Tag Archives: propaganda

WE ARE TRAPPED IN A TRUMAN SHOW DIRECTED BY PSYCHOPATHS

Posted on by
2

“Whether in actual fact the policy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indefinitely seems doubtful. My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power, and these ways will resemble those which I described in Brave New World. Within the next generation I believe that the world’s rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience.” – Aldous Huxley – Letter to George Orwell about 1984 in 1949

“There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution” ― Aldous Huxley

When I step back from the day-to-day minutia and trivialities flooding my senses from all directions and media devices, it almost appears as if I’m living in a highly scripted reality TV program where the characters and plots are designed to create passions and reactions to support whatever narrative is being weaved by those directing the show. Huxley really did foresee the future as clearly and concisely as anyone could, decades before his dystopian vision came to fruition.

Orwell’s boot on the face vision is only now being initiated because a few too many critical thinkers have awoken from their pharmaceutically induced stupor and begun to question the plotline of this spectacle masquerading as our reality. The mass formation psychosis infecting the weak-minded masses; relentless mass propaganda designed to mislead, misinform, and brainwash a dumbed down and government indoctrinated populace; and complete control of the story line through media manipulation, regulation, and censorship of the truth; has run its course. As Charles Mackay stated 180 years ago, the masses go mad as a herd, but only regain their senses slowly, and one by one.

My recognition that the world seems to be scripted and directed by Machiavellian managers, working behind a dark shroud, representing an invisible governing authority, molding our minds, suggesting our ideas, dictating our tastes, and creating fear, triggered a recollection of the 1998 Jim Carrey movie – The Truman Show. The movie, directed by Peter Weir (Gallipoli, Witness, Dead Poet’s Society), had the surreal feel of Forest Gump, while beckoning the horrendous introduction of reality TV (Big Brother, Survivor), which poisons our shallow unserious society to this day. The plot of the movie focuses on individuality versus conformity, consumerism, voyeurism, reality versus manipulation, false narratives, the truth about the American Dream, and the dangers of surveillance in a technologically advanced society.

Truman Burbank is the unsuspecting star of The Truman Show, a reality television program filmed 24/7 through thousands of hidden cameras and broadcast to a worldwide audience. Christof, the show’s creator seeks to capture Truman’s authentic emotions and give audiences a relatable every man. Truman has been the unsuspecting star of the show since he was born 30 years prior. Truman’s hometown of Seahaven Island is a complete set built within an enormous dome, populated by crew members and actors who highlight the product placements that generate revenue for the show. The elaborate set allows Christof to control almost every aspect of Truman’s life, including the weather. The picture-perfect home, with picket fence and plastic people, is an attempt to convince Truman he is living the American Dream rather than in an inescapable dystopian techno-prison.

To prevent Truman from discovering his false reality, Christof manufactures scenarios that dissuade Truman’s desire for exploration, such as the “death” of his father in a sea storm to instill aquaphobia, and by constantly broadcasting and printing messages of the dangers of traveling and the virtues of staying home. One cannot but acknowledge the plotline to keep Truman under control, obedient, and locked down in his controlled environment, with no escape hatch visible, as exactly the plotline used by our overlords during the Covid scam. Using fear to regulate your subjects is a familiar theme used by those controlling the narrative and pulling the strings behind the scenes of our glorious democracy of dystopia.

The first task was to instill fear into the masses through fake videos, fake medical experts spewing fake “facts”, denying the reality masks, social distancing, and locking down the world did not stop a microscopic virus, while suppressing treatments which were clearly safe and effective (ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine) and forcing Fauci’s remdesivir and ventilators on patients – insuring their deaths. Truman’s life was built upon lies, deception, and fake narratives, controlled by a tyrannical director putting on a show to please his bosses and maximize profits. We are experiencing the same reality today.

Since March 2020 we have been trapped in a dystopian reality show based on lies, deception, and fake narratives about a weaponized virus created in a lab funded by Anthony Fauci and utilized to further the totalitarian Great Reset agenda of Schwab, Gates and their ilk, while maximizing the profits of Pfizer, TV networks and filling the pockets of politicians, shills, and apparatchiks willing to sellout the people of our country for thirty pieces of silver.

As the Truman Show approached its 30th anniversary, Truman began discovering unusual elements, such as a spotlight falling out of the sky in front of his house and a radio channel that precisely described his movements. He began to awaken to the fact he was nothing but a peculiarity trapped in a cage and constantly deterred from escaping at every turn, for the good of the show. He lived in a scripted world of conformity, where questioning the plot was not allowed, and the masses just played their parts.

This is exactly how a dictatorship without tears uses technology, pharmaceuticals, and psychological manipulation to convince the masses to love their servitude. This is the reality show we have been living in during this 21st Century dictatorship dystopia of dunces. But this psychological phenomenon is not new to mankind, as Plato described an ancient Truman Show analog in the 4th Century BC with his Allegory of the Cave. The nature of human beings has not changed across the trials and tribulations of history.

In the allegory, Plato describes a group of people who have lived chained in a cave all their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall from objects passing in front of a fire behind them and give names to these shadows. The shadows are the prisoners’ reality but are not an accurate representation of the real world. An enlightened man is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand the shadows on the wall are not reality.

The ignorant inmates do not desire to leave their prison/cave, for it is the only life they know, and they fear reality. The fire and the puppets, used to create shadows, are controlled by artists. Plato indicates the fire is also the political doctrine taught by a nation state. The artists use light and shadows to indoctrinate the masses with the dominant doctrines of the times. Few humans ever escape the cave. Most humans will remain at the bottom of the cave, with a small few elevated as major artists, to project the shadows keeping the masses disoriented, confused and fearful.

“Whereas the truth is that the State in which the rulers are most reluctant to govern is always the best and most quietly governed, and the State in which they are most eager, the worst.” ― Plato, The Allegory of the Cave

“Most people are not just comfortable in their ignorance, but hostile to anyone who points it out.” ― Plato, The Allegory of the Cave

The State is run by an eager group of psychopaths who are hell bent on destroying our civil society and common culture on behalf of globalists attempting to implement their Great Reset agenda, and enforcing it through technological surveillance, mind control through propaganda messaging, and strict management of the daily plot via mainstream media and social media censorship of the truth. As Plato contemplated twenty four centuries ago, most men will remain in their cave, believing shadows presented by their overlords is reality, never questioning their servitude or seeking the truth.

Never has this fact been truer than during this covid pandemic reality show directed by our Christof – mass murderer Anthony Fauci. The willful ignorance of the masses was assumed by the covid controllers who cast shadows of fear and death on the cave walls of the locked down extras in this well-orchestrated reality show. Using a purposefully misleading PCR test to vastly overestimate “cases”, paying hospitals to classify all deaths as covid, and having the propaganda professionals at CNN, MSNBC and Fox showing Covid Death Counters on their screens 24/7 to terrify the masses into compliance was the Covid Show.

Once the fear level was ramped to eleven on the control dial, the producers of this show introduced the miraculous Big Pharma vaccine antidote to save the day. Their script was so believable they were able to convince over 5 billion members of their captive audience to inject themselves with an untested, unproven genetic therapy, that didn’t prevent you from catching, transmitting, getting sick, being hospitalized, or dying from the Fauci funded Wuhan lab produced virus. But, as a dramatic twist to the tale, it seems the “vaccine” causes myocarditis, blood clots, infertility, miscarriages, heart attacks, cancer, and sudden death.

