The cause: the emotional distress of reactionary conservative at the thought of responsible executive management and oversight of large (immense!) social networking platforms.
Here is reason.
From the Awesome Conversation
Most platforms are only “common carriers” — they support communications / “content” and, if large, attend to some maintenance of normal community standards. The systems that support extremism include “dark web” and specialized communities that one has to know how to access via the “out there” or radical vines.
Of course the idea of self-proclaimed “patriots” invading the Capitol and attempting to disrupt the validating of possibly the most well observed and secured election in American history would be mind boggling but for the agitprop and disinformation industries and the self-selected “echo chambers” that surround those who fall into cult-like information traps.
Here’s another and related excerpt from today busyness, and it follows from an absurd and irresponsible statement of fact that wasn’t factual. From the Awesome Conversation –>
“Free Speech” is a right that Government cannot limit” — not true. Criminal law prohibits speech associated with conspiracy and incitement; tort law addresses libel and slanders. While we may enjoy a great bandwidth in expression, we treat adult sexual material differently than we do other content – I hope you don’t have a problem with that – and professional and responsible publications prove themselves sensitive to differentiating between valid-reliable information and bunk.
Most of the public understands differences between mainstream media and partisan publications. The major common carriers – like Facebook – believe they have cultural, political, and social responsibilities that include the discouragement of disinformation and the encouragement of good civil conduct whatever the speaker’s beliefs and thoughts may be.
I’ve owned this one a long time and here own up to not having yet read it! 🙂 However, I know of it and reviews may be easily found online:
The energies and numbers of Israelis and Palestinians engaged in cross-cultural activities (like this one with Mohammed S. Dajani Daoudi), in trade, even in commiseration, have been stable and strong for years.
Do the extremists the west calls “terrorists” authentically represent Islam?
Do yesterday’s rockets from Gaza represent today’s Palestinians?
The PLO/PA and Hamas have ways of making the news look bad.
Other Palestinians, however, have ways of getting things done despite the efforts of the Phantoms of the Soviet to repeat their declarations — year after year for 72 years — while handily lifting some money from Palestinian pockets and skimming more from UNCHR revenues intended for Palestinian development. While the war that exists in the minds of Palestinian “Leaders” — and ticks off the IDF most of all — goes on and on and on and on, Palestinians have long been working.
Here are a few references that BackChannels regards as positive indicators for the region. The URL titles provide the story headers:
The Left is the achievement of Western enlightenment.
Recall the authoritarian and reactionary governance in place that involved hundreds of years of warfare between politically absolute monarchies and the development of a mercantile class powerful enough, eventually, to stand up for their own interests and security.
The Soviet / post-Soviet Far Left indeed continued the Russian historical experience with paternal authoritarianism — and, of course, it built on the secret police organization established by Nicholas II (the Okhrana). The rest is more or less KGB history and a long history of motivating or driving politics based on the amplification of the victimization of numerous groups thrown beneath the wheels of history — or believing themselves so.
The formerly moderate Left’s — or “cultural left’s” — embrace of humanism, secularism, the broadest freedom possible for persons (as opposed to, say, impersonal “headcount”) is echoed in our Constitution and Bill of Rights. We were raised to believe in Man and Reason and great possibilities. It’s from the Russian side and, in part, the 19th Century and earlier portions of the 20th that we seem approving of authoritarianism and thuggery, frankly, in now polarized Left and Right camps.
One may suppose the center has not held — and we have forgotten many of the good things we as Americans were to embrace.
Four days ago, conservative libertarian Charles Murray stood on a stage at Vermont’s Middlebury College to talk about his latest book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, with political science students. Instead of being heard out, this in Murray’s own words is what happened before a packed house:
Then I went onstage, got halfway through my first sentence, and the uproar began.
First came a shouted recitation in unison of what I am told is a piece by James Baldwin. I couldn’t follow the words. That took a few minutes. Then came the chanting. The protesters had prepared several couplets that they chanted in rotations—“hey, hey, ho, ho, white supremacy has to go,” and the like. It was very loud, and stayed loud. It’s hard for me estimate, but perhaps half the audience were protesters and half had come to hear the lecture.
BackChannels readers are by now familiar with terms like “Active Measures” and “Reflexive Control”(URL –> PDF) that connect the amplifying of America’s political polarization with Moscow and its efforts to destabilize the European Union and NATO to better establish the feudal worldview on which depends the greater promotion and sustaining of dictatorship in the world.
This blog’s readers know also the chains: Putin-Assad-Khamenei (or “Assad the Tyrant as flanked by Putin and Khamenei”); Putin-Orban; Putin-Erdogan; Putin-Le Pen. Such relationships need not be too friendly, only merely authoritarian and encouraging of conditions favorable to a shared “malignant narcissism“.
