
The great British Brexit robbery - rbanffy
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great-british-brexit-robbery-hijacked-democracy
======
kristianc
What's really scary about these recent developments is that we're losing the
ability to critically analyze the ideas and arguments that are being used to
influence people.

Back in the days of network TV, you might not agree with everything that was
being said, but you could at least see the arguments that were being used to
convince others.

Even the early so-called behaviour change campaigns, such as 'Five a Day' (a
marketing campaign that most didn't realize was a marketing campaign that has
long since been accepted as a piece of general health advice) were quite
benign.

Here it seems that an influence / behaviour change campaign could be waged
relatively cheaply against a relatively small number of people, exist
completely outside the normal rules for fact checking or veracity, and the
majority of the population would have no idea about it.

I'm not sure I agree with the thesis of the piece - that Cambridge Analytica
played even a primary role in Brexit happening (I think it was always pretty
likely, due to UK tabloids having campaigned for around 20 years on the issue,
lack of organization in the Remain campaign, Corbyn failure to engage working
class voters etc, hell even a latent feeling that the EU maybe isn't that
great after all), but the techniques for doing this will only become more
sophisticated and I wouldn't be surprised to see them become a common feature
of our democracy.

~~~
candiodari
The point of democracy is the implicit threat: if you, as a leader of the
country, mess up the lives of the people you govern, you'll get kicked out.
Aside from that, democracy has mostly negative

This prevents the situation from getting out of hand before it completely
descends into violence.

That's it. That's the sum total of what democracy gets us.

Analyzing critical ideas is not now, and wasn't ever part of the democratic
process. Cicero was complaining about citizen's lack of analyzing critical
ideas (except when directly hurting them in the wallet) in 70 BC. You can read
about leaders from the French revolution lamenting the same, and even in cases
where only limited self government exists, like today in Bahrain, you find
most analysts complaining that the large majority of the people who have
influence (usually local landowners) do not think critically at all.

What has happened is simple: the previous government was pro-Europe, couldn't
get Europe to commit to basic concessions that would make British lives
easier, and the imposed austerity made a lot of people's lives worse in a very
concrete and visible way. So they were voted out.

Now you can argue that they were right, that it wasn't their fault that this
happened, and I might even agree with you. But as the government, I do
understand, this is not good enough.

~~~
kristianc
It's interesting - as Tocqueville (Democracy in America) and Mill (On Liberty)
argued precisely that it was civil society and discourse that help us protect
against a tyranny of the majority.

And that generally what separates 'democratizing' nations from 'democracies'
is that one simply has democratic institutions such as voting, and the other
has a culture of democratic decision making, civil discourse etc etc to go
with it. Iraq may have elections and be able to kick out its leaders but it
sure isn't a democracy in the same way Britain and the United States are.

Now its not a 'the people are stupid' argument that I'm making - there have
been people throughout history who have contended that we take a too
simplistic view of affairs. Fine, blah, I'm sure they do, and I'm happy to
accept there are people who don't reason critically on both sides and there's
no reason to think one side has a monopoly on those.

What I'm saying is that we can't fairly determine the information that is
being seeded to all parties. It's the equivalent of someone turning up to lots
of Tocqueville's town hall meetings and distributing pamphlets biased to one
side to people who look like they're from a certain socioeconomic background
as they walk in.

There is something that happened in Britain in the last five years that merits
explanation. A population which according to Eurobarometer 2010 data, only
five years ago was 45% Pro-EU and 33% anti voted 52% to 48% to Leave when the
government of the day, international instutitions, and all major political
parties were arguing that we should stay. This, in Britain, a country not
generally known for upending its whole political system on a whim.

Now you can pin the explanation for that on whatever you want (and I happen to
think your austerity theory has something in it), but it's reasonable to think
in a democracy that we should be able to have a discussion (or at least know
about) the factors that swayed people.

~~~
fche
> we can't fairly determine the information that is being seeded to all
> parties

Why do you think anyone should be in the position of "determining" the
information that is being seeded? Fight disagreeable speech with agreeable
speech, amirite, but don't yearn for a boss to tell which is which.

~~~
kristianc
> Why do you think anyone should be in the position of "determining" the
> information that is being seeded? Fight disagreeable speech with agreeable
> speech, amirite, but don't yearn for a boss to tell which is which.

Maybe the more exact word for what I mean is "discern" rather than determine,
though determine works fine too ("Officials are working to determine the cause
of a bus crash").

Anyhoo, I don't yearn for such an arbiter.

------
ptaipale
I find it amazing how people can stay in denial about the Brexit vote: that it
happened, and that people in Britain actually disliked EU enough to want to
get out of it. That what people voted for is not their will.

I'm in the remaining EU, if I'd had a vote in the British referendum, I'd have
voted for Remain. But the increasingly paranoid conspiracy theories about
shadowy conspiracies makes me more and more disgusted with the EU status quo.

New emperor-wannabes come up with 50 billion or 100 billion or 200 billion
that Britain should pay to the union. Looks like that the more absurd numbers
you can come up with to punish Britain for insulting the honor of EU
institutions, the better.

Get real: such payments are not going to happen. You're coming up with a
"favoured trade partner" or whatever status with Uganda; you'll be able to do
that with Britain as well. The British isles aren't floating away to the
Atlantic, and the countries will need to continue trading.

