Something monstrous is taking shape in America. Formally, it exhibits the synergy of state and corporate power in service of a tribal zeal that is the hallmark of fascism. Yet anyone who spends time in America and is not a brainwashed zealot can tell that it is not a fascist country. What is coming into being is a new form of government and social organization that is as different from mid-twentieth century liberal democracy as the early American republic was from the British monarchism that it grew out of and eventually supplanted. A state organized on the principle that it exists to protect the sovereign rights of individuals, is being replaced by a digital leviathan that wields power through opaque algorithms and the manipulation of digital swarms. It resembles the Chinese system of social credit and one-party state control, and yet that, too, misses the distinctively American and providential character of the control system. In the time we lose trying to name it, the thing itself may disappear back into the bureaucratic shadows, covering up any trace of it with automated deletions from the top-secret data centers of Amazon Web Services, “the trusted cloud for government.”In a technical or structural sense, the censorship regime’s aim is not to censor or to oppress, but to rule. That’s why the authorities can never be labeled as guilty of disinformation. Not when they lied about Hunter Biden’s laptops, not when they claimed that the lab leak was a racist conspiracy, not when they said that vaccines stopped transmission of the novel coronavirus. Disinformation, now and for all time, is whatever they say it is. That is not a sign that the concept is being misused or corrupted; it is the precise functioning of a totalitarian system.If the underlying philosophy of the war against disinformation can be expressed in a single claim, it is this: You cannot be trusted with your own mind. What follows is an attempt to see how this philosophy has manifested in reality. It approaches the subject of disinformation from 13 angles—like the “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” Wallace Stevens’ 1917 poem—with the aim that the composite of these partial views will provide a useful impression of disinformation’s true shape and ultimate design.
Radical Ideas’ Raphael Lima delves into the concerning situation brewing in Brazil where the government is introducing legislation that could lead to social media censorship. Google, for instance, penned an article criticizing the law for its potential to create legal uncertainty and censorship, only to be ordered to take it down or face hourly fines. Telegram, too, warned its users about the law's implications, encouraging them to reach out to their representatives. However, they were ordered by the Supreme Court to retract the message and issue a new one, admitting they had "attacked the democratic state of Brazil". This poses a question: Is this law an example of censorship? Yet, it seems Brazilians aren't allowed to say so.
In a tweet that reached nearly three million people in 24 hours, the longtime Democrat and Bernie Sanders supporter ripped Democrats who threatened reporter Matt Taibbi with prison following his congressional testimony on the Twitter Files.“What an embarrassing, shameful time for the Democrats and the ‘free’ press,” wrote Robbins. “You are losing any shred of credibility you had, you f**king fools.”
Many reports and opinions once labelled “misinformation” turned out to be true.In recent years, people in government and big media suddenly decided it was their job to stop “misinformation."Facebook banned posts that claimed Covid leaked from a lab. Now experts say the lab leak theory is probably right.Senator Rand Paul was suspended from YouTube for saying, “masks don't work very well, particularly the cloth masks.” What he said is absolutely true.Twitter prevented the NY Post’s reporting about Hunter Biden’s laptop from being shared. The story was accurate.It’s bad thing when media censors people. It’s worse when government polices speech. Twitter’s recently released internal files show government tried to control what you read.