R/I ~ AA
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There is a group of people in the United States who have become convinced that they are qualified to decree what is true and what is false—not in any one particular area of expertise that they have spent a lot of years studying, say, cardiology or archeology or physics, but they believe they are somehow competent to identify truth and falsity in general. And more than just being somehow qualified to identity truth and falsity in general, they believe they are entitled to have their judgments be binding on others, that if they pronounce something to be false or inaccurate, then it should no longer be permitted to be expressed or to be heard.
Such people now call themselves “disinformation experts.” This is a completely fraudulent credential. It was invented out of whole cloth following the dual 2016 disasters of Brexit in the UK and Trump’s victory over Hillary in the U.S. Seemingly out of nowhere, overnight, there descended upon the United States this creepy new group of self-anointed experts who proclaimed to the world that they were able to identify falsity and deceit where nobody else could. As a result of this unique insight they insist that they and they alone possess, they have demanded the power to dictate the limits of our political debate, and have purported to impose on the largest tech companies in the West the obligation to enforce their pronouncements.
It should be—and would be—very easy to scoff at such people and dismiss them the way one laughs at people who materialize and proclaim themselves the Messiah and demand that everyone obey and follow them. Yet these people are often financed by the most powerful and politically interventionist billionaires in the West. The country’s largest media outlets routinely treat them as the prophets they claim to be. Often, they’re backed by the U.S. intelligence agencies and increasingly, in the West, the force of law is being wielded to bestow upon their judgments an unquestioning shield of truth.
Over the weekend, the television program “60 Minutes” featured a woman named Kate Starbird, and she was presented as one of our nation’s most important and prestigious disinformation experts. “60 Minutes” found it quite scandalous – as did Starbird herself – that X and other platforms have failed in many instances to remove political speech that Starbird believes is false and should be removed. This “60 Minutes” segment really shines a light on how these people think. And since Starbird herself has worked with some of the most menacing state and private-sector institutions attempting to police our political discourse, understanding her is vital to understanding the institutional weapons being unleashed to control political speech online.
Free Assange