Thread by @JohnOBrennan2

A short thread about the Conservative party’s move into the world of disinformation and fake news. Dominic Raab says people "couldn't give a toss" about this. 1/
independent.co.uk/news/uk/politi…

Last night we saw one of the oldest political parties in the world shamelessly adopt tactics employed by Russian ‘political technologists’ & other warriors of disinformation. It was a deliberate effort to weaponize independent fact checking as part of the Tory election armoury. 2

@CCHQPress was turned into a version of St. Petersburg’s notorious Internet Research Agency, designed to fool the gullible into believing that it was a neutral arbiter of empirical research, endeavouring to bring truth to a highly polarised electoral environment. 3/

Whilst the move may have appeared to some of the Oxbridge PPE dunderheads who populate the ranks of Tory backroom operations as a tactical operation of some genius, the longer term implications of what they did are chilling. 4/

If political parties can engage in such chameleonic shape-shifting, using technology to morph into non-partisan guise, trust in political systems will collapse. 5/

What they were doing was aligning the Tory party with the shadowy world of troll factories, dark ads, deep state conspiracy, Putin and Trump.
All of this is brilliantly evoked in Peter Pomerantsev’s recent book, This is NOT propaganda. 6/
theguardian.com/books/2019/jul…

Around the world courageous people are putting their lives on the line against despotic regimes. Whether in Iran or Hong Kong, those lining up to face down regime violence do so in the name of freedom, equality and dignity. 7/

The reference points for many of these individuals is the freedom they associate with countries like the UK. Now they watch as the UK’s governing party behaves in the same way as Putin’s regime or Xi Jinping’s: engaging in deception through online curation of subterfuge. 8/

The Conservative party was once a beacon of individual & collective freedom. Now it has become what it fought against throughout the Cold War years: ideologically extreme, utterly shameless about the manipulation of information & indifferent to the consequences of its actions. 9/

Conservatives often claim that they are committed to the ‘marketplace of ideas’ and that the highest ideal within that world is freedom. Last night the Tory party sided with the opaque forces committed to authoritarianism and despotism. 10/

It is no coincidence that No. 10 is now a wholly owned subsidiary of the Vote Leave apparatus which literally bombarded British people with a torrent of lies about the EU in the referendum campaign in 2016. The associated pathologies are now deeply embedded in the Tory party. 12/

We know that Johnson's ascent to power was characterised by inveterate lying. Aided by the exit of a moderate MPs who simply couldn't take any more, the Tory party is now wholly committed to the darkest of 'dark arts'. It is doing incalculable harm to the fabric of politics. 14/

Twitter received mountains of complaints and – yet again – decided to do nothing. Their platform is being used to defenestrate democracy.
And, just like Dominic Raab, they and @jack in particular could not give a toss. 15/