Political Ideological Grooming Gangs are undermining our democracies, escalating social tensions, disrupting our communities, inciting hatred and fear, escalating political street violence.
Institutions of Commercial power adopt a defensive stance, they do not target the root cause.
Update
August 3 2024
We know that there is very well organised ongoing, in-depth collection of surveillance data about entire populations. Surveillance Capitalism collects data on our psychology and behaviour, every day, all day long, all the time. The platforms collect data on c.4,000 data points for every active consumer. We know too that this data and the analysis of that data is being deployed by the platforms that collect it.
The sell an enhanced capability to target very specific traits, characteristics, locations, income range, age rang and much, much more, to offer enhanced marketing effectiveness to advertisers, increasing sales to advert ratios, offering more precision.
They call it micro-targeting, and it is fed by global data-mining.
Advertisers go to the platforms believing that micro-targeting advertising/influencing will be more effective in generating attention and sales. Influencers.
Ideological Marketing.
In marketing language then the objective of online political grooming is to locate and identify 'vulnerable' people who are then targeted with content that exploits sets of cognitive biases, insecurities, pain, fear, distress and concerns. The objective is to weaponise the targets 'heart and mind' in support of the groomers goals.
What do I think of the Southport Riots?
- Targeting vulnerable people selected through studying their biases, insecurities, fears - psychological profiling, criminal intent
- Disseminating content designed to exacerbate those vulnerabilities - incitement, criminal intent
- Tweaking the content, increasing the tension and emotional charge to drive or nudge behaviour in a desired direction - manipulation, criminal intent
- Providing mechanisms for multiple small groups to form to take actions designed to inflame public political discourse - undermining healthy democracy criminal intent
Vulnerable people are being exploited and their exploitation causes harm.
The people who incite and orchestrate this are the ultimate criminals - the rioters are not the cause, they are the symptom.
They have been groomed. Many willingly, admittedly. These are unhappy, violence prone people. Their emotional immaturity renders them exploitable.
By all means hold those who participate in violence to account.
But do not allow the people who cause this to go unaccountable.
Because it is dishonest, grooming, at any level, in any relationship or setting, is not Free Speech.
Because it is manipulative and causes emotional harm, it is psychological abuse.
Because it incites hatred and fear, aimed at marginalised identified groups, it is bullying.
Because it is designed to undermine healthy public debate on democratic governance it is political.
We need to legislate ideological grooming as the psychological abuse that it is, to recognise it as a criminal activity, to define it as an offence, with a custodial sentence as a rational reasonable preventative measure, more health and safety than punishment.
We already define psychological abuse within Domestic Violence.
The legal precedent of criminalising gaslighting, bullying and other forms of psychological abuse within a relationship, human to human, exists.
The relationship of human to human in this dynamic contains a Power Disparity, the more powerful party being the sponsors of the most public figure, the funders of the ‘research’, content creation, content dissemination compared to any of the vulnerable targets.
Preventative Legislation would mean the platforms would have to shut all that grooming down, which they could do. They have total control of the platforms. They would have to uphold that legislation in order to operate.
Protecting the vulnerable from avoidable harm is a fundamental duty of care.
Update February 24 2024
Update: Paper on Cognitive Warfare 2023
"This article characterises the nature of cognitive warfare and its use of disinformation and computational propaganda and its political and military purposes in war and in conflict short of war. It discusses both defensive and offensive measures to counter cognitive warfare and, in particular, measures that comply with relevant moral principles."
Cognitive warfare has been defined in various ways.
Here are a couple of influential definitions to give the flavour of what is meant by this term: “Cognitive Warfare is a strategy that focuses on altering how a target population thinks and through that how it acts” (Backes & Swab, 2019)
“the weaponization of public opinion, by an external entity, for the purpose of (1) influencing public and governmental policy and (2) destabilizing public institutions” (Bernal et al., 2020, p. 10)
example : encouraging a cohort of voters to not vote, convincing them not voting is cool, in order to give another group an advantage ; behavioural modification driven by online and real world grooming operations informed by harvested behavioural surplus data.
example : running a decades long mis and dis-information news media campaign slandering the EU
example : encouraging a cohort of voters that their lives are at risk unless the vote for a certain candidate
example : Brexit!
example : Covid masks are Muzzles!
