Blog: the Panopticon, Public Trust, and “Fake News”
The Panopticon, Public Trust, and “Fake News”
Today’s “Quickshot Quotation” post comes from a brand new book by American Intelligence whistleblower Edward Snowden, called “Permanent Record” – I’ve only just purchased it this week and thus haven’t even had time to add to my library listings. Unfortunately I’m still only about halfway through the book itself, but you can find one of the few non-antagonistic reviews available online, here at the New York Review of Books.
I think what attracted me to this quotation is not just that it’s true, but that I suspect that even Snowden himself might not be entirely aware of how broadly this statement touches on our society at large – which is rather incredible when you think about it because globalized Pig Empire mass surveillance and “bulk data collection” is after all a very “broad” subject.
While obviously as a former CIA systems expert who helped design key portions of the NSA’s mass surveillance program Snowden’s focus is going to be on the awesome technological power of the U.S. government’s online global Panopticon, the propaganda involved in justifying that program is in of itself not technological, but political and literary in nature. Furthermore that propaganda is not created in, and does not live in a vacuum but rather exists inside a world fundamentally altered by the very same attack on truth that motivated Snowden to speak out and risk his life, relationships and future happiness to expose the NSA’s global surveillance operation.
Sure the government lies to obscure its mass surveillance program, and sure the media lies to protect the government, and Wall Street lies to run rigged roulette games backed by your pension money and everyone knows the big companies lie to sell their products, but has anyone ever thought about what happens to the public and its discourse when all of this is happening at the same time? Has anyone considered how this routine and foundational violation of trust might affect the average person’s outlook towards their government, societal institutions and even each other – particularly when this constant, mind-boggling violation of trust is occurring in the middle of a fake “Culture War” with all too real casualties?
Frankly, I don’t know the answer and if the truth be told the question consumes a rather large portion of my thoughts and my writing. The vast majority of the things I write about consist in some way of deconstructing lies, propaganda and purposely implanted false assumptions used by the powerful to deceive the public at large – usually for the ultimate purpose of exploitation and profit. Whether it’s exposing the manufacture of consent for endless wars, examining how to control the way a population thinks about the news through the use of framing, or deconstructing the lies nazis tell to obscure the terrifying fascist creep in America, most of my work looks at the front lines of this “full-on assault on the principle of truth” – politically, economically and in the media. That is after all why I bought Edward Snowden’s new book and why I continue to read many other books like it; I’m trying desperately to stay informed and help inform others in the middle of this vast and open war on the public’s right to at least be truthfully informed about the horrible things rich people are doing – both to them and for personal profit in their name.
What I have learned is that there really doesn’t appear to be a unifying conspiracy theory here unless you want to call globalized “free market” capitalism, colonialism and imperialism conspiracy theories – and I’m not sure you could get away with that line of crap even on cable news.
This horrifying environment of falsehoods that walk upright in the light of day even though we all know they are falsehoods, has many fathers and many grabbing hands happy to exploit the abolition of truth for their own nefarious ends. When the people have very good reasons not to trust anyone in their government, their media or the upper classes it becomes possible for literally anyone with enough reach to vault to incredible influence by pointing out that the emperor has no clothes – even a naked fascist billionaire liar whose criticisms could be applied equally to himself as the corrupt, amoral and dishonest establishment he is excoriating.
– nina illingworth
