Trump wants to be sole arbiter of truth ... just like a real dictator
So part of Trump's agenda is about silencing competing voices, especially expert ones.
That's one of his key motives for intimidating America's elite universities, for pursuing media companies for outlandishly large sums, for shutting down America's public broadcasters PBS and NPR, for unleashing an anti-science health secretary, RFK Jr, against the US National Institutes of Health and the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
But Trump's goal is much bigger than merely strangling voices speaking inconvenient truths. All dictators are censors. Xi Jinping, for example, has instructed the Chinese Communist Party that 'control over the internet is a matter of life and death for the Party'.
Trump goes further. His original campaign mastermind, Steve Bannon, famously set out the MAGA philosophy. Rather than conduct endless debates with the enemy in a contest to win an argument, simply 'flood the zone with shit'. Not with counterarguments or factual rebuttals. Just shit.
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It's a method uniquely suited to the age of the conspiracy theory, which is not new, amplified by 'social' media, which is.
Trump is perhaps the world's most effective creator and promoter of conspiracy theories. There's a Wikipedia entry titled 'List of conspiracy theories promoted by Donald Trump'. As of Monday, it contained 87 separate theories. It has an addendum of other conspiracy theorists whom Trump has either supported, endorsed or hired.
The conspiracy theory that first brought Trump to mainstream political attention was the 'birther' claim that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, and therefore disqualified from the presidency, and a secret Muslim, to boot.
He accused the 'mainstream media' of refusing to report the theory. To the conspiratorially minded, this confirmed that the media must be part of the conspiracy. Such internal consistency is key to the conspiracy theory; it's self-confirming.
'The function of conspiracy theories,' writes Yale professor of philosophy Jason Stanley, 'is to impugn and malign their targets, but not necessarily by convincing their audience that they are true,' he writes in his 2018 book How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them.
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Hannah Arendt, he points out, argued in her work The Origins of Totalitarianism that a characteristic of modern masses is that 'they do not believe in anything visible, in the reality of their own experience; they do not trust their eyes and ears, but only their imaginations'.
Stanley suggests that the birther claim was obviously far-fetched, but that it was nonetheless effective even among people who didn't fully believe it. Because conspiracy theories 'provide simple explanations for otherwise irrational emotions such as resentment or xenophobic fear in the face of perceived threats'.
This is comforting for an anxious people, and once the comfort is accepted by a public 'its members will cease to be guided by reason in political deliberation'. Amplified by the staccato cognitive bombardment of 'social' media, this is a people ripe for mass confusion, delusion and doubt.
The leader, in this epistemology, becomes the sole source of truth. Is unemployment going up or down? Is it American carnage or the golden age? Who knows any more?
The Washington Post 's slogan is 'democracy dies in darkness'. But Bannon and Trump aren't trying to make America's screens go dark; they are lighting them up with disorienting flashes of non-stop nonsense. Democracy, they believe, dies amid induced dementia.
Bannon promised a reporter in 2016 that the coming era would be 'as exciting as the 1930s', the time of tyrants rising. So far, so good.
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West Australian
24 minutes ago
- West Australian
Putin backed Ukraine security protections at summit: US
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Perth Now
24 minutes ago
- Perth Now
Putin backed Ukraine security protections at summit: US
US envoy Steve Witkoff says Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed at his summit with US President Donald Trump to allow Ukraine's allies to offer it a security guarantee as part of an eventual deal to end the war. "We were able to win the following concession: that the United States could offer Article 5-like protection, which is one of the real reasons why Ukraine wants to be in NATO," he told CNN. Witkoff said it was the first time he had heard Putin agree to that. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, speaking at a news conference in Brussels with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said that "we welcome President Trump's willingness to contribute to Article 5-like security guarantees for Ukraine. and the 'coalition of the willing' -including the European Union - is ready to do its share". Witkoff, offering some of the first details of what was discussed at Friday's summit in Alaska, said the two sides agreeing to "robust security guarantees that I would describe as game-changing". He added that Russia said that it would make a legislative commitment not to go after any additional territory in Ukraine. Zelenskiy thanked the United States for recent signals that it was willing to support security guarantees for Ukraine but said the details remained unclear. "It is important that America agrees to work with Europe to provide security guarantees for Ukraine," he said, "But there are no details how it will work, and what America's role will be, Europe's role will be and what the EU can do and this is our main task, we need security to work in practice like Article 5 of NATO, and we consider EU accession to be part of the security guarantees." Witkoff defended Trump's decision to abandon his push for Russian to agree to an immediate ceasefire, saying the president had pivoted toward a peace deal to end the three-and-a-half-year war because so much progress was made. "We covered almost all the other issues necessary for a peace deal," Witkoff said. "We began to see some moderation in the way they're thinking about getting to a final peace deal," he said. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio insisted there would be "additional consequences" as Trump warned before meeting with Putin, if they failed to reach a ceasefire. But Rubio noted that there was not going to be any sort of deal on a truce reached when Ukraine was not at the talks. "Now, ultimately, if there isn't a peace agreement, if there isn't an end of this war, the president's been clear: there are going to be consequences," Rubio said on US broadcaster ABC. "But we're trying to avoid that. And the way we're trying to avoid those consequences is with an even better consequence, which is peace, the end of hostilities." He also said "we're not at the precipice of a peace agreement" and that getting there would not be easy and would take a lot of work. "We made progress in the sense that we identified potential areas of agreement but there remains some big areas of disagreement. So we're still a long ways off," Rubio said. Zelenskiy and European leaders are scheduled to meet Monday with Trump at the White House. They heard from the president after his meeting with Putin. "I think everybody agreed that we had made progress. Maybe not enough for a peace deal but we are on the path for the first time," Witkoff said. He added: "The fundamental issue, which is some sort of land swap, which is obviously ultimately in the control of the Ukrainians - that could not have been discussed at this meeting" with Putin. "We intend to discuss it on Monday. Hopefully we have some clarity on it and hopefully that ends up in a peace deal very, very soon."
