Counter-Propaganda
An engineer's view of an approach to counteracting right-wing propaganda (now called "vibes")
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I have just published my first book: Me and My Big Ideas — Counterculture, Social Media, and the Future, which is available in paperback (Amazon KDP, Ingram-Spark) and ebook (Amazon KDP, iTunes). It tells my entire story as founder of the first computer public-access social media system, and prescribes for the future.
This essay is based upon the book and I encourage readers who want to know how I developed my ideas and more detail of those ideas to obtain the book (221 pages) and read it. Please don’t ask me to recite the whole story.
(Short-term notice - I will be in the DC/Baltimore area from 23 Nov. through Thanksgiving and am interested in giving talks about the book where and when I can. Please email me if interested.)
My website is www.FelsenSigns.com .
Counter-Propaganda
The post-election discussions are raging right now, and it seems that “disinformation” (or “misinformation”) seems to be the light that attracts the moths. I don’t disagree, but I believe that we need to take a step backwards to understand the environment within which such misbegotten forms of information flourish.
I should introduce myself – 50 years ago I assembled a project that created and operated the first computer social media system, one which, as I say – “opened the door to cyberspace and found that it was hospitable territory”. That was in 1973, before personal computers appeared, and access was by walking up to public terminals placed at various sites.
As an engineering student I experienced the Free Speech Movement of 1964 at the University of California at Berkeley. There I saw a mass of isolated students form a strong community when, as was analyzed later, “the barriers to communication between people came down” in the immediacy of the crisis (which lasted for two months). From that point I went in search of technologies I could master that would enable such freedom of communication.
Along the way I analyzed information in the public sphere, reaching a few useful conclusions. One was that information had quantifiable levels – “primary” information was person-to-person interchange, and “secondary” information carries the means by which that connection can be made.
Our system, Community Memory, was designed to handle secondary information since computers available then had no hope of conveying even pictures, let alone the subtleties involved in face-to-face discussion, or even a telephone call.
Listening to the current post-mortem discussions it struck me that there were numerous further levels of information that might be identified and understood. Polling around the election brought forth the term “vibes” as an explanation of why, contrary to verifiable facts, people remained unsettled about their views of society’s direction.
It seemed to me that these “vibes” were intimately connected to the purposely vague statement “people are saying” used to justify irrational conclusions. In 2016 FBI Director Comey, for whatever reason, released a statement 11 days before the election that Hillary Clinton was a subject of investigation. This was followed a few days later by a retraction, but the damage was done. As commentators noted afterward, that marked the point where Clinton’s female supporters began to withdraw support, often justifying it with the “people are saying” rationale.
While there was no such incident this year, the information landscape over which the campaign was fought had been laid down and carefully cultivated for decades previous. We can set the starting date as 1994, with the hiring of Roger Ailes by Rupert Murdoch to create Fox News. Books have been written about the techniques perfected at Fox to convey false information to the viewer, usually through inference (“We report – You decide”). Statements were conveyed as questions – usually one-sided excluding any contrary possibilities.
I recall around 2003 lunching in a place where Fox was constantly running as background, and getting increasingly upset at the intellectual dishonesty of the presentation. I could not think of a way to complain to the management about this flow of biased information without seeming like a biased crank myself, so I stopped patronizing that retaurant.
I’m sure lots of fair-minded people similarly cut themselves off from the Fox “drip irrigation system” (to distinguish it from “firehose”, which it is not), but I’m sure they were the minority of unintentional Fox viewers. To “low-information” recipients, the information flow probably seemed quite reasonable – especially when they were reminded that it was “Fair and Balanced”.
Such a constant, background flow of misleading information qualifies as a form of propaganda, in my view. I will define propaganda here as information calculated to develop emotional responses to outside stimuli, bypassing rational analysis. Advertising creators are intimately familiar with the techniques used in that process – it has made them and their clients a lot of money.