EU is not working very well. The leader of the Commission is a drunkard.
Institutions are grabbing power that I and very many others want to belong to
national governments. The union wants to expand to new countries and deepen to
a federal state at the same time. Very many people want free trade, but
otherwise want to retain national sovereignty. Accept that, stop blaming Trump
and shadowy conspiracies.

~~~
Tomte
200 billion is most probably too high, but dozens of billons? Easily. The UK
has committed themselves to paying this, they don't get to withhold the money
now.

Those sums aren't some arbitrarily thought up "exit fees", it's regular
funding that has been decided on and committed to years ago.

If the UK wanted to avoid that they should have exited somewhere in the
future, outside of the current budgetary periods.

~~~
vixen99
Actually they do. [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/06/100bn-brexit-
bill...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/06/100bn-brexit-bill-legally-
impossible-enforce-european-commissions/)

~~~
Symbiote
The legality is irrelevant.

If Britain refuses to pay what the rEU decides is fair, it will have a very
poor position for the trade negotiations which follow.

(I'm not paying to read the Telegraph, but "admit" in the headline is loaded
language, and intentionally missing the point.)

~~~
jwlato
No, Britain will have a very poor position in the negotiations that follow
regardless. That's why the E.U. is insisting on the payments and citizen's
rights issues being resolved first: they want a British commitment to items
the E.U. cares about without having to make any concessions. If you think the
E.U. will go back and renegotiate, or take British payments into account at
later stages of negotiation, you're as delusional as May.

I hate to admit it, but May and Davis should absolutely refuse to play ball.
They should agree to terms they think are fair here, and if the E.U. doesn't
go along, prepare for a really hard brexit. Which of course means that they'll
capitulate.

~~~
presidente20
Can you clarify what this poor trade negotiation position is?

Worst case, we go to WTO tariffs. The effect of that in theory is that EU
imports to the UK will reduce, as they become more expensive relative to the
same goods from non-EU countries (note that our tariffs to non-EU countries
will reduce post Brexit).

UK exports to the EU will also reduce for the same reason. However, given that
we're a net importer it should be clear who is in the worst position.

If the UK can sign a couple of decent trade deals with large economies like
India, USA, China then we won't be worried about the EU trade at all.

~~~
Tomte
Can they sign those trade deals? When? In ten to twelve years?

The UK doesn't even have the bureaucracy anymore, the capable negotiators to
conduct more than a few smaller or maybe one big trade deal.

The deals between the EU and Switzerland took more than a decade. And
Switzerland didn't poison the atmosphere.

Additionally, the US aren't in a big hurry. Trump said otherwise while he was
campaigning, but now he has already made clear tzhat a trade deal with the EU
is a priority and the UK will have to wait (after Merkel had to tell him _ten_
times that Germany cannot and will not negotiate a separate trade deal with
the US).

I wish the UK the best, but I am very much in favor of us playing hardball.
It's fascinating to watch the UK's non-strategy, a bit like a bit car crash.
You have guilty feelings about stopping and staring, but you just cannot help
it.

~~~
presidente20
You don't actually need a trade deal with a country to trade successfully with
them (hopefully I don't need to give examples of this).

I think you overestimate how long it takes to sign a unilateral trade deal
when the parties want to make it happen. The reason the EU trade deals take so
long is that 28 countries have to agree on the EU side (which will indeed be a
problem for Brexit, but hardly the UK's fault).

Non strategy? As previously stated, we have a net trade deficit with the EU
and are the EU's biggest export destination. Do you really think BMW group etc
are going to want to stop selling cars to the UK?

Also as previously pointed out any import/export detriment to the UK from
increased tariffs will be offset by the corresponding tariff reduction when
trading with the rest of the world. That's not the case for the EU.

That's without considering the money we'll save on contributing to the EU
budgets.

------
bootload
Psyops.

I occasionally delve into the CIA CREST database and one day stumbled on old
articles with dollar values [0] Russian Intelligence services dumped on psyops
against their adversaries at the height of the cold war. In 1980 for instance
this was reported:

    
    
        "According to the CIA's reckoning, the Soviets in 1979 
         poured at least 200 million dollars (I assume US) into 
         a variety of campaigns - using propaganda and covert 
         operations - to isolate the US from it's friends." [1]
    

Nothing has changed.

 _" Palantir is practically now a trigger word. The data-mining firm has
contracts with governments all over the world – including GCHQ and the NSA.
It’s owned by ^Peter Thiel^, "_

Let that sink in. How long till this article is flagged?

Reference:

[0] Values in CIA reports are often redacted because they are an indication of
resources.

[1] CREST (Psyops Russia 1980): DEPARTMENT OF DIRTY TRICKS, SOVIET STYLE
Document Release Date: January 13, 2011

Summary: [https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-
rdp90-0...](https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-
rdp90-00552r000707160159-7)

Document: [https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-
RDP90-00552...](https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-
RDP90-00552R000707160159-7.pdf)

~~~
pjc50
So this raises a very important question: what about the CIA psyops? Is this
kind of thing only "not OK" when certain parties are doing it, or is it one of
those things that just makes the world worse and should be banned by treaty
like biological weapons?

After all, the west regards "regime change" as its prerogative; what if the
rest of the world wants to "regime change" us?

Edit: yes it's whataboutism, but I think addressing that has to be part of any
good solution. Otherwise the only solutions are bad ones: every country has to
build a Great Firewall to stop its domestic politics being destroyed by
foreign intelligence agencies.

