The mushroom theory of power

Comments made last week by Barack Obama at a Democratic Party event highlight the problems of running a country when its citizens have permanent access to uncensored information in real time:

… the truth of the matter is, is that the world has always been messy. In part, we’re just noticing now because of social media and our capacity to see in intimate detail the hardships that people are going through.

Clearly, Barack Obama is aware that the growing popularity of the social media makes for a very different country to the one that his predecessors in the White House governed. Furthermore, he made no reference to any need to protect the good people of the United States from exposure to too much information, suggesting that not only does he understand the unmanageable nature of these type of media, but that he also accepts the reality of the world that he lives in and within which he must carry out his responsibilities.

Sad then, that he has overseen the rolling out of the most intrusive surveillance system in the history of the United States, and which is an ongoing, permanent violation of the basic rights and privacy of just about everybody on the entire planet, in flagrant violation of international law. For President Obama, looking after his flock would seem to be made more difficult when his sheep are well-informed, but that this can be overcome if the shepherd knows what they, and all the rest on the planet, are thinking, reading, and writing.

Needless to say, other so-called democratic governments have shown that they too need to check information flows to the electorate. In Spain, the administration has not only threatened to change the law, creating new crimes applicable to the internet: at the same time, we have seen a concerted effort to control the media, all part of a broader campaign to prevent the free circulation of information. In short, the social networks are a menace that has to be brought to book by whatever means. This government’s view of the world is that the traditional media: newspapers, television, and radio, should be the only channels by which news is distributed, and that these can be kept under the control of the authorities.

Under such a system, the social networks are reduced to a “minor problem”, but still a thorn in the side. Which is why the ruling Popular Party has made Spain a bulwark in the fight against internet freedom, the homeland of the dangerous and absurd “right to be forgotten”, leading the way in imposing stupid taxes that penalize anybody who provides a link to a news story. Our government, which has shown itself adept at making last-second changes to new laws, has rewarded the country’s leading newspapers with a subsidy to compensate their ever-shrinking sales, hoping to kill two birds with one stone: keep the press on side, and put the internet under control.

Contrary to what the founder of Spanish news aggregator Menéame says, whose site has become something of a forum for criticism of the Spanish government, the impact of the tax is not collateral damage: just like in Venezuela, it is the government’s response to opposition.

Spain is now a supposedly modern country, but one whose leaders do not speak English, and whose main political parties are riddled with corruption — and whose politicians never take responsibility for — but determined to make sure that nothing is ever published in the press, and on the rare occasions it does, it can now apply the right to be forgotten to those concerned.

The Spanish government reminds me in some ways of some CEOs, who just wish the customers would go away so that they could get on with their job. The Spanish government believes that it could run this country much better if everybody just kept quiet, stayed at home, and kept out of the government’s hair. In Spain, patriotism means saying and doing nothing. Unlike its US counterpart, which seems to be making an effort to address people’s concerns, the Spanish government is determined to do all within its power to ignore the electorate’s concerns and to apply the mushroom theory of power: keep the people in the dark and feed them manure.

(En español, aquí)