People are, it seems, growing increasingly more aware of, and increasingly more wary about, what has come to be called the ‘censorship industrial complex’ – that conglomeration of NGOs, academics, journalists and state entities which seems bent on controlling the diet of information which citizens are permitted to digest. But we have only really begun to grapple with what the ‘disinformation’ movement really signifies. How are we to think about it?
In a recent post I described the essence of tyranny as being a set of consequences of government action, which can be summarised as:
The slow but sure erosion and erasure of private lives, private opinions and private property, and the gradual reduction of the sphere of the social to a desultory rump over which the state exerts total oversight.
Tyranny, in other words, consists in the enervation and vulnerablisation of the populace, achieved through policies which have the effect of dissolving all barriers that exist between state and society, such that each and every individual is sundered from social ties and made utterly reliant on his or her relationship to public authority.
I was amused, then, to be given a glimpse of the type of mentality which breathes life into the ‘tyrannical tendency’ in a recent piece of journalism by the BBC’s resident ‘Disinformation Correspondent’ Marianna Spring. Spring, for those who don’t know of her, is the smiling face of the ‘censorship industrial complex’ in the U.K. – a figure who appears, generally around election time, to hint darkly at the existence of sinister forces (Russian spies, trolls, bots, Brexit supporters) subverting the cause of democracy through various nefarious online activities.
Her most recent concern, it turns out, is that, well, Russian spies, trolls, bots and Brexit Reform U.K. supporters are, er, subverting the cause of democracy through various nefarious online activities. The problem that is particularly exercising her this time around is that people keep popping up in large numbers on TikTok videos to leave comments saying dastardly things like ‘Vote Reform U.K.’ This, she suggests, is evidence that something sinister is going on: the online ‘conversation’ is being somehow ‘shaped’.
You can read the article and decide for yourself whether it is entirely sane and exactly how unhinged it is. But what particularly interested me about it was the ‘tell’ which appears towards the end, in which Spring provides us with an insight into a particular way of understanding democracy that a certain class of people nowadays hold.
“[Online] comments that boost the perceived support for a political party,” Spring tells us in the passage in question, “can embolden more real people to join in” (emphasis mine). She goes on:
It is one more piece of evidence in this election that suggests individual social media users and anonymous accounts have the ability to shape the online conversation just as effectively as the content coming from the political parties themselves.
I am sure Marianna Spring is basically a nice and honest person who wants what is best for the world, but I earlier used the word ‘unhinged’, and it is important to note first of all how divorced from reality the disinformation movement actually is. Since time immemorial, when elections take place, people have chosen to signal their support for one party or another visually by putting up signs in their gardens or living room windows saying things like ‘Vote Labour’ or ‘I’m Voting Conservative’ or ‘Ron Smith for MP’. They have dialled into radio talk shows and appeared on TV in vox pops and written letters to newspapers. And they have also conversed with each other – friends, neighbours, colleagues, acquaintances, strangers at bus stops – with regard to whom they are voting for and why. Why, then, would anybody expect them not to do these sorts of things online, and why would anybody, all of a sudden, see anything illegitimate or dangerous in them doing so, when similar activities have never been perceived that way in the past?
So on its face the notion that there is anything sinister going on here is, to put it politely, silly. But there is something deeper at work here. Read Spring’s comment again and pay careful attention to the wording (emphasis mine):
[C]omments that boost the perceived support for a political party – whether they come from U.K. voters or inauthentic accounts – can embolden more real people to join in.It is one more piece of evidence in this election that suggests individual social media users and anonymous accounts have the ability to shape the online conversation just as effectively as the content coming from the political parties themselves.
The implications here are firstly that we should be concerned about real people being “emboldened” to join in the political discussion regardless of their views; and secondly that we should be worried when ordinary people act in such a way as to disrupt “the content coming from the political parties themselves”. We should, in other words, view with suspicion any attempt by the public to connect with each other directly to discuss politics, and we should be especially anxious when people do not simply imbibe the messaging that comes from political parties, but rather seek to have their own ‘conversations’ and indeed seek to ‘shape’ politics themselves.
