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Elected officials who spread disinformation, like the QAnon conspiracy theories, should be barred from public office, writes Bethume.
The Capitol mob was put down. The disinformation spreaders need to be defeated next.
Jan 12 2021
Berthume is a fellow at the Truman National Security Project, a progressive defense and foreign policy think tank.
<div></div><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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. </p><p>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.</p><p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>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. </p><p>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.</p><p>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. </p><p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><div></div><p>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.</p>
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Mythbusting Squad Training
Nov 19 2020
Organizer: RepresentUs
Misinformation about election fraud is rampant on social media, especially on Twitter. These baseless stories are sowing doubts in the validity of our election and undermining our democracy. Our Mythbusting team is designed to activate volunteers like you by providing the resources and tools you need to find misinformation on social media at its source, and debunk that misinformation directly.
We will train you on our Twitter search tool Tweetdeck and get you started debunking false and misleading claims about the election at the source.
Location: Webinar
Mythbusting Squad Training
Nov 19 2020
Organizer: RepresentUs
Misinformation about election fraud is rampant on social media, especially on Twitter. These baseless stories are sowing doubts in the validity of our election and undermining our democracy. Our Mythbusting team is designed to activate volunteers like you by providing the resources and tools you need to find misinformation on social media at its source, and debunk that misinformation directly.
We will train you on our Twitter search tool Tweetdeck and get you started debunking false and misleading claims about the election at the source.
Location: Webinar
Chris McGrath/Getty Images
Rudy Giuliani, one of President Trump's most vocal surrogates, is back in a courtroom today, trying to block the certification of the election in Pennsylvania.
Trump makes his case in Pa. as most everyone else makes the case he's done
Nov 17 2020
The most ambitious of President Trump's longshot and counterfactual claims against the election is getting its day in federal court Tuesday.
The hearing in Pennsylvania comes two weeks after the nation voted decisively to deny Trump a second term, which in public he steadfastly refuses to realize — while almost all Republicans in authority continue to enable the fiction. The consequence is that the bedrock of American democracy, which by all accounts was remarkably fair and efficient despite a deadly pandemic, has been sullied as never before by a presidential disinformation campaign.
Underscoring that, 59 top election security experts and computer scientists have rebuked Trump for his baseless assertions about voting fraud and cheating by election hackers, saying "these claims either have been unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent."
<p>"Anyone asserting that a U.S. election was 'rigged' is making an extraordinary claim, one that must be supported by persuasive and verifiable evidence," the <a href="https://josephhall.org/papers/Experts-Statement-on-the-US-2020-General-Election-16NOV2020-1057.pdf" target="_blank">group wrote</a> in a statement they are posting on their websites. "To our collective knowledge, no credible evidence has been put forth that supports a conclusion that the 2020 election outcome in any state has been altered through technical compromise."</p><p>That blunt pushback was delivered at the same time President-elect Joe Biden amped up his own impatience with Trump's refusal to accept the outcome. Presumably, once Trump does admit his loss, the outgoing government could begin cooperating with the incoming administration. </p><p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>"More people may die" of the coronavirus, Biden warned Monday, unless his team and Trump's team can begin coordinating now on pandemic policy — especially to allow the earliest possible start of Covid-19 vaccinations after the inauguration.</p><p>The hearing that began Tuesday afternoon is an effort by Trump's campaign to block Pennsylvania from certifying its final election result. The deadline is Monday, and with less than 2 percent of ballots still in limbo, Biden is ahead by 74,000 votes. The state's 20 electoral votes are no longer crucial to his path toward the presidency, though, because even without them he has 286 electoral votes, 16 more than the number assuring victory.</p><p>The president's most high-profile attorney, Rudy Giuliani, has been permitted to represent the Trump campaign before Judge Matthew Brann at the federal courthouse in Williamsport — apparently his first courtroom appearance since he moved from federal prosecutor to mayor of New York nearly three decades ago</p><p>During an interview Tuesday on Fox Business, Giuliani claimed without offering any further explanation that his argument hinges on 700,000 ballots that "were counted surreptitiously," adding: "Frankly, that is a case that we would like to see get to the Supreme Court."</p><p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p><p>The Pennsylvania claim, which hinges on the fact that tabulating rules were not uniform statewide, is among more than a dozen lawsuits filed by the Trump campaign and Republican voters hoping to slow or prevent the certification of election results — mainly in battleground states that Trump lost narrowly. </p><p>Suits brought by his GOP allies in Wisconsin, Michigan and Georgia were abandoned on Monday, joining a roster of more than a dozen claims that have been dismissed by various state and federal courts. And a Michigan appeals court on Monday denied another bid to stop the certification of Detroit-area votes.</p><p>But the president's team is still fighting the steeply uphill cause of getting the results in those and other states upended with more litigation yet to be filed — or with recounts. While Georgia is conducting its own recanvass that has shifted votes minimally, Trump would have to foot an $8 million bill for a do-over tally in Wisconsin. He lost both states by less than 1 point but at least 14,000 votes.</p><p>The election experts' letter followed a similarly strong rebuttal of the president's claims last week by a panel of experts convened by Trump's own Department of Homeland, who declared the 2020 election <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/trump-transfer-of-power" target="_self">"the most secure in American history"</a> because "there is no evidence" any voting systems were compromised.</p><p>For the four years since Russians made virgous attempt to hack the previous election, election integrity experts and good-governance advocates have been promoting an array of measures to make voting more secure, transparent and trustworthy — but legislation embodying these ideas has been spurned by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on the grounds that the ideas were partisan and unnecessary. McConnell, of course, is now the most powerful Republican allowing Trump to go unchallenged in his baseless complaints that he's being robbed of a second term by weak election security.</p><p>Another, even higher-volume Republican proponent of the president's fraud claims in recent days has been Trey Trainor, the chairman of the <a href="http://thefulcrum.us/fec" target="_self">Federal Election Commission</a> since his confirmation this summer. While his agency would be in charge of deciding whether money spent on election controversies was in line with federal campaign finance law, Trainor has felt unbound by any complaints about conflicts of interest. </p><p>Trainor has declared his view that many reports of voter fraud in battleground states are credible and that Democratic officials have broken federal law by making life difficult for GOP poll watchers. And on Monday he tweeted his endorsement of one of the Trump team's attorneys, fellow Texan Sidney Powell, saying he's never known her "to be anything but forthright and honest in every case she's ever taken on. If she says there is rampant voter fraud in #Election2020, I believe her."</p>
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