• Home
  • Opinion
  • Quizzes
  • Redistricting
  • Sections
  • About Us
  • Voting
  • Events
  • Civic Ed
  • Campaign Finance
  • Directory
  • Election Dissection
  • Fact Check
  • Glossary
  • Independent Voter News
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Subscriptions
  • Log in
Leveraging Our Differences
  • news & opinion
    • Big Picture
      • Civic Ed
      • Ethics
      • Leadership
      • Leveraging big ideas
      • Media
    • Business & Democracy
      • Corporate Responsibility
      • Impact Investment
      • Innovation & Incubation
      • Small Businesses
      • Stakeholder Capitalism
    • Elections
      • Campaign Finance
      • Independent Voter News
      • Redistricting
      • Voting
    • Government
      • Balance of Power
      • Budgeting
      • Congress
      • Judicial
      • Local
      • State
      • White House
    • Justice
      • Accountability
      • Anti-corruption
      • Budget equity
    • Columns
      • Beyond Right and Left
      • Civic Soul
      • Congress at a Crossroads
      • Cross-Partisan Visions
      • Democracy Pie
      • Our Freedom
  • Pop Culture
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
  • events
  • About
      • Mission
      • Advisory Board
      • Staff
      • Contact Us
Sign Up
  1. Home>
  2. Civic Ed>
  3. disinformation>

The Capitol mob was put down. The disinformation spreaders need to be defeated next.

Josh Berthume
January 12, 2021
QAnon supporters storm the Capitol

Elected officials who spread disinformation, like the QAnon conspiracy theories, should be barred from public office, writes Bethume.

Win McNamee/Getty Images

Berthume is a fellow at the Truman National Security Project, a progressive defense and foreign policy think tank.


Last week's invasion of the Capitol by QAnon adherents and white supremacists, acting on the orders of the president of the United States and encouraged by members of Congress, demonstrated in clear and visceral terms that disinformation is an existential threat to the republic.

Elected officials who engage in disinformation must be banned from public life. The Biden administration must take this problem seriously and act now or risk the end of American society.

The case for taking concrete action on disinformation is clear. The goal is to blunt the weaponization of our national media environment by those who would use it to radicalize Americans. The violent failed coup attempt at the Capitol — and the simultaneous, correlated mob actions in Georgia, Washington, Kansas, Minnesota, Utah, Ohio, Arizona, Oregon, Michigan, Oklahoma, Colorado, California and Texas — was not an arbitrary incident. It was the outcome of a months-long disinformation campaign led by President Trump, joined by a wide array of Republican elected officials and amplified by mainstream right-wing media.

Our current information ecosystem encourages elected officials to lie and rewards them with power. It incentivizes platforms and media outlets to enable those who are ill-suited to public service to engage instead in destructive behavior. And it likewise rewards them with reach and profit. The attacks of Jan. 6 are the inevitable result.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

The problem is too far gone to solve with existing mechanisms. A popular idea is to blame social media platforms, which they absolutely deserve. However, attempts to fix this problem at the platform level by using existing regulatory tools would take years. We do not have enough time to rely on this as a sole remedy.

In state capitals nationwide, legislators are preparing to use disinformation to justify anti-democratic measures that will further restrict access to the ballot and selectively criminalize legitimate protest. Conservative media still sits atop a high-speed pipeline of conspiracy theories born in the most extreme, pro-fascist, white nationalist corners of the internet. Right-wing outlets and Republican elected officials are already amplifying an obvious Big Lie: That those who attacked the Capitol were not pro-regime sectarian domestic terrorists, rioting in support of Trump's last desperate attempt to maintain his grip on power, but rather were the agents of antifa.

State governments not already captured by anti-democratic actors must take immediate legislative action to punish participation in disinformation campaigns by elected officials. The consequences must be real and have teeth: expulsion and removal from their posts and a lifetime ban on holding another public office.

The Biden administration must go further and dedicate real resources to combating disinformation. The big picture reasons for this are clear: Such an effort would buttress democracy against the most corrosive and destructive force we face other than climate change, and it would help us work toward a future in which we can begin to repair the damage already done to our society.

The more practical reasons are just as urgent. An administration that does not immediately address this problem with sufficient people, money, big thinking and activist policies will be unable to govern because it will soon be paralyzed by disinformation on all fronts. Dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, threats from foreign adversaries, the battered economy and the shortcomings of our social justice system will be impossible if the basic tenets of operating the federal government are besieged, again and again, figuratively and literally.

