Radicalization comes in all forms - Left and Right.
Over the last few years, we have seen a concerted effort online to influence public opinion, worldwide, through social media postings. And it has been working. Given the anonymous nature of the online experience, it isn't hard to set up numerous fake accounts and post opinions and make it seem like what you are saying resonates with a lot of people. With bot accounts and now AI, this will only get worse - and a lot of people are talking about (but not actually doing) going offline.
Our European friends are scrambling to find more Euro-centric alternatives to American "tech" (that is not really tech per se, but more of a psy-ops operation) and I don't blame them. I noted before that when I used to fly out to Silicon Valley every month for Patent work, we actually made silicon, hence the name. Then, it was realized that software, particularly operating systems, was where the real money was, and silicon became a commodity item. Computers got cheap, operating systems stayed the same price or got even more expensive.
Operating systems became commodity items as well, and Silicon Valley made its last transformation into Bullshit Valley. It became a big advertising and propaganda agency - buying and selling eyeballs by tracking people through their web browsers and social media sites (now called "apps") and the smart phone made sure we were plugged-in 24/7. Back in the 1970s, people wasted 4.6 hours a day watching television, today they waste more than that on their smart phones. It is the new television.
The real money isn't in selling computers or operating systems or software, but in accumulating data about people and manipulating people into doing things. More than one person has noted how it seems the smart phone "listens" to what we are saying and then promotes products in response. Maybe this is not literally true, but I suspect they do read your e-mails and texts and of course try to track what sites you visit and then sell this information to retailers.
So Amazon sells you a widget after you texted Grandma about it. What's the harm in that? Maybe you even got a good price on it - or maybe not, as it seems flexible pricing is now the norm online (looking at you, Wayfair!). But early on, some bad actors on the world stage realized that public opinion could be altered through social media and individuals could be targeted for radicalization.
We're not just talking ISIS here, either. Remember the whole Qanon conspiracy? It seems quaint now, in retrospect, but it was supplanted or perhaps morphed into Pizzagate, Gamergate, and eventually the J6 insurrection (ahem! I meant to say, guided tour of the Capitol Building).
We watched in horror as Russian trolls and their paid allies trolled America with a lot of nonsense. The CoVid epidemic added to the pile - convincing Americans of government over-reach and vast conspiracies at work. That sort of thinking still goes on today.
Of course, not everyone was convinced. People on the left dismissed Qanon et al as utter nonsense and put up signs saying (unironically) "We believe the science."
But it seems lately, the online troll army has pivoted. Having driven Republicans clinically insane, they now turn their efforts to Democrats. Why not? After all, the GOP is firmly in power and firmly under the influence of Putin, whose portrait adorns the Oval Office today. Why propagandize them further? It is a self-sustaining ecosystem at this point.
Before the 2016 and 2020 elections, if you logged onto Reddit r/all, you would be bombarded with messages from r/conservative or r/the_donald (the latter started as a parody site lampooning Trump before morphing into a cheerleading section). You might come away with the impression that the entire world was enamored of Trump, even though he was elected twice by a minority of the population (and in one instance, a minority of the voters).
Today, well, Reddit has flipped. Conspiracy theories like Qanon are banned and r/the_donald is gone as well. In its place are just as radical left-wing discussion groups promoting everything from "guaranteed annual income" to communism, etc. The drumbeat is that America is rotten, we need to tax billionaires, we need free healthcare, free college, free money, and free jobs. Not all of these ideas are without any merit - the tax system is skewed to favor the wealthy of course. And our healthcare system is a weird patchwork of Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, private (unaffordable) insurance, and no insurance - and a billing system that makes no sense whatsoever.
My latest "bill" from Medicare is a case in point. An "office visit" is billed at $743 for a half-hour consultation, "Patient Savings" (a discount) is listed at $606.21. The balance is divided to $109.13 paid by Medicare and $27.66 by my supplemental insurance. I owe nothing. But an uninsured patient would owe $743! It makes no sense whatsoever. And talk about paperwork!
But I digress. We can have rational discussions about these things, but not online, of course.
Enter the Epstein files. The whole Epstein thing has been floating around for literally decades. Like any clickbait news article about Trump, we are told that "soon" there will be damning revelations and people will go to jail! But days pass and either the "startling revelations" fail to materialize or fail to be startling. Or maybe nothing ends up happening because the news media has the attention span of a toddler.
Heard any news about Gaza lately? Yea, me neither. Glad that is all wrapped up! /s
What is annoying to me is that there is some meat in those files. For example, the whole Bill Gates thing is very embarrassing to him and explains why he and his wife inexplicably divorced a few years back. Melinda Gates has very carefully commented while not confirming, saying only that it brings up painful memories about her divorce and she is concerned for trafficked girls. She confirmed without confirming.
But other stuff online puts Qanon to shame. Posters on Reddit claim that people on Epstein island were eating babies based on some very weird notebook entries in the files apparently from a young woman or girl who had (one might infer) a late-term abortion. She does not come right out and say this, but instead wrote poems about a lost infant, in between pages of obscure codes and pasted-in excerpts from newspaper articles. I had a girlfriend who went to Smith College back in the day who kept a similar notebook - she was batshit crazy, schizophrenic. These meandering writings are hardly proof of anything, much less a smoking gun. And she never said anything about anyone eating babies.
On Reddit, though, some posters - no doubt agents of the Russian Internet Research Agency, treat this as gospel, along with a host of other crimes that are at best, hinted at in the documents, but for the most part seem to be fabricated from whole cloth. I get the impression that we are being trolled here. Tired of toying with the emotions of Republicans, these bad actors are trying their games on Democrats - trying to get people riled up to the point where they can't think straight.
There may be another explanation as well. You can discredit damning evidence by lumping it in with stupidly fake "evidence" and then saying, "Well, this part is obviously false, so the rest must be false as well!" The GOP did this with the Bush "National Guard" controversy. There was some real question as to whether Bush Jr. ducked out of service in Vietnam by joining the National Guard and then maybe not showing up consistently. There was also the issue of his opponent, John Kerry, had actually served in Vietnam. How do you defuse such a situation?
Well, just prior to the election, a "document" surfaced which appeared to implicate Bush. But it was such a laughably poor forgery (clearly drafted in MS-WORD, which did not exist at the time the document was purported to have been written) that it was easy to use this to discredit any critique of Bush's "war record." Meanwhile, Kerry was roasted over the coals by the "Swiftboat Controversy" which was a Carl Rove operation and basically fabricated from whole cloth.
Maybe the same thing is happening here - by making extreme accusations, such as baby cannibalism - one can discredit the entire Epstein scandal as overstated.
Perhaps.
But I think it is also being used to further radicalize the far-Left and influence elections. Another drum beat you hear on Reddit is that "centrist" Democrats are no good and unless a far-left radical candidate is on the ballot, one shouldn't vote. It is the same argument made in 2020 about "Killer Kamala" that convinced many young people to not vote at all, and hand the election to Trump.
Which is why I am not out on the streets protesting ICE as they round-up illegals who are often Trump supporters. The people protesting are often the same ones who sat out the last election or chanted "Killer Kamala" or whatever. Like the soon-to-be deported Trumper, they got what they wanted, only it turned out to be a horrible mistake.
And yes, some on the far-Left actually wanted Trump to win, hoping that everything would go to hell in a handbasket and usher in a new era of Communist paradise.
You know what? Fuck radicals on both sides.
