Re: <nettime> Stop the Steal

[carlo von lynX <lynX@time.to.get.psyced.org>]

On Sat, Nov 14, 2020 at 10:06:13AM -0600, Brian Holmes wrote:
> Those who want to agonize about the role of the Internet in undermining
> democracy and sparking civil conflict, well, I think you should investigate
> this.

I feel summoned up and I did. In my perspective these folks
mentioned in the article are the guys who have figured out
Internet control - but ultimately human beings with the
capacity to do great evils have always been walking this
planet. It is the technology which is creating such epic
opportunities of bringing about havoc. And we could have
regulated it... back when we first noticed things going
wrong... 1995 or something like that.

On Mon, Nov 16, 2020 at 10:22:37AM -0800, Flick Harrison wrote:
> It’s interesting that he was able to look out across a sea of faces, shout out awful slogans, and read the crowd more effectively than the opinion polls or the experienced party strategists.  His instincts as a board-game player were better than the bean-counters'.

Not necessarily. I just presume that Nixon-style spin doctorship
isn't as powerful as directing the masses via the Internet. So
it doesn't really matter what Trump does or says - the way the
new spin technique reorganizes any possible criticism in the
minds of the fans makes him invulnerable. Even if he says
something dumb or something wrong, those propaganda channels
will turn it around to make it sound right.

Luckily he doesn't have Hitler's talent for a dictator. But even
Adolf took over a decade before getting fully in control in 1939
and being able to rid himself of the people that spin doctored
his rise to power, right?

Well, this time around the only person who can become a dictator
is the one that can at all times stay on top of the Internet
spin that brought him into power. So a Bannon or a Stone are the
sort of guys that could indeed deliver as Internet-compatible
dictators of the future.

> The biggest crisis in all this is that the critical media literacy of the last 50 years has been straight-up weaponized by capital and the right.  All the instincts to “follow the money,” “follow the class identity” in the media ecosystem, hammered home by Chomsky and the like, have been turned in on themselves

Yes. Very acute observation. I watched some videos from the
German-Anti-Corona demonstrations and it's the same thing:
how they talk about the Constitution, while actually getting
it all wrong - or how they massage the policemen on duty with
comparisons to how police had a crucial role in 1933. They
are telling today's police that they are helping Merkel
become a dictator, when in fact their way of influencing the
police is just what NSDAP did in 1933. So they learned from
the history books - and then employ it like an instruction
manual rather than as a warning sign.

> A feminist woman I know weaves her critique of the patriarchal medical system seamlessly towards the conclusion that vaccines are a form of assault on women.

This hurts.

> How can we tackle the problem of massive disinformation if the terms are constantly hijacked by the very people we’re trying to protect ourselves from.

It has been done before, but never as effectively. It's the
technology which has allowed them to insulate half of the
population from hearing any other interpretation. There is
no longer an "open society" in Karl Popper's understanding,
the precondition for functional democracy, if half of the
society is brainwashed.

> “Everyone who disagrees with us is a liar.”  Ipso Facto.

Sadly, so. Amazing how the psychological bias of feeling
better believing this crap has a stronghold over reason.

> So while we’re struggling to create a movement whose ideology we can be proud of, and which has clear coherent principles, the other side is spending all their time destroying us while marching in lockstep to whatever tune is the most useful at the moment.

Oh, don't use the ugly i-word. Ideologies are by definition
simplifications of reality and they are a big part of the
problem that got us here. Since we are not in the position
to fix the broken Internet now, what would help to reconstruct
an open society are manipulation-resistant discussion,
decision and information systems. That's why I would suggest
what we need is a liquid democracy driven method of debating
what is *real* - a way to formalise intersubjective truths
by deliberating them collectively - then build on these
pieces of collective intelligence to create a common discourse
which does not depend on some few people behind them - where
there is no money to follow - whereby the news that spread
over our channels is no longer authored by a selected few
ideologists in an editors office, but by a liquid democratic
process of putting in words what we collectively perceive as
being true.

Sounds like sci-fi, I know, but I've experienced liquid
democracy achieve just that - and its intrinsic resistance
from corruption and independence from ideologies is just
what it needs now to stop the alt-right from taking over
the whole planet.


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