misinformation – Pike & Hurricane

An Ideology of Selfishness — How Misinformation Propagates Inequality

Filip Zahariev — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 15:26:39 +0000

Since the 2010s, a sharp uptake in the levels of misinformation can be observed, in the push for so-called austerity, in the war on facts, in the bold attempts of different socio-political organizations to exchange fact for opinion.

The mechanisms of propaganda have mastered their most powerful array of tools yet––social media. That’s not to say misinformation hasn’t gone hand in hand with print media; it has walked hand in hand with factual information, since as long ago as the fifteenth century, when the printing press took off. In the intervening centuries, human society has, collectively, found ways to combat misinformation through methods of verification which, the hope was, the Internet would make foolproof. But rather than provide a higher standard, the rise of the Internet (and of social media, in particular) has seen the decline of hard journalism along with the printed press.

Nowadays, criticism is systematically dismissed as “fake news”––if not outright silenced––, no matter the source or topic it is aimed at. It would be easy to pin the blame on a name or on a score of them. Easy but misguided. The Trumps and Bolsaneros of the world are a symptom of an economic system at odds with itself, much like the ouroboros swallowing its own tail, at once hungry and suffering from agonising convulsions.

Marilynne Robinson, in a piece for the NYRB in June, “What Kind of Country Do We Want?” described this economic system as:

“…the snare in which humanity has been caught––great industry and commerce in service to great markets, with ethical restraint and respect for the distinctiveness of cultures…having fallen away in eager deference to profitability.This is not new, except for the way an unembarrassed opportunism has been enshrined among the laws of nature and has flourished destructively in the near absence of resistance or criticism.”

This is, Robinson writes, a “system now revealed as a tenuous set of arrangements that have been highly profitable for some people but gravely damaging to the world”. And not just the world––growing economic inequality is as high as it has ever been.

Inequality – A Cancer Eating Away at Society

Inequality affects “more than 70% of the global population,” according to a UN report, but nowhere is it more jarring, more on focus than in the richest, most powerful and prestigious countries in the world. To this end, it’s time to turn the reader’s attention to several recent developments, first in the USA and then in the UK.

Robinson describes the USA as “having been overtaken with a deep and general conviction of scarcity, a conviction that has become an expectation, then a kind of discipline, even an ethic. The sense of scarcity instantiates itself. It reinforces an anxiety that makes scarcity feel real and encroaching, and generosity, even investment, an imprudent risk.”

It is this sense of scarcity that drives society towards polarization, which Robinson in turn characterizes as “a virtual institutionalization in America of the ancient practice of denying working people the real or potential value of their work.” This institution couldn’t work without popular support. It is here that the mechanisms of branding––dare we call it by its non-politically correct name, propaganda?––enter into the scene. With them come their main beneficiaries, would-be demagogues whose interest lies in reinforcing the status quo.

Through the benefits of unified branding, large swathes of the population are persuaded to vote against their own interests. This branding rarely has a basis in fact, as is the case with perceptions of economic competence in the USA, for example. Every Republican administration from Reagan onward has overseen a recession, and every Democratic administration has overseen a strong recovery and an economic boom. Do Americans trust Democrats more to do a good job with the economy? On the contrary: the GOP enjoys a durable advantage, recently at eight points. The pandemic may agitate sentiments and approval numbers, but even in the chaotic era of President Trump, Americans irrationally trust in the GOP’s longstanding image as the party of practical, “fiscally conservative” businessmen who know how to run things efficiently and profitably. (Joseph O’Neill, “Brand New Dems?” for the NYRB)

This is no small feat of misinformation, but a wilful spread of what is equivalent to a mass delusion over decades. So, too, with migration; despite migrants performing jobs the vast majority of Americans do not want, their contribution to society is denied.

A Universal Problem

This is not a uniquely American issue, though the USA is perhaps the most extreme example––and the richest country in the world. If we turn to the UK, much the same can be seen, both in terms of a push for austerity and in the divorce from facts. For a decade now, British austerity has gutted the NHS (National Health Service)––in a time of a pandemic, the fault lines of this act couldn’t be more pronounced.

The “Leave” campaign was successful on the grounds of false claims, as well as racism and a perceived economic victimhood of the English (more so than any other group) at the hands of migrants. At the UK’s great economic loss over membership taxes to the EU, as well. Why is it, then, that British farmers were faced with the possibility of their harvest rotting, unpicked, on trees? This is an issue exacerbated by the coronavirus, certainly, but with its roots in the Eastern European migrant labour force that so offended English sensibilities, despite performing a job that no Britons are interested in.

