Intelligence and counter-intelligence

I am delighted that Trump will be leaving the White House on 20 January - the only one-term president to be impeached and to lose two consecutive popular votes. My outright disgust for him is unmatched by my dislike for any other current political leader. His appeal to the basest instincts of the poorly-educated is of huge concern to people of good will everywhere. 

The world breathed a sigh of relief that petty demagogues and populist shit-stirrers no longer have a green light from the White House. Decency and character return.

The first task of President Biden will be to defuse the instruments that allowed Trump's base to form and grow. The manipulation of lame, poorly educated minds, lacking in curiosity or powers of observation.

The task over the longer term will be to deal with the root causes of ignorance and hatred. But in the short term, the social media that allowed that ignorant to vent their hatred needs to be tackled. The CIA and FBI, once they have their leadership restored, needs to take a long look at how the social media, and the algorithms that drive their feeds, function. As it is, the social media allow vulnerable minds to be exploited for political ends.

As I write, Trump has tweeted about some alleged voting irregularity in Georgia, that he found on right-wing Breitbart News, one of the few media outlets that has not acknowledged Biden's victory. Below were some 31,000 comments (mostly, it must be said, from gloating Democrats and Republican Never Trumpers), but with a sprinkling from disgruntled Trump supporters. Here's one:

There were 440 comments below, mocking this chap whose Googling skills did not go beyond scrolling past the first result.

Now, when I was doing my internship on the Ealing Gazette back in 1980, I was given the task one day of selecting the letters to the editor. Rants written in green or purple ink in capital letters about 'darkies', 'Jews', 'Freemasons' or 'poofs' went on the spike without any second thoughts - the only letters that did get through, and got printed, were well-written, well-considered, without spelling mistakes - ones from respectable citizens, ones that added merit to the contents of the newspaper.

Forty years on, the social media have given the ranters a space, a way to avoid the spike of civically minded editors with the good of their community on their conscience.

The angry ignorant section of society is larger than most of us realise; they have been finally given a voice - and this has created a chance for the unscrupulous, the Bannons and Farages of this world - to harvest that anger and ignorance for political ends. 

I have written several times about Russia's interference in Western domestic affairs. Putin cannot get Russia on the road to progress while he and his buddies are fleecing the country. Rather than build Russia up, he wants to tear the West down to Russia's level. This Russia does through the military doctrine of Dezinformatsya - maskirovka - and the West's weak-point is an open social media, where anyone can post stuff regardless of where in the world they are. There is no Facebook in Russia, there's Vkontakte. China has its own internet, closed off from the world. Yet the world's internet is open to Russia and to China, to manipulate the opinion of those unable to think critically.

Closing down Russian, Chinese and indeed Iranian and Saudi troll farms' access to the West's social media should be a priority for an incoming Biden administration. Failure to do so will result in Biden being another one-term president. May he live long and in good health.

UPDATE: This article in Foreign Policy makes the same point.

This time three years ago:
Trumpkins, Brexiteers and the missing middle

This time nine years ago:
Bad news for Jeziorki's rat runners

This time ten years ago:
Death on the tracks

This time 11 years ago:
From Łady to Falenty