Have We All Been Played?

"The machine spewed forth outright distortions, amplifying half-truths and lies."

"Let's Go to Golgotha!" is a 1975 science fiction story by Garry Kilworth. In it, a tour company offers time travel to famous historical events, with the crucifixion of Christ proving to be the most popular. As briefed before their departure, the tourists join the crowd in disguise.

When asked who to spare, Jesus or Barabbas, the time-travelling tourists call out "Barabbas," as instructed. Then, the story's protagonist realises that the entire crowd is from the future, and no other citizens are present. As recorded by history, they've condemned Jesus to the cross, not the Jews.

I read the story as a teenager, and it came back to me when I was sent David Samuels's article, Rapid-Onset Political Enlightenment.

Samuels suggests that public opinion is manufactured. He asks, "Have we all been played?" Is public opinion created by narrative-shaping wonks with fancy degrees merging social media with psychological operations (psyop) to drive an agenda? Samuels makes a convincing case.

To explain his theory, he ties together several events and trends that may explain what has happened to politics in the U.S. and what's unfolding in the U.K. and elsewhere (my view—not his). Some of this is new, and other stuff is well-known.

In summary, in the early 2000s, Barack Obama recognised that traditional mainstream media was losing its grip on conveying news, shaping opinions, and reaching people. Thus, he engaged a team led by David Axelrod, a political consultant and analyst, who sought to leverage Web 2.0 (what we now call social media) to pursue the presidency.

It is important to stress that the U.S. election system gives disproportionate power to marginal swing states, and a tiny sliver of votes decides the outcome. For example, Kennedy beat Nixon by only 0.17% in 1960. If 30,000 people had switched votes, Nixon would have won. 

In a quarter of all U.S. presidential elections, the winner and loser were separated by 3% of the popular vote. George W. Bush won in 2000 by 537 votes from the Florida recount. Therefore, targeted messaging has a profound impact.
 
In effect, Axelrod and his team created a vast, all-encompassing de-facto psyops machine that harnessed emerging social media platforms not to drive it along according to an agenda.

They employed 'fiction' writers to create narratives and harnessed fact-free virtue campaigns to attack the opposition, hence all the gender and woke propaganda based around postmodernism. 

It worked well at first, anchoring key messages through storytelling and repetition. Then, gradually, the machine spewed forth outright distortions, amplifying half-truths and lies.

As a result, the American public increasingly suffers cognitive dissonance from holding the prescribed opinions while seeing things that contradict them. They witness the rise in crime and the relentless crossings at the Mexican border. That's the glitch that all the clever folks didn't see; the public isn't as gullible as they think.

Thus, the psyop machine faltered when Hillary Clinton ran for president. Trump short-circuited the system with his first presidential run by directly appealing to the people's fears.

Yet, the machine kept running and placed Biden in the White House. But here's where it gets interesting. With Facebook and Twitter now acting as de facto government agencies by censoring Trump and others, the full power of the machines gets exposed when the truth of the Hunter Biden laptop story, a controversial incident involving Joe Biden's son, breaks. 

Algorithms downplay the reality of the laptop story while propagating a lie that 'Russia did it'. Then, revelation emerged that the FBI had agents embedded in Twitter HQ helping censor stuff.

This laptop saga and false narratives about Trump being in Putin's pocket pulled back the curtain on the deceit.

Then, along comes Elon Musk. He buys Twitter and opens the gates to the public square. He purchased the platform for much more than it was worth, forcing a deal and breaking the Democratic Party machine monopoly on messaging. 

No wonder those living in the shadow of the machine are traumatised by Trump's reelection. Everyone told them he was done, the orange Hitler was history (their words), and that lovely lady would win. She didn't. They expose themselves to ridicule with opinion pieces like this about how to share Christmas with Trump voters. 

In the U.K., Prime Minister Starmer faces a similar fate, with Nigel Farage's Reform Party snapping at Labour's heels. With his popularity rating plummeting close to those of the hapless Liz Truss, Starmer is in a bind. With Musk backing Farage, the game is wide open.

Meanwhile, centre-left governments across Europe have fallen as the public punishes incumbents for their failures and lies. This wave of change is shaking the established political parties. 

Of course, Trump, Musk and others will now tweak the psyop machine to serve their purposes. I suppose traditional media outlets could have helped prevent all this by exposing what Obama and the Democrats were doing; instead, they went along for the ride with an uncritical eye.
 
Now, the big hitters who proclaimed disdain for  Trump are busy deleting their social media posts as they make their way to Mar-a-Lago to pay homage. 

I find Samuels makes a convincing case. However, academic research is necessary to support his conclusions and lend weight to his ideas. In the meantime, it is best to question everything and verify, verify, and verify.