Writer Jacob Siegel has talked to UnHerd‘s Freddie Sayers about America’s new censorship complex. In a 13,000 word essay for Tablet, Siegel (pictured) explains how ‘disinformation’ is an invention that has morphed into a tool of governance. He told Sayers:
Disinformation is a means by which the Government in cooperation with private tech companies and civil society, NGO groups, censors, uses extra-legal means to censor political discourse around issues like Covid vaccinations, lockdowns, the elections. And in the U.S., it’s a free-for-all. It’s a blank cheque to censor anything. So on one level, disinformation is ostensibly censorship in order to protect national security. In a larger sense, that machinery of censorship is not opportunistically looking to erase certain things from the public record that are unflattering to political elites. It’s actually rather more than that. It is a means of governance. It is a system of power. It is its own system of power, outside of the formal, official — in the U.S., constitutional — means by which the Government is supposed to operate.
How did this ‘tool of governance’ become so mainstream, asks Sayers? The U.S. Government, Siegel points out, has long engaged in promoting disinformation of its own, but the ‘war on disinformation’ was begun by Barack Obama. One of the last things the former President did while in office was sign into law the ‘Countering Foreign Disinformation Act’, which fully committed the U.S. to a counter-disinformation campaign, which according to Siegel “was really always in spirit, and very quickly in practice as well, an information war directed against the American people”.
Siegel continues:
There was originally this foreign dimension… But from the very beginning, ‘foreign’ is a kind of ruse that’s setting up what is actually a much larger, effectively omni-directional structure, because the internet is global, that can censor anywhere but which is, in practice, focused on the domestic political environment inside the U.S. and specifically on this populist surge, which is taken as an existential threat by the ruling party officials in the U.S. who see populism in truly apocalyptic terms.
Siegel argues that the consequences of this censorship for American society should not to be minimised:
The system of secrecy and the Government’s own promotion of conspiracies, like the idea that Donald Trump was an agent of Vladimir Putin or a Russian stooge, which the U.S. intelligence agencies promoted. It’s not simply that they are wrong or pernicious, or that this reflects corruption. They actually drive people crazy. They deranged the political system. They ruin the ability for people to engage sanely and transparently in their own politics.
Worth reading (and watching) in full.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
The Chagos Islands were ceded to Britain by a treaty. Does anybody know if the government of the day has the legal right to negate treaties without the consent of Parliament? Doesn’t that sound rather presidential?
Welcome to the world of Starmer and his cronies say it must be, and bugger the rest of you.
Exactly, it’s not his to give away
Wonderful what hey can sneak through when Parliament isn’t sitting – and it hasn’t for most of their three months in office!
Labour behave like the communist totalitarians that they really are. They’d love a dictatorship. Evil people.
Starmer is a Globalist PUPPET…..This is not in the least bit unexpected.
Gibraltar and the Falklands are certain give aways now. This Next Tuesday is…well, a treasonous Next Tuesday.
How have they “secured” Diego Garcia? In what way was it insecure before?
Don’t think anyone’s ahead of you on this. Otherwise there would have been some explanation in the Telegraph article. I fear the answer to your questions are: They haven’t, and it wasn’t.
Sir Keir ‘Faithless’ Starmer.
With surrender monkey Starmer in Downing Street, if I lived in tha Falklands, I’d start learning Spanish or whatever it is they speak in serially-bankrupt corrupt, failed-state Argentina.
And if I were Gibraltarian I’d be equally concerned.
I would be asking that 4 Regiments of the British Army be dispatched to defend our Islands! And what is left of the Navy and Airforce. Stalin wants to get rid of our services all together! This is why.
The Chancellor might be relaxed about dumping Gibraltar, but might say NO re the Falklands.
Worth noting that if the Gov was still interested in oil as an energy source, the existence of oil to be extracted is a reason for holding on to the Falkland Islands. However, there are quite a few published articles on this topic, including the potential dispute as to whether it should ever be used at all. It would be ironic if the islanders wanted to extract oil and sell it South America. Maybe money would want to get out of the UK altogether in that case; who knows.
Just search for “falklands oil reserves”.
E.g. https://www.offshore-technology.com/news/uk-cant-stop-falklands-islands-extracting-oil-from-sea-lion-field/
The Government – in the form of Mad Ed Milliband – is not interested in oil as an energy source – so expect the Falklands to be surrendered sooner rather than later.
No, the People who live there are British! Idea, lets give away Wales to Russia!
I fear that this is the prime reason why this Government will give up the Falklands. The power to issue licenses for oil and gas extraction lies with the Government in Port Stanley and not Westminster. Therefore, Milliband will not be able to stop them doing it and his plan to stop all oil extraction will fail. Handover the islands to Argentina and it is more carbon production exported and more achievement for the idiot.
If that communist bstard tries to give up the Falklands and Gib, he’ll be hanging from a lamppost by the end of the month (metaphorically, before the Gestapo start checking my thinking).
You mean ‘Keirstapo’?
Nice one! Keirstapo, Free Gear Keir, Two-tier Kier….has ANY Prime minister gathered so many negative nicknames in so short a time?
He’ll do whatever his Chinese overlords demand, and do it willingly.
Every action so far, inc open borders, carbon zero, wrecking the economy, benefits the CCP.
They humiliated a corrupt Biden and used their Democrat agents to destroy America using the same playbook.
If you want to understand Starmer’s next move, look east.
It is willing, deliberate, intentional and completely overlooked by ourz naive MSM.
People ask about Gibraltar or the Falkland Islands. How long has Northern Ireland got?
Well, if that be true that’s a signal to Spain and Argentina if ever I saw one.
As I recall/ some idiot Labour foreign secretary said as much re the Falkands re Argentina.
That worked out well.
Do you mean the racially prejudiced one against Brits, who hasn’t got two brains to rub together?
Starmer cannot do this without full consent of Parliament. Can a single MP make a binding Treaty which applies to all the population? He has assumed this will pass because he has a majority, an assumption which cannot be made. We, the British people do not consent, and even more particularly will not have parts of our population, the Falklands or Gibraltar, given away to a foreign power. Who does he think he is? I suggest the entire Labour party be transferred to China or Russia and be deported NOW. This is simply dictatorship of the type which Stalin would be proud. Has he asked the population if they wish to be transferred? No, and they probably don’t! Evil.
What does the ‘Opposition’ Party have to say? Oh wait….