The End of Credibility in Public Discourse

What do QAnon in the US and the Leftist Lunatic Fringe in India have in common?

A consequence of the increasing polarization in society is the apparent fact that it is now virtually impossible to trust any public figure or institution. Those of us watching the Indian mainstream media have understood for long that it is one of the most compromised institutions in the country. The Fourth Estate is a Fifth Column, in thrall to malign forces.

For a brief, shining moment, social media seemed to promise a subversive, emergent medium, of, by and for the people. I was optimistic about it in 2001 and wrote in DNA https://rajeev2007.wordpress.com/2011/01/11/is-there-an-emergent-peoples-medium-india/ about the prospects of the ‘wisdom of crowds’ overwhelming the Great Firewalls erected by the incumbent, sold-out media. I thought ‘citizen-journalists’ would democratize the media. And they did, but only to an extent. 

Alas, by 2019 I was forced to admit in Swarajya https://swarajyamag.com/magazine/the-empire-strikes-back-on-social-media that the powers-that-be had hijacked the promise of disruptive innovation that once seemed to animate social media platforms, and that the usual vested interests ended up manipulating us there too.

Things have gotten worse in the recent past. I direct your attention to the US:

1. The large-scale infiltration, with millions of dollars, https://www.opindia.com/2020/06/china-propaganda-daily-washington-post-new-york-times-wall-street-journal-millions-dollars-justice-department-newspapers-paid-content/ by Chinese interests into the most credentialed American media, such as the WSJ, NYT, WaPo. 

2. The massive hoax regarding hydroxychloroquine in the Lancet and the NEJM that is only the latest example of pious frauds https://openthemagazine.com/essay/pious-frauds/ in the sciences in the West, and probably even criminal malpractice. Culprits? Perhaps both BigPharma greed and unreasoning anti-Trump hatred 

3. The departures of the New York Times’ opinion editor James Bennett and a senior columnist Bari Weiss, both alleging politicization of the opinion pages 

4. The reduction of the hitherto well-regarded World Health Organization to a virtual handmaiden of Chinese propaganda in the Wuhan Coronavirus pandemic.

Notably, we have seen industrial-scale efforts to absolve China of blame regarding the virus. The latest salvo is The Economist suggesting that China may not be the source, but Southeast Asia! “The hunt for the origins of SARS-COV-2 will look beyond China: The virus may have been born in Southeast Asia” https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2020/07/22/the-hunt-for-the-origins-of-sars-cov-2-will-look-beyond-china in points the finger at Vietnam (and other nations in Southeast Asia). Clinching evidence? There have been zero virus-related deaths in Vietnam!

That must count as one of the more entertainingly Orwellian bloviations of this dubious magazine, which has been a long-term fan of white racism and imperialism, but is apparently willing to shill for Chinese racism and imperialism as well, so long as the price is right. 

Not surprisingly, they also justify themselves by saying, “Objectivity? What’s objectivity? My objectivity is just as good as your objectivity!” https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2020/07/16/how-objectivity-in-journalism-became-a-matter-of-opinion?fsrc=scn%2Ftw%2Fte%2Fpe%2Fed%2F This is about as close to mindless deconstructionism as it gets. 

Not content with this, the irrepressible Economist went one step further and suggested that ‘trustworthy news’ is now in great demand https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/07/29/pandemic-fears-are-boosting-demand-for-trustworthy-news?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ed/dailychartpandemicfearsareboostingdemandfortrustworthynewsgraphicdetail, and I suppose the definition of ‘trustworthy news’ is in the eyes of the beholder. I am certain the Economist is always trustworthy, along with its friends in high places. 

I am reminded of a white British friend who said, “I am racist, and proud of it!” although she was jesting: she had an Indian boyfriend. 

A lone exception to the constant hosannahs and hallelujah’s to China is an article in the WSJ https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-hold-beijing-accountable-for-the-coronavirus-11595976973?mod=opinion_lead_pos7 which said: “Suggesting that an outbreak of a deadly bat coronavirus coincidentally occurred near the only level 4 virology institute in all of China—which happened to be studying the closest known relative of that exact virus—strains credulity.” Amen!

And then there is QAnon, a conspiracy theory site group that holds, apparently, that a cult of leftist pedophile satan-worshippers are on a mission to destroy the US, and that President Trump and friends are a bulwark against their machinations. Oh the face of it, their claims are rather absurd. Twitter, which has a self-image of being some sort of left-wing conscience-keeper, promptly banned tens of thousands of QAnon-affiliated accounts. 

It is obvious that Twitter has a severe left-leaning bias. So the fact that Twitter canceled them (the US is going through a ‘cancel-culture’ phase anyway) is not very interesting.

What IS interesting is how alike the left-wing conspiracy theorists in India are to QAnon. They believe, apparently, that a cult of Hindu ‘Sanghi’ RSS types are on the warpath to destroy the ‘secular state of India’ (which moniker itself is debatable considering how religion and government are mixed up here), and that communists and West Asian religionists and the Congress party are a bulwark against their machinations!

This left-wing cult belief is as absurd as QAnon is, and for the same reason: it is a figment of the fevered imaginations of some lunatic-fringe academics and politicians, no doubt greased generously by funds flow from China and the other usual breaking-India forces. Not surprisingly, this is the general picture put about by the mainstream media in India as well as the ‘august’ NYT, Wapo, FT, Economist, Guardian etc. 

It goes further. There is a thread that connects the Indian cult with their peers in the West. Both the Lancet and the MIT Tech Review carried editorials condemning the Article 370 abrogation, though what business it is for a medical or a technology publication is not clear. Similarly, there has been a string of municipalities in the US passing resolutions against the Citizenship Amendment Act. ironically the latest (San Francisco) was in the very week that the last of the Sikh and Hindu citizens of Afghanistan--the ones barely escaping targeted genocide--were being urgently evacuated. That, incidentally, was the whole point of the CAA: saving oppressed religious minorities! 

The municipalities are chivvied on by Indian-origin activists. The sheer Catch-22 black humor and Daliesque surrealness of their actions can only be appreciated if we realize that some of the same municipalities also voted to disband their police forces in the wake of George Floyd riots! Too much law and order is the problem?

If these are the standard-bearers of the public discourse, I see no hope for either the US or India. China has won. 

1073 words, 31 July 2020