The War Against Disinformation is Not What it Seems.

Andy Burnham made a speech a few days ago relating to Russia amongst other countries and it's ability to insert disinformation into social media and therefore influence public opinion and even influence elections.

But without any evidence. 

If Burnham wants to fight "fake news", he needs to tell us which is the fake news, so we can identify it analyse it and remove the source from our trusted information providers.

But instead Burnham proposes censorship and sanctions, possibly fines and jail time, no doubt. 

Instead of allowing us the freedom to assess information for ourselves, he wants to remove that from us and just tell us "this is the truth". 

I've never heard something more tyrannical come out of a Prime Minister's mouth before, except maybe Kier Starmer's. 

I've lived through the cold war, I well remember the "tractor stats" coming from the old Soviet Union, where they had to make everything bigger, better and more glorious than the West could ever manage. Amongst the folky music was the most egregious propaganda. Ridiculously obvious. Much like our Labour government.

The phrase "Tractors Stats" was coined because the Soviet Union used to produce endless list of how well they had done, including the numbers of Tractors they had produced. Impossible statistics. Radio Moscow used to pump them out nightly to those in the West that would listen. I was one of the listeners, because Short Wave Listening was my hobby.

The same applied to the vast amounts of grain the Soviet Union supposedly produced. 

In other words, they were statistics to be taken with a healthy scepticism.

When it came to News, again the Soviet Union made immensely unreasonable claims, but so did the West. The truth was somewhere in the middle and it was up to the listener to perceive where the truth was.

We're getting back to those days, but it's not an information war between the Soviet Union and Western Governments. It's actually an information war between Western governments and their own people. 

People are now seeing the actual truth being denied before their very eyes. 

Journalists arrested as terrorists on the left and the right of politics. 

Ordinary people being arrested and jailed for opinions. 

It's quite clear this is NOT about foreign actors influencing social media, or we would have had examples the government could show us.

This is about controlling the flow of information. And the government ensuring you only have access to their propaganda.

It is tyranny.