Also, note in the article that seemingly everyone is fine with CA doing this
kind of stuff to _other_ countries. This is like shipping thousands of tons of
guns to Mexico and then being surprised when some of them turn up on US
streets.

~~~
bootload
_" what about the CIA psyops?"_

The CIA psyops question is a good one. The CIA was setup by Eisenhower to
collate intelligence not engage in operations. Psyops is operations. The
question of CIA dabbling in operations was resolved in '63\. Post '63, there
was no real threat to the CIA charter.

I'll double up, _" why has the CIA got an Airforce?"_ [0] T

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Targeted_killing#Use_by_the_Un...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Targeted_killing#Use_by_the_United_States_Government)

------
leonroy
This is a worrying story. And not only because it highlights the possible role
that outside factors might have played in swinging key elections to the right.

It's worrying because it runs a great risk in making those living in the
London bubble (myself very much included) of thinking Brexit was caused by
malignant forces rather than poverty and lack of opportunity. The latter being
a hard problem to solve, the former something we can uncomfortably accept.

Brexit was a democratic vote. It was about as democratic as you can get with
no possibility for gerrymandering, first past the post or any other sort of
voter suppression.

It's a damn shame it happened, but when those of us living comfortable college
educated lives choose to endorse policies which allow vast swathes of less
skilled labour to be automated and hammered down with zero hour contracts, as
the so called 'Brexit heart-lands' have been, then what do we expect but to
see a resurgence of fear and the consequent nationalism that arises?

Certainly Cambridge Analytica might have some effect on marginal elections
like Brexit or Trump/Clinton, but at the end of the day we've built a system
which provides no safety net or training for those whose jobs we're replacing
with automation and over efficiencies of scheduling and the introduction of
the 'gig' economy.

I think the roots behind these problems are your age old problems of
increasing inequality, poor educational opportunities and gutted job markets
in northern towns. We've basically shafted a whole generation of folk who
unsurprisingly voted for a nationalist agenda out of sheer desperation.

------
easilyBored
Direct democracy is dangerous. Major decisions, and joining /leaving EU is
certainly one, should require e super-majority. Say 60% of the vote and 60% of
the Parliament.

50%+1 just doesn't seem right. These are life-changing decisions and there
needs to be a general consensus.

~~~
beaconstudios
the problem with the supermajority argument is that there was no such vote to
join the EU in the first place. You can't apply stringent rules in only one
direction of a decision, or you're weighting the default to the position you
personally prefer. At the end of the day, the vote could be repositioned from
"remain/leave" to "be in the EU/not be in the EU" to make it an A/B rather
than a yes/no decision, at which point the argument about direct democracy
being unfair becomes clearly biased.

~~~
belltaco
>the problem with the supermajority argument is that there was no such vote to
join the EU in the first place

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_European_Commun...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_European_Communities_membership_referendum,_1975)

>The electorate expressed significant support for EC membership, with 67% in
favour on a national turnout of 64%.

Am I missing something?

~~~
sbmassey
EC membership, not EU - from the perspective of the British, they voted for
membership of a trading block, which then morphed into a new megastate wannabe
without any vote taking place to legitimise it.

------
corford
"Documents seen by the Observer show that this was a proposal to capture
citizens’ browsing history en masse, recording phone conversations and
applying natural language processing to the recorded voice data to construct a
national police database, complete with scores for each citizen on their
propensity to commit crime.

The plan put to the minister was Minority Report. It was pre-crime. And the
fact that Cambridge Analytica is now working inside the Pentagon is, I think,
absolutely terrifying said David."

Steve Bannon was the former vice president of Cambridge Analytica. Terrifying
is indeed the word. A little alarming too that Sophie Schmidt was swimming
around these waters.

~~~
madaxe_again
Pre-crime is very much alive and kicking. For a publicly visible example, see
the multitudinous "terror convictions" in the U.K. that have involved the
arrest and lengthy incarceration of people who have allegedly plotted, or have
thought about beginning to plot, terrorist acts.

Less publicly, there is a rather well hidden court circuit that has been about
since 2008 which specialises in these cases, specifically the ones which can't
be disclosed due to "national security". I know about this from a family
friend who was a high flying barrister (QC) who was asked to preside. He
refused. They destroyed him in the press ("paedophile sympathiser"), Cameron
went on national TV to decry him, they suicided his wife. He is only just
beginning to quietly practice law again. Every time I think I'm maybe paranoid
I recall this episode, and know that the truth is likely even darker than I
know.

What a wonderful world we live in.

~~~
foldr
>Cameron went on national TV to decry him, they suicided his wife.

Sources for this? It seems unlikely that the Prime Minister would on TV to
denounce a barrister for refusing a gig. They would just have got another
barrister to do it.

~~~
madaxe_again
I promise you he did - it wasn't to denounce him for refusing the gig, rather
to denounce him as part of the retaliatory smear.

Here's a pertinent link. If you read the court transcripts, none of the things
ascribed to him were said by him - it was just another fairly average day in
court.

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2386556/Lawyer-
Rober...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2386556/Lawyer-Robert-
Colover-called-girl-13-predator-barred-sex-cases-condemned-Cameron.html)

Here's an equanimous piece by a barrister befuddled by what happened to him,
as the subtext is all sorts of secret.

[http://barristerblogger.com/2013/08/29/criticism-robert-
colo...](http://barristerblogger.com/2013/08/29/criticism-robert-colover-
unfair/?fdx_switcher=true)

~~~
foldr
The outrage had nothing to do with a refusal to preside over a secret hearing,
as the links you provided show. Whether or not the Daily Mail article was fair
is a separate issue. It may have misquoted him, but what he actually said was
stil pretty bad.

>Yes, your Honour. Very much so, and she is undoubtedly it is fair to say very
experienced, and one hesitates to use the word, but it is a word that has been
used in other cases, I think the officer would agree that she may well be what
is described as predatory in respect of her activities.

(Said of a 13 year old.)

~~~
icebraining
I think madaxe_again's argument is that similar things are said every day
without a frenzy being raised, pointing to some other motivation behind it.

That said, considering that he specifically chose that word, I agree that it's
pretty bad, and find it hard to believe that it's a common occurrence for
barristers to call 13-year-olds' actions "predatory".

