“If you think of information as a virus, instead of treating an infection once it has taken hold — that is, debunking — it is much better to vaccinate so that the body is inoculated.” Welcome to pre-bunking.
On Wednesday (May 28), just over a week before the EU elections commence, European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen unveiled her latest (and hopefully last) censorship initiative: pre-bunking. This approach, she says, is “more successful than debunking” and will allow society to “build up… immunity to misinformation.”
Von der Leyen drew heavily on the vernacular of virology and vaccinology to describe her pre-bunking initiative. This, of course, is ironic given her present embroilment in the “Pfizergate” vaccine procurement scandal, which is the subject of not one, but two, criminal investigations. It is also disconcerting to hear one of the most powerful political leaders of the so-called “liberal” West liken information to a virus. As I will show in this article, she is not the only one.
As with medicine, Von der Leyen says, prevention is preferable to cure: “If you think of information as a virus (NC: which, to be fair, most right-thinking people probably don’t), instead of treating an infection once it has taken hold — that is, debunking — it is much better to vaccinate so that the body is inoculated.” That is where pre-bunking comes in.
The EU will start "pre-bunking":
– Debunking suggests exposing false information
– Pre-bunking" entails more government gatekeepers, smearing and censorship against those who challenge the EU's monopoly on truth pic.twitter.com/HHiduewd0s— Glenn Diesen (@Glenn_Diesen) May 30, 2024
Building “Immunity” Against Misinformation
Like vaccines, pre-bunking intentionally exposes people to a weaker dose of mis- or dis-information (as defined by the Commission, presumably), so that their minds can build up antibodies to resist real fake news stories later down the line. In the words of the concept’s creator, Sander van der Linden, “you preemptively try to refute falsehoods or the techniques that are used to dupe people online, so that people can build up cognitive or mental antibodies so that when they come across them in the future they are partly immune.”
Sander van der Linden is a Dutch professor of social psychology at the University of Cambridge. His books include Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity and The Psychology of Misinformation. The titles speak for themselves.
Van der Linden’s lab is apparently partnered with the UK government, the US State Department, and CISA (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency), the notorious censorship agency embedded within the Department of Homeland Security. That’s according to Mike Benz, a former State Department official who is arguably the top expert on the US censorship industry. CISA has its own subsidiary: the Office of Biometric Identity Management. This gives an idea of how digital censorship will soon be tied up with biometric digital identity.
These institutions are at the leading edge of the collective West’s rapidly growing censorship industrial complex. Their role, notes Benz, is primarily, if not exclusively, political:
Here, watch this star of the US-UK govts new political "thought control" game industry explain his other games controlling the psychological response to gov't Covid-19 policies.
Note how the government's censorship targets are all posts criticizing the government: pic.twitter.com/8QMNAPvbqJ
— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) September 14, 2023
Van der Linden’s pre-bunking ideas have gained traction in some important places, including Silicon Valley. In February, Google Alphabet revealed plans to run a series of animated ads on platforms such as TikTok and YouTube featuring pre-bunking techniques developed in partnership with researchers at the Universities of Cambridge and Bristol. The ads have been shown in five EU countries: Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, and Poland. Viewers watching the ads are asked to fill in a short multiple-choice questionnaire, designed to gauge what they have learned about misinformation.
So, in other words, Google, a company that was recently forced to withdraw its Gemini image generator after suffering worldwide ridicule over “inaccuracies” in some of the historical depictions that it was creating, is now trying to train untold millions of EU citizens in the art of identifying mis- and disinformation.
“A Vaccine for Brainwash”
Another organisation experimenting with pre-bunking is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). The organisation’s Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence recently published a report co-authored by Van der Linden. Titled “Inoculation Theory and Misinformation,” the report discusses ways of “build[ing] psychological resilience against misinformation through psychological ‘vaccines’ or ‘inoculation.'”
