit was needed, then why not set it up within the Ministry of Health, and make it answerable to the then Director-General of Health, Ashley Bloomfield?

The problem is, the moment you start asking questions like this you immediately run the risk of being branded a conspiracy theorist. And that just circles the whole argument back to its starting-point: the dark narrative of evil intent which lies at the heart of Fire and Fury.

The question, never satisfactorily answered, which lies at the heart of the heart of Fire and Fury is – Why? What is it that prompts individuals to create false political, economic and cultural narratives in the first place? More importantly, what is it that makes otherwise perfectly sensible and caring people follow these fantasists down their rabbit holes?

Well, what led Alice down the rabbit hole in Lewis Carrol’s famous children’s story? Wasn’t it the sight of a waist-coated white rabbit consulting a pocket-watch and muttering “I’m late!”? Who wouldn’t want to get to the bottom of a sight as peculiar as that!

Many people find themselves caught up in events over which they exercise no control, and which they do not understand. Since, in small matters, they find it easy to identify cause and effect, they assume (wrongly) that big events can be equally easily explained.

This is by no means an unreasonable assumption, given the propensity of governments to explain large events in the most simplistic terms. Those who remain unconvinced by these official versions, all too often discover their scepticism is entirely justified. Nothing encourages the growth of conspiracy theories faster that citizens discovering that their own governments have conspired to deceive them.

In Fire and Fury, Kate Hannah explains the concept of what she calls “necessary” or “protective” violence. Once a group of citizens convinces themselves that their government, motivated by pure evil, is “coming after their kids”, then there is nothing they will not contemplate to keep their loved ones, and their homeland, safe.

Step this argument back a few paces, and it is possible to grasp how individuals of an authoritarian and/or paranoid temperament, having learned that their government has deliberately lied to them, decide that striking back with lies of their own is not only justified – but also the only effective way to balance the scales.

Like the evil wizard in the tale of Aladdin, the conspiracy theorists come offering “new lamps [lies] for old”. And, like all good liars, they mix in a hefty portion of the truth in with their falsehoods. “Why is it,” they ask, “that you will never encounter people with information contradicting the government’s claims in the mainstream news media?” While most people will respond by pointing out the idiocy of spreading false information during a pandemic, a not inconsiderable minority will accept the conspiracy theorists’ explanation that the news media are nothing more than the paid mouthpieces of a government unwilling to tell its citizens the truth.

It is a great pity that Paula Penfold and her team did not spend more time talking to the fiery and furious individuals around whose behaviour the documentary was constructed. A pity, too, that they did not explore in greater depth the popular conviction that the Public Interest Journalism Fund – which paid for Fire and Fury – is proof of the conspiracy theorists’ contention that the mainstream news media has, indeed, been bought and paid for.

Yes, there is an argument to be made that it is better to allow these “influencers” to condemn themselves out of their own mouths, than it is to interview them one-on-one. Equally, there is an argument for doing both: broadcasting their views – and also asking them to explain why they continually engage in such dangerous speech. Watching Fire and Fury, it is easy to apprehend its makers’ fear of “the mob”. The hostility directed towards journalists who were “just doing their job” by militant anti-vaxxers certainly was frighteningly intense.

And yet, these people are New Zealanders, too. And perhaps that is what, in the end, made me feel so uneasy about the Fire and Fury documentary. Watching it, the viewer cannot help being struck by the vast epistemological gulf separating its subjects from its makers.

Listening to Hannah and the other, equally disdainful “experts” consulted by Penfold and her team, the viewers could be forgiven for thinking that they was listening to a team of anthropologists describing the cultural practices of a particularly belligerent tribe of indigenes. Certainly, the inclusion of Rebecca Kitteridge, Director of the SIS, among that commentary team does not bode well for the future safety of this truculent tribe.

Fire and Fury didn’t quite call them “deplorables” – but it came close.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 15 August 2022.