The raw correspondence returned in two Freedom of Information requests to one of America's biggest sponsors of "anti-disinformation" work, Kate Starbird's University of Washington
I've just started reading the documents and the emails sound like they're setting up a big family reunion picnic rather than a Constitution circumventing censorship machine.
I think y'all have hit on a potentially awesome upgrade to FOIA. We need everything dumped to a FOIA database on the web, open to all searchers for any reason. Make it 100% public without request so Indy investigators van instantly search it all.
Jim, I agree. Imagine if EVERYTHING the government does had to be public - every salary, every contract, every purchase of paperclips or toilet paper. These evil shenanigans and oodles of fraud, waste, and abuse would cease very fast.
Tech ripped the mask off the rigged game collusion, tax treasure looting criminal financiers, turn on a dime politicians and free floating perps manning the scam. The lie they represent is transparent to reality. Hence their open assault on the American Republic and free peoples across the world. So far, primarily against free speech and information.The perps are scared and dangerous.
I think the ascending totalitarianism fully understands and I'm waiting for the day "we the people" realize, that "subscription journalism" is a model of citizen co.operation that can shift political power away from the hyperrealistic political/financial grift destroying life on planet earth. A million put your money where your mouth is free citizens united around a single issue could easily out voice and outspend the nasty little perps and regain control of the American future.
RE: 'citizen cooperation' I agree wholeheartedly. Since 2020/COVID lockdowns, ppl were able to reach out via the internet be it FB, Twitter, YouTube, Substack, etc to commiserate or discuss events, points of view, etc. And it was amazing to see how many ppl agreed with each other - sometimes from all over the world. These platforms have opened up a new way of connecting. And I'm here for it.
(My epiphany came during the Depp v. Heard trial. 'Lawtube' commentators who gave blow by blow analysis generated an enormous amount of concurring opinion there was.)
"Imagine if EVERYTHING the government does had to be public"
I was a Security Policeman (back when dinosaurs walked the earth :-) ) For a while I had a Top Secret clearance, because of the things I had to guard. That Said, there are things the government has done/is doing that NEED to be kept secret, because if they aren't BAD Things happens and People Die.
THAT SAID most of what is classified is someone screwed up an needs their ass covered.
They’ll ALWAYS tell us that “someone will die” if this isn’t kept secret!!! That means their reputation will suffer. I say stop doing stuff that might endanger lives.
No, they wouldn't (this is coming from one who resides close to Seattle, where the obnoxious UW rules supreme). Check comment from GB HeBe below, who is correct about official correspondence during the CHOP debacle.
For the record, boy do I wish you were correct. I truly do.
Great project fab link share! Another great site to see your taxes or by state etc w tradeoffs.. like how many schools can we build for one fighter jet.. a lot! Super user friendly tools to juggle spending and see what we could have instead. :~)
The thing to know about Seattle and surrounding areas is the disdain many gov't agencies have for FOIA. Check out how texts disappeared off the phones (and servers) of many gov't actors around the CHOP/CHAZ error of 2020.
Agreed and it’s much worse than that… the Seattle region is fully engineered with gaslighting, feudal-serving technocrats that abhor the idea of a true democracy and any meaningful participation in political leadership by working class non-aligned people. It’s not surprising these undemocratic practices and censorship find a great home there.
"the lines between enforcement agencies, publicly funded university research outlets, and the internal trust and safety departments of private platforms seem blurred beyond recognition"
Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.
It's written down in plain words, but no one wants to accept the reality.
Written down in plain words? "collaboration surfaces" "ticketing system" , "the pod groups/communities are: conspiracy and extremist, right-wing influencer ecosystem, Black or Latino communities, foreign influence, left-wing influencer ecosystem, and wellness/health/parenting." WordNik has a word for it: academese
/ə.kæ.dəˈmiz/ A formal or artificial form of communicating prevalent in institutes of higher education.
Thank you for your link to Down a Rabbit Hole where I found one of your other appropriate quotes: "what you get is a headache from a steaming pile of post-modern deconstructionist bullshit". Very well-written piece. I have subscribed.
It's always funny that the people who criticized taibbi seem to be saying "why are you focused on DNC corruption? Why don't you attack the RNC corruption?"
I guess being against corruption across the board is just a dog whistle?
I feel like you're the only journalist who doesn't paywall stuff when you feel like it's public info. It really shows your heart is in the right place!
My interpretation is that Matt has reached critical financial escape velocity where he has BOTH the integrity and the financial freedom to do the right thing. As long as we can sub to support him and consider everything he sniffs out and publishes our reward, free or not, he will follow the story where it goes.