If this sounds like something straight out of Dr. Strangelove, that’s probably because, as the report notes, the theoretical background of “inoculation theory” dates all the way back to the 1960’s when the US government “became concerned about the prospect of its troops becoming brainwashed (or persuaded) by foreign propaganda” during the Vietnam War:
This concern prompted the social psychologist William McGuire to explore the idea of a “vaccine for brainwash”. Drawing on the analogy of medical inoculations, McGuire proposed that rather than bombarding people with more supportive facts, pre-emptively exposing people to a weakened dose of a specific persuasive [manipulative] argument could confer psychological resistance against future exposure to persuasive attacks, much like a medical vaccine confers physiological resistance against future infection. Over the years, inoculation treatments came to feature two core components: 1) a forewarning of an impending attack on one’s beliefs, and 2) a pre-emptive refutation of the persuasive argument, also called a “prebunk.” Since then, a large volume of studies and metaanalyses has been conducted, establishing inoculation theory as a robust framework for countering unwanted persuasion.
Although the original paradigm has proved highly replicable, for a long time it was never
tested in the context that inspired McGuire’s idea: brainwashing and propaganda. This began
to change around 2017, when researchers started to apply inoculation theory within the
modern context of online misinformation.
A (Philip K) Dickensian Future
The gathering interest among governments, generals and Silicon Valley companies in ideas like “pre-bunking” underscores one of the darkest aspects of the censorship industrial complexes taking root in ostensible liberal democracies: the increasing emphasis on taking preventative actions against illegal, mis- or dis-information. It is eerily reminiscent of “pre-crime”, the concept first coined by Phillip K Dick to express the notion that the occurrence of a crime can be anticipated and prevented before it even happens.
“The monitoring obligation of all actors” involved in the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) “is preventative,” warned Manfred Kölsch, a retired German judge, in a blistering critique of the EU’s censorship regime featured in Berliner Zeitung (which we covered here):
It is always about “expected critical [effects]”,… “foreseeable adverse effects” on “social debate”, “public safety” or “public health”. The Advocate General at the ECJ has said what is legally necessary: These represent a “particularly serious interference with the right to freedom of expression” “because by restricting certain information before it is disseminated, they prevent any public debate about the content, thus “[d]epriving freedom of expression of its actual function as a motor of pluralism.” The Advocate General correctly points out that preventive information controls ultimately abolish the right to fundamentally unrestricted freedom of expression and information.
Kölsch also warned that the DSA directly contravenes many of the EU’s and national laws on freedom of expression and information, including Article 11 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Article 5 of the Basic Law (Germany’s written constitution, agreed by the allies back in 1949 when the first post-war government was established in West Germany). Here is the text of Article 11 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights:
Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.
Not anymore, it seems.
A Milestone in Global Online Censorship
The upcoming EU elections will represent a milestone in online censorship. This is the first time bloc-wide elections have been held since the full launch of the DSA in February (covered in my article, The EU’s Mass Censorship Regime Is Almost Fully Operational. Will It Go Global?) So far, all of the main platforms, including Elon Musk’s X, appear to be adhering to the EU’s rules on disinformation. If they don’t, they could face serious economic consequences, including fines of up to 6% of global turnover.
At her speech at Davos this year, Von der Leyen said that the “top concern” among the World Economic Forum’s partner companies (which also happens to be one of the Commission’s biggest worries) is “misinformation and disinformation.” The solution, she said, is to forge a grand coalition of sorts between “business and governments” — which, as luck has it, fits snugly with the WEF’s primary mission in life: to promote public private partnerships at all levels and in all areas of government, for the benefit primarily of its partner companies.
In February, just one month after that speech, the Commission published a set of guidelines for Big Tech firms to help Brussels “secure” the upcoming elections from foreign interference and other threats. The guidelines recommend “mitigation measures and best practices to be undertaken by Very Large Online Platforms and Search Engines before, during, and after electoral events,” and are explained as necessary in order to prevent things like fake news, turnout suppression, cyber threats and attacks, and, of course, Russia’s malign influence on European public opinion, particularly regarding Ukraine.
“Integrity of election[s] is one of my top priorities for DSA enforcement, as we are entering a period of elections in Europe,” said Thierry Breton, [EU Internal Market Commissioner] last September.
Elections in Slovakia in September were supposed to offer a dummy run, but the results were disappointing — at least as far as the Commission was concerned. The left-wing populist and social conservative party, Direction–Social Democracy (Smer-SD), led by former Prime Minister Robert Fico, took the largest number of votes and was able to form a coalition government with like-minded parties. Fico had promised to cut all aid to Ukraine, which he says is governed by neo-Nazis, as well as block its ascension to NATO.
