TRUTH BE TOLD

FACTS LIE BLEEDING

In his second term Donald Trump’s institutionalized disinformation is being spread quickly through his own social media and by mainstream social media. Everything is judged by a non-thinking audience by the number of views, without fact-checking and earning dollars for folks posting untruths. Image credit: JON SAILER on Unsplash.

By DR VICKI BISMILLA

As secondary and post-secondary students start a new school year, it is a good time to examine how knowledge is manipulated.

One of the best tools to do this is a case study as Professor Salim Abdool Karim does at the Royal Society of Science, a Fellowship of eminent scientists. You can access the hour-long lecture here.

The Royal Society states that a search for truth is a key pillar in society and Professor Karim analyses the threats to truth through institutionalized disinformation.

Take AIDS, for example. The book The River: A Journey to the source of HIV and AIDS (New York, 2000) written by a journalist Edward Hooper (not a scientist) through his own investigations into testing of polio vaccines in the Congo, claimed that AIDS was started by the USA injecting people in West Africa through a polio vaccine. True or false? After legal actions, laboratory investigations, journal articles and top-level meetings at the Royal Society in London, the allegations were put to rest. Science showed that AIDS was started through human contact with monkeys which was rational, data-based evidence through scientific sequencing. At that time Russia had a KGB office of disinformation which said that AIDS was created in a US lab.

When COVID 19 hit in late 2019 social media was rife with people with no expertise posting false narratives. Enter Trump with his social media platforms positing conspiracy theories, anti-masking movements, blame games and misinformation endangering people’s lives. Disinformation became “truths” for the masses. His first term became the major source of disinformation. The New York Times fact-checked his speeches and found them riddled with lies. So if the state is the major disinformation source then where to get the truth? Cornell University Press wrote that Trump’s lies about unproven COVID treatments (bleach) and defying mask-wearing led to risky practices and more infections.

In his second term his institutionalized disinformation is being spread quickly through his own social media and by mainstream social media. Everything is judged by a non-thinking audience by the number of views, without fact-checking and earning dollars for folks posting untruths. The New York Times research team found many sources of COVID disinformation and a prominent source was Robert F. Kennedy Jr. So Trump made him his health czar and he is at present dismantling the Centres for Disease Control.

Professor Karim calls this state capture.

And continued state capture became vital for the regime. The Supreme Court was captured by appointing sycophant judges to carry out Trump’s agenda. Media became afraid to speak out. Congress and Senate were silenced by threats of connived defeats in engineered votes at the next election. Vengeance against his criminal prosecutors and against Biden and Anthony Fauci was quickly exercised. His “replacement theory” that white Americans are being replaced by non-white immigrants took hold. He initiated mass deportations of non-whites, ended birthright citizenship and anti-diversity became mainstream.

Then came tariffs with accumulation of personal wealth being the key driver. Influence and power were exercised to remove barriers to wealth accumulation in personal businesses like crypto currencies. Obstacles were removed by minimizing the Environmental Protection Agency, FDA, Federal Aviation Administration, Equal Employment Commission, all attacked by his DOGE. Lies became facts. State accountability institutions like the taxman, national prosecution authorities and police investigation units that would hold billionaires accountable were dismantled or disempowered. He changed how laws were made. Instead of going through vetting processes, he is making laws and signing them as executive orders which can be overturned by the next president, but damage is already embedded. He is using democracy itself to meet his personal needs.

Businesses are not permitted to show tariff costs on their pricing tags. To accumulate wealth and power Trump eviscerated the justice department so it cannot address corruption and he pardoned tax cheats.

Professor Karim points out that to accumulate wealth and power you have to hide the truth. Hence, state capture of the three main forces who would fight state lies – media, legal system, intellectuals and scientists – became the strategy. So Trump is systematically attacking free press, threatening to dismantle National Public Radio and public television like PBS, discrediting independent press, blocking accredited media at White House briefings and supporting sycophantic media to spread the lies. Journalists, afraid of punishment and personal threats are now self-censoring to stay safe. For favourable legal outcomes the state captured the judiciary by their own appointments to the Supreme Court, appointed a favourable attorney general, scared law firms into submission, dropped charges against corruption and used executive orders to silence democratic law firms.

The attack on science and intellectual processes included calling Fauci a disaster and shrugging off soaring infection numbers. And because science matters and its truth will take power away from him, Trump started to get rid of government science departments, coerce universities to suppress dissension and held back university funding to force them to be compliant. He threatened scientific journals so they self censor, fired leaders who went against him, and the scientific system is being steadily broken down. The top vaccine official was forced out and billions of dollars were cut from research agencies so science has become politicized. He terminated grants that the government doesn’t agree with like AIDS, vaccines and climate change and put certain university departments into receivership.

Professor Karim offers five suggestions to students and activists standing up for truth:

1. Recognize the problem.

2. Appreciate the role of scientists and truth sayers who base their voice and work on data and evidence.

3. Fact-check everything, especially official government communications e.g. on climate change. Should we believe the UN reports based on data and evidence or government sponsored propaganda that supports polluting industries enabled by government funding for economic reasons? There’s no freedom without free press.

4. Rebuild trust in science and public understanding of science.

5. Every bit of resistance helps even if it seems insignificant. Poke holes in false narratives especially with social media bombarding us and taking us in directions that make no intelligent sense and moving public opinions in its wake.

All of these occurrences have been reported on mainstream news channels but this analysis from Professor Karim and the Royal Society, is a starting point for students embarking on the most important thinking years of their lives.

Dr Vicki Bismilla is a retired Superintendent of Schools and retired college Vice-President, Academic, and Chief Learning Officer. She has authored two books.