I did not sub to get special treatment; I sub'ed to reward journalistic integrity on critical stories of interest. Do not care at all if I get special info because I sub. Just do what you do, Matt!
BTW, I am very conservative and often disagree with Matt's politics. But I gladly pay to read that POV along with the full body of his work. Why? Two reasons. First, I will learn another POV on political issues, which improves myunderstanding and ability to connect with everyone. Second, WE get real investigative news that matters.
These people know nothing about human nature. What they practice is the equivalent of telling your spouse to “Shut up. I’m right. You’re stupid” and expecting that to convince the other to see things our way. And it really brings people together. 🤦🏼♀️ Arrogant SOBs.
I thought it was interesting the universities who were in on it, and others who weren’t. By emails, Stanford UT Austin, UW, GWU… why those? Certain personalities with certain areas of interest? Maybe someone can ask those questions down the line.
We’re still trying to figure that out. One thing we learned early is that this is a bountiful source of funding: just a handful of donors (Craig Newmark, the Knight Foundation, Omidyar/Open Society, Reid Hoffman, etc) is throwing around tens of millions, and connected schools are getting in on it. There also appears to be a connection between schools that already have a strong tradition of defense research. That might explain why so many state schools show up. But overall - we tried to make a comprehensive list of these organizations/programs and gave up somewhere after the 400 mark. That includes foreign schools and NGOs, but… let’s just say it got to be too much even for a team of us to count.
No worries.. maybe you need an army of volunteers and when your energy/capacity runs out along some unlikely trail, we could take up what you have, learn some investigative tools, and go after it. You have many fans and much support.
of course this is also a design feature to overwhelm those interested in their scheme...built in complexity by using 1,000's of entities and players which require an extreme amount of tedious labor to extract and unwind...bring on the hands and feet of the sub's to help get it done
I bet they will move all these outfits to "private" institutions ASAP to avoid FOIA requests. Or is any grant recipient subject to FOIA regardless of their employer? Hard to believe they are honoring FOIA requests to any extent, really, given that they believe (quite rightly, apparently) that they are above the law.
I would like to see a report of all the federal monies spent on all these tactics at the taxpayers' expense. Just thrilled to be paying for the shredding of our 1st Amendment rights!
I've never really understood the censorship impulse. All the justifications for censorship are self-defeating: if the suppressed information is dangerous, and deleterious to the public's intellectual and moral hygiene, what makes the censors immune? Shouldn't repeated exposure to dreaded 'misinformation' render their own judgment the most corrupted of all? If, on the other hand, repeated exposure is the key to developing immunity, why not inoculate the public too?
Anyway, what this groundbreaking research makes clear is that censors are determined and organized in ways even the most paranoid 'conspiracy theorists' probably hadn't anticipated. They're also secretive, which suggests that defending democracy isn't high on their list of motivations. Maybe they're simply 'control freaks' on the grand (pathological?) scale; but that's an explanation which itself needs explaining, since I've never understood that impulse either.
The people participating in these efforts know full well that they are participating in social engineering efforts meant to shape the public's perceptions of reality (and thus their opinions of it). Surely they know they are not merely filtering out "misinformation" - that's just the cover story.
Then they're frauds... but knowing this doesn't make their motives any less opaque to me. What's the point of 'socially engineering' fellow citizens whose intelligence you don't trust, and whose right to arrive at their own judgments and make their own decisions you hold in contempt? What kind of society can would-be social engineers expect to create from such unpromising material, and who are the supposed beneficiaries? Even when I try seeing things from the censors' side, their activities and what they offer as justifications for them refuse to sum to a coherent worldview or an intelligible project. There's something missing.
Of course they're frauds, but they are unwitting frauds. They believe they're doing, at least the secular equivalent of, "God's work." They're establishment fundamentalists, adherents to the self-professed expertise only elitist insiders feel entirely comfortable claiming for themselves. They're "protecting democracy and freedom" by abolishing both. Orwell explains the whole perverse psychodynamic in "1984." Huxley does much the same in "Brave New World."
What these assholes today are delivering is actually existing totalitarianism, not the mere fictionalized prophetic version of yesteryear, accurate as those predictions were.
Those predictions were actually very different, as Neil Postman persuasively argues in his 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves to Death:
“But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.
“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.
As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions". In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.
“This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.”
