As I was trying to decide what to write about for this installment of the blog, I was having a hard time deciding between something related to medicine, something controversial about human nature, or something light-hearted. Then, two things happened that helped make my decision for me. First was the publication in this week’s Annals of Allergy and Immunology of an article by Dr. David Stukus at Ohio State University entitled “Social media and its impact on health care.”(1) The other was the decision mid-week of Russia’s dictator-in-chief to invade Ukraine. This reminded me of something I have been chomping on the bit to write about since April 2020. Today, we will be examining the question, “What do anti-vaccine groups and anarchy-oriented groups have in common with Russia, China, and some of our other enemies?” The simple answer is that they have all used social media in a semi-concerted effort to undermine the very fabric upon which our nation was founded. Let’s take a deeper look at what we actually know. It’s time for Americans to wake the heck up and realize what they are allowing to happen right under their noses.
From the very beginning of this pandemic, the Anti-Vaxx lobby has been at work, even when it was not obvious. Starting with simply using Face Book, Twitter, YouTube, and other new media outlets to raise doubts about the numbers of cases of COVID announced by the WHO and CDC, questioning the epidemiology of counting deaths due to COVID, minimizing the severity of the disease itself, and spreading misinformation about the origins of the disease and how to treat it. They were reinforced by some politicians and people from previously reliable news outlets that lent credibility to the efforts in the average person’s mind. If that weren’t bad enough, they found people like Judy Mikovits with “Plandemic” and America’s Top Doctors to spread even more misinformation, but with the added bonus of using scientific terms and language that made them seem even more credible than they actually were. Many of these people start their sentences with “I’m not anti-vaccine, but…;” however, a simple search will reveal that nearly all of these people, including Mikovits and America’s Top Doctors are very closely associated with anti-vaxx groups. Most of these false claims and misinformation on social media were easily refuted, but after each wave of nonsense was discredited there would be a new wave of a different piece following closely behind. This bombardment began even before vaccines were approved for emergency use.
When you think about it, it makes sense. From the very start, these bits-o-bull-hockey were aimed at discrediting the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Bill Gates, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and the efforts of physicians in general. What do all of these things have in common? Vaccine development and vaccine advocacy. The Anti-Vaxx folks were hard at work making sure that they cast huge swaths of doubt on all of these people and institutions even before vaccines were rolled out so that people would be very hesitant to embrace COVID vaccines from the get-go, and would be even more fertile fields for the cultivation of false fears such as “it changes your DNA,” “it makes you infertile,” “there’s a microchip in the vaccine,” and “it contains fetal parts” that would be buzzwords for vaccine-hesitant people who had succumbed to the second wave of the Anti-Vaxx effort.
So what in the world does that have to do with undermining American Democracy? More than you might think. At the beginning of the pandemic, I had been reading Ghost Wars, by Steve Coll.(2) In it, I read how the CIA had used the internet and social media to help weaken a Middle Eastern regime that they hoped to discredit and allow a leader who was friendly to the United States to take power. At this point, a light bulb went off and I said to myself, “If the United States is doing that to other countries, it’s pretty much a sure bet our enemies are also trying this with us.” This led me to research the topic of new generation warfare, and I found an article by a researcher at the US Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute from way back in 2012 about how insurgents use the internet and social media to do just that.(3) In that article, he talked about the three goals of insurgency: survival, strengthening itself, and weakening the power structure of the state. For non-political insurgencies, such as the Anti-Vaccine movement, the goal is to “weaken the state in order to be sufficiently free of its control.” (Metz, p 81). These insurgents shift the overall focus of their efforts toward morale and psychological factors and away from areas in which the state has more power, such as the military. The internet makes it easy, cheap, and safe, to contact multitudes of people and make it ideal for recruitment of people to their cause. The element that makes the internet and new media outlets most useful to insurgents, though, is the culture that supports their use—anonymity and depersonalization. Organized upheaval, whether physical or psychological, requires depersonalization of the enemy, and insurgents exploit the disconnect between the virtual world and real life.