The disdain for democracy in this is obvious. But more noticeable still to my eye is the tyrannical cast, in the terms in which I have previously described that phenomenon, to Spring’s remarks. This is a person who fundamentally dislikes the idea of ‘emboldening’ people to engage in political discussions with one another. It is also a person who thinks there is something dangerous, disruptive – and, let’s face it, just plain uppity – about ordinary voters refusing merely to listen to their political leaders, and instead trying actively to ‘shape’ political discussion in their own way. The essence of tyranny, remember, is that it always seeks to individualise and totalise – to separate, divide and atomise, and to break down society as an organic barrier to the relationship between individual and state. And an important aspect of that mode of governance is that it should seek to prevent people from developing and expressing private – meaning, really, their own – opinions. Their opinions, such as they have, should simply be given to them from above, handed down by their betters, and should certainly not be developed organically. Opinions, like property, are presumptively best owned by the state, and to be made use of by the population as the state sees fit.
Seen in this light, it is obvious that it is not hyperbole to describe as ‘tyrannical’ the impulse to cast as illegitimate the perfectly normal tendency among human beings to want to discuss politics with one another, however crudely. And it is, then, perfectly natural and indeed unavoidable that we should have to describe the disinformation movement – which seems to eternally seek to realise that end – as an important feature of the tyrannical impulse in our age.
Dr. David McGrogan is an Associate Professor of Law at Northumbria Law School. You can subscribe to his Substack – News From Uncibal – here.
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Does the author know something I don’t. I’m aware the animal that slaughtered three girls was a child of Rwandan parents who were supposedly Christian, but that doesn’t necessarily make the animal a Christian. I’ve been waiting for the inevitable ‘fact’ that the animal was actually a Christian member of the EDL (or something as ludicrous). Have I missed anything?
Robinson, Musk, Douglas Murray…they’re targeting more and more outspoken people and they’re going to keep going. They’re comical in their desperation. It’s also interesting to see how Americans perceive what’s happening in the UK. Mainly condemning the government, Leftards and thanking God for their guns, pitying the British for not having the same rights as them, criticizing those who let it get to this point, but I’ve seen support from other countries, people out with their pro-England banners. The UK has gone viral, basically, and the world is watching;
”Holy moly, what has happened to the home of the Magna Carta? Did MI5 rip that document to smithereens? Years ago, the wayward nitwit Prince Harry got into some hot water by dressing up as a Nazi for a costume ball. The public was aghast that a member of the Royal Family could be so daft as to minimize the atrocities of the fascist thugs who nearly conquered Europe. Little did they know that Harebrained Harry was way ahead of the game. The threat of fascism isn’t buried in Britain’s past; it’s choking Britain’s future. Maybe Meghan Markle’s leashed poodle should find his old German uniform now that Keir Starmer’s stormtroopers have taken Westminster.
At this moment, government authorities are blocking foreign I.P. addresses from accessing the United Kingdom’s police website. Apparently, the Brits have gotten their knickers in an Oliver Twist over outsiders using words that are now banned in the U.K. One freedom-curious bloke observed, “I see our police is a tad upset with Americans making fun of them.” Over there, the language enforcers are locking up Grandma and Grandpa for saying that foreigners shouldn’t be raping and murdering children, but over here, plenty of First Amendment–loving Americans are sending pictures of General George Washington kicking some serious Redcoat butt.
One transatlantic tweeter jeered, “I’ve never been more grateful that our forefathers crossed the Delaware on Christmas to kill British law enforcers.” If that sentiment doesn’t make you want to shoot off fireworks while grilling a couple ribeye steaks and revving the engine of a monster truck outside a WrestleMania grudge match, you might just be Canadian. Yucky U.K. can’t do squat when Joe America gives his two cents. So the powers that be scream at their I.T. boffins to shut down the internet, and the tech slaves do their best to comply. Surely some North Korean with a secret window to the outside world is shaking his head in disgust. As Amy Curtis over at Twitchy smartly concludes, “From ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ to ‘your Facebook posts hurt my feels’ in 75 years.” So true. RIP, U.K.”
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/08/yucky_uk.html
Yet the international condemnation will make no more impression on our captured institutions than the astonishment at Trudeau’s overreach in Canada, over the truckers, did.
