Creating a world where facts and truth are always questioned.

The idea to keep us in a state of confusion about power and politics. That way, powerful forces control the messages and their outcome. ProPublica reports that Russia is using fake factchecks to misinform the Russian population. what the Russian controlled media is doing is creating false narratives and then disproving those false stories with fake fact checks. According to the article, here's how it work:

"On March 3, Daniil Bezsonov, an official with the pro-Russian separatist region of Ukraine that styles itself as the Donetsk People’s Republic, tweeted a video that he said revealed “How Ukrainian fakes are made.”

"The clip showed two juxtaposed videos of a huge explosion in an urban area. Russian-language captions claimed that one video had been circulated by Ukrainian propagandists who said it showed a Russian missile strike in Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city."

"But, as captions in the second video explained, the footage actually showed a deadly arms depot explosion in the same area back in 2017. The message was clear: Don’t trust footage of supposed Russian missile strikes. Ukrainians are spreading lies about what’s really going on, and pro-Russian groups are debunking them. (Bezsonov did not respond to questions from ProPublica.)"

"The goal of the videos is to inject a sense of doubt among Russian-language audiences as they encounter real images of wrecked Russian military vehicles and the destruction caused by missile and artillery strikes in Ukraine, according to Patrick Warren, an associate professor at Clemson who co-leads the Media Forensics Hub."

“The reason that it’s so effective is because you don’t actually have to convince someone that it’s true. It’s sufficient to make people uncertain as to what they should trust,” said Warren, who has conducted extensive research into Russian internet trolling and disinformation campaigns. “In a sense they are convincing the viewer that it would be possible for a Ukrainian propaganda bureau to do this sort of thing.”

The use of social media makes this so much easier that 25 years ago. The firehose stream of information has limited filters. The attacks on the media by Trump and his administration were a deliberate attempt to confuse the issues. There is no shared truth, only opinions vetted by those who would shape the narrative. Trump influenced conservatives are attacking science, intellectuals, journalism, an independent judiciary, and democracy...even organized, mainline, religions. Why? Divided, we are more vulnerable.

Pew published a series of reports to gain insights about the potential future effects of people’s use of technology on democracy. "The digital disruption of democracy has been a leading concern over the past four years – a time of the Brexit decision in the United Kingdom, the American presidential election and a variety of other elections. Pew shared a series of quoted from people who are studying these issues in a hunt for remedies." The report came out in 2020. Their worst fears are being realized in Trump's "Big Lie" and Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The river of falsehoods and lies has become a torrent.

Some of those quotes from the Pew article are below.