I respectfully suggest readers read the paper linked above, and then decide whether or not this piece is worth your time. The paper certainly is.
~ end of update ~
Knowing that serial egregious abusers operate within its jurisdiction, causing harm to millions of wholly innocent people, and masking any responsibility for that behaviour within one's jurisdiction or institutional setting in order to maintain status and income.— corneilius (@coreluminous) July 11, 2020
I don't buy the apology, until I see behaviour that confronts the harms in full, openly and honestly.
Political Grooming Gangs are abusing Facebook and deliberately undermining our democracies, escalating social tensions and disrupting our communities with lies, manipulation, gaslighting, emotional hijacking, neuromarketing false narratives....
Apology is oft taken as meaning remorse, when in fact what we see with powerful institutions that it is a line of defence, a public relations exercise.
The etymology of the word 'apology' is revealing : "defense, justification," from L.L. apologia, from Gk. apologia "a speech in defense," from apologeisthai "to speak in one's defense," from apologos "an account, story," from apo- "from, off" (see apo-) + logos "speech".
The original English sense of "self-justification" yielded a meaning "frank expression of regret for wrong done," first recorded 1590's, but it was not the main sense until the 18th Century. The old sense tends to emerge in Latin form apologia (first attested 1784), especially since J.H. Newman's "Apologia pro Vita Sua" (1864).
Thus when The Church or The State apologises, it is most often adopting a position that defends it's current image, status and power. Truth and Reconciliation processes are likewise marred by competing institutional interests and the wish to avoid the most honest accounting of harms caused, the parties culpable seeking always to mitigate the costs of facing the truth, addressing the harms, accepting the punishment.
Make no mistake about this - powerful Institutions of all kinds understand the intent and the meaning of the words they use, for both State and Church and Corporation are the source of all legal language, and this language and it's use allows these and other institutions to continue to maintain their status and power. Apologies most often avoid the necessary full accounting of the consequences of their actions. Polluters pollute. get caught, are fined and continue business without ever fully confronting the externalised costs dynamics of their industries. The Vatican fights every case, yet withholds information on thousands of untried cases. Facebook was fined, and their stock rose.
Sorry, but not sorry: they paid the fine, it is a business expense.
We see this is so with the way both Church and State in Australia have responded to the emergence of living witness evidence with regard to Residential School Systems in which poor and Aboriginal children have been incarcerated by force and brutally harmed in systemic fashion, over long periods of time.
We see it in terms of Institutions defence of themselves against the interests of Survivors and the genuine demands for Justice within every State on Earth.
It is a pattern of behaviour.
Saying 'I am sorry' or 'We are sorry' has no meaning unless there is material action to back it up, unless there is a clear indication that whatever transgression occurred will not occur again and that any perpetrators will be made to account for the harms they have caused.
And in cases where the harm caused is beyond remediation, then corrective legal punitive measures against Institutions, and judicial incarceration of individuals who have caused harm must follow, to protect from any future harm and to provide a meaningful deterrent.
In the case of The Vatican, and Facebook, there has been no internal driven action to correct the situation where known abusers operate within and through their structures. They resist rather than putting their hands up, and admitting responsibility.
To be fair, they are not the only institutions feigning apology for allowing abusers to operate within their systems. It is a standard behavioural pattern within in every powerful institution, every gang, every dysfunctional family - to protect their status, image and ability to operate, at all costs.
Facebook, Masks, Brexit and Donald Trump
Facebook permits micro-targeting of content that absolutely has caused harm, is causing harm and will continue to cause harm - for example, the current issue of anti-mask wearing freedom conTheory content. We know that activists are using Facebook and other social media to organise protests and live events.
That content is helping spread the SARSCOV2 virus within the United Kingdom and The United States of America. That is causing harm.
We know that military grade disinformation and disruption campaigns are being waged on Facebook, and that Facebook is earning billions from this activity.
"Emma Briant, a scholar of propaganda at Bard College who has spent years studying SCL, says the company’s mix of work demonstrates how military-funded psychological research can be exploited to wage domestic political warfare, establishing a dangerous template for political campaigning. During elections, tactics intended for battlefields could be used to foment division and extremism or discourage voters."
