The new silence
Mainstream media and the freedom of expression field are captured to a degree I could barely have ever imagined.
A week ago a bombshell story broke that in earlier days would have launched a swathe of journalists and activists into action. Instead the principal of see, hear, and speak no evil was evoked.
On January 29 Big Brother Watch released it’s Ministry of Truth report, detailing how the UK government secretly employed a military unit to monitor the legal speech of citizens, marking as ‘disinformation’ ideas that ran counter to government policy. The unit then made content removal recommendations to social media companies.
Those monitored included journalists, government MPs, academics, and activists. The existence of the operation has been admitted by the UK defense secretary, who has also launched an internal investigation.
As Big Brother watch state...
“Whilst presented as in the public interest, these censorship “solutions” centralise powerful interests, positioning them the arbiters of truth. The misinformation industry, combining Big Tech companies, governments, international governance organisations and start-up “fact-checker” style organisations present themselves as the judges and juries of information, determining the parameters of acceptable speech.”
The report should result in a reckoning for the ‘anti-disinformation’ industry. However if the silence is any indication the industry is siding with government, Big Pharma, and other powerful actors.
To date only two Right leaning mainstream media outlets have covered the story, and the digital rights and freedom of expression fields have shown barely any interest – why?
New tactics
Smearing and ‘debunking’ have been the usual tactics in such situations. In this case (as well as others) a peculiar silence is employed.
Whilst Big Brother Watch position themselves as independent, I would argue they are left-leaning and should be more than palatable to the mainstream digital rights and freedom of expression fields. This is not an organisation that can be easily dismissed as right-wing, as is so often the tactic when a revelation arises (such as the recent Project Veritas video detailing a Pfizer executive boasting about the company doing gain of function experiments).
The ‘right-wing’ slur (regardless of whether the person is right-wing or not) is highly effective at instantly denigrating the person and by extension their argument. The person becomes a modern day leper from whom most want to disassociate for fear of also being socially ostracised.
In this case there is no smearing or debunking, only silence.
What amazes me is how in unison the legacy media are in this regard – at the time of publishing not a single centrist, liberal, or progressive outlet has reported what should be considered a scandal. Here was an opportunity for a largely left-leaning media and completely left NGO sector to take an easy shot at a Tory government for a massive Orwellian overreach. The silence is a kind of gas lighting - it gives the impression that this is not a story – how could it be if all the outlets ignore it?
The Project Veritas sting (whatever you think of it) has been view almost 30 million times on Twitter. Tens of millions have similarly read the Twitter files.
The gap between realities gets wider, at some point they must meet.
Why the silence?
The first is that it is about Covid, in particular takes that run counter to the government, mainstream and progressive narratives. Running such a story exposes the counter-arguments and reveals just how much these outlets got wrong about the pandemic.
Secondly, the story brings into question the capture of the media and BigTech, and the bidding they too may have been doing for the government.
Thirdly, many of the people being monitored and censored are on the Right, which just makes it OK.
If it wasn’t already obvious, the supposed ‘universal’ values of the media and NGOs and all to often just a show. As Noam Chomsky once remarked “If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech.”
Of course progressives are no longer is favour of free speech, they are in favour of safetyism, as I have detailed previously.
Part of the capture is ideological but how much is it economic? A great deal of work needs to be done to untangle the shifting funding models of major media - enterprises that have been in decline but during Covid were propped up by huge amounts of government ‘public health’ advertising and foundation funding, to say nothing of Big Pharma revenue streams.
Regarding NGOs, a serious evaluation of how much the ultra-wealthy are shaping and directing civil society through their foundations is past due. The NGO-ification of social movements has taken them too far from the concerns of everyday people, and in the case of Covid meant the needs of the laptop and expert class drowned out the concerns of the poor and marginal.
As the former Executive Director of a non-profit I was keenly aware that stepping out of the Covid narrative could have consequences – we did it anyway, but not as much as I would have liked. At the same time there was a deeper problem, people often didn’t even know that censorship was occurring and what was being censored – basically, it worked.
At the same time a new social conformity has emerged that punishes the curious, making all too often wiser to stay silent.
Whilst some mainstream media are starting to admit mistakes, there are very few. Even when the pandemic high priests fess up (as Bill Gates did recently regarding the failures of vaccines) the flock will not budge. Perhaps it is because the die is cast and there is no going back.
And there is no going back, but the current forward direction marches us intro a diminished democracy and a new technocratic authoritarianism. To the expert class who swim in this reality this march is invisible, it is just progress. Their complicity in one of the greatest social disasters in modern history means fessing up and changing direction will take some doing.
“At the same time a new social conformity has emerged that punishes the curious, making all too often wiser to stay silent.” - AL It seems the awkward silence from community groups, especially the older crowd, and yes, we were wild, free and rambunctious in the 1960s, is a result of coming to a full realization that our overlords are actually THAT evil. That takes time to process. As for the purveyors of hate and deceit, their egos will not let them apologize. It is not in their nature. Love the essay. Thank you. Keep it up.