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Alt. Media “Epidemic” Has Elites Pounding Panic Button

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“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”
-Evelyn Beatrice Hall

You know it’s gotten real when a dreary-eyed Hillary Clinton crawls out of her hole to dispassionately and laboriously read a speech about the dangers of fake news  and… yes… Russian propaganda.

Duh-duh-duhhhh!

Did someone say… RUSSIA!?

“The epidemic,” Clinton said yesterday in a press conference, “of malicious fake news and fake propaganda that flooded social media over the past year… it’s now clear that so-called fake news can have real-world consequences.

“This is not about politics or partisanship,” she went on. “Lives are at risk, lives of ordinary people just trying to go about their days to do their jobs, contribute to their communities. It is a danger that must be addressed and addressed quickly.”

We fail to see how Russian propaganda has put people’s lives directly at risk. Unless, of course, Hillary is suggesting that the increasingly-bizarre #Pizzagate swarm journalism campaign (which apparently caused a man to shoot up a floor tile in a D.C. pizza shop) was conjured up by a bunch of Russian trolls.

And this is about as absurd as saying Russian trolls were why Trump got elected.

“It needs to be said,” former counterintelligence agent John R. Schindler (who, by the way, believes Assange and Snowden are both Russian plants), writes in the Observer, “that nearly all of the liberals eagerly pontificating about how Putin put Trump in office know nothing about 21st century espionage, much less Russia’s unique spy model and how it works. Indeed, some of the most ardent advocates of this Kremlin-did-it conspiracy theory were big fans of Snowden and Wikileaks — right until clandestine Russian shenanigans started to hurt Democrats. Now, they’re panicking.”

(Nonetheless, #Pizzagate and Trump, IMHO, are manifestations of a population which deeply… deeply… distrusts the handlers and gatekeepers of the status quo. Justified or not. And with or without Putin’s shadowy fingers strumming its magic hypno-harp across the Land of the Free. This runs deeper than just Putin.)

So how, pray tell, will this “fake news” problem be addressed by the politicos, you wonder? Well, they really have two options. 

One is to stay out of it, but encourage clever workarounds to fake news. To let the social media networks and other great minds innovate the problem out of existence.

Such as, for example, stronger reputation systems which incentivize newsworthy sharing and punish, or disincentivize, agenda-based “fake” news.

Or even something like what Fakespot does for fake product reviews…

Fakespot allows you to plug in an Amazon product link or a Yelp page to analyze and identify fake reviews.

(It’s actually great for shopping. Try it out here.)

Ways to identify fake news without impinging upon any individual’s freedom of expression or privacy are completely possible. And they should be voluntarily chosen and received.

But, in reality, that’s not what this “fake news” campaign is about.

This has nothing to do with protecting innocent lives… or routing out legitimately fake news.

Fake news has always been around, from the fake news which led Americans to believe the Pearl Harbor attack was a surprise and completely unprovoked….

To the fake news campaigns put out by Edward Bernays tricking women into believing cigarettes were empowering little phallics of feminism. (AKA “Torches of Freedom.”)

This War on Fake News has more to do with the elites finally realizing how little control they have over the minds of the unwashed masses. Rather, this is a war on the freaks, geeks and weirdos who’ve formed a decentralized and massively-influential media right under their noses.

The establishment, of course, no-likey. They’re opting for the yawningly-predictable “Option B.”

Censorship.

Hide your kids. Hide your husbands. Hide your wives. Wrap your head in tinfoil. The Russian trolls are coming to infect your brainwaves. Let us protect you.

Clinton cuts to the chase: “Bipartisan legislation is making its way through Congress to boost the government’s response to foreign propaganda, and Silicon Valley is starting to grapple with the challenge and threat of fake news. It’s imperative that leaders in both the private sector and the public sector step up to protect our democracy and innocent lives.”

Meanwhile, well across the pond, similar rhetoric was being bandied about by Alex Younger, head of British intelligence agency MI6. Younger, after expressing concern over shadowy countries holding too much sway over the Brit’s collective consciousness, said:

“Our job is to give the government the information advantage; to shine a light on these activities and to help our country and allies, in particular across Europe, build the resilience they need to protect themselves. The risks at stake are profound and represent a fundamental threat to our sovereignty; they should be a concern to all those who share democratic values.”

Big picture, what does this mean?

The mainstream media is dying. It’s flesh is becoming gangrene. It has become an aversive entity. Whatever it promotes (which is usually more centralization of power), the majority of the people run away from pinching their noses in disgust.

The Alt. Media, a more decentralized form of media, in other words, is fighting its way into becoming the new norm. And this has elites pounding the panic button.

But the new decentralized paradigm is here to stay. The freedom and power has saturated the taste buds of millions. It’s too late now.

And as long as it’s tethered down by top-down, centralized control systems — such as the digital plantations of Facebook and Youtube, for example — the battles will be incessant, ongoing, and will progressively intensify.

And with each and every post, tweet, or account these outlets censor, there will be — much like the rise of the Frankensteinian “Alt-Right” — a piling on to the tumor-like growth… the hodgepodge… the melting pot of peeved outcasts banding together, uniting under a single cause.

And that cause, this time, will be the general right to freely express one’s own opinion without arbitrary blue-penciling.

The next cultural rebellion, therefore, should not aim its arrow just at the Established Media. The E.M. will die of self-inflicted wounds. That war has been won. It should aim higher. It should be channeled by Evelyn Beatrice Hall in her 1906 work, Friends of Voltaire:

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

If we allow that simple principle to be our guiding light, then what’s next will be something everyone can resonate with and rally around. And the cause will be that much stronger.

Decentralized, censorship-resistant networks which are created with the individual right to self-ownership, freedom of expression and privacy baked into the cake. That’s what’s next.

New-World social media platforms like GAB, Steemit, Synereo, Diaspora and others are paving the road as you read this.

We’ll take a look at them here in our virtual pages next week.

To paraphrase Steve Jobs, If you want to see into the future, you don’t need some silly crystal ball. Simply look to the fringes of society.

But, I urge you not to just look at it.

I urge you to leap.

Until next time,

Chris Campbell
Managing editor, Laissez Faire Today

P.S. Have something to say? Say it! [email protected]

The post Alt. Media “Epidemic” Has Elites Pounding Panic Button appeared first on Laissez Faire.


Source: http://freedombunker.com/2016/12/09/alt-media-epidemic-has-elites-pounding-panic-button/


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