Relatively few people alive would have experienced the rise of fascism in the early C20 but most people understand the crucial role that manipulation of information played in the ascent to power in what were democratic’ countries. Mussolini evolved from a journalist/publishing background; Goebbels and ‘the big lie’ trope are a frequently quoted feature of the rise of the Nazis.
Italy and Germany were civilised, first-world countries with sophisticated societies. Their economic and strategic conditions were outcomes of WWI; these became fodder for the propaganda that was the baseload power for the rise of the fascist masters.
The Holocaust is indelibly attached to the rise of modern fascism; it is a specific example of Genocide. Executing Genocide demands complicity by a significant force, which requires a mind-set amongst at least the operatives that the victims warrant the action. In a democracy, a majority of citizens must accept the proffered reasons.
Genocide by purported democracies requires the majority of the electoral body to suspend any humane inhibitions and become sociopaths. Today, while the channels of information can differ from those of 100 years ago, it is information/misinformation that is the preeminent driver of opinion in societies.
Exhibit A: The address recently by Dr. Gabor Mate to an Israeli audience, a definitive, concise and passionate expose of just how effective misinformation and the shaping of ‘the story’ is in creating the prosecution of genocide. He is but one of the very many rational people of Jewish ethnicity who try to counter the mass support of the (international) Zionist genocidal machine.
The schism between ‘progressive’ Jews everywhere and the Zionist machine worldwide must be pervasively highlighted if we are ever to see progress in stopping Zionist imperialism and genocidal activity.
Through family connections I have the advantage of a conduit to members of my godfather’s family in Israel. I have been copied into email exchanges where the author has had to scramble for safety under the wail of the warning sirens of ‘Incoming’ HAMAS rockets in the immediate period post October 7, 2023. We should not underestimate the impact of those days on general Israeli attitudes.
We also need to understand that the situation is a jigsaw of many aspects: some acceptable, quite a lot dubious in varying degrees, some utterly malignant and repugnant. Netanyahu is not the worst but is right up there.
To create the mindset in a society that supports a campaign of genocide, territorial conquest, massacre, fear and geostrategic dominance requires two prongs of what may be generically described as ‘propaganda’ (It is tempting to adopt the Steve Bannon phrase of ‘flooding the zone with shit’ as more appropriate these days.)
The first prong is positive propaganda: information/misinformation tailored to create and reinforce opinion that confirms the righteousness of the actions being undertaken. The second is the converse. The USA election demonstrated the relative power of each side of the propaganda equation.The conclusion to be drawn from that miasma at this early stage is that negative propaganda is the stronger force, particularly when aligned with predispositions held by a significant percentage of the target population.
In the current Israel vs Middle Eastern lands and peoples war, the dual strands of ‘Eretz Israel’ and ‘Avenge the Holocaust’ provide the framework on which the positive propaganda is built. The imperialism / genocide of the Zionists is ‘God’s will’, ‘occupying the Promised Land’ and similar motives presented as holy works. Most P&I habitues will be wearily familiar with the spread and threads presented. Ultra-Zionists like Smotrich, Ben-Givr and so forth can probably weave snatches of Old Testament lore and evidence of rocket attacks into the one sentence..
As we see in the excerpt from Dr. Mate above, it is the negative stuff that really swings the weight. In an arm-wrestle between ‘positive’ and ‘negative’, negative will win – sometimes, by kicking positive in the groin under the table.
The Zionists are acutely aware of this. The compliance of too many governments, including ours, by NOT standing up to the Zionists has encouraged the Likud government and the IDF to specifically target reporters on the ground because they can (and as far as they can, do) provide evidence of facts which are negative to Likud interests..
Reporters are murdered in their hundreds; information sources such as Al Jazeera are banned access to Israel. A few entities including Haaretz and B’Tselem have some ability to report negative matters from ‘inside the bubble’. The Likud party dictatorship is not (yet, at least) entirely complete.
‘Social Media’ through its various entity forms is supposed to break control of the dissemination of information by the print and electronic entities. In theory, the sheer volume of postings would ensure access to relative equality of facts contrary to the policies of the media ownership(s).
Creating massive amounts of positive misinformation is easy: relatively crude Bot activity will generate a maelstrom of sufficiently believable material. AI can be quickly trained to work with ‘positive’ information elements to increase this exponentially. The intended audience will not be greatly interested in testing each factoid for authenticity.
Prosaic Truth is still struggling to get its underpants on the right way around while Rumour and Misinformation has circled the sentient world multiple times.
However, controlling negative propaganda is complicated because language is extremely context-driven and capable of using nuance through inflection and construct.
AI is fundamentally driven by algorithm and heuristic learning.It takes massive amounts of computing power to achieve useful results, and what underpins it all are the basic precepts of the designers – who have human foibles.
So a regime seeking to stifle negative information carried on social media platforms such as X have a major task on their hands: effective control of ‘negative’ posts (text or especially video) through crude specific filters or even the development of serious AI routines is presently remote.
When an AI routine can interpret something like: ‘Hooray for the moral lads of the IDF and their unicorns’ as being negative (as we readily understand it to be), the chances of automation successfully stopping that flow of comment might eventuate.
Human intervention remains necessary and we are seeing it. In the past weeks, taken from the ‘Five-Minute Scroll’ features on P&I, we have witnessed the hasty removal of some damning posts, showing in incontrovertible detail a headshot baby, children burnt alive in their school, a mother and two daughters murdered in their home by the IDF, and a line of dead children being laid out on a street in Jabalia camp.
X is removing the posts – censoring the information – tilting the balance. Censorship at the micro-level.
There will, naturally, be many other ‘lost’ posts. This is the Zionist industry at work. Israelis would not tolerate a blanket ban on X and the second-tier targets of other national governments’ support for the Likud activity that could be influenced negatively cannot be excluded from accessing X.
If the world is drawn into a global or even just a large-scale middle-eastern war, the main cause will be the intransigence of countries including Australia but especially the USA in ignoring the inequality of information that – if properly accepted – would convince our/their leaders to take every action possible to stop the rot.
Social media is quite evidently supporting the Israeli Genocidal action by suppressing vital evidence.
Richard Llewellyn
Richard Llewellyn was Registrar at the Australian War Memorial from 1986 to 1995.
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