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in a Insightful works For Harper magazine, BuzzFeed News senior reporter Joseph Bernstein questioned that false information spread on social media platforms in the past five years, rather than long-term social conditions, is the cause of the crisis of faith in democratic institutions. Swept the West in the era of Brexit and Donald Trump. For example, he believes that “the rich experience of forming Americans’ attitudes towards the professional knowledge of public health authorities” is a better explanation for the hesitation of vaccines and masks, rather than the hypnotic power of Facebook. “Why are we so eager to accept Silicon Valley’s story about how easily we can be manipulated?” he asked.
Bernstein traced the assumed power of social media companies to dubious mid-century academic research, quoting sociologist Jacques Ellul, who wrote in the 1960s that such research often “sees buyers as victims and prey.” . However, especially as the 9/11 anniversary is approaching, the story of how the United States’ 20-year global war on terrorism has strengthened this view is clearly missing. In a very real sense, this is the chicken coming home to roost.
The concepts of “radicalization,” “anti-radicalization,” and “de-radicalization” are based on similar assumptions about the manipulability of Muslim societies and people. The United States and the West did not consider that a small number of people may have specific dissatisfaction with resorting to terrorist violence, but rather to blame it on “radical” preachers who spread anti-Western propaganda—some might say, Facebook in the Middle East.
The mainstream media, governments and academia in Europe and North America’s rejection of the image of benevolence in the West and, at worst, the honest but pathetic image of innocence, found it when portraying the Muslim population as simple-minded and easily confused by spells cast. The comfort was written by an angry, bearded priest in flowing robes. This is the same view that Bernstein saw in the West itself to be copied in order to understand their own disobedience groups, a few of whom also pose a serious terrorist threat.
Authoritarian governments in the non-Western world have also seized on the idea of ”radicalization” to cover up the real dissatisfaction of their subjects with their policies. For example, in the past 60 years, the Kenyan authorities have continued to pursue a colonial policy of marginalizing and oppressing the country’s Muslims, especially the Somali ethnic population. They are only verbal services to this period of history. This has been widely documented by the truth and justice. The Commission for Reconciliation and Reconciliation has collected more than 40,000 witness statements-when faced with grievances and terrorist attacks from local actors. Although 90% of such attacks occurred after the invasion of neighboring Somalia in October 2011, almost no one admitted that it might be related. Instead, history was turned upside down, and the reason for the invasion was based on what it inspired. In addition, the government and the media together received hints from the United States, blaming “radical” missionaries for the violence, and even targeted some people for extrajudicial executions.
This is not to say that radical preachers who celebrate violence are ineffective-they can obviously influence a small number of followers to do terrible things. However, similar to disinformation on social media platforms in the West and elsewhere, their influence is greatly exaggerated by those who are motivated, and their audience is also infantilized. Bernstein once again quoted Ellul as saying that without “pre-propaganda,” propaganda or incitement would not be effective—he equated it with the entire social, cultural, political, and historical context. One can think of this background as the soil where the violent ideas spread by clergy can take root in specific individuals. Ignoring this and focusing only on Fox News or radical missionaries can lead to improper “solutions” that entrench the problem and provide privileges for “acceptable” propaganda.
In a wonderful speech on the limits of media literacy at the 2018 SXSW EDU Conference in Austin, Texas, Danah Boyd, the founder of the research organization Data & Society, pointed out that “fundamentally speaking, misinformation is contextual.” This means that the composition of the advocacy depends on who is marking it. “The difference between what is seen as missionary work, education, and radicalization depends largely on your worldview and your understanding of power,” she said. She believes that the culture war between the “progressive” and “conservative” in the United States is actually an epistemological debate—how do you know what you claim to know—that cannot be resolved through fact checking or compromise. She believes that many liberal elites are trying to debunk the beliefs of Trump voters as “assertions of epistemological authority” and to spread a single, acceptable truth or worldview.
On the global stage, the global war on terrorism has transformed the American culture war and the methods used to launch the war into what Samuel Huntington called the “clash of civilizations.” This assertion of a single truth conveyed by Western prophets negates the rest of the world. Most areas have been the source of deradicalization efforts. However, they may have the opposite effect. As Boyd said, “Nothing can irritate someone more than feeling that you have been cheated.”
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
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