Challenging Disinformation: Links Between Economic Stress and Abortion

As I noted yesterday, Sarah Posner argues that those promoting women's rights to basic health care should not let their guard down after the apparent breakthroughs with the HHS guidelines and the Komen Foundation. Posner notes, in particular, the need for vigilant monitoring of the disinformation the political and religious right continually disseminate about issues of contraception and abortion.

When the Lie Is Obvious, Why Tell It? The Size of the 9.12 Crowds and the Right's Strategy of Lying

Eric Boehlert offers incisive analysis yesterday at Media Matters of the lies spun by FreedomWorks' Matt Kibbe and wingnut commentator Michelle Malkin this week, re: the size of the crowds at the 9.12 protests. As I noted yesterday, it was reported that the crowds reached the 2 million level, when accurate estimates place the size of the gathering in D.C. at closer to 60 or 70 thousand.

As Nate Silver observes, Kibbe's bold-faced lie about the size of the crowds is equivalent to telling folks his penis is 53 inches long. He didn't just lie--he lied boldly, exaggerating the size of the crowds thirtyfold, and knowing as he did so that no one in his or her right mind would swallow the exaggeration.

And that raises questions about why the right-wing blogosphere has attempted not merely to push an easily disproven lie, but to keep on telling it over and over, accompanying the lie-meme with a picture of the crowd that can easily be proven to have been taken some years ago, and not this past weekend.

In Boehlert's view, the liars are lying because they know they can do so: they know they can do so with impunity. No one will think the worse of them for lying blatantly:

Nobody within the right-wing blogosphere seems to be the slightest bit upset, let alone embarrassed or chastened, for having been part of a farcical, inept attempt to inflate the size of Saturday's rally by 1,930,000 people. Nobody seems to think it reflects poorly on them as a community, or that it will damage their collective reputation.

They really are shameless. And they really do inhabit their own parallel political universe where everyone's allergic to facts.

My own reading of this lie is more cynical, I'm afraid. I'll grant that Kibbe and Malkin (and all those who have spread the meme) have lied without compunction because they and their kind know very well they can continue posturing as exemplars of morality while violating the most basic tenets of moral behavior. They have debased the coinage of political discourse precisely to that end.

But I think something else--something far more cynical--is at work in this strategy of bold, easily disproven, shameless lying. Kibbe and Malkin lied deliberately in order to establish boundaries for the discussion of the crowd's size that would automatically move towards the top end of possibility rather than in the direction of accuracy.

In placing the size of the crowd near 2 million when they knew very well that it was nowhere near that number, Kibbe and Malkin intended to cow the media and anyone else trying to estimate the crowd's size into overestimating the size of the event, rather than reporting as accurately as possible on the numbers present in D.C.

This was a strategic lie. It's intended to assure that, no matter how many folks attended the 9.12 event, all estimates of crowd size would be as robust as possible.

This is one of the key ways in which the right has been manipulating public awareness and media coverage of events for some time now--through outright, deliberate lies that grow ever bolder, as those engaging in this behavior find they can get away with it. And that their claim to be guardians of morality, even as they lie boldly, is not going to be challenged. These lies are designed to move political discourse away from truth and towards ideology--right-wing ideology.

And they're successful lies, in that regard. The center has been deliberately moved so far to the right that information from any sector other than the right, which once would have been taken into consideration without question in our national political debates, now has to pass ludicrous litmus tests in order to be taken into consideration, while even the stupidest and silliest claims of the right automatically receive serious consideration in the mainstream media.

And this is how the game of politics is going to continue to be played in the U.S., until we stop legitimating the voices of the lunatic fringe on the right, and start permitting back into the center a wide spectrum of views and information the lunatic right has succeeded in labeling as illicit and dangerous in the past several decades of political and cultural history.

