A Template for Disinformation
Donald Trump’s legacy is not the America-first mantra, the wall, the cozy relationship with Putin, the economic shadow fight with China, bleaching COVID-19, nor the two impeachments. It isn’t even the takeover of the GOP and the surrender to the right-wing lunatics in this country.
Trump’s legacy is three-fold. First of all, Trump enabled the Mitch McConnell judiciary take-over, beyond a conservative Supreme Court. A much more conservative judicial branch will have a long lasting impact in the US.
Secondly, Trump eroded key functions of the US federal government. Michael Lewis details this in his book, The Fifth Risk. For example, in his contempt for reason and science, and in his fight against climate change, Trump gutted the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency, NOAA. The scientists which worked tirelessly to provide critical weather information for air traffic, ships and farmers, and were forced out, aren’t coming back. There are many more such dramatic changes in the government.
Thirdly, Trump enabled the dismantlement of any reasonable discourse. “Fake news!” “They are out to get me!” “The radical left.” “Alternative Facts” We will suffer the impacts from this for years, starting with the prolonged Covid pandemic. We lost critical analysis, in-depth reporting and civil debate. We lost a scientific debate.
Instead, we got groups of Google-enabled pseudo-scientists, talking heads, conspiracy-theorists, all amplified by Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, and an army of Russian and Chinese bots, spewing “their opinion”.
Here’s the script to both recognize fake news or to create it yourself:
A Template for Disinformation
- Start with “What the mainstream media doesn’t want you to know”. Or “You are only going to read this here.”
- Throw in a cherry-picked fact out of a scientific report, and indignantly cry foul how the Nobel-prized authors have been silenced, or even have disappeared. “Their information has been removed by Big Tech.”
- Trot out a fancy title: Doctor, PhD, scientist, etc, (Hello Doctor Mengele). Establish their credibility with a long list of educational institutions and awards. Neglect any mention of their money making side business in food supplements, or how they are no longer board certified (Dr. Rand Paul, we meet again).
- Repeat how they have been silenced by secretly funded dark powers, or by the Silicon Valley techies.
- Omit any facts, any serious arguments, any peer-reviewed data, reason or logic. No need to string a few coherent thoughts together. Remember, the rant must go on.
- Call foul: follow the money!
- Send it to the bots to distribute it widely. Appear on extremist (u-hum Murdoch) radio and television shows.
- Rinse and repeat.
The pattern is all too clear in the many articles I get get forward and read. So much that it undermines any potential new insight the article might bring. My immediate reaction is file under /dev/null.
This is unfortunate, as I do want to remain open to the potential of pharmacy-grade ivermectin or about the real effect of masks.