In the realm of bots, fakes, contrived gossip, curated information, and narrowband propaganda it is becoming increasingly difficult (and undeniably unsettling) to find the truth in the swathes of 'likes', 'retweets', and 'shares' that, together, purportedly comprise the material evidence upon which we rely to comprehend the world and make decisions to change the way things are. Little wonder that confusion and outrage now reign.
As I have contended on more than one occasion, while the amount of data to which we are subjected is increasing exponentially, clarity of meaning giving way to distortion and ambiguity as a consequence, our capacity to make sense of the data available to us has flat-lined. This allows proselytizing, self-righteous minds and celebrity shock-jocks to dominate media channels - their networks used to broadcast fictions, invent truths, and warp public awareness.
In countries like China, the use of state media as an instrument for maintaining social cohesion, national pride and morale-building is openly conceded. The case for controlling the information channelled to citizens in this manner, even though clearly in conflict with Western ideals of individual freedom, is effective and accepted by a majority of Chinese. How citizens would 'know' to protest if that was not the case is a separate issue.
In Western democracies, however, the source of much commercial and government propaganda, a discourse aimed at manufacturing consent, is secreted behind a wall of think tanks, institutes, and privately owned 'news' empires posing as part of a dispassionate mainstream. One of the most naive features of state propaganda in countries like Australia and the UK, for example, which consistently shapes the way ordinary people think, act and vote to maintain a patently conservative status quo, is the fact that mainstream news outlets routinely cite the opinions of researchers in privately-funded 'think tanks' as 'expert' sources for their recommendations and reports. Who these 'experts' are is never queried.
The truth often evades detection. And reporting the truth can be dangerous - just ask Julian Assange or Edward Snowden. Even 'legitimate' research emanating from the university sector has been called into doubt today as a result of the ingrained 'peer review' system that rewards like-minded academics, often reifying particular views funded by commercial bodies with vested interests. We are well aware of the history of oil companies and the tobacco lobby, who funded their own 'arms-length' research so as to discredit and cast doubt on the science. There can be no denying the reality that ruthless individuals like Rupert Murdoch and the industrialist Charles Koch will go to any lengths to preserve their power and wealth through deceitfulness.
In Australia the Murdoch press influences much government thinking as a 'not-to-be-trifled-with' conservative narrative-shaper extraordinaire. Just last week, for example, Sky News cited a report from the Lowy Institute aimed at whipping up public hysteria about an absurd fantasy that China might attack the country because it possesses long-range missiles.
Two factors went unnoticed. First, the Lowy Institute report was paid for by Australian government agencies, including ASIO and the Department of Defence, major financial institutions, and weapons manufacturers whose interests are well served by maintaining massive budgets for the military-industrial-surveillance complex. Second, the author of the report cited Thomas Shugart as the 'expert' source for their 'intelligence'. Shugart is a staff member of the Center for a New American Security, a right-wing think tank that receives funding from firms such as General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon, as well as the US State Department and other governments, who profit from geopolitical tension and conflict.
Meanwhile, eager to use their public megaphone to amplify the research into the most outrageous headline, Sky News Australia duly roared: China possesses ability to strike Australia with long-range missiles. This was followed up on social media with an even more reckless and incendiary caption: China now has the military arsenal to pose the greatest threat to the Australian mainland since World War II, experts warn. Experts? Well not exactly. Government agencies and war profiteers paid for a report that manufactures the consent needed for their agendas to be accepted by policymakers and the public, while mass media institutions passed this off as 'news'.
This is just one example of why privately funded think tanks exist. Their pretense at 'thought leadership' is a thinly disguised ideological product. Their job is mind control - concocting stories that attract public interest, stoke fear or some other sensation that benefits their immensely powerful and psychopathic sponsors - and then inserting those narratives at key points of leverage.
'Think tank' is a commonly-used label for the kinds of research undertaken by these propaganda firms - not because a great deal of original thinking happens in them, but because it adds a dash of respectability to their work, which is dedicated to controlling what people think and, even more importantly, how they construct their thoughts.
Their role, by and large, is to fabricate and promote reasons why it would be sensible to believe a particular myth and to follow a subsequent course of action. And within the field of geopolitical persuasion, it certainly works. Other than rhetoric coming out of the US, which is dutifully parroted by the Australian government and its shock-jock supporters in the popular press, there can be no other explanation as to why more and more Australians are convinced by anti-Chinese sentiment, and alarmed by stories claiming China poses a meaningful threat to the nation.
The presumed accuracy of their findings is measured by polls they conduct in support of their own 'evidence'. For example, a poll undertaken by the Lowy Institute following their earlier report claims that only 16% of surveyed Australians [express] trust in China compared with 52% just three years ago, that a similar number of Australians think China will launch an armed attack on Australia (42%) as on Taiwan (49%), and that more Australians (13%) than Taiwanese (4%) think a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is likely sometime soon. In this instance, the process of research and polling is simply an example of the serpent swallowing its own tail.
The Australian consciousness is continually clobbered with think tank-manufactured narratives about China. Most of these are fictions designed to ensure that the public dare not rock the boat when their government, in its wisdom, decides to host an even greater US presence in the country, which is ideally unseen and unspoken.
Of course the Australian experience is by no means an exception. Media citation of ideologically-funded and supported think tanks is common throughout the Western world and runs far more deeply than one might imagine. Take award-winning 'citizen journalist' site Bellingcat for example. This Netherlands-based outfit likes to present itself as a force for good - an independent international collective of researchers, investigators and citizen journalists, that provides fact-checking and open source intelligence services.
Under this deceptive exterior, however, it is little more than a state-sponsored spin factory. Funded by Western governments, staffed by former military and intelligence personnel, Bellingcat quietly slipped into the habit of repeating state propaganda - passing off Western government narratives as independent neutral research, but in reality serving as an intermediary by feeding biased information to the corporate media.
Modern social media and corporate platforms disguise journalistic malpractice with ease. Statements by ideological advocates and spin doctors, who are paid by governments and vested interests to pursue a particular line of thought, constantly blur the boundaries between fact and fiction.
If we had access to better sense-making tools, and the time to examine data sources more critically, we might begin to recognize how easily duped we are. As is the case with China, propaganda only works if citizens remain unaware of their indoctrination. In the West preventing people from realizing this is itself part of the propaganda machinery - just as it is in China.