And in February, Business Insider estimated that by the end of 2020, the British government will have spent £200 billion to leave the UK, more than all its payments to the Union over forty-seven years of membership. One cannot help but wonder what these funds might’ve accomplished, were they aimed at reducing economic inequality within the UK, rather than spent on a divorce bill.

What becomes clear through these examples––and many more like them––is that the drive towards ever greater profitability at the core of our economic system is not only flawed, it is a pandemic more deadly, more divisive than COVID-19 could ever be. Its tools seek to propagate an ideology of selfishness. And it is easy to drink its bitter message in. What’s required is only passive consent, a wilful lethargy, an unwillingness to look away from the screen.

Or… a different choice can be made. We can examine humanity through a prism not of its greed or rugged individualism, but through an outrage for the injustices embedded in our society, and most of all, through a shared human experience and selflessness.

Related articles:

A Stark Case of Propaganda

The Social Network of Ethnic Conflict

Photo credits:

Astroturf by hanne jatho, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

INEQUALITY by Teeraphat Kansomngam, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Paul Harrop / Poster site, New Bridge Road, Newcastle / CC BY-SA 2.0

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The Box (Poem)

Amanda Bujac — Sun, 07 Oct 2018 15:59:36 +0000

Hello there! We’re glad to see you,Make yourselves comfortable, folks,

It’s us, your old and trusted friends,

The voices from the box.

Together, we’ve been through a lot,

Those football nights and tears of joy,

Your children love the magic box,

So does that silly wife of yours!

It’s been a long day, it’s alright,

Worked at that shitty job till late,

You hate it from the depth of heart,

But those bills ain’t paying themselves.

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♫ ♫ We would like to present you the fruit of innovation –

The telescreen.

Please calm down your exaltation!

You will never again struggle with finding your remote,

‘cause there is only one channel, and you just can’t turn it off! ♫ ♫

We have so much news for you,

Brought from all over the globe,

You don’t have to leave your house,

Just free your mind and listen close:

The world is a dangerous place,

We have foes and we have friends.

Friends have money, foes have bombs,

And sometimes they change their roles.

Our president is best

at explaining who is who,

As he says,“no one knows

the game better than I do”

“China we love. Israel we support.

There is no Iraq, it’s not a country at all.

With Russia we’re cool. North Korea beware.

They keep doing threats on us,

I bomb the hell out of them.

Mexico is not our friend.

Mexico is killing us.

Mexico is raping us.

Therefore I should build a wall,

It better be f***ing tall.

And don’t worry, ‘cause, you see,

No one builds walls better than me.

I’m concerned about the country.

The country simply goes to hell.

The American Dream is dead,

I’m lifting it from the grave.

Know that I will bring it back,

Stronger than it’s ever been,

The country will rebuild itself

So fast your poor heads will spin.

See,

no one is better at the military than I am,

No one knows the system better than me,

No one knows taxes better than me,

No one knows trade better than me,

No one is stronger than me—

We are,

We, people,

We are

–

Knowledge is power.

You have your eyes to see.

Preserve clearness of mind.

Turn off your TV.

By Amanda Bujac

Illustrations

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For Whom the Bell Tolls

Vladislav Kaim — Sun, 07 Oct 2018 15:59:31 +0000

September 2018 marked the 10th anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers that triggered the most destructive financial and economic crisis of the last 80 years. One of the most powerful US investment banks at the time collapsed in a handful of days. Meanwhile, not long before its filing for insolvency on September 14, leading credit rating agencies confirmed AAA rating for it. In fact, they attributed top rating to a walking corpse, whose assets were well overrated.

Digging a Grave for the Banking Corpse

Two people knew about the real state of affairs : Ben Bernanke -then head of Federal Reserve System – and Jimmie Dymon – CEO of JP Morgan – who was offered to take over the bank with so many problems. They preferred not to provoke panic but also had no option other than to bury this banking corpse. As Bernanke himself recognized, being already a fellow at Brookings Institute, saving Lehman Brothers on behalf of Fed either wouldn’t be legal or feasible economically.

