An evening with Anne Applebaum | On propaganda & fake news

welcome you all to this first edition of the futures now with our guests and Appelbaum thank you 10 years ago the idea that fate news and this information might become a problem for Western nations seem to be very far fetched but today it has become one of the major issues that is challenging challenging our democracies as an Applebaum has written in one of her recent essays and I quote these messages fate news messages are no longer seen just by a small fringe but they are much more likely to be consumed by mainstream users of social media at the same time only a tiny percentage of political information available on social media actually comes from political candidates people are now much more likely to see a targeted ad from an unidentified political group with an opaque again agenda in other words then something written by people actually vying for the vote and of course exploring the relation between information the exchange of opinion and political discourse is therefore very urgent and of vital importance as this kickoff event of the futures now we examine the status of this information or information and the emotion of trust in our democratic institutions how can we prepare ourselves for this post fake news page an epimer will introduce her very short but you'll introduce herself afterwards it's an Atlantic columnist a Pulitzer Prize winning historian a professor of practice at the London School of Economics and she's a renown expert in the research and analysis of propaganda and polarization and he impact this has on our social and political community my name is Dan gravis I'm philosopher thinker laureate and moderator of this evening we will have a conversation for I think one and a half hour but you the audience will have can jump in as well but I think in three quarters of an hour I will give you a sign and then please raise your hand and there will come a mic to you and then please stand up because this evening is livestreams and then you not only be hurt but also be seen by the audience you came from Britain by train today this is the first time you cross the border and this poster exit HR act actually on the day of brexit I flew into London from Germany and I forgot to take a photograph you know of the of the you know you are now you you know II you you people only this way I have to know nothing's happened yet so I'm afraid it was very unexpected in a minute but first a few things about your background and your expertise you're a historian a journalist a researcher and I think you have three homelands United States Britain and Poland I'm a citizen of NATO citizen but as these are all strong men politics countries aren't they I mean you know we're we're heading that way in all of our countries but yes you could say the three these are three countries that have had experienced a particular version of the modern Democratic crisis already yeah that's true and you since 2014 you're the director of arena a Research Institute that's part of the London School of Economics and its analyzed it's a pretty project Research Institute makes it sound like a huge thing it's actually a small project but yes please tell us a little bit about it what you're doing there and what your aim is okay so it says first of all thank you I haven't said thank you and how much I'm delighted to be here and how much I like being Amsterdam I was just saying on the way and that the aesthetics of Amsterdam always appealed to me and I love the symbolism of the hidden Church Arina was originally a think-tank project and then we moved it to the London School of Economics and it was created by me and a colleague friend Peter Pomerance eV and both of us were simultaneously in kind of 2013-2014 we both became aware at the same time of a new form of Russian propaganda that was working in a different way from the way it had worked in the past we come from completely different backgrounds my background is that I spent many years writing books about the Soviet Union and Soviet Communism and so I had that in the back of my head and Peter had been a television producer in Moscow actually he's he's the kind of Russian British he grew up in Britain but has Russian origins and he'd worked in entertainment television in Russia from during the first part of the 2000s and he had watched the creation there of a new kind of information state really he wrote he wound up writing a book about it called nothing is true and everything is possible which is a very good title and my original encounter with Russian propaganda as I was just telling you was the awareness that it was directed at me and I had I won't go into all the details but I had an odd experience with a series of articles that were written about me that I noticed appearing in lots of places in what I realized was a kind of was a was a set of websites that had been created for the purpose of passing around stories this one was a claim that I had implied that I was being secretly paid by mysterious people maybe it was the CIA maybe it was the Polish government maybe it was the Ukrainian government and you know it passed around all these odd websites and then eventually it was subject off-days I was the subject yeah I was the subject of it and eventually the article the original article which had originally appeared one kind of Russian business website was retweeted by Julian Assange and this was before the WikiLeaks involvement in the u.s. elections I had also become aware of how you know how Rush Pro Russian political groups and organization and businesses were operating in different in different European countries and so we started out thinking about Russia honestly that was the that was the original project and for me of course the fascinating thing was trying to understand what was different about the modern Russian use of information how it was different from the old Soviet use and there are some consistencies but there are some differences created by modern technology in the olden days the Soviet Union's you know main aim was to convince people to like the Soviet Union you know they remember the posters with you know our tractors have achieved 150 percent of the plan and our societies better than your society was a kind of competition with the West modern Russians don't care if you like them I mean the morale of Russian government lots of ordinary Russians care but the Russian government doesn't care if you like them the point of Russian propaganda today is to divide and distract the West with the ultimate goal of undermining democracy and they're not trying to be popular they're trying to and they're no they don't promote themselves they they use all the modern tools of disinformation ranging from BOTS and fake websites and and kind of organized campaigns to try to support extremist movements actually of the far right and the far left in most European countries anyway so the original project was just an analysis of that and then when we moved it to the London School of Economics we became much more technical and we began producing papers that looked very specifically at particular election again originally at Russian involvement more recently particularly as I think we can all see that the tactics that the Russians invented but if are used by many others is it a coincidence that the the greatest social media this information experts are also experts on the Soviet Union this is a it's I think it's just because we became paranoid before anybody else did yeah you know we're used to it yeah you were you know the you know well I mean first of all they attacked us you know yeah so we you know the other the other big turning point moment for all of us was the invasion of Ukraine and the enforce the invasion of Crimea and then of eastern Ukraine and this was important because I for me it was a very strange experience because I wrote a book about the Soviet invasion of Eastern Europe after the second you know at the end of the Second World War and you know and how you know the Red Army came into eastern Poland at Eastern Hungary and they of course when they arrived they often wore these unmarked uniforms they pretended to be Polish they created kind of fake Polish communist parties which were actually people buy or run by Russians you know they created all these fake entities and organizations and they denied that what they were doing was an invasion or an occupation you know no it's a liberation you know we're liberating these countries and when I watched on television the Russian action in Crimea and you know it was like a you know kind of a light bulb went off I mean this was exactly the same kind of operation you know they there you know it was people in unmarked uniforms and they said we're you know we're liberators they implied that probably they were separatists you know you know revolting against the the the the new government in Kiev and to me it was you know I almost felt like I wish I had I wish I had seen this happen before I wrote my book because then I would understand better how this operation worked and of course they also put out this propaganda which was very successful in parts of the West you know people said well is this a Russian invasion or are these separatists you know maybe there has been a coup in Kiev and maybe this is a legitimate this is a legitimate intervention and there was a lot of confusion for for many weeks you know in in cities like this one and in Washington in New York and it was fairly clear to me it was clear to me from the beginning that this was a Russian operation and that it was accompanied by a propaganda campaign designed to cover up what it was and then eventually with time it became clear and Putin gave medals to the invaders so you know because we now know that they are the Russian army and but but the the way work and you know anybody who'd been paying attention to Soviet behavior over the sorry excuse me there was a slip of the tongue Russian behavior over the previous decade had seen this kind of thing happening before there was a you know there was a there was that they created a political crisis in Estonia over over a soviet-era statue you know they they'd been they'd been working on creating these kinds of crises and doing messaging and information around them for a long time so Ukraine was this kind of moment of crisis and so that I think is why so many of us got drawn into it yeah because you were most suspicious about this Russian propaganda you were trained it's much that we were suspicious it's just that it all looked very familiar you know where have I seen this kind of behavior before well maybe you know it's not the same I you know not exactly the same we we talked about a very well-known example in Hollands and in our country namely the mh17 flies know this amazing story yeah and you analyze that as well we we wrote something about