John Chuckman
EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE ON CBC NEWS
"More has to be done to prevent foreign interference and abuse of social media from disrupting Canada's elections, says Canada's chief election watchdog.
“Commissioner of Elections office has already started working with Facebook, Twitter”
I just do not understand such language.
I am not aware of any genuine interference in Canadian elections.
The words just seem to echo the noise coming out of the political madhouse that we call America.
And talk about "trolls" is simply bizarre.
I read a lot of newspapers, having as I do an interest in public affairs, and I often comment where it is permitted.
When I comment, I try to be thoughtful and analytical, bringing a lifetime's experience of reading and trying to understand.
Yet I have been called a "troll" a number of times in thoughtless responses which I simply ignore, but a lot of repetition of that close-to-meaningless term is to be seen in comment sections of newspapers. So, for me the word is millennialist jargon or argot, a form of faddish mumbo-jumbo.
It makes absolutely no sense, but saying that word about someone with whom you disagree has become almost a characteristic of our political times. Useless and sad. And when government echoes the trend, it is only the sadder.
I say all this knowing perfectly well that there are organized and paid efforts by some countries to influence public opinion through comments. I am sure the Pentagon follows this practice because they have large budgets now dedicated to what in former times we would call propaganda or disinformation.
Israel is the most active practitioner of this of which I am aware. You actually cannot miss the flood of comments that find their way onto comment sites. Their tone and direction and even some of the pseudonyms used scream organized effort. I understand that the IDF has a section of people employed this way. The government also pays many students to join in.
I do not see the point. For the most part the effort is recognizable and many of the comments read as if taken from a crib sheet of phrases and argument points. Hard to imagine who would be influenced by them.
Besides, in the cases of both Israel and the Pentagon, the entire mainline press and broadcasting already are heavily skewed in all their reporting and editorial. How can some silly comments add much?
I think this is the clearest evidence of almost out-of-control ideology intensively at work, wasting resources, trying to pound the last nail in, exorcising Satan, and the ideology comes mainly from Washington and its colonial enterprise in the Middle East.