The below referenced tweet packages reflexive control, Moscow’s continued dabbling with terrorism (for more of how that works, see BackChannel’s post on ISIS as Moscow’s tool — follow up by looking up “Zawahiri, Russia”), and the induction of a disturbing new American politics: Republican Party associated “Brown” New Nationalism v Democratic Party associated “Red-Green” Resurgent Socialism.
Some of us Conservative or Liberal but definitely, perhaps becoming stridently so, more Middle have not been pleased by the eruption of Fascism on the Left and the appearance of a hardening contempt for the public (and media) on the Far Right, the latter falling just a little all white, all male, and all superior short of the ranks of the white supremacists.
There’s the possibility that any effort to bring people together may begin by seeing them apart, Farthest Left to Farthest Right, and, later, in Keith Ellison fashion, curbing the indignant toward accommodation. However, be that possibility as it may, Americans have most certainly experienced the development of a uniquely cant-ridden, contentious, uncivil, and unreasoning national politics.
As happens always in general combat, it’s those caught in the crossfire or whose turf — region, city, community, home — has been overrun that suffer most of all, and that whether in Syria (generated: 4.8 million refugees), Ukraine (generated: 1.7+ million Internally Displaced Persons), or the United States (okay, we’re a little uncomfortable here in the middle): for anyone else still hanging around the middle of the political aisle, this may be a good time to pull the wayward of the Parties back to reason — and then have a good push of the irredeemably immoderate back toward the margins where they have always been and, God willing, will return to grumbling.
Historically, Moscow has devoted itself to managing political perception domestically (thank George Orwell for the parables) and producing political influence in its target states. The depth of the totalitarianism is what strikes us, but other aspects of the state’s diplomacy seem within bounds until one starts looking into 20th Century intellectual and political history.
Today, “Moscow” represents the ultra-nationalist neo-imperial version of KGB-style political expression. It loves conservatives! And does so because it may helped create the same using the same methods with the addition of the possible manipulation of “Allahu Akbar Attacks”, for each one of those has induced a greater patriotic nationalist response!
I hedge but a little to leave it to others to connect a few more dots.
Why conservatives?
Feudalism.
The divisions formed by the urging to demonize one’s opponents and idolize one’s hero conforms exactly to the medieval mode (and for my conservative readers, our impression of Muhammad’s medieval Islam) encouraged by President Putin’s architecture of power in Moscow.
Where Trump may do no wrong and the “Libtard” Left and Far Left have nothing to offer beyond their cries of outrage (over every little thing!) — and Trump, his plutocratic business class, and the host of “Right Wing Nuts” and, now, “Alt-Right” (White Supremacists) may do nothing good for the country — we may have a “Brown” vs “Red-Green” national politics bent out of shape by foreign influence and manipulation or simple contagion.
The failing @nytimes writes total fiction concerning me. They have gotten it wrong for two years, and now are making up stories & sources!
Not only has President Trump today a critical issue continuing to develop over Credibility, Integrity, and Trust (CIT), but his followers do as well.
For the term “lamestream media” (Red State has done the etymology) to pervert to a general smear employed by Far Right media to throw doubt on traditionally highest integrity reporting is one thing: however, to have then convinced a large portion of the American population that it cannot generally trust reportage in The New York Times (or Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, etc.), that is quite another — and pretty much what Moscow would enjoy if it could have only centrally controlled the process of confusing and obliterating the critical reading and reasoning facility of so many American minds.
On that, BackChannels repeats but a little differently with the employment of the passive voice: it may have been known that every “Allahu Akbar Attack” would induce a patriotic nationalist response!
Add the reaction to the vaunted threat posed by refugees from Muslim-majority states, especially Syria, and what illness do Moscow’s target states develop?
Xenophobia!
(Regarding Assad’s indirect engineering and incubation of ISIL as an ideal political tool — a goad for blackmailing the west; a useful foil for demonstrating Moscow’s latest military technology — Moscow’s defense sales have risen on such demonstrations; and in the end the best of enemies prepared for vanquishing — how glorious!): https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/12/09/syria-assad-isil-background/)
Yo, bro’! Get the picture as President Putin’s Moscow might wish you to get it, albeit without knowing quite so much?
Marine Le Pen appears to represent the French national soul — but with a crooked grin or mouth; President Trump’s own surreal first week and the start of another needs no rehashing here; Viktor Orban has fashioned himself as another palace-building, well palace refurbishing, autocrat; and Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s political repression and Islamist expression have ditched EU accession and imperiled the NATO arrangement in Turkey.
In October 2014, Katharine Gorka of the Council on Global Security published a white paper on how language was developed and finessed by the American government to cultivate the moderate and discourage extremists. While noting “The conscious effort not to insult “peaceful” Muslims and at the same time not confer legitimacy on violent Muslims,” she settles on a critique of “Social Movement Theory and Counter-Terrorism Policy,” which turns out also a criticism of the Obama Administration’s approach to “Allahu Akbar” terrorist attacks up to the approximate date of publication.