Algorithms on Face Book, Twitter, and YouTube can lock people into vortexes of confirmation bias by the news articles, memes, and other information they share and like. These things have their consequences, unbeknownst to the average social media consumer. The number of shares and re-shares of misinformation makes it difficult to distinguish the origin of the news, thus making it very hard to distinguish its authority. Credibility is assigned based on whether the item reinforces the reader’s current beliefs. This is an advantage for insurgents, especially when they are marketing to large numbers of people prone to believe anything that portrays the state as repressive, corrupt, inept, or dishonest. This is where insurgency takes root. Because the information is hard to vet, audiences assign credibility based on their general attitudes toward the state. When information portrays the state in a negative light, the negative information is considered inherently credible by anti-authoritarian audiences. This phenomenon is known as the reverse-halo effect.
So, where do the anarchy-oriented groups and our foreign enemies fit into the mix? Through the wonder of the Internet, they can piggy-back right onto the COVID misinformation campaign, because the Anti-Vaxxers have already done much of the dirty work for them. Because of the anonymity of social media, these groups co-opt the messages of the non-political insurgents such as the anti-vaccine lobby that have achieved the most traction. Political insurgents go one step further, by creating multiple conflict narratives. They can cause more chaos by posting news and hot-button issues on both political extremes. They do not need a unity of purpose, only a unity of result, which is the weakening of the state. Personal freedom is one of the most effective tools in their box, and one that is easy to use to incite folks on both sides of the aisle. Lock down versus herd immunity. Mask versus no mask. Getting vaccinated versus remaining unvaccinated. Mandates versus no mandates. The internet and new media allow anarchist groups on both the left and the right to broaden their bases by harnessing anger, frustration, fear, and resentment. It also makes it more cost-effective to contact and recruit their target audience. Even if a small percentage is driven to action, the sheer number of people contacted can make this number rather large in quick order. Being in a large group will cause diffusion of responsibility, which makes good people less likely to point out and take action against things that they would ordinarily consider morally wrong. Mobilization is fueled by raw anger and resentment, and creates the polarization that allows anarchist groups on both the left and right to aid and abet our enemies abroad.
As to Russia specifically, former national security advisor General H.R. McMaster says in his book Battlegrounds that new generation warfare became Vladimir Putin’s “playbook for surviving while weakening competitors.”(4) Since Russia cannot compete as well economically with the United States, instead of building up his own country, Putin’s goal is to “drag others down, weaken rival states, and unravel alliance networks that give those states strategic advantages,” (think ‘fostering a negative opinion of the U.S. government and of NATO’). His modus operandi was not to make his targets believe something new, but to question just about everything they heard or read. The purpose was to disrupt, divide, and weaken society. The only pre-requisite has been internet access and raw emotion. Russia has done this in several countries by trying to disrupt elections, but not in the way many people think. Russia does this by financially supporting fringe political parties or candidates at opposite ends of the political spectrum. Their NGW operatives plant disinformation by setting up fake accounts and use Face Book and Twitter algorithms to disseminate information designed to shake people’s beliefs in their common identity, and in their democratic principles and institutions (think ‘the 2016 and 2020 elections’), with the objective of weakening American society through racial, religious, and political polarization (McMaster, p. 39-45).
Other nations competitive with the U.S.—such as Iran, North Korea and China—have used the internet to similar ends. They all would rather we Americans be distracted by fighting with one another and creating strife within our own country over whether masks work or not, whether COVID vaccines contain fetal parts, or whether the 2020 election was stolen, while they involve themselves with trying to achieve their own goals, such as nuclear arms in Iran and North Korea and Chinese territorial expansion in Taiwan. All of these countries have used the pandemic and the time that Americans have spent fighting one another, to strengthen themselves or to covertly prepare for something down the road that you can be assured is not in the best interest of the United States.
So, why do we need to know this? Just look at what has happened since the start of the pandemic. Americans are now more divided politically than at any time in recent history. Fear and resentment are driving political polarization and extremist behavior. Trust in doctors’ advice among conservatives in America is at a twenty-year low. Anti-vaccine sentiment, formerly confined to looney left wing folks on the West Coast, is now a predominantly conservative talking point. Russia has invaded Ukraine. People in Taiwan now fear a Chinese invasion. China and Russia are as closely aligned as ever. Meanwhile, Americans bicker back and forth on Face Book, Twitter, and other platforms, allowing ourselves to be distracted while bad actors both at home and abroad tear our country apart.