Great points. I've never forgotten Postman's book (though I lost my copy years ago, loaned it to someone, never got it back) since I reviewed it for a magazine I worked for in the '80s. It's one of the best critiques of modern social deterioration and collapse I've ever read. But I had forgot that he made this comparison of Orwell and Huxley, not having a photographic memory.
And it totally makes sense, though I tend to think what we're being ushered into by these brave new cleansers of disinfo, misinfo and malinfo from the woke social fabric they believe they're creating is a combination of both Orwell and Huxley, contradictory as that may sound. I think they were both right, and we'll be seeing aspects of both dystopias playing out all over the place. If Orwell proposed that "we'll be overcome by an externally imposed oppression," all these institutes, organizations, commissions and agencies the Twitter Files have uncovered are maybe the first wave of that externally imposed oppression.
And the very likely embrace by millions of these censors and cancellers and deplatformers would fulfill Huxley's prophecy that people will "come to love their oppression and adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think." AI will be leading the way in that respect.
So, I think they're ensnaring us in a kind of double dystopia, if we don't overthrow the entire system that has spawned these authoritarians.
Yes, your judgment coincides with my own. We now have the worst of both worlds, an apathetic, easily diverted citizenry, and all-too energetic behind-the-scenes authoritarians who understand that the narrative control technological advance has brought within reach is the key to masquerading their mission as something else entirely. The 'medicine' they prescribe for our safety is sufficiently sugar-coated to seduce people into taking it; and its addictive properties are such that victims willingly collaborate in their own subjugation, denouncing those who suggest they should consider weaning themselves from the stuff.
As a retired reference librarian whose career consisted of connecting people with reliable, relevant information to the best of my ability, I find this development quite frightening. The internet, so eagerly anticipated by myself and my colleagues in the 1980s and 90s, not only revolutionized the information commons it also destroyed the old one, and there's no going back now. It's disconcerting to realize that the same potential threats to information diffusion that were discussed then, with a view to determining what safeguards might help counter abuses, were seen instead by authoritarians as step-by-step guides to closing loopholes to becoming monopolistic abusers themselves.
One thing we were in no position to anticipate, of course, was the surveillance competence of algorithms, which make possible the instant identification of dissenting opinion and the almost equally immediate discrediting of it. This is a uniquely powerful tool in Big Brother's arsenal, and it's unclear how electronic communication can ever evade its monitoring and reporting functions.
I suspect that the overarching philosophy is this:
Ideal outcomes can only be achieved by supressing people's ability to make selfish choices (by curating the information they encounter to nudge them toward choices that support the ideal outcome). The people doing this work at universities probably greatly overestimate the extent to which this will be used to benefit society as a whole and greatly underestimate the extent to which is will be used to bolster powerful interests and/or suppress human rights.
How does such a 'philosophy' avoid the charge of authoritarianism? Logically, it entails a two-tiered society of nudgers and the nudged, something you'd presume anyone qualifying for university admission couldn't fail to see. How compatible is a willingness to suppress people's ability to make choices, selfish or otherwise, with a claim to be defending democracy? The mission still makes no sense: every time I try to bring its 'ideal' into focus, something else goes out of focus.
Think back to when Trump was elected. How many celebrated him being kicked off Twitter? I did. Since then, the scales have fallen from my eyes; don't like Trump any better, but I can see that censoring is not American.
While certain number of people ardently and genuinely believe in shutting others up—and this is nothing new in terms of human behavior—I think the boundless money spigot involved in "Disinformation" has a lot to do with it.
Thanks for this work! Exposing the totalitarians is vital to defeating them.
Why else the lawfare?
I've just started reading the documents and the emails sound like they're setting up a big family reunion picnic rather than a Constitution circumventing censorship machine.
Welcome to Fascism Martha Stewart style.
"It's a good thing" - Martha
I'm refraining from clapping until Snoop Dog jumps on board.
Let’s get him to narrate the documentary.
That’s why we need Momala!
I prefer Lady Marmalade.
I don't know how many times I've said this, but I'll say it again...Thank you Matt Taibbi
I think y'all have hit on a potentially awesome upgrade to FOIA. We need everything dumped to a FOIA database on the web, open to all searchers for any reason. Make it 100% public without request so Indy investigators van instantly search it all.
Jim, I agree. Imagine if EVERYTHING the government does had to be public - every salary, every contract, every purchase of paperclips or toilet paper. These evil shenanigans and oodles of fraud, waste, and abuse would cease very fast.
Tech ripped the mask off the rigged game collusion, tax treasure looting criminal financiers, turn on a dime politicians and free floating perps manning the scam. The lie they represent is transparent to reality. Hence their open assault on the American Republic and free peoples across the world. So far, primarily against free speech and information.The perps are scared and dangerous.