that this the the mh17 you know the the the the russian reaction to the mh17 accident what wasn't an accident was a it was it was shot down by what we now know we're actually ordinary Russian troops they weren't even the Ukrainians this fake separatists the the reaction was was very interesting the Russian government didn't just didn't deny it instead they put out a hundred different stories about it you know they you know it was the Ukrainians who shot it down it was the Americans who shot it down there was one version that there was a plane that was deliberately filled with dead bodies in Amsterdam it was taken up into the air and then exploded on purpose to embarrass the eastern Ukrainian separatists fake separatists and you know literally dozens and dozens of these stories and of course the impact of that you know when there's so many stories and it's so confusing was to make people feel that well we just can't know what happened it's impossible to tell and there was a very very good sort of mini documentary done by I think was done by Radio Liberty if a week a few weeks after this happened and they went around Moscow and they asked people on the street who shot down that plane and the answer people gave was not only do we not know we will never know it's going to it's impossible to find out the truth will never be known and this was the effect of this multiple confusing you know narratives it convinced people that the truth is something that can't be known and if the truth can't be known then that means that the dictatorship the government can create the truth and this is the ultimate aim of this kind of propaganda it's to eliminate the even the idea that we can know what's true very very similar kind of behavior happened after the murder of the first of all the attempted murder of Sarah script all this KGB agent in in in Salisbury in England it was a very it was a very similar you know once again after that I mean the the British Foreign Office was actually keeping track and I think at one point they are up to 40 or something different explanations for it again put out a thousand different messages confuse people undermine reality you know convince them that you know that they not just that they don't know what happened but they would they will never know and it's not possible to find out so this is a perfect model for online this information that you create so much junk information that you yeah wrong people in information so you destroy the the whole idea of the truth it's not about lying it's about destroying yes the idea of the truth yes and then if and that if nobody knows what's true then you know then you can as I said you can create you can a manufacture reality in the way that you want and people will either accept it or say well we don't really know and they can't craze I mean this is one of the reason why not just Putin but also president Trump and and others who you've called strong men are so vehement about attacking media universities you know in any place that might be a source of objective information and this is and this this event is not an event that's making excuses for the media and for universities which have lots of flaws but but the the the viciousness of the attack on those kinds of institutions is because they want to eliminate sources of objective reality and replace it with their own and this was one part of your expertise is Soviet Union knowledge but you're also a historian so how come an historian be involved with these online information in this information this year a historical background give you some inside or some so first of all for me history and journalism aren't that different I mean they they're both essentially an attempt to gather facts and put together the story as well as you can it's just that you know in journalism you have to do it much faster and you're much more likely to be wrong and you don't have the benefit of hindsight you don't know what's gonna happen next so there's a little bit different but it's it's not it's not so wrong and this this the the interest in disinformation really grew out of both I mean it grew out of being interested in how propaganda had worked in the past which is one of the subjects of my books and an awareness of how it was how you know again we began with the Russians but this is absolutely not about Russia anymore this is but being aware of how it functioned in in in the present and then being interested in trying to understand it better and think about how to how to overcome the problem I mean one of the conclusions that we came from and maybe this is what you were going to ask me next is that added added sorry at a deeper level you know so you know why does it why does this work I mean one of the reasons it works is because is because the whether it's Putin or whether it's Trump or whether it's you know political parties and leaders in other places they succeed in successfully polarizing societies and in convincing at least some people that you know all of the mainstream institutions you know the media the judges the courts the Parliament you know every you know can't be trusted because they've been captured by the other side there I don't know whether they're traitors or elites or whatever it is and so ultimately it it disinformation works on very polarized societies and so that led us to our next set of projects which was looking at polarization how it works how you can can you smooth it can you ease it can you you know there are there ways that you can work with people to to reduce it that's kind of where we are now well I want to ask you about polarization but the the question about history was also about historical parallels and I think one of your articles you drew a parallel between this age and the age when adventure the printing press printing press yes and the consequent the consequences it had so this is also this is a another important piece of this story so as I said we began by being interest in Russia but eventually you also come to realize that you know the very nature of modern media not just social media actually but modern media has what's modern media modern modern media know what temporary it masks mean let's call it the Internet okay you know the the digital the the way in which people now get and process information and especially political information is totally different from what it was 20 years ago there's been an enormous revolution partly it is to do with social media which is you know you all know now everybody knows that it's which which tends to create filter bubbles because people get information from their friends and from people they they trust it's also to do with the decline of the so-called mainstream media the decline of you know fact-based reporting the the weakness of the the financial model that no longer supports press it's to do with I think even the way in which people get news I mean you most of us get it now on our phones you know in which you kind of flip through and there's an ad for hair dryers and there's an ad for you know I don't know something about a pop music that I like and then there's something about a political party and it all kind of runs together and it seems the same and there's no there's no hierarchy of importance you know if there ever was and and the this transformation has a parallel almost every time in history when there have been major changes in the way in which meat people get information there have been big political changes that have gone with it and the most famous example of this is the moment of the invention of the printing press which did all kinds of useful and wonderful things you know it increased literacy and it gave people access to books and knowledge in a much cheaper way and it undermined the dominance of the monasteries and you know which had controlled you know the the production of books had been a very expensive and time-consuming thing before and one of the one of the side effects was also the Reformation which I think maybe some people in this room are happy about and some people aren't but certainly the people who use this building were but you know the Reformation also led to you know a hundred years at least of religious warfare in Europe and very bitter divisions and and conflicts that went on you know for many decades and we are in a moment like that where the the mainstream institutions have been you know can be challenged and written about in new ways and we may be in for a period of very rapid change in conflict the other interesting moment if you look at is the invention of radio and radio was also transformational as years ago I think approximately yeah and and the first people to really learn how to use radio and to understand how radical it be were Hitler and Stalin I mean it understood that if he was speaking inside somebody's house and he could reach them directly then it was much more powerful than reaching them through the printed word and the and and actually many many modern institutions were created as a response to the to you know to the to the power of radio I mean famously the BBC was very consciously actually created as a project of the the British said right you know we have this new medium you know it could divide people what we want is a public broadcaster that can unite people and so the BBC was conceived as something that would reach all social classes it would have you know Scottish and Northern Irish and even and local branches so that it would reach people in provinces and it was it was thought of as a forum for public debate you know that what we need to make sure that we have in this new world is a place where democracy can continued you know where we can we can all talk and you know we an exchanged views so that people don't wind up in in in echo chambers and that was that was the thinking of the BBC at the time and of course we are now at a moment when once again one of the effects of new media is that it splinters people and particularly actually in in to the countries that I feel loyalty one being Poland and one being the United States you see the effect of this very bitter division you know and in fact in the United States there is no one television channel where everybody will appear and every political actor is comfortable being there and there is no one studio or one space that everybody accepts is legitimate you know there's the Fox News space and then there's the CNN MSNBC space and you know one group of people won't appear on one and vice versa and that has created you know that means that we have a there's a real democratic deficit there isn't a you know there isn't a shared culture anymore there isn't a shared political culture it's very deeply divided and you know one of the you know but but this is an effect that we've seen before I mean this is not a new it's not the first time that our societies have experienced this kind of division so this