Why its only misinformation that doesn’t pose any threat to existing centers of power that is considered problematic.

I think it’s interesting when you see the Facebook “infobox” under any post related to covid comes up in your newsfeed. My understanding is Facebook is committed to filtering out misinformation about the pandemic which is considered “harmful” to public health. The White House recently instructed Facebook to remove 12 people or groups that it deemed harmful. What I find curious about this, is the premise of state or corporate intervention in curating what “information” we can access, which is built on the idea that some misinformation remaining present is “literally” costing lives, therefore, it needs to be removed.

Yet I wonder why the same logic doesn’t apply to many others streams of information that also “literally” cost lives? Misinformation you could consider far more pernicious to the lives of humans. So, if we going to do this Facebook, let’s do this.

Why wasn’t this logic applied or currently being applied, to all climate change denial that has had platforms and forums across MSM and social media for decades? This false information or “the science is still being debated” lie is now costing literally thousands of lives, soon to be millions and possibly billions of lives, and has put us on course towards humans and many other species extinction. Why does that misinformation not get a little “tag” letting us know is most probably false? Why don’t ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron ect. all be purged from all platforms for the constant misinformation they churn out? Surely, they are worse than bad orange man?

What about one of the biggest murder machines the world has ever seen, the US military and the CIA? Who constantly put out propaganda and misinformation to further its murderous wars, coups and economic punishments of non-compliant countries? We are invading Iraq to bring democracy and find WMD, in the words of Maury Povich “That was a lie”. Why aren’t we warned about their treacherous porkies?

What about the finance and banking industry? They spent years lying, thieving, and rorting our economy, making never seen before transfers of wealth to themselves. Why aren’t we warned about their lies?

I could go on and go on. As it seems we are only permitted to mobilize and rally against misinformation that doesn’t threaten existing centers of power, be it corporate, military, financial, or political.

As why is the BS put out by Bill Gates regarding vaccine patents being waivered for poorer nations as “not being viable” not be deemed misinformation by the White House and Facebook, even though it’s a straight-out lie? A lie that will “literally” cost lives. As we are allowed to vilify and scapegoat anti-vaxers as it’s a safe target of our anger, frustration, and pain, being a section of our population that has no real power.

What we aren’t allowed to do in any fundamental way, is challenge the obscene systems we live in. 3.1 million children die from undernutrition each year whilst the world wastes about 1.4 billion tons of food every year. Eight men own the same wealth as the 3.6 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity. The plastics in our bodies put men on a trajectory to have zero sperm by 2040. We most probably have tipped the tipping point, moving to irreversible climate horror ect.. Why haven’t we mobilized, shut down economies, and “leave no stone unturned” to halt such fixable and crazy problems? Why haven’t we waged a war against misinformation and corporate and state propaganda that gets in the way of fixing the above problems?

As we can see humanity can go “above and beyond” when we are allowed, instructed and the bugle is sounded. Yet the untold misery and hardship of our fellow brothers and sisters throughout the world in abject poverty and war, the destroying of the earth beyond repair, is someone’s profit and obscene wealth somewhere else and it cannot and will not be allowed to be stopped, even as we fall off the cliff our existence.

So let’s be clear, the fight against the pandemic and misinformation is a fight we are allowed to partake in and cheer for, because it’s a victory that will bring no loss of control to existing institutional power, actually quite the opposite. Like all historical “threats” be it communism, Islamic terrorism ect. it will most likely be exploited as a back door to acquire more control, surveillance, and limit political engagement and dissent, all under the banner of “keeping us safe”. The liberties and freedoms we so obediently relinquished we be locked in permanently as part of our “new normal”

And if for some bizarre reason the “fight against covid” suddenly looks like it could take profit or control from the prevailing hegemonic power, then watch how it magically will no longer be the issue it once was. See it get shelved into something we can’t do much about, something we just “need to live with” an obscure geopolitical issue too big to tackle and address, that we occasionally will get Bob Geldof to do a concert for, or launch a new wrist band with Nike to bring awareness to, as a new, more pressing concerns and dangers comes into focus. So keep in mind, if or when we ever get back to normal, that normal is ecocidal and utterly insane.