Fishing for Truth in the swamp of censorship

One of the great advantages of living in an international apartment block is having the ability to ask people how they personally feel about their country and its neighbours – rather than getting second-hand information via the prism of propaganda mirrors.

In recent months, I’ve been able to talk to Finns about Putin, to Palestinians, Iranians and Lebanese about Netanyahu and Hamas….and this last week, to Swedes about their government’s alleged plans to “survive a nuclear attack” from Russia.

The last group – my chum Bjorn and his three best friends who’ve just arrived here for a holiday – looked blank when I mentioned the “news” about the Stockholm government issuing dire warnings of the danger to its citizens.

They weren’t aware of any of it….and so – in their own Scandinavian neutral style – the lie was quickly dismissed as “NATO propaganda”.

In the same vein, talking direct to them, my impression is that most Gaza strip inhabitants were getting on just fine with most Israelis until ultra-zionist Netanyahu manufactured a crisis, that most Iranians have little time for Hamas, but citizens of Lebanon are furious about the attack on their country….for which I can hardly blame them.

The Lebanese who live in Gambia are not suppliers in the agitprop profession….they’re far too busy running much of the wholesale, import, distribution and pharmacy sectors here. They are about as geopolitical as the customers in Cheers [US readers] and Eastenders Queen Vic barflies [UK readers].

They are in business, not Monkey Business. Thus – like taxi drivers throughout the World – they’re worth listening to.

This opening section today has been a brief reminder of the old adage that states, harken not unto what ideologues say they’re going to do, but rather what real people feel about ideologues.

This involves – if you like – a stark comparison of the behaviour of the holier-than-thou politician versus the wholly disinterested cab driver: the former sells us all out to the giga-rich money men, whereas the latter simply tells you what it costs to ride in his taxi.

Personally, I’m a big fan of cabbies.

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I’m also a depressive. Not manic, thank God – just reactive.

I observe the never-ending tableau of people taking selfies or tapping in code numbers with their Dumbophones, and become depressed.

For there is no action within the lifetimes of Trump or RFKJr that can be taken to put this evil Genie back in the bottle.

This is the distraction thing again….but equally, the Smartphone is a vehicle for distortion of what is real – and the massive deception that it’s just a harmless convenience toy, as opposed to the 24/7/365 surveillance machine it really is.

The Smartphone exploits Man’s innate narcissism and unique capacity for intra-tribal communication. As such, it’s a work of demonic genius, but many billions of human beings addicted to them simply don’t want to know. I watch these self-obsessed bimbos and inane blokes pouting for the camera or grinning at some limp cartoon gag, and it becomes ever more clear to me why Elon Musk has succeeded in conning customers in full view over and over and over again.

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Mr Musk – I often think that such nomenclature sounds like a brand of aerosol kitchen-surface cleaner – has succeeded in selling thousands of electric cars that solve none of our energy problems, persuaded the Pentagon Top Brass that he is the man to take them to Mars, and – most amazing of all – sold ‘X’ users on the idea that the only way to get free speech is to pay for it.

I take my hat off to the bloke, I really do: Josef Goebbels was an amateur by comparison.

But while I like to think my hat is white, I’m pretty sure Elon’s is black. For freedom of expression practised on the basis of ability to pay is just another way of saying I censor you on the grounds of your material poverty.

And from that comes the Rise and Rise of Oligarchy.

Hence the heroes celebrated at this permanent Slog Page.

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How should censorship be defined? The word conjures up the idea of Winston Smith in Room 101 of Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty Four. But 75 years on, 21^st century censorship is far worse than even he imagined:

* It now means paying to have your opinion delivery “promised”…but severely restricted delivery of anything the Secret State doesn’t want in the public domain

* It means ISPs lying to you about how many internet users saw and or approved of your content

* It involves blatant smearing of your track record of empirical reporting

* It results in an inability to trust your platform provider, search engine or encryption promises.

The bottom line is that in 2024, Truthsayers and Soothsayers not only pay to get their voices heard, the voice that emerges is a caricature of what they really meant to say.

They are cheated, mistreated and – in the end – deleted by potential subscribers on the grounds of being deliberately misquoted.

And that’s how profoundly devious censorship is today.

We can all sit by the swamp looking for Truth among the propaganda piranhas, fake news fish, character assassination crocodiles, electronic encryption eels, surveillance sharks and censorious search engine sardines.

But you need a sensitive fishing rod, a lot of patience, and most of all, the ability to reach a decision about what you’ve caught based on cui bono.

Source: https://therealslog.com/2024/11/25/fishing-for-truth-in-the-swamp-of-censorship/