the BBC was the public answer to this it was propaganda machine that radio was and but now BBC still exists but there's a big divide in Britain as well I think so no the BBC is in trouble and and part of it part of the read is it's in trouble is because it's perceived on both sides of the political spectrum now actually as having been captured by the other side you know it's no longer thought to be you know neutral and people are angry at it you know maybe they've always been a little angry at it but but you know it's it's the thing people love to hate but it's much much bitter now and there is a possibility that the current British government might make big changes to it they're talking about lifting the licence fee this is something that everybody pays automatically just the BBC has a sort of its own tax base and they're talking about changing that and that will be an important turning point I mean that might be the end of it in this well now we're talking about Britain and the brexit in brexit article you wrote a week ago I think you said the brexit campaign was transformed from a French eccentricity into a movement by a handful of people who decided to make it an argument about identity but what triggers me is this in the digital public sphere you can a fringe movement can can emancipate to mass movement in absolutely you know that's change very small numbers of people can now get mass audiences which was not the case before and that again I'm describing this neutrally I mean there are many good things about that and there are bad things about it too it's not a it's not a it's not a criticism it's just a fact that we should be very aware of this yeah no no I mean a the kind of person who used to write you know letters and green ink to journalists you know complaining about their coverage can now have you know his own website and his own YouTube channel and can reach you know the very large audiences and again you can they're there they're positive and negative aspects to this but I mean one of the reasons why you know why you know politics is undergoing such a big revolution in so many places is that that that you know excluded voices extreme voices far-right far-left minorities again both good and bad have a you know are able to make a bigger impact and they than they once good and then you talk about polarization in your own country but also in other countries you say it's not not only a classic clash of opinions but it's also not not sharing the same facts or sharing the same yes-no again if you look if you look at American politics Americans literally have two different sets of facts like that one group of people knows that one set of things happened and another knows that another in other words if you looked at how people rode in about impeachment which we which just ended the the failed attempt to impeach Trump you know you can get a completely different explanation of what it was and what happened by reading different sets of media and again this isn't just a sort of opinion whether it was good or bad this is a fundamental disagreement about what was happening and about the original facts of the story and how can you work with that as a journalist with these two very distinctive views with these warr of opinions I mean you know this is a interesting debate in journalism which is you know is it your role to depolarize society or is it your role to write what you think is happening in other words what are you supposed to be doing and there people have taken different views I mean I'm somebody who tries to keep writing about what I see I have a friend though for you know here's what here's one solution that a friend of mine had she's a journalist based in Texas and she did a trip down to the border during one of the heights of the of the crises when the Trump administration was putting was putting children in these camps and she went with a friend or an acquaintance who was an evangelical Christian and she wrote the story from the point of view of her friend who's an evangelical Christian and she did that on purpose because she wanted the story to reach people who would who would be more likely to sympathize with the evangelical Christian than with her her you know she's a you know she's a you know she's sort of ordinary journalist and but she thought that telling the story with this well you know with somebody else's point of view would make it more powerful and whether that worked or not I don't know but this is these are some of the kinds of ideas that people are experimenting with and trying to test you know what are the messages that can reach both sides you know are there are there ways of writing that are more or less polarizing I mean one of the projects that we did more recently we worked with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera partly because I had a good old friend of mine was a was the deputy editor there and they they actually gave us access to their Facebook page and to the sort of the the you know the data analytics piece of the Facebook page which we watched for a year and we at their request actually because we asked them what's the most polarizing issue in Italy and they said migration and so for about a year we measured people's responses to different kinds of articles and there were a number of interesting things that we learned and the most interesting actually was that as the migration numbers actually went down which they did because of various deals that the EU did to stop people coming over across the Mediterranean as migration went down the interest and anger about migration went up and this was due almost entirely to the to the to the to the sort of information war waged by salvini I mean it was due to his his speech and his coming his commentary was creating by itself in other words that was him speaking which had nothing to do with the actual numbers of migrants so it was you know that was what people were reacting to rather than something they were seeing you know around themselves that was very interesting but the other piece of it there was interesting we tried to look at you know if you if you wrote one the same facts in a different way and and Cory are was very extremely kind and they did this experiment those are the same story told in different ways with different headlines and so on how did people react and one of the things that we learned actually is that the most the least polarizing way of telling the story was literally just to report the news here's what happened yesterday you know the Prime Minister said X the you know the Minister of Interior said why that's it you know and that didn't upset people when you tried to humanize stories so there were a lot of human interest stories you know this migrant and his life and how he got to Sicily and you know this made people more angry in other words it was the the Assumption people would make which is that you know I don't know feature journalism and narrative stories would reach people and it actually didn't work I think did you also investigate our research how much it was clicked on because it was yes I mean there was it was about how much it was clicked but it was also about people wrote under it yeah this was a fair I should say this was a very kind of primitive experiment and that and you can't you know was actually one of the conclusions that we've come to is that measuring emotion online is very misleading I mean people will do and say things online that they wouldn't do in real life it's very hard to know whether people's online personas are the same as their real personas and even whether people are radicalized by being online because everybody's so angry probably not here in the Netherlands I'll tell you so it's very hard to know whether what you're seeing is real you know but but and this was a this was just a you know a test experiment you know can we and we believe what we did it with a group of Italian computer scientists who are very interested in trying to also figure out if there's a way to measure polarization can you measure it can you estimate it can you look at what makes it more or less and it was it was a little inconclusive I mean one would have to do it several more times and in different ways to find out whether it but you would have five journalists stick to the facts more not to I mean it depends on the context and it depends what you're trying to do I mean this was looking at journalism as a way of increasing or decreasing polarization and that's not what all journalism is for you know so this was just this is just a you know it was a kind of experimental experiment not even a full experiment you're on Twitter as well sorry you're on Twitter I'm on Twitter sorry yeah about polarization speaking about polarization yeah but don't you get depressed on Twitter I mean I'm sorry ambivalent about Twitter I find it really useful because it sort of you know it it curates the news for me in other words the people I want to read I can always read what they've written and I do try to I follow the far right in the far let you know I follow all kinds of people who aren't you know who I don't know or this is really like and I find it useful to I find it a useful way to see what's going on I mean but I'm aware that it's not the real world I also I didn't know there's something that's happened to me maybe others feel the same way in the last couple of years I mean you know you can say almost anything about me and I don't care anymore you know just block them you know I don't know maybe other people everybody's developed this kind of thick skin maybe that's bad maybe it's maybe there's something inhuman about it but I many people I know who are active online or have a lot of followers and you know just it just somehow washes off after a while and it doesn't only have two really cares and I say and also I try not to argue with people on Twitter I mean I just use it to post things and you know read what other people have said I don't you know it's not a very good place I mean if you want to have a serious conversation about anything you don't have it on Twitter you know you have it in a room like this one yeah I want to elaborate a little bit about the intricate link between information and democracy because this information is one thing but it's also a threat to our way of living in our institutions I think and I have a quote from walter Lippmann your Pulitzer Prize winning colleague one century ago and he said he called it the original dogma of democracy and he said knowledge needed for the management of human affairs and democracy comes up spontaneously from the human heart he says we underestimate the what's needed to to live in a democracy people need information people need patience people need engagement democracy is based on an assumption of rationality in other words there is a kind of mythic you know I mean it's based on the assumption