Just finished reading an article that came out today on Scheerpost, thought some here might find it interesting, if sobering. An excerpt:
**
The New York Times published a piece on Oct. 20 under the headline, “How Disinformation Splintered and Became More Intractable.” In it, Steven Lee Myers, formerly of the Times’s Moscow bureau, and Sheera Frenkel, a technology reporter in the San Francisco bureau, made the point very plain, although hardly did they intend to do so: Those flinging around all these charges of disinformation with notable vigor and conviction are crusaders in the cause of a dangerous form of liberal absolutism.
Much has been written about disinformation these past few years, of course. I have read nothing to date that so exposes the malign design that is implicit in the war against it. This war rests squarely on the cynical use of disinformation in the service of power as it intrudes ever more stealthily into our lives and rights.
We have heard talk of “liberal authoritarianism” and even “liberal totalitarianism,” which I consider excessive for its extreme connotations, over the past half-dozen years. My own coinage since 2016, when Russiagate was all the rage and we still had Hillary Clinton to kick around, is “apple-pie authoritarianism.” To one or another extent, these terms seem in line with de Tocqueville’s “soft despotism” as he explained the phenomenon 190 years ago in the second volume of Democracy in America.
**
I still don't have enough posts to link the article, but the title of the article is disinformation, absolutely. Putting those 2 words in, along with the comma in between them, put the article at the top of search list results on duckduckgo.
**
The New York Times published a piece on Oct. 20 under the headline, “How Disinformation Splintered and Became More Intractable.” In it, Steven Lee Myers, formerly of the Times’s Moscow bureau, and Sheera Frenkel, a technology reporter in the San Francisco bureau, made the point very plain, although hardly did they intend to do so: Those flinging around all these charges of disinformation with notable vigor and conviction are crusaders in the cause of a dangerous form of liberal absolutism.
Much has been written about disinformation these past few years, of course. I have read nothing to date that so exposes the malign design that is implicit in the war against it. This war rests squarely on the cynical use of disinformation in the service of power as it intrudes ever more stealthily into our lives and rights.
We have heard talk of “liberal authoritarianism” and even “liberal totalitarianism,” which I consider excessive for its extreme connotations, over the past half-dozen years. My own coinage since 2016, when Russiagate was all the rage and we still had Hillary Clinton to kick around, is “apple-pie authoritarianism.” To one or another extent, these terms seem in line with de Tocqueville’s “soft despotism” as he explained the phenomenon 190 years ago in the second volume of Democracy in America.
**
I still don't have enough posts to link the article, but the title of the article is disinformation, absolutely. Putting those 2 words in, along with the comma in between them, put the article at the top of search list results on duckduckgo.
