“After
the Fact? The
Truth About Fake News,” by Marcus Gilroy-Ware, 2020
Not
sure what to say about this book. Filled
with somewhat common insights, it’s best on conspiracy theories. Gilroy-Ware seems to be a leftist of some
sort, exposing the various myths around journalism, the internet and the
bi-partisan nature of a shallow understanding, centering on misinformation and
disinformation as a regular part of capitalism.
We live in a disinformation society, so the concept of ‘fake news’ is
not an aberration – except in how the phrase is now used as a way to ignore
accurate reporting.
Gilroy-Ware’s
focus is on events like Brexit, the Trump election, global warming, the Iraq
war and various corporate disinformation campaigns – tobacco, oil, plastics,
pollution, pesticides, insider trading, etc. His key insight is that in a
“market-driven society” the truth becomes elusive. The existence of omnipresent, slick
advertising in a capitalist society should tip one off that the sales effort is
all around us – and it includes news, politics and economics. Even the Mount Perlin society would be
astounded at how commercialized everything has become, in our shiny, “exciting
capitalist lifestyle.”
The
author won’t touch the Vietnam War and Kennedy and MLK assassinations as real conspiracies. These started to broadly
unwind the post-WW2 consensus about what was true in the U.S. Mark Fisher’s "capitalist realism" became
further unglued in the 2008 financial collapse and the Iraq War, which again revealed
the hollow heart of bourgeois social reality.
Brexit, the environmental crisis, the rise of China and Trump’s election
accelerated the whole process. So, here are some points made by Gilroy-Ware:
1.
He argues against technology being
the decisive element in society or social progress or regression.
2.
Software
like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google,
You Tube are all monetized for advertisers and data-firms. Money is made, no matter how accurate
anything on the platforms is.
3.
Mis
and disinformation have always been a part of politics, so the idea that
software platforms created this diversion from the ‘center’ is untrue. "Echo chambers" and "filter bubbles" have
always existed. Social media may have
accelerated it due to its ability to link so many people. From my perspective, much of the distress is
coming from the ‘reasonable' centrists who see their control over the narrative
coming apart. As was said by Yeats in
1919, “The center cannot hold.”
4.
In a
fake democracy like the U.S., fake news is no deviant brand.
5.
“Hoaxes,
propaganda, myth, conspiracy theory, deceptive liberalism, complacent, crappy
journalism and digital platforms” all exploit this democracy with magical
thinking according to Gilroy-Ware.
6.
Government
and corporations are almost twins.
7.
“The
free exchange of ideas,” the “free marketplace of ideas” and the "public
sphere" are examples of simplistic utopianism, as no such thing actually exists
or has ever existed.
8.
The
dominant ideas of any society are the ideas of its ruling class, an idea cribbed
from Marx. Fakeness is promoted to
hide actual social relations.
9.
Literacy,
including numerical literacy, in the U.S. or the U.K. – the ability to read, to
understand what you read, as well as the ability to decipher fraud or untruths
or bad math – is very weak. Long texts are rejected as too difficult. Education
and knowledge is for commercial usefulness, not social usefulness.
10.
Gilroy-Ware
cites the Dunning-Kruger effect as to people assuming they know more than
they do. Anyone who has watched Jay Leno
or You Tube interviews of the ‘man on
the street’ know what I’m talking about.
11.
Emotions
and feelings, hedonia and pleasure, are valued over actual understanding or other
forms of intelligence.
12.
The
ruling class in both parties hides their power and wealth behind culture war histrionics, obscuring what class really is.
13.
In his
best chapter, Gilroy-Ware understands there are real conspiracies, as well as conspiracy theories that have little to no basis. The signs of a conspiracy theory, no matter who is spouting it, are: A. Suspicion first, facts last. B.
Nothing happens by accident. C. Nothing is as it seems. D.
Everything is a hoax or ‘false flag.’
E. Selective empiricism. I.E. one fact, many flaws.
14.
His
collection of rootless conspiracy theories:
Flat earth; 5G hysteria; chemtrails; climate change opposition; staged
school shootings; Qanon; the granddaddy of them all, the Protocols of Zion; China-created Covid 19; extraterrestrials living
among us; new age medicine quackery; anti-vaccine theories; 9/11 as a
controlled explosion; holocaust denial, the staged moon landing, UFOs, etc. He does
not include some Democratic Party conspiracy theories like Russia-Gate,
pee-tapes, the Syria gas attack. He gives
Russia-gate less than a page, referencing Cambridge Analytica much more. As another example, right now in Minneapolis the centrist Democrats are running ads that straight-out lie about a ballot question they claim will 'get rid of police.' It doesn't.
15.
Even some
leftists have conspiracy theories, as if the ruling class has total control
over everything, no one else has agency and the bosses don’t take advantage of
events. This vastly overestimates
ruling-class power.
16. He accounts for beliefs in conspiracy theories as a reflection of alienation, a “politics of suspicion” and a sad attempt at knowledge agency.
17.
Journalistic
objectivity has always been a fantasy, like the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus or ... God.
18. Liberalism is based on a shallow positivist political belief in order, meritocracy and ‘reason’ that prop up the status quo and oppose inconvenience. Gilroy-Ware cites MLK’s point that his white liberal ‘allies’ were actual opponents of the black freedom struggle through their commitment to order, resulting in "do-nothingism." He calls their approach "shallow understanding."
19. Steven Pinker is a hyper-empiricist taking small facts, while ignoring context, to make an overly-large point.
20. Journalism
is not neutrality, a debate, giving credence to both sides or opinions. It is supposed to accurately reflect reality as much as possible. In most countries it is a
for-profit business. He goes into many
examples of how most established papers, websites and journals, including the
liberal Guardian, lean to the right. The Guardian’s
obsession with Corbyn’s ‘anti-Semitism’ is one example. The BBC
comes in for particular ire, not for their public television entertainment pablum
but their political slant. For instance
it stopped portraying climate change as an ‘opinion’ only in 2018.
21.
Clicks
and impressions drive digital advertising, a $330B business in 2019 based on
software like AdSense, DoubleClick and others, while far-right websites like
Alex Jones sell health product quackery.
The internet is based on affective and emotional links, so ‘sensations’
can be monetized far easier than anything else.
Which is why Facebook, Amazon, Alphabet, Netflix and Google (FAANG) sector
profits are so high.
22.
Gilroy-Ware
suggests public ownership of the FAANG sector, but then does not pursue
that.
This list is only a reflection of the general text and can’t encompass everything. Buy the book and see!
P.S. - Thom Hartmann's article on Q-Anon's theo-fascist conspiracy status: https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/qanon-doomsday-cult/
Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog
search box, upper left, to investigate our 14 year archive using these
terms: “When Journalism Was a Thing,” “The Paper / Novine,” “The Post,” “No
Longer Newsworthy,” “Manufacturing Consent,” “Doublespeak,” “Empire of
Illusion” (Hedges); “American Exceptionalism” (Haiphong); “Propaganda”
(Bernays); “Turning Off NPR,” “Advertising
Shits in Your Head,” “Keywords,” “All Art is Propaganda” (Orwell); “Four
Arguments for the Elimination of Television.”
And I
bought it at May Day Books!
Red
Frog
October
26, 2021
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