Health Care Reform and the Race Card: Michael Lind and Glenn Greenwald on the "Someone Else" Who Benefits

I appreciate the lively discussion that followed my posting yesterday about the 9.12 protests in D.C. this weekend. My posting drew attention to the supreme irony of the contention of many 9.12 protesters that they want government off their backs, when they benefit from government intervention in ways too numerous to count.

In response to my posting, Butterfly and Phillip Clark point to the racism underlying the “get the government out of my life” mantra. Butterfly says that the 9.12 protesters remind her of the KKK without its robes. Phillip says flatly that these manufactured teabag protests are racism masquerading as loyal opposition.

And Ralph and Colleen call the protestors on their insincere claim that they want government out of their lives and out of their business. As Colleen says, she’ll believe the mantra is sincere when those chanting it burn their Medicare and Medicaid cards.

As Ralph states, it’s all about wanting benefits without responsibilities. It’s about wanting government services for me and mine without the responsibility of paying for you and yours.

In my view, all these comments are right on target. As Michael Lind notes at Salon today, the dirty little secret of the “debate” about health care reform this summer is the unacknowledged fear of many voters that they’re being asked to offer support to folks unlike them—specifically, to brown-and black-skinned fellow citizens. It is that base fear that Joe Wilson’s outburst traded on, when he shouted “You lie!” as the president stated that the health care bill will not cover illegal immigrants.

It is that base fear that those staging these faux populist protests are trading on, as they pull the strings of many Americans who predictably imagine a black or a brown face when they imagine extending any social benefits beyond themselves to others in need—an undeserving black or brown face. As Lind notes,

From the beginning, attempts to create a universal welfare state in the U.S. have been thwarted by the fears of voters that they will be taxed to subsidize other Americans who are unlike them in race or ethnicity or culture. The original Social Security Act passed only after domestic workers and farmworkers -- the majority of black Americans, in the 1930s -- were left out of its coverage, at the insistence of white Southern politicians.

And yet as he also points out, even as many Americans have fought bitterly against providing social assistance to the “undeserving” (brown, black) members of our society, they shamelessly stampede to the trough for every handout possible—for themselves, for their affluent white selves:

Since the 1964 Civil Rights Act destroyed formal white supremacy in the U.S., every attempt to expand traditional social insurance in America has failed. Meanwhile, there has been a massive expansion in government-sponsored welfare going disproportionately to the white and affluent. What the political scientist Christopher Howard calls the hidden welfare state includes the tax-favored employer-provided health insurance that most working-age Americans depend on, as well as the home mortgage interest deduction and the childcare and child tax credits. Affluent and educated workers are more likely to work for employers who provide private health benefits than are low-skilled workers and employees of small businesses. Personal tax benefits like the home mortgage interest deduction are available only to the top half of households who pay federal income taxes, and are unavailable to lower-income workers who pay payroll taxes but no income taxes. In many cases, the benefits of this tax-credit welfare state increase with income.

Glenn Greenwald makes similar points in another Salon piece yesterday. Greenwald dissects an op-ed piece of the neocon Catholic New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, who wrote recently about the unarticulated fears of many middle-income Americans that “someone else”—someone undeserving—will benefit from health care reform. As Greenwald notes,

Just as was true for the 1994 crime bill, the right-wing fury over health care reform is motivated by the fear that middle-class Americans will have their money taken away by Obama while -- all together now, euphemistically -- "having someone else benefit." And this "someone else" are, as always, the poor minorities and other undeserving deadbeats who, in right-wing lore, somehow (despite their sorry state) exert immensely powerful influence over the U.S. Government and are thus the beneficiaries of endless, undeserved largesse: people too lazy to work, illegal immigrants, those living below the poverty line. That's why Joe Wilson's outburst resonated so forcefully among the Right and why he became an immediate folk hero: he was voicing the core right-wing fear that their money was being stolen from them by Obama in order to lavish the Undeserving and the Others -- in this case illegal immigrants -- with ill-gotten gains ("having someone else benefit," as Douthat/Luntz put it).