~~~
madaxe_again
In mitigation such things are pretty normal - particularly coming from the
prosecution under direct questioning, which this was. You don't mince words
when asked for a direct opinion by a judge.

Of course the press pieces don't address the context, as the context was and
is a state secret.

Bob is a Rabbi, a youth worker, a kite festival organiser, and a stand-up
bloke and father of three very well adjusted adults I've known since I became
a conscious entity.

~~~
icebraining
Fair enough, but in any case, the argument wasn't on whether what he said was
fair or correct, or whether the reaction was appropriate, but whether the
(over)reaction was _because_ of some unrelated case.

I mean, it's not exactly uncommon for anything involving pedophilia, often
even when there's no actual evidence of such, to explode in Think Of The
Children hysteria, and a man in an official position calling a 13-year-old a
"predator" sounds exactly the kind of thing that can trigger it.

So the question is: are barristers often referring to 13-year-old as
predators, and the media just specifically picked up on this case?

~~~
madaxe_again
The answer to that query is a pretty sound yes - mitigation looks at the
precise circumstances and behaviours of surrounding that which is being
sentenced over, and this is the sort of thing that is raised.

~~~
foldr
I think what people find difficult to understand is how this could be
construed as mitigating. No-one can seriously think that a 13 year old girl is
in a position of powerto "predate" on an adult man. What the defence really
seems to be doing is trying to blame the victim by saying it was her fault for
being horny rather than the perpetrator's fault for failing to exercise any
self restraint.

~~~
madaxe_again
Bob was the prosecution, responding to a query on a defence mitigation
statement by the judge - honestly, if you read the transcript, the context is
clear.

~~~
foldr
Surely the fact that the prosecution said it makes it worse.

------
1337biz
This is a textbook example on how to create a demonizing narrative with little
to no facts at all.

Guilt by association, throwing in the Russians and Holocaust deniers, some
evil billionaires - it has it all. Funneling foreign money into national
elections is always happening - through foundations, local branches, tax
location, and so on.

Absent from all of this are of cause any facts on what Cambridge Analytica is
doing different than being just another programmatic ad buying firm.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
It's a compelling narrative, and yes it would be easy to dismiss as being
conspiracy theory.

However, it's the first time I've seen an answer to the question "who's
driving Brexit" that seems realistic.

Mercer, Bannon, Thiel, et al. and their psy-ops arms - what's their
involvement now in the French election. Presumably if the article's narrative
is factual they're trying to get Le Pen elected to further fragment Europe?
Which French campaigns have had unsolicited calls from AIQ/AIS/Cambridge
Analytica?

~~~
1337biz
You find it realistic.

I find it another pseudo-logicical explanation for those who can't accept the
fact that most voters don't agree with them. Who are trying to justify their
own moral superiority by pretending those who don't agree with them were all
scammed and cheated into that believe.

Nothing personal but since we are already picking those narratives that we
favor let me just pick the other extreme.

~~~
andybak
> most voters don't agree with them

Replace 'most' with 'a slender majority' if you want to retain the fig-leaf of
objectivity and rationality that you seem to covet.

Politics is littered with examples of groups who were deceived into voting
against their own self-interest. This isn't some kind of bizarre conspiracy -
it's business as usual. It strikes me as more bizarre to pretend that
democracy is some kind of idealized machine that extracts considered, rational
decisions from large aggregates of people. It never was and never has been.
It's simply the "least worst"[1] way of choosing our leaders.

[1] [https://richardlangworth.com/worst-form-of-
government](https://richardlangworth.com/worst-form-of-government)

~~~
1337biz
I am not here to defend Democracy or 'the system'. In fact I noticed the
fallback to those fundamental critique comes always up when one's own favorite
did lose. How the voting system works has been known for decades. It is the
job of politicians and all those trying to shape the public opinion to
convince people to vote.

~~~
andybak
> In fact I noticed the fallback to those fundamental critique comes always up
> when one's own favorite did lose.

Of course. We have vested interest in complaining when we 'lose' and praising
the outcome when we 'win'.

But your original post seemed to be dismissive of the idea that there is
anything to be worried about. Even if we agree on the existence of a major
cognitive bias here - it's irrelevant to the question of whether there is a
real issue that should be addressed.

The problem with a "backdoor in democracy" is similar to the problem with
cryptography backdoors. You can't control who'll make use of them so everyone
should be scared.

~~~
1337biz
It is similar to the US campaign finance reform - if you want to spend money
for your candidate you will always find a way to do it. For me it is much more
surprising why so little money has been funneled into EU elections so far.

~~~
fche
Maybe they thought they were invulnerable.

------
samsonradu
There have been a lot of speculation and finger pointing at social media
platforms for influencing high-level decisions. What I'd like to ask the
elders here on HN is: Wasn't this always the case? Were elections in the 70s
80s all fair and fact-based? Were not political parties using information to
their advantage and for pushing their own agenda?

Because to me it seems that only the tools have changed, rest is pretty much
played by the same book.

