This post was written out of observing the anti-CRT and anti-trans moral panics, thinking about a prompt about how people might identify professional disinformation, personal worries about the rise of fascism, and reading this article.
It is difficult to separate truth from misinformation when there are professional disinformers in the mix. I could describe a few common things to look out for that can lead to faulty reasoning, but ultimately, there aren't many good content-free ways of distinguishing these things. People need some basis in truth to be able to notice when someone is spreading disinformation or misinformation.
Conversational Red Flags Are Helpful But Insufficient
Nevertheless, there can be red-flags which act as warnings for potential disinformation. The most basic red flags look at how consistent a person's messaging is. This "inconsistency" red flag doesn't rely on us having to know any extra content about the topic, which makes it a powerful tool.
Of course, people might appear to be inconsistent if they change and develop their views—on the other hand, they might be covering up their inconsistencies in bad-faith by saying that they merely changed their views.
There are red-flags, but as observed above, there are ways to obfuscate red flags. A pre-existing content-rich analysis is necessary to help clear up some of these ambiguities.
It helped me that I had an existing analysis of conservative strategies in the past. My analysis has developed in nuance over time, but the general ideas have been stable for years. Because of my existing understanding of common conservative tactics and targets, it was pretty easy for me to identify that the anti-CRT, anti-trans messaging was likely to become part of the broader conservative disinformation project. Dividing people with fear-baiting social issues is a common conservative tactic.
Inconsistency, Overlooked Because Of Overriding Fear and Anger
Disinformers say a lot of things. They will sometimes get sloppy with their messaging, which often reveals an inconsistency in their stated motivations, and simultaneously reveals something closer to their underlying motivations. For wealthy conservatives and capitalists, these underlying motivations usually align with their political-economic interests.
Some of the people in these moral-panic disinformation campaigns will know that their disinformation is motivated by their underlying conservative agenda. For others, however, they'll just be caught up in bad reasoning and silly talking points.
Fear and anger are known to be effective ways of causing people to reason badly and take up bad talking points, which is why professional disinformers focus on that style of messaging: “Be afraid of this social outgroup! They are ideologically misled but powerful!”, or “Be angry at this social outgroup! They have different, ridiculous, harmful interests around this ideological social issue! If you don't want people to be harmed by their evil ideology, then you should militantly defend the other side of this social issue!” This style of messaging is yet another red flag.
Social Molehills Are Not Bigger Than Material Mountains
Conservative disinformation campaigns almost always have people who are intentionally or unintentionally pushing a social issue which distracts from underlying material issues. That is, their fear-mongering around social issues almost always diverts people away from a more accurate material analysis of their concerns.
We'll have time to get into the details later, but as a quick summary, I believe that a useful material analysis would emphasize how the structure of the political economy is now tending to make society unnecessarily worse-off, for the benefit of the few who have effective control over the means of production.
The “structure of the political economy” may be defined as: “the relations between people involved in production, with particular consideration to who has effective control over the means of production”. In a capitalist political economy, “effective control” essentially refers to “ownership rights”. In a socialist or communist political economy, it would refer to “democratic influence”.
The analysis, applied to modern examples of disinformation in the USA, results in a few rather useful heuristics for looking out for disinformation.
First, when you are introduced to a prominent political proposal which would be significantly in the class interests of the bourgeoisie, then it's likely that the bourgeoisie were the ones who helped make it so prominent. They may have even employed people to write the text of the proposal.
Second, if a political proposal promotes more division over a materially ungrounded social issue, particularly in a way which conjures a scary outsider or evil scapegoat, this division will often be in the class interests of the bourgeoisie. It is likely that there is—or will be—a bourgeois-resourced disinformation campaign which uses fear and anger to rally unwitting citizens into supporting the proposal, and simultaneously into supporting the bourgeois-allied politicians who identify with the proposal.
This entire ordeal ultimately undermines these citizens’ working class interests. It divides the working class; it creates a scapegoat for real material problems; and the bourgeois-allied politicians who pass the proposal will go on to pass other things to benefit corporate profits and wealthy individuals, and to attack the interests of the working class.
Third, which seems to follow from the previous two points: If you notice well-resourced people trying to raise the prominence of a socially divisive political proposal, and they don't ground the discussion with reference to rigorous material analysis; then it's very likely that they have been looped into a bourgeois disinformation campaign, wittingly or unwittingly. At the very least, they are almost certainly helping the interests of the bourgeoisie, and hurting the interests of the working class—regardless of whether it is part of an intentional campaign by the bourgeoisie. But it is almost always part of an intentional bourgeois campaign.
