Remember the “Moment of Truth” in Auckland Town Hall just before the 2014 election when Glen Greenwald, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden revealed the extent of the NZ government’s spying on us?
I seem to recall that went down as foreigners interfering in democratic processes in many quarters, and as such, was deemed to be “malign”. And so, regardless of the information they were imparting or attempting to impart, the order of the day (at least in a number of quarters) was to cast aspersions on the messengers, while minimising and/or ignoring the message.
Remember a company based in Russia pushing ridiculous but clickable memes through facebook that allowed them to generate revenue from advertising that was attached to their posts in various ways?
That was a “the sky is falling in” moment of foreign interference in democratic processes that, to this day, has people and agencies running around all in a flap.
So there’s a pattern. Whatever the rights and wrongs or efficacy of what’s being done, the clear message is that a country’s elections ought to be left to unfold in a vacuum, sealed by domestic power structures that can rightfully, and without interference, subject the voting public to whatever information or mis-information as might be around at the time.
Any challenge to that set up (either real or merely perceived) is jumped on from a great height with cries about democracy being subverted, undermined or otherwise threatened. Of course, in the current political climate, the alleged source of the threat will tend to be Russia, what with its supposed track record of nefarious goings on stretching all the way back to the stone age or when-ever. Such were the claims with regards the independence vote in Catalonia, and various European elections, as well as the US one.
And sure, the USA and whoever else sticks fingers in various pies and has done for years, but either we’re meant to view that interference (“ours”) as benevolent in intent if not benign in practice, or ignore it completely. Which, for the sake of this post, is fine, because we’re talking about interference in elections taking place on “our” side of some notional fence – which is to say, on the ‘good guys’ side of the fence.
So from Dotcom to “all things Russian” (or tenuously connected to something that can be labelled “Russian”), and across various jurisdictions, democracy is under attack from “bad guys” who are bad because they are focusing their energies on largely benign or benevolent instances of power.
Which brings us to today’s Guardian headlines about George Soros, a Hungarian American and dedicated liberal centrist, who is about to launch a campaign aimed at securing a second Brexit referendum in Britain. Now, I know there’s a swathe of conspiratorial stuff swills around about George Soros and his influence. I’m not interested in any of that and would appreciate if comments steer away from that rabbit hole.
The point is that the Guardian has “gifted” its front page to the announcement of a foreign person intent on shaping British democratic culture at a quite fundamental level. This isn’t about influencing a vote, but about generating an issue for the British public to vote on. And yet, the pieces (there are two) offer up no criticism of this attempt to determine British politics at such a basic level.
In fact, the second piece strongly suggests that any questioning of this most bizarre unfolding of events is, or will be, down to rabid nationalism and/or anti-semitism on the part of those calling matters into question. The British public are to “get in behind” George Soros. George Soros, so the second article reports, is looking to “save the UK from “immense danger”” after all.
And what could possibly be wrong with that?
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