However, a majority of the population didn’t bother to analyze what was happening to the investment bank. Living in an economic upturn that lasted without break since the end of recession in 2001, they were busy investing in main sources of wealth available to them – their houses. Two giants in the mortgage sphere – Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – were creating new financial products that made houses available for those who in normal conditions would never allow a mortgage themselves. To cover the risks, they started issuing new bonds – credit default swaps (where seller assures the buyer that the latter will be paid in event of a default) and collateralized debt obligations (where in a event of the default holder of the obligation was given the collateral – house – as compensation). House prices were soaring. Not a single bank in the US collapsed in 2006-2007. Meanwhile, the most important “consumer” of new financial instruments was the bloating balance sheet of Lehman Brothers.

Professional market participants didn’t know where all this conjuncture would lead. Watching growth in all the most important indicators, they were unable to detect any ‘canaries in the wharf’, which led to a phenomenon called procyclical bias. Basically, banks and regulators were fooling themselves into thinking that the upturn in economic cycle would be here for long, and investment opportunities would be available for many. The choice of many was investing mainly in real estate. And no one bothered to ask themselves how they would repay the loans or how their bank would avoid collapse because of high exposure to new opaque bonds once house prices would start to fall.

The Great Recession

Everything changed on September 14, 2008 (in fact, though, first alarms were triggered in autumn of 2007). Six years of reckless credit expansion followed, which was an unstoppable destruction of wealth, called the Great Recession. Anger and anxiety of the people who realized they had been fooled about their future started spilling over the world, because the lies didn’t stop there.

On both parts of the Atlantic, states predictably were under significant pressure to save the ‘command heights’ of their economies i.e. main financial institutions and industrial giants. Special strain was put on Eurozone economies significantly dependant on foreign capital inflows and growth of construction industry – Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece. Their debt-to-GDP ratio skyrocketed, and the trust of markets eroded which was reflected onto higher yields . Soon the moment of reckoning came, and they had no one to appeal for an effective bailout rather than IMF, ECB and European Commission.

What followed remains the most egregious episode in the history of economic misinformation in the EU. In 2009, the then head of Greek Statistical Agency Andreas Georgiou refused to breach European best practices in the field by refusing to present inaccurate data of the Greek economy to the public and the European Commission. The politically appointed board of the institution insisted on submitting lies in order not to provoke fear of markets and the people. Georgiou was dismissed. The data was presented. However, the authorities were caught lying anyway.

Ironically enough, soon after trying to use manipulative data to show their (in fact, inexistent) strength, the Greek government used Georgiou’s accurate accounts to ask for a bailout from the Troika (ECB, IMF, EC) in 2012. Yet, in return, the statistician himself received a conviction for breach of trust, upheld by Greece’s highest court. This episode shocked the markets and European authorities, showing how shaky the foundation of trust in the Eurozone was in times of turmoil as in 2009-2012.

To the Grassroots of the Issue

More and more people are reconsidering their political allegiances in favor of populist parties because of their unresolved economic anxieties. What can we, then, make of the fact that governments are reporting with fanfare about exiting the recession and accelerating growth? Why is it not felt at the grassroots level? The most probable response to that, is that current metrics to present the state of national wellbeing are becoming more irrelevant and thus misinforming.

GDP was a great invention that in the time of the catastrophe of 1930s simplified economic discourse for the general public. But with growing economic and social inequality, and growing importance of factors other than material wellbeing it is time to reconsider. Stubbornly sticking to traditional toolkit of communication of economic data to the people will be met at least with indifference, if not with anger. Policymakers need to realize that just stating that the economy is growing is not enough if people don’t feel it in their pockets. Thus, publishing data on how the fruits of this growth are distributed among income quintiles would be prudent. As soon as scientists have more access to government data, they would be able to make the necessary conclusions and present them faster to the public.

In a post-GDP world, the indicators that would matter the most would be fairness of distribution, availability of jobs, progress in healthcare etc. People want to be sure that their children will live better lives than them, but this is not the case momentarily. Being fooled with false promises during both economic upturn, and Great Recession, they are perfectly right to demand new evidence, new measures and new accountability. The price of kicking the can down the road is the bell that tolls for democracy itself – plunging the world in a second iteration of ‘brown plague’ of neo-fascists born with disdain towards any evidence-based policy- and decision making.

By Vladislav Kaim

Photo Credits

Graph With Stacks of Coins, Ken Teegardin (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Historic Moment: the Fall of an Empire – 25 SEP. 2008, Alane Golden (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Huge Euro Symbol – Frankfurt, Germany, Chris Goldberg, (CC BY-NC 2.0)

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