In Greenwald’s view, this middle-class fear is warranted. But it’s misplaced. It’s misplaced because, in fact, someone else does already largely benefit from federal redistributive programs. And it’s not the poor. It’s not brown and black citizens. It’s the obscenely rich at the top of the economic pyramid, who just happen to be the folks ultimately pulling the puppet strings at the teabag protests:

This is the paradox of the tea-party movement and other right-wing protests fueled by genuine citizen anger and fear. It is true that the federal government embraces redistributive policies and that middle-class income is seized in order that "someone else benefits." But so obviously, that "someone else" who is benefiting is not the poor and lower classes -- who continue to get poorer as the numbers living below the poverty line expand and the rich-poor gap grows in the U.S. to unprecedented proportions. The "someone else" that is benefiting from Washington policies are -- as usual -- the super-rich, the tiny number of huge corporations which literally own and control the Government.

From Nixon’s Southern strategy forward, when the white South moved solidly into the Republican camp as cynical political strategists whipped up racial antagonism among white Southern voters, wealthy interest groups have used race shamelessly to divert attention from their increasing rapacity and their increasing stranglehold on the democratic process. These interest groups have been adroit about convincing millions of Americans to vote against their own economic and social best interests, as they scapegoat imaginary welfare drones whose faces always happen to be, in the popular imagination, brown and black.

And those interest groups continue to be adroit about race-baiting. And their strategy continues to work. Millions of Americans persistently cut off their noses to spite their faces in their political behavior. We do so because powerful economic interest groups persuade us to do so by manipulating racial fears and resentments. And they will keep on doing so to assure their economic dominance, no matter how much their behavior unweaves the fabric of our democratic society, and brings democracy final unraveling in these United States.

Unless we stop permitting them to do so, that is.

Organized Vigilante Mobs in the Civil Rights Movement and the Teabaggers: Historic Parallels

And then finally there’s this, from Stockley’s book Ruled by Race (pp. 360-362): he notes that, as the Civil Rights movement advanced in the Arkansas Delta, the part of the state most wedded to Old South ways, the John Birch Society began to organize and disseminate literature that deliberately spread lies to inflame the fears and hatred of whites in the region.

The predictable upshot of that organized covert vigilante disinformation campaign was outright vigilantism: in the summer of 1969, as racial tensions escalated following the murder of Martin Luther King, whites inflamed by these techniques of the organized vigilante disinformation campaign began to rally, form mobs, and issue threats. Stockley notes,

In early September an estimated crowd of more than seven hundred whites turned out for a rally [in Forrest City] at which speakers denounced city officials, the news media, and outside black influence. Dr. George McPhail claimed the Arkansas Gazette was “Communist controlled” and said, “You can rough up a few Sweet Willies and be within the law.” . . . Sue Saunders, a local correspondent for the Arkansas Gazette, was physically assaulted by an irate woman as she attempted to cover a story dealing with the racial situation. She had been called a “Communist” and “n----r lover” and frequently had been cursed by incensed white conservatives for her efforts to cover news stories involving race relations in Forrest City. After her attack, she said, “I’ve never seen such hate. I didn’t know it existed.”

Sound familiar? For anyone who lived through this period of Southern history, it is impossible, I suspect, to look at the rage-contorted faces of the organized mobs now shouting speakers down at town hall meetings and not call to mind what went on in our part of the country in the 1950s and 1960s.

The faces are the same. The tactics are the same. The goal—dissemination of lies to fuel fear and rage leading to social regression—is the same.

Through Nixon’s Southern strategy, the Republican party has inherited a shameful legacy that it would do well to disavow now, if it wants to have a viable future. That is, if our future is not to be one of outright mob rule. This is why I have been intently concerned about the increasing use of organized, disruptive mobs by powerful interest groups of the right in our society, from our last election campaign right up to this summer of discontent, 2009. And by the silence of Christian leaders about this potential turn to ugly mob rule.

I know what can happen. I've seen it happen. It's not pretty. And people of conscience have an obligation to stop it from happening, it seems to me.

