Arnon Grunberg

Self-affirmation

Fantasies

On the danger – Markus Becker, Patrick Beuth, Markus Böhm, Max Hoppenstedt, Janne Knödler, Guido Mingels, Mathieu von Rohr, Marcel Rosenbach und Hilmar Schmundt in Der Spiegel:

‘The fact that the insurrectionists filmed their crimes in real time, thus presenting clear proof of their misdeeds to the authorities, isn't just evidence of their limited intellectual capacities. It also demonstrates a certain loss of touch with reality among these self-proclaimed "patriots." Nourished by QAnon conspiracy narratives, fantasies of election fraud and Trump's unceasing stream of lies, they believed they were in the right and felt unassailable. As such, the events of Jan. 6 could also be seen as their arrival in a world where they don't feel at all at home: The real one.’

(…)

‘The world became witness to the intoxicating narcissism of a mass of people who are constantly online and searching obsessively for clicks and likes. Trump's mob both inside and outside the Capitol were essentially an assault team made up of digital-world friends who had forgotten that they weren't in a video game, but at the seat of Congress, a place where the glass actually does break and people actually do die when shots are fired.’

(…)

‘Economist Scott Galloway, well-known as a critic of Silicon Valley and comfortable in the role of prophet of doom, believes the storming of the Capitol "may be the beginning of the end of Big Tech as we know it," as he told Yahoo Finance on Tuesday. Does that, though, mean that we are about to see the disappearance of social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube, which have completely changed and dominated the way their billions of users communicate over the last decade? The allegations against social media are as old as the platforms themselves. Rarely, though, have we seen so clearly how the nonsense spread in these networks can spill over into reality. The world saw clearly how lies, violence and hate are freely spread and what misinformation echo chambers can produce. We saw what happens when algorithms – in their pursuit of clicks, reach and stickiness – determine how users see the world. And how successful those algorithms are in doing exactly what they are programmed for: creating a system in which the self-affirmation of its users continues to grow and magnify.’

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‘The mob of Trumpistas in Washington was far from being merely a collection of rednecks and racist neo-Nazis. Well-dressed, country-club Republicans, evangelicals in Jesus T-shirts and run-of-the-mill social conservatives were standing shoulder-to-shoulder with weapons-rights fanatics, QAnon sectaries and hardcore nationalists.
Such collections of the crazy and the confused are in no way unique to the United States. QAnon is active in Germany as well, as are the so-called "Querdenker," which is essentially the German term for those who adhere to "alternative facts." They seriously claim to believe that they are living under a "Merkel dictatorship," which is no less bonkers than thinking the U.S. election results were falsified. In Germany, too, there are mobile-phone waving zealots who go after lawmakers in German parliament. There are those who, like last summer, target the parliamentary building while waving the imperial flag, the German equivalent of the Confederate flag in the U.S. Or who lay siege to the home of Saxony Governor Michael Kretschmer. Delusion is no longer a fringe phenomenon. Many people who visited family and close friends over the holidays were forced to realize that elements of the conspiracy narratives – from "Gates" to "Epstein," from "QAnon" to "the vaccine conspiracy" – have long since put down roots in the mainstream.’

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‘In the months preceding the attack on the Capitol, no other network in the U.S. proved as attractive among right-wing extremists – and among those in the process of radicalizing – as Parler. When Facebook quickly blocked a group of more than 300,000 members called Stop the Steal immediately after the presidential election, it's members simply migrated to the competition. According to Parler head John Matze, fully 4.5 million new users registered for the platform within just four days following the election.’

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‘It also proved impossible to keep the message board 8chan offline for long. The site is notorious around the world for being a breeding ground of right-wing radicalism and terrorism. The assailants from Christchurch, Poway and El Paso were all active on the message board, and they were honored on 8chan for their deeds. It is also known as a hub for images of child abuse and as a hotspot of QAnon imbecility. After El Paso, 8chan wasn't available for a few months, but then went back online under the new name 8kun.
The message board's operator, Jim Watkins, sees himself as an anti-censorship crusader, and he long operated the site from the Philippines. Now, though, he is back in the U.S., where, as he claimed in an email to DER SPIEGEL, he took part on the march in Washington, D.C.’

(…)

‘It also proved impossible to keep the message board 8chan offline for long. The site is notorious around the world for being a breeding ground of right-wing radicalism and terrorism. The assailants from Christchurch, Poway and El Paso were all active on the message board, and they were honored on 8chan for their deeds. It is also known as a hub for images of child abuse and as a hotspot of QAnon imbecility. After El Paso, 8chan wasn't available for a few months, but then went back online under the new name 8kun.
The message board's operator, Jim Watkins, sees himself as an anti-censorship crusader, and he long operated the site from the Philippines. Now, though, he is back in the U.S., where, as he claimed in an email to DER SPIEGEL, he took part on the march in Washington, D.C.
Still, Vestager allowed that it is interesting that Twitter and Facebook now "acknowledge that they have a shared responsibility to prevent the spread of illegal content." The commissioner, who is also the vice president of the European Commission, is widely considered to be the most powerful woman in the world when it comes to regulating internet content.
Either way, the shocking scenes from Washington and its aftermath have provided ammunition to all those who have spent years calling for the power of tech companies to be limited. In December in the U.S., the Federal Trade Commission in cooperation with 40 states sued Facebook for "anti-competition conduct," and demanded that acquisitions made recently by the company be rolled back.’

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‘John Scott-Railton has already proved that social networks can indeed empower people to do good. Originally from the U.S., Scott-Railton works at the University of Toronto as a researcher at the Citizen Lab, where he has been successfully uncovering government surveillance attempts against journalists and dissidents for years.
But something else has been driving him since the raid on the Capitol. When he looks at the now-famous photo of the masked man with zip ties in his hand, he is gripped by an ominous suspicion: "Wow, was there a plan to take hostages?” And then: "Can we get more pictures of this guy?"

He just launched a social media campaign that has kept him busy for days, earning him tens of thousands of new followers on Twitter – and a level of celebrity he probably never would have gained for his honorable Citizen Lab work. John Scott-Railton is examining the footage from the Capitol, collecting "tips and clues from tens of thousands" of other volunteers, he told DER SPIEGEL – and is thus helping to identify the perpetrators.
Eventually, they also helped to identify the terrorist Scott-Railton initially called the "ziptieguy” as Eric Munchel of Nashville, Tennessee. He has since been arrested and charged.’

Read the article here.

There are means and there is an end. Social networks can be used to identify perpetrators, but it can also be used to intimidate opponents, to incite, to spread lies et cetera.
Of course, the radio could do all of this as well, but the new thing here is that anybody can start his own radio station, his own television channel, empowering people, yes and no. The great-inquisitor would have answered: people hate freedom.
This article doesn’t come up with solutions. Who is against civil discourse? To enhance civil discourse, we must agree on what we exactly mean by it.

Human history teaches that most of the times the desire to beat the hell out of your (evil) enemies is slightly bigger than the longing for a civilized conversation.

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