Yes, that's right. And everything I've been saying and doing here on Twitter has been in the service of fighting for global democracy. It wasn't a secret. But maybe this thread will help fill in some of the details, since I know much wasn't immediately obvious to many
Just fyi, I have a big thing about personal dignity. Yelling crazy shit into the void is a whole lot of no fun for me. Basically torpedoing a professional reputation I had worked very hard for many years to build in order to get through to my colleagues was also a not fun.
But debunking issues of national security is important, you can't waste time fucking around with the delicate bitchery that fact-checkers show one another around "misinformation," and this has been a matter of national, no, global security from the get-go. So I've been on here
saying shit I never would have said before, because I knew if we didn't fight this shit now we might not get a chance in the future.
Debunking doesn't look like delicate "both-sides" journalism. It doesn't look like bitchy "actually"-ing each other or writing columns about
"misinformation." Counterdisinfo is rough and tumble, occasionally vulgar, and sometimes you sound highly partisan -- because disinfo purveyors make politics out of issues that were previously unpolitical.
So anyway that's what I've been doing on here and why.
It has definitely changed me though. I don't think I'll ever be able to stop saying exactly what I think ever again. And I don't want to.
Which brings me to my next point: I'm never going to stop excoriating all the dipshits who came after me the last few years. How dare you consider yourselves anything approaching my colleagues when you missed a story as huge as this for so long. You fucking hacks.
One more thing: Security isn't what you think. Not any more. I don't think it ever was, but I'm a "divergent thinker." Security now looks like human security, not fortified borders. It looks like having enough to eat and not getting murdered by corrupt cops in your own bed.
Security is the right to have clean water, to have fresh air, to vote. That's what security looks like, and resilience is how you provide such security. In this security landscape, fighting against racism and misogyny and other social ills isn't "virtue signaling," it isn't just
something that bleeding hearts do; it's essential to the future of the planet. That's because disinformation preys on social inequalities and uses it for its fuel. Without inequality and austerity, disinfo cannot spread. Fighting those is building resilience.
Without the social ills we have allowed to propagate for too long, there would be nothing for these attacks to seize on. You see how adept the global far right (it ain't just the Kremlin) is at using the history of U.S. racism to divide and attack. Disinfo weaponizes humans.
This is the future of war. That's why I've written extensively about the Four Block War and agitprop, too. We need to understand how this works now, because we're entering a new age -- that of the global crisis. I tried to stop that, too, but climate change is here now.
Anyway, much more to say later but one more time for the people in the back: See? SEE? I told you so.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Hey so if you all had listened to me back in January and February 2021, this wouldn't have happened. But all the "very serious journalists" decided that they knew better
But that's all right, because those same "very serious journalists" have declared that the problem of "misinformation" isn't as big a deal as everybody thought!
Or maybe they're just bad at their jobs in a time of unprecedented crisis and lack the chops to understand what they're failing to prevent -- a dire security flaw during a protracted, ongoing disinformation attack. But what do they care, right? They're fine.
Oh good we get to have this fucking conversation all over again like we do every fucking year and yet no one seems to think that there might be disinformation working on people in disinfo spaces
I can already tell that I'm about to have one of those days where I either alienate or worry everybody, so I should probably not be online. But holy shit, people, listen to yourselves. We've been having the same conversation for EIGHT years now
I'm not intentionally picking on specific people so I apologize, this stupid "misinfo" bullshit is everywhere and I hate everything. Next, everyone is going to rediscover something called "disinformation" and float the idea of using artificial intelligence to fight it