Countdown to Socialism by Devin Nunes

Author:Devin Nunes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Encounter Books
Published: 2020-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOUR

The Disinformation Funnel

AMERICA NEEDS a free, diverse press – we need the vital information and debate the media is supposed to provide in order to make decisions about our country. Instead, we have the fake news complex feeding its product directly into our information ecosystem. In the last chapter I discussed the manufacturing of fake news. In this one, I’ll explain the delivery system for that product – how it’s injected into the public sphere via the social media giants, especially Google, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Social media is the central component of the fake news chain. It’s the distribution center. Nearly 70 percent of Americans use Facebook, and more than half of all Americans use it as a source for news. Social media takes the radical, anti-American messages developed by socialist activists and disseminates them to the public at large. This process of developing and distributing propaganda is the key to the success of the fake news complex – I call it “the Disinformation Funnel.”

The purpose of the Funnel is to filter, refine, direct, and amplify propaganda ultimately disseminated through laptops, tablets, and smart phones. From there it goes directly into your brain, with the goal of leaving no room for anything besides socialist propaganda.

Interestingly, social media’s role in the Funnel was first exposed by none other than Barack Obama. Only two weeks after Trump’s 2016 victory, Obama complained to Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, blaming Clinton’s loss on the supposed fake news posted on the social media giant. As we know, Trump later turned the phrase “fake news” against his opponents in the press and the Democratic Party politburo. But what was Obama driving at when he warned the tech oligarch about allowing disinformation on his platform?

Obama’s warnings had nothing to do with Russian disinformation. Russia spent a negligible sum on Facebook ads compared to the $28 million the 2016 Clinton campaign spent on the same platform. Further, as House Intelligence Committee Republicans showed, most of those Russian-bought Facebook ads were seen after the election. Obama wasn’t upset about the success of Russian propaganda – he was frustrated with the failure of Democratic Party propaganda.

Remember the context of Obama’s statement – it was after a devastating Democratic loss. Obama was simply complaining that Zuckerberg and his company lacked party discipline. Information that should not have gotten out, information that was not harmful to Trump and not helpful to Clinton, had reached the public. Facebook should not have allowed that. It was supposed to be pushing whatever helped Clinton and blocking anything that hurt her. Obama was angry because Facebook had failed to play its nakedly partisan role in the information ecosystem that had served the Democrats so faithfully during his time in office – what former Obama advisor Ben Rhodes called the “echo chamber.”

This was the first excuse the Democrats used to explain Trump’s victory – fake news and Facebook were to blame. This also marked when the Democrats decided they need to own the entire infrastructure of social media.

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