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My first head-on encounter with wilful disinformation was trivial and illuminating. Back in the mid-80s, I was barely 20 years old, working in one of Ottawa\u2019s busiest restaurants. As with restaurants everywhere, artists, students and social misfits were over-represented.<\/p>\n
A pair of very pretty front of house people, he a dancer and she a budding intellectual, were discussing Thomas Pynchon\u2019s novel The Crying of Lot 49, as young lovers do. They were leaning across the service bar in the back, making eyes at each other. Professing her love for the, uh, book, she said something astonishingly wrong about it. He enthusiastically agreed.<\/p>\n
I, the stunted Beatnik, stupidly thought their enthusiasm was driven by a shared love of learning.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo it\u2019s not!\u201d I blurted. \u201cThe whole point of the book is that there won\u2019t<\/em> be any resolution!\u201d<\/p>\n They didn\u2019t even break eye contact with one another. I offered a couple more increasingly agitated points, but they ignored me.<\/p>\n I was right there. Speaking. To them.<\/p>\n And they ignored me. Me. Who was right there.<\/p>\n God I was stupid.<\/p>\n It took me decades to come to terms with a thing I should have learned right then and there: Ideas aren\u2019t debated. They\u2019re contested. Ideas exist only to bind us together.<\/p>\n Yes, only. The fact that ideas also allow information to be stacked up so that even a fool such as I can pontificate about the ornate intellectual structures in Foucault\u2019s Pendulum or Gravity\u2019s Rainbow is Darwinian coincidence. We\u2019re flying to other worlds on peacock feathers.<\/p>\n If we survive as a species, it will be through the power of ideas to build common cause and save us from ourselves.<\/p>\n If we collapse, it will be through the power of ideas that unite (enough of) us in opposition to the idea of a common cause.<\/p>\n The fact that it\u2019s taken me decades to come to this realisation makes me very sad. The fact that I\u2019ve come to this realisation at all gives me hope.<\/p>\n Climate change theory isn\u2019t up for debate. It never was. Ever. It was just a widening body of data leading inexorably to a more nuanced understanding of the same conclusion: If we change the composition of the atmosphere sufficiently, the climate will change too.<\/p>\n Voter fraud isn\u2019t subject to debate. Fraud is remarkably easy to detect, and always has been, even back in the days of Machine politics. Actual voter fraud generally isn\u2019t designed to hide the results. It\u2019s a show of force. It\u2019s a public statement of contempt for the mere concept of democracy. It is the idea of autocracy embodied, designed to unify the population in submission.<\/p>\n Fake narratives of voter fraud are, paradoxically, the same thing.<\/p>\n Vaccination isn\u2019t subject to debate. Discovery? Yes. Research? Of course. But not debate. There is literally nothing in the fundamental proposition that is subject to question: If we assist the body in developing immunity to dangerous diseases, we will suffer less as a species.<\/p>\n But if we do allow people to pretend it\u2019s a debate, every word of that last sentence can be assailed:<\/p>\n \u201cIf\u2014\u201d Ah! You\u2019re not even sure yourself and you want to force me to take that poison?!<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cwe\u2014\u201d Who\u2019s we, Kemo Sabe? I never consented to this!<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cassist the body in developing immunity\u2014\u201d Assistance?!? It\u2019s invasion! We\u2019re messing with God\u2019s Plan! We\u2019re poisoning ourselves now and for generations to come! <\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cto dangerous diseases\u2014\u201d It\u2019s no worse than the flu! I had it, and I was fine!<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cwe will suffer less\u2014\u201d MORE<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cas a species.\u201d Leave me out of your mind control plots, Bill Gates! I\u2019m not even sure we <\/strong>are<\/strong><\/em> the same species.<\/strong><\/p>\n And yet, in the face of this, we spend inordinate amounts of time and effort trying to equip the truth-tellers, the fact-checkers, the cooperators and the listeners with tools to cope with the liars and the stone-hearted exclusionists.<\/p>\n Forgive me if this simile offends, but telling reputable media professionals how to better contend with this phenomenon is disturbingly similar to telling women to dress sensibly. You\u2019re demeaning us, second-guessing what we\u2019re already doing, and making the problem ours alone when it\u2019s emphatically not.<\/p>\n We haven\u2019t lost our readers\u2019 trust. It\u2019s not like it slipped between the cushions while we were streaming Tiger King. We\u2019ve been systematically delegitimised and defamed by bad faith actors.<\/p>\n In this light, telling media people to Do Better and to Build Trust is counter-productive. We should do it, of course, but not because it\u2019s going to solve the disinformation blight. Better information is a public good in and of itself, but it\u2019s not a suitable antidote to false narratives that unite one group against another.<\/p>\n We won\u2019t win this contest by debating. We win by exposing bad faith.<\/p>\n\n\n The solution has always been the same: Single out the ringleaders and show them up for the charlatans they are. Because the charlatans are there. Every time\u2014or at least so often that the exceptions are statistically unmeasurable.<\/p>\n Purveyors of falsehood and conspiracies know this. That\u2019s why they reserve an especially virulent stream of invective for the most charismatic leaders, the ones who don\u2019t argue, but persuade. They\u2019ll stop at nothing if they fear their ideas are taking hold.<\/p>\n That\u2019s not how we roll, of course. But we have a weapon that is equally effective. We can expose. We expend exabytes of data\u2014years of effort every day\u2014exposing the lie, but only a fraction of that exposing the liars and their selfish motives, and punishing them. And yet:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n