The Deception Industry | FREE READ | Fake News As a Political Strategy
Fake News As a Political Strategy
In 1967, India was electing its fourth Lok Sabha. Colonel Ved Rattan Mohan, the chairman of Mohan Meakin, a prominent liquor manufacturer in India, secured a Congress ticket for the Lucknow seat.1 Colonel Mohan, who built the famous India rum brand Old Monk, was a well known figure in both politics and business. Also, the rich industrialist had no paucity of resources for a successful campaign. There were other reasons also that made it seem like Mohan’s victory was almost inevitable. The Lok Sabha constituency of Lucknow was the traditional seat of the Congress, and while the Congress was looking a little weak throughout the entire country, the Lucknow seat seemed unaffected by that wind.
Another significant factor in that election was the absence of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the most popular leader of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, who had lost two successive elections from the Lucknow Lok Sabha constituency in 1957 and 1962.2 Vajpayee’s decision to not run from Lucknow, where he used to gather large crowds with his impassioned speeches, was also reassuring for the Congress.
Colonel Mohan’s sole viable opponent was Anand Narain Mulla. He was an Urdu poet as well as a lawyer and an intellectual. He was contesting the election as an independent candidate. Even though he was not as famous as his competitor, he had some following. But it seemed impossible for an independent candidate to compete with the organizational strength of the Congress and Colonel Mohan’s personal status.
Narain faced an additional challenge. His past was acting against him. His father, Jagat Narain Mulla, was a prosecutor in the well-known Kakori railway robbery case in 1925, where revolutionaries like Chandra Shekhar Azad, Rajendra Lahiri, Ram Prasad Bismil and Ashfaqullah were involved. Narain had assisted his father on the case. And this incident had not gone away from public memory. The worry was that Anand Narain Mulla might face negative publicity related to the Kakori case during the election campaign.
But an unfounded rumour shifted the wind at the last second. The rumour began to circulate that the Congress candidate was campaigning while inebriated. A narrative was built that the Congress had handed the ticket to an alcoholic from Lucknow. The Congress employed all of its resources, all of the country’s major leaders visited and a large sum of money was spent at the time. Nothing, however, could refute this rumour-fuelled narrative. When the election results were announced, Anand Narain Mulla won easily. This was the first election in which the Congress lost the Lucknow seat. The following election saw the Congress recapture the seat again.
This Lucknow election demonstrates that what we call ‘fake news’ now is not a novel concept. Through rumours and fake news, dirty politics has ruined the game of elections. Even back then, carrying out character assasination and smear campaigns was rampant. Political ethics were ignored in order to win elections. However, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, these practices have reached unprecedented heights. The menace of fake news is wreaking havoc.
THE SUDDEN UPTICK IN FAKE NEWS
For a long time, information has been recognized as a powerful weapon in the hands of wicked individuals. Propaganda, manipulative information and information designed to intimidate and force people into doing specific actions were known to mankind even before the rise of information technology and its rapid development. However, in modern times, technology allows misinformation to travel swiftly and poses greater risks.
During the period of traditional channels—press, television and radio—information was subjected to numerous checks before being shared, as publishers, channels and providers might have been held liable for what was communicated if it turned out to be false or defamatory. However, it’s not the same when it comes to online sources of information. Anyone may start a blog, post on their Facebook page and share whatever they want on Instagram or Twitter. People are much more immersed in this online realm; we spend hours online—on public transport, during breaks at work and when we go home and decide to totally immerse ourselves in Internet browsing. We are constantly bombarded with information online and may not always have the energy or time to determine what is genuine and what is not.
Recent spate of political fake news or disinformation in India began in 2012 when PM Manmohan Singh’s government was rapidly losing credibility. Another theory holds that the government’s credibility suffered as a result of fake news. On the one hand, anti-government movements such as IAC was gaining traction, while the BJP’s caravan was marching confidently towards Delhi. By the time the 2014 general elections came around, the spread of fake news had reached new heights.
We arrived at a crossroads where the collision of dirty politics and lightning-fast dissemination technologies was made possible by mobile technology. This unholy union has fundamentally altered the character of politics. Previously irregular at the local level, the politics of rumours, fake news and character assassinations can now be done on a massive scale and in a coordinated manner at the national level. What was earlier muttered in a shrouded manner can now be conveyed to each home and person. What had previously been a political disease has now become a pandemic.
There are sociological reasons for this as well. We have arrived at a point in history when emotions have trumped facts—the post-truth era. The Oxford Dictionary defines ‘post-truth’ as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’. 5 People have begun to build their beliefs based on emotional appeal rather than truth and reality. They have become dissatisfied with the idioms of liberal democratic politics and started looking for alternatives. People’s trust in many of democracy’s essential institutions has begun to dwindle for a variety of reasons. The resulting vacuum enables conservative and revivalist forces to get a foothold. The groundwork has now been laid for the societal polarization for which these forces have been working for years. Even while the commercial media was profiting financially, its credibility was dwindling. And this was not limited to India, but has occurred around the world.
Politicians have also made significant contributions to shaping this impression. When news does not favour them, they quickly label it as fake news. Once, former US President Donald Trump accused CNN of being ‘fake news’ so as to avoid answering difficult questions.
In the post-truth era, it has become excruciatingly difficult to distinguish between what is real and what is fake. Even those who are considered to be informed often fall in the trap of fake news, and also spread it further. An example will help us comprehend the impact of this. For several decades, efforts have been carried out through whispers and stories to persuade people that Indira Gandhi’s husband, Feroze Gandhi, was a Muslim. However, for a long time, people did not pay attention to such things and it was simply dismissed as hearsay. However, in the last decade and a half, the number of people who believe in this has risen dramatically. Such people will often be seen participating in debates on television news channels. Many such notions are getting ingrained in people’s brains that have nothing to do with the reality.
When mobile phones and smartphones became available to everyone, politics gained a new instrument for creating narratives on the basis of fake news. Soon after, this tool was transformed into the most powerful weapon capable of annihilating any adversary. Such a weapon can be used to set the agenda of both society and politics. Fake news was crafted in such a way that it went viral and reinforced a specific narrative. The short-term goal of the fake news generated for political advantage is to win elections. The long-term goal is to develop a society with a specific ideology and prejudice; a society that thinks and reacts in a certain way on every key occasion. Some trends of the country’s fake news era, which began around the year 2012, are quite apparent.
Read more in The Deception Industry: The Art, Craft and Science of Hacking the Electorate by Herjinder by ordering your copy here: Link