On Disinformation: How to Fight for Truth and Protect Democracy by Lee McIntyre

On Disinformation: How to Fight for Truth and Protect Democracy Reviews

• 
  Leah (Jane Speare)

  An accessible, tiny (but powerful!) manifesto or call-to-action about the state of reality denial and plague of misinformation, reminiscent of Snyder's On Tyranny. Basically, Russia would be proud at how well we are following in their footsteps, the electoral voting process needs to be demolished (duh), and all information is owned by billionaires. It is very depressing, I'll be honest. But I learned so much and feel I am better mentally prepared to deal with reality deniers (aka Trumpism but not limited to that). Hopefully with more awareness of the technical processes behind information dissemination that this pamphlet illuminates, we can work on depolarizing a lot of issues.
  
  If you haven't read Strangers in Their Own Land by Arlie Russell Hochschild, I highly recommend it too. Though this book will also give you a dozen more authors to look up.
• 
  Katherine

  This was an interesting little read. The most helpful part is the end with suggestions on fighting a tyrannical take over. I would have liked to see less name calling and blind acceptance of one political side—which goes against his suggestions to be kind as one speaks up for truth and to not assume the “other side” is always wrong.
• 
  Jessada Karnjana

  พูดถึง disinformation ได้กระชับและตรงจุด พร้อมเสนอวิธีรับมือกับมัน และรับมือหรือช่วยเหลือคนที่เชื่อถือมัน อธิบายกระบวนการและองค์ประกอบที่สนับสนุนให้ disinformation ดำรงอยู่ ได้อย่างชัดเจน … ชอบ
  
  The truth does not die when liars take power; it dies when truth tellers stop defending it.
• 
  Diogenes Grief

  McIntyre gives us a concise yet thorough accounting of today’s digital era and the weaponization of disinformation. At 60 pages, with about 15 pages of hyperlinked endnotes in the Nook version, this should accommodate even those with goldfish-like attention spans. McIntyre, a research fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University, and an Instructor in Ethics at Harvard Extension School, is also the author of How to Talk to a Science Denier (2021) and Post-Truth (2018). Standing up for Truth-with-a-capital-T is his calling, and it should be all of ours as well.
  
  “Trump’s call to arms on January 6 was unsuccessful, in that it did not result in overturning a free and fair election; the insurrectionists were not able to get their hands on Mike Pence or Nancy Pelosi, and there was no coup. Yet in another sense, #StopTheSteal has been a ringing success . . . and it is far from over.
  
  Sixty-six percent of Republican voters still think the 2020 election was stolen, and that Trump is the rightful president.
  
  A stunning 147 republican members of Congress still refuse to publicly acknowledge that Joe Biden is the legitimate president of the United States.
  
  Why do they believe these things?
  
  Because Donald Trump wants them to (p. 22, Nook) (
  https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/arc...).
  
  This is an information war waged for nothing more than pure power, like authoritarians on the “left” and “right” have done for the past 100+ years. As McIntyre explains, modern information warfare began in Soviet Russia with Lenin’s Cheka group. Putin’s FSB, SVR, and GRU have been actively fueling the flames of disinformation to destabilize “Western” democracies” since the world-wide-web was opened, and the strategies involved go back to Big Tobacco on 15 December 1953, when the CEOs of the four largest US tobacco companies decided to “fight the science” on their carcinogens. This has evolved into the “Fox News Effect” (
  https://eml.berkeley.edu/~sdellavi/wp...) with everything they don’t like, plus climate denial, COVID vaccine denial, and Steve Bannon’s playbook, which the GOP has wholeheartedly adopted through a decades-long campaign of obfuscation and delay, confusion and doubt, lies and purposeful disinformation. Big Tobacco knew the risks of cancer in 1958, and the fossil fuel industry knew the effects of global warming in 1977. That’s how insidious and deep these complex dynamics go. “The genius of disinformation is that it doesn’t just get you to believe a falsehood, but to distrust (and sometimes even hate) anyone who does not also believe this same falsehood” (p. 21).
  
  The playbook has three components, which McIntyre illustrates: the Creators (those who manufacture the lies for their personal gain), the Amplifiers (the means of getting the lies as widespread as possible), and the Believers (those ripe for accepting disinformation). Looking at statistics between 2014 and today, the number of people believing falsehoods (such as 9/11 being an “inside job”, or the COVID pandemic being a planned event) has grown thanks to the unregulated Internet, impotent political efforts, and massive for-profit social media sites profiting off endorphin bumps, ignorance, and rage.
  
