It's unnerving to put this all together. Given the Global War on Terror, it's hard not to view the state departments' declaration of parents concerned with CRT to be "domestic terrorists" as a kind of declaration of war on the American public. These digital propaganda policies certainly feel closer to how the state would treat an adversarial population, or even an enemy, than one's own citizens.
But I wonder if this is just a symptom of too many academics and lawyers in government? They seem inclined to view the nation as a system to optimize and streamline, rather than as sheep to be defended from wolves (as more militaristic leaders of the past seemed to), and so citizens that don't conform to the rules of the desired system becomes threats to the nation as a whole, at least as the nation is conceived to be by academics. I could see military leaders doing bad things like this, but civilian academics like Sunstein and Gruber seem to employ this kind of approach during peacetime in a way generals seem to reserve only during open war... though perhaps I'm giving our military too much credit.
I sort of lost you somewhere between COVID and the Twitter files. In March of 2020 when COVID first appeared, my first thought was how glad I was that I didn’t have to make public health decisions about something new and unknown. Since my feeling was that we were all in this together, it never occurred to me that a universal health crisis would somehow devolve into another political issue between right and left. The first line of COVID defense lay with local governments, and soon my city council was being criticized for inflicting needless hardships and unnecessary precautions. I didn’t have any reason to know whether my city council was making the right decisions on COVID safety, but I did know, and do know, they were doing the best they could with limited information. In situations like that it seems just common sense to follow the advice of experts. I remember the polio crisis in the 1950’s, where no one questioned taking precautions, such as not swimming in public pools, and avoiding crowds. And when a vaccine was finally invented, there was absolutely no protest about government overreach. As far as the use of a set of “common phrases,” this seems to be far more likely coming from those complaining about government interference than those acknowledging the necessity of it. I don’t think turning to experts and science during a public health crisis is narrative control, and I do think the backlash against government public health policies are due to conspiracy theories. As far as the Twitter files, it seems the White House did ask Twitter to not spread pictures of a naked Hunter Biden across the internet, which I’m sure benefited everyone. I’m also sure the story behind the Twitter files will continue to evolve for a long time. The acknowledgement of government and corporate interest alignment has been with us since President Eisenhower warned us against the military/industrial complex 75 years ag. I’m not sure, even if information from the Twitter files proves any kind of coordinated actions between Twitter and the FBI, it would be anything new. Elon Musk, that great champion of freedom of speech, seems to think there are forces afoot to discourage it. However, these forces come primarily from the fringes of the far right, who, far from suffering from censorship, never seem to shut up. Every time a conspiracy theory gets shut down, it just pops up again elsewhere. I don’t doubt that many people are afraid to express their opinions, since everything is now political: food, media, entertainment, vehicles, geography, sexuality, education, healthcare, COVID, to say nothing about the climate crisis and immigration. This fear is not from any kind of tyrannical government/corporate/technological behemoth, but rather from their fellow citizens’ censoriousness and polarization.
The truly ominous aspect of all this from my own perspective is that 'AI' (I don't like the term 'artificial intelligence', but it's what we're stuck with) is developing right at the same time the 'machinery of narrative control', as you put it, is deciding for itself that merely to try to improve oneself or live a better life through e.g. bodybuilding, not watching porn, or homesteading is per se fascist. It's not hard to guess where that will lead. To merely be left alone is going to become difficult, I think.
Thanks for returning us to the Siegal piece which, probably because of its length, might have slipped away without the notice it deserved. It is so peculiar how human beings go on interpreting the present moment, and predicting the future, without the slightest idea of the conditions these efforts must of necessity be predicated on.
For example, now that we are fairly sure Covid came from a lab, very few reporters are willing to even discuss the possibility of a leak perpetrated with the intention of infecting the world. The enormity of the transgression seems to undercut any true discussion.
Similarly, if the authorities knew the vaccine could not prevent transmission, what was the justification for mandates? And who is responsible for the deaths that resulted? The livelihoods destroyed? Who's even asking?
And thirdly: now that we are sparring about the candidates of the 2024 election, no one really knows whether we have intact the processes that would guarantee an legitimate election in reality. Democrat denials are tantamount to a survivalist's proof. This is happening as the pundits are yammering away creating the illusion that an election is a plausible idea.
And yet we have little idea of what "winning" means.
A week after there was a consensus about a lab leak, there was another consensus about racoon dogs. And it is beyond comprehension that China would be stupid enough to deliberately let loose a virus that would first potentially decimate its own population before infecting the world. And even if the vaccine didn't prevent transmission, it absolutely lessoned the severity of that transmission. And the mandates didn't come from some abstract "authorities." The Federal government didn't make any country-wide mandates; local entities, such as cities mostly did that, with some inputs from states. Also, various industries, such as healthcare, and corporations passed their own mandates. The CDC offered guidelines. And the states that had the least restrictions were the states that had the most infections. The Federal government has held elections for over 250 years, but all of a sudden elections are not plausible?