Disinformation Campaigns and the Generational Shift in Politics

In a posting several days ago (5 June), I addressed the issue of disinformation in American politics. I predicted that in this federal election cycle, we are on the verge of a disinformation campaign the likes of which we have not seen at any previous point in our history. I distinguished disinformation from misinformation: the former is the deliberate dissemination of information those disseminating it know to be false, in the expectation of twisting the consciousness of those receiving disinformation.

In my 5 June posting, I discussed a flurry of carefully tailored comments on progressive blogs immediately following the announcement that Barack Obama had won the Democratic nomination. These comments gave every indication of having been planned; they gave every indication of having been released all at once as soon as the announcement of Obama’s nomination win came through.

These comments purported to be statements by Democrats disgusted that Mr. Obama has the nomination. These “Democrats” stated that they intended to vote for McCain in the coming election.

My assessment of this flurry of comments on progressive blogs as part of a disinformation campaign seems to be borne out now that Ms. Clinton has endorsed Mr. Obama. That endorsement makes it very difficult now for those trying to split the Democratic vote to use this particular little nasty trick as effectively as they had hoped to do.

The comments of disaffected Hilary supporters have suddenly ceased on progressive blogs, for the most part. What is clear is that many of those making these comments were not disaffected Hilary supporters at all. They were Republicans masquerading as angry Democrats to create the illusion of a national movement of disaffected Democratic voters.

So on to new tricks: I predict that, in addition to the overtly nasty bash rhetoric we’ll see all over the place now that Obama has been chosen the Democratic candidate, we’re going to see another trick tried again and again. I’ve already noticed it on the blog of my statewide “liberal” weekly newspaper, the Arkansas Times.

This is the sober, dispassionate, disinterested prediction that McCain will win, because states that have been voting Republican for some time now will do so once again in this election.

This prediction is anything but dispassionate and disinterested, though it will be spoon-fed to voters again and again in the coming weeks as bona fide political analysis. The prediction plays a cynical numbers game to gain bogus legitimacy. It depends on projecting voting trends that will mirror precisely those of recent presidential elections.

Such analysis pays no attention at all to the fact that this election has changed the ground rules in significant ways. It has brought out a massive tide of new Democratic voters. Many of these are young voters who have previously felt disempowered.

These are trends of intent concern to those who want to conduct politics as usual. These trends portend changes in the way that we do politics which go beyond the surface—substantive changes. The trends point to shifts in the American political scene that may well—if they are not stopped in their tracks by sheer force—be as decisive for the future of the nation as the shifts of the 1960s were.

We are seeing now the birth of a new politics in this country. What is happening now, especially among young voters, does not break down along traditional liberal-conservative lines. The fault line in how the political process is being viewed runs right through the Democratic party itself, dividing Democratic voters into those wedded to politics as usual, and those seeking a new way to engage the political life of the nation.

This election has unmasked the fatuity and insincerity of many of the “liberal” claims of my generation of Democratic voters. Though we of the baby-boom generation have professed concern to include people of color, women, LGBT people in the political process, we have done next to nothing—next to nothing substantive—to translate our professed concern into action.

We have invited minorities to the table only as token representatives of groups. They have not had a voice at our table—not a real voice. They have been there to echo the opinions of the straight-identifying white males who still control our political, economic, and ecclesial life. We have tolerated these minorities at the table only insofar as they were clones of the white-male power structure dressed up in minority garb—only insofar as they were “nice” minority members who played our game, and did not threaten to change the status quo.

We have, in other words, we boomer liberals, willingly participated in the politics of divide and conquer, of pitting one minority group against another, of the Republican right. We are a vanilla version of the more robust flavors of discrimination offered by the right. We all come from the same manufacturer. The ugly divide-and-conquer tactics centered on race and gender in this election derive as much from right-wing strategy as from liberal complicity in that strategy.