  McIntyre has a strategy for winning this war: “The truth does not die when liars take power; it dies when truth-tellers stop defending it. So let’s expose and name the truth killers. Reveal their tactics and their financial ties, and wake up as many of their believers as we can. Boycott social media companies and anyone else who is enabling them to carry out their dirty mission. Complain to your local cable operator. And, as my favorite bumper sticker from the 2020 election states, ‘Vote in numbers too big to manipulate'” (pp. 65-66).
  
  For info on the big money behind the Big Lie, listen to Terri Gross interview Jane Mayer (
  https://www.npr.org/transcripts/10247...) on Fresh Air.
  
  He believes that standing up for the Truth at every possible opportunity will help counter disinformation. He also believes emailing elected officials will push action, as well as writing to your local cable monopoly to reign in networks like Fox, OAN, and their ilk will help. I have my doubts about those options, but speaking the truth, loudly and often, supporting amplifiers for truth, and helping watchdog groups like Check My Ads (
  https://checkmyads.org/fox/) strip advertisers and enablers from such networks can certainly help. Obviously the ballot-box will matter most, and the GOP is attacking free and fair elections from every conceivable angle to suppress voting rights by all means possible.
  
  Restoring the Fairness Doctrine for news outlets and revising Section 203 of the Communications Decency Act, thereby eliminating immunity to digital platforms for any content on their sites, would be incredibly beneficial. The Amplifiers are certainly the best way to cinch the conduits from Creator to Believer. How many people did the GOP, its cable media outlets, and websites like Facebook and Youtube kill because of COVID disinformation? Research has shown that only 12 Twitter accounts fueled the COVID anti-vaccination disinformation (which came from a Russian propaganda outlet), with one being former heroin addict Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Shutting down such Creators on their Amplifiers could have saved countless lives.
  
  Remember, this is information warfare, and there is ALWAYS an objective truth to every single topic that can be supported by concrete facts. As McIntyre quotes Jonathan Foster, lecturer in journalism talking with a college class, “If someone says it’s raining and another person says it’s dry, it’s not your job to quote both of them. Your job is to look out of the f-ing window and find out which is true” (pp. 33-4). That job falls on ALL of us now. The US Army Cyber Institute created this Invisible Force: Information Warfare and the Future of Conflict graphic document to help (
  https://digitalcommons.usmalibrary.or...), and the NATO Defense College’s “The Handbook of Russian Information Warfare” (2018) is available too (
  https://www.ndc.nato.int/news/news.ph...), to precisely see what these strategies are. I’ll include a short list of other books to seek out at the end of this.
  
  McIntyre was interviewed by Andrew Keen for the LitHub podcast KeenOn on 24 AUG 2023 (
  https://lithub.com/lee-mcintyre-on-fi...) and it’s a very engaging conversation. Keen tends to play the arrogant Brit who offers both-sides-isms a lot, but with McIntyre he seems to concede that the GOP has become a quasi-fascist regime now, and the truth is worth fighting for.
  
  “Once the truth dies, the end may come swiftly for American Democracy. Like Russia and China, we’ll still have politicians in suits going about a charade of the people’s business in the halls of government, we may even have further elections, but it won’t really matter. If the truth-killers succeed in using denial to undermine democracy, the next day we’ll wake up in an electoral dictatorship” (p. 12).
  
  It’s not easy tying to talk sense to those in denial of truths, as McIntyre has experienced with his book How to Talk to a Science Denier. Emotions, values, biases, and identities shield too many from the truth. The Greater Good Science Center has a host of articles here to help us acquire the patience, calmness, and communication skills to help our fellow Americans (
  https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/arti...) our of their echo chambers and cult-like tribalism, but again, it is never an easy path.
  
  Truly the best tactic we have left is to vote in numbers too big to manipulate. Next year will likely decide our collective fate for a very long time. What role will you play?
  
  
  Playlist:
  Angelus Apitrida “The Age of Disinformation” from 2021 (
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiERM...)
  One Minute Silence’s “Fruit From the Lie” from 2013 (
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDdbw...)
  Tankard’s “Arena of the True Lies” from 2017 (
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXto4...)
  Armageddon Time’s “Foxed in the Head” (
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uKHB...)
  Kreator’s “People of the Lie” from 1990 (
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYzSN...)
  Flattened Earth’s “The Glorious LARP” from 2021 (
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oS4t...)
  Exodus’s “Clickbait” from 2021 (
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0Tuq...)
  False Witness’s “Truth Dies With a Severed Tongue” from 2021 (
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_tGl...)
  