that people will get facts and then make their political decisions you know based on those facts and that and the assumption is that there will be a kind of competition of ideas like a marketplace of ideas and that the best ideas will win and that people will choose you know good leaders because they have good information it's on I mean that's always been a little bit of a myth let's you know let's not let's not fool ourselves but it is it true that in a world where you know there is no man we may be moving towards that world where there is no trusted sources of information and therefore there are no shared facts and there is no shared public sphere where we can all at least agree on like what happened yesterday then it does become hard to see how you have democracy I mean how do you you know if one group of people one group part of society thinks that the other side you know the other part of society are traitors and that everything they say is a lie and that the institutions they believe in our false or fake or you know then yes it becomes hard to have politically it does assume the existence of a kind of shared public space that we at the very least we all agree on the rules right we agree how someone should be elected we agree you know what rule of law means we agree how the courts should work and so on if that becomes people you know begin to doubt that then yes it becomes harder and harder to see how you know how you know how we can how we can continue to I mean you know in the United States right now we are at a stage where you know parties because one party considers the other party illegitimate and both parties you know have some faults and I this is not a political agenda but you know the there was a there was a recent governor's race in Kentucky in which the loser took a long time I mean it was 9 or 10 days to concede this is a Republican you know on the grounds that the winner was a traitor and he was you know he'd cheated and so on I mean there was no evidence for that but he seems to have been genuinely convinced that there was and the that may become more and more frequent I mean if if the you know if the winners you know sorry if the losers don't accept the result of a democratic election then you know then it becomes hard to see how we're going to continue all living in peace with one another I mean to be very to be blunt about it but it's so it's it requires a lot of trust in press or in education institutions series you know we have there is an assumption at the very least of trust in the institutions you know that we respect our courts you know that we you know we we don't automatically assume that the Prime Minister is a traitor you know that there is a there is a kind of base of assumption that does need to be there in order for the system to function you know there are a few very basic things I mean that the winners cannot seek to eliminate the losers in other words there has to be the possibility for political change so it can't be the case that when one side wins they rigged the system so the other side can't ever win again which is what we now see happening in some European countries you know and it has to be the case that the losers allow the winners to rule without protesting and you know trying to use violence against them for example and if we begin to lose those basic assumptions then it's harder to see how how the system continues as in the past Alessandro Barocco an Italian writer stated in an article that yes we're Italians we know about populism we already live in that for 10 20 years we know about having no meat no independent media anymore and the next step will be mind you Americans in the rest of Europe the undermining of the school system the trust in school teachers that's his that's what he foresees it's not a coincidence actually that Italy has had a big problem it's getting a little better now but it has had a big problem in the past with the anti-vaccine Singh people that the medical establishment is legitimate and they had not just anti-vaxxer also you know sort of fake medicines and other you know that's been a it's been a perennial problem that people don't trust the doctors they don't trust the medical establishment you know they're lying to us there they're trying to poison our children whatever whatever the version of it is and there's they've now had there been a huge campaign actually against the anti-vaccine movement Italy and it's I think that situation is improved but none of these things can be taken for granted or more you know that people will trust the schools that they'll trust the universities that they'll trust the medical establishment I mean once you don't try you know the leaders of the country then why should you trust any of the other institutions of the country either please explain the the link for us between the ant FX movement and the Russian trolls because there is a link and then I'll ask the audience if they have some question so there is like I have a friend who's working on that project and who's trying to trace that and I can't tell you right at this second I carry writings I can't tell you the but but yes there is some evidence that there have been Russians backed trolling operations that seek to promote the anti-vaccine because it's one of the things that undermines social trust and because it's you know and because it's disorienting I mean and there is a link between the anti-vaccine in some forms of extreme politics whatever I mean either the far right or the far left these two ballot these two whatever whatever is whatever what whichever group it is in a given Society who see who believe that you know that the rest of the mainstream is the conspiracy and it's conspiring somehow against them and their children because that's what the anti-vaccine is about it's that they are trying to they're lying to us about these vaccinations and they're designed to harm our children yeah okay look around and see if there's someone in the audience who wants to pose a question ah there's someone please yeah there's a mic coming to you thank you The Book of Why nations fail referred to the failure of institutions and the success of institutions in the promotion of a good state do the tactics that you describe necessarily imply the failure of institutions and by implication the failure of states I didn't something about the echo means that I don't quite hear what you said so the last part to the tactics you described necessarily imply the failure of institutions and therefore the failure of states I mean if we can't figure out a way to you know to compensate then yes I mean I think the failure of the democratic institutions will lead to the failure of the state so I happen to have just come back from Venezuela where I was last week and this is this this is a there we might not want to go off on this tangent okay but but this is a this is a society and you know yes the you know Shabbos was a Marxist and so on but but he was also somebody who very systematically sought to undermine the institutions of what was Venezuela x' democracy and you know one by one i mean again it was the same thing the elites the media the the universities which are which are under assault right now the you know the courts and so on and the effect has been the destruction of the state i mean it is a it is it is heading to what was the wealthiest and most one of the most successful countries in latin america is heading towards becoming a failed state and so yes I do think I think that once you undermine the the institutions that keep society together and ensure the rule of law takes over and ensure that we have regular changes of government then you are very much in the realm of being becoming a failed state I don't want other questions at this moments please go so recently Facebook was criticized for not policing political ads that might have untruths in them and there's been an argument that oh well maybe we don't want an entity like Facebook you know arbitrating truth where do you stand on that I don't want Facebook deciding what we see at all actually I mean I don't I don't want the most important decisions about what Americans and everybody else actually reads or doesn't read being decided by Facebook I mean I think it's a deeper problem than just kind of censorship of ads I mean no of course I don't want them to be censors but I don't I also don't want them to you know to be to have such an such an important role in shaping what news we'll read and that maybe gets us to it you know the the deeper question of whether whether Facebook has too much power I mean that's a different a different issue from you know so no I don't think they should be deciding at the same time I don't want them deciding about you know I don't want them to have as much power over over what information we get is that they do we also remember they they they decide what we see based on a set of algorithms which are secret and we have no as a democratic society we have no access to the algorithm and whether or not it's a good algorithm or a bad algorithm you know we we don't know and I I don't think that is I don't think that's a state of affairs that we will want to have go on indefinitely yes this relates to a question my teachers hacker sent to me she definitely would be here if she wasn't in Stanford today but and she's a former member of the European Union and European Parliament we're all members of the European yeah so not all of them but some of them are more British here or not anymore okay she asks European Parliament of days is assistive how can we understand the full impact of the digital information ecosystem and how it may be used for this information when companies declined to offer transparency to researchers regulations and representatives in democracy right so I happen to know that she agrees with me and that and that you know that yes there is a role for regulation the difficulty is that you know this is a these technologies are changing very fast and what we don't want to do is create you know bad regulation that will I mean the regulation itself could also have negative effects and you know you need to think of it you know as a dynamic process by which it will change over time what I would like us to begin to do and this actually I think is where our LSE project will we go what I would like us to begin to do is to think about the Internet in a broader way and think about what would a what a liberal democratic internet look like in other words we know already what an authoritarian internet looks like because the Chinese have created it very very sophisticated ways you know they use many of the same kinds of tactics and technology as Facebook but they use them to make sure that they have control over people so we don't want that in our societies so what do we want what is the what is the BBC of the modern era yeah you know what is the public