I think the ascending totalitarianism fully understands and I'm waiting for the day "we the people" realize, that "subscription journalism" is a model of citizen co.operation that can shift political power away from the hyperrealistic political/financial grift destroying life on planet earth. A million put your money where your mouth is free citizens united around a single issue could easily out voice and outspend the nasty little perps and regain control of the American future.
I asked a friend from India, what do Indians value most highly? He quickly responded, 'Freedom'
'...yearning to be free.' It's not an American thing.
RE: 'citizen cooperation' I agree wholeheartedly. Since 2020/COVID lockdowns, ppl were able to reach out via the internet be it FB, Twitter, YouTube, Substack, etc to commiserate or discuss events, points of view, etc. And it was amazing to see how many ppl agreed with each other - sometimes from all over the world. These platforms have opened up a new way of connecting. And I'm here for it.
(My epiphany came during the Depp v. Heard trial. 'Lawtube' commentators who gave blow by blow analysis generated an enormous amount of concurring opinion there was.)
I keep thinking, they have got to be pissed they can't control conversations and data sharing... Should have kept internet under control from day one.
Yes! The schadenfraude is real!
"Imagine if EVERYTHING the government does had to be public"
I was a Security Policeman (back when dinosaurs walked the earth :-) ) For a while I had a Top Secret clearance, because of the things I had to guard. That Said, there are things the government has done/is doing that NEED to be kept secret, because if they aren't BAD Things happens and People Die.
THAT SAID most of what is classified is someone screwed up an needs their ass covered.
They’ll ALWAYS tell us that “someone will die” if this isn’t kept secret!!! That means their reputation will suffer. I say stop doing stuff that might endanger lives.
"They’ll ALWAYS tell us that “someone will die” if this isn’t kept secret!!!"
And Sometimes That's true.
"I say stop doing stuff that might endanger lives."
How Do we DO THAT? Explain that to me. Small words PLEASE I'm not that bright.
No, they wouldn't (this is coming from one who resides close to Seattle, where the obnoxious UW rules supreme). Check comment from GB HeBe below, who is correct about official correspondence during the CHOP debacle.
For the record, boy do I wish you were correct. I truly do.
That's a great idea! I'm gonna work on that this weekend - it'll take a while but hopefully I can get a prototype up on Monday.
I've been following these folks. Every Dime. Online. In Real Time.
https://www.openthebooks.com/about-us/
Just need the political will to make it happen.
Great project fab link share! Another great site to see your taxes or by state etc w tradeoffs.. like how many schools can we build for one fighter jet.. a lot! Super user friendly tools to juggle spending and see what we could have instead. :~)
https://www.nationalpriorities.org/
The thing to know about Seattle and surrounding areas is the disdain many gov't agencies have for FOIA. Check out how texts disappeared off the phones (and servers) of many gov't actors around the CHOP/CHAZ error of 2020.
Agreed and it’s much worse than that… the Seattle region is fully engineered with gaslighting, feudal-serving technocrats that abhor the idea of a true democracy and any meaningful participation in political leadership by working class non-aligned people. It’s not surprising these undemocratic practices and censorship find a great home there.
I suppose the Oregon county secession to Idaho is an example....seems pretty serious.
Get'em Matt! Someone needs to hold these clowns accountable, and no one better than you.
Follow the money and see how these programs are funded and who approves.
"the lines between enforcement agencies, publicly funded university research outlets, and the internal trust and safety departments of private platforms seem blurred beyond recognition"
Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.
It's written down in plain words, but no one wants to accept the reality.
Written down in plain words? "collaboration surfaces" "ticketing system" , "the pod groups/communities are: conspiracy and extremist, right-wing influencer ecosystem, Black or Latino communities, foreign influence, left-wing influencer ecosystem, and wellness/health/parenting." WordNik has a word for it: academese
/ə.kæ.dəˈmiz/ A formal or artificial form of communicating prevalent in institutes of higher education.
The plain words I was referring to were those of Gentile, about the state.
Allow me to refer you to my comment just below, the one with the link to Down a Rabbit Hole.
Thank you for your link to Down a Rabbit Hole where I found one of your other appropriate quotes: "what you get is a headache from a steaming pile of post-modern deconstructionist bullshit". Very well-written piece. I have subscribed.
I hope that these dumps will put to bed the criticism you've endured over the past several years Matt.
The idiotic arguments put forward by Brianna and Zed made me frustrated on your behalf, and I'm hoping this puts it to bed....