  
  Further Reading:
  Naomi Orestes and Eric Conway “Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming” (2010)
  Timothy Synder “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century” (2017)
  Yochai Bencher, Robert Faris, and Hal Robert’s “Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation and Radicalization in American Politics” (2018)
  Thomas Rid’s “Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare” (2020)
  David Pepper “Laboratories of Autocracy” (2021)
• 
  Julia Bucci

  "What might ordinary citizens do to fight back [the creation, spread, and amplification of disinformation]? In addition to the general advice already offered–which might be heeded by government, media, and big tech– what are some practical steps that the rest of us can take?
  First, confront the liars….
  Second, heed history…
  A third step…is to resist polarization…
  Fourth, as hard as it is, recognize that in some sense deniers are victims. They have been duped. They are the zombie foot soldiers of the creators of disinformation, who are profiting by their ignorance, while the believer gets nothing…
  Fifth, tune out the bullshit…
  Sixth, don’t fall for the sop that this can all be solved by ‘better education’ or ‘critical thinking.’...
  Seventh, stop looking for facile solutions to the problem of disinformation…
  Eighth, engage in political activism to try to get Congress to regulate social media….while you’re at it, encourage them to push harder for voting rights and electoral reform…
  Ninth, take solace in the fact that there are many others out there who are also engaged in this battle. ..
  Tenth, continue to learn more about the problem of reality denial and its consequences for democracy…
  …The forces arrayed against the discovery of truth and the use of reason do not die, they wait. They are reborn into every age. It is like hammering mercury. They may disappear for a while, but eventually they gather.
  We have been born into an age in which science and reason–indeed truth and reality itself–once again need defending. Embrace this. Don’t give in to despair. There is something you can do today to fight back against the truth killers.”
  
• 
  Jerry James

  Excellent. Should be required reading for Middle School students and onward.
• 
  David Britten

  This is a small, pocket-sized book about 135 pages in length. When I first picked it up this afternoon, I could not put it down. The author pulls no punches in describing the war against disinformation we are currently in, as well as throughout the recent past. Without revealing any more details, I highly recommend every American on the side against the truth-killers read this book, take note of the author’s recommendations, and go to work to preserve our democracy.
• 
  Ryan Boissonneault

  Here’s a fair question: If you believe that the California wildfires are caused by Jewish space lasers, or that COVID vaccines contain microchip tracking technology, is there any possible book or explanation that could convince you otherwise? Sometimes, people operate at such an appalling level of gullibility and flagrant stupidity that they are essentially beyond reach, and this, unfortunately, is what Lee McIntyre is up against in his latest book, On Disinformation: How to Fight for Truth and Protect Democracy.
  
  To begin with, McIntyre points out the crucial difference between misinformation and disinformation, the latter being entirely intentional. Producers of disinformation do so, not for the benefit of those who consume it, or even because they mistakenly believe it, but for their own economic, political, or ideological advantage.
  
  To demonstrate this, McIntyre takes us back to 1953, when the connection between cigarette smoking and cancer was becoming clear. During this time, the public didn’t inherently “know” that smoking caused cancer; rather, specialists in the field had to first discover it through standard scientific protocols.
  
  For those who know how science works, you’ll know that full consensus is never required (or in many cases, isn’t even possible). But this doesn’t stop one from asserting a scientific “fact” when the overwhelming amount of evidence supports it, even in the face of some vanishingly small amount of uncertainty.
  
  If you’re scientifically illiterate, however, you won’t know this.
  
  Well, the tobacco industry in 1953 took that last point to heart. They didn’t have to “prove” anything; rather, they simply had to create enough “uncertainty and doubt”—by hiring their own scientists to present “both sides of the debate”—to “get the public to question the truth about something that scientists didn’t really question”; namely, that smoking significantly increases one’s risk of developing cancer and other pathologies.
  
  And it worked, because, according to public opinion polling at the time, no one seemed especially concerned about the health risks of smoking. Now, if this sounds eerily similar to the public’s skepticism toward evolution, climate change, and, more recently, COVID and vaccinations in general, it’s because those spreading disinformation on these topics used the exact same playbook. The tobacco companies set the standard and now shady politicians know exactly how to spread doubt about literally anything to an uneducated public that doesn’t know the first thing about scientific objectivity.
  