~~~
probablybroken
There weren't that many traditional news outlets in the past, and those that
publish flagrant lies tend to get a reputation for this ( not that that ever
stopped some of them ). Nowadays, I barely recognise half of the sources I see
material forwarded from, which allows a range of much more extreme opinions /
alt facts to be shared with the world without any real requirement for self
regulation ( obviously, this is a contentious point, but I do feel things are
a lot worse in this regard now ).

~~~
CM30
Over in the UK, a fairly large percentage of the traditional news outlets
available published flagrant lies on a regular basis and still remained
extremely popular despite a reputation for the same. Like the Daily Mail,
every tabloid in existence, every free paper in existence and arguably a
decent percentage of local ones.

And that hasn't changed much since. I mean, the Daily Mail (if Wikipedia is
accurate here) was the most popular paper in the world in 1902.

Either way, I suspect the sources the British public have access to haven't
exactly gotten much worse (or better) since then.

------
jonyt
Personally I think Brexit was a bad idea but I don't understand the sentiment
in the article. Back when Obama was using big data (and yes, big money) to win
the election he was hailed as smart and tech-savvy. Now when it's the Brexit
supporters doing it democracy is coming to an end. How about instead of
weakening people's support for democracy leftists instead try to win
elections?

~~~
corford
Yes, except I don't recall Obama using big data to blast people's facebook
feeds with fake news citations, irrefutably wrong numbers and xenophobic clap
trap.

"With great power comes great responsibility" and all that...

This is the problem with the far right (or any political extreme). They're not
interested in debate or acting responsibly.

An excellent example was Le Penn's 'debate' a few days ago with Macron. It was
a fucking shambles and embarrassing to watch. She had the whole of France
watching - it was her time to shine and capture voters with her programme. She
failed miserably because other than soundbites, there's no meat on the bone.
The FN cannot withstand the sunlight and rigour of genuine, intellectually
honest political debate.

They (and all other extreme parties) know this of course and so their solution
is to try and debase the system itself. To convert people from reason to
"gut".

Given that back drop, yes, it's a little concerning extremists are awakening
to the awesome power of big data. Coupled with the delivery mechanism and
reach of the internet, it's a propagandist's wet dream and potentially
extremely destabilising if left unchecked.

~~~
Boothroid
'To convert people from reason to "gut".'

Here in the UK all discussion of migration was successfully suppressed for
decades by shouts of racism from the left. Perhaps if a sensible debate on
migration had been allowed, and perhaps if the EU had been willing to yield a
little more than absolutely nothing around controlling migration, Brexit might
have been avoided.

~~~
corford
I'm not sure it has much to do with the EU. The UK's domestic politicians did
a poor job of managing migration. Had the brains in London allocated proper
resources to the North and applied some common sense approaches to where
migrants were placed and in what numbers, most issues would have been
resolved.

Don't forget too that around half (iirc?) of annual migrants arriving in the
UK come from outside the EU...

------
zakk
On the hand hand, Trump supporters are claiming that Soros is -- more or less
legally -- financing left wing organisations and influencing the political
debate in many countries.

You know what? Both of them are right, and actually this is not a new
phenomenon, rich people have been influencing democracy for a long time now.

~~~
pavlov
George Soros is a euphemistic stand-in for "the international conspiracy of
rich Jews" \-- a persistent scapegoat with a very sordid history.

~~~
beaconstudios
is he? My understanding is that he actually funds organisations like the Open
Society Foundation and Media Matters - just because he's Jewish doesn't mean
he's a stand-in for old conspiracies, especially if he actually does fund
progressive political organisations.

~~~
matt4077
Having once been a recipient of an Open Society Foundation grand on the order
of X00,000$, I have to say that both of you are right: His jewishness is
definitely used to amplify opposition to him, by people opposing him primarily
because he advocates for open democracies.

It's important to clearly state what is meant when people talk about Soros'
"liberal" or "progressive" values: the work I have seen is almost exclusively
concerned with the _mechanisms_ of politics, not the content. It is motivated
by his experience of seeing both fascism and communism devastating his native
country and opposes both extremes. The work I was involved in organised
debating competitions for students from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe and everything
in between and there's nothing "liberal" about it, unless you count allowing
women to participate on equal footing as such.

~~~
loblollyboy
How did you get one of those grants?

------
erikrothoff
I'm looking forward to the discussion on this. I'm normally quite liberal in
privacy concerns and think that a lot of people tend to overreact when it
comes to what Facebook et al does. But this just puts it all into perspective
how powerful and nefarious closed organizations can become.

------
jimduk
One irony is that these predictive/manipulative systems built on mass data and
psychology are (currently) being used by the 'right' rather than the 'left',
though they fit better philosophically with the latter.

Does anyone know of any work on the politics of trust/agency in the
information/ algorithm age ? How does a normal democratic person self educate
in this world without falling back to a siege mentality/ trust in a small
cell, or proceeding in a 'happy-go-lucky', 'life is short' manner.

My uneducated guess is this is not that different from some periods of history
(Russia, Communist Europe, French Terror, US west expansion?, Ethiopia?), but
it feels different from 1960s-90s western Europe (though maybe not - qn raised
by samsonradu in this thread).

Another way of putting the problem is as an arms race between vested interests
with advanced predictive/ manipulative systems and the general populace. This
is probably not new - does it balance out or does it get more concentrated ?

~~~
andybak
> though they fit better philosophically with the latter.

In which case you're talking about a different left to any that I would
identify with. People seem to have begun to forget that there is such a thing
as "libertarian left". On the contrary - When I first started learning about
politics I was surprised that there was any such thing as "libertarian right"
\- it seemed obvious to me in my late teens/early twenties that the right was
about maintaining power and the left was about making the world a better place
(I was naive but not an idiot - I didn't regard state socialism as belonging
to any 'authentic' left)

Power is power. Left and right are labels that shift hugely over time.

All that really exists are shifting alliances and existing power structures.
"Whoever you vote for, the government always gets in".

This is why an independent judiciary, legislative safeguards, whistleblower
laws, a free press and all the other checks and balances of a healthy
democracy are the most critical things to defend right now.

