Misinformation Is A Weapon

In 1986, the Guardian newspaper released a video about perspective.

The first shot shows a skinhead running away from a car as it pulls menacingly out of an alley.

The second shot is the same scene but from the reverse angle. So now you can see that the skinhead isn't running away from the car but towards a respectable-looking businessman. The scene cuts just as the skinhead lunges at him.

And the third shot, a wide angle, shows the same scene again. But this time, you realise that the skinhead isn't attacking the businessman, he's trying to save him by pushing him clear of a previously unseen stack of falling bricks.

In a thirty-second clip, we learn that the car was irrelevant, that 1986 brick safety regulations weren't up to scratch, and that we may be harbouring some unconscious bias against skinheads.

But if social media had existed back then, we’d have learned the truth: rogue vehicles are forcing ordinary citizens to run in fear, an epidemic of skinheads is mugging hard-working businessmen, and it’s time to get these murderous bricks out of our country before they destroy our way of life.

There's an art to radicalising people on the internet.

First, you feed them a grain of truth, preferably about something other people are afraid to talk about.

Have you heard that “military age” immigrants are “flooding” into your country? Did you know that the “black homicide rate” is disproportionately high? Are you aware that “Big Pharma” is run by greedy, untrustworthy sociopaths? Or that the Quran contains violent, even genocidal passages?

That kind of thing.

Then, connect these unsayable truths to a problem your budding extremist is afraid of. This connection can be as flimsy as you like, so let your imagination run wild.  

Try suggesting that immigrants are the reason hardworking citizens can't pay their mortgages, or that a single, troll-baiting survey means white people should “get the hell away” from black people. Claim that COVID vaccinations contain nanotechnology that governments can control via 5G networks, or that the Mayor of London (who happens to be Muslim) is planning to implement “Shakira” law throughout the city.

And so long as you never, under any circumstances, stop making people afraid, as long as you never let them realise that “military age” just means “working age” (good news considering immigrants contribute billions to their economies), or that a mere 0.008% of African Americans commit the homicides that you're demonising all African Americans for, or that all Abrahamic texts, including the Bible, endorse slavery, numerous genocides, and a veritable cornucopia of incest, this formula is remarkably effective.