  So, what can be done about this? It seems like, for every bullshit theory we can patiently refute, we’re presented with a hundred more. Or, in the words of Uriel Fanelli, “an idiot can create more bullshit than you could ever hope to refute.” It appears, then, to be a losing battle, especially since social media algorithms are primed to reward the sharing of politically charged nonsense.
  
  It may seem hopeless, but there are, in fact, things we can do (and must do). As McIntyre skillfully conveys, we can (1) expose the faulty reasoning process by which idiots adopt their beliefs, rather than counter specific beliefs one at a time, (2) point out the underlying strategies that nefarious disinformation producers use to delude the public, (3) reveal the incentives that bad actors have for lying to the public, and (4) start penalizing news sources, social media platforms, and politicians for not more aggressively fighting against the spread of disinformation (especially in the name of free speech absolutism).
  
  It’s a tall order, to say the least. But the alternative, to sit back and let charlatans define our reality for us, is even more unpalatable. So, if you find yourself caught in a web of conspiracy theories and being used as a useful idiot to spread embarrassingly foolish beliefs, read this book to understand the faulty thought processes by which you come to understand the world. And if you’re fed up with the level of stupidity you’re experiencing in your relations with others, read this book for practical strategies to help the victims of disinformation navigate their way back into the light of reality.
• 
  Jim Parker

  “The first step in winning an information war is to admit that we are already in one.”
  
  This quote summarises the call the arms in this brief but powerful long essay by Boston-based philosopher Lee McIntyre on how to fight back against the disinformation campaigns that are imperiling democracy.
  
  The focus is primarily on the MAGA movement behind Trump, but it is really about the quite consciously and deliberatively driven campaign by far right, billionaire-funded forces to use lies and misinformation to create distrust of democratic institutions and polarise the population.
  
  Using the tactics developed by the tobacco lobby in the 1950s and 1960s to deny the link between smoking and cancer and later by the fossil fuel sector in denying the science of climate change, the Trumpist authoritarian movement is seeking to destroy democracy by killing the truth, McIntyre writes:
  
  “The post-truth playbook goes like this: attack the truth tellers, lie about anything and everything, manufacture disinformation, encourage distrust and polarization, create confusion and cynicism, then claim that the truth is available only from the leader himself. The goal is not merely to get people to believe any particular false claim, but to so demoralize them with a tsunami of falsehoods that they begin to give up on the idea that truth can be known at all, outside a political context.”
  
  This concept will be familiar to anyone who has read ‘This is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality’ by expatriate Russian journalist Peter Pomerantsev, based on his experience with the Putin regime. The people behind Trump, like the loathsome Steve Bannon learnt well from the Russians - ‘flood the system with bullshit’ so no-one knows what to believe anymore.
  
  As McIntrye says, it doesn’t take much to have ordinary people believing that the sky is no longer green, but blue or that 1+1 = 3. At the centre of the misinformation complex are only a few dozen truth killers. But all they need is a distribution and amplification system - and now the have several - not only in the social media cesspits of Musk’s X and Zuckerberg’s Facebook, but the mainstream media companies where journalism has been dying a slow death for decades.
  
  At worst, players like Fox News are not only nakedly partisan but have a business model built on stoking division through the distribution of outright lies and propaganda. But even at best, supposedly straight-shooting professional journalists are complicit by driving a narrative of conflict, failure and chaos. They normalise creeping authoritarianism by ‘Performative objectivity’ which positions reality has residing halfway between the truth and a lie.
  
  “Mainstream media can be truth killers too—or at least bystanders who refuse to render aid when the truth is dying,” McIntyre writes.
  
  The last part of book suggests some ways of pushing back against the misinformation tide, such as forcing social media companies to reveal the design of their algorithms or reintroducing in the US the fairness doctrine which once forced media companies to provide all sides of a story. Predictably, the neoliberal champions of ‘freedom’ are pushing back against this as censorship in the naive belief that the truth will emerge from a ‘free information economy’.
  
  But we know it doesn’t work like that. The people fighting the information war on the other side are not just promoting an alternative viewpoint. Their intent is to actively destroy the institutions of liberal democracy by fomenting distrust and polarising society. You would have to conclude they are winning this war, so far.
  
  Essential reading.
  
  
• 
  Matt Berkowitz

  I love short books, especially ones that are dense yet concise. Too many books take twice or thrice as long as necessary to make their core arguments and evidence-based claims. Not this book.
  
  This short piece is all about modern science denialism, disinformation and misinformation (and their difference), and what we can do to fight back.
  