Broadly speaking, the capitalist class and the working class both have materially-grounded class interests.
Bourgeois class interests are about maintaining the domination, exploitation, and coercion of the working class, to accumulate material wealth and consequently increase their social influence. The working class, because they do not own the means of production, have no other option to survive but to sell their capacity to perform labor to capitalists.
Working class interests are to replace that system with democratic ownership/control over the means of production; to abolish the domination, exploitation, coercion, and unnecessary deprivation of the capitalist economic system.
There are nuances in the material and social distinction, and in this basic description of these class interests. I’ll try to briefly address some of these in later posts.
Conservative Grifters and Useful Idiots Get Funded and Amplified
Conspiracy theories are often spread by people who unintentionally believe them—the same is true with the conspiracy theories peddled by professional disinformers. But there's something unique to the cases of professional disinformers. Professional disinformers have the resources of conservative funding, which means they have far greater capacity to amplify their disinformation.
The bourgeoisie select for the propaganda and disinformation which they think will benefit them. That's why you see influential conservatives working together to quickly boost anti-CRT conspiracies & “LGBTQ awareness = grooming” conspiracies; but you don't see the same sort of fervor around the 9/11, moon-landing, or flat earth conspiracies.
Chris Rufo's anti-CRT campaign was always intentionally part of a conservative campaign to divide the working class—to bring more people into close-enough ideological alignment with the right wing so that they would vote or act against their own interests. The anti-trans campaign started in small circles of fearful and ignorant TERFs, and has become what it is today because it was picked up and amplified by conservative media corporations and grifters.
A Clarifying Material Analysis
Disinformation is only useful for the conservatives and capitalists insofar as it advances their political-economic interests. Therefore, to spot disinformation campaigns more easily, it is useful to have an analysis which has a developed understanding of the bourgeois class' political-economic interests.
~
To cut through the mess, I try to focus on a material analysis about the class interests of people with effective control over the means of production.
A more nuanced, materially grounded (and orthodoxly Marxist) analysis would be along the lines of:
People's material relations in the production process have resulted in our present political economy's tendencies and social relations. In contemporary practice, this means that corporations and rich individuals (who benefit from capitalism) have the resources to influence ostensibly non-economic social relations.
The present capitalist material relations of production are less efficient/preferable than the alternative socialist material relations of production.
Capitalism is to thank for developing technology to the point where these alternative socialist material relations are not only merely morally desirable, but also practically viable.
These socialist material relations would just so happen to be associated with freer and more democratic social relations. These free and democratic social relations are a major part of how we decide whether—and guarantee that—certain material relations are efficient/preferable to others for the majority of people.
While socialist relations would benefit the majority, they would also abolish the undemocratic inequalities in economic power which the capitalist class has benefited from. The bourgeoisie—insofar as they are self-interested or are true believers in capitalism—have the wealth and motivation to try to sustain capitalism against the perceived threat of working class collective action which would establish socialism.
~
Let's begin to apply this analysis to our concerns around disinformation campaigns.
In a capitalist political economy, the means of production are used to accumulate more wealth for corporations and owners of corporations. This focus on the interests of corporations and rich individuals is not the most beneficial setup for the majority of people, nor society in general.
Concentrated control over material production bleeds into other areas of societal influence. Ownership over the means of production allows corporations to threaten a region's working class (and their political representatives) with increased unemployment if the corporations don't get their way. Ownership and the wealth accumulation that comes from it is used to fund lobbying groups which influence politicians, used to support corporation-friendly politicians, and used to fund decades-long legal battles against laws that put socially useful constraints on the power of corporations.
Particularly relevant here is how ownership and wealth accumulation is used to amplify and fund disinformation campaigns to protect particular corporations or the broader capitalist political economy. As with most disinformation campaigns, there are intentional disinformers (like Chris Rufo) and useful idiots (like James Lindsay), boosted by corporate stewards and rich people who have consciously realized that this is an effective strategy for promoting their conservative, capitalist class interests.