It has become an ethical priority for the progressives to lie factually about what their opponents have done or said in order to do them harm. That does not appear to count as misinformation requiring to be scoured by the team of police officers seconded from investigating actual crimes.
As regards the riots, though, has anyone arrested the Hope not Hate guy who spread the malicious rumour that a Muslim woman had been attacked with acid, thus sparking Muslim violence? I thought not.
It is very frustrating that those including Starmer who liberally spice their speech with ‘Far Right’ are not called out and held to account.
We are witnessing the usual Left and Far Left fake news misinformation and propaganda.
Specifically, what is the evidence they rely on?
Whom specifically do they identify as ‘Far Right’?
Whom specifically do they allege were the organisers of the fake 100 ‘Far Right’ demonstrations which never happened – because of course if there is anyone who is ‘Far Right’ there are so few it might be difficult for them to be in 100 different places at the same time either at all or in any numbers.
What are the names of the ‘Far Right’ groups they allege were involved – only the EDL has been named and that ceased to exist a decade ago.
What is their evidence for defaming 4 million Reform voters as ‘Far Right’?
Starmer is going to have to tread carefully on revising the Online Safety Act because unless he exempts government from its provisions he personally might find himself the subject of legal proceedings for spreading fake news and disinformation along with a lot of other politicians and government departments.
The Sunday Times was in full regime message mode yesterday, complete with “10 Years in Prison – if we see you on the street trying to make us listen (you dumb, inarticulate pleb)” headline.
Dr. Watson is right: David Clews did not “fan the flames” of the riots. Here is one fact that came to light in the DM public comments:
“Did he also say that immigrants were exposing themselves in the hotel windows, which is what started the rioters throwing things at the hotel? The real story has not been told.”
I suppose he might have done but, I guarantee, based on my own quick survey of 30, if you asked 1000 people in the street you’re unlikely to find anyone who even knows who he is…
Its the first time I’d heard of UNN tbh…..
Contrast the verbal litter of this broadcasting outfit with the state’s blasphemous use of the funeral of a murdered child to make a public service announcement by a uniformed person.
Whether this person was invited or invited themselves, their presence starkly illustrates the fact that the Service they represent only arrives after someone has been injured or killed as a result of violent crime.
The uniformed person making the address at the funeral expressed sorrow at the fact that the grieving family had to suffer the affront of the looting and arson that followed the murder of their child. As a visible representative of the state, this person made no apology for the fact that the institutions of the state have been long absent from effectively dealing with and, indeed, uninterested in, the everyday crime the ‘communities’ must endure.
Like the Roman Empire which had no police force but only a Praetorian Guard, Britain’s police service is deployed to shore up the authority of the state when it is insolently challenged by the tattooed barbarians.
All I can saw is the only people to have died in all of this are the 3 murdered girls. They are now just a footnote in history as far as the media and politicians are concerned.
Bonfire of Teenagers by Morrisey
And the silly people sing: “Don’t Look Back in Anger”
And the morons sing and sway: “Don’t Look Back in Anger”
I can assure you I will look back in anger ’till the day I die:
Government Policy on issues of concern.
If he’s a free speech absolutist, then I already like him.
“...give(s) airtime to some cringeworthy characters such as the arch conspiracy theorist David Ike and the prominent anti-vaxxer Andrew Wakefield.”
A staggering assertion by a clearly ill informed Roger Watson. The jury might be out on David Icke – he hasn’t even spelt his name correctly – although on the globalists One World Government issue he is correct but since when did “prominent anti-vaxxer” Andrew Wakefield equal “cringeworthy?”
Unbelievable.
Yes he has let himself down there and anyway they may be cringeworthy to Dr Watson but that’s just his opinion – if nobody publishes what these people say, how can we assess what we think?
https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/p/the-riots-in-great-britain-a-dream?r=ylgqf&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
I really liked Mattias Desmet’s article, highlighting the role government is playing in creating division.
Just out of interest,and as an aside does anyone know if ‘Prominent Antivaxxer’ Andrew Wakefield has an opinion on the covid jabs and if so what it is?