THE INFORMATION STATE

Ideologically colored account of the rise of the surveillance state.

By former Army officer Siegel’s account, the federal government’s efforts to “eradicate dangerous narratives” speaks to a number of points: Bad information, whether misinformation or disinformation, supposedly lies at the heart of the world’s troubles in the minds of the political elite, and combating it has led to the development of a “parallel system of government” whose purpose it is to control the “information environment.” This parallel system has control as its aim, dictating what can and cannot be said on social media. What can be said, of course, lies on a broad spectrum; one of Siegel’s cases in point is the removal of Trump’s social media accounts following the events of Jan. 6, 2021. Most of his bad guys are Democrats. He holds, for instance, that Barack Obama turned the Democratic Party into a monolithic machine representing the “tenets of progressive technocracy,” using intelligence to “dictate the beliefs held by hundreds of millions of Americans by controlling the media and manipulating public discourse.” Against this backdrop, President Trump is the blameless victim of a “Russiagate hoax” fostered by a hostile press bent on spreading conspiracy theories that “were being used to whip the country into a frenzy of unreason.” Siegel’s villains are many, but high among them is the television host and commentator Rachel Maddow, who “was arguably the most reckless and dogged of all the Russiagate obsessives and covered every new claim in the lurid, paranoid style of a grocery store gossip rag.” Siegel’s narrative becomes ever more fervent as he denounces Joseph Biden, the intelligence community, Black Lives Matter (compared unfavorably to the patriots who stormed the Capitol), vaxxers, and other broad-side-of-the-barn targets.

A high-toned effort of appeal to the QAnon crowd.