No, this will beget more criticism and desperate cries of "nothing burger" and "look away thine eyes, true believers".
It's always funny that the people who criticized taibbi seem to be saying "why are you focused on DNC corruption? Why don't you attack the RNC corruption?"
I guess being against corruption across the board is just a dog whistle?
I feel like you're the only journalist who doesn't paywall stuff when you feel like it's public info. It really shows your heart is in the right place!
My interpretation is that Matt has reached critical financial escape velocity where he has BOTH the integrity and the financial freedom to do the right thing. As long as we can sub to support him and consider everything he sniffs out and publishes our reward, free or not, he will follow the story where it goes.
I did not sub to get special treatment; I sub'ed to reward journalistic integrity on critical stories of interest. Do not care at all if I get special info because I sub. Just do what you do, Matt!
BTW, I am very conservative and often disagree with Matt's politics. But I gladly pay to read that POV along with the full body of his work. Why? Two reasons. First, I will learn another POV on political issues, which improves myunderstanding and ability to connect with everyone. Second, WE get real investigative news that matters.
They're convinced that they're fighting fascism with censorship, noble knights slaughtering the heathen unbelievers.
These people know nothing about human nature. What they practice is the equivalent of telling your spouse to “Shut up. I’m right. You’re stupid” and expecting that to convince the other to see things our way. And it really brings people together. 🤦🏼♀️ Arrogant SOBs.
They're so smug and confident that they're right that they can't even see how toxic they appear to normals.
Such vital and important work. This is why I am a paid subscriber. Thank you!!!
I thought it was interesting the universities who were in on it, and others who weren’t. By emails, Stanford UT Austin, UW, GWU… why those? Certain personalities with certain areas of interest? Maybe someone can ask those questions down the line.
We’re still trying to figure that out. One thing we learned early is that this is a bountiful source of funding: just a handful of donors (Craig Newmark, the Knight Foundation, Omidyar/Open Society, Reid Hoffman, etc) is throwing around tens of millions, and connected schools are getting in on it. There also appears to be a connection between schools that already have a strong tradition of defense research. That might explain why so many state schools show up. But overall - we tried to make a comprehensive list of these organizations/programs and gave up somewhere after the 400 mark. That includes foreign schools and NGOs, but… let’s just say it got to be too much even for a team of us to count.
No worries.. maybe you need an army of volunteers and when your energy/capacity runs out along some unlikely trail, we could take up what you have, learn some investigative tools, and go after it. You have many fans and much support.
Perhaps one may be able to parse through it all with some appropriate AI.
of course this is also a design feature to overwhelm those interested in their scheme...built in complexity by using 1,000's of entities and players which require an extreme amount of tedious labor to extract and unwind...bring on the hands and feet of the sub's to help get it done
I bet they will move all these outfits to "private" institutions ASAP to avoid FOIA requests. Or is any grant recipient subject to FOIA regardless of their employer? Hard to believe they are honoring FOIA requests to any extent, really, given that they believe (quite rightly, apparently) that they are above the law.
Please do note the Jim Baker quotes in Schellenberger's article specifically to this point in attempt to protect twitter
Kate Starbird is a malignancy that grew in a petri dish. You can argue about her but you shouldn't ignore everything that supports her.
https://rathercurmudgeonly.substack.com/p/down-a-rabbit-hole
I would like to see a report of all the federal monies spent on all these tactics at the taxpayers' expense. Just thrilled to be paying for the shredding of our 1st Amendment rights!
I've never really understood the censorship impulse. All the justifications for censorship are self-defeating: if the suppressed information is dangerous, and deleterious to the public's intellectual and moral hygiene, what makes the censors immune? Shouldn't repeated exposure to dreaded 'misinformation' render their own judgment the most corrupted of all? If, on the other hand, repeated exposure is the key to developing immunity, why not inoculate the public too?
Anyway, what this groundbreaking research makes clear is that censors are determined and organized in ways even the most paranoid 'conspiracy theorists' probably hadn't anticipated. They're also secretive, which suggests that defending democracy isn't high on their list of motivations. Maybe they're simply 'control freaks' on the grand (pathological?) scale; but that's an explanation which itself needs explaining, since I've never understood that impulse either.
The people participating in these efforts know full well that they are participating in social engineering efforts meant to shape the public's perceptions of reality (and thus their opinions of it). Surely they know they are not merely filtering out "misinformation" - that's just the cover story.