Despite the obvious dangers and failures of these “vaccines”, those bullied into getting jabbed became so comfortable in their ignorance, they were easily persuaded to hate the unjabbed and wish for their deaths. Orwell’s “Two Minutes of Hate” was extended for over a year and continues to this day. Rather than think critically and question why annual flu cases averaged 35 million per year prior to 2020 but dropped to near ZERO during the covid “emergency”, the cave dwellers lashed out in anger at anyone questioning the plot, because to admit they were duped would destroy their self-esteem and decrease their virtue signal credits.

The annual flu didn’t disappear. Covid was the annual flu, with a multi-billion-dollar marketing campaign. This wasn’t a pandemic, but an IQ test, and most people failed miserably. But the critical thinking unvaxxed are still considered the enemy of the state, especially since they have been proven right.

Whether we are trapped in an artificial world produced in a dome, cave, or our current technologically advanced surveillance propaganda state, the goal of those controlling our false reality is to take away our freedoms, crush dissent, keep us ignorant of the truth, and treat us as plebs to be taxed and molded. Christof, whose name is supposed to invoke him being a god-like figure ruling over Truman’s world, declares Truman could discover the truth and leave at any time, while using every diabolical trick to keep that from ever happening, because his show generated revenues exceeding the GDP of a small country.

Truman and ourselves are essentially prisoners in a vast production, and our overlords believe it is their duty to convince us to love our servitude and prefer our cells, because it is financially beneficial to the overlords and their crew.

Our world is not fake, but it is tightly controlled by those running the show. Seemingly random events, plots, and subplots are manipulated to generate specific emotions and reactions by the public in order to achieve the objectives of those benefiting from the various storylines. They are molding our minds and forming our tastes through psychological and technological manipulation of our daily existence. Christof explained why most rarely discover the truth or question the world they live in – “We accept the reality of the world with which we’re presented. It’s as simple as that.”

We have allowed men we have never seen to dictate how we live our lives, the choices we make, and which politicians and “experts” to believe, without ever putting in the effort to understand why we are being prodded to do so. We are locked in a self-imposed prison of desires, emotions, and needs through mass media messaging and a constant barrage of advertisements. Conformity and obedience are the desired traits sought by the ruling class, while individuality and skepticism are frowned upon and punished through social ostracism.

We are conditioned from birth to believe what they tell us to believe. Government school indoctrination and mass media misinformation does the trick. Distracted by our techno-gadgets and ignorant of truth is how the globalist oligarchs methodically implement their Great Reset agenda. They are so convinced of the ignorance of the masses they openly proclaim their depopulation and techno-prison schemes with no fear of push back or retribution.

The ending of the Truman Show is a lesson in resistance, persistence, and the strength of the individual, even in the face of a technologically advanced Big Brother state. It offers a message of hope, no matter how powerful our overlords appear to be. Refusing to obey or conform by one individual can inspire others to do likewise. Once Truman ‘awoke’ to his plight as a lab rat in a scripted show, he began to plot his escape. Using a makeshift tunnel in his basement, out of view of Christof’s cameras, he disappeared and forced the suspension of the broadcast for the first time in thirty years.

Christof discovers Truman sailing away from Seahaven in a small boat, as he has overcome the fake conditioning of fear instilled in him by the man who supposedly loves him but traumatized him about the sea by faking his father’s death while at sea. Christof chooses to almost drown Truman by creating a violent storm to deter him from discovering the truth. Ultimately the storm ceases and his boat strikes the wall of the dome.

This is exactly how our controllers treat the ignorant masses. They feed us stories designed to make us fearful and compliant to the exhortations of their paid experts. Paid to lie. Paid to misinform. Paid to persuade people a dangerous concoction is “safe and effective”. The evilness of using Sesame Street characters to convince four-year-old children they need this Big Pharma gene altering toxic brew, even though essentially ZERO children on earth died from covid, is a testament to the greed and malevolent impulses of those in power. Vast amounts of ever-increasing advertising revenue are what kept The Truman Show on the air for thirty years.

The covid advertising campaign will never be topped, as Hollywood stars, top athletes, famous writers, rock legends, supposedly impartial journalists, and all the major networks said SHOW ME THE MONEY!!!! Everyone was for sale, and all they had to do was lie and say the jabs were “safe and effective”. Product placement was the money-making formula for the Truman Show, while hard selling a Big Pharma phony cure over the airwaves 24/7 using the tax dollars of the victims was the final solution of the Great Reset Cabal.

The grand finale is a clash of the philosophies of reality versus false reality, as Truman discovers a staircase leading to an exit door. Christof speaks to Truman, claiming there was no more truth in the real world than in his artificial world, and he would be safe, with nothing to fear, in a world controlled by men invisible to him assuring him they have his best interests at heart. Truman chooses individuality, truth, risk, living a real meaningful life, and seeking honest relationships over a safe existence in a bubble where all decisions were made by others. Truman bows to the audience and exits, leaving Chistof to mourn the loss of his star and the revenue he generated. The ignorant masses watching the show cheer his escape and then ask, “what’s on next?” Plato captured the uncertainty and bewilderment Truman must have felt as he walked into the light.

The covid advertising campaign will never be topped, as Hollywood stars, top athletes, famous writers, rock legends, supposedly impartial journalists, and all the major networks said SHOW ME THE MONEY!!!! Everyone was for sale, and all they had to do was lie and say the jabs were “safe and effective”. Product placement was the money-making formula for the Truman Show, while hard selling a Big Pharma phony cure over the airwaves 24/7 using the tax dollars of the victims was the final solution of the Great Reset Cabal.

The grand finale is a clash of the philosophies of reality versus false reality, as Truman discovers a staircase leading to an exit door. Christof speaks to Truman, claiming there was no more truth in the real world than in his artificial world, and he would be safe, with nothing to fear, in a world controlled by men invisible to him assuring him they have his best interests at heart. Truman chooses individuality, truth, risk, living a real meaningful life, and seeking honest relationships over a safe existence in a bubble where all decisions were made by others. Truman bows to the audience and exits, leaving Chistof to mourn the loss of his star and the revenue he generated. The ignorant masses watching the show cheer his escape and then ask, “what’s on next?” Plato captured the uncertainty and bewilderment Truman must have felt as he walked into the light.

“Anyone who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light” ― Plato, The Allegory of the Cave

This world of manufactured dystopian pleasure harkens more towards Huxley’s Brave New World, where pharmaceuticals and conditioning would keep the public seeking pleasure, pre-occupied with trivialities, distracted by materialism, unable to think critically, and reduced to passivity and egoism through the control of messaging by their controllers. Our efficient totalitarian state has gained complete control by convincing the masses to love their servitude and beg for more rules, restrictions, and reduction of liberties in the name of safety and security.

Smart phones, smart cities, and smart streets are nothing more than code for spying on you and controlling you. Truman finally understood his liberty was his to choose and not Christof’s to give. There is a small minority of Americans who are realizing the same thing after two years of totalitarian measures designed to take away our freedoms and liberty. The question is whether enough will exit this tyrannical government produced show to make a difference. The future of mankind literally depends on the answer to this question.

Hunting the Twitter Files

Posted on by
Reply

Legacy Media Censor Details About Censorship

By Nolan Higdon

Source: Project Censored

More than two years since Big Tech made the historic decision to limit access to the New York Post’s story about President Joe Biden’s son Hunter, users are getting a glimpse into how Twitter came to that decision. However, delusional legacy and social media outlets are doing everything they can to misrepresent and bury the consequential details of the process.