~~~
beaconstudios
I'm not sure that many right-leaning people would agree that "the right was
about maintaining power and the left was about making the world a better
place". This is a perspective I see quite often these days, and I'd like to
point out that left and right aren't equal to "good and bad". They're merely
different perspectives on the best way to structure society - and the left-
right spectrum doesn't even make that much sense in the first place, given
that (as you've noticed) most left-leaning people hold as much in contention
with marxist-leninists as they do with conservatives. So while I think you're
right that left and right shift around, I think that's partly because they're
fairly nonsense labels in the first place.

~~~
andybak
I find nothing to disagree with you on, here. I was careful to speak in the
past tense about my own views.

I still have an innate affinity with the left in an idealized form, but I
understand that there is such a thing as an intellectually valid conservative
political philosophy based on something more than self-interest.

There are scoundrels and there are the righteous (and many of us are a mix of
both). Making the world better for everyone in it is the only political aim I
can fully support. If we agree on that we still have a very difficult task
converting the aim into concrete policy decisions. Spotting scoundrels is
sadly another intractable problem.

~~~
jfnixon
Please define "better for everyone" as I think this is the source of much of
the liberal/conservative split.

~~~
battlebot
I fight the left because of Venezuela, Cuba, and every place else where
Marxist ideas have infected the minds of the masses to give assent to
dictatorship. To me, the left will never conjure anything other than the ideas
of misery, starvation, political violence, and destruction of life on a
massive scale. The Soviet Union, the gulags, China, North Korea. Not one
single success story.

~~~
andybak
You have a very narrow view of the left. How about civil rights, votes for
women, basic protection from horrific working conditions?

How about the fight against absolute monarchy. How about the American
Constitution and the Founding Fathers? Where does the term 'left' even come
from? Who were Thomas Paine and Jefferson inspired by?

The long march towards basic decency in western society has been the task of
'the left' since the Enlightenment and maybe before.

EDIT:

> The Soviet Union, the gulags, China, North Korea.

To anyone on the libertarian left these are all abhorrences. I'm much more of
a centrist than most who would identify with the left but - unless you swallow
the narrative of state socialism whole, it's hard to include these examples in
any authentic history of the left.

(not that that stopped a large percentage of leftist thinkers defending them
way past the point of decency - to their eternal shame. Read up on the split
between Sartre and Camus and the split between Orwell and most of the rest of
the British left)

EDIT 2

> and every place else where Marxist ideas have infected the minds of the
> masses to give assent to dictatorship

Luckily there's no such thing as right-wing dictatorships, eh?

------
chvid
How silly is this article?! If anything the establishment, Clinton and friends
has the most money and the biggest aparatus.

Brexit happened because EU has failed in handling urgent problems around
refugee inflow and monetary/fiscal constraints (forcing countries such as
Greece into pro-longed economic depression) plus EU's lack of democratic
legitimacy.

------
jondubois
No matter what happens, someone is going to come out of the woodwork to claim
credit for it. I don't buy the narrative that some big hedge fund guy
masterminded the whole thing while the rest of humanity stupidly played into
his hands.

A more likely scenario is that people already had some theories about
globalisation and its negative side-effects and then maybe several interest
groups used their influence to help reinforce those ideas through social
media. Let's not forget that there were also other interest groups that were
trying to promote/reinforce the opposite view point.

I don't fully buy into the echo-chamber argument. I think that by the end of
the 2017 US elections, Everyone had a pretty good understanding of both
candidates. That was probably the most transparent election we have ever seen.
If anything, there was too much information on both candidates and it just
made both of them look terrible.

~~~
tomerv
It sounds like you didn't read the article. At the least, your comment doesn't
address the main issue presented in the article: that the Brexit vote was
heavily influenced by non-UK interest groups. The article presents a pretty
solid case, with plenty of evidence of foul play.

------
jpalomaki
I admit I did not study the article very carefully, but did it point out the
actual methods used to affect people? I understand they collected data and
analysed it to be able to do micro targeting, but how was this data used in
practice? Was it Facebook adds or something else?

~~~
stevenwoo
It may have had only a tiny effect but considering the election could have
swung either way with 100,000 votes in the _right_ states so who knows.

[https://medium.com/startup-grind/how-the-trump-campaign-
buil...](https://medium.com/startup-grind/how-the-trump-campaign-built-an-
identity-database-and-used-facebook-ads-to-win-the-election-4ff7d24269ac)

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trumps-new-attack-
strate...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trumps-new-attack-strategy-
keep-clinton-voters-home-1476221895)

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-27/inside-
th...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-27/inside-the-trump-
bunker-with-12-days-to-go)

a.) identifying Clinton voters and sending negative Clinton ads based on
race/gender/policy reversals(by Clinton) to make them consider voting for
anyone else, or not voting b.) identifying voters who were on the fence and
sending them ads for Trump + identifying geographic clusters in swing states
and sending Trump there for campaign rallies

~~~
jessaustin
TFA is about the Brexit vote, not USA president.

------
tragomaskhalos
Sadly, over the past few months The Guardian has become a repository of
increasingly shrill and paranoid anti-Leave articles, although few are as
fully tin-foil-hats-on as this one.

------
smsm42
Oh dear, they used data to persuade voters and win the election. If they're
left, they are supporters of Science and Progress and thus it's natural they
win. If they're not left, they hijacked the democracy by using creepy tricks
and doomed us all.

------
monochromatic
If you don't like the result of an election, just claim that the Russians
"hacked" it somehow, or that "billionaire Trump supporters" robbed the good
guys out of the win they deserved!

Please.

------
godzillabrennus
Seems like yet another conspiracy theory to grab attention while automation
continues to eat jobs.

