General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsDemocrats are ill-prepared for Trump's oncoming misinformation campaign.
Big Data, Big Oil and White Supremacy: Unveiling the Dark Forces Behind Trumps 2020 Reelection Campaignhttps://www.laprogressive.com/dark-forces-behind-trump/
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Reynard Loki: Your films have been about the environment, and the fight to save it from climate change, fracking, pipelines, the activists at Standing Rock. How has your previous work led you to your new live performance-based project, The Truth Has Changed?
Josh Fox: Thats a great question. It started with an intriguing proposal from HBO. They said, We know you do theater. We know youve been on the road for 10 years bringing your films to people. And you in a live setting is a part of the show, right? Its not just that people come out to see your films. They come to see you, so how about you do a one-man show that brings that reality to the people? And that was an assignment from Sheila Nevins when she was at HBO. And I said, Absolutely; Ill try this. And then I started to really think about it, and at first, it was kind of a reporters notebook, but to be honest, what I really zeroed in on was the fact that for the last 10 years, the oil and gas industry has made a huge effort to discredit my work and discredit all of the people who spoke about how bad fracking is. And this is very similar to the campaigns of climate denial, which hinge on widespread misinformation and then spreading disinformation and propaganda, smear and lies.
RL: Can you describe the effort to discredit your work?
JF: Big names in conservative smear campaigns were following me all around the country. [Steve] Bannon. Conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart. Filmmaker Phelim McAleer, whose pro-fracking documentary FrackNation attempted to refute my own documentary Gasland. Conservative activist James OKeefe. GOP media strategist Fred Davis. These high-profile right-wing charlatans clearly did opposition research on me. They collected all this data on me and figured out how to attack me personally. They tried to get inside my psyche to unnerve me. And they did it in a very specific and deliberate kind of way.
RL: What exactly did they do?
JF: They created hate emails specifically designed for my personality. There were tweets threats; there were death threats on Twitter. They highlighted my life in the theater, my hairline, the fact that my familys Jewish; they found out that I had quit smoking several years ago, but they found a picture of me with a cigarette in my hand online from the past, and they ran that as a pro-fracking TV ad in Ohio saying, This environmentalist is a smoker. They followed me around the country for years. They booked shadow tours of our films. They tapped into ethnic and regional stereotyping. And then they tried to paint me as some kind of rich, intellectual, New York City liberal, which is not the case. They flung all of these stereotypes at me. They gathered all this information about memy background, my ethnicity, my age, my race, where I live, where I went to school, how much money I made, what I had done in my previous life before the films.
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RL: How important was big data to Trumps victory in 2016?
JF: During the 2016 election, CNN called political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica Donald Trumps mind readers and his secret weapon. They gathered up to 5,000 data points on more than 220 million Americans. And they used that data to tailor ads specifically toward peoples personality types to influence their thinking. The same folks are currently rallying white supremacists all across the world and are making a bid to get Trump reelected in 2020. Their digital campaign created 5.9 million different ad variations in 2016, versus just 66,000 ads created by Hillary Clintons campaign. It was so key to Trumps victory that Trumps digital campaign manager Brad Parscale is now his campaign manager.
RL: So in The Truth Is Changed, youre connecting big oil and white supremacy to big dataand how these forces are working together to influence the 2020 election.
JF: Yes, were talking about Bannon and the white supremacy movement. Were talking about Trumps former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who, before that, was the head of ExxonMobil and the oil and gas industry, which has brazenly taken over the government. Were talking about Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and their collection of the personal data of billions of people around the globe. Together, they have created a situation in which big data, big oil and white supremacists powerfully influence the way the United States government operates. And certainly, in the 2020 election cycle, were going to have a very hard time figuring out what is true. I think were going to see the largest smear, misinformation and disinformation campaigns in the history of any election. So in The Truth Has Changed, Im taking a deep dive not only into the smear techniques of big oil and how they work from a new technology perspective, from psychographics to addressable ad technology, but going into how that is now how we run elections in America, and then weve entered the age of misinformation because right now its very hard for people to tell whats true.
Iliyah
(25,111 posts)Stealing and cheating during the EC with the help of Republicans, i.e. Russians and other put this illegal person in the WH . .
It will be tough, but I think Democrats and others are ready . . .
The battle is on, let's win the war. . . .
louis-t
(23,295 posts)they surrender their brains to the propaganda channel.
Why are WE immune to the bullshit when so many around us GUZZLE it up?
Midnight Writer
(21,768 posts)Picture a debate (or panel discussion on TV). One person has two minutes to make a point and he/she tells five demonstrable, bald faced lies during their time.
How does one respond? Do you use your limited time debunking or challenging the lies? Then you have lost the chance to make your own point.
Or do you push through to make your point, and leave the lies unchallenged?
Either way, the liar gets something he wants.
Me.
(35,454 posts)If they never won a race it would be one thing...and do you think the so-called dark forces didn't try to stop PBO. We need to stop allowing ourselves to becoming scared. It's a tactic.
saidsimplesimon
(7,888 posts)Democrats and others elected the best President of my lifetime. I hope President Obama is recognized for his accomplishments, to many to list.
NYC Liberal
(20,136 posts)Democrats are totally inept despite having won the popular vote in every presidential election for the past 28 years except one, and controlling one or both houses of Congress for half of that time.
Me.
(35,454 posts)at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. And panel after panel, especially MJ discused what the Dems are doing wrong. They beat up on them for not bringing up Parnas at the debate despite the fact that the news had broken less than an hour for the debate, they had no time or means to get all the info and confirm it. And if they had gotten the info wrong or it turned out to be a scam they'd been roasted for that too.
Brian Williams, in his assumed role as gracious/erudite host, is always insulting about the Dems, at least once a night.
Initech
(100,080 posts)You can bet that the mud will be flung fast and furiously in the next several months. It's going to get very ugly very quickly.
And as I have stated many times here, if you see hate and misinformation on social media do not hesitate for a minute to hit that alert button. Don't engage the trolls. Just block, report, and move on!