Disinformation is a national security crisis and represents an enormous vulnerability to threats both foreign and domestic. So it merits staff integration across multiple elements of the executive branch including the National Security Council, the Defense Department, the Justice Department, the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security.

This problem cannot be taken seriously enough, but it must first be taken seriously at all. It is a challenge to governance, human rights and democracy, and must be treated as such. Trump will leave office next week. But this problem will persist. Things will get worse.

Every political scientist knows the consequences for anyone participating in an attempted coup against the United States must be swift, harsh and public — or else the next attack will come soon and be worse. These consequences must reach and include the active participants in the disinformation campaign that generated the attack. This will serve as a necessary first step in an information war we must fight, or else face extinction.

From Your Site Articles
  • Disinformation: remain calm and do not spread - The Fulcrum ›
  • It's our duty to combat pandemic's digital disinformation - The Fulcrum ›
  • Census Bureau opens unique office to fight disinformation - The ... ›
  • Report: Anti-conservative bias in social media is unfounded - The Fulcrum ›
  • The competing existential crises of our time - The Fulcrum ›
  • Disinformation and what businesses can do about it - The Fulcrum ›
  • How conspiracy theories became more cruel after Sandy Hook - The Fulcrum ›
  • Threats and vilification could lead to end of public service - The Fulcrum ›
  • Capitol riot reminiscent of Mussolini's march on Rome - The Fulcrum ›
  • I was healed of a Rush Limbaugh addiction - The Fulcrum ›
Related Articles Around the Web
  • Stop the Steal's massive disinformation campaign connected to ... ›
  • Disinformation campaigns are murky blends of truth, lies and sincere ... ›
  • Russia Disinformation Campaign That Operated In The Shadows ... ›
  • The Billion-Dollar Disinformation Campaign to Reelect the President ›
disinformation

Want to write
for The Fulcrum?

If you have something to say about ways to protect or repair our American democracy, we want to hear from you.

Submit
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Confirm that you are not a bot.
×
Follow
Contributors

Hypocrisy of pro-lifers being anti-LGBTQIA

Steve Corbin

A dangerous loss of trust

William Natbony

Shifting the narrative on homelessness in America

David L. Nevins

Reform in 2023: Leadership worth celebrating

Layla Zaidane

Two technology balancing acts

Dave Anderson

Reform in 2023: It’s time for the civil rights community to embrace independent voters

Jeremy Gruber
latest News

Three practical presidential pledges to promote national prosperity

James-Christian B. Blockwood
31 May

Meet the Faces of Democracy: Justin Roebuck

Mia Minkin
31 May

Podcast: Why Is Congressional Oversight Important, and How Can It Be Done Well? (with Elise Bean)

Kevin R. Kosar
Elise J. Bean
30 May

Chipping away at election integrity: Virginia joins red state exodus from ERIC

David J. Toscano
30 May

Your Take on congressional incivility

Lennon Wesley III
26 May

White House plan to combat antisemitism needs to take on centuries of hatred, discrimination and even lynching in America

Pamela Nadell
26 May
Videos

Video: Honoring Memorial Day

Our Staff

Video: #ListenFirst Friday YOUnify & CPL

Our Staff

Video: What is the toll of racial violence on Black lives?

Our Staff

Video: What's next for migrants seeking asylum after Title 42

Our Staff

Video: An inside look at the campaign to repeal Pennsylvania’s closed primaries

Our Staff

Video: Where the immigration debate stands today

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: AI revolution: Disaster or great leap forward?

Our Staff
25 May

Podcast: Can we fix America's financial crises?

Our Staff
23 May

Podcast: Gen Z's fight for democracy

Our Staff
22 May

Podcast: Political Football, Inc.

Our Staff
19 May
Recommended
Three practical presidential pledges to promote national prosperity

Three practical presidential pledges to promote national prosperity

Big Picture
Meet the Faces of Democracy: Justin Roebuck

Meet the Faces of Democracy: Justin Roebuck

State
Podcast: Why Is Congressional Oversight Important, and How Can It Be Done Well? (with Elise Bean)

Podcast: Why Is Congressional Oversight Important, and How Can It Be Done Well? (with Elise Bean)

Test Unlisted
Hypocrisy of pro-lifers being anti-LGBTQIA

Hypocrisy of pro-lifers being anti-LGBTQIA

Diversity Inclusion and Belonging
Chipping away at election integrity: 
Virginia joins red state exodus from ERIC

Chipping away at election integrity: Virginia joins red state exodus from ERIC

Big Picture
Video: Honoring Memorial Day

Video: Honoring Memorial Day