Here is an excerpt from the thesis of the work:
What are the implications of the Social Movement paradigm for U.S. counter-terrorism policy? First and foremost, it dismisses the ideas and beliefs that inspire
terrorists to act. It reduces their actions from religiously or ideologically inspired acts of will to merely reflexive reaction, little more than an involuntary response to abject circumstances. In this way it also serves to legitimize the actions of extremists, deeming them not as the unjust and horrific acts that they are but as the rational and justified response to negative circumstances, whether they be imperialism, colonialism, tyranny, or poverty.
To be clear, social movement theory can provide valuable and instructive insights into how groups form and behave, but as a unitary and all-encompassing lens through which to view Islamic terrorism and extremism, it dooms the United States to strategic failure.
Not surprisingly, this single issue is at the heart of the current debate. Today, in the United States, the most important point of contention over U.S. counter-terrorism policy is its deliberate rejection of the ideological component, of the way in which Islam itself drives or inspires extremism or terrorism.
A large number of authors and analysts, as well as lawmakers, have criticized the systemic failure of the U.S. government to address the ideological component of Islamist terrorism.
This paper argues that the roots of that failure lie here, in the application of social movement theory to Islamic activism. If one looks closely at the policy documents that emerged from Obama’s National Security Staff around this time, one can see the influence of social movement theory as well as the criticisms these documents elicited.
As a history, Gorka’s paper covers the many strategies that have been applied to detected and quelling Islamist violence — or should that be “Islamist”?
BackChannels has dropped the quotation marks for at least that much.
While dismissing the “social movement paradigm” as a foundation for counterterrorism strategy, Gorka may have overlooked other contributing variables, much including messianic-narcissistic drives in Islamist leaders and the ranks that support them, and behind that — basically taking place earlier in the formation of personality — the “narcissistic mortification” that drive compulsive wishes and actions beyond normal boundaries in belligerence and the importance of the centrality of control to proponents.
While making the “call the spade a spade argument” — ” . . . language must be used that accurately identifies and distinguishes the enemy, for example, the Global Jihadist Movement” — Gorka may have missed the extremism developing in the Red “comrade networks” of the anti-Semitic International Solidarity / Palestinian Solidarity movements and in such “Brown” and “New Nationalist” spheres as the right-wing Jobbik in Hungary and now so many name-your-nation “defense leagues” springing up in response to the goad of Islamist terrorist events.
Americans also have seen a stink raised about potentially high value State Department e-mail allegedly mishandled by candidate Clinton — and they have witnessed Trump spin the same story into an attack perhaps facetiously wishing that Moscow would recover the cache, despite the possibility of the same containing state secrets — and the opposition has picked up on that to throw the mud pie right back at him.
Into that mess comes this comes this header from the “lesser media”: “Trump & Putin. Yes, It’s Really a Thing” (Talking Points Memo, July 25, 2016). At the top, editor and writer Josh Marshall remarks, “My weekend post on Russia, Vladimir Putin, and Trump . . . has been one of if not the most read pieces I’ve ever written for TPM.”
Whatever the truth may be as regards either Clinton or Trump, the domestic atmosphere for elections has been poisoned by the polarized and strident politics enabled and perhaps encouraged in both camps. For the presence of “Red-Green” — old comrades in the “Solidarity Mode” — see, for example —
I post the URL because I like its unmistakable Red-Green branding in relation to that movement within the Democratic Party that has been developing for many years, and this year appears as part of a hate-America-first crowd that has been burning flags.
As regards the GOP, it’s doubtful that Trump would take office as what this blog refers to as a “New Nationalist” (in the manner of Orban in Hungary and Erdogan in Turkey). However, with the employment of Paul Manafort and an uncertain relationship with Putin, the idea that a Trump Administration might react to domestic and foreign affairs with an authoritarian hand also appears to worry Americans.
Add in the leading foreign affairs element: Putin’s efforts to destabilize NATO would seem to be advancing.
BackChannels has often stated in relation to dictatorships: “Different Talks — Same Walk”.
Again, in different words, the Democratic Party has been infiltrated or swelled by the presence of “fascists on the left”; the GOP frontrunner has been smeared as authoritarian and nationalist in predisposition; and NATO now hosts two states — Hungary and Turkey — in which the political style of each president has departed from standards shepherding the classically liberal values of other open and democratic societies.
Call it “Syndicate Red Brown Green” or Moscow’s efforts to play “ends against the middle”, the states of affairs for Americans in the middle — on both domestic and foreign affairs fronts — is looking rough.
BackChannels 