The dark art of political manipulation
“In every age there have been political hucksters, using aggression, lies and outrage to drown out reasoned argument” writes George Monbiot on his website. “But not since the 1930s have so many succeeded. Trump, Johnson, Narendra Modi, Jair Bolsonaro, Scott Morrison, Rodrigo Duterte, Nicolas Maduro, Viktor Orban and many others have discovered that the digital age offers rich pickings.”
He describes the psychology of political manipulation used by these populist demagogues. It involves raising people’s anxieties, because when we feel threatened we cannot hear the considered voices of reason. No matter how carefully-considered and well-argued are the messages of opposition parties, they won’t be heard.
Morrison’s art of political manipulation
While George Monbiot simply includes Morrison as one in his list of hard-right populist manipulators (see above entry), political scientist Rodney Tiffen, writing in Inside Story – The Morrison Playbook – identifies his outstanding capacity for distraction and deception. Morrison refuses to acknowledge the existence of policy options or contingencies:
He prefers to talk as if no reasonable person could contemplate anything but the course he has embarked on — as if his side is all pro and the alternative is all con, and the choice is between common sense and absurdity. This absolutist rhetoric projects certainty and decisiveness, and aims to close down debate.
Too many slogans, not enough explanation from government
Last week’s leak of “talking points” demonstrates not only the shallowness of the government’s policy agenda, but also its patronising attitude to the people it claims has given it a mandate.
Speaking at an awards ceremony in Parliament House, former High Court judge Kenneth Hayne spoke out against politicians’ use of dumbed-down communication. “It will take honesty to recognise that slogans may sell, they do not persuade. It will take courage to recognise that slogans sell by appealing to emotion not thought or reason”.
(Parliament House has not made available the full text of his comments: perhaps they are too close to a description of the behaviour of Morrison and his ministers. Some non-metropolitan papers have given them reasonable coverage, such as this report in theNorthern Daily Leader.)
Human Right Heroes in the Making China blocks Liberal MPs Andrew Hastie and James Paterson from ...
Two outspoken Liberal politicians have been barred entry into China but deny it is a reflection on the Federal Government.
Key points:
- James Paterson said he thought the decision was due to recent criticisms of China's ruling Communist Party
- Andrew Hastie has previously compared the West's handling of China's rise to the failure to contain Nazi Germany
- Senator Paterson said he wanted to engage with China in good faith, calling it a "shame" the opportunity had been denied
West Australian MP Andrew Hastie and Victorian Senator James Paterson were due to take part in a study tour to Beijing next month.
But when the tour operator called the Chinese Embassy to arrange their visas, it was told the pair were "unwelcome at this time".
Mr Hastie believed the decision was politically motivated.
"I think we've been banned from travelling to China largely because we've been outspoken about the Chinese Communist Party and we've been vocal on human rights issues," he said.
"We've spoken for the Uyghur people in Xinjiang province, we've spoken for Dr Hengjun, an Australian citizen still in detention, we've also spoken with deep concern about the process in Hong Kong."
JOEL KOTKIN: Will Australia Become A Vassal State of China? “China presents the most profound challenge to liberal values since the end of the Cold War, a development that has caught our consistently lame political establishment by surprise. The leaders of both parties, and much of the corporate America, never saw it coming.”
AND THAT’S THE OFFICIAL, INFLATED FIGURE: China’s 2020 growth will drop below 6.0 per cent says Chinese think tank – first government-linked body to make such a prediction.
IT’S AMAZING HOW LITTLE ATTENTION THIS IS GETTING, EVEN FROM OUTFITS LIKE AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL: Uighur researchers say China running more camps than known.
Hundreds of internal Chinese government documents obtained by The New York Times reveals striking new details about the execution of the country’s mass detention of ethnic minorities over the past three years in the Xinjiang region.
The rare leak of documents, described in the newspaper’s bombshell report as “one of the most significant leaks of government papers from inside China’s ruling Communist Party in decades,” details how Chinese authorities have contained as many as one million Uighurs, Kazakhs and other predominately Muslim minorities into internment camps and prisons.
Chinese online fiction as 'soft power'
In the South China Morning Post Simone McCarthy looks at How a new generation of online storytellers is helping to spread the word about Chinese culture.
An interesting observation that:
This officially sanctioned push involves the global spread of state media news bureaus and the use of lConfucius Institutes to teach language and culture.
However, unlike big-budget television programmes or feature films that major production companies hope to export, the fiction writers face a lesser degree of pressure from the censors
Consider the past 10 days. On Nov. 8, security forces killed a student protestor. Another was wounded Nov. 11. On Nov. 12, Beijing sycophants claimed mobs had brought the city to “the brink of total collapse.”