Then they're frauds... but knowing this doesn't make their motives any less opaque to me. What's the point of 'socially engineering' fellow citizens whose intelligence you don't trust, and whose right to arrive at their own judgments and make their own decisions you hold in contempt? What kind of society can would-be social engineers expect to create from such unpromising material, and who are the supposed beneficiaries? Even when I try seeing things from the censors' side, their activities and what they offer as justifications for them refuse to sum to a coherent worldview or an intelligible project. There's something missing.
Of course they're frauds, but they are unwitting frauds. They believe they're doing, at least the secular equivalent of, "God's work." They're establishment fundamentalists, adherents to the self-professed expertise only elitist insiders feel entirely comfortable claiming for themselves. They're "protecting democracy and freedom" by abolishing both. Orwell explains the whole perverse psychodynamic in "1984." Huxley does much the same in "Brave New World."
What these assholes today are delivering is actually existing totalitarianism, not the mere fictionalized prophetic version of yesteryear, accurate as those predictions were.
Those predictions were actually very different, as Neil Postman persuasively argues in his 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves to Death:
“But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.
“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.
As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions". In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.
“This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.”
Great points. I've never forgotten Postman's book (though I lost my copy years ago, loaned it to someone, never got it back) since I reviewed it for a magazine I worked for in the '80s. It's one of the best critiques of modern social deterioration and collapse I've ever read. But I had forgot that he made this comparison of Orwell and Huxley, not having a photographic memory.
And it totally makes sense, though I tend to think what we're being ushered into by these brave new cleansers of disinfo, misinfo and malinfo from the woke social fabric they believe they're creating is a combination of both Orwell and Huxley, contradictory as that may sound. I think they were both right, and we'll be seeing aspects of both dystopias playing out all over the place. If Orwell proposed that "we'll be overcome by an externally imposed oppression," all these institutes, organizations, commissions and agencies the Twitter Files have uncovered are maybe the first wave of that externally imposed oppression.
And the very likely embrace by millions of these censors and cancellers and deplatformers would fulfill Huxley's prophecy that people will "come to love their oppression and adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think." AI will be leading the way in that respect.
So, I think they're ensnaring us in a kind of double dystopia, if we don't overthrow the entire system that has spawned these authoritarians.
Yes, your judgment coincides with my own. We now have the worst of both worlds, an apathetic, easily diverted citizenry, and all-too energetic behind-the-scenes authoritarians who understand that the narrative control technological advance has brought within reach is the key to masquerading their mission as something else entirely. The 'medicine' they prescribe for our safety is sufficiently sugar-coated to seduce people into taking it; and its addictive properties are such that victims willingly collaborate in their own subjugation, denouncing those who suggest they should consider weaning themselves from the stuff.
As a retired reference librarian whose career consisted of connecting people with reliable, relevant information to the best of my ability, I find this development quite frightening. The internet, so eagerly anticipated by myself and my colleagues in the 1980s and 90s, not only revolutionized the information commons it also destroyed the old one, and there's no going back now. It's disconcerting to realize that the same potential threats to information diffusion that were discussed then, with a view to determining what safeguards might help counter abuses, were seen instead by authoritarians as step-by-step guides to closing loopholes to becoming monopolistic abusers themselves.
One thing we were in no position to anticipate, of course, was the surveillance competence of algorithms, which make possible the instant identification of dissenting opinion and the almost equally immediate discrediting of it. This is a uniquely powerful tool in Big Brother's arsenal, and it's unclear how electronic communication can ever evade its monitoring and reporting functions.
I suspect that the overarching philosophy is this:
Ideal outcomes can only be achieved by supressing people's ability to make selfish choices (by curating the information they encounter to nudge them toward choices that support the ideal outcome). The people doing this work at universities probably greatly overestimate the extent to which this will be used to benefit society as a whole and greatly underestimate the extent to which is will be used to bolster powerful interests and/or suppress human rights.
How does such a 'philosophy' avoid the charge of authoritarianism? Logically, it entails a two-tiered society of nudgers and the nudged, something you'd presume anyone qualifying for university admission couldn't fail to see. How compatible is a willingness to suppress people's ability to make choices, selfish or otherwise, with a claim to be defending democracy? The mission still makes no sense: every time I try to bring its 'ideal' into focus, something else goes out of focus.
Think back to when Trump was elected. How many celebrated him being kicked off Twitter? I did. Since then, the scales have fallen from my eyes; don't like Trump any better, but I can see that censoring is not American.