As readers well know, Fico was shot five times in an assassination attempt two weeks ago but somehow survived and is now apparently on the mend. As Conor Gallagher reported shortly afterwards, Fico’s opposition to Project Ukraine and the rabid demonisation of his political stance by mainstream media appear to have played a key role in motivating his would-be assassin.
The Commission’s mass censorship regime is the culmination of a process that began at least a decade ago, as I previously documented. But it is determined to up its censorship game. Two weeks ago, VdL pledged to create a new disinformation unit for detecting and weeding out online disinformation promoted by foreign agents while using education to “inoculate” (that word again!) EU citizens against false information. The Orwellian title for this new initiative? “European Democracy Shield.
The irony of VdL, once described by POLITICO EU as “Europe’s American president”, talking about the risks posed by foreign agents is, of course, rather rich. But there is an even darker irony.
The EU is currently venting its spleen against the government of Georgia for daring to pass a law seeking to rein in Western meddling as US-EU assets seek to push a colour revolution in the country, just as they did in Ukraine in 2013-14. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has even argued that the Georgian government’s “law on foreign influence transparency goes against [the] core principles & values of the EU, negatively impacting Georgia.” What she hasn’t said is that the Commission she heads up is also seeking to pass similar regulation aimed at combating foreign interference — the so-called “European Democracy Shield”.
"the law on foreign influence transparency goes against core principles & values of the EU"
So why is the EU drafting identical legislation all member states have to adopt?
🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐 https://t.co/5epE40adTG pic.twitter.com/GBhOwhUB93
— Kit Klarenberg 🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻 (@KitKlarenberg) May 29, 2024
While Von der Leyen is a big-part player in all of these processes, the sad truth is that they would almost certainly be happening with or without her. They may even accelerate under her rumoured successor, Mario Draghi. As Conor Gallagher documented in his recent piece, Combating Hate: The Trojan Horse for Precrime, burgeoning censorship and anti-hate efforts are proliferating across the world’s ostensible liberal democracies. And “while hate could mean a racist comment or action; it could also now refer to criticism of Israeli policy or a thought crime against the ruling class.”
This is a key point. While the governing classes in the so-called “liberal” West can dig up a plethora of reasons for censoring online discourse — from protecting children from harmful content to preserving faith in the new generation of “vaccines”, to preventing widespread discussion of, say, central bank digital currencies — the reality is that governments and the corporations whose interests they serve are rapidly losing control of the narrative. The only way of regaining control is through Stasi-like censorship. And that, unfortunately, will mean the end of what little precious remains of liberal democracy.
33 comments
Comments are closed.
The latest front cover of The Economist, the gloriously lunatic neoliberal publication that is reliably wrong about pretty much everything, hails ‘The Three Women who will Shape Europe’ adding:
The need for strong, unified leadership in Europe has never been greater. Ursula von der Leyen, Giorgia Meloni and Marine Le Pen encapsulate the dilemma of how to handle populism https://econ.st/3V5CVxo
God help us all if the Economist is right for once!
Thank you and well said, John.
I’m surprised the rag* did not include Kaja Kallas. *Ownership: Most of the shares are owned by the Agnelli family’s now Dutch investment vehicle with the balance split between the Schroder and Rothschild families.
Not unrelated. A delegation comprised of retired diplomats now employed by UK firms with Hong Kong connections met Foreign Office and Treasury officials this week and suggested dialling down the rhetoric and measures aimed at China.
Ah ha! Bread and butter issues making a strong showing against guns in the Halls of Whitehall? Is the UK suffering from an outbreak of sanity all of a sudden? One can only hope.
Stay safe and pick a winner!
The only way of regaining control is through Stasi-like censorship. And that, unfortunately, will mean the death of liberal democracy
The concluding sentence reminded me of when Nietzsche’s Zarathustra comes down from the mountain to meet the recluse monk. He has a interesting conversation with him, and as Zarathustra walks away laughing, he is puzzled that no one seemed to have told the monk that “God is dead.”