CHINA SYNDROME: Vast Dragnet Targets Theft of Biomedical Secrets for China. “Nearly 200 investigations are underway at major academic centers. Critics fear that researchers of Chinese descent are being unfairly targeted.” Well, the Chinese government expects overseas Chinese to be loyal to it, so . . . .
" How much do you think the poster intended to hurt people with what they said"
SOCIAL MEDIA UPHEAVAL: The Paradox Of Viral Outrage: Shaming Breeds More Outrage, But Also Sympathy.
THE DARK PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIAL NETWORKS: Why it feels like everything is going haywire. “At its inception, social media felt very different than it does today. Friendster, Myspace, and Facebook all appeared between 2002 and 2004, offering tools that helped users connect with friends. The sites encouraged people to post highly curated versions of their lives, but they offered no way to spark contagious outrage. This changed with a series of small steps, designed to improve user experience, that collectively altered the way news and anger spread through American society. In order to fix social media—and reduce its harm to democracy—we must try to understand this evolution.”
You could start here.
Can’t say I’m much of a gamer but I like when things intersect in interesting ways and the launch of Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding is one of those times. This is a huge launch with lots and lots of coverage, you’ll probably be seeing it everywhere. The GameSport review, which gives a great idea of the look and gameplay, is above and here’s more of what it’s about, from the review at The Verge:
Death Stranding takes place in a distant future, one that has been ravaged by a largely unexplained phenomenon called the death stranding. It wiped out cities and almost all life while opening a gate between the worlds of the living and dead. Those ghostly BTs haunt forests and mountains, and certain humans called repatriates are able to return to life from a strange underwater space known as the Seam. Sam, played by Norman Reedus, is one of these repatriates. He’s also something of a post-apocalyptic delivery man, shuttling supplies from one settlement to the next. Early in the game, he’s given a particularly ambitious task: reunite America (now known as the UCA, or United Cities of America) by traveling across the country, connecting settlements to a sort of internet-like network. At the same time, Sam is trying to reach the west coast of the country to rescue his sister who has been captured by a terrorist organization.
David Erlich at IndieWire is calling it the best video game movie ever made.
Massive, moody, and — as usual for the video game auteur — weird as hell. The open-world experience has enough contemplative moments to make it feel like a “Grand Theft Auto” sequel directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, and it’s the greatest achievement yet from the most eccentric and forward-thinking designer of a medium in which virtually every large-scale project is created by committee.
But what I’d like to draw your attention to is where Kojima’s vision intersects with fashion and design. As Ryan Epps says at TheGamer, Death Stranding Is A Tangled Web Of Designer Collaborations.
“At today’s rates, the shipping of a 100-gram parcel to Fairfax, Virginia, would cost a small business in Marion, North Carolina, at least $1.94…but it would cost a company in Shanghai only $1.12,” Paul Misener, Amazon’s vice president for global public policy, told Congress in 2015. “This has left thousands of American small businesses at a competitive disadvantage against foreign competition…because of the size of the hidden shipping subsidies.”Foreign mail weighing less than 4.4 pounds arrives at U.S. “transfer points,” where it is then distributed by the USPS like regular domestic mail, but at subsidized “terminal dues” rates set by the UPU, not by the U.S. Postal Service.
Dumb.
But:
An “extraordinary congress” convened by the UPU in October finally addressed the disparity. UPU members voted to allow the U.S. and other countries to set new reimbursement rates beginning in July 2020. Terminal dues could increase anywhere from 125 percent to 600 percent, according to Cathy Roberson of Air Cargo World. Whatever the change, American tax dollars will no longer be used to benefit one group of businesses over another.
#Winning.
And that just may be why they are successful
LATE EATING IS BAD FOR YOU IN ALL SORTS OF WAYS: Eating late may mean higher heart disease risk for women. It’s bad for your digestion and tends to make you fat. Which is sad, as I do love a late-night pizza.
YET A HIGH-PROTEIN, HIGH-FAT DIET IS GOOD FOR YOU: Eat What You Want And Die Like A Man: The World’s Unhealthiest Cookbook.
“JOHN, THIS IS MONIKA. I AM OVER THE WALL”: A journalist’s recollection of the Fall of the Berlin Wall.
At Radio Prague International Ian Willoughby has a Q & A with Rosamund Johnston and Lenka Kabrhelová about their new Q & A-based book, Havel v Americe, in Humility and “rock star” appeal – how Václav Havel won over the US.
Why Are The Books We Read As Children The Ones That Enter Our Psyches?
Children aren’t reading for their brand, and they’ve got something adults often don’t: Time. Also, “children’s books are where we first encounter myriad aspects of life. Such intense periods of discovery tend to lodge in the memory.” – The Observer (UK)