Sky News AU
4 hours ago
- Sky News AU
Alaska meeting dubbed ‘win for Putin' as President Donald Trump gives up on ceasefire, signals agreement with Russian demand
The latest attempt to bring an end to the war between Russia and Ukraine has been dubbed a 'win for Putin' after President Donald Trump walked away from demands for an immediate ceasefire. President Trump had gone into the Alaska meeting demanding President Putin agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine, with the United States threatening to place massive sanctions on any country that continued to buy Russian oil. However, the US President came out of the meeting having dropped the demand, a move Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy suggested would make ending the war more difficult. Despite this, President Trump told Fox News' Sean Hannity he and Putin had discussed land transfers and security guarantees for Ukraine and had "largely agreed". "I think we're pretty close to a deal," President Trump said, before adding: "Ukraine has to agree to it (and) maybe they'll say no". Asked what he would advise President Zelenskyy to do, the US President said they have "gotta make a deal'. "Look, Russia is a very big power and they're not," he said. Discussing the meeting on Sky News Australia, Australian Strategic Policy Institute Senior Defence Analyst Malcolm Davis said the meeting had been a 'win for Putin' and 'a disaster for Trump'. 'I don't think anyone was expecting agreement to be reached on a ceasefire, let alone a peace deal, but essentially what happened was that Putin gained international recognition and basically credibility as an international leader, that Trump gave him, which he shouldn't have done,' he said. 'Trump really didn't achieve much… (He) seems to have adopted Putin's position of moving straight to a peace deal rather than a ceasefire. 'Putin has not retreated from his maximalist demands that really he reiterated in 2024 and going back to 2022.' According to Reuters, the deal proposed by President Putin would involve Ukraine ceding the eastern Ukrainian provinces of Luhansk and Donestk – a large portion of which it still controls. In return, Russia would agree to freeze the front lines in the southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia and hand back much smaller areas of land it has occupied in the northern and northeastern provinces of Sumy and Kharkiv, Russia currently holds approximately 440 square km in the Sumy and Kharkiv regions, while Ukraine controls around 6,600 square km of the Donbas – almost all in the province of Donestk. Mr David said such an agreement would expose Ukraine to greater risk in the future. "He is basically asking for Ukraine to withdraw from the Donbas… and if Ukraine were to accede to that demand, that they would then give up what's known as the fortress belt, which is a belt of cities and towns that are critical to their defence,' he told Sky News. 'That would then allow Putin to be very well placed to launch further attacks deep into Ukraine at a time of his choosing. 'So I think what you will see tomorrow in this meeting between Zelenskyy and Trump and with the Europeans there as well is that Zelenskyy and the Europeans will push back against any demands or any suggestion by Trump that Ukraine give up the territory in the Donbas. 'Because that would essentially sow the seeds for a much wider war down the track in Ukraine and potentially beyond Ukraine. 'The Baltic states, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, understand that they are the front line that if Ukraine is allowed to fall to Russian aggression, that the Baltic states will be next.' President Zelenskyy has consistently said he cannot concede territory without changes to Ukraine's constitution, and Kyiv sees Donetsk's "fortress cities", such as Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, as a bulwark against further Russian advances. In a Truth Social post after the Alaska meeting, President Trump said he had spoken to President Zelenskyy and various European leaders during a late night phone call. 'It was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a Peace Agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere Ceasefire Agreement, which often times do not hold up,' he said. 'President Zelenskyy will be coming to D.C., the Oval Office, on Monday afternoon. If all works out, we will then schedule a meeting with President Putin. Potentially, millions of people's lives will be saved. Thank you for your attention to this matter!' In his own post on X, President Zelenskyy said the fact Russia had rebuffed calls for a ceasefire 'complicates the situation'. 'The positions are clear. A real peace must be achieved, one that will be lasting, not just another pause between Russian invasions. Killings must stop as soon as possible, the fire must cease both on the battlefield and in the sky, as well as against our port infrastructure," he wrote. President Zelenskyy also called for Ukrainian prisoners of war and civilians to be released and the children abducted by Russia to be returned. He also reiterated the importance of security guarantees, suggesting there had been 'positive signals' from President Trump on the matter. 'It is important that Europeans are involved at every stage to ensure reliable security guarantees together with America. We also discussed positive signals from the American side regarding participation in guaranteeing Ukraine's security,' he said. Asked about the negotiations between Presidents Trump and Putin, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said it was good President Trump was an "advocate for peace", but that Russia must not be rewarded for his actions. 'What we want to see is that the sovereignty of Ukraine be protected and that the illegal and immoral invasion conducted by Mr Putin and Russia are not rewarded,' he said. 'It's also important because of the precedent that Russia's invasion sets of a powerful nation invading a much smaller nation and engaging in the brutality, which we have seen at great cost to the Ukrainian people, but also at a great cost to Russian soldiers who've lost their lives as well."