We know for certain that Brexit was in large part 'won' using these techniques against an unknowing population, a vulnerable population.
"Vote Leave’s campaign director, Dominic Cummings — now a special advisor to the UK prime minister — wrote in 2017 that the winning recipe for the leave campaign was data science. And, more specifically, spending 98% of its marketing budget on “nearly a billion targeted digital adverts”.
Targeted at Facebook users."
We know for certain that Trumps election in 2016 was in large part 'won' using these techniques against an unknowing population, a vulnerable population.Facebook's position is similar to the Vatican knowing that pedophiles and adults who beat and bullied children were operating within their ranks, and yet it did all it could to preserve it's external image and income revenue stream.
2020 US Presidential Election
Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP) was Nixon's baby. I remember reading Hunter S. Thompson's scathing writings on that odious little man and that disgusting campaign.
Nixon, Johnson and Trump are not too far apart in morality.
'Making the economy scream' so it hurts the people.
Now it is online micro-targeting and political grooming gangsterism. News media are part of the corruption.
Trumps re-election campaign has a $1 billion dollar 'advertising' budget just for Facebook in the coming months.
And it is already well under way.
"Thousands of micro-targeted ads had flooded the internet, portraying Trump as a heroic reformer cracking down on foreign corruption while Democrats plotted a coup. That this narrative bore little resemblance to reality seemed only to accelerate its spread. Right-wing websites amplified every claim. Pro-Trump forums teemed with conspiracy theories. An alternate information ecosystem was taking shape around the biggest news story in the country, and I wanted to see it from the inside.
I was surprised by the effect it had on me. I’d assumed that my skepticism and media literacy would inoculate me against such distortions. But I soon found myself reflexively questioning every headline. It wasn’t that I believed Trump and his boosters were telling the truth. It was that, in this state of heightened suspicion, truth itself—about Ukraine, impeachment, or anything else—felt more and more difficult to locate. With each swipe, the notion of observable reality drifted further out of reach.
What I was seeing was a strategy that has been deployed by illiberal political leaders around the world. Rather than shutting down dissenting voices, these leaders have learned to harness the democratizing power of social media for their own purposes—jamming the signals, sowing confusion. They no longer need to silence the dissident shouting in the streets; they can use a megaphone to drown him out. Scholars have a name for this: censorship through noise."
What the writer is describing is grooming.
Studying populations to source vulnerable people who are then targeted with content that exploits cognitive biases, insecurities, pain, fear, distress and concerns in order to exploit them at the ballot box, by triggering and re-inforcing those biases. Truly evil behaviour and activity.
Zucked! and MindF*ck.
I have just finished reading two important books - Zucked! about Facebook and MindF*ck about Cambridge Analytica
Here's a few pertinent quotes from Mindf*ck!
“In psychological warfare, the weak points are flaws in how people think. If you’re trying to hack a person’s mind, you need to identify cognitive biases and then exploit them.”
and
“We were spying, pure and simple, with cover from Trinidadian leaders. It felt bizarre—unreal—to be observing what people were watching on a tiny, faraway island, somehow more like we were playing a video game than intruding on the private lives of actual people. Even today, thinking back on it, Trinidad seems more like a dream than something we actually did. But we did do it. The Trinidad project was the first time I got sucked into a situation that was grossly unethical, and, frankly, it triggered in me a state of denial”
and
“perspecticide – the active deconstruction and manipulation of popular perception – you first have to understand on a deep level what motivates”
So notice the terminology - psychological warfare, notice the anger and abuse that is being 'stimulated', notice the irrationality of the to and fro of online 'debate' - that is warfare!
When we have well funded, well organised entities observing people as they are manipulating content being broadcast to the people they are observing, and when they are refining the manipulation of that content in real time to better exploit the reactions of the targeted people, all the time actively working to undermine the perceptual dynamic of an entire population, person by person, intimacy at scale, in order to exploit the people for political advantage, we have a huge problem.
Political grooming gangsterism, no less.
I had not read these two books when I wrote my first blog pieces on Political Grooming Gangsters.