This analysis—alongside my knowledge of common conservative targets and conspiracies—made me highly wary and critical of anti-CRT, anti-trans arguments from the start. To me, it was clear that these had a ton of potential to ramp up into influential conservative disinformation campaigns—with the practical effect of dividing the working class from collectively organizing for our interests. That is, these campaigns prevent us from organizing in ways that transcend racial categories or trans/cis categories.
Importantly, these disinformation campaigns also provide a scapegoat explanation for social ills that have been caused by material class inequalities—“Things feel bad and scary in your life because woke-ists and trans people are destroying the foundations of society—not because the structure of the political economy consistently promotes the interests of rich individuals and corporations against the interests of the working class!”
In opposition to scary outgroups and anger-inducing scapegoats, these kinds of narratives present Republican Party rule as the solution—a party which, in practice, essentially exists to win elections so they can cater to the interests of corporations and rich individuals.
~
I truly think that any good analysis of fascism will find it to be inextricably linked to this style of social division: Tapping into fear, anger, and scapegoating to disrupt the proletariat's capacity to engage in collective action in the material interests of society in general.
Particularly, fascism is more likely to occur when other strategies for sustaining capitalism have failed. The neoliberal economic justifications for the disempowerment and immiseration of the working class are no longer as credible as they appeared in the 80s. Accordingly, the bourgeoisie are gradually learning that they might have to shift to fascism's risky and brutish strategies to maintain their class dominance. Aside from the fact that contemporary neoliberalism wasn't around in the 30s, this is nearly identical to the classic Marxist analysis of fascism when it first emerged in Italy and Germany.
Analysis-Informed Red Flags
With that material analysis in mind, I believe it is a red flag when I see people promoting messages which divide people over social issues, when the most consequential disagreements are in material injustices. This is not necessarily a red flag for intentional disinformation, but is at least a red flag for arguments which are likely missing something important.
But we need something like the Marxist political economic analysis to be able to notice this red flag in the first place. For example, you need an analysis which allows you to distinguish between social and material issues.
There is no blind method for distinguishing these sorts of complex empirical truths from untruth. A developed analysis of people's motivations is especially useful for shielding oneself from professional disinformers.
I'm on board with what has come to be known as a race-class analysis, proposed by Ian Haney Lopez and initially described by Cedric J. Robinson. Ian Haney Lopez tries to define the race-class analysis in opposition to a purely class analysis, but I think his analysis is nevertheless materially well-founded.
The race-class analysis describes the divisions around 'race' as the eventual result of the (white) bourgeoisie figuring out through experimentation that ‘a political strategy that stokes racial division’ is likely to protect their economic interests. This is a material analysis because class interests are the main explanatory factor. The race-class analysis simply emphasizes that the class interests aren't rigidly constrained to purely economic consequences, and that racial division can further bourgeois class interests.
On the other hand, conservative disinformation peddlers start their analyses in the messy middle of social/ideological disputes. This is the case with the 'anti-woke', 'anti-CRT', 'anti-LGBTQ-inclusive-education' moral panics. These analyses give me an impression of being ungrounded in a rigorous objective analysis. The closest they get to something objective is how they attach their arguments to a social fear of “cancellation run amok” or “child sexual assault”. They latch onto real concerns, but misrepresent and amplify these genuine social concerns to fit their narratives and end goals.
Of course, in practice, their narratives more consistently adhere to the goal of dividing and discrediting progressive movements, not a rigorous analysis of what they purport to be concerned about. The most rigorous analyses, in my opinion, would trace most social concerns back to discussions of how the capitalist political economy gives some people unjust power over others—unjust power which is materially underwritten with physical violence and the threat of material deprivation.
The Proletariat Has No Need For Disinformation
There's a stark difference between how the bourgeoisie and the proletariat are compelled to represent our views.
To maintain their desired political economy, the bourgeoisie have to misrepresent their interests and promote disinformation campaigns. If the bourgeoisie plainly stated their corporate and individual interests, the vast majority of people would reject them.
On the other hand, the proletariat can plainly state our desired political economy. We do not feel a need to obfuscate our views to avoid criticism. We proudly want a truly democratic, socially-focused political economy. We're not afraid to state it, because we know that such a political economy is for the benefit of all—present and future generations alike.
Fighters for the interests of the working class should not rely on disinformation. All we ever need is our plainly stated analysis. The vast majority of people will almost certainly decide, as individuals, that they believe the best path forward is to collectively organize for the moral alternative of socialism—that is, so long as we are not continually divided by manufactured fear, anger, and partial complacency.