An October 2020 New York Post story titled “Smoking-gun email reveals how Hunter Biden introduced Ukrainian businessman to VP dad” offered sensationalistic photos and details of Hunter’s addiction issues coupled with damning emails indicating that Hunter utilized his connection with his father to curry favor and economic opportunity in foreign countries. At the time, intelligence officials told members of the press that the story was Russian propaganda aimed at influencing that year’s election. As a result, Big Tech platforms limited access to the story including in direct messages which is usually done only in extreme cases such as child pornography.

On Friday, December 2, 2022, Elon Musk promised to release files related to the matter. Soon afterward, journalist Matt Taibbi published a report based on thousands of internal Twitter documents. Taibbi demonstrated that Twitter’s decision to remove the Hunter Biden story was influenced in part by Biden’s campaign. Indeed, as Taibbi described, Twitter’s staff regularly fields phone calls from powerful people in government and acts upon their requests to moderate content. And it’s is not just Twitter. During a 2022 interview with Joe Rogan, co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Meta (formerly Facebook) Mark Zuckerberg admitted that his company’s decision to moderate content – including the 2020 Hunter story – is sometimes based on recommendations from the intelligence community. Similarly, The Intercept reported in 2022 that the Department of Homeland Security regularly informs Big Tech’s content moderation practices.

In any other country, the revelation that government and Big Tech collude to shape public discourse and democratic participation would make Americans irate, but the story has received little coverage. The coverage received by legacy media has been dismissive. CNN reduced the files as simply showing “how employees debated how to handle 2020 New York Post Hunter Biden story.” Variety echoed the same sentiments. Meanwhile, giving readers less than 24-hours to process what Taibbi reported, WAPO declared that Musk’s Twitter Files “haven’t changed minds.”

The lack of substantive coverage of the Twitter Files is rooted in the legacy media’s fears over the broader implications of the story. Since 2015, legacy media have been fostering a moral panic over fake news and blamed their competition – digital media – for its spread. They have practically begged Big Tech overlords to fix the country and restore faith in journalism by censoring problematic content, which they often refer to as misinformation or disinformation. Taibbi’s reporting demonstrates that the news media’s framing of Big Tech content moderation as a solution to anti-democratic practices, actually functioned as an anti-democratic position that enables the elite political class to shape public dialogue and manufacture consent of the electorate.

Adding to the news media’s inability to cover the story is their business model which depends on framing every story as an issue of left versus right, blue versus red, Democrat versus Republican. Indeed, whether it is cable news audiences or legacy newspaper subscribers, news outlets cater to audiences’ confirmation biases by villainizing a caricature of the “otherside.” This has reduced every story to a partisan issue, and fostered such high levels of hyper-partisanship vitriol that half of Americans cite “other Americans” as their number one fear, while 40% contend that a civil war will occur in their lifetime.

Although they still try, the legacy media has found it impossible to frame the Twitter Files as a hyper-partisan story because the political duopoly, not one party, utilizes Big Tech to manufacture the consent of the people. For example, Big Tech’s content moderation of was influenced by Biden’s Campaign in 2020 and leading Democrats after January 6th. Similarly, Donald Trump’s campaign spent $100 million to work with Facebook staff to amplify their campaign messages, and Trump met personally with Zuckerberg in secret meetings throughout his presidency. Furthermore, legacy news media outlets cannot villainize the “other side” for censorship when loyalists for both parties are complicit. Indeed, the feckless liberals who begged Big Tech overlords to censor content about elections and Covid-19 are equally complicit as the neocons who championed censorship of the press and individuals, and organizations during the War on Terror and Trump supporters who lauded his attacks on the free press and whistleblowers such as Julian Assange.

Anyone can, and will, argue that Hunter’s photos are not newsworthy, but that is for the citizens to decide when they encounter the story. That is how a free press in a democratic republic works. A democracy does not depend on Big Tech overlords acting at the behest of the political class to determine what content the public should see. The notion that censorship will erode hate, correct falsehoods, or solve national problems is a fallacy of utmost proportions.  The contemporary censorious crowd seems to be in such a state of delusion that they have come to believe that World War II and the Holocaust could have been avoided if Twitter was around to censor Nazis. It is ludicrous and the establishment news media deserve part of the blame for perpetuating this lunacy.

A truly independent press would privilege narratives that expose Silicon Valley propaganda, which has led users of all political ideologies to a delusional state of Stockholm Syndrome, where Big Tech exploits their labor, erodes their privacy, and manufactures their consent for the duopoly, but users still laud and entrust the industry with their democracy. To be clear, Big Tech commercialized tools that were developed by the military industrial complex during the Cold War (which was not so cold in much of the world) to surveil and exploit users. They advertised their platforms as transformative tools that strengthen democracy and inclusion. As whistleblower after whistleblower remind us, this is all nonsense: Big Tech’s oligarchs are rapacious capitalists who time and time again put profits over people. No entity should be moderating information in a democracy, and as the Twitter Files reveal, the unaccountable profiteers in Big Tech are no exception.

Related Video:

Punching Down: How the “anti-disinformation” movement worked with Big Tech to protect Big Pharma

Posted on by
1

By Paul D. Thacker

Source: The Disinformation Chonicle

The COVID-19 pandemic saw the greatest acceleration of online censorship in the short history of the internet. In response, the field dedicated to upholding human rights online—the digital rights movement—remained near silent to this massive government and corporate over-reach. Worse, digital rights activists sometimes even collaborated with censors in the name of protecting the public from “disinformation.”

I’ve spent more than 20 years in digital rights, freedom of expression and open technology communities, and co-founded an organisation dedicated to these ideas: EngageMedia. Over the 17 years I ran Engage Media, we built a team that stretched across 10 countries, from India to Australia—one of the biggest digital rights organisations in the Asia-Pacific, hosting hundreds of workshops and large events, and leading multiple international networks. In short, I’m not a newbie or outsider in this field.

But during the pandemic, I watched the digital rights movement lose its voice as champions of online freedom of expression. Instead, they began to echo the positions of governments and companies with far from stellar records on human rights and corporate integrity. This recasting of governments and corporations as allies, rather than institutions to be held to account, has perverted the mission of digital rights and harmed public health.

The Digital Rights Movement

Digital Rights is an umbrella term that captures multiple concepts from “internet freedom” to “open technology” to “digital public policy.” Over the past several decades, it has become a major force in advocating for online rights and freedoms. Hundreds of universities, institutes, and non-profit organizations work in this arena on every corner of the planet. Whilst I know of no exact calculations, funding for the field is surely in the hundreds of millions of dollars annually—sourced from a mix of liberal foundations, governments, and Big Tech itself.

Core to this fundamentally left-leaning field was anti-censorship and a libertarian ethos. If the movement has a founding document, it is the 1996 Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, which begins:

Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.

We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks. I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear.

Left-libertarianism and techno-utopianism dominated Internet culture in the 90s and 2000s, yet withered rapidly in the Trump era, as it was unable to move quickly enough to address issues of online discrimination and harassment. In response, a new wing took root that was less hippy, more helicopter parent.

Internet parentalism, with its emphasis on safety over freedom, addressed concerns about the dark side of the Internet, but it did so with top-down regulation and control. And just as the former left-libertarianism created an imperfect system, so has the current left-parentalism. This became quite clear during the pandemic. During COVID, general skepticism of authority was replaced by respect for authority. Once suspect governments and businesses were now to be shielded from critique.

Content moderation is key to the new left-parentalism, and the pandemic radically accelerated and solidified a new digital authoritarianism. It is worth revisiting Hillary Clinton’s seminal 2010 “internet freedom” speech, to see how far thinking has shifted:

Now, all societies recognise that free expression has its limits. We do not tolerate those who incite others to violence… And hate speech that targets individuals on the basis of their race, religion, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation is reprehensible… But these challenges must not become an excuse for governments to systematically violate the rights and privacy of those who use the internet for peaceful political purposes.