While certain number of people ardently and genuinely believe in shutting others up—and this is nothing new in terms of human behavior—I think the boundless money spigot involved in "Disinformation" has a lot to do with it.
quick scrub of FEC donation data from 2008-2024 for donations from DIRESTA, STARBIRD, LINVILLE< SHORENSTIEN
(3 columns are total , avg donation, # donations)
kwd1:congress$ grep "DIRESTA," fec08.txt
0 NAME DIRESTA, ANTHONY 1250 250 5
kwd1:congress$ grep "DIRESTA," fec10.txt
0 NAME DIRESTA, ANTHONY 250 250 1
kwd1:congress$ grep "DIRESTA," fec12.txt
0 NAME DIRESTA, BRETT 250 250 1
kwd1:congress$ grep "DIRESTA," fec14.txt
0 NAME DIRESTA, NICOLE 1750 875 2
kwd1:congress$ grep "DIRESTA," fec16.txt
0 NAME DIRESTA, NICOLE 8250 634 13
0 NAME DIRESTA, RENEE 3200 1066 3
0 NAME DIRESTA, THOMAS J. 2475 75 33
0 NAME DIRESTA, THOMAS J 1200 75 16
0 NAME DIRESTA, ANTHONY 1002 77 13
0 NAME DIRESTA, BRIAN 500 500 1
0 NAME DIRESTA, AMANDA 210 30 7
kwd1:congress$ grep "DIRESTA," fec18.txt
0 NAME DIRESTA, NICOLE 9150 508 18
0 NAME DIRESTA, THOMAS J 3600 75 48
kwd1:congress$ grep "DIRESTA," fec20.txt
0 NAME DIRESTA, NICOLE 26500 552 48
0 NAME DIRESTA, THOMAS J 3600 75 48
0 NAME DIRESTA, MARY 1060 25 41
0 NAME DIRESTA, MICHAEL 500 250 2
0 NAME DIRESTA, AMANDA 127 21 6
0 NAME DIRESTA, ROSEMARIE 100 100 1
0 NAME DIRESTA, JOSEPH G. 40 20 2
kwd1:congress$ grep "DIRESTA," fec22.txt
0 NAME DIRESTA, NICOLE 26900 747 36
0 NAME DIRESTA, THOMAS J 3450 75 46
0 NAME DIRESTA, MARY 100 50 2
0 NAME DIRESTA, ROSEMARIE 10 10 1
kwd1:congress$ grep "DIRESTA," fec24.txt
0 NAME DIRESTA, NICOLE 6900 862 8
0 NAME DIRESTA, THOMAS J 825 75 11
kwd1:congress$
RENEE DIRESTA donates in 2016, but it looks like someone named NICOLE DIRESTA is a whale since then.
CATHRINE STARBIRD:
kwd1:congress$
kwd1:congress$
kwd1:congress$ grep "STARBIRD, CAT" fec08.txt
kwd1:congress$ grep "STARBIRD, CAT" fec10.txt
kwd1:congress$ grep "STARBIRD, CAT" fec12.txt
kwd1:congress$ grep "STARBIRD, CAT" fec14.txt
kwd1:congress$ grep "STARBIRD, CAT" fec16.txt
kwd1:congress$ grep "STARBIRD, CAT" fec18.txt
kwd1:congress$ grep "STARBIRD, CAT" fec20.txt
0 NAME STARBIRD, CATHARINE 5500 275 20
kwd1:congress$ grep "STARBIRD, CAT" fec22.txt
kwd1:congress$ grep "STARBIRD, CAT" fec24.txt
kwd1:congress$
kwd1:congress$
-no data for Darren Linville
SHORENSTEIN:
wd1:congress$
kwd1:congress$
kwd1:congress$ grep "SHORENSTEIN, " fec16.txt
0 NAME SHORENSTEIN, LYDIA 50730 16910 3
0 NAME SHORENSTEIN, STUART ALAN 8100 2700 3
0 NAME SHORENSTEIN, MARISSA JEAN 5400 2700 2
0 NAME SHORENSTEIN, MARISSA 5019 218 23
0 NAME SHORENSTEIN, BRANDON J 2700 2700 1
0 NAME SHORENSTEIN, SANDRA 2700 2700 1
0 NAME SHORENSTEIN, LYDIA P 2700 2700 1
0 NAME SHORENSTEIN, DOUGLAS W 2700 2700 1
