How exactly to define ‘disinformation’? Is it merely lying? In which case most married men commit acts of ‘disinformation’ on a daily basis (‘No, I’ve only had two beers’, ‘Yes, dear, I don’t know what men see in her’). Or is it only lying for a nefarious social or political purpose? In which case most of our elected representatives indulge in it – telling falsehoods for the unholy purpose of gaining power over the rest of us.
A group who have no such qualms defining the concept is ‘The Disinformation Project’ – three academics who have appointed themselves arbiters of what is and is not harmful online content. One of these eminent three has “research interests that include gender, race, eugenics, colonisation and white supremacism” and another produced a Masters thesis that “examined a history of student activism in response to the issue of sexual violence on university campuses”. So completely sound, unbiased, middle-of-the-road sorts with absolutely no political barrows to push whatsoever.
Yeah, right.
Last week this tedious triumvirate produced a ‘disinformation dozen’: twelve Facebook accounts that they claim produced 73% of all ‘disinformation’ during the parliamentary protests – neglecting to inform us how they defined this nebulous term. Nevertheless, it was picked up by mainstream media crowing over the role social media supposedly played in pushing the protests ‘towards violence’. The ‘white supremacist expert’ I mentioned above was quoted by One Network News as saying these accounts had made “the narrative….resistance to the state, government and mainstream media”.
Well, yes. And a bloody good thing too.
You can see why the “mainstream media” love the ‘disinformation project’ – it lets them off the hook as purveyors of ‘disinformation’ themselves. Which they undoubtedly are. Here is their own ‘disinformation dozen’ – lies they have told and in some cases continue to tell: six foreign and six domestic.
DOMESTIC
- Covid deaths
After releasing the daily Covid death counts with more fanfare than the Lotto numbers, suddenly our media have discovered the difference between ‘dying with Covid’ and ‘dying of Covid’. Turns out about half of those ‘Covid deaths’ died from something other than Covid. Counting them all together was designed to scare us – which both media and this Government love to do. If this isn’t disinformation, I don’t know what is.
- Ardern’s vaccine promise
In the queue for vaccines right behind Guatemala, when they finally arrived, our prime minister let her mouth write a cheque her arse couldn’t cash. Remember ‘They won’t get as sick and they won’t die’? More vaccinated Kiwis have now died from Covid than non-vaccinated.
- Another Ardern promise – no penalties for the unvaccinated
‘Not only will there be no forced vaccinations but those who choose to opt-out won’t face any penalties at all.’
Jacinda Ardern PM
And then she introduced vaccine mandates for about half the workforce. That leaders change their minds when faced with evolving situations is reasonable. What isn’t is calling the claim that mandates would be introduced – which proved correct – a conspiracy theory. That was the disinformation.
- The Christchurch gunman
He was not ‘us’. The media continues to slander Pakeha New Zealanders by suggesting that there is a ‘problem with white supremacy’. There isn’t. But keep calling everyone who opposes the radical separation of the nation along ethnic lines a ‘racist’ and you might just create one.
- Systemic racism
According to the media narrative, all statistical variances between Maori and non-Maori can only be explained by ‘systemic racism’. Maori live on average 7 years fewer than the general population; rates of smoking, obesity and alcohol abuse apparently are less the cause of this than having a doctor who can’t pronounce your last name correctly. New Zealand men live on average four years fewer than New Zealand women. Is this because of ‘systemic sexism’?
- New Zealand has an outsized ‘carbon footprint’
Our farmers produce food for 40 million people of which 95% is exported. That, as a result, we produce more greenhouse gases per head of population than the subsistence rice farmers of Bengal or the goat botherers of Azerbaijan is meaningless but endlessly repeated by our media.
IMPORTED
- The Hunter Biden laptop story
After spending four years parroting scuttlebutt about Trump’s predilection for Moscow water sports (and I don’t mean rowing on the Volga), when the media finally got evidence of real dinkum corruption of a presidential candidate on the eve of the US election they killed it. This is why I don’t believe Trump’s claims that the Dems rigged the election. With the media so massively on their side, they didn’t need to.
- Origins of Covid
Earlier in the pandemic Facebook banned anyone who speculated about Covid originating in a lab. Now that ban has lifted, the debate over Covid’s origins still rages. As it should. A textbook case of how the ‘disinformation’ label leads to less net truth rather than more.
- Massacres in the US
If a black man drives his car into a crowd and kills six people (in Wisconsin, last November) his racist views are not important. When a black man shoots ten people on the New York subway (last month) his racist views are not important. When a black man shoots and kills three Korean women (in Dallas, last week) his anti-Asian views are not important. But when a white man kills ten people in a shooting rampage (in Buffalo last week) his racist views are front-page news and proof that WHITE SUPREMACY IS EVERYWHERE.
- The entire Trump presidency
Just last week the NZ Herald ran an op-ed praising the Abraham Accords as a model for a peaceful solution to the war in Ukraine without mentioning which US administration put the accords together. The lie here is that the Trump presidency was the worst ever. Have you seen the guy in charge now?
- Black Lives Matter
A black person in the US is more likely to be shot by another black person than by a white police officer. They are also more likely to be shot by a black police officer than by a white one. But the chances of them being killed by any police officer at all are extremely slim – 13 unarmed black people were killed by cops in 2019 out of a population of 46 million. This is in line with the higher probability of a black American interacting with police due to more frequent call outs to black neighbourhoods. But of course, this nuance is discarded by a media convinced the police are on one big turkey shoot of black Americans.
- Transgender madness
A man can become a woman merely by saying it is so. And there will be no problems due to this at all…
The ‘Disinformation Project’ is right that the spread of lies and the distortion of truth are a problem for democracy. But if they were less biased they would see the problem is less about fringe lunacy on the internet than the deceptions of their ideological comrades in the mainstream media.