The corpse of liberal democracy is cold and long buried, we are in the interregnum here The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters
Point taken, Zaganostra. This being a Friday and with the sun shining bright and warm here in Barcelona, I must have been wearing my rose-tinted glasses when I wrote the final section. Thanks for bringing me back down to earth. Have made an alteration to the last sentence: “And that, unfortunately, will mean the end of what precious little remains of liberal democracy.” I still think there is something, however small, worth salvaging.
Absolutely, much to be cherished and saved. I always remember the saying “strengthen the things which remain” which, ironically enough, is originally found in Revelations 3:2.
It should be noted that Stasi ultimately wasn’t able to maintain its control, as I would guess most even of their own apparatchiks didn’t believe the party pre-debunking. Still interesting that our rulers are firm believers in the totalitarian theory of state, where all you have to do is feed the population your propaganda, wipe out all criticism, and everyone will love you. All liberals say is 100% projection, every accusation is confession, etc.
NN Cassandra: It should be noted that Stasi ultimately wasn’t able to maintain its control.
That was my first thought. But we live in interesting times and one thing that hasn’t become clear yet is just how the unprecedented novel possibilities for surveillance that AI makes possible will play out.
From Bruce Schneier —
The Internet Enabled Mass Surveillance. AI Will Enable Mass Spying.
Spying has always been limited by the need for human labor. AI is going to change that.
https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2023/12/the-internet-enabled-mass-surveillance-ai-will-enable-mass-spying.html
How AI Will Change Democracy
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/05/how-ai-will-change-democracy.html
Oh. This too —
AI and Microdirectives
Imagine a future in which AIs automatically interpret—and enforce—laws.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/07/ai-and-microdirectives.html
I think there are grounds to be skeptical of using AI for “pre-emptive refutation of persuasive arguments,” simply judging by current output I read about almost daily her at NC. That’s not to say such a thing won’t still be tried, it almost seems obvious they will because no matter how much AI fails they still keep trying to shove it down our throats wherever we turn. As a programmer AI is already embedded in a few of my main tools, and the ‘predictive’ results are often funny because they’re so ridiculous.
At any rate, it’s hard to imagine AI as pre-bunker won’t lead to many people being even more pissed off about being targeted like this. Won’t that just give us more division and cause political tensions to rise even higher? How does that realistically turn out good?
In the end I still don’t know where there’s widespread concern over “exposure to persuasive attacks,” has everyone really forgotten what it means to simply disagree? Maybe it’s the PMC and their bubble hardening DEI programs, but can they make the dogs finally eat the dog food this one last time? Hmm.
Those calling for pre-bunking and more censorship and more ‘correct information’ in the form of increased government approved material are missing the point.
It is precisely because of the lies of the establishment – from ‘the USA was empty before the white man arrived’ to ‘European empires discovered and civilized the world’ – that disinformation and the patently ridiculous is believed.
According to the west, covid came from a laboratory (even though this was first reported by anti China bloggers in Taiwan)
Ukraine war was Russia’s fault and nothing to do with NATO (now NATO is supplying staff and bombs to land on Russian soil as well as Ukrainian)
Palestine is not a war crime
In that case, the problem is belief being used in place of comprehension. Comprehension takes time and effort, beliefs are more compact, easily invoked, and can be exchanged more rapidly.
In highly technologized cultures, automations encapsulate and deliver responses to understood physical, and eventually, social, scenarios. Absent a comprehension of the operations of an automation and the reasoning behind it, individuals can achieve things they don’t understand, and eventually may not even recognize. It may be tempting to construct the belief that the achievement signifies comprehension.
When beliefs are invoked, they interrupt rational logical sequences in cognitive processing and reasoning is truncated, obscuring or omitting relevant information. The reduced amount of information to be assessed can in itself be a comfort the believers.
Ursula will be going all Vance Packard next
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=the+hidden+persuaders
Elsewhere in psyche world B.F. Skinner’s behavioral manipulation research was heavily drawn upon by the advertising industry and then the political campaign industry so our 20th mad scientists have had more than a paw in selling us stuff including cheesy politicians like Ursula. Just call her Mrs.Subliminal.
James Garvey’s Persuaders – hommage to Packard – is also worth a read. He updates things to a degree. Certainly gives an insight into how we are manipulated, though, here, in the UK, by our press more than anyone else.