~~~
andybak
A lot of the things touched on in this article can be easily verified and have
been reported by multiple sources.

Whilst you might dispute the way the jigsaw has been put together, there is
definitely something troubling occurring at the nexus of data-based marketing
and the democratic system.

> while automation continues to eat jobs.

Surely concern about one does not preclude concern about the other?

------
aqsalose
The article is very interesting, but did anyone else found the surface
stylistic choices ... more than a little weird?

"The world had not yet turned."

"The details of the Trinidad project finally unlocked the mystery that was
AggregateIQ."

"[..]Is it unreasonable to see in this the possible beginnings of an
authoritarian surveillance state? [beat] A state that is bringing corporate
interests into the heart of the administration."

"Is it a telling detail, or is it a clue to something else going on?"

Instead of pseudo-Lovecraftian horror story prose, I'd prefer straightforward
presentations of the facts. It's less annoying and less confusing to read.
"The world had not yet turned." Indeed.

~~~
djhworld
I found the article was far longer than it needed to be and took a long time
to explain what actually was going on, and seemed to take a circuitous route
to its conclusion.

Saying that thought I did find it very interesting, and worrying.

What can people do about it really though? I mean, I think people vote with
conviction for whatever they vote for - and no one likes to be told they've
been conned, or made a fool of.

------
OliverJones
It's worth mentioning that this Guardian page had so much ajaxy crap embedded
it that it brought my dual-core 3ghz laptop to its knees reading it. It was
almost impossible to scroll through the article.

It would be a metaphor for the surveillance culture, if it weren't actually a
genuine sign of that culture.

------
digi_owl
Not surprised that The Guardian is running this, because ever since the
2007/2008 cricis they have proven themselves to be firmly in the champagne
left camp. Thus EU is good because EU is about European peace, full stop. Say
anything else and you get shouted down as fascist or just get to witness them
stick fingers in their ears and go "lalalala EU is peace lalalala".

------
battlebot
This article is genius is the way it depends on layers upon layers of
propaganda. It's freaking brilliant--the underlying assumption that only
leftist ideals are "correct" and "good" and thus everyone who voted against
such ideals must have somehow been manipulated into doing so or is not in
their right mind. That's the too-clever communist brain right there--write an
article to promote leftism by rejecting all the intellectual challenges to it
and then accuse the right of manipulating technology against the only true
good in the world. Never mind the true track record of leftism!

Brexit--the people have had enough of unelected EU demagogues telling them
what they can and can't do in their own country. The problem is, the UK is
probably 30 years too far gone, but we'll see.

US--Trump bested an ethically compromised internationalist after 8 years of
Americans suffering through a different ethically compromised
internationalist. There's no tricks there, it's just that Americans finally
woke up to the fact they they were being sold down the river and getting zero
in return. Plus, anyone who has been paying attention knows that the Clintons
are like Bond villains in that they have succumbed to influence peddling via
their foundation and they are implicated in many questionable deaths whose
timing could only have helped their cause. In short, the Clintons are
criminals, clever ones, but still criminals.

On the matter of Reddit--I don't think the centipedes are paid shills. I have
no evidence to back that other than the fact that I have been involved in
other grassroots movements and I can tell the difference between astroturf and
the real deal. The people on The_Donald are the real deal, and they fought
hard to even have a voice at all, what with the owners of reddit always
manipulating the underlying tech to marginalize them. That the The_Donald even
still exists on Reddit is because if it got banned, approximately half of
Reddit's user base would migrate elsewhere overnight. The_Donald is followed
by more people than nearly the rest of Reddit combined, although the people
who run that site have done their best to cover up the facts. And yet,
The_Donald doesn't get the ban hammer because to do so would put them in
extremely hot water with their advertisers and investors. Reddit needs Trump
supporters far more than Trump supporters need Reddit, however--and that's
something that everyone in smug Silicon Valley would be wise to remember--I'm
looking at you, Apple, Facebook, and Google--you know you tried to influence
the election outcome, too. We all know. So beware.

As far the allegations about Jews running the world--I have no idea who runs
the world. I grew up in NY State and I can say with some certainty that Jews
and Jewish interests have an undue influence on politics and commerce which is
outsized compared to their overall numbers. It's not some grand conspiracy,
it's just that like all groups, the insiders would rather deal with like-
minded folks versus non-liked minded folks because it guarantees their own
success while diminishing competition. It's a mind-set as old as civilization.
It's not anti-semitic to observe this, it is only anti-semitic to bring up the
fact that certain Jews are far-left and that they, like Soros, are promoting a
far-left agenda that runs against the political and economic interests of
literally everyone else on the planet. You can't say that global
internationalism is anything but anti-democratic at the local level. Just look
at Agenda 21, or at any globalist initiative, and you see what I'm talking
about. It all looks benign, but slowly and surely, individual rights are being
removed as the ownership of everything of any real value is being trickled to
the very top. All the while the left proclaims that they are doing this for
the people--which is the big lie the left has always used while robbing
regular people of everything.

Again, I don't think this is some Jewish conspiracy--there are plenty of good
Jewish folks who are caught on the wrong side of it like the rest of us. Maybe
it's an inner-circle kind of thing amongst billionaires? There are many rings,
many facets and many competing interests, I'm sure. But the one common trend
is the continued disenfranchisement of the regular citizens both politically
and economically. We simply can't have any more of that.

------
paganel
Maybe it'a because the Brits (as in the civil population) never really got to
experience the horrors of war for the last 200 years, at least. I live in an
Eastern European country, and each and every village around these parts of the
world has a stone monument in the center-village area commemorating the names
of those that died in WW1. Lots more died in WW2, but because that happened as
we were fighting the Soviet Union no monuments were erected while we were
under communist rule following WW2.

Talking about communist rule that was the result of WW2, just today I learned
from my father that one of the hardest things for my parents raising me as a
kid under communist rule was the central heating and electrical power would go
out at the same time in the middle of winter. Now, imagine raising a 3-old kid
while there are -10 or -15 degrees Celsius outside and for you with no way to
warm your apartment (as an aside, I think that the fact that Cuba is a
tropical country was one of the main factors of Castro staying in power for
that long, when you don't have to fear that your kids will die of cold then
you become a lot more acceptant).

In comparison, the EU, with all its quirks, is like heaven on Earth. The
Leavers deserve whatever is that will come to them, even if they didn't know
what they were voting for.

