Hans Vogel discusses the elusive nature of disinformation, urging readers to think critically and highlighting the interplay between truth and falsehood in a world where governments weaponize the term to suppress inconvenient facts.
What is disinformation? No wait, wait, don’t ask Wikipedia, just think for yourself for a moment.
Actually, everything one reads, hears or sees, is information, everything. Some of it is true or may turn out to be so, some is relatively true (or untrue) and some is untrue. Such is the case in everyday life, but most notably in science and all other academic disciplines and in detective work, where the sleuth has to find out who committed that crime. In that context, the information that does not serve to attain the stated goal needs to be discarded. One might perhaps call such information “disinformation,” because it leads one away from the stated goal. However, during the process of attaining it, the true nature of such “disinformation” is not always easy to ascertain. Distinguishing between what is true and what is false is often not easy, and even what appears to be false may turn out to be useful or even true in the end. Only a very shrewd, very experienced and very knowledgeable specialist, whether sleuth, scientist or scholar, may be able to make such a distinction at first sight. Even then he might be mistaken.
Yet “disinformation” does not cease to be information and may therefore prove eventually helpful. One might therefore also say that “disinformation” is the kind of information that prevents one from perceiving the contours and nature of the stated objective.
Hence, the very term “disinformation” is political and therefore imprecise. Moreover it is a weaponized term, but above all the very concept is a stupid one. Nevertheless, many governments in the collective West today have adopted it and use it to qualify unwelcome facts that contradict government narratives that are sustained by the governments themselves and the entire gamut of state-controlled media. For instance, facts about the “pandemic,” “vaccines,” the war in the Ukraine, anthropogenic climate change, “global warming” and the supposed advantages of consuming crickets and other lowly creatures, such as mealworms, instead of real meat in order to “save the planet.”
Once governments began to use the weaponized concept of “disinformation,” they automatically committed themselves to combat “disinformation” and to take measures to prevent the public from being exposed to it.
For some time, major social media platforms (YouTube, Twitter and Facebook), big search engines (Google) and websites (Wiki!) have been busy censoring everything that was defined as “disinformation” by the US and other governments. Today, as was to be expected, the direction and coordination of the fight against disinformation is rather more centralized and has been put in the hands of the leading spy agencies in the US and its vassal states. Lately, these agencies have been busying themselves with trying to define “disinformation,” to define those guilty of spreading it, as well as finding ways of combating “disinformation” in the most effective manner.
Quite a formidable task for the people manning the spy agencies, don’t you think? Needless to say, they are utterly unequal to the task. If even scientists, scholars and sleuths are unable to define “disinformation” in their respective fields of expertise, why should the boys and girls of the spy agencies be able to do so, in a much less rigidly defined field where it is politics that defines what is true or false?
Therefore, they have outsourced this daunting task. They are resorting to a new kind of authority that was initially developed by the social media platforms: the fact checker. What is that, a fact checker? That is someone whose job it is to distinguish between fact and fiction, between true and false, and who is therefore able to identify disinformation! In other words, a fact checker is a bit like a judge or a jury who is able to tell right from wrong.
Unfortunately, the centralized state propaganda narratives are swallowed up by the gullible public as if these were sugar-salt-fat-saturated fast food delicacies.
Wow! How many detective agencies, scientific organizations, national academies and universities would not love to have access to a seemingly supernatural being like a fact checker to help them separate fact from fiction. Imagine how much easier and less time-consuming research would then become!
Yet for now, those wonderful fact checkers are only being employed to help combat “disinformation”! Somehow that does seem like a waste of energy and resources. Now that AI is being introduced, it would seem that “fact checking” is uniquely suited for it. Many a fact checker would be free to switch to more exciting fields such as science. Nevertheless, numerous governments, including the unelected commission of the EuSSR, are continuing to pay lavish subsidies to “impartial” fact-checking organizations to enable them to separate fact from fiction.
The battle against “disinformation” goes on unabated and governments all over the collective West are increasingly worried about losing their grip on the narrative. One thing that particularly haunts them is the fact that more and more citizens seem to be losing their confidence in government. According to the Ancien Regime adage of “nobility obliges,” it used to be silently understood by holders of public office that they should strive to apply policies benefiting the common good. Try explaining this to young couples in the collective West hoping to buy a house they can afford. Or to pensioners forced out of their low-rent apartment and reduced to begging for a bit of food at the nearest subway station.
Many in the collective West believe their governments no longer have the common good in mind and are dancing to tunes played by big finance and outfits like the UN, the WHO and the WEF. “Evil elite” is a term often used to describe the new ruling clique. Hence, spy agencies in the collective West and assorted fact checkers are alerted to the term and tend to define anyone using it as a potential enemy of the state. In the Netherlands, the national spy agency AIVD estimates there are 100,000 people (only about 0.5 percent of the population!) that believe such an evil elite exists. All of these people are considered to be potential adherents of “anti-institutional extremism” and therefore constitute a threat to the “democratic legal order.”
Is that elite truly evil? How to distinguish fact from fiction? Actually, it would seem the evidence does not point to it being evil. Evil somehow supposes a higher level of intelligence to perpetrate evil deeds because this always requires subterfuge, which is impossible without intelligence. Therefore, it would seem the elite is not evil but rather ignorant, if not outright stupid. Perhaps the most telltale proof of this stupidity is that its members appear to suffer from excessive hubris. This characteristic is just one of several manifestations of stupidity. Another manifestation is vanity.
Bill Gates, the guy who made himself a fortune selling computer software, is considered to be a member of the “evil elite,” but his utterances and actions prove his utter ignorance and vanity. Just because he has a fatter wallet than most of the rest of us, he thinks he is entitled to pontificate on health issues, “global warming,” and human nutrition and just about anything else he fancies. Only an absolutely ignorant and stupid person could do all that. Most other visible members of the elite hardly seem less stupid. Think of Joe Biden, Emmanuel Macron, the Germans Olaf Scholz, Annalena Baerbock, Jürgen Habeck and Nancy Faeser (all a far cry from people like Bismarck or even Helmuth Schmidt), luminaries like now almost forgotten Liz Truss and a guy like NATO’s new gensec Mark Rutte. Some may actually seem sort of clever, but their actions certainly are not. All of them are now pushing for war with Russia and doing everything they can to start another major carnage in Europe.
Is there a way to stop that stupid elite in its tracks? Is there a way to change their members’ minds and behavior?
I am afraid that is very difficult because the stupid elite can implement its misguided policies through bureaucracies composed of herds of docile servants unable to think for themselves. All they can do is carry out orders by following rigid protocol. To top it off, the policies decreed by the stupid elite and carried out by obedient civil servants are embedded in tightly woven narratives of political correctness, which are being divulged by state and corporate media, and duly purged of “disinformation.” Unfortunately, the centralized state propaganda narratives are swallowed up by the gullible public as if these were sugar-salt-fat-saturated fast food delicacies.
The fact that the stupid elite is now so afraid of “disinformation,” however, is a good sign. It proves its members are aware that their positions might not be as secure as hitherto assumed. That is actually a glimmer of hope!
who checks the fact - checkers
Robert Habeck. Otherwise a thoughtful and precise contribution.