Since the election of Trump in 2016 tensions with Russia have been rapidly on the rise. Claims that Putin meddled in the elections have resulted in a number of (sometimes false) accusations by the US media and sanctions by the US government. Russian sources have fired back with their own claims and counter-measures against the US, and these are just as often shown to be questionable or outright false. It getting harder to know which news sources are worth trusting, particularly since US claims that Russia infiltrated a number of American ‘alternative’ media organisations, and trust in ‘mainstream’ outlets is dropping rapidly.
In this confusing and contradictory conflict it is nearly impossible to distinguish between truth and falsity. It feels as though whatever information you get, it may have been manipulated or invented by those whose interests are served by it. The more you learn about the organisations which produce our news, the deeper this doubt becomes.
As one looks at the claims and counter-claims made by both sides, it becomes increasingly obvious that the information we are expose to constitutes the battleground for a new Cold War. The weapons in this battle are our shared political vocabulary, with terms like ‘fake news’, ‘post-truth’ and ‘alternative facts’ being used to obfuscate the widespread dishonesty on both sides.
Words like ‘fake news’ can be usefully used to illuminate dishonest and untrue reporting, but they can also be used by Trump or Putin to unilaterally undermine any criticism of their rule. It isn’t just the creation of fake news which is used to confuse public opinion; the idea of fake news is one of the many political tools utilised by governments to draw attention towards or away from information, depending on its strategic value.
To better understand the characteristics of this new Cold War it may be illustrative to consider the parallels between the first Cold War and the surveillance state which was uncovered in 2013, on the one hand, and the second Cold War and forms of informational manipulation which are only now becoming tentatively visible on the other.
The First Cold War — ‘Information awareness’
The first Cold War was a fight not only to build the biggest possible arsenal and assure mutual destruction, but also to steal secrets from — and spy on — the other side incessantly. The image of the spy, infiltrating the enemy country and expertly collecting sensitive material is a motif of the Cold War which has come to symbolise a key part of the conflict. Neither side could feel safe that they were not being listened to in their own country by the demonised enemy. The paranoia projected onto the population was felt within the ranks of government, as well as on the street, and in the privacy of the home.
Fast forward a few decades: the Snowden NSA leaks in 2013 cast a gigantic spotlight on the spying network which was developed in the 1990s and continues to operate unimpeded today. It is a mechanism which effectively monitors all the information produced by the civilian society. Snowden revealed the completion of America’s long sought after aim to have ‘Total Information Awareness’.
We all know that we are potentially being monitored whenever we are within hearing distance of a phone, computer, TV or whatever else you might own which connects to the internet.
If spying and information gathering was a key tool of the Cold War, then Snowden’s revelations are a proof that, since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the War has only been extended. The difference is that the target of the spying is now global as well as domestic, rather than being directed against the so-called Reds.
We might think that this universal monitoring is the height of modern societal control, but in my view it reveals only one half of modern governments’ strategy for preserving social control. The surveillance period of Government has reached a height, and since it is now widely known to exist, a new form of control is coming into vogue.
The Second Cold War — Information manipulation
The New Cold War, building as we speak, is defined by a different set of dangers. While the first Cold War had nuclear armament and espionage, the second one has hacking, fake news and disinformation (and we still have all those spies and nukes). Since we are in the midst of this conflict it is impossible to say which elements of which narratives are true and which are false, but whatever you think about Russian Hacking, the Corporate Media, RT, Democratic Election Fraud, Project Veritas, Trump’s Collusion, Russia’s troll factories, and all the endless conspiracy, there are clearly many less-than-honest actors exerting their influence over public discourse. The problem is people can’t agree about which sides are worth trusting. If you think the Russians are to blame for the disinformation, you probably heard it from US news sources, and if you think it’s all the US, you probably heard it from Russian-backed sources.
Revelations that the CIA was involved in the creation of Google, and that the Washington Post has a $600 million dollar contract with the CIA (more than double what Bezos paid for it), should remind us that US sources of information are just as vulnerable to manipulation from our own governments as Sputnik and RT are. Manipulating messaging can be done by anyone who has influence over significant forces in the media, or has their own means of spreading self-serving information. You and I don’t have this kind of influence. We don’t have the right ‘connections’.
It is important to remember, though, that government’s use and abuse of messaging is not a single, unified, flow of influence. There are a myriad of different individuals, groups and interests who work for and against each other, depending on their own strategic interests — particularly in the US, the conflicts between different powerful groups are all too often mistaken for genuinely open democratic discourse.
At the same time, it’s certainly possible for a range of political interests to uniformly get behind a particular narrative if it’s in the interest of the people at the top. The infamous “weapons of mass destruction” scandal is a particularly well known case of this, but there are plenty of other examples of the US media almost universally getting behind a narrative which is later shown to be completely manufactured.
At the ‘top’ of American media sit 6 companies. Anyone who can have influence over these institutions can have enormous power over the views and beliefs of 100s of millions of people who live far beyond the US border. The same thing applies in Russia, though it is exercised somewhat differently there, with the Kremlin and it’s own network of media influence controlling what is known and unknown for countless millions.
Emphasising, emitting, obscuring or inventing information is just as pertinent a means of control as the NSA’s mass surveillance. The latter gathers information, the former uses and adjusts information to suit its interests.
Surveillance power has been dramatically exposed in recent years, but the other side of power is less easily revealed. This new side of power is, in ways, more insidious, because it does not simply monitor and observe us, but mediates and manipulates the public consciousness itself.