How different content moderation is today, where comments deemed “offensive” might be censored. In those days liberals even thought about balancing safety and freedom when dealing with terrorists, yet this was not the case with COVID. With Musk now taking over Twitter, the Internet-parentalism wing may be on its back-foot but it has made headway in altering culture, so much so that supporting the left-libertarian approach (or the 2010 Clintonian position) is now considered “right-wing.”

New Zealand Prime minister Jacinda Arden personifies the progressive authoritarian shift. In her recent UN speech she compared “disinformation” to “weapons of war,” expressing a deep frustration with those who stray from the “consensus” and emphasising strong government control for “disinformation.” The Arden approach is now the default setting in the digital rights field where government and corporate censorship have replaced debate and persuasion as the answer to “wrong” ideas. For example, Ardern gave the opening speech at the 2022 RightsCon, the biggest digital rights conference on the calendar (EngageMedia co-hosted the 2015 edition).

That government determines truth to protect citizens is a boom to authoritarians everywhere – from the Philippines, to Ethiopia, to Russia—while also limiting government and corporate accountability. To be clear, both Clinton’s and Ardern’s policy served the needs of power. The difference is that Clinton was largely in step with the previous 200 years of liberal theory, while Arden returns society to levels of government authority and control that people have struggled to overcome for centuries.

Growth and change of “anti-disinformation”

Disinformation was already an established sector prior to the pandemic. But it focused on top level malfeasance: for example, Myanmar military social media accounts promoting violence against the Rohingya or former Philippine President Duterte’s use of bots to attack dissidents. Advocacy took a mostly Clintonian approach to counter such state power—minimising overt censorship, while educating the public and notifying Big Tech of egregious incidents of disinformation (mostly by government).

The Trump election and Cambridge Analytica scandal changed these rules as many blamed social media greed and wilful ignorance for the election loss. Claims of Russian disinformation compounded these problems. Big Tech’s alleged lack of action put it at odds with its core, liberal constituencies. Anger and disillusionment allowed the speech control wing of the digital rights movement to ascend, shifting the movement’s mission from watching the powerful to policing the fringe.

Newer disinformation initiatives also sought to rebuild trust in Big Media, legacy organisations whose legitimacy crumbled for a variety of reasons: from supporting the Iraq war, to failing to predict Trump and Brexit. To recapture authority, elites made themselves the adults who discern the truth, as the rest of society cannot be trusted make competent decisions.

Anti-disinformation amid the pandemic

I went into the pandemic with a wide variety of doubts, but was among the majority in supporting government restrictions, though never on access to information. Banning discussion of a possible lab accident at the pandemic’s beginning triggered me to reevaluate. My own Australian government and the former CDC Director Robert Redfield both considered the lab-leak a plausible reason for how the pandemic started. Meanwhile, leading anti-disinformation organisations labelled it a conspiracy theory, and suggested that journalists not amplify it.

After the lab leak theory became mainstream, I saw no reconsideration of facts among the anti-disinformation and digital rights sectors, as any straying meant being called far-right. Unfortunately, silence only shields the powerful, and civil liberties and human rights groups went AWOL on their duties, or even swapped sides. Witness the ACLU advocating for the violation of bodily autonomy and in favour of widespread vaccine mandates.

The digital rights field seem oblivious to how much information is now controlled. Despite all the changes during COVID, the 2022 iteration of RightsCon had no sessions on the pandemic and disinformation. The digital rights community has also ignored news of the White House directing Twitter to deplatform journalists, and of Harvard and Stanford Professors suing the White House for social media related free speech violations.

Other few key examples of how pandemic censorship protected the powerful:

Questioning of lockdowns was once banned, yet it is now widely acknowledged that lockdowns resulted in serious harm including delays in childhood learning, lack of early treatment for serious illness, a rise in domestic abuse, as well as inflation and a massive transfer of wealth to the rich.

Across the board social media sought to disallow information that is “inconsistent with health authorities’ guidance”. But authorities are not all-knowing and this policy blew away previously held norms around open scientific debate and went against the crowd-sourcing ethos of progressives.


Why the conformity?

Some level of conformity is to be expected; however, it reached uncanny levels during the pandemic. Public relations campaigns hid how information controls have worked, as many aren’t even aware of policies and repeated “fact check” failures. PR campaigns also succeeded in associating those seeking to limit pandemic controls as being right-wing and therefore selfish, or worse, racist and misogynist—even as vaccine hesitancy was highest among communities of colour.

Second, the “anti-disinformation” and digital rights field maintains rigorous class solidarity and is overwhelmingly upper-middle and middle class. The upper and middle classes have a higher trust in institutions because they run those institutions and those institutions have worked for them. The field is also the ultimate laptop class, along with others working in tech. Work from home and other lockdown policies benefited them, even as it harmed others.

Third, digital rights melted into the “follow the science” movement. Populism dented the prestige of the expert and professional managerial class, while COVID energized their authority with “science” and gave them back power. Questioning “the science” and acknowledging mistakes means re-diminishing that power.

Finally, Big Tech has compromised the field with tens of millions of dollars (possibly hundreds) annually, yet this funding bias is rarely discussed. Imagine if Shell, BP, and ExxonMobil were core funders of the climate change movement. Added to this financial influence is a revolving door between Big Tech and those meant to hold it to account

Moving forward

Allegations of “disinformation” have become a tool to delegitimize opposition to orthodoxy and power, and have been weaponised to shield government and Big Pharma from scrutiny. Just as criticism of the automobile industry in the 60s and 70s led to improved car safety, today’s public fora must hold the powerful to account.

By aligning with Big Tech and Big Pharma, the “anti-disinformation” and digital rights sectors have neglected their responsibilities, and have come to serve power rather than people, contributing to a broader chilling effect.

To improve digital rights, we must:

  • Ensure funders, non-profits, journalists, and media organisations more clearly stand up for free speech and invite dissenting views;
  • Remain courageous while suffering the slings and arrows of nasty online criticism. And support those who speak out;
  • Highlight bullying that closes down conversation and benefits institutional interests;
  • Generate greater public awareness of government and corporate manipulation on social media;
  • Refuse Big Tech and Big Pharma funding for work that is meant to keep these same industries accountable;
  • Create more watchers to watch the “anti-disinformation” watchers;
  • Develop alternative media platforms so the conversation can’t be so easily controlled;
  • ·Ensure regulation that protects free speech;
  • Break up Big Tech and Big Media to limit government and corporate control of public discourse and increase diversity of opinion.

Pandemic information controls and restrictions on free speech had real world consequences that contributed to poorer, not better, public health outcomes. By neglecting to address corporate and government pandemic censorship, the digital rights movement failed in its core mission of securing online freedom of expression.

Zelensky, media lackeys caught in most dangerous lie yet

Posted on by
1

By Alexander Rubinstein

Source: The Grayzone

With Kiev exposed for a lie that could have triggered a third world war, it is time to examine past deceptions that Western media promoted.

A missile that exploded on Polish soil on November 15 killed two civilians and destroyed farm equipment. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Western corporate media rushed to blame the explosion on Russia in apparent hopes of triggering NATO’s Article 5, which requires NATO states to defend one another militarily when attacked by a hostile force.

Polish and NATO members including US President Joseph Biden have since confirmed the missile that struck Poland was, in fact, a Ukrainian S-300 anti-aircraft missile. Yet Zelensky is sticking to his line, blaming Russia for the strike, while NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg still insists that “Russia bears ultimate responsibility.” Meanwhile, the media outlets that reflexively pointed the finger at Russia have been forced to take a step back from their initial reporting.

