Thread by @EmmaLBriant

IMPORTANT THREAD ON DISINFO: I have working class roots. First hand knowledge of how difficult it is for working & vulnerable unemployed people to make improvements to their position. My attempts to understand power, both concrete and informational & how it shapes organization

of our world led me directly to study sociology, politics, international relations and propaganda as a positive/negative force. I needed to understand why people think and do as they do. My values preceded my education, as experiences of being rich and poor... that gulf

and differing cultures led me to be drawn toward left politics, social justice. I support the underdog our government should protect, I don’t support ignorance. I admire left wing intellectuals who have defined our thought on the basis of evidence... public scholarship.

Facts should underlie but are NOT perceptions and beliefs. You can’t grab the most exciting breaking comment that challenges (or supports!) the prevailing narrative and take a counter-establishment argument (because you’re a rebel) and say that necessarily makes you ‘left’.

I am not a ‘liberal’ in the American sense, nor a centerist. I voted for Corbyn, I believe in his domestic (not foreign) policies but was disappointed in him - I support traditional Labour Party causes like the NHS, the welfare state... equality...

I have been homeless. Poor. No one rises from that because they’re gifted, safety nets and good communities are essential. I say this because I want to make clear where I stand when I ...

...say I am incredibly concerned about the number of people on the academic and political left who are spreading literally anything ‘anti-establishment’ without thought and not being discerning about checking accuracy...

- The left is only better if it is evidentially robust, factually superior. Without consideration for the way power is distributed and abused internationally AND in our own country - without understanding of power’s abuses globally we do not understand power...

Concern about 9/11 response or Iraq lies do not mean everything we hear is a lie. The world is not black & white - indeed whatever claims it is may be dirty too. As someone in DC, who knows people who ‘do’ that propaganda deliberately - I was dismayed to receive emails and posts

from academic left wing lists claiming ‘false flag’ operations on Jan 6. Things I saw in Russian propaganda and US white nationalist outlets defending Trump on grounds ‘the establishment’ are corruptly trying to get rid of him, I have watched reproduced spreading nonsense in

left wing UK outlets. Tony Benn would be appalled. I also see mainstream outlets that refused to acknowledge western governments produce propaganda. Our media refusal to focus on anything but threat of foreign propaganda means they fail to scrutinise government.

Disagreement about the principles that organise society should not determine what we consider facts. And the left should be better than this. We need proper scrutiny not zealots.

Opinion is not fact. Academics especially should do better - what I saw on an academic list organised by supposedly left wing academics in the days following Jan 6 made me incredibly upset. I’ve been worried for a while.

I believe strongly in academic freedom. I shall not reveal the identity of anyone but I share below an image not identifying its author. I want the left to think about it’s fuller interrogation of facts not opinion, because we should be succeeding politically and we are not.

And this is not helping. Nor is exclusion from the mainstream media of criticism of ‘the establishment’ or concerns of those who might disagree (with me!) that the Russian Federation is threatening us - but we threaten ourselves.

We have to come together in our common understanding of power and lawbreaking. We cannot do that without a shared factual basis. The mass insurrection of the US Capitol building which - I just lived through!!

...and which EVEN people I know who work doing right wing propaganda creating narratives about Antifa and who still support Trump tell me they accept that Neo-Nazi Oathkeepers were organising not Antifa. Despite the BS..

Come on lefties we are better than this... (anything identifiable redacted here) - from 8 Jan - no evidence provided for any of this of course. Some share false claims about the coronavirus, academics- academic freedom is important to protect but not abuse.

The saddest thing is the lack of counter argument this received.

This does not represent academia. But the failure to call it out is an embarrassment.