The Crackdown On "Fake News": An Attempt To Restore Oligarchy

A couple of days ago, the Gab user Charmander sent out this gab asking for our thoughts:

Our alternative media is under attack, what the left call Russian propaganda. H.R.6393 combined with the liberals attempt to keep power over the #FCC.

GabFam the left / globalists only want you listening to their propaganda...Thoughts?

The question's important enough to rate a detailed answer, thankfully with the aid of the scholarship of the late, great [Murray N. Rothbard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Rothbard. Specifically, his discussion of the Salem witch hunt of 1692 in chapter 59 of his Conceived In Liberty. The Mises Institute has a .pdf version of the four-volume set, which you can download and read yourself. The chapter I'll be citing starts on PDF p. 471 (webbed) or p. 442 (downloaded).

"Fake News", Real Butthurt

The first link that Charmander included in her gab is to this Activist Post article: "Bill Targeting “Russian Propaganda” Passes In House. Although this bill contains the usual word-blizzard, the relevant section is S. 501:

Section 501 calls for the government to counter “measures by Russia to exert covert influence … carried out in coordination with, or at the behest of, political leaders or the security services of the Russian Federation and the role of the Russian Federation has been hidden or not acknowledged publicly.”

Definitions include media manipulation, covert broadcasting, disinformation and forgeries, and “funding agents of influence.”

It’s easy to see how this law, if passed by the Senate and signed by the president, could be used against “fake news” websites....

Especially since "fake news" is a go-to excuse as to why so many "real news" purveyors wound up with egg on their faces when Donald Trump won the election.

When you're wrong to the point where your whole world comes crashing down, you have two choices: a) try to figure out where you went wrong (introspection); b) blaming someone. Overwhelmingly, the MSM pundits and journos went with the latter. The first target was James Comey.

But those folks seized upon a second target, so-called "fake news." Like all propaganda operations, this target was selected because there is something to it. There were some notorious fake-news Websites, some branding themselves as "satire" sites, that were geared to produce salacious fake news to be spread all over Facebook. But it's a stretch to say that "fake news" was the reason why Hillary lost: those purveyors were only in it for the money. They only cared about ad revenue.

And, if you look closely at the claim, it insinuates that a) the bulk of fake news was objectively pro-Trump (has anyone even tried to prove this?) and b) Trump supporters, whether innocently or cynically, passed around those fake news stories without questioning their veracity. As for (b), I know for a fact that it's sketchy. I lurk at the venerable Free Republic; while there, I've read at least one warning about those fake-news Sites that urged Freepers not to pass them along or take them seriously. On the grounds that it would make Conservatism easy to discredit. (!)

The addition of "Russia did it" is an odd one. For decades, the libs have demonized Sen. Joe McCarthy for fomenting a "witch hunt" in the early 1950s. Yet here they are, doing the same thing with less hard evidence than Sen. McCarthy had.

The Original Witch Hunt: Oligarch's Opportunity

Let me hand the podium over to Prof. Rothbard:

The Glorious Revolution imposed the last great settlement on the northern colonies. After the smoke of the tumult was over, Massachusetts, New York, and New Hampshire were royal colonies...

When Massachusetts heard the news of the new charter at the turn of 1692, a power vacuum opened up in the colony.... The old Puritan theocracy was in rather frantic retreat from external and internal blows, but still remained strong in the colony...

As Prof. Rothbard explains further, the seeds of the Salem Witch hunt were planted when a royalist despot named William Staughton got named Deputy Governor of Massachusetts underneath the more liberal Governor William Phips. In order for Staughton to realize his ambitions, and for his newfound partner-in-conniving William Dudley to regain power, Phips had to be discredited.

With great luck, William Staughton found his opportunity at hand; opportunity to split the ordinarily antiroyalist masses and to rally the body of Puritan theocrats behind him. In short, Staughton found a way to rally the two extremes, to swing the Puritan masses behind his Tory opportunists in order to crush the moderate center. This opportunity was the notorious Salem witch-hunt of 1692.

Why did the prestige of the old-time Puritan oligarchs erode? First of all, theocracy was easier to keep in place when Puritan Massachusetts was the only British colony in the Americas. When other colonies were established, including colonies for folks with different Protestant faiths, trade relations naturally developed. The Massachusetts Puritans could see with their own eyes that people of other faiths were neither sin-filled wretches nor punished by God for worshipping in a different way. Nor were they more untrustworthy than fellow Puritans.