Although my career is in the dim and distant past now, I have an ounce of sympathy for the Commission. I remember well – when I was in a position to know the truth – their distress at the lies being told about them in the UK newspapers and by British politicians. I am not surprised therefore that they are sensitive to disinformation.
I am firmly of the view that it was the lies in the English newspapers which caused Brexit. Please, I hope people will learn not to trust Rupert Murdoch. That way madness lies.
That Commission for which you store an ounce of sympathy is, sadly, a thing of the past. The current Commission is vastly more incompetent except if you narrow their role to a mere instrument of the PMC in which case one might consider they are doing the hell of a job.
Thank you, both.
I don’t disagree with either of you.
@ Anonymous 2: It was recently suggested that a study be conducted about attitudes to immigrants etc. in Liverpool, where the Sun is boycotted, and nearby Manchester, where the Sun’s sales match the national average.
Apologies for posting anecdotes, not facts, but this is too tempting given the comments above. I just heard a rumo(u)r – and it is only that – that the Commission is now using AI to write policy papers. Concerning if true.
Thank you, C.
Uschi’s English ancestors hail from the same area, south Midlandss, as the Spencers (including Spencer-Churchill branch), Washingtons and Draytons (as in Magnolia) and made their money in sheep farming. They were royalists in the civil war.
The Washington family home, Sulgrave Manor, and some villages linked to the Drayton family and Spencer family estates (Wormleighton and Althorp, Steane and Wicken, the latter two sold decades ago) are in the area.
I don’t know if Uschi is related to the others.
Looks like censorship is really going to clamp down in the EU. All for a good case of course. If this Shield had been in place about four years ago, all information about Covid being spread by aerosols would have been totally suppressed or debunked. The desire seems to be in the EU to have total control on what appears on the internet and sideline anything that does not agree with the present “narrative”. So the internet in the EU will not be about education and enlightenment but about suppression and obedience. How far can they push it though? Will they ban and make illegal VPNs? Make access to the Dark Web a crime? You could hope that they will seek to use AI to monitor and censor the net as it could be easily fooled. But as I have said before, the EU is now well on its way to being the European Hegemony.
Nice to see so in such clear fashion whom this “public servant” is offering her “public services”. Evidently not to the public but “the partners”.
I do wonder if these measures in the EU are a little too late.
The European elections are in June – it’s hard to see this level of censorship making much difference to the onward march of the centre right ( aka populists in EU speak).
Plus, with Brexit Britain ( ok, we’ve got our own issues & challenges too) I suspect it will be harder to enforce the kind of censorship & control that Brussels is peddling.
Can’t help but think the Commission is now using a rear guard action which is too little & too late but perhaps symptomatic of a dying behemoth.
As the old aphorism goes – ‘ in the absence of anything better, resort to the truth’ – likely too late for the ‘Colleagues’ of Bruxelles.
Growing up Catholic in America in the 1950’s and 1960’s, we schoolchildren were titillated by the existence of The Index of Forbidden Books (Index Librorum Prohibitorum.). This was a list of books which, on pain of excommunication and subsequent burning in Hell for all eternity, we were not to read. Because they would corrupt our mind, our faith, and our morals.
The first texts to be listed were apparently some versions of the Gospels, which did not please the Church hierarchy. Since manuscripts were laboriously copied by hand, mainly in monasteries under the strict control of the Church, suppression of non-orthodox ideas was relatively easy.
With the introduction of movable type, however, allowing Martin Luther’s heretical tracts to be spread throughout Europe in a matter of months, the Church had to step up control of ‘disinformation.’ Zola, Gibbon, Galileo (listed, then removed,) Descartes, Voltaire, Bacon, Rousseau, Victor Hugo, Locke, Mill, all went onto The Index.
The Enlightenment happened, in spite of the Church’s endeavors. The Church finally gave up on The Index in the 1960’s. Television had happened, and what force could fight against the rising addiction to I Love Lucy and Howdy Doody.
Some years ago two Evangelicals came to my door, a young man and woman, and asked, quite sincerely, if I would tell them what they should pray for. I said without hesitation: enlightenment. They thanked me and walked away.
I wonder if VdL has considered pre-bunking religion.