What can we do about it? First and foremost, we can be aware of it. It is time for us to wake up and sniff the java and realize what is at stake here. It is time for good men and women of character to stand up and say something, and then not only say something but put some form of action to their words. There is something known as the “Bystander Effect” that causes otherwise good people to stand idly by and allow something bad to happen in a crisis situation. Three elements that influence this effect include: fear of being judged by people for doing something, relying on the attitudes of others rather than thinking for oneself in judging an ambiguous situation, and being in a large enough group that it dilutes one’s sense of responsibility to take action when a situation calls for it. Being in a large group can also have the detrimental effect of causing someone to join in with swarming or mob-like behavior to drown out competitive voices or worse, commit atrocities.
As someone who is guilty of fearing judgement by people who would disagree with my assessment, I have decided that I can’t sit on the sidelines forever. In his article, Dr. Stukus discusses how physicians like me can help combat the misinformation campaigns involving medical issues. First of all, he recommends using clear, plain language and providing vetted and independent sources that explain the actual science. We need to make sure we discuss contradictions in information and how evidence evolves over time to give an honest appraisal of the issue at hand. Physicians, as well as others, need to exercise politeness, authenticity, and empathy, and focus on facts that are relatable. Not everyone can be reached, but hopefully there is still a large enough group of reasonable people in the middle who want credible, true information (Stukus, p. 143).
More importantly, General McMaster says that average citizens should not wait for political leaders or the media to counter this cyber-warfare. We need to reject the toxicity and disinformation on social media and reintroduce civility into the formula (McMaster, p. 403). We need to take time to try to educate ourselves on issues and learn to think critically, rather than believing something just because our favorite politician or radio host said it. It is a great, and very American, thing to engage with people who think differently than you do, but that should be something we value and perform with politeness and respect rather than giving in to the temptation to troll, ridicule, and insult. While discussing issues that separate them, people need to also concentrate on the things they have in common—most importantly, living in the greatest country in the world. Finally, those of us who profess to be Christian need to start living up to the standards to which we subscribe. It’s time to walk the talk.
Like it or not, our country is in crisis, and at least part of the blame needs to be shouldered by the social media-consuming public who have been oblivious to what is happening right before our eyes. In his book Upheaval(5), Jared Diamond talks about the factors that lead to successfully dealing with crises. The first thing we need to do is to stop pointing fingers at our political rivals and acknowledge that we are at a cross-road, and that we bear responsibility to do something about it. We need to circle the wagons, figure out what problems need to be solved, and go about finding the best and easiest solutions. This will require honest self-appraisal, patience, adaptability, and adherence to our core values, while leaning on other like-minded individuals both for ideas and for moral strength (Diamond, p. 39). Let’s be aware of the negativity and try to avoid sharing angry tweets, insulting memes, and fake stories that only serve to inflame people and stoke the fear and anger that is setting our country back. We need to stop saying things like “(Insert Candidate) is Not My President,” and deciding that the only people who deserve our respect are the people of our own political persuasion. We need to stop pointing fingers at our rivals and start looking in the mirror and calling out the scoundrels in our own party.
Putting partisan power over the survival of our democratic republic and our Constitution does not strengthen our nation, but only weakens it. Let’s disengage from all the nonsense and get back to getting to know one another again. Set limits, and unplug from social media (yes, I see the irony of saying this on an internet blog), read a good book, get outside and enjoy some fresh air with your family! Let’s leave behind the hatred, bitterness, and vitriol, and get back to enjoying one another as friends and fellow Americans! Don’t let those who wish to weaken our country win!!
Who’s with me??!!
References:
1. Patrick M, Venkatesh RD, Stukus DR. Social media and its impact on health care. Annals of Allergy and Immunology 128 (2022):139-145
2. Coll, Steve. Ghost Wars. Penguin Press 2004. pp 720
3. Metz S. The Internet, New Media, and the Evolution of Insurgency. The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters 42(3):80-90
4. McMaster HR. Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World. HarperCollins Books 2020. pp 545.
5. Diamond J. Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis. Back Bay Books 2019. pp 500.
Well written and scary too. I’m with you!