Why 'pan-Africanist' influencers and Ibrahim Traoré fans dey push fake claim about coup
Social media bin dey full of posts wey claim say coup dey go on. Dramatic video comot wey show sojas dey waka for road comot platforms as AI generated and presenter led reports bin get millions of views for YouTube.
Di management consultant tell BBC say, "I bin really worry, really fear, I bin tink say sometin dey happened."
But di claims around 19 May na lie.
Dem be di most recent example of lie-lie rumours wey dey spread about coups for West Africa, wey dey raisee tensions for region wey recently don see plenti military takeovers.
Ivory Coast wey be one of di few French speaking kontris wey still be paddi wit di West, go hold presidential elections later dis year.
Sabi pipo believe say e fit tirn target for dis kain disinformation wit tori to attack di electoral process.
Dis na bicos di Ivorian president Alassane Ouatrra wan run for fourth term in office and e dey seen as pro-Western - and im critics accuse am say e dey jor--jor wit kontris wey dey exploit di continent.
Ivory Coast Minister of communications Amadou Coulibaly tell BBC say dem don trace di origin of di fake informate go "neighbouring kontris" but im no add any oda informate.
Di rumour be like say e comot from kasal wit Burkina Faso and dey promoted by growing wave of self styled pan-Africanist influencers.
Dem reject ties wit di West, dey often support Russia and generate tok-tok across di continent to reach kontris like Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and South Africa.
Di influencers don also promote pipo like Burkina Faso military leader Capt Ibrahim Traoré wey seize power for coup for 2022.
Traoré dey show imself as pan-Africanist and get plenti genuine support from young pipo across di continent who dey see am as leader wey dey stand up to di West.
Alex Vines, wey be di director of di Africa Programme at Chatham House think tank, tok say di influencers dey try to sow doubt on top di exsisting political leadership by say dem spreaf or ginger coup rumours to shift public confidence for di current institutions.
E tell BBC say dem dey "find beta market of readers wey wan see more assertive African leaders wey dey developmental and dey bring peace and prosperity".
Even though analysts dey suggest say dis Ivory Coast rumours resemble one Russian sponsored campaign, proof no dey say Russia get hand inside.
Di kontri don dey linked to influence operations for French-speaking West African kontris bifor. According to di US Department of Defense Africa Center for Strategic Studies, di disinformation networks wey dey connected to di Russian Wagner Group bin try to spark rumours of coup for Niger for 2023.
No proof dey say di Burkinabé authorities bin get hand inside di Ivory Coast coup rumours but pipo wey dey live for dia no spread am.
Di relationship between Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast spoil well-well ova one year ago wen Traoré accuse im neighbour say dem dey tolerate militant groups for di territory and dey house who dem call "destabilizers" and dissidents wey dey openly insult im junta.
Den dis April, im security minister blame plotters wey dey stay Ivory Coast say dem dey plan to overthrow Traoré, dis accuse bin spread well-well online.
Di BBC Global Disinformation Unite analyse mentions of di fake Ivorian coup reports for TikTok, Facebook, X and YouTube and di earlies popular post wey we find na from 19 May, wey one pro-goment activist for Burkina Faso, Harouna Sawadogo wey dey make content for im 200,000 TikTok followers about almost only Capt Traoré.
E bin post selfie video for French and Mooré wey be local language say sojas for Ivory Coast need rise up to run coup and encourage pipo to share im post.
One hour later, e post video wey show picture of Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara on top video of of rapid gunfre wit di caption wey tok sat coup dey happun even though di video clip comot from recent India-Pakistan tensions ova Kashmir.
Di next day, social media users outside di Francophone West Africa chop di misinformation and push am give English speaking audience for Nigeria, Kenya nad South Africa wey encourage oda social media users to do di same.
Wen di BBC message oga sawadogo weeks later wit di Facebook page wey dey post im live videos, to ask wia e for get im information, e no tok any details but tok say e "pray to God say Alassane [Ouattara] dey brought down by coup d'etat."
Anoda pesin wey carry di rumour post am for English, na Turkish born South African Mehmet Vefa Dag wey dey run di Truth and Solidarity Movement wey be small political organisation for South Africa.
E post plenti times for different platforms dey celebrate wetin im call "internal coup".
In fact oga Dag wey dem don drag for offensive and false comments against Jews and LGBTQ+ pipo, bin also call for coup for Ivory Coast on X for 11 May.
Wen BBC contact am for 3 JUne, wen e bin clear say no coup bin happun, e insist say e bin happun.
E tok say, "we dey very proud of whoeva run di coup comot Ouattara. E bin sell im soul to imperialists and wan destroy Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger."
