Greg Lukianoff Recommends Martin Gurri’s “The Revolt of the Masses”

I just spotted this review of The Revolt of the Masses by Greg Lukianoff." Greg's review has convinced me to order my own copy of The Revolt of the Masses.

Excerpts:

“The Revolt of the Public” explains that the shifts in media technologies that we believe accelerated American political polarization and played havoc with young people’s mental health were actually part of a much larger global transformation that Gurri calls “The Fifth Wave.” Essentially, the empowerment of vast multitudes of people to communicate directly with the world and with each other has genuinely transformed society. Unfortunately, in its current state, this media revolution has only been able to tear things down; institutions, ideas, and yes, even people (a.k.a. cancel culture). This idea is what Gurri calls “negation.”

. . . . Gurri shows how this manifested in the 2011 Arab Spring and how it has had ripple effects in Spain, Israel, and the American Occupy Wall Street movement. Gurri also argues that these movements generally were rich with targets: people, institutions, and ideas that needed to be torn down, but those same movements were often very hesitant to offer constructive solutions or realistic reforms. This hopeless point of view amounted to a kind of nihilism, according to Gurri—usually not the kind of nihilism of the philosophers, but a de facto nihilism in which nothing constructive is proposed to replace what needs to be torn down.

You can see this in American society in everything from “End the Fed,” to “abolish the police,” to cancel culture on both the right and the left, and to the absolute negation of all assumptions represented by the QAnon conspiracy.

One thing that must be said about the “crisis of authority” we find ourselves in due to the overwhelming power of negation is that very often what critics have discovered is that our existing “knowledge” was truly based on some pretty thin evidence, bad assumptions, and sometimes not much more than the pieties of some elites. Understanding the crisis of authority as only being wrongfully destructive of expertise is to miss that, frankly, we are often asking far too much of expertise and experts, and oversight itself has not been all that rigorous. Negation is indeed tearing things down that needed to be torn down; unfortunately, it seems to be taking everything else with it.

Continue ReadingGreg Lukianoff Recommends Martin Gurri’s “The Revolt of the Masses”

Martin Gurri: The Elites Battled the Peripheries at Twitter

Michael Shellenberger and Leighton Woodhouse interview Martin Gurri in their article, "Former Top CIA Analyst Condemns FBI For Censorship & Misinformation "Joe McCarthy would have loved to have that kind of control," says Martin Gurri, author of the seminal 2018 book, "The Revolt of Public," about government influence over Twitter." Here is an excerpt:

For some perspective, we reached out to former CIA analyst Martin Gurri. In 2018 Gurri published a major book, The Revolt of the Public, which argues that the Internet is disrupting modern society and politics as much as the printing press did in the 15th Century. The book influenced us so much that we named our Substack publication after it. (Above, you can see a video that one of us, Leighton, made about it.)

The Internet in general, and social media in particular, argues Gurri, mean that the elites can no longer control the public conversation as they once could. They struggle to “manufacture consent.” Anybody can start a Substack or Twitter account, and anybody can go viral. That technological revolution is resulting in political revolutions.

“What you’re seeing [in the Twitter Files] is a reaction to the revolt of the public,” said Gurri, who concludes that the United States needs a truth and reconciliation commission, similar to the one used in South Africa, to get to the bottom of what happened.

In the end, Gurri doesn’t believe we can return to the pre-Internet era of information control. But the Twitter Files, he notes, reveal just how hard they’ve been trying.

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The Lies Told by Governments and their Allies

George Galloway eloquently states the facts about the about the 2003 invasion of Iraq, smashing the official lies, one by one. Who told these lies? Governments in bed with weapons contractors and people who pretended to be journalists, who actually served as their stenographers. For those thinking that such a big lie is not possible, here's your proof. It's possible for powerful people to tell a big lie in broad daylight and never be called out on it. Or maybe not for 20 years, when it is too late to save hundreds of thousands (or millions) of lives.