0 NAME SHORENSTEIN, DOUGLAS 2600 1300 2
0 NAME SHORENSTEIN, JANICE 1000 1000 1
0 NAME SHORENSTEIN, MARISSA J 1000 1000 1
0 NAME SHORENSTEIN, STUART 649 649 1
kwd1:congress$
kwd1:congress$ grep "SHORENSTEIN, " fec18.txt
0 NAME SHORENSTEIN, LYDIA 12500 2083 6
0 NAME SHORENSTEIN, MARISSA 9600 384 25
0 NAME SHORENSTEIN, LYDIA P. 5400 1800 3
0 NAME SHORENSTEIN, STUART 5199 1733 3
0 NAME SHORENSTEIN, CAROLE 2700 2700 1
0 NAME SHORENSTEIN, BRANDON 2000 1000 2
0 NAME SHORENSTEIN, STUART A. 1000 1000 1
0 NAME SHORENSTEIN, STUART ALLAN 250 250 1
kwd1:congress$
kwd1:congress$ grep "SHORENSTEIN, " fec20.txt
0 NAME SHORENSTEIN, LYDIA 174800 11653 15
0 NAME SHORENSTEIN, BRANDON 11000 2750 4
0 NAME SHORENSTEIN, STUART 10998 1099 10
0 NAME SHORENSTEIN, MARISSA 10700 486 22
0 NAME SHORENSTEIN, DAVID 2800 2800 1
0 NAME SHORENSTEIN, DANIELLE 1000 1000 1
kwd1:congress$
kwd1:congress$ grep "SHORENSTEIN, " fec22.txt
0 NAME SHORENSTEIN, BRANDON 27400 3914 7
0 NAME SHORENSTEIN, STUART 19998 1538 13
0 NAME SHORENSTEIN, LYDIA 17400 3480 5
0 NAME SHORENSTEIN, DANIELLE 5800 2900 2
0 NAME SHORENSTEIN, SANDRA 5800 2900 2
0 NAME SHORENSTEIN, MARISSA 2500 833 3
0 NAME SHORENSTEIN, DAVID 1000 500 2
0 NAME SHORENSTEIN, JANICE J 1000 1000 1
0 NAME SHORENSTEIN, STUART A. 1000 1000 1
0 NAME SHORENSTEIN, STUART ALAN 1000 1000 1
kwd1:congress$
kwd1:congress$ grep "SHORENSTEIN, " fec24.txt
0 NAME SHORENSTEIN, STUART 4520 1130 4
0 NAME SHORENSTEIN, MARISSA JEAN 2500 2500 1
0 NAME SHORENSTEIN, MARISSA 2000 1000 2
0 NAME SHORENSTEIN, STUART A. 1000 1000 1
kwd1:congress$
CARLO ORR is an FEC whale
kwd1:congress$ grep " ORR, CAROL" fec08.txt
0 NAME ORR, CAROL 3050 338 9
0 NAME ORR, CAROLYN L. MRS. 250 250 1
kwd1:congress$ grep " ORR, CAROL" fec10.txt
0 NAME ORR, CAROL 250 250 1
0 NAME ORR, CAROL H 210 210 1
kwd1:congress$ grep " ORR, CAROL" fec12.txt
0 NAME ORR, CAROL H 800 400 2
0 NAME ORR, CAROL MS 275 275 1
0 NAME ORR, CAROL H. 250 250 1
0 NAME ORR, CAROL 250 250 1
kwd1:congress$ grep " ORR, CAROL" fec14.txt
kwd1:congress$ grep " ORR, CAROL" fec16.txt
0 NAME ORR, CAROL 2436 128 19
0 NAME ORR, CAROL H. 500 100 5
0 NAME ORR, CAROL S 77 19 4
kwd1:congress$ grep " ORR, CAROL" fec18.txt
0 NAME ORR, CAROL 24668 203 121
0 NAME ORR, CAROL H 1700 566 3
0 NAME ORR, CAROL HAMILTON 150 150 1
0 NAME ORR, CAROL S 77 19 4
kwd1:congress$ grep " ORR, CAROL" fec20.txt
0 NAME ORR, CAROL 30339 149 203
0 NAME ORR, CAROLINE 1163 387 3
0 NAME ORR, CAROL HAMILTON 1000 50 20
0 NAME ORR, CAROLYN 357 29 12
0 NAME ORR, CAROLYN R 75 37 2
0 NAME ORR, CAROL JIM 35 35 1
kwd1:congress$ grep " ORR, CAROL" fec22.txt
0 NAME ORR, CAROL 19650 98 199
kwd1:congress$ grep " ORR, CAROL" fec24.txt
0 NAME ORR, CAROL 11725 244 48
0 NAME ORR, CAROL H. 5950 743 8
kwd1:congress$