The Lie Detectives

January 22, 2024
The Democratic Party’s fight against right-wing memes is limned in this overwrought study of election propaganda. Journalist Issenberg (The Engagement) surveys the new breed of political operatives who advise Democratic politicians on how to respond to conservative lies and conspiracy theories. These specialists use interns and AI to suss out disinformation and its sources on social media, deploy analytic protocols to vet its peril to Democratic campaigns, convene focus groups to test counternarratives, and sometimes spread their own disinformation (as when strategist Matt Osborne concocted a Dry Alabama campaign insinuating that Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore wanted to ban alcohol in the state). Issenberg profiles leaders of the anti-disinformation consulting industry, who warn of an “‘existential threat to democracy’ ” while spinning reams of “threat assessments,” “Harm Indexes,” grid quadrants, and nine-cell matrices. The book’s most illuminating chapter covers Brazil’s 2022 presidential election, which saw the country’s Supreme Electoral Court grant itself sweeping powers to censor political speech; this section reveals the anti-disinformation crusade’s potential to reach an anti-democratic endpoint. Elsewhere, though, Issenberg’s embrace of the hysteria over disinformation undermines his reporting—he does not pierce the consultants’ lingo, which smacks at times of faddism and technocratic grift, with its fee-enhancing veneer of expertise. This is a tantalizing yet overly credulous glimpse of a shadowy industry.

January 15, 2024
A data strategist examines misinformation and disinformation as promulgated by right-wing Americans. Being a "lie detective" is in some ways easier than other kinds of gumshoe work. As Issenberg, author of The Victory Lab, recounts, when he called on a Republican misinformation minion a couple of election cycles back, the fellow proudly proclaimed, "We have three major voter suppression operations under way." That was just the beginning. The rumblings of conspiracy first seen in the days of the tea party became the chaos of QAnon, and the lies mounted as Trump normalized lying. Interestingly, that lie machine was first used on Republicans by Republicans, with rumors floated in the 2000 primary that John McCain was "a godless heathen" and had had a Black child out of wedlock. Also interestingly, much current conspiracy thinking can be traced to Gamergate, the "open-source reactionary movement" that began as a malicious rumor machine against a woman video game maker and turned into an army of right-wing trolls. Republicans may not like the word disinformation, Issenberg writes, since they "think it's an excuse to silence, cancel, or censor them," but that's just what it is. The author also looks at Brazil, which has legislated against disinformation and is quick to fine and shut down bad actors. However, it's a giant game of whack-a-mole, with new sites and new lies cropping up instantly and those arrayed against it faced with the "recognition that ultimately disinformation would move too quickly, and too stochastically, for anyone to successfully police it." In other words, there's not much to be done about the right-wing web of lies. As one data activist notes, "We will win some and lose some, and will probably start to lose more." A provocative if dispiriting look at the endless campaign to curtail the big lie and a million lesser ones.

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