“Russian missiles hit Poland, the territory of our friendly country. People died,” Zelensky insisted on November 15, the night of the attack. “The longer Russia feels impunity, the more threats there will be to anyone within reach of Russian missiles. To fire missiles at NATO territory! This is a Russian missile attack on collective security! This is a very significant escalation. We must act.”

Zelensky held firm the following day, despite mounting evidence that his own country’s air defenses were responsible, declaring “I have no doubt that this is not our missile… I believe that this was a Russian missile, based on our military reports.” By this time, most analysts rejected the Ukrainian president’s assessment, including the founder of the US government-sponsored intelligence cutout Bellingcat, who wrote “At this point I think it’s fair anyone saying that a Russian missile hit Poland based on the current evidence is being irresponsible.”

A Russian attack on NATO member Poland could have triggered Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization which compels its member states to consider “an attack against one Ally” to be “an attack against all Allies.” Such a mobilization would have amounted to World War III.

Despite the clear risk of such a catastrophic escalation – or perhaps because of it – Western corporate media immediately blamed Russia for the strike, never even posing the question of why Russia would consider Polish farmland such an important military target that it would be willing to risk a full-scale war with the 30-member NATO alliance. 

Initially, the Associated Press ran with the headline “Russian missiles cross into Poland during strike on Ukraine.” The article cited a “senior US intelligence official,” and later, “a second person.” 

On November 16, AP began redirecting the link to its original article to a correction that stated, “The Associated Press reported erroneously, based on information from a senior American intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity, that Russian missiles had crossed into Poland and killed two people. Subsequent reporting showed that the missiles were Russian-made and most likely fired by Ukraine in defense against a Russian attack.”

Time Magazine ran with the headline, “Russian Missiles Cross Into Poland During Strike, Killing Two,” and cited the AP report.

Fox News similarly announced, “Russian missiles cross into NATO member Poland, kill 2: senior US intelligence official, citing the Associated Press. MSNBC also blamed a “Russian missile” for the strike in its headline.

Then there was CNN, which reported, “Poland says Russian-made missile killed two, will consider invoking NATO Article 4.” NATO Article 4 deals with the meetings between NATO states that are to take place in the event one of them is “threatened” and would theoretically precede any invocation of Article 5. Like CNN, Reuters cited the Polish Foreign Ministry and ran the headline, “Poland says Russian rocket hit its territory as NATO weighs response.”

The New York Times stated in the second sentence of its report on the missile strike that “the blast came as Russia fired roughly 90 missiles into Ukraine.” Two lines later, the Times stated “local media suggests a Russian missile strike.” Readers of the paper of record would have to scroll down several times to even read that Russian officials denied responsibility.

Earlier in the war, in an article on “Ukraine’s online propaganda,” the New York Times sought to downplay the Ukrainian government’s penchant for pushing fake news, arguing that Kiev’s information war merely “dramatize[s] tales of Ukrainian fortitude and Russian aggression.” The article quoted an unnamed Twitter user, who wrote, “Why can’t we just let people believe some things? … If the Russians believe it, it brings fear. If the Ukrainians believe it, it gives them hope.”

The US media’s support for Ukraine’s propaganda efforts meant that it covered some of the most suspicious events without a hint of skepticism, and thereby encouraged more. 

These questionable incidents included the following:

  • On March 8, Western media reported that a Mariupol maternity hospital was attacked by Russian aircraft. Zelensky claimed the attack was evidence of Russian “genocide” against Ukraine. However, a key witness – a pregnant woman in the hospital photographed by AP – stated that no such airstrike occurred, and that nearby explosions were caused by Ukrainian artillery shells.

On March 16, the Ukrainian government blamed a targeted Russian airstrike for destroying the Mariupol Dramatic Theater and causing anywhere from 300 to 600 deaths. Western corporate media promoted the Ukrainian narrative of the event despite a total absence of footage showing a missile strike, no images or evidence of large numbers of dead civilians inside, no images or evidence of any attempted rescue, and testimony by Mariupol locals asserting the Azov Battalion fighters that controlled the theater’s grounds staged the explosion to provoke NATO military intervention. Photographic evidence showed that Azov fighters removed all vehicles from the theater’s parking lot one day before the explosion.

The Kramatorsk train station bombing that was blamed on Russia despite the fact the Tochka-U missile responsible for the blast contained a serial number matching others in Ukraine’s arsenal and originated from Ukrainian-controlled territory.

As the war grinds on, elements in the Biden administration appear to be growing impatient with the tall tales of their Ukrainian clients. “This is getting ridiculous,” an unnamed NATO official told the Financial Times on November 16. “The Ukrainians are destroying our confidence and they are openly lying. This is more destructive than the missile.”

AP Editor Said She “Can’t Imagine” A US Intelligence Official Being Wrong

Posted on by
1

By Caitlin Johnstone

Source: CaitlinJohnstone.com

The Associated Press journalist who reported a US intelligence official’s false claim that Russia had launched missiles at Poland last week has been fired.

As we discussed previously, AP’s anonymously sourced report which said “A senior U.S. intelligence official says Russian missiles crossed into NATO member Poland, killing two people” went viral because of the massive implications of direct hot warfare erupting between Russia and the NATO alliance. AP subsequently retracted its story as the mainstream political/media class came to accept that it was in fact a Ukrainian missile that had struck Poland.

AP’s firing of reporter James LaPorta looks at this time to be the end point of any accountability for the circulation of this extremely dangerous falsehood. AP spokesperson Lauren Easton says no disciplinary action will be taken against the editors who waved the bogus story through, and to this day the public has been kept in the dark about the identity of the US official who fed such extremely egregious misinformation/disinformation to the public through the mainstream press.

It is utterly inexcusable for AP to continue to protect the anonymity of a government official who fed them such a profoundly significant falsehood. This didn’t just affect AP staff, it affected the whole world; we deserve to know what happened and who was responsible, and AP has no business obstructing that knowledge from us.

LaPorta’s firing looks like this is yet another instance where the least powerful person involved in a debacle is being made to take the fall for it. A powerful intelligence official will suffer no consequences for feeding false information to the press — thereby ensuring that it will happen again — and no disciplinary action will be taken against LaPorta’s superiors, despite the absolute buffoonery that subsequent reporting has revealed on their part.

In an article titled “Associated Press reporter fired over erroneous story on Russian attack,” The Washington Post reports the following (emphasis added):

Internal AP communications viewed by The Post show some confusion and misunderstanding during the preparations of the erroneous report.

LaPorta shared the U.S. official’s tip in an electronic message around 1:30 p.m. Eastern time. An editor immediately asked if AP should issue an alert on his tip, “or would we need confirmation from another source and/or Poland?”

After further discussion, a second editor said she “would vote” for publishing an alert, adding, “I can’t imagine a U.S. intelligence official would be wrong on this.”

“I can’t imagine a US intelligence official would be wrong on this.”

Can you imagine not being able to imagine a US intelligence official being wrong? This would be an unacceptable position for any educated adult to hold, much less a journalist, still less an editor, and still less an editor of one of the most influential news agencies on earth.

These are the people who publish the news reports we read to find out what’s happening in the world. This is the baby-brained level of thinking these people are serving the public interest with.

Antiwar commentator Daniel Larison writes the following of the AP editor’s shocking quote:

Skepticism about official claims should always be the watchword for journalists and analysts. These are claims that need more scrutiny than usual rather than less. If you can’t imagine that an intelligence official could get something important wrong, whether by accident or on purpose, you are taking far too many things for granted that need to be questioned and checked out first.

