In terms of International Relations and Geopolitics both things can be true. And they are.

We’re just not used to dealing with that kind of complexity - our media debate is ruled by reductive fallacies.

1/ But it does run a little deeper …

https://twitter.com/triofrancos/status/1721259188074983897

2/ We tend to consume media reporting rooted in normalcy bias, perspectives observing events as if they conform to how we perceive the world.

Nicely separate domains of power. Rules. Law. Structures.

But there are glaring blindspots in our media reporting.

This thread touches on something disconcerting. Not just the problem of news deserts or yellow journalism.

1/ Authoritarians depend on active and/or passive permission, which depends on lack of awareness, emotional manipulation & continuity of belief traps.

https://twitter.com/waytowinaf/status/1699830009064747036

2/ At every corner of authoritarian agency growing and agenda proceeding we have suffered from a decrease of big picture awareness and an increase of narrative - as opposed to human storytelling or explanatory journalism.

At every step we’ve tried to have debates on why and how.

1/ When Paul Weyrich put together his teachings on building agency and creating agenda for an authoritarian reshaping of America, two concepts resonated strongly with the Republican Party.

The use of crisis.
The use of chaotic actors. 2/ Weyrich’s playbook warned about the use of a chaotic actor.

If you use one, you must be able to deny him agency at the right time and present an establishment actor.

Agreeable to extreme & biased alike. Controlled. Obedient. To get that required permission from conformists.

Well, once upon a time …

We may not have expected it, going by media narratives, but it was always going to happen. Not just cause internecine conflicts are normal to authoritarians.

We still see this as “one man, one coup”.

1/ Reality is more complex, and far more dangerous.

https://twitter.com/helenkennedy/status/1692272737325031911

2/ For the past decades there’s been several groups pushing authoritarian agenda.

From oligarchs with brown shirts like Koch, to corporatists allergic to taxes, zealots dreaming of theocracy, tech bro clubs drooling over feudalism & more.

And that’s just domestic threats.

Journalists examining today’s Twitter, in and beyond context of today’s struggles of self-coup and nascent authoritarianism really should sit down with social scientist Rebecca MacKinnon.

1/ Because today’s Twitter has become a textbook example of networked authoritarianism. 2/ Twitter is now a captured social fabric, where roads between proverbial villages aren’t just cut but used for identification, selection and deselection, just open enough for bad actors to exploit the signals mechanism for cultural engineering, propaganda and personal attacks.

Sometimes I can’t help myself. I did a social experiment.

On a former managing editor, who by now is no longer an old acquaintance. A substitution experiment.

1/ Oh boy 😬 2/ In conversation I substituted the name of one of our Cassandra’s with a generic name and a policy institute reference.

It was enough to open the floor for consideration of the topic of transnational organized crime as foundational to domestic and foreign vectors of trouble.

Oh my word, this is remarkable.

Even the laziest corporate journalist can track every private and public infrastructure investment instigated and made possible by Biden.

And damn, this really shows how much we need to rebuild, how much was torn down. Invest.gov Exploring this, the practical part of me recognises avenues of rebuilding for downstream effects.

The emotional part of me thinks back to @sarahkendzior ‘s warnings in Flyover Country & Hidden in Plain Sight, how we the people have been abused for decades whitehouse.gov/invest/

It isn’t pro- or opponents of authoritarianism who grant or deny that particular permission authoritarians depend on.

But a very specific set of demographics.

Conformist. Established. Passive.
Long attuned to perception management.

Now why do you think Chris Licht got the job.

https://twitter.com/oliverdarcy/status/1653110636010692629

It is sensitive, and it is something which requires us to look further than mere brands. But at the connects of our corporate media landscape.

Seemingly separate, they are connected and secured by a shared advertising economy, controlled for ownership and access by oligarchs.

Smedley Butler would have had Mike Flynn arrested on sight.

https://twitter.com/Strigiformes18/status/1652271079019167744

Authoritarians always try to prevent us from learning about the past.

Why?

Because by examining how we got here, and how they failed with previous attempts, we can remember how to beat them.

Flynn knows that his bosses are vulnerable in specific ways.

https://twitter.com/mmbrussell/status/1652104202733092864

The irony is raw.

1/ ISIS was created by a blend of rogue IC, white collar crime and organized crime. Today’s Brownshirts here were created in the exact same manner, by the exact same type of force dynamic.

https://twitter.com/clearing_fog/status/1359061269131587592

2/ But today’s authoritarians know they depend on permission, from conformist, established segments of demographics.

They created Brownshirts to distract us, not just as sacrificial goats. But to distract us, to push the envelope and thus normalise.

I cannot stress this enough.

What we face, what wages war upon us all, cannot be defeated by just engaging it bottom up.