If the vaccine did not prevent transmission, there was no moral imperative for a mandate.
Democrats completely changed our election process under the cover of covid. Two significant changes: much wider use of mail-in ballots, removing precincts and using centralized counting stations. Both changes are recognized as key to facilitating fraud.
I'm not sure if you are referring to the Communist revolution in 1949 or the cultural revolution under Mao, but neither one necessarily has anything to do with COVID unless you think there is some kind of genetic flaw in the Chinese character that makes them more prone to murder each other than other races. Revolutions and civil wars from the beginning of time have resulted in the slaughter of "their own people," from the French Revolution in 1789 to Stalin's efforts to collectivize the Soviet Union in the 1930's to the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia in the 1970's or the recent genocide in Rwanda. Unfortunately, it is all too common. My reasoning in not believing China intentionally let COVID loose in the world is that they are now too sophisticated and too technologically advanced to do anything so crude. Maybe COVID was a lab leak, maybe it was transmitted from animals to humans, maybe it was even something else we don't even know about. Whatever it was, it wasn't intentional.
I'm talking about the CCP's inclination to murder citizens which is not a secret, and of which, there are contemporary accounts. Even their brutal lockdowns.
I appreciate your consideration of Seigel's work, and it seems that all of the reasons listed initially play a role in contributing to the situation we find ourselves in. What is maybe the most difficult part to contend with is the shear banality of it all. How much simpler would it be if there was a man in a goat mask running the show, and if we could just find his lair we could put this all to rest? Instead, as usual, we are suffering from status humanicus, and I fear that the pendulum will have to swing farther to the fascist before it begins its return.
My personal feeling (from a UK standpoint) is that the machine got out of control and overplayed it’s hand during the Covid experience. It hasn’t collapsed into a heap just yet, indeed it is fighting tooth and nail on the way down off that peak, but I do think that slowly, over the next 5-10 years it will significantly decline. Unless, of course, we have a big fat war to make it all seem necessary again.
It saddened me as a lifelong Democrat to watch the Democrats tip their hand by viciously attacking Matt Taibbi and Michael Schellenberger in Twitter files hearings. I feel like voting for the Democratic ticket basically endorsing a coup. Great essay, much needed.
After reading your work, I was pleased to see you writing on Substack. Do you think Substack is more insulated from government and commercial actors influencing for malevolent ends? Is there a propaganda immune way of online publishing?
Excellent piece as always.
It's unnerving to put this all together. Given the Global War on Terror, it's hard not to view the state departments' declaration of parents concerned with CRT to be "domestic terrorists" as a kind of declaration of war on the American public. These digital propaganda policies certainly feel closer to how the state would treat an adversarial population, or even an enemy, than one's own citizens.
But I wonder if this is just a symptom of too many academics and lawyers in government? They seem inclined to view the nation as a system to optimize and streamline, rather than as sheep to be defended from wolves (as more militaristic leaders of the past seemed to), and so citizens that don't conform to the rules of the desired system becomes threats to the nation as a whole, at least as the nation is conceived to be by academics. I could see military leaders doing bad things like this, but civilian academics like Sunstein and Gruber seem to employ this kind of approach during peacetime in a way generals seem to reserve only during open war... though perhaps I'm giving our military too much credit.
I sort of lost you somewhere between COVID and the Twitter files. In March of 2020 when COVID first appeared, my first thought was how glad I was that I didn’t have to make public health decisions about something new and unknown. Since my feeling was that we were all in this together, it never occurred to me that a universal health crisis would somehow devolve into another political issue between right and left. The first line of COVID defense lay with local governments, and soon my city council was being criticized for inflicting needless hardships and unnecessary precautions. I didn’t have any reason to know whether my city council was making the right decisions on COVID safety, but I did know, and do know, they were doing the best they could with limited information. In situations like that it seems just common sense to follow the advice of experts. I remember the polio crisis in the 1950’s, where no one questioned taking precautions, such as not swimming in public pools, and avoiding crowds. And when a vaccine was finally invented, there was absolutely no protest about government overreach. As far as the use of a set of “common phrases,” this seems to be far more likely coming from those complaining about government interference than those acknowledging the necessity of it. I don’t think turning to experts and science during a public health crisis is narrative control, and I do think the backlash against government public health policies are due to conspiracy theories. As far as the Twitter files, it seems the White House did ask Twitter to not spread pictures of a naked Hunter Biden across the internet, which I’m sure benefited everyone. I’m also sure the story behind the Twitter files will continue to evolve for a long time. The acknowledgement of government and corporate interest alignment has been with us since President Eisenhower warned us against the military/industrial complex 75 years ag. I’m not sure, even if information from the Twitter files proves any kind of coordinated actions between Twitter and the FBI, it would be anything new. Elon Musk, that great champion of freedom of speech, seems to think there are forces afoot to discourage it. However, these forces come primarily from the fringes of the far right, who, far from suffering from censorship, never seem to shut up. Every time a conspiracy theory gets shut down, it just pops up again elsewhere. I don’t doubt that many people are afraid to express their opinions, since everything is now political: food, media, entertainment, vehicles, geography, sexuality, education, healthcare, COVID, to say nothing about the climate crisis and immigration. This fear is not from any kind of tyrannical government/corporate/technological behemoth, but rather from their fellow citizens’ censoriousness and polarization.