Intelligence officials of many governments feed information to journalists and have done so practically ever since there was a popular press to feed information to, and that information certainly should not be trusted just because an official source hands it over. It is also always possible for intelligence officials to just get things wrong, whether it is because they are relying on faulty information or because they were too hasty in reaching conclusions about what they think they know.

Whether the AP’s source was feeding them a line or was simply mistaken, a claim as provocative and serious as this one should have been checked out much more thoroughly before it got anywhere near publication. The AP report in this case seems to have been a combination of a story that was “too good to check” and a culture of deference to official sources in which the editors didn’t feel compelled to make the effort to check.

Indeed, the only reason the press receive such explicit protections in the US Constitution is because they are supposed to hold the powerful to account. If the editors of a wildly influential news agency will just unquestioningly parrot whatever they are fed by government officials while simultaneously protecting those officials with anonymity, they are not holding the powerful to account, and are in fact not meaningfully different from state propagandists.

They are state propagandists. Which is probably why they are sipping lattes in the AP newsroom while Julian Assange languishes in prison.

As Jacobin’s Branko Marcetic observed, this is far from the first time AP has given the cover of anonymity to US government officials circulating bogus claims of potentially dangerous consequence, like the time it reported an official’s evidence-free assertion which later proved false that Iran had carried out an attack on four oil tankers off the coast of the United Arab Emirates, or the time it let another one anonymously claim that “Iran may try to take advantage of America’s troop withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan.”

So to recap  —

  • Powerful government official who fed AP a false story: Zero accountability
  • AP editor who asked if a report should immediately be published upon receipt of the story: Zero accountability
  • Second AP editor who says she can’t imagine a U.S. intelligence official would be wrong:  Zero accountability
  • Journalist who wrote the story: Singular accountability

In a sane society, power and responsibility would go hand in hand. A disaster would be blamed on the most powerful people involved in its occurrence. In our society it’s generally the exact opposite, with the rank-and-file taking all of the responsibility and none of the power.

Our rulers lie to us, propagandize us, endanger us, impoverish us, destroy journalism, start wars, kill our biosphere and make our world dark and confusing, and they suffer no consequences for it. We cannot allow them to continue holding all of the power and none of the responsibility. This is backwards and must end.

The Military Industrial Complex Wants You To Be More Media (l)literate!

Posted on by
6

By Nolan Higdon

Source: Project Censored

A September 2022 report from Tessa Jolls, president of the Center for Media Literacy, titled “Building Resiliency: Media Literacy as a Strategic Defense Strategy for the Transatlantic,” read like a blueprint for how to indoctrinate students in corporatism and militarism under the auspices of  media literacy education. Jolls received a Fulbright-NATO Security Studies Award to study “aspects of the current information ecosystem and the state of media literacy in NATO countries.”

For historical context, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was created after World War II during the Cold War and has long since outlived its stated purpose of stopping the spread of communism. Indeed, as political sociologists such as Peter Phillips have noted, NATO has morphed into a global army that engages in questionable conflicts and other human rights abuses in an effort to serve the “transnational capitalist class.” 

Just like the crisis of “fake news,” media literacy can and is being weaponized by organizations and individuals seeking to increase their power by influencing the public’s perception of reality. For example, Steve Bannon, former White House Chief Strategist for President Donald Trump has a long history of spreading false information. Form 2012-18, he was the executive chairman of Breitbart’s website which has been caught manipulating videos, manufacturing stories, and spreading baseless conspiracies. Starting with Bannon’s tenure, Breitbart published articles lauding media literacy as a way to combat “fake news,” while touting that its founder, Andrew Breitbart, integrated media literacy into the platform. However, their consistent spreading of false information seems to run counter to traditional definitions of media literacy. 

The standard U.S. definition of media literacy is “the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, create, and act using all forms of communication.” In response to the post-2016 moral panic over fake news, there was a demand for more media literacy education in schools. This provided a window of opportunity for media companies – which had long sought to enter the classroom to advertise products and collect student data- to move at rapid speed to indoctrinate students with their corporate propaganda. 

Jolls’ report aids these efforts by arguing that corporations’ “allocations for media literacy education are few and far between.” Jolls’ report speaks to the military industrial complex when it calls for “funding and programming from all corners: government, foundations, and the private sector (tech and media companies, other corporations).” The military industrial complex refers to the relationship between the military and related defense and national security industries. In fact, Big-Tech emerged from and continues to serve the same military industrial complex. 

Rather than advocate for a critical media literacy education that would account for the power dynamics invested in NATO and its long history of working against democracy and social justice, Jolls’ lauds the “values that NATO states” arguing that they represent an “excellent foundation” for “media literacy initiatives.” To normalize NATO values in the educational process, Jolls suggests what amounts to a psychological operations campaign (PSYOP) to spread NATO’s version of media literacy to the public through “mass media, media aggregators such as AP, Reuters and LexisNexis, social media and influencers.” The report calls on NATO to “nurture grassroots efforts,” which sounds more like astroturfing.

Jolls’ report ignores that members of the very same military and intelligence community that she lauds have been producing and spreading fake news to U.S. citizens from Operation Mockingbird in the 20th century up through the present on various social media platforms. It dismisses the public’s rejection of empowering the military industrial complex to determine truth for the citizenry. For example, in 2022, critics from the left and the right successfully lobbied to have the Department of Homeland Security scrap its Disinformation Governance Board because it was reminiscent of the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s 1984. 

Instead, Jolls is following the lead of similar media literacy projects from the military industrial complex such as the NewsGuard browser extension. Known as an “Internet Trust Tool,” NewsGuard’s Advisory Board includes numerous people who served in the military and intelligence community as well as bureaucrats known for opposing the interests of educators. Yet, NewsGuard positions itself as an objective tool for educators while its rating system is ideologically driven. It touts the legitimacy of establishment and legacy media sources that echo the status quo – even when they have been proven to spread false information – and downgrades independent and alternative media outlets that challenge powerful institutions of government, industry, and the military. Jolls’ mirrors NewsGuard’s top-down approach to media literacy education calling on NATO leaders to determine “the intent and purposes for media literacy interventions” by choosing the “social problem or behavior or ideology” or issue for educators to focus on.   

It is clear that we do need a critical media literacy curriculum in the U.S., but that is not what Jolls and her ilk are promoting. A true media literacy education empowers students to be autonomous and sophisticated media users, who ask their own questions about who controls media messaging and interrogate the power structures behind them. When a student is left dependent on the military industrial complex to analyze content for them, it is not education, it is indoctrination. 

Poland, NATO Agree Deadly Polish Border ‘Russian Attack’ Was Errant Ukrainian Missile

Posted on by
3

By Tyler Durden

Source: Zero Hedge

A mere less than 24 hours ago, before the dust had settled from the explosion and before investigators could come to any definitive conclusions after the deadly incident on the Polish border village of Przewodów, the Western public was already being harangued and forewarned to stay away from ‘conspiracy theories’ as the early mainstream headlines – pushed especially based on an anonymous US official in an Associated Press report – were fast out the gate with “Russian missiles hit Poland, killing two”. 

“Article 5” – the NATO collective defense treaty which many had long worried would be the first invoked act leading to WWIII, began trending on Twitter, as Western officials issued confident statements of ‘solidarity’.  Almost immediately and without evidence, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky demanded “action” from the West over the supposed brazen aggression against a NATO member. “Hitting NATO territory with missiles… This is a Russian missile attack on collective security! This is a really significant escalation. Action is needed,” Zelensky said his Tuesday night video address.

