The pleasure of having one's prejudices confirmed

I forced myself to watch Web of Chaos, Tuesday night’s state-funded TVNZ documentary that promised “a deep dive into the world of disinformation”.

It’s sad that I should regard it as a chore to watch something I helped to pay for, but that’s the way it is. I wanted to satisfy myself that Web of Chaos was exactly what I expected, and so it turned out. There are few things more richly satisfying than having one’s prejudices confirmed.

The first clue was in the name of the director: Justin Pemberton. I vaguely recalled the name from somewhere else, and it soon came to me. Pemberton made Capital in the 21st Century, which I described in 2019 as a masterpiece of the propagandist’s art.

I wrote then that “The film uses every trick in the documentary-maker’s book to dramatise its message, which is that contemporary capitalism is overwhelmingly rigged in favour of the ultra-rich and basically rotten to the core”.

Web of Chaos uses similar techniques – powerful images, slick editing, ominous music – to create a sense of dread and foreboding. It’s a clever piece of work that will have chilled the hearts of anyone open to its message, which is that shadowy, dark forces on the far Right (that term again) are using the internet to promote hatred, division and paranoia.

If the name of the director wasn’t a pointer to the likely tone of the doco, the identities of the participants certainly were. The names were almost comically predictable: self-described “disinformation researcher” Byron C Clark, cultural historian Kate Hannah from the shadowy Disinformation Project, “media literacy expert” and activist Sanjana Hattotuwa (I presume that being an expert on “media literacy” means we can trust him to tell us which sources of information are safe), celebrity TV reporter David Farrier (memorably, if unflatteringly, described by Sean Plunket this week as a gutter-snipe journalist), the achingly woke Marc Daalder, Newsroom’s in-house proselytiser on climate change and right-wing extremism, and University of Otago philosophy professor Lisa Ellis, the one name unfamiliar to me, whose online resumé tells us she writes about “climate adaptation justice”, whatever that may be, and edits a magazine called Political Theory. Enough said.

In other words, the usual suspects: a tight little coterie of mutually supporting (and apparently well-resourced) activists marching in lockstep with a radical leftist government and mainstream media. All are caught up in, and simultaneously promulgate, a moral panic over so-called disinformation, which can loosely be defined as any information or opinion they dislike.

So … not exactly a balanced line-up, but polemical documentaries like this – even ones funded, albeit involuntarily, by the taxpayer – don’t pretend to be balanced. Would I turn to any of these “experts” for guidance on what I may safely watch, read and hear? Absolutely not. No one should.

No surprises, either, in the political phenomena that the doco presented as proof of the far Right’s baneful influence: Brexit, climate change denial, Donald Trump, toxic masculinity, evangelical Christianity (white Christianity, to be precise) and pandemic conspiracy theories all got a raking over.

There was talk of gullible people falling down rabbit holes, yet it occurred to me that the participants may have fallen down a few themselves. (Ah, I can almost hear them say, but their rabbit holes are okay.) They have immersed themselves in the same febrile, conspiratorial netherworld as the people they rail against. Perhaps they all deserve each other.

It also occurred to me (as it did with Stuff’s recent Fire and Fury documentary) that by amplifying online hysteria and paranoia, and probably doing their enemies a favour by doing so, they become part of the problem they purport to deplore. A detached observer – someone living in the real world, perhaps, and thus immune to overheated conspiracy theories from either side – could hardly be blamed for wishing a plague on all their houses.

What particularly struck me about Web of Chaos was the feeling that what really vexed the participants most is that they’re unable to control the digital conversation. Much of the leftist idealism that drove the internet in its early years has evaporated and anarchy has moved in. This is not how it was supposed to play out.

This is not to deny that some of the online content deplored by the virtuous participants in Web of Chaos is poisonous – but in the information wars, the poison flows both ways. The documentary didn’t mention neo-Marxist vitriol on Twitter or the routine cancellation of any opinions, no matter how reasoned or moderate, that run counter to woke orthodoxy. Neither did it consider the possibility that conservative opinion has been driven underground because it was locked out of mainstream social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter.

Extremism is bound to thrive when dissent is suppressed by members of a pharisaical caste that takes upon itself the right to determine what others may read and hear. This was the less than surprising conclusion to be drawn from Web of Chaos – a documentary accurately assessed by the aforementioned Sean Plunket as having the same level of journalistic integrity as Fire and Fury, but with the important difference that it was made using public money. Hence we all become accomplices in our own indoctrination.

And speaking of brazen, state-funded journalistic bias, how about the latest Sunday programme on TVNZ? In a lifetime of television viewing I’ve seen some atrocious reportage, but rarely anything so egregiously slanted as Mark Crysell’s report on the consequences of the US Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade.

Crysell took it as given that it’s a fundamental human right to take the life of an unborn child. Not for a millisecond did he bother himself with the consideration that many of the people watching his report find abortion deeply repugnant. Insofar as objections to abortion were acknowledged at all, they were presented as being confined to a slightly mad and dangerous religious fringe.