The whole situation is maddening. At times it feels like I’m the only one in my peer group who sees the darkening clouds and hears the thunder. But the sky is so nice and clear today they tell me…
This seems like yet another thing that should arouse the anger of the population and cause the great Atlanticist project to crumble in the face of unified revolt. But I feel like all the streams will be dry and dead long before that dam breaks. It is increasingly clear that the people in power will have their way, sooner or later, and any holding actions against them to preserve sovereignty, freedom, or personal liberty, will be disregarded.
Bring on the state sponsored constitutional convention in the US. Sure, it will be corporate $hit show but I would rather we tear the whole thing down than continue to live like this.
“…At times it feels like I’m the only one in my peer group who sees the darkening clouds and hears the thunder. But the sky is so nice and clear today they tell me…”
yup.
its weird…and this after a lifetime of heterodoxy.
(ie: i oughtta be used to being the only one,lol)
but before…say…2015…i could always find others who were at least a little heterodox…on at least some things.
not any more.
even the teabillies have hardened their shibboleth armor.
and no one….NO One…wants to even consider things like USA= empire…let alone empire in terminal decline.
this was, of course, the Norm like forever…but now its apparently universal.
israeli genocide?
cant be.
the west started the ukraine war?
heretic!
we encircle china, want a war with them, which is stupid?
but…but Chicoms!
of course, i dont get out much at all any more…so not even decent anecdata,lol.
Well, using the term “heterodox” may damn you in this post-rational age. Simply, communication about politics is pointless at this time because it makes even close friends rabid. I have a recent friend who said he’d cut out my wife and I if we didn’t vote for Biden and Trump won.
I avoid talking politics because I realize that the project is just to exhausting because we have to go back to where we agree on “facts” and that, due to the heterodox nature of the internet where there are dozens of “world views” with their supportive “facts.” When you and I were young there was this idea that there was such a thing as “truth” but I don’t think that is the case today–I think we are slipping in between dimensions.
Let’s just go back to Reading is FUNdamental, and keep David St. Hubbins in mind while reading.
TPTB ultimately would like to attain perfect or almost perfect self-censorship, if possible.
Similar experiments were tried in the past and never succeeded. But the controllers have this fix idea, the the unrully mob must be controlled – since they can ultimately threaten the Golden Calf: “Private Property is sacrosanct and God given”.
It will be worst until it might get better. Moar war, moar bombing, clensing, droughts, storms, crop failures, incidental tactical nuke… Then maybe the unrully mob will start behaving like that army of the dead in the “Lord of the Rings: Return of the King”, and be unstoppable due to sheer mass and desperation and anger…
My studies and observations over many decades of life have led me to the conclusions that most people crave to conform to certain standards both in speech and action so they can navigate the world with a minimum of friction. People will willingly believe things they don’t really believe and believe, passionately, in a conceptual framework that meets their emotional needs.
I am friendly with people who believe in “facts” that are almost the opposite of what I believe. I think the whole effort to stop “misinformation” will mainly work particularly in Europe but I think that effort is unlikely to successful in the USA where heterodoxy is the normal reality in my country. The gulf between variou sub-groups is too great. They are hppy to conform to the MSNBC world view or the views of people like Glenn Greenwald, or people who believe in the world according to the DailyWire.
1981 CIA Director William Casey :
Well, that’s the US, but even so…
(Aposiopesis)
I was in Hungary and Austria last week. I very much enjoyed encountering in both countries numerous roadside billboards slagging off von der Leyen on the occasion of the upcoming EU elections. While nary a negative word is said about her in the Western corporate media organs, do not believe for a minute that she isn’t despised over there.
I was hoping for some examples of “weakened” forms of disinformation used to inoculate. Is it like Allen Dulles and “a conspiracy theory”?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/30/europe-on-high-alert-after-suspected-moscow-linked-arson-and-sabotage
The Guardian’s report from 3 days ago struck me as a particularly ominous example of coordinated propaganda, seeding suspicion. That seemed like inoculation to create rather than prevent a pandemic of disinformation.
OR. . .schools can reintroduce classes in logic. In particular, they can provide the list of logical fallacies as a kind of identification chart, like bird watching only consequential for the astute watcher. Knowing how to think analytically is useful. Granted the sources of things needing thinking are less reliable. But, maybe a gnostic community will have an upwards influence on that.