And then as missile crash site images widely circulated on the internet, leading even Western sources to express doubt that the projectile was launched by Russia, enter no less than the foreign minister of Ukraine, who attempted to preempt what he slammed as a developing Russia-promoted “conspiracy theory”. Like with many other aspects to this war, some of the most obvious common sense questions were quickly declared “off limits” before they could even be asked. 

Warsaw then stopped just short of any talk of Article 5, but then floated Article 4 as the basis of an emergency NATO security meeting for Wednesday, which calls for “consultations” in the event a NATO country is under threat. 

But what a difference a few hours, and a skeptical refusal to blindly jump on the war! bandwagon, makes. First, as we reported overnight, President Joe Biden explicitly said that based on preliminary information, it is “unlikely” that the rocket strike in Poland originated in Russia. Oops. This as based on the available emerging evidence it seemed clear the culprit was more likely an errant Ukrainian anti-air missile. “It’s unlikely in the minds of [sic] the trajectory that it was fired from Russia. But we’ll see,” Biden had said. But this admission conveniently came well after the US president seized the ‘fog of war’ moment to unveil another massive $37 billion emergency aid package for Ukraine almost simultaneous to the border incident.

Now on Wednesday, Poland and NATO officials have also done a reversal of the initial kneejerk ‘blame Russia’ reporting which momentarily sent the world into a frenzy of anxiety over the prospect of WWIII. Polish President Andrzej Duda has said the explosion that killed two people now appears to be an “unfortunate accident” and not an “intentional attack.”

What is left to say after all of this? Here are the facts…

Recall that the initial reaction out of Moscow was that either Ukraine or Poland was staging a “deliberate provocation” in so quickly hurling blame on Russia for an aggressive act. Warsaw officials had even in the hours after demanded that Russia make an apology if it was an accident.

But President Duda alongside NATO HQ is quickly reversing the entire narrative, according to more from Axios: 

  • Duda added that the projectile that caused the blast was “most likely” Russian-made, but officials have “no proof at the moment that it was a missile fired by the Russian side.”
  • Ukraine has previously denied it was to blame for the blast and accused Moscow of a “serious escalation.” Russia also denied responsibility.

Of course, it’s always been the case that Ukraine’s anti-air missile arsenal is entirely “Russian-made” – particularly its S-300s.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg issued a similar assessment, saying it was most likely an errant Ukrainian missile:

“Our preliminary analysis suggests that the incident was likely caused by a Ukrainian air defence missile fired to defend Ukrainian territory against Russian cruise missile attacks,” the NATO Secretary General told reporters after an emergency meeting of the alliance’s Security Council. 

He stressed that the investigation into the explosion is still ongoing but that there is “no indication that this was the result of a deliberate attack. And we have no indication that Russia is preparing offensive military actions against NATO.”

To be expected, he quickly followed by still laying blame on Russia for the overall war and series of events which led to the deadly border explosion. “But let me be clear. This is not Ukraine’s fault. Russia bears ultimate responsibility, as it continues its illegal war against Ukraine,” the NATO chief said.

Without addressing Zelensky’s prior day shrill rush to get NATO to declare military action based on collective security, Stoltenberg stressed, “this is not Ukraine’s fault.” As NATO defense officials continue to meet to determine a way forward, and as the whole drama has clearly fizzled out (again, only after it emerged it was Ukraine’s rocket), likely the alliance will quietly move on in a “nothing to see here” manner.

But what about the next time a similar border tragedy or incident on NATO-land plays out? Will the same “Russia is attacking NATO!” narrative prevail before anyone is allowed to ask simple questions? Will the war drums beat before there’s so much as a forensic investigation? Will there be a mushroom cloud before pesky rational skepticism disrupts the “consensus”? As the past ten years of war in Syria and Western intervention there have demonstrated, this is the likely inevitable scenario of how NATO and Russia will stumble into direct conflict at this rate.

In the meantime, as for the below still lingering question, we won’t hold our breath…

Researchers Find Massive Anti-Russian ‘Bot Army’

Posted on by
1

By Peter Cronau

Source: Consortium News

A team of researchers at the University of Adelaide have found that as many as 80 percent of tweets about the 2022 Russia-Ukraine invasion in its early weeks were part of a covert propaganda campaign originating from automated fake “bot” accounts.

An anti-Russia propaganda campaign originating from a “bot army” of phony automated Twitter accounts flooded the internet at the start of the war.

The research shows that of the more than 5 million tweets studied, 90.2 percent (both bot and non-bot) came from accounts that were pro-Ukraine, with fewer than 7 percent of the accounts being classed as pro-Russian.

The university researchers also found these automated tweets had been purposely used to drive up fear amongst people targeted by them, boosting a high level of statistically measurable “angst” in the online discourse.

The research team analysed a massively unprecedented 5,203,746 tweets, sent with key hashtags, in the first two weeks of the Russian invasion of Ukraine from Feb. 24. The researchers looked at predominately English-language accounts. A calculated 1.8 million unique Twitter accounts in the dataset posted at least one English-language tweet.

The results were published in August in a research paper, titled “#IStandWithPutin versus #IStandWithUkraine: The interaction of bots and humans in discussion of the Russia/Ukraine war,” by the University of Adelaide’s School of Mathematical Science.

The size of the sample under study, of over 5-million tweets, dwarfs other recent studies of covert propaganda in social media surrounding the Ukraine war. 

The little-reported Stanford University/Graphika research on Western disinformation, analysed by Declassified Australia in September, examined just under 300,000 tweets from 146 Twitter accounts.

The Meta/Facebook research on Russian disinformation reported widely by mainstream media, including by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) a fortnight later, looked at only 1,600 Facebook accounts.

Reports on the new research have appeared in only a few independent media sites, and on Russia’s RT.  The ground-breaking study exposing a massive anti-Russia social media disinformation campaign has been effectively ignored by Western establishment media, showing how stories that don’t fit the desired pro-Western narrative are routinely buried. 

Disinformation Blitz Krieg

The Adelaide University researchers unearthed a massive organised pro-Ukraine influence operation underway from the early stages of the conflict. Overall, the study found automated “bot” accounts to be the source of between 60 to 80 percent of all tweets in the dataset. 

The published data shows that in the first week of the Ukraine-Russia war there was a huge mass of pro-Ukrainian hashtag bot activity. Approximately 3.5 million tweets using the hashtag #IStandWithUkraine were sent by bots in that first week. 

In fact, it was like someone had flicked a switch at the start of the war as pro-Ukraine bot activity suddenly burst into life. In that first day of the war the #IStandWithUkraine hashtag was used in as many as 38,000 tweets each hour, rising to 50,000 tweets an hour by day three of the war. 

By comparison, the data shows that in the first week there was an almost total absence of pro-Russian bot activity using the key hashtags. During that first week of the invasion, pro-Russian bots were sending off tweets using the #IStandWithPutin or #IStandWithRussia hashtags at a rate of only several hundred per hour.

Given the apparent long-range planning for the invasion of Ukraine, cyber experts expressed surprise that Russian cyber and internet responses were so laggard. A researcher at the Centre for Security Studies in Switzerland, said: “The [pro-Russian] cyber operations we have seen do not show long preparation, and instead look rather haphazard.”

After being apparently left flatfooted, the #IStandWithPutin hashtag mainly from automated bots, eventually fired up a week after the start of the war. That hashtag started appearing in higher numbers on  March 2, day 7 of the war. It reached 10,000 tweets per hour just twice over the next two days, still way behind the pro-Ukraine tweeting activity. 

