The most anti-democratic strategy possible is to persuade people not to listen to your opponents. By doing so, you destroy debate. You make an exchange of viewpoints impossible. ‘Project Fear’ is a central tool of propaganda. #FBPE #PeoplesVote
I once read an article in an ancient political magazine on how to bamboozle people. It said that the first rule was to make sure people didn’t listen to your critics. The easiest way was by bringing up alleged errors of judgement by them in the past. #FBPE #PeoplesVote
Everyone makes mistakes, so the tactic of bringing up past mistakes is a sure-fire way of discrediting people. It muddies the waters usefully. What can result is a stalemate in which the current issue gets obscured. #FBPE #PeoplesVote
Rees-Mogg is a master of the ‘Project Fear’ style of debate. It requires no thought whatsoever, no real capacity to evaluate a situation. The impression of intelligence he creates is a total illusion. His famed fluency is the simple result of repetition. #FBPE #PeoplesVote
Rees-Mogg creates an illusion of encyclopaedic knowledge by lying. On Newsnight, he dismissed CBI fears by alleging they had got the effects of Brexit wrong. They didn’t. They commissioned research by PWC that has already come true. #FBPE #PeoplesVote
Rees-Mogg’s tactic enables him to command television debate. His interviewers can hardly be expected to argue with him on every point. This proves Obama’s argument-it takes hardly any words to tell a lie but many words to refute one. #FBPE #PeoplesVote
In the U.K. as in America, the right have learned tactics to destroy debate. Use lies and facile phrases to shut down intelligent and thoughtful, factual debate. Key to this is ‘Project Fear’, ‘Fake News’, ‘Pessimism’ and ‘Talking Our Country Down’. #FBPE #PeoplesVote
In debating Brexit, I come across a new phenomenon. It is as if there is a separating out of worlds of logic and fact. Brexiteers exist in an intellectual bunker with their own facts, phrases and sources of information. It is a black hole, into which no fact can penetrate. #FBPE
Of course, this is far from a total position. Many people voted for Brexit for good reasons, and many people can clearly see how badly it is turning out, and are changing their minds accordingly. But the phenomenon of creating, and having, a bunker mentality is worrying. #FBPE