It has been in our own best interest—the best interest of liberal boomers—to natter on about inclusion and representation and places at the table for all, while we belie our rhetoric in our actions. A case in point: liberal political commentators in my state are now (rightly) decrying the ugly misogyny we have seen in this election, primarily targeting Hilary Clinton.

Yet these same white-male commentators seem utterly oblivious to the reality that they themselves edit and write for publications that have only male (and white-male, at that) political commentators: white-male middle-aged middle-class heterosexual political commentators. These are almost the only voices we hear in any “official” political discussions in our local media, whether televised or print media.

Fortunately, not a few voters are getting the disconnect between liberal rhetoric and liberal action among voters of my generation. Many of those getting it are younger voters. And it is not accidental, I think, that these voters are also far more media-savvy than are those of either the traditional right or the old left. In particular, these voters know how to use the power of the internet to circumvent the information-flow stoppage of the “official” media, whether of the left or the right.

As I have noted frequently on this blog, one of the most promising developments the internet poses for our political life (and for the lives of our churches, I would also maintain) is the ability of blogs to give voice—real voice—to voices that have historically been excluded by the mainstream media, both of the left and of the right.

Blogs and other online media sites give everybody a chance to be at the table in a way entirely unanticipated by the control-oriented, status-quo-maintenance politics of both the traditional right and the old left. Those of us whose voices have been shut out or carefully tailored to echo the observations of the power centers of our society can now speak for ourselves—in a new way, in an unanticipated way, in a way that reaches around the world.

This potential for change (and for interconnection, for solidarity, between people of all colors and stripes everywhere in the world) frightens those who want to maintain the status quo. It frightens not merely those conservatives who want, with William F. Buckley, to stand athwart history and shout stop. It also frightens gradualist liberals, those who want to anoint only predictable voices that will speak lullingly of change that doesn’t upset the balance of power in any substantive way—that doesn’t upset the balance of their power in any substantive way.

Does all that I have said above mean I am a messianic Obamabot? Hardly. I know enough history to know that the reign of God is always on the horizon, never here in history. It’s what we have to keep striving after, not what we have already built.

Give people power, and they are likely to abuse it. Give power to the marginalized and oppressed, and they may misuse their new-found power even more spectacularly than those who once lorded it over them. Some of the absolutely most horrific abuses of power I have seen in my lifetime have been manifested by women of color, by women one would have expected to know better and do better.

Granting power alone—shifting the structures of power—is no guarantee that things will move in a more humane direction, once power shifts have occurred. What is always essential in participatory democracy as a check against the tendency of those with unbridled power in their hands to abuse their authority is the big table, at which a place is set for everyone.

Insofar as it is participatory, participatory democracy acts as its own check against the abuse of power by any person or group within the body politic. Building open forums in which accurate information is available to all, and all have a chance to comment on how this information is used by the entire society, by its very nature militates against abuse of power by any individual or group.

The shift we are now seeing in our political process is, in some sense, an inevitable one—insofar as we continue to be a society that values, at least theoretically, free speech and the free and wide transmission of information (and it is entirely possible that we can move in the other direction). The shift is an inevitable one in a postmodern age, in which the ground rules of communication, affiliation, bringing people to the table, have shifted radically due to new technologies.

We liberals of the baby-boom generation have, in key respects, simply been caught off-guard by the development of the internet. While we have remained stuck in the modern moment, using new technologies to extend our buying power, our illusion that we can remain young and powerful up to the very end, our lust for new experiences and new things, many of those in the next generations have begun to realize the power the internet offers postmodern global culture for radically inclusive participatory democracy.

And as we boomers continue playing, the next generation has been hard at work building—building towards postmodernity. This is their moment. We need to give them a chance. (For further information on doing so, see Micah Sifry, “Obama’s Organization and the Future of American Politics,” www.huffingtonpost.com/micah-sifry/obamas-organization-and-t_b_105958.html; and Courtney E. Martin, “Fanning the Flames of Youth Civic Engagement,” www.alternet.org/story/87026/).