Who’s to blame for ‘misinformation’?

Labor’s push for a “misinformation bill” collapsed last month under pressure from the political right and social media bosses. Labor’s proposed solution to the proliferation of online misinformation was a series of laws that would have given the Australian Communications and Media Authority the power to monitor digital platforms and require them to keep records about misinformation and disinformation on their networks.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton, who last month called for Palestine solidarity demonstrations to be banned, described the proposed laws as a “scandalous attack on free speech”. Pretence to lofty principle aside, the Liberals were worried that the laws would be used against the right-wing kooks that are a cherished part of their base. The sort of people who, for example, used social media to argue against the Indigenous Voice to Parliament proposal on the basis that a “Yes” victory would lead to “apartheid” and potentially pave the way for the UN to take over Australian land.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese also found himself in an unwanted conflict with the incoming Trump administration in the US. Trump plans to pass laws prohibiting social media platforms from removing anything other than unlawful content. The right-wing press seized on this clash with glee. For example, Sky News’s Michael Shellenberger described Labor’s bill as a “very unwise and counterproductive act of aggression” against the White House.

Albanese’s ALP is pathologically incapable of defending any of its policies against the political right or the business lobby when it comes under pressure. Hence, Labor failed to respond to an inquiry that recommended banning gambling advertising: it’s scared of putting even marginal sectors of capital offside. The only group the party seems confident standing up to is the under-16s, who have been banned from social media after an absurd piece of legislation passed the parliament.

Labor’s proposal was also incoherent. It assumed that social media companies would develop their own industry codes and self-regulate, the government bureaucracy stepping in to impose standards only in “exceptional and urgent circumstances” when there was a threat of “serious harm to the community”. This was defined broadly to include interference in electoral and referendum processes, harm to public health, the vilification of particular groups, and imminent harm to the economy or critical infrastructure.

The bill’s explanatory memorandum said it would cover not only verifiably false claims but also “opinions ... commentary and invective”, presumably with the government to decide what constitutes a “false” opinion. This overreach meant the bill also came under criticism from the Greens for being “half-baked” and from the human rights commissioner for posing genuine risks to free speech.

The proposed legislation was a mess. But the surrounding discussion—which focused on balancing policing responsibilities between social media bosses and state bureaucrats—largely missed the point. Misinformation and disinformation are hard to root out because they are not simply the products of a few basement-dwelling trolls; they are permanent features of capitalist politics.

For example, conservative political parties promote lies designed to inflame the reactionary fears and delusions of their right-wing base. When right-wingers claimed during the Voice referendum that a “Yes” victory would result in suburban homes being repossessed under Native Title, they were echoing a racist fear campaign initiated by Liberal PM John Howard in 1998. And during the pandemic, Melbourne anti-vax rallies organised by fascists were addressed by Liberal MPs, who lent legitimacy to the notion that COVID-19 was little more than a pretext for Labor Premier Daniel Andres to establish a communist dictatorship.

These “culture wars” are essential to mobilising a popular base for parties that exist only to represent business interests. Paul Weyrich, a leader of the “new right” that pioneered this strategy in the US 50 years ago, explained: “We talk about issues that people care about, like gun control, abortion, taxes, and crime. Yes, they’re emotional issues, but that’s better than talking about capital formation”.

Business interests are often found lurking in the background of these campaigns. Anti-lockdown demonstrators were the rag-tag shock troops for a push led by the Business Council of Australia and other industry groups eager to return to business as usual and let COVID-19 rip, regardless of the health consequences. Fears of increased Native Title claims if Indigenous rights are advanced have been stoked for decades by big farmers and sections of the mining industry to reinforce their control over resources.

Fact-checking and media regulation do nothing to challenge these politics—they have to be confronted by challenging the reactionary worldview that underpins them. Labor, typically, is unwilling to do this. Instead, it hopes that presenting itself as a party of “adults” committed to facts and reason will be broadly appealing and result in a second term in government—much like the Democrats did in the recent US presidential elections.

This approach relies on the wide acceptance that the mainstream political establishment represents “sense” and “truth” as opposed to the “loony” right-peddling conspiracy theories of its opponents. The problem for Labor (and the Democrats) is that there is a “truth deficit” on both sides of capitalist politics. It might not be as unhinged, but the political establishment has always relied on lies and misinformation to rule.

For example, millions across the world who have engaged in Palestine solidarity over the past twelve months have seen first-hand how the establishment presents supporters of Israel as victims and paints critics of the war on Gaza as antisemites. In November, international headlines were dominated by an extraordinary piece of fake news along these lines.