It should come as no surprise that people will tend to repeat phrases that saturate their information environment, and will adopt those phrases as products of their own thought, resisting tenaciously any attempt to counter them with factual information. This has clearly happened with the “vibes” response in this election cycle.
There has been a continuous drumbeat out of right-wing media of statements and implications that the economy has been terrible that inflation is ruinous, and that a recession is imminent – while the facts all shoe the opposite. The payoff for cultivating this information environment comes when the individual makes their electoral choice, and tells themselves that regardless of what the parties are saying “people are saying” that things are going in the wrong direction.
In this year’s election much of this effect came from voters deciding not to cast a vote at all – that’s worth half an affirmative opposition vote, and certainly made the difference in Harris’ vote among the Black and Latino electorate.
I recently concluded that the background propaganda qualified as it’s own level of information – I cannot assign it an ordinal number but it is pretty far back in the chain from “primary, secondary,” etc. A great deal of money is being spent over a long time span to create and sustain it, so it is not a derivative effect but in fact the intended product of major importance.
Of great importance is that it is not matched by any counter-propaganda – that to me constitutes political malpractice and the Democrats should take note.
If I were a commentator I could end this article here, having made my critical point. But I am rather an engineer, to whom simple critique rings hollow. Solutions need to be created to solve a problem that criticism identifies, and in my recently-published book (“Me and My Big Ideas – Counterculture, Social Media, and the Future”) I conclude with several chapters structured as a stand-alone tutorial laying out my ideas for future social media systems.
Similarly, I will now describe a general approach to the challenge posed by the right-wing propaganda effort:
Do the necessary research to uncover the dimensions of the propaganda effort. A very good resource is Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (www.fair.org), which operates “Counterspin Radio” distributing audio programs for the radio spectrum.
Establish listening stations – a valuable resource for this is Media Matters for America (www.mediamatters.org) – any such effort will have to be broken down into areas and subjects, given the size of the propaganda effort. Organizing this will involve the formation of an ad-hoc organization that self-funds until the value of counter-propaganda is palpable to funders.
Assemble “brain trusts” of people who can, as a group, come up with strategies for creating counter-propaganda slogans and memes. I envision a network of such “brain trusts” (or, to be more pedestrian, “writers’ rooms”) in networked communication – we can imagine daily video calls and crisis calls when events move quickly.
Always remember the secret weapon against fascism – humor. More specifically, insult humor aimed against specific targets, making them laughing stocks. Puns, satire, metaphor, doggerel, and general ridicule are all important tools in writers’ toolkits toward this end.
For several years I have advocated (none too strongly) the establishment of “joke warfare” websites where casual visitors can deposit suggestions for insults, metaphors, and calumnies. Political comedy shows like The Stephanie Miller Show, a liberal political humor show with nationwide coverage, could serve to sponsor such websites, though they cannot spare resources to operate them. I have written a few emails to them but have received no response – they will probably need to see tangible progress in infrastructure (as mentioned above) before they will want to support it.
One of Stephanie Miller’s contributors, “Rocky Mountain Mike”, provides instantaneous musical clips to satirize the villain of the day – I would suggest building a relationship with Mike should the plan progress far enough.
Remember, the goal is to provide, through various media, a constant stream of metaphors and put-downs that will surface in the listeners’ minds as “People are Saying” memes. We need to have young people tune to the channel to brighten their day and to stay abreast of their friends.
It will be possible to start a counter-propaganda effort without significant funding, but in order to continue it a financial flow will need to be established and maintained. This may require a non-profit corporation such as a 501(c)(4) in IRS parlance, which can accept donations but not offer a deduction, and can keep donors’ names secret – they are quite popular with the right wing and rather simple to maintain (no elaborate reports needed).
I want to pose this as a challenge to younger people (I am a War Baby – pre-Boomer, and cannot spare much energy). Should anyone wish to take up this challenge I will help as much as I can.
It’s an organizing problem.