Quote:
Originally Posted by spanktehbadwookie
Threatening content? It's basically a an advert for a book. It does contain some propaganda, but I wouldn't call it threatening in isolation.
The article is a guy interviewing another guy selling a book about what Google tells us about what people really think. I was not impressed from what I read. Both the author and the Vox interviewer are trying to generate interest with sensationalism, and it makes the author of the book look like an idiot or propagandist (maybe both).
The "persuasive proof" promised in the headline is never delivered. The author thinks that a spike in google searches related to racially charged content in the run up to the election both predicted Trump's victory and proves there are tons of racists in the country. Don't take my word for it that that is a crock, but just think about it rationally.
First notice that the author is careful to say he thought that Trump was going to win as he looked at Google trends and not that he voiced his prediction before the fact. There is a huge difference between the two acts. One of them is bull****, and the other isn't. So he made no prediction, but just claims to have thought Trump would win based on his analysis of Google trends. So no actual support for that his technique has predictive value. More importantly, the author makes inferences that he can't justify. He can't know that a surge in racially charged content isn't reflective of a general pickup in interest in all things racism simple because it took higher topical precedence due to Trump. So I might look at Stormfront in reaction to Trump because I want to know what exactly these people are thinking, not because I want to join them. His analysis can be confounded in any number of ways which he doesn't address.
And the article's discussion leaves out the demand for populist policies which Trump addressed that no other politician would as an explanation for his victory. There is a lot of good evidence that Trump was voted in for those popular policy positions
in spite of his apparent racism. But that is not the propaganda narrative. It can't be, because that would encourage an obligation on the Democratic party to do something to fill that policy demand, an obligation that its corporate sponsors definitely do not want. The propaganda narrative has to be that there are all these die hard racists out there pushing Trump over the top. Fear and hate mongering thus smear the outsider candidate and distract from the abysmal dysfunction of politics from a democratic standpoint.
But you would have to have some ability to know the limits of the author's analysis and compare it to his claims to know how sorry it is. Most people don't have that ability, and that is why Vox and Vox-like productions are the devil. They use a lot of sophistication in delivering the propaganda of neo-liberalism. Me of 15 years ago would have been totally taken in by Vox.
