From meme armies to the "office of hate."
I’ve been writing about the internet and the myriad ways it transforms us for over a decade. I’d argue that there’s one underlying message that runs through almost every story I’ve written: The internet is real life. |
People tend to want to make a distinction between what happens online and in the physical world. But if the last few years have proved anything, it’s that — from Donald Trump’s meme army to progressive racial justice movements — what happens online influences society, politics and culture. |
That’s the theme behind Patrícia Campos Mello’s Op-Ed published today, which details President Jair Bolsonaro’s “office of hate” in Brazil. According to Patrícia, a Brazilian journalist who has experienced the regime’s hate firsthand, the office is a shadowy operation “run by advisers to the president, who sponsor a network of pro-Bolsonaro blogs and social media accounts that spread fake news and attack journalists, politicians, artists and media outlets that are critical of the president.” |
The piece is full of dystopian examples of the department’s alleged work, but two passages stood out to me as representative of a broader, global theme of disinformation: |
| Over the last year, the office of hate has pitted Brazilians against one another, and against those who have served as checks and balances against Mr. Bolsonaro’s authoritarian rise. It has eroded their trust in the institutions designed to protect the county’s democracy. |
| Beyond smear and disinformation campaigns, the office of hate’s purpose is far more nefarious: to weaken Brazil’s democratic institutions. Investigations by the prosecutor general revealed that some pro-Bolsonaro legislators are spending cabinet funds on marketing agencies that use social media to promote protests against the Supreme Court and Congress, and in favor of military intervention in politics. |
What Patrícia describes in Brazil is one of the purest examples of disinformation at work. While “fake news” and 100 percent false stories tend to make headlines, the more insidious disinformation is the kind that muddles one’s understanding of what’s real and what’s not. Often this disinformation contains a grain of truth, which makes it harder to debunk. It’s weaponized information that takes advantage of existing political and cultural divides. The audience is primed to receive and share it — and so they do. Often the culture wars that sprout organically from a tiny seed of propaganda tend to be more effective at sowing division than any bit of debunked “fake news.” |
Patrícia’s account is striking — in part because Brazil’s leadership operates so brazenly and with such impunity. But the similarities should trouble American readers, too. While we might not (yet) have an “office of hate,” powerful political operators have learned how to create a fog of disinformation by “flooding the zone” with junk news and polarizing conjecture. Modern censorship, as many have noted, isn’t just blocking information, it is creating an information environment so cluttered and polluted that it the blurs the lines of reality. The internet is a powerful tool for such censorship, and its effects are felt well beyond the confines of the browser. |
Forward this newsletter to friends … |
Here’s what we’re focusing on today: |
|
No comments:
Post a Comment