E add say, "as pan-Africanists we no go eva give dem chance again. We go fight for our kontri. Dis na our continent".
Di most popular YouTube videos about di alleged kasala for Ivory Coast wey bin dey viewed millions of times, bin dey shared by channels wey position demselves as dedicated to pan-Africanism or tok-tok about Burkina Faso junta leafer.
According to Effiong Udo, wey be associate professor for Nigeria University of Uyo and president of di Pan-African Dialouge Institute, sone "opportunistic influencers" dey romantisize military goments dey pretend say na pan-Africanism wey be movement to promote unity and freedom for di continent. Dem dey do like dat, according to di prof to gain popularity and make moeny from dia content.
But e tell BBC say dis kain content na di kain tin wey young pipo wey politics don tay, de like. E add say, " I fit understand dia ginger".
Kenyan academic Karuti Kanyinga gree say dat kain social media content dey ginger desire for accountable leaders wey fit change Africa, wey no dey waste resources and dey try to comot pipo from poverty.
Di research professor of development studies for di University of Nairobi Insitiote for Development Studies tell BBC say, "but di pipo wey dey try give misinformation and disinformation about Traoré for Burkina Faso and coup ofr Ivory Coast no be agents of pan-Africanism".
Doubt no dey say Traoré get fans and for content creators na im be di tori of di moment, anytin about am and im political worldview dey do well online.
Kenyan YouTuber Godfrey Otieno wey dey produce content on trending news sat e bin nack dis winning formula months ago wen e bin post video wey report on di fake news say Capt Traoré best friend shoot am.
E tell di BBC say "e really trend" and since dat time im content na all about di Burkinabé leader.
E be one of di pipo wey repeat di fake tori about Ivory Coast for May and im video get ova 200,000 viwes. E later tok sorry say e get am wrong.
E admit say e dey make money from some of im content but e add say e no dey monetize all im posts and unlike some pipo wey dey call demselves "pan-African influencers", no be only money dey motivate am.
E tok say, "dia be pipo for di space wey dey use misinformation and disinformation to take grow dia reach and do engangement farming."
Pipo really get interest for dis content and comments for di fake coup videos na often positive, wey fit show say pipo for di continent wan chanfe.
But to call make dem comot Ivory Coast goment cause real panic for di pipo wey dey live dia and all of dat dey lead to increase fear as di West African kontri dey ready demselves for dia elections for October.
Additional reporting by di BBC Nicolas Négoce
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
20 hours ago
- The Guardian
Blue gold: how a Ghana mine's troubles hit workers and UK politicians – and could cost British taxpayers
In late 2020, amid the economic maelstrom unleashed by Covid-19, there were few better places to be than sitting on top of a goldmine. In Ghana, the west African country once called the Gold Coast by British colonisers, the Bogoso-Prestea mine was producing 4,000 ounces of the precious metal a month, valued at $6m (£4.5m). As gold prices reached record highs, London-based Blue International Holdings – a seasoned investor in African energy projects, pounced to buy the mine for $95m. Blue International promised 'attractive financial returns while having a positive impact on the communities and countries in which it operates, and the planet as a whole', according to its website. It enjoyed the backing of a trio of British political heavyweights, including two members of the House of Lords and a government minister. Yet, a few short years later, its future appears to have tarnished. And, as the Guardian reveals now, the venture appears to have resulted in collateral damage to everyone from Ghanaian mineworkers to a member of the British royal family, a billionaire backer of the GB News TV channel and, possibly, UK taxpayers. 'Blue Gold is a scam' read a placard, as protesters, backed by a brass band, voiced their discontent in February 2024. It was the latest in a string of demonstrations as miners and suppliers in the resource-rich Ashanti gold belt demanded to know why they were seeing no benefit from the precious metal buried beneath their feet. Four years earlier, when Blue International arrived, the future had seemed promising. The company boasted a track record of African investment stretching back to 2011, steered by its co-founders Andrew Cavaghan and Mark Green, professional investors with financial pedigree. As well as its new goldmine in southern Ghana, the company also owned a promising hydroelectric power project in Sierra Leone, a partnership with the government in Freetown. It came with a phalanx of prestige backers, drawn from the British political and business elite. Lord Dannatt, the former head of the British army, and Lord Triesman, a Foreign Office minister with responsibility for UK diplomatic relations in Africa, served on its advisory board. So, too, did Philip Green, who was rebuilding his reputation after the implosion of the government outsourcer Carillion, which collapsed during his time as chair in 2018. John Glen, a Treasury minister between 2018 and 2023, held shares in the company. The UK taxpayer was also significantly exposed. In early 2024, it emerged that the Treasury had lent