~~~
zigzigzag
_Maybe it 's because the Brits (as in the civil population) never really got
to experience the horrors of war for the last 200 years, at least._

Are you serious? What do you think the Blitz was?

~~~
eropple
The Blitz was huge. It was terrible. It was also _across a channel_. He's
talking about ground-level, street-to-street fighting, where you see men clomp
into the town in which you live and remake your society, and that's very
arguably a difference of kind. Britain has not seen fighting on its soil that
was not internecine in the better part of _a thousand years_ (honorable
mention to the French who bailed on Fishguard Bay, though). The countries he's
talking about were stomped on in living memory.

~~~
quirkafleeg
He didn't say that what happened to other people and not him long before he
was even born was worse than what happened during the Blitz, he said British
people "never really got to experience the horrors" of WWII, which is simply a
denial of fact, offensive and the words of someone who doesn't know even basic
history.

Not everywhere in Eastern Europe was Stalingrad or Warsaw, particularly in
fascist, anti-Semitic states like Romania, which eagerly invaded the USSR
alongside its Nazi ally, and was second only to Nazi Germany in murdering
Jews.

~~~
paganel
> He didn't say that what happened to other people and not him long before he
> was even born was worse than what happened during the Blitz, he said British
> people "never really got to experience the horrors" of WWII, which is simply
> a denial of fact, offensive and the words of someone who doesn't know even
> basic history.

I know my basic history, thank you very much. I moved office recently and in
my way to work I'm passing on a street which used to have a Jewish cemetery
until 1942 (or 1943). At that point all the tombstones were taken way, the
buried taken who knows where and some garden was built in that place. On my
way to my previous office I used to pass on the street where 2 Jewish
synagogues had been burned in 1941, by the members of a right wing party which
was all powerful back then.

> "never really got to experience the horrors" of WWII, which is simply a
> denial of fact, offensive and the words of someone who doesn't know even
> basic history.

Have the British experienced the horrors of communism, which was brought to us
directly by WW2? No, they have not.

> Not everywhere in Eastern Europe was Stalingrad or Warsaw, particularly in
> fascist, anti-Semitic states like Romania, which eagerly invaded the USSR
> alongside its Nazi ally, and was second only to Nazi Germany in murdering
> Jews.

We invaded USSR because of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact, which saw the Soviets
take part of our country (I'll let you search on wikipedia which part
exactly). I, for myself, do not think that was the best decision for us to
take, but saying that we invaded USSR like we were the Golden Horde searching
for things to loot then you're utterly mistaken.

> offensive and the words of someone who doesn't know even basic history.

I don't care if people get so easily offended by things that are very close to
the truth (as in we can't never know the historical truth 100%). To put it
more bluntly, I was always asking myself as a kid, in my head: "Has my grand-
mother been raped by the Russians as they entered our country?". Answer: she
was probably not, or, if she was, it doesn't matter, now, as she's dead, but
that question was put by a lot of kids and grand-kids after WW2 all the way
from Berlin to the gates of Moscow (you can replace "Russian soldiers" with
"German soldiers" as you go East). What I'm trying to say is that things on
the Continent have been fucking bleak, and what happened in Britain, as a
comparison, is kids' play. I don't care if you find that offensive or not.

~~~
zigzigzag
_What I 'm trying to say is that things on the Continent have been fucking
bleak, and what happened in Britain, as a comparison, is kids' play_

Putting aside your ridiculous belief that Brits did not suffer in WW2, what I
don't get about your position is that the EU is run by powerful, entirely
unaccountable leaders who very frequently and publicly take a dump on the
entire concept of democracy and voting. The EU's law making is done in secret,
which is similar only to North Korea in opacity.

[https://euobserver.com/institutional/136630](https://euobserver.com/institutional/136630)

And the EU is busy telling eastern European countries they're going to be
punished financially and legally for not adopting "european values" (as these
countries are without a doubt in Europe geographically, what that means of
course is "german values").

Of all the people who should be attuned to the dangers of powerful leaders who
dislike referendums, citizens of ex-Soviet countries should be the _MOST_
aware. Yet you are running headlong into another giant undemocratic bloc.

------
hugh4life
Another way to hijack democracy is to purposely invite people into your
country who you think will vote for your political party.

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-
order/6418456...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-
order/6418456/Labour-wanted-mass-immigration-to-make-UK-more-multicultural-
says-former-adviser.html)

[http://www.businessinsider.com/tony-blair-brexit-
immigration...](http://www.businessinsider.com/tony-blair-brexit-immigration-
eu-referendum-2016-10)

~~~
the_why_of_y
That would be a funny plan, considering that immigrants to western countries
tend to hold more conservative values than natives, and thus should be
expected to vote for conservative parties.

~~~
smsm42
Any data to support the idea immigrants vote more conservative than natives in
UK? Would also be useful to specifically consider recent immigrants, as
immigrants 30 years ago might have totally different demography.