  As someone who’s followed and read widely about science denialism, conspiracy theories, and scientific skepticism, there is not much new in here. But it [i]is[/i] a good summary of how we got to the present moment of institutional distrust, tsunamis of dis- and misinformation, and rejection of scientific findings. McIntyre focuses heavily on the reality and science denial perpetrated by Trumpism, especially the Jan. 6 riots/insurrection, and the antipathy towards facts that MAGAists exhibit at every term. McIntyre also discusses the role of the media—social, online, and legacy—in enabling and even fomenting the spread of dis- and misinformation.
  
  One weakness of the book is the complete absence of mention of the role that the extreme tribal left played (and continues to play) in contributing to institutional distrust, not to mention their own reality/science denial (largely as a function of its embrace of identity politics). So, the story McIntyre tells is incomplete, even if largely accurate.
  
  Another weakness is McIntyre’s suggestion that social media companies could easily do more to combat misinformation. While I somewhat agree, I think there are inherent difficulties with combatting many types of misinformation—of the “true but misleading” sort, or “plausible but controversial and ambiguous” sort. (And I’m surprised McIntyre, as a philosopher, doesn’t remark on this.)
  
  After a brief chapter on effective interpersonal tactics to rebut and persuade science deniers—content rebuttal, technique rebuttal, and “pre-bunking”—McIntyre closes with a list of steps (not entirely practical ones for the individual) that society can take to combat dis- and misinformation, such as: complain to companies that do not effectively police such content, resist polarization, and recognize the scale of the problem.
  
  All in all, a decent, if not entirely novel, quick, digestible read.
• 
  Thomas Cottone

  I purchased this book after reading a few pages at the Northshire Bookstore in Saratoga Springs. I immediately knew it would be a sustainable purchase; a novel that I'd read more than once and lend to others. Mcintyre provides a solid, unbiased foundation on conspiracy theories and misinformation surrounding the Jan. 6 insurrection. He also explains the lack of education and ignorance regarding politics in the United States. He explains the similarities between former U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin; both leaders hold fascist-like beliefs and indoctrinate a majority of their populations.
• 
  Scott

  A strong and accessible plain language summary of the perils of the post-truth age. Deeply scary to learn some of the specifics of how the Putin / MAGA disinformation environment operates. It is truly astonishing to see how little it takes to injure so many in the age of social media. To their credit, McIntyre is an admirable optimist and provides some comfort in very simple steps we can take to combat this tide of insanity.
  
  For anyone interested in understanding the stakes of the contemporary American fight against Trumpism / authoritarianism, I suggest pairing this with another excellent short and powerful treatise - “On Tyranny” by Timothy Snyder.
• 
  Kathy D

  I heard about this book on The Politics Girl podcast with Leigh McGowan. Lee McIntyre provides a concise summary in 6 chapters of what democracy is up against in the USA, how denialism has taken over one political party and what steps we can take to fight the truth killers. This book doesn’t sugarcoat anything, which is the best way to get our attention and ideally, get us moving to save our country.
• 
  Gold223

  Read. It. Now.
  Absorb it and understand what it's trying to tell you.
  
  I got busy in to middle of reading it and it wasn't until recently I picked it back up and it was worth it. Our way of life as Americans and across the world is under threat and I have no intention of sitting it out. Freedom from authoritarianism, from boys like Trump and his cronies is too damn important. My fellow men and women deserve better than tyranny.
• 
  Armen Shirvanian

  My interview with Lee McIntyre for The Armen Show:
  
  
  http://www.armenshirvanian.com/podcas...
• 
  Gabriel K

  A must read!
• 
  Kim

  A short, straightforward explanation of what disinformation is and how it is being used to dismantle our democracy. A must read.
• 
  Michael

  Many good ideas in this short and easy read. My problem is with McIntyre's reliance on Cold War tropes as the ultimate source of our disinformation culture.
• 
  Gigi

  Aggressively American to the point of missing the broader picture, still made some really interesting points in the content moderation discussion.
• 
  Karen

  A fascinating look at what's going on in America.
• 
  Rowan Wiley

  “..to refuse to stand up for the truth becuase it might look partisan is itself to succumb to partisanship.”
• 
  Michael Muntisov

  On Disinformation provides an overview of first, how we got to this place where feelings carry more weight than evidence, and secondly the essential elements of disinformation campaigns. Most importantly it gives suggestions on how you and I can do something about it. As a pocket-sized book it's worth reading in a single sitting and passing on to others with similar concerns over the growing war on truth. My full review here
  https://courtofthegrandchildren.com/t...