The second reason was increased prosperity. Puritanism, like many religions, speaks most strongly in hard times. After a long period of good times, what used to be stirring becomes overwrought. So, Puritan society was loosening up; even some of the elders were toning it down. But, this did leave an old guard who saw their former prestige and influence dwindling.

What did the Salem witch trials offer the old-time old guard? An opportunity to demonstrate that the colony was being punished for its laxity: for straying from the old-time path. If the masses bought it, the old guard would reclaim their former prestige, influence and even power.

When Sir William Phips arrived in Boston he found the colony under a full head of witch-hunt steam. He found over one hundred accused witches in prison and awaiting trial. In over his depth, he turned unfortunately to the Mathers for advice. The Mathers and the rest of the clergy called for continual efforts to detect and root out witchcraft in the colony. The crime must meet "speedy and vigorous prosecution." The Mathers did warn that more than spectral [i.e., imaginary] evidence should be required for conviction, but this was a mere pro forma note of caution, unheeded by them or by the judges. Phips then centralized the witch trials. On advice of the Council, he turned over all witch trials to a special court of seven councillors. Naively, Phips wrote William Blathwayt that the seven judges were "persons of the best prudence." Chief judge and strongman of the new court was Lieutenant Governor Stoughton. The other councillors constituted, in the words of Professor Dunn, a "perfect microcosm of the Massachusetts ruling coalition"—Puritans and Tory opportunists. Trustingly believing that all was safe and in sober hands, Phips left for Maine to fight Indians; Stoughton was left in charge of the court, which opened in Salem in early June.

Too many writers have treated the Salem witch-hunt in psychological terms: childish neuroses and mob hysteria. The vital point is not the hysteria of children, but the use made of it by the adult society. Neither can the witch-hunt be treated as a case study in mob psychology; for the witch-hunt was not a lynching bee, but a program carried out by the elite of the colony and directed by the lieutenant governor himself, the man whose major aim had long been the exercise of power.

In other words, it was a lynch mob from above. Teenage girls regularly make unsubstantiated accusations about people they don't like. In normal times, these accusations are ignored if they don't check out. By the brutally simple process of a) treating unsubstantiated accusations as proven, and b) encouraging more accusations, Stoughton and his cohorts launched and directed a "mob hysteria" that was not spontaneous.

When you consider the old-time oligarchs' interest in the matter, you can see the important parallel to the hysteria over "fake news" and "Putin's Russia." Although the mainstream media today has far less power than the Puritan oligarchs of old, the oligarchs were gatekeepers too. Gatekeepers whose prestige and influence are eroding have a big interest in using what influence they still have to restore their prestige and power.

(The above quotes are from Conceived in Liberty, pp. 442, 443, 445.)

Will The Hysteria Turn Into An All-Out Witch Hunt?

Thankfully, No. As noted above, the mainstream media has a lot less power than the Puritan oligarchs. The very same amendment that protects them - the First Amendment - also protects alternate journalism. If that bill becomes law, it's still open to a Supreme Court challenge on First Amendment grounds.

And even if that protection were somehow transmogrified into a special privilege for "accredited" journalism, it's really hard to censor the Internet.

(Image from here.)

So, the realistic risk for alternate journalists is no worse than the risk for anyone who crosses the SJWs. Namely: swarming, defaming, discrediting. I don't want to minimize the risk of being canned from your job; that's serious. But it is a lot better than jail or being forced to live on the run.

Plus, as compared to the Puritans of 1692, we moderns are wiser to the tricks. There's already a lot of debunking of the "fake news" and "Russia swayed the election" hysteria. We moderns are better at spotting butthurt.

(Image from here.)

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Postscript: I have to say that I'm really glad that Steemit's user interface is set up like Medium's, as I've just used it like Medium: to give a detailed answer to a question asked on Gab that I couldn't answer therein. Not without a meltdown-level string of gabs, that is. :)

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Update: The strongest defense against the fake-news hysteria spinning out of control are good-hearted, scrupulous folks - thankfully politically naive - taking the claim of "fake news" literally.

Like this people:

"Anti-Fraud Experts Launch News-Accuracy Site, Find U.S. Probably Blamed Wrong Side for Syria Chemical Attack"

(Unrelated image from here.)