The #IStandWithRussia hashtag use was even smaller, reaching only 4,000 tweets per hour. After just two days of operation, the pro-Russian hashtag activity had dropped away almost completely. The study’s researchers noted the automated bot accounts “likely used by Russian authorities,” were “removed likely by pro-Ukrainian authorities.”

The reaction against these pro-Russian accounts had been swift. On March 5, after the #IStandWithPutin hashtag had trended on Twitter, the company announced it had banned over 100 accounts using the hashtag for violating its “platform manipulation and spam policy” and participating in “coordinated inauthentic behaviour.”

Later that month, the Ukraine Security Service (SBU) reportedly raided five “bot farms”’ operating inside the country. The Russia-linked bot operators were reportedly operating through 100,000 fake social media accounts spreading disinformation that was “intended to inspire panic among Ukrainian masses.”

Ukrainian security forces unearthed a pro-Russian automated “bot army” operating out of an apartment in March 2022. The raid found 100 sets of GSM-gateways, left, and 10,000 sim cards, right, operating 100,000 fake bot accounts. (SBU)

Unfiltered Research

The landmark Adelaide University research differs from these earlier revelations in another most unique and spectacular way. 

While the Stanford-Graphika and Meta research was produced by researchers who have long-term deep ties to the U.S. national security state, the Adelaide University researchers are remarkably independent. The academic team is from the university’s School of Mathematical Science.

Using mathematical calculations, they set out to predict and model people’s psychological traits based on their digital footprint.

Unlike the datasets selected and provided for the Stanford/Graphika and the Meta research, the data the Adelaide University team accessed did not come from accounts that had been detected for breaching guidelines and shut down by Meta or Twitter. 

Joshua Watt is one of the lead researchers on the university team, and is a Master of Philosophy candidate in applied mathematics.

He told Declassified Australia that the dataset of 5 million tweets was accessed directly by the team from Twitter accounts on the internet using an academic license giving access to the Twitter API.

The “Application Programming Interface” is a data communication software tool that allows researchers to directly retrieve and analyse Twitter data.

The fake tweets and automated bot accounts had not been detected and removed by Twitter before being analysed by the researchers, although some were possibly removed in Twitter’s March sweep.

Watt told Declassified Australia that in fact many of the bot accounts behind the 5 million tweets studied are likely to be still up and running.

Declassified Australia contacted Twitter to ask what action they may have taken to remove the fake bot accounts identified in the University of Adelaide research. They had not responded by the time of going to press.

Critical Tool in Info War

This new research paper confirms mounting fears that social media has covertly become what the researchers call “a critical tool in information warfare playing a large role in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.”

The Adelaide University researchers tried their best to be noncommittal in describing the activities of the fake Twitter accounts, although they had found the vast majority – over 90 percent – were anti-Russian messages. They stated: “Both sides in the Ukrainian conflict use the online information environment to influence geopolitical dynamics and sway public opinion.”

They found the two main participating sides in the propaganda war have their own particular goals and style. “Russian social media pushes narratives around their motivation, and Ukrainian social media aims to foster and maintain external support from Western countries, as well as promote their military efforts while undermining the perception of the Russian military.”

While the research findings concentrated on automated Twitter bots, there were also findings on the use of hashtags by non-bot tweeters. They found significant information flows from non-bot pro-Russian accounts, but no significant flows from non-bot pro-Ukraine accounts.

As well as being far more active, the pro-Ukraine side was found to be far more advanced in its use of automated bots. The pro-Ukrainian side used more “astroturf bots” than the pro-Russians. Astroturf bots are hyper-active political bots that continuously follow many other accounts to increase followers of that account.

Social Media Role in Boosting Fear

Crucially, the University of Adelaide researchers also investigated the psychological influence the fake automated bot accounts had on the online conversation during those early weeks of the war. 

These conversations in a target audience may develop over time into support or opposition towards governments and policies – but they may also have more instant effects influencing the target audiences’ immediate decisions.

The study found that it was the tweets from the fake “bot” accounts that most drove an increase in conversations surrounding “angst” amongst people targeted by them. They found these automated bot accounts increased “the use of words in the angst category which contains words related to fear and worry, such as ‘shame,’ ‘terrorist,’ ‘threat, ‘panic.’”

By combining the “angst” messaging with messages about “motion” and geographical locations, the researchers found “the bot accounts are influencing more discussion surrounding moving/fleeing/going or staying.” The researchers believe this effect may well have been to influence Ukrainians even away from the conflict zones to flee from their homes.

The research shows that fake automated social media “bot” accounts do manipulate public opinion by shaping the discourse, sometimes in very specific ways. The results provide a chilling indication of the very real malign effects that mass social media disinformation campaigns can have on an innocent civilian population. 

Origins of Twitter Bot Accounts

The researchers report that the overwhelming level of Twitter disinformation that was anti-Russian was from bots “likely [organised] by pro-Ukrainian authorities.”

The researchers asserted no further findings about the origin of the 5 million tweets, but did find that some bots “are pushing campaigns specific to certain countries [unnamed], and hence sharing content aligned with those timezones.” The data does show that the peak time for a selection of pro-Ukrainian bot activity occurred between 6pm and 9pm across U.S. time zones.

Some indication of the origin and the targeting of the messages could be deduced from the specific languages used in the 5 million tweets. Over 3.5 million tweets, or 67 percent, were in the English language, with fewer that 2 percent in Russian and Ukrainian. 

In May 2022, the National Security Agency (NSA) director and U.S. cyber command chief, General Paul Nakasone, revealed that the Cyber Command had been conducting offensive Information Operations in support of Ukraine.

“We’ve conducted a series of operations across the full spectrum: offensive, defensive, [and] information operations,” Nakasone said. 

Nakasone said the U.S. has been conducting operations aimed at dismantling Russian propaganda. He said the operations were lawful, conducted through policy determined by the U.S. Defense Department and with civilian oversight.

Nakasone said the U.S. seeks to tell the truth when conducting an information operation, unlike Russia.

U.S. Cyber Command had deployed to Ukraine a “hunt forward” cyber team in December to help shore up Ukraine’s cyber defences and networks against active threats in anticipation of the invasion.

A newly formed European Union cyber rapid response team consisting of 12 experts joined the Cyber Command team to look for active cyber threats inside Ukrainian networks and to strengthen the country’s cyber defences.

The U.S. has invested $40 million since 2017 in helping Ukraine buttress its information technology sector. According to U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, the investments have helped Ukrainians “keep their internet on and information flowing, even in the midst of a brutal Russian invasion.”

Wars & Lies in Our Pockets

With the rise of the internet, war and armed conflict will never be the same. Analysts have noted that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has ushered in a “new digital era of military, political and economic conflict” being manipulated by “laptop generals and bot armies.”

“In all dimensions of this conflict, digital technology plays a key role – as a tool for cyberattacks and digital protest, and as an accelerator for flows of information and disinformation,” wrote analysts at the Heinrich Boll Stiftung in Brussels. “Propaganda has been a part of war since the beginning of history, but never before could it be so widely spread beyond an actual conflict area and targeted to so many different audiences.”

Joshua Watt, one of the lead researchers on the University of Adelaide team that conducted the landmark study, summed it up: “In the past, wars have been primarily fought physically, with armies, air force and navy operations being the primary forms of combat. However, social media has created a new environment where public opinion can be manipulated at a very large scale.”

“CNN brought once-distant wars into our living rooms,” another analyst stated, “but TikTok and YouTube and Twitter have put them in our pockets.”

We are all carrying around with us a powerful source of information and news media – and also, most certainly, disinformation that’s coming relentlessly at us from influence operations run by “bad actors” whose aim is to deceive.