CI , "cognitive infiltration" and Libertarianism

There is some commotion now about an academic article by Cass Sunstein, called "cognitive infiltration". Sunstein is an advisor to Barak Obama, and is a corporate lawyer and self styled "libertarian paternalist".

What he was advocating was that some persons, presumably governments agents, monitor internet discussions of "conspiracy theorists" and try to turn the discussion away from what he considers to be misguided and misinformed ideas. This has the Libertarian crowd stirred up. First, many are huffing that "libertarian paternalist" is a contradiction in terms. Second, their conspiracy theorizing already runs to governments agents trying to control people's ideas, discussions, etc.

Both of these ideas are amusing, because he word 'libertarian' was originally used interchangeably with 'Anarchist'. What is now called libertarianism would not have been recognized by Proudhon and Bakunin. It is as paternalistic as it gets. As well, you may notice that the biggest source of "cognitive infiltration" on the net comes from libertarians. Modern libertarianism is something that has been engineered, promoted, and funded by the corporatists as an ideological sword and shield against democracy. Fuse it with "free market" and "social Darwinist" ideologies and is the ultimate in cognitive infiltration and misdirection for social control.

Give your heads a collective shake, libertarians! There is no way that a modern, urban, technological society will operate without a sophisticated system of government. Ideas hatched in the early industrial age when populations were overwhelmingly rural and information travelled on horseback, have no relevance in our present world. I think they often made no sense back then, either.

There is going to be a government. It is going to be a democracy or a bureaucracy. A bureaucracy means a corporate bureaucracy. A democracy means a participatory democracy. The great struggle of the past century has really been between these two models for running a modern society. The triumph of private, corporate bureaucracy and its propaganda is that people believe that what we have now is democracy. And, especially for libertarian types, that there is a difference between public and private bureaucracy; that they are not the same thing.

The worst thing with these libertarian pea brains is the tendency to see democracy as a threat, instead of the only alternative to bureaucratic hegemony. They have this idea that democracy is "the mob" voting itself bread and circuses from the tax money taken from the "productive" people, like them. Yet whenever "the mob" has had a chance to govern themselves, they have done so very prudently and effectively.

Put another way, government is not an issue. It is about who does the governing and to what ends. It has been well explained by numerous writers that there is no real distinction in western countries between governmental and corporate bureaucracies; they are all part of one big bureaucracy. The aim is social control; profits are only a means of maintaining control. Hershel Hardin in "The New Bureaucracy" explained this well.

The way this system protects itself from people, who might collectively decide to start running their own lives, is by controlling opposition from within. Cognitive infiltration, cognitive manipulation and distortion, are nothing new. They are about turning truth upside down. They use what people do not like about the system in which they live, in order to protect that system. It is about redirecting them to attack the only possible alternative to that system.

This strategy of controlling and preempting opposition depends on sharply limiting people's knowledge. Then it depends on pouring misinformation into the vacuum. For most of the population, they can do this effectively with mass media. But for the more dangerous part of the public, those who are willing to make some effort to find out what is really going on, more is needed. The internet is a potential breeding ground of dangerous ideas, so it is policed by the same cognitive infiltration methods long used for public meetings.

It is widely knowable, though not yet widely known, that private corporations, foundations, and institutions all pay people to lurk on the net, seeking out discussions to cognitively infiltrate. Most people who have spent some time on net discussion groups of various kinds have encountered them, usually without understanding what is really going on. When you know what the aims and methods of these people are, they are not hard to spot.

The trouble is, as soon as you try to alert everyone else to them, they target you and try to get rid of you. Also, any discussion that tries to talk about real solutions for real problems is especially targeted for infiltration. We see this in the constant effort to warp the idea of Citizen's Income/Basic Income into a form of libertarianism.

This is why we have people living in extreme poverty, who cannot even afford dental care, and who think a flat rate income tax would be a good idea. And they also think that this has something to do with the Basic Income concept. That is sorrowful!

However, the cognitive controllers, or thought police, generally do not do their dirty work all by themselves. They can find plenty of true believers to do the internet lurking for them. These are usually people who have been unable to get anywhere in the real world and have plenty of time to sit around posting comments on the net. Part of Libertarianism's appeal is that it is a good alibi for failure in life.

This is also why I am reluctant to start a discussion board about Citizen's Income. I am working on a CI primer that will explain to people exactly what the idea is and is not. But in the meanwhile I keep getting approached by people who have the idea that CI is Libertarianism or a revival of Social Credit. They may assume I agree with them or may be to be trying to feel me out.

Like all true believers, they will never accept that you understand what they are saying, you just do not buy into it. They are personally insulted. They are worse than the Marxists for trying to explain that "reasoning" only gets you into a set of dead end truisms. Your reasons are the product of your own mind and reasoning is recycling your own rubbish.

If you want to understand how things work and what are the most probable solutions for a problem, you look at reality and form a theory about it. You test the theory, revise it, improve it. You discard it if it does not work. Modern Libertarianism never starts from an actual problem; it is a solution looking for a problem.

But the thing that really offends me about Libertarians is that they want the benefits of civilization without the obligations. This is narcissism. In this the lIbertarians are the natural allies of the "crony capitalists" they claim to oppose. They are silent about corporatism, especially about the increasingly obvious danger to personal freedom posed by powerful corporate bureaucracies.

Worst of all, Libertarians totally misidentify the cause of the lack of personal freedom in the modern world. That cause is inequality among people and the hegemony of the powerful over the powerless. This is going to be remediated by democratization and socialization; which corporatists and Libertarians despise.

By democratization and socialization, I mean real democracy and real socialism, happening at the same time. This brings me to a point where I agree in part with the Libertarians. There is a big problem in Toronto, which makes it hard to move anything really progressive forward, like a Basic Income. This is that the left here is almost all of the authoritarian variety.

"The revolution" is not going to come from a violent overthrow of the existing order, or through a political party getting power. It is going to come from below, from a powerful movement. It is not going to come from a bunch of people who think they are smarter than the rest of us and are going to lead us to the promised land.

The authoritarian left is strongly opposed on ideological grounds to the idea of a Basic Income; more so than the Libertarians. Why, is a topic for another editorial.

However, I should mention some further exchanges I have had with M. I published a commentary on something he sent me last month. He wanted to know what I thought about various topics, such as using gold as a currency. He did not like my responses. He said I am thinking in a "collectivist" way. Here is what he wrote.

Ew! Yes, they always get very testy when they realize you are not going to agree with them. My Libertarian funny is not funny and I am not only a collectivist but an altruist.

Well, I am not getting into any altruism versus... What is the antonym to altruism,anyway? Autism?

But the human species is a social animal. We evolved to survive by working together. We helped old people to survive so they could pass on their experience. We helped mothers of small children to look after their kids longer so they could have a prolonged childhood and learn more.

People who thought they could make out better without submitting to the collectivity of the tribe were free to do so. They did not pass on their genes. Selfish behavior only became an evolutionary advantage after civilization developed. That is, an advantage for a ruling elite, not for the human kind as a whole, or for the natural world.

The funniest thing about this libertarian funny is the way in which he claims to "believe in charity". The recipients of charity do not believe in it. They have no choice but to put up with it. They would much prefer to have an income.

I am sure I will cross trails with M and his like again and it will not be a happy encounter.