Mainstream politicians—from the German Greens and Australian Labor to the Israeli far right—united to present a picture of antisemitic pogroms in Amsterdam. Foreign Minister Penny Wong posted on social media: “Violence in all its forms is unacceptable. The Antisemitic attacks on Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam overnight are abhorrent”. Israeli President Isaac Herzog claimed: “We see with horror this morning, the shocking images and videos that since October 7th, we had hoped never to see again: an antisemitic pogrom currently taking place against Maccabi Tel Aviv fans and Israeli citizens in the heart of Amsterdam, Netherlands”.

But there was no pogrom. Within hours, the truth came out. Israeli football fans had gathered to burn a Palestinian flag, destroyed a taxi, chanted, “Let the IDF win, we will fuck the Arabs!” and “Why is school out in Gaza? There are no children left there!” After Israeli fans began attacking houses displaying Palestinian flags, members of the community responded to calls on social media to defend themselves, clashing with the Zionists before police intervened.

In this topsy-turvy world, Israelis marauding around inciting genocide are painted as victims of racism, while local communities defending themselves from violent attacks are smeared as pogromists.

Politicians and the media establishment will tell far bigger lies than this in the service of upholding their imperialist interests and alliances. The US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, which killed and displaced millions of people, is just one example.

In 2001, the Republican administration of George W. Bush seized on the disorientation and fear caused by the 11 September terrorist attacks to launch a campaign of regime change in the Middle East. Bush claimed that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein represented an existential threat to the world and possessed weapons of mass destruction: anthrax, nerve gas and nuclear weapons. The administration also tried to link Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the US, insinuating that the Iraqi president was in league with al-Qaeda. The enemy was clear, Bush argued: “States like these and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world”.

But Saddam Hussein didn’t possess weapons of mass destruction, nor did he have anything to do with 9/11. So they cooked up fake intelligence. Grainy satellite photographs of warehouses, bogus testimonials and ominous rumours of imported “aluminium tubes” were reported earnestly by the world’s media as evidence of the existential threat proposed by Saddam, now dubbed the “new Hitler”.

On 3 February 2003, the Washington Post—which purports to be a great defender of democracy and truth—published an article about Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction” headlined “Irrefutable”. The article stated: “It is hard to imagine how anyone could doubt that Iraq possesses [WMDs]” and claimed that the evidence was “overwhelming ... powerful and irrefutable”. It went on to assert: “Saddam Hussein’s regime is cooperating with a branch of the al Qaeda organization that is trying to acquire chemical weapons and stage attacks in Europe”.

Dodgy intelligence prepared by Bush’s allies in Britain’s Labour Party made the false claim that Iraq possessed WMDs that could be deployed against British citizens within 45 minutes . The Sun newspaper ran the hysterical headline “BRITS 45 MINUTES FROM DOOM”.

These lies were repeated ad-nauseum in the Australian press. The Australian’s Greg Sheridan claimed in August 2002 that Saddam Hussein possessed a vast arsenal of chemical and biological weapons would obtain nuclear weapons in “one or two years”.

Sheridan’s gushing support for Bush won him proximity to power, which elicited further gushing. Months later, Sheridan reported on the “dizzying week” he spent in the US capital. “It is the heart of Washington, this display of US strength and pride”, he wrote. “It is imperial Rome without the vomitoriums, greater than London was at the height of the empire ... [This] is the known universe, the most formidable agglomeration of pure power we have ever seen.”

The arguments justifying the war rapidly unravelled. Iraq’s WMD arsenal, the pages of the Australian admitted a few months later, had always been a matter of “speculation”. The false claims about the Iraqi WMD arsenal were, two years later, “perhaps the worst American intelligence failure since Pearl Harbor”.

But the damage had been done. A monstrous and murderous eight-year-long occupation was in progress. The cost? The ensuing wave of war and crisis in the Middle East, organised to reinforce American power in the region, is estimated to have taken 4.5 million lives.

“Misinformation” and “fake news” are often portrayed as modern, algorithmically driven scourges. But there is nothing new about either.

The Australian state was founded on a lie: that the continent British colonists encountered was “terra nullius”—empty land. Invaders, fully aware of the highly organised cooperative Indigenous society, destroyed evidence of it to justify their claim to the land. This heinous legal fiction stood as a defence of genocide for more than two centuries, perpetuated through history books and the education system until it was finally overturned by the Mabo land rights decision in 1992.

Dishonesty trickles down in capitalist society. The profusion of misinformation, conspiracy theories and fake news on social media is a symptom of a society ruled by liars. When reputable sources package self-serving and malicious lies as “facts”, why wouldn’t far-fetched conspiracy theories seem credible? The people who run society spend inordinate time and energy beating opponents into submission and justifying their exploitative and unequal system. They have no credibility to be the arbiters of fact and fiction.