The truly ominous aspect of all this from my own perspective is that 'AI' (I don't like the term 'artificial intelligence', but it's what we're stuck with) is developing right at the same time the 'machinery of narrative control', as you put it, is deciding for itself that merely to try to improve oneself or live a better life through e.g. bodybuilding, not watching porn, or homesteading is per se fascist. It's not hard to guess where that will lead. To merely be left alone is going to become difficult, I think.
Thanks for returning us to the Siegal piece which, probably because of its length, might have slipped away without the notice it deserved. It is so peculiar how human beings go on interpreting the present moment, and predicting the future, without the slightest idea of the conditions these efforts must of necessity be predicated on.
For example, now that we are fairly sure Covid came from a lab, very few reporters are willing to even discuss the possibility of a leak perpetrated with the intention of infecting the world. The enormity of the transgression seems to undercut any true discussion.
Similarly, if the authorities knew the vaccine could not prevent transmission, what was the justification for mandates? And who is responsible for the deaths that resulted? The livelihoods destroyed? Who's even asking?
And thirdly: now that we are sparring about the candidates of the 2024 election, no one really knows whether we have intact the processes that would guarantee an legitimate election in reality. Democrat denials are tantamount to a survivalist's proof. This is happening as the pundits are yammering away creating the illusion that an election is a plausible idea.
And yet we have little idea of what "winning" means.
A week after there was a consensus about a lab leak, there was another consensus about racoon dogs. And it is beyond comprehension that China would be stupid enough to deliberately let loose a virus that would first potentially decimate its own population before infecting the world. And even if the vaccine didn't prevent transmission, it absolutely lessoned the severity of that transmission. And the mandates didn't come from some abstract "authorities." The Federal government didn't make any country-wide mandates; local entities, such as cities mostly did that, with some inputs from states. Also, various industries, such as healthcare, and corporations passed their own mandates. The CDC offered guidelines. And the states that had the least restrictions were the states that had the most infections. The Federal government has held elections for over 250 years, but all of a sudden elections are not plausible?
If the vaccine did not prevent transmission, there was no moral imperative for a mandate.
Democrats completely changed our election process under the cover of covid. Two significant changes: much wider use of mail-in ballots, removing precincts and using centralized counting stations. Both changes are recognized as key to facilitating fraud.
Read about the CCP cultural revolution in China and you'll see how willing they were to slaughter millions of their own people.
I'm not sure if you are referring to the Communist revolution in 1949 or the cultural revolution under Mao, but neither one necessarily has anything to do with COVID unless you think there is some kind of genetic flaw in the Chinese character that makes them more prone to murder each other than other races. Revolutions and civil wars from the beginning of time have resulted in the slaughter of "their own people," from the French Revolution in 1789 to Stalin's efforts to collectivize the Soviet Union in the 1930's to the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia in the 1970's or the recent genocide in Rwanda. Unfortunately, it is all too common. My reasoning in not believing China intentionally let COVID loose in the world is that they are now too sophisticated and too technologically advanced to do anything so crude. Maybe COVID was a lab leak, maybe it was transmitted from animals to humans, maybe it was even something else we don't even know about. Whatever it was, it wasn't intentional.
I'm talking about the CCP's inclination to murder citizens which is not a secret, and of which, there are contemporary accounts. Even their brutal lockdowns.
I appreciate your consideration of Seigel's work, and it seems that all of the reasons listed initially play a role in contributing to the situation we find ourselves in. What is maybe the most difficult part to contend with is the shear banality of it all. How much simpler would it be if there was a man in a goat mask running the show, and if we could just find his lair we could put this all to rest? Instead, as usual, we are suffering from status humanicus, and I fear that the pendulum will have to swing farther to the fascist before it begins its return.
My personal feeling (from a UK standpoint) is that the machine got out of control and overplayed it’s hand during the Covid experience. It hasn’t collapsed into a heap just yet, indeed it is fighting tooth and nail on the way down off that peak, but I do think that slowly, over the next 5-10 years it will significantly decline. Unless, of course, we have a big fat war to make it all seem necessary again.
It saddened me as a lifelong Democrat to watch the Democrats tip their hand by viciously attacking Matt Taibbi and Michael Schellenberger in Twitter files hearings. I feel like voting for the Democratic ticket basically endorsing a coup. Great essay, much needed.
After reading your work, I was pleased to see you writing on Substack. Do you think Substack is more insulated from government and commercial actors influencing for malevolent ends? Is there a propaganda immune way of online publishing?