information space what rules do we want it to have you know should there be a for example you know in the in in the space where we're having political debates do we want to have anonymity and if so how much you know if someone were to walk into this room night-night now with a mask on and to start shouting that he wanted attention we would all be suspicious right we wouldn't necessarily want it we would know who are you and why are you wearing a mask on your face you know online people are masked all the time and again and there's a long discussion about this and of course there are many good reasons for that and people like being anonymous online and you know dissidents and difficult countries have been saved I'm not saying I'm not saying there should be no Anatomy at all but or should there also be spaces where there isn't any in other words everybody takes responsibility for what they say based on their real names that's you know that's one set of you know is there a digital is there something as do we have digital rights as citizens what does that look like what exactly should we be guaranteed you know what quote did digital rights yes if you had a if there was a I mean so for example Estonia has something called a digital ID card and so if you're Estonian you can have you have a sort of digital ID that you can use for all kinds of things online that shows that you're real it's somehow connected to your to your person and you can use it too for banking and you can use it for voting and you can use it for you know conversation all kinds of other things in other words as an Estonian you have a right to have a you know kind of you know your digital possible a digital passport that's that's a better word than ID maybe we should all have that maybe the European Union should give us digital passports so that we can all you know so that at least in some areas we all take part and we all have a safe you know some safe connections so you know they're there the other question is what what do we mean by free speech in this new world because the model that we when we talk about free speech the model that we all have in our heads is Orwell's 1984 you know where there's a minister of truth and they cut our - you know they cut things out of the newspaper and they erase pictures and you know that doesn't exist anymore the the real problem the real threat to free speech now is the one that we started out talking about which is not the government erasing you know erasing things although there's a bit of that still the real problem is the flooding of the of the information space with junk and with with false stories and or or tangential tent you know very tendentious stories rather and so we need to rethink what we mean by free speech and think about how to protect it maybe we need as societies maybe we need some insight into the algorithms you know maybe we need you know maybe there is such a thing as a public interest algorithm in other words so what Facebook is trying to do when it and I'm picking on Facebook but this is true of all of them what Facebook is trying to do is to sell stuff you know I mean they created this machine that's perfect for selling whatever soap you know or pop music you know and and they you know identify people who like a certain kind of soap and then that you get lots of ads for that soap if you you know if you you all know this I'm sure and this turns out it works just as well for politics you know if you express an interest in left-wing politics then suddenly we'll get lots of ads for left-wing politics or whatever right-wing politics whatever whatever it is you know maybe there is a public interest algorithm that doesn't that does something rather different that shows you a range of things or you know has I'm making this up because I'm not a computer scientist it sounds very intriguing but there are but there are computer scientists who are interested in this kind of problem and are talking about it you know I mean the in France I know that there a debate about you know shouldn't there be a kind of public ombudsman who's in charge of algorithms you know shouldn't somebody from the democratically-elected you know government have some insight into how they work and to what they favor and what they don't favor and those are that's the beginning I think of a much more interesting conversation about regulation I mean yes I mean obviously the idea that we live in a world where Facebook is gonna have employ thousands of people which they do whose job it is to decide what good you know what gets on and what gets off the internet is wrong I mean that's you know you know aside from it being inefficient you know why does Facebook get to decide or Google you know or anybody else well one of the problems is that we don't discuss this in economic terms maybe we focus too much on this technological part and don't address these economic powers that are driving behind us and you know Facebook is doing this to make money I mean there's no this is and they're not even in Europe so they don't care about our upa don't care about no information they're tangentially interested in Europe and European elections and European political issues that's true they are focused on the US and you know let alone I don't know Burma you know or India they're where Facebook and Instagram and other and whatsapp actually are used for all kinds of you know in nefarious ways I mean that's just not something that people in Palo Alto we're thinking about when they design the programs and so the so so so this I think is going to be the task for the next generation the question is going to be also how to convince the political class you know politicians to take this seriously as an issue and it's very you know it's a difficult technical issue I mean we had annexed maybe some of you know there was an extraordinary I mean horrible actually moment when Mark Zuckerberg testified in Congress and it was you know it was one of the most embarrassing things that you know you could see that some of the people asking him questions in the Senate didn't understand what Facebook was or how it worked yeah you know and we have to you know we we're gonna need to have politicians who are educated in this stuff you're gonna understand need to understand it better so that they will be able to decide as I said I think at the end of the day we should have some you know should the you know should the purpose of our news you know an information space should the purpose of it be to make money for people in California or should the purpose of it be for us to make sure that our democracy survive I mean there's at some point we're gonna have to decide it may be that this is something that ultimately has to be done by the European Union simply because it's a you know it gives you more a louder voice you know it's not just the Netherlands it's you know it's a it's a much larger much larger group of countries maybe the European Union plus Britain you know but but I dunno I mean these are these are there's there are so little interest in these topics from politicians I think yes I mean I think until they start losing elections because of it maybe you know maybe but there's more interest in there's more interest in France there's more interest in Germany than there used to be there was a bit of interest in Britain although we'll see where that goes I thought I was another question please wait for the mic and cinema hi thank you well when we talk about the effects of disinformation and fake news one of the things I find mind-boggling are all these parallels that we can draw between how it works in Eastern Europe and in Western countries and in the light of this what you mean by Eastern Europe the former communist bloc the former communist bloc or the former Soviet Union from the former coming the the former Eastern Europe communist countries so also Poland I have a background in former Yugoslavia so that goes there as well and in in light of these similarities about you know how effective this information is it seems to me that a lot of explanations we usually offer ourselves on how we make society resilient for this information like you know oh the problem is the civil society is weak well it's not in a western country so or at least we didn't assume it is corruption is high you know but maybe in Netherlands it's not so what can we make you know if all our explanations about how we make society resilient with strong institutions independent media you know good education etc etc we do have that in Western democracies and yet it seems that it falls short as a kind of barrier towards this new wave of this information and fake news I was wondering what your thoughts are in that so yes I think I mean I actually don't think there's as big a difference between you know Poland and the Netherlands as most people think I mean and you know I've written a lot about what's going wrong in Poland so it's not I'm not under any illusion but I mean that's Poland has been a democracy for thirty years you know you know Germany has only been a democracy for forty years longer I mean it's not you know these aren't but in the in the modern sense you know I didn't I don't think you know anyway I don't see a big difference between the East and the West in that sense but I think you're right in that the traditional remedies you know the things that we have thought would would preserve our democracy may in a lot of places like the United States for example turn out to be insufficient and it may be that the you know we need to think more deeply about again how information works how its how we protect it how we how and also how we conceive some of our institutions and ideas for this new era you know one of the other things that I think people don't like about modern democracies is that they seem outdated I mean I can click my phone and Amazon will deliver a pair of shoes to me tomorrow morning right but you know to create a government coalition you know in Sweden takes six months you know or two for the bureaucracy to make a decision about some you know there there's a feeling you know there's often a feeling that these everything takes too long the old conventions are boring I mean it may be that some of our democracies and some of our institutions need to be updated for a kind of digital era when things happen faster it may be that some of our ideas about what civil society is need to be updated I mean we clearly need a kind of online civil you know we need online civic education which we haven't had before I don't think there that many schools that teach you know internet etiquette you know how do you deal with the troll you know I don't you know that may be something that you need to learn in a classroom and maybe it has to be part of understanding how to be a citizen and democracy I mean that well we're thinking about updating you know making the internet