Even back then I was pretty on the money in terms of the dynamics, the influence, the covert nature of the manipulation.
Now I know a little bit more, I have some extra detail, I have some witness testimony and all I can say is this - our social systems and our democracies are being undermined and harmed by the most abusive grooming type behaviours imaginable and the grooming is operating at scale. To be fair, it's not like there were not problems before this micro-targeting emerged. The dynamic of propaganda is old. It is the way that the digital online tech has created intimate access to people's psyche at scale that is new, and extra harmful.
Zuckerberg and Sandberg are allowing this to happen on their Facebook platform, and Amazon and Google likewise and others - and I cannot say it is just for the cash, because if any of them took action to prevent this abuse happening (and they could) they would make immeasurable gains in reputation, and that would translate into long term business stability, and therefore I have my questions about why they are allowing this to happen.
I cannot see into their minds nor would I want to.
That they are allowing this to happen is a best feeble, greedy and arrogant and at worst, it is truly evil.
Here's the thing, if you - the user - know and understand what is being done you can counter it.
What the writer is describing is grooming.
Studying populations to source vulnerable people who are then targeted with content that exploits cognitive biases, insecurities, pain, fear, distress and concerns in order to exploit them at the ballot box, by triggering and re-inforcing those biases. Truly evil behaviour and activity.
Zucked! and MindF*ck.
I have just finished reading two important books - Zucked! about Facebook and MindF*ck about Cambridge Analytica
Here's a few pertinent quotes from Mindf*ck!
“In psychological warfare, the weak points are flaws in how people think. If you’re trying to hack a person’s mind, you need to identify cognitive biases and then exploit them.”
and
“We were spying, pure and simple, with cover from Trinidadian leaders. It felt bizarre—unreal—to be observing what people were watching on a tiny, faraway island, somehow more like we were playing a video game than intruding on the private lives of actual people. Even today, thinking back on it, Trinidad seems more like a dream than something we actually did. But we did do it. The Trinidad project was the first time I got sucked into a situation that was grossly unethical, and, frankly, it triggered in me a state of denial”
and
“perspecticide – the active deconstruction and manipulation of popular perception – you first have to understand on a deep level what motivates”
So notice the terminology - psychological warfare, notice the anger and abuse that is being 'stimulated', notice the irrationality of the to and fro of online 'debate' - that is warfare!
When we have well funded, well organised entities observing people as they are manipulating content being broadcast to the people they are observing, and when they are refining the manipulation of that content in real time to better exploit the reactions of the targeted people, all the time actively working to undermine the perceptual dynamic of an entire population, person by person, intimacy at scale, in order to exploit the people for political advantage, we have a huge problem.
Political grooming gangsterism, no less.
I had not read these two books when I wrote my first blog pieces on Political Grooming Gangsters.
Even back then I was pretty on the money in terms of the dynamics, the influence, the covert nature of the manipulation.
Now I know a little bit more, I have some extra detail, I have some witness testimony and all I can say is this - our social systems and our democracies are being undermined and harmed by the most abusive grooming type behaviours imaginable and the grooming is operating at scale. To be fair, it's not like there were not problems before this micro-targeting emerged. The dynamic of propaganda is old. It is the way that the digital online tech has created intimate access to people's psyche at scale that is new, and extra harmful.
Zuckerberg and Sandberg are allowing this to happen on their Facebook platform, and Amazon and Google likewise and others - and I cannot say it is just for the cash, because if any of them took action to prevent this abuse happening (and they could) they would make immeasurable gains in reputation, and that would translate into long term business stability, and therefore I have my questions about why they are allowing this to happen.
I cannot see into their minds nor would I want to.
That they are allowing this to happen is a best feeble, greedy and arrogant and at worst, it is truly evil.
Here's the thing, if you - the user - know and understand what is being done you can counter it.
If you do not know, then you can be adversely influenced by this activity.
At the collective level, across a society there needs to be regulation, and intense, legal or law enforcement level active opposition to political grooming gangster activity. We need both. Now.
At the collective level, across a society there needs to be regulation, and intense, legal or law enforcement level active opposition to political grooming gangster activity. We need both. Now.
Kindest regards
Corneilius
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