The lies we heard regarding Iraq should make us pause whenever a government official looks us straight in the eyes and tells us to trust them. It's possible that they are telling the truth, but governments and their newspapers have a long history of misleading us. We need to always keep this in mind. The Twitter Files are blowing up more big government/corporate/media lies every week and the official silence is deafening and telling.

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Who is the Authoritarian?

because I follow these trends closely, but . . . For the past month Matt Taibbi has been reporting in detail that the FBI, DHS, DOD, CIA and other agencies have built a system for mass delivery of censorship requests to firms like Twitter and Facebook. MSNBC has now accused Taibbi of fueling authoritarianism with his reporting. Taibbi responded by listing some of the many pro-censorship advocates currently lurking around at MSNBC, people who call themselves journalists:

John Brennan, former Director of the CIA, now senior intelligence analyst at MSNBC

Frank Figliuzzi, formeer Assistant Director of Counterintelligence at the FBI

Asha Rangappa, former Special Agent for the FBI, specializing in counterintelligence

Nicolle Wallace, former Communications Director for George W. Bush

Jeremy Bash, former Chief of Staff of the CIA

Clint Watts, former FBI counterintelligence agent and MSNBC national security analyst

Chuck Rosenberg, former Acting DEA administrator and senior FBI official

Nayyera Haq, former Senior Director of the White House

Richard Painter, former Chief Ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush White House

Neal Kaytal, former Acting Solicitor General of the United States

Ben Rhodes, former National Security Advisor to Barack Obama

Barry McCaffrey, former U.S. Army General and Drug Czar, security analyst for NBC and MSNBC

Stephen Twitty, former Lieutenant General of the U.S. Army

Joyce Vance, former U.S. Attorney

Barbara McQuade, former U.S. Attorney

Glenn Kirschner, former Assistant U.S. Attorney

For more on the abject silence of the left-leaning legacy media, its refusal to acknowledge the obviously disturbing importance of Taibbi's recent reporting on the Twitter Files, consider this episode of Glenn Greenwald's System Update on Rumble. The title: "Media Silent as Twitter Files Expose Flagrant Misconduct in Govt. & Journalism."

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Hundreds of College Professors Sign FIRE Letter of Concern Directed to Hamline University Firing of Art History Professor

I'm honored to be one of the signatories of this letter to Hamline University in Support of an instructor unfairly dismissed by Hamline. I was among many college professors FIRE invited to view and sign the letter. The letter details the incident, the facts of which are so absurd that one might wonder whether they were made up. But they are absolutely true. Here's an excerpt from the letter:

We are deeply concerned by reports that Hamline dismissed a faculty member for presenting pedagogically relevant artwork depicting the Prophet Muhammad during an art history class session on Islamic art.

The notable piece, which has been studied and shared extensively since the 14th century, enriches students’ understandings of Islamic history, the life of Prophet Muhammad, the nature of Qur’anic revelations, and the significance of religious iconography.

Therefore, in presenting the image, the instructor was exercising academic freedom for one of its core intended purposes: to introduce students to “the best published expressions of the great historic types of doctrine upon the questions at issue,” and “to provide them access to those materials which they need if they are to think intelligently.”

Moreover, the instructor, out of respect for some Muslim students’ religious convictions, stated in the syllabus that Islamic images would be presented, and that participation in the visual exercise and discussion would be optional. Before presenting a slide of the painting, the instructor also reportedly alerted the class.

After a student complained, the instructor emailed the student to apologize. But this was deemed insufficient. Associate Vice President for Inclusive Excellence David Everett sent an all-staff email describing the Islamic image and classroom exercise as “undeniably inconsiderate, disrespectful, and Islamophobic,” later declaring, “it was best that this faculty member was no longer part of the Hamline community.”

Continue ReadingHundreds of College Professors Sign FIRE Letter of Concern Directed to Hamline University Firing of Art History Professor