suit us we also might have to think about how our you know educational and judicial and and political institutions also need to be updated to deal with this different ways in which information now circulates and I think that's a problem for Western and Eastern Europe alike I don't think it's that different but do you think that there would be a good idea to to to evolve towards an online democracy more fast for more I mean for something I mean I mean yeah for some things I mean I I am NOT a fan of referenda because they polarize people over issues that you know may or may not be and they create bad debates but but yeah I mean it may be that politicians need to use the internet more creatively to reach citizens you know it may be that you know maybe my you know my imaginary Public Interest internet will have spaces for debate and argument in which politicians participate along with ordinary people in new ways I mean maybe you know clearly the old ways of transmitting information you know through the television or in an interview or walking around shaking hands I mean some of that well of course we'll have to go on particularly the walking around shaking hands part but maybe there also needs to be politicians need to find ways of interacting online I mean actually Twitter it turns out to be not very good for doing politics online because but maybe there's it maybe there's another former social media that is you know this this form of public interest algorithm what would that we require what would be the requirements for that would it be a lot of dedicated computer scientists a project that involved you know lawyers and people who think about you know human rights in different ways experts on free speech experts on communication in politics you know it needs a kite needs to be a durational constant moderation you need a kind of national project to think about what it is that we want and we're just at the beginning of this conversation but first should rethink the whole idea of this well the you know we've accepted the you know we've accepted the internet the way it is because you know the way it was you know there are some flaws in the ways I mean for example the fact that it was created to allow anonymity that was part of the original design you know the fact that it's now very dominated by a few companies you know do we you know do we as you know I'll speak with my European hat on you know do we as Europeans want that that's I mean leaving aside all the issues about Facebook's money and so on this is secondary do we want those companies to have so much power over our political system they know us so well sorry they know us so well already so maybe we don't want them to know us so well but anyway I don't think we want to know us we want them to know us so well but they already do yes well you know we're a bit late I mean I'm we're a bit late I mean we've you know there there have been attempts to limit the amount of data people can give away and so on I means but and that's the beginning that's kind of that was the beginning that was the first step it was the beginning of thinking about it you know now people do understand that their data is being used by these companies for a thing you know but there may be another you know we need we need to take a few steps further I think and so now back to the to the role of journalism in in favor of to the truth sort of facts or the information we citizens need you have some I'm going to say that some ideas how we shoot how we should yeah transform journalism - what so there there's a commerce there's an ongoing conversation about this - maybe journalism is also a sand you know and by the way it happens in newspapers you know maybe journalism also needs to be partly reinvented and you know you've seen some of this probably on Dutch papers as much as you know in American papers you know journalism you know you know newspapers becoming sources of videos trying to find different ways to connect with readers in some cases creating kind of clubs of their readers too you know because one of the ways in which you create trust is by having a deeper relationship so it's not just your readers clicking on your paper it's also you know the paper or the magazine provides extra content for its members or something I mean there are lots of people are experimenting with this there are also experiments with what's called sometimes called constructive journalism so journalism which isn't just people writing and describing the problem but also focuses on finding solutions it's very fashionable for example in Denmark and one or two other places you know is there you know I don't know could you create an interesting television program which dealt with I don't know whatever a problem you know potholes in the road and you got the various actors responsible for the potholes and you put them in a room and you had them solve the problem or say you know you know and there have been you know the difficulty of course is how to do that without it being boring yeah just as just stating the facts it's so well do how do you how do you involve people how do you do journalism which is about finding solutions and coming up with answers and fixing things in a way that doesn't make people switch off and want to watch you know I don't know the movie something is something more entertaining you know how do you make that entertaining and involving how do you how do you bring people into a car in a political conversation in a way that's not that that's also exciting but yeah I mean there's a lot a lot of computer and a lot of complaints about journalism which are you know particularly in an era when newspapers and websites and even broadcast television are have lost money because their advertising model has been destroyed by social media they've lost money and so they are more frantic for readers and so they're more sensationalist and as they become more sensationalist fewer people trust them yeah you know there's a kind of vicious cycle that you know you can see killing off newspapers because they become sensationalist they make mistakes you know people don't trust them anymore and stop reading it and there's a the question is how to break that cycle is there a different way to do journalism is there a different way to to do the news can you you know again maybe there's a role for public broadcaster's you know can you offer people something more than just you know a sensation can you offer them an answer a solution you know a feeling of connection but but even public broadcaster's have low trusts are undermined right so then the question is how mainstream not like the BBC we talked about I mean so how do you what should they do to rebuild the trust and that's a I mean yeah I think you know everybody's everybody who's who I know who's in public broadcasting is thinking about it it's not a and there's no obvious answer I mean if there were we would have come up with it already I think we have two chief editor of follow the money in room just various he's reinventing journalism very good news own platform yeah there's the mic I'm indeed today one of the founders follow the money and actually I do not very much agree with what you just said about you agree or disagree I disagree yes there there's you you will see numerous initiatives that do show a complete different business model for instance our platform has no advertisement advertisers completely subscription-based its long form it's not the bow the heading so they're spectacular news it's about investigator really I'm sorry I didn't mean to imply that old journalism is going that way just don't some as a matter of fact you see a bit of a trend I would see even in in in our big our newspapers that have tend to focus more on in-depth stories so I think there's a positive switch towards in-depth journalism to be honest question is if it's not if is it enough because there's so much filth and diarrhea around small islands of truth that surrounded by all that well excrement I have a question though which is not about necessarily about journalism although there's many questions to ask because you know you're basically advertised writing about boring stuff in being a telephone book just write the facts you know telephone book has full of facts it's very boring I want to go back to that algorithm of the public interest because that fascinates me I think the assumption is that there is a general idea what the public interest is and and you've more just less suggested there that you know experts of of many fields were are supposed to be introduced or to help design the algorithm but whose experts on what side do you invite all the experts if there are experts what is an expert and how can you can you legitimize the construction of such an algorithm what if you could construct an algorithm that inflected the views of the public yeah well I mean then we get back to the basis of a democracy don't we right yeah well that's I mean but that's it's still going back to what this factual or nothin one expert can say this but in the end it's a discussion about facts yeah but at the end of the day I mean I you know I didn't I wait I didn't mean to imply that you know expert sorry if I was in clear I mean what I meant to imply was that we right now decisions about what we see in are often made by you know people in large companies in Palo Alto and I would like that to be not true anymore I would like us to decide how we see and read it and the process by which that happens you know I'm not dictating to you right now by any means it's clearly something that should involve the public and we should find a way to express the views of the public and include the views of the public you know but you will need some computer technicians involved and you know presumably there's some way of deciding who knows how to write an algorithm and who doesn't so there's some there's some you know let's some level of expertise is required but no I didn't mean to imply that 10 people will sit in a room and design it although that is kind of how the BBC was designed but but but yes no I'm not I don't think we were disagreeing but it does show as a sort of a very strong belief in a solution of technology and solving the problem am i right well technology has caused the problem I mean our to the but although it's not a problem I mean it's a it's a change in in the nature of information which is good and bad and it has allowed interesting publications like yours to exist and it's destroyed some older publications and it has allowed some people who we didn't hear from before to speak and it has allowed some crazy people to speak and this is not a I'm not making a moral judgement about whether it's better or worse you know in some ways it's better in some ways it's worse but the point is it's different it's a new world it's a we have a completely new way of exchanging