He informed us that what’s unfolding in Texas, where abortion is now illegal unless the mother’s life is threatened, is a “human tragedy”. But wait! This could be to New Zealand’s benefit, Crysell revealed, because disenchanted American medical professionals are thinking of emigrating. This could be the solution, he suggested, to the staffing crisis in our health sector.

Really? I’m not sure I’d welcome doctors and nurses who want to leave the US for the sole reason that they’re no longer allowed to kill foetuses. I subscribe to the quaint idea that we’d be better off with health professionals who are concerned with saving lives rather than terminating them. Yet Crysell portrayed the Texas abortionists as being motivated by high principle. It was a striking illustration of how grotesquely warped the abortion cult has become.

As is invariably the case in media coverage of abortion, the unborn child was unmentioned and invisible. Easier and more convenient to ignore it.

Crysell’s report was a “f*** you” gesture to all the mugs in Sunday’s audience whom he must have known would find its tone offensive. They pay his salary and pick up the tab for his flights, hotel bills and rental cars (not that they have any say in the matter), and in return he exercises an assumed right to impose on them his personal prejudices on a profoundly contentious issue.

What a contemptible creep. As an arrogant abuse of media power, it’s equal to anything Rupert Murdoch ever dreamed up.

 

A masterpiece of the propagandist's art

(First published in The Dominion Post and on Stuff.co.nz, October 31.)

The New Zealand-made documentary Capital in the 21^st Century is a mightily impressive piece of film making.

Inspired by the best-selling 2014 book of the same name by the left-wing French economist Thomas Piketty, it’s taut, fast-moving and masterfully edited. The pace never lets up.

Auckland-based director Justin Pemberton, who previously made films on Richie McCaw (Chasing Great) and New Zealand’s triumphs at the 1960 Rome Olympics (The Golden Hour), makes inventive use of graphics, montages, music and clips from movies – The Grapes of Wrath, Les Miserables – to keep the viewer engaged.

Originally screened as part of the New Zealand International Film Festival and now on commercial release, Capital in the 21^st Century has received admiring reviews. Some critics say it translated Piketty’s 700-page book, which by many accounts was hard going, into something easily digestible and entertaining.

The film uses every trick in the documentary-maker’s book to dramatise its message, which is that contemporary capitalism is overwhelmingly rigged in favour of the ultra-rich and basically rotten to the core.

Viewers receptive to that message, which I suspect includes most of the people who paid to see the film, will have come away more convinced than ever that capitalism is wicked and should be dismantled.

As I say, an impressive piece of film-making – in fact a masterpiece of the propagandist’s art.

The basics of effective propaganda film-making are no mystery. They consist of being highly selective about the information presented, which means carefully excluding anything that doesn’t conform with the desired message, and then delivering it in the manner most likely to manipulate the viewer’s emotions.

The American film maker Michael Moore, famous for the documentaries Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11, is a master of these techniques. But with this film, Moore’s status as king of cinematic agitprop and darling of the film festival set must be seriously challenged.

As with all the best propaganda movies, there is a grain of truth in Pemberton’s film. It focuses relentlessly on the excesses of global corporate capitalism, the emergence of a super-wealthy elite and the disparities between rich and poor. It conveys this message via a succession of eloquent talking heads and damning images, many of them chosen for maximum emotional impact rather than veracity or strict relevance to the script.

Even a defender of capitalism can nod in agreement with some of the points made. Unrestrained greed is no easier to justify in the 21^st century than it was in the 19^th.

But what Capital in the 21^st Century lacks is any notion of balance, because propaganda films, by definition, aren’t remotely interested in balance. The moment the existence of an alternative, competing narrative is acknowledged, a propaganda movie’s premise is weakened. Propaganda is never about presenting two sides of a story.

It’s no surprise, then, that the film doesn’t mention inconvenient facts such as World Bank figures that show 1.1 billion fewer people are living in extreme poverty than in 1990. Most of the people who have been lifted out of poverty in that time live in the same capitalist economies that Capital in the 21^st Century damns as concentrating massive wealth in the hands of a tiny elite.

Neither does the film mention that life expectancy is steadily improving around the world, because this doesn’t gel with its resolutely pessimistic portrayal of how humanity is faring under capitalism.

It shouldn’t have been too hard to find a talking head willing to point out that ordinary people generally do well in market economies where the excesses of capitalism are moderated by liberal democratic government, as in New Zealand. Capitalism and democracy are the magic combination.

Such countries consistently lead global rankings not only for prosperity but for longevity, freedom and respect for human rights, which is why they are a beacon to people desperate to escape corrupt and oppressive states in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.  

Hardly anyone, other than the fictional Gordon Gekko in Wall Street, argues that unbridled capitalism is the pinnacle of human civilisation. It’s a matter of getting the balance right, as many countries do.

But Capital in the 21^st Century isn’t interested in such nuances. It conveys the impression that capitalism is incapable of being anything other than exploitative and unfair.

And here’s the interesting thing. Apart from a general pitch in favour of a tax crackdown on the super-rich, the film doesn’t put forward any other economic model as an alternative to capitalism.

At the end, I was left wondering what system the film maker would prefer us to adopt. It can't be socialism, because that's been a wretched failure wherever it's been tried. But the film doesn't say, and I think that's either a copout or dishonest.