1/ We have neither time nor resources to deal with every Brownshirt, every racist uncle, every operative, every stunt, and so forth.

https://twitter.com/mmbrussell/status/1640731293452312578

2/ The very foundation of the frameworks today’s authoritarians use is that everything is networked.

Vectors don’t even need to be connected, to reinforce or amplify each other. Following the money will only get you up to a low point on the curve.

1/ Sensitive as this may be, on a base level we have some serious blindspots as to why corporatism is only ever one step removed from authoritarianism.

Yes, you read that right. 2/ We have this mythos about business, but a blind eye for which behavioural predispositions have become favoured in corporate environments.

For those who welcome a propagandist leaving Fox News.

I get it. But be careful. Long games.

Authoritarians know they need to create Brownshirts - to first distract, to normalise.

But they know they *depend* on permission, from the conformist, established majority. It’s not self-evident to look beyond the noise, or the theatre craft of accelerationist narratives. Especially with all the damage it has done.

But this is a network created purposely as a component of a weapon, for an agenda of decades.

I often see comments and replies along the lines of “so many people don’t know” and “media don’t inform”.

All too true, indeed.

We are drowning in noise, normalcy bias and reductionist fallacies - at least worst.

1/ But here’s the thing, it isn’t anyone else’s job, but ours. 2/ We have outsourced the job of informing folks to something we perceive as a Fourth Estate - which it is not.

We consume narrative tailored for effect.

We signal narrative.

Both as and where we can.

But most of us have neither means nor method for even that.

If what we perceive as “conservatism” is to be an actual ideology, and not a transition state of identity, it needs to be decoupled from its selectorate model.

Because it is the very same three pillar/component model as present in authoritarianism.

https://twitter.com/JeffSharlet/status/1650129120515203074

I do believe there are conservatives who envision that conservatism must be an ideology, not a transition state, on some level. But the selectorate model remains a blindspot.

And that’s a problem. Worse, it too easily makes them a use case regardless of intent, or conviction.

One of these days experts in the fields of history, geopolitics, international relations, counterinsurgency, noopolitik and network theory really need to sit down with Tom.

1/ Because this, from someone with that much reach - this goes well beyond normalcy bias. Who benefits. 2/ When push comes to shove there’s a really simple, brutal, historical constant which applies.

Authoritarians always seek to capture any social fabric.
If they can’t capture it, they kill it.

At which point they reshape what’s left to one of siloed social control mechanisms.

Dear corporate media,

detail, like language, matters.

1/7 Trump did not attempt a coup.

Trump attempted to instigate an insurrection to seize control over agency held by the other, domestic, vectors in the discourse coalition of authoritarianism. 2/7 Trump did not bring us to where we are now.

It was oligarchs who provisioned him with tools.
It was oligarchs who told the GOP to use him as a tool.

It was oligarchs who for decades shaped conditions for both a chaotic actor, and an authoritarian party.

For decades.

It’s a healthy exercise to examine role and function of the NYT, not simply as a paper, but as a brand, and a mechanism.

For the past century.

1/5 There’s journalism, but every time when it matters, when topics of plutocracy and crime meet in consequences, it gets real ugly.

https://twitter.com/jeffsharlet/status/1647313871626031106

2/5 It’s worth considering that even though we accept that media have a role in our society, as a given, we have difficulty examining media beyond that accepted role.

The NYT is a good example of this. Every time it gets ugly, the paper manages to sidestep the debate. Why? How?

We really need to stop doing this. I get it, but it is dangerous to even entertain the idea that they would ever treat any nominal selectorate as humans.

1/ Regardless of intent, it affirms power of that authoritarian ecosystem, by reinforcing a normalcy bias.

https://twitter.com/Victorshi2020/status/1645809109122568195

2/ As a society we have a very human tendency to assume that everyone participating in a human system shares the same foundational perspectives.

Union. Republic. Democracy. Law. Et cetera.

Authoritarians don’t. And it’s demonstrable in the selectorate model they maintain.

After the Civil War, our first Twin Insurgency by Plutocracy and Crime, we failed to apply accountability.

We let slaveowners stay rich and powerful.

But it’s worse.

We let them bleed the social fabrics and economy and the population under their control.

Here we are, again. It’s sensitive to consider, but when we wonder why there’s people stuck in belief systems created by oligarchs even when it goes against their interests, we need to consider something.

Deep down, those subcultures remember having had the stick applied to them by those oligarchs.

From Leni Riefenstahl to Leslie Stahl.

@60minutes delivered the moment where authoritarianism went prime-time, receiving the grandmotherly, conformist, established, permission authoritarians depend on. In case anyone thinks @60minutes providing a platform to an authoritarian was a bad call, or badly executed, or well intended.

They’ve been leading up to this. From Stahl and her TV presentation of Trump’s “health” “plan”, to presenting Proud Boys as family men.