information now the question is who is going to decide how that space is shaped in the future you know is it going to be Mark Zuckerberg you know or is it going to be us you know in some sense people in this room or rooms like it and my desire is for it to be people in this room's like it but since I'm talking about a process that hasn't begun yet you know you're asking me for details about it that I can't no I'm not I'm not giving you a formula for how that's going to happen I'm just saying I want it to happen that's that's all very disappointed sorry I was coming here for a year for the formula but it has to be a democratic formula thank you very much the point you know the point of it is that we want a democratic formula that reflects our democratic values that you know that's absolutely the point but as something in this this algorithms that are working now that are that they are polarizing in in itself they are century faisal in itself they're fragmenting you yes I mean everybody I mean I don't know if you've all tried this experiment you know that if you go to youtube and you look up something whatever veganism you know and you start clicking on and if if every time you make a choice about a more extreme form of veganism you will end up with you know you know I don't know auntie you know you'll end up and basically you end up with whatever you do end up with a most extreme version of whatever it was you know or the same you know if you if you keep clicking on you know you can start with you know the far right and you end up with white supremacist and Nazis you know it so if you the algorithm will lead you in the direction that you're going and that happens with you know in any subject then not a political subject anything it will show you more and more extreme versions of whatever it was that you were looking for so you know is that how we want this is that how we want that the you know YouTube to be constructed so that's that's the only question that I'm asking yeah so maybe we can reshape an algorithm like and by the way when you're talking about I didn't mean to imply that all new journalism was gonna be boring you know quite the opposite I mean new you know I was in Jacksonville Florida a year or two ago where I was at a dinner where there was the editor of the local newspaper and he told me that his newspaper which only comes out in a print edition you know I think it's once I've not remember now I don't think it's every day it was once a week I think I'm just not remembering but anyway here's a print publication which is the most important publication - and it's only print there's no internet and he and it's very expensive and it makes a profit and he you know it gets delivered whenever however many days a week to all the citizens in Jacksonville who want it and it's an thrives and survives and is very influential and people read it and so on but but it doesn't even have an online version but if you want to know kind of really the inside on you know scoop on local news in Jacksonville you have to buy this and of course the problem with his model is that it leaves people out who can't afford it or you know but it's but it but they're they're going to be many models of how news is distributed and and them and the people who are the most creative and coming up with these models are the ones whose papers will survive that's a question in the audience in the middle yeah first that one okay so we've been talking about what kind of solutions are but we don't really know yet because it's still in the future but I was thinking you're also an historian so is there some kind of clues from the past because democracy has survived so far that we might use to do something with the solution that's a really interesting question and we actually at one point we tried to do that we we looked at what methods had been used to fight Soviet propaganda in the past what were the what had been the responses that worked and do they have a modern equivalent because obviously it's not the same and one of the one of them that I remember thinking about was you know in this you know in the Soviet Union you had this you know very intense propaganda you know all the media was state-owned and so how could you create an alternative to that and there was a group of dissidents in Moscow in the 6067 mostly 1970s and 1980s who created something called the chronicle of current events and it was one of these publications you know that people typed up in their apartment and you would type up five copies and then pass them out and that somebody else would type up five copies and pass them out and it and it you know and they and then very often a copy or two got to Radio Liberty Radio Free Europe and then it would be the stories would be beamed back into the country and this used to drive the Soviet government crazy because you know these you know they couldn't figure out where this news and information was coming from and the question it was is why did people trust the Chronicle so they would get these they were these sort of bulletins they were very basic actually they were sort of bulletins of basic information and they were often information about who'd been arrested or who was in prison or what was going on just kind of lists often I've seen them and and the answer was again one I hinted it before is that they'd created this community of trust so people trusted the originators they trusted the people who were distributing it you know they had a so that made me think so maybe one of the answers to disinformation the present is also creating new communities of trust and as I was hinting and what I said before there are some newspapers magazines publications that have tried to do exactly that you know create a readership you know with by having a relationship with them or by having a particularly high quality journalism that you know you know giving people something that you know they've you know I'm a certain kind of person because I read this or I know that sounds obnoxious actually I mean but I'm a you know I identify with this kind of writing or these kinds of these kinds of articles and so that was that was one thought the other was that there had in the past been responses to disinformation that came in other spheres so for example and I think we talked about this yet there was a very famous Soviet era 1980s era disinformation project which was a project designed to spread the rumor that the CIA had invented AIDS it's a very famous very well studied story there's book about it and recently and the way they the way this story you know the way this rumor was started was in the old-fashioned way you know there was a story planted I think originally in an Indian newspaper with some kind of communist party links and then they planted another story in an Italian newspaper and then eventually in other places and then people began picking up the stories and they and they'd spread that way and this of course is a project project that took many months I think even years to catch on you know now this is something you can do in 15 minutes I mean just plant stories and 100 different websites and you know you create a rumor and then you spread it with BOTS I mean it's a very similar so what and then the casual so what did the United States do about this because they were aware the American government became aware that this was this was happening and they were getting questions from all over the world and there were a number of responses and one of them was you know to put out you know disclaimers and it's just like we have fact-checking today and another one was to tell the Soviet Union in diplomatic dialogue that if you go on doing this you'll suffer in other ways I think at that time there were these scientific exchanges with the Soviet Union we will cut off these scientific exchange unless you knock that you know knock it off but and the only interesting thing about this is this shows how if you begin to take disinformation seriously in one sphere and this is more to do with disinformation attacks you know from other countries you know you can respond in other spheres so you know and this I think was what was what the Obama administration was thinking about the very very end when they saw that Russian campaign going on in the in the US election you know if you do this we will sanction you in these other areas so there's a there's a non you know you have to look for somehow responses and in other places and that was one other thing that we looked at and then we looked at the creation of in the past of radar for Europe and radio Liberty and why those and those were probably the most successful counter disinformation projects ever done I mean they were they were they were good news stations which again gained reputation for for reliability among their listeners and which also Radio Free Europe was important because if everybody knows what radio for you're opposed right so Raider for Europe was important because it was a they used so when they radio free Poland or Radio Free to Kosovo key and would use local people so poles ran radio PO free Poland in checks ran radio free chuckles of akhiya and they again sought to create links with their listeners and so again creating a sense that you know that and they also again they cultivated an air reliability and simplicity it's about juicing trusting your community it's about producing you so that so ultimately a lot of this comes down to creating trust you know how do we rebuild trust how do we make sure that people don't feel excluded or or left out how do we how do we you know rebuild that trust in a world where you know there is a lot of junk information out there but what's a question but it's a it's a fascinating subject I mean there there is no exact analogy in the past I mean when you look at what ended religious wars in Europe well it was like the Enlightenment and the invention of religious freedom and I'm not sure I know what the analogy to that is now and then we first have to to start these religious wars right and would like to get we'd like to avoid the point of getting religious wars please go ahead good evening so for the last couple of years we've been observing the whole process of the rule of law backsliding in certain member states of European Union especially Hungary and pond and I was really curious about European of the role in of media in the whole process of undermining of judiciary in those countries it's really interesting question you know the first thing and the the first clue that there was going to be a problem with the current Polish government was the fact that as soon as they could they destroyed state media they public Poland had a public media that was okay it wasn't what it should have been and so on it but it was meant to be a neutral space and they took it over and they gave it to people who had been sort of on the you know kind of far-right journalists kind of propagandists and they changed the nature of it completely and they made it a kind of ruling party media you know so that it speaks and it's not even really pretends to be anything else and they you know and they created this very very slanted very biased media which kind of openly manipulates and even brags about it so I could give you lots of examples but it's a it's a it's a long story and I and this was a this was a part of the it was as soon as they did that it became clear that what they were going to do was to try to you know was to try to change the constitution and break the law and this was and this was the first roll it you know and as in other countries as in the u.s. you have had on the other side you have had independent media seeking to counter that sometimes successfully sometimes not I mean you get to you you know you've had both in the US and in Poland actually there's been an odd thing what's happened which is that you know independent media have kind of taken on the role of becoming the political opposition which is not good for media you know that's not really the role of media and of journalists but people have become engaged and but they've had some some successes in Hungary you have you have now you've had they've gone a step farther and the Hungarian government has also sought to undermine independent media and this has been done in a variety of ways from from from denying or trying to limit advertising in independent media to you know altering rules to make sure you know to admit is essentially trying to harm their from their business model and their financial model as a way to you know as a way to make sure they don't succeed and and now in effect almost all with very very tiny exceptions almost all Hungarian mean I mean this was a long process by which they sought to take over and undermine the independent media and now they the endgame is that most median Hungary is owned directly or indirectly by the government by the ruling party and again that's been a deliberate you know it's been a deliberate part of the policy because of course if you control the media then then there is no level playing field there's no marketplace of ideas there's no there's no competition so it's been a very important part of in both of those countries and actually not only there I mean I know that there are parallel things that have happened elsewhere but if we talk about the consequences of that you wrote a quite moving essay about New Year's Eve in Poland in yes 1999 and now 20 years later you say you would cross the street if you came across one of these former Flint's may be mutually across history yeah yes and you you were right on what became of these friendships of the time and this was this was so this was a piece that was about you know what had happened to you know a group of people the sort of Polish anti-communist you know who had been one United group in you know at that time at the time and and have now divided very bitterly and this is a knot of not a phenomenon unique to Poland you can say almost a very very similar process happened within the Republican Party in the United States you know I know I have Republicans you know many friends who don't speak to each other there as well it's very strikingly similar but so it was an attempt to describe how and why this happened in in some way and you know the point of it was it in some ways they were sort of uniquely thing weird things that had happened in Poland that explained it and in some ways it was part of a bigger a bigger story that you can see echoed in other democracies but it's all dispersed and your friendships are all so I have I have plenty of other friends so yeah well and then you wrote last week that well before brexit um I organized dinner yes so is that I described in an article in the brexit situation a little bit cuz I have friends on both sides of that debate and I have stayed friends with both sides but they are not they don't all like each other so I thought we thought well let's have dinner and we're gonna invite people from both sides and as I wrote in that piece it wasn't that fun and so a friend of mine said to me well I'm not coming to any party or any dinner at your house all together again that's right no but you know in in England I have found it but for a lot of reasons maybe because I'm not originally English you know but I found it much easier to to not lose friends if a brexit but people have I know it's a it has been very polarizing and people are pretty bitter but depending on on both sides actually well I see there's a lot of questions we have to finish in a few minutes and I want to ask you a few questions about what we can expect in the coming year and then you can decide you don't have a crystal ball and I don't know who in the US election well at the mid time elections in the United States you wrote we learned a lot about polarization and this information and yet we learn nothing because we know how it works but we don't do anything about it no I mean you know the best way to fight polarization is with an anti polarizing political project right but what that means and how it works and who can succeed at it is not clear and I can point to you little examples around Europe of people who've tried it one of them you know in a very small country is the president of Slovakia who tried to who want an election as a kind of in a you know where there had been a populist government for a long time and she won and very corrupt one and she won an election as a kind of provincial green you know kind of progressive religious candidate that's how I that's my best description of it you know she kind of defied a lot of categories and and became president Slovakia so that's a you know defying categories and finding new ways of reaching a wider range of people is clearly one way to do it but there is no magic formula and others who've tried to you know there's a moderates are at risk of looking weak and you know and or old-fashioned or of sounding like I just want everything to go back the way it was and that that kind of politics seems not doesn't win that's you know what worries me about Joe Biden for example you know even though you know he'd probably be a perfectly all right president but you know there's an there's a counter theory that what we need to counter you know very polarizing right-wing populism is some very polarizing left-wing pop you know that what we need is a radical left and that's a that's the Bernie Sanders are yeah if you do you think I'm that well the I mean the one the one example we've had of that being tried which was in Britain was also a failure so carbon yes so you know it's a you know the the you know we are at a time of political experimentation I think all of our parties ten years from now are going to look completely different the people's political alignments are changing very rapidly and I don't think there's a magic formula that can predict what will happen is there any Civic Council response you can endorse to us I mean there have been you know there been a lot of good Civic responses you know in you know in Italy a couple of weeks ago there was a very interesting counter response to salvini if I don't have people followed this year there was a local election in emilia-romagna that he was very important for him and he he he he put him spent a lot of time there and there was a group of young very young actually Italians who said alright salvini is the shark we're sardines you know he's bigger and more powerful than we are but there are a lot of us so every time he showed up anywhere this huge pack of sardines they called themselves would show up and protest and shout in the background that was and they were funny you know and they they were good at you know they were good at creating jokes and you know making fun of him and they seemed to have helped first of all they raised the interest in voting this is just a local election very high and they'd a very high turnout and you know he was defeated or his party was defeated not him so this is a you know this is an example of one I didn't know I don't know if that's scalable to an you know national level or not I saw an Italian friend of mine yesterday thinks it's not but you know you know there's a lot of experiment there's an interesting Swiss experiment there's a also very young Swiss group of Swiss they were originally students who created a project called Operation libero which was originally designed to kind of do counter disinformation on what they didn't call it that but that's what they were doing online you know they would sort of they had a team of people who would you know when people wrote things that were wrong or untrue they were they had a team that would go out and try and you know on these public fora and discussion for they were trying and they also sought to you know because there is a big Swiss populist party which is their largest political party and they sought to you know you know can't we read you know and that and the populace would talk about the Swiss past and the countryside and Swiss traditions and they said well we want you know there's also another kind of Swiss past and it's the revolution of the Constitution rather of 1848 and there's a long tradition of Swiss liberalism and we've historically been open to the world and those are the parts of Switzerland that we want to celebrate and remember and you know in other words they were camped during a kind of nationalism with a form of patriotism this is another you know and they've been using it to fight these referenda campaigns since which one so these are not none of these are kind of you know I'm not offering you any formula again but no but maybe we should look for something utterly rooted there are there are you know there are you know there we're in a time of political experimentation and we don't know yet what is going to come out of it okay Anne Applebaum may I thank you so much for your stories and your insights tonight thank you nice read her booth she has to leave us very quickly because she has to go in the train very early in the morning please read her books follow her on Twitter and Roman controller and next episode of the futures now will be I think in April with David good heart thank you for ferryman thank you thanks

Channel: Rode Hoed

Views: 2,812

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Keywords: Anne Applebaum, Fake News, Donald Trump, Russia, Poetin, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Pulitzer, Prize, Rode Hoed, QAnon, complot, nepnieuws, Daan Roovers, Tegenlicht, Buitenhof, The New York Times, ann applebaum, applebaum, appelbaum, Anne applebaum, anne applebaum, Anne Applebaum writer, Anne Applebaum the atlantic, Ann Applebaum, An Applebaum

Id: N0NCzTIpJjs

Length: 92min 41sec (5561 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 10 2020