Blue International £3.3m of taxpayers' money via the 'Future Fund' the previous year. Glen, the MP for Salisbury in Wiltshire, said he was not aware of the loan application when he served at the Treasury and there is no suggestion that he did. The Future Fund was designed, in the words of then chancellor Rishi Sunak, to support 'start-ups and innovative firms' survive the pandemic by extending them loans that converted into equity. In this case, the money supported a company engaged in extracting valuable minerals from African soil. In mining, all can appear calm on the surface, even as things fall apart below ground. By the time British taxpayers' money was pumped into Blue International, its Ghanaian venture was on the brink of a financial collapse whose tremors reached from rural west Africa to the City of London. Within two years of Blue International's takeover, operations at Bogoso-Prestea had been shut down several times, according to corporate filings and contemporary reports. Mineworkers blamed lack of investment from Blue, which owned and operated the mine via a local subsidiary, Future Global Resources (FGR). Lack of output choked off cashflow and increased costs, as equipment failed or required maintenance, according to one corporate filing. FGR failed to pay local suppliers, including the Ghanaian state electricity company, while mineworkers were left out of pocket, according to filings, fuelling local protests. 'It had devastating consequences,' said Abdul-Moomin Gbana, the general secretary of the Ghana Mineworkers' Union (GMWU). He said workers' salaries went unpaid for months, hitting the community hard. 'General conditions declined because they had no income. The communities virtually became ghost towns,' he said. 'It became obvious that if nothing was done, there was no way there could be a future for the mine.' Blue Gold declined to answer questions about the claims of unpaid wages, and directed questions to FGR. FGR did not respond to requests for comment. Eventually, in 2024, the Ghanaian government issued an ultimatum. Blue International must restore the mine to working production or hand back its lease, the right to own and operate the site. The company tried to issue bonds – a form of IOU – in Ghana to raise cash that could be invested in bringing the mine back to production but the fundraising effort stalled. The directors behind Blue International, Cavaghan and Green, restructured the debt-laden mine's ownership, moving it into a new entity called Blue Gold, also owned and incorporated by them, as part of a plan to raise new investment in the US. Despite this, in late 2024, the government of Ghana made good on its threat to seize back the Bogoso-Prestea lease. A legal challenge from the company failed earlier this year in Ghana's high court and the mine was handed over to a new operator. Sign up to Business Today Get set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning after newsletter promotion Blue International's travails were not felt only by Ghanaian miners and the surrounding community. The British taxpayer's investment in the business now appeared to be under threat too. But it was blue-blooded lenders that suffered the more profound consequences. In 2021, at the start of its Ghanaian venture, Blue International had borrowed about $5m from Devonport Capital, a bespoke lender specialising in 'high-risk' jurisdictions, offering short-term loans at relatively high interest rates. Devonport, headquartered in Plymouth, was founded by Paul Bailey, a corporate lawyer who had carved out a niche advising investors in postwar Iraq. His partner was Thomas Kingston, who had also worked in Iraq conducting hostage negotiations for the UK Foreign Office in Baghdad, where he had witnessed first-hand the horrors of sectarian violence. In the UK, Kingston was better known for his marriage, in 2019, to Lady Gabriella Windsor, a second cousin of King Charles III. With this experienced and well-connected duo at the helm, Devonport thrived, recording pre-tax profit of £6m in 2023. But as Blue International's Ghanaian woes mounted, it began defaulting on the interest payments it owed to Devonport. Another of Devonport's important borrowers also defaulted at the same time, leaving the lender increasingly unable to repay its own creditors. Then, in February 2024, personal tragedy struck. Thomas Kingston died from a gunshot wound at his parents' home in the Cotswolds on 25 February. A coroner ruled that he had taken his own life. Torn apart by a combination of personal tragedy and the ongoing inability to recover its debts, Devonport fell into administration a year later. A report published in March by the administrator, RG Insolvency, lists creditors who had lent money to Devonport. Among them is Christopher Chandler, a New Zealand businessman and founder of Dubai-based investment company Legatum, which funds UK media channel GB News. Chandler declined to comment. Creditors also include HM Revenue and Customs, which is owed more than £788,000. RG Insolvency estimates that, of the £49m owed by Devonport, as little as £11.2m could be recovered. Much will depend on whether administrators can recoup about £13.5m owed by Blue International. Earlier this year, the team behind Blue International completed a $114.5m combination with a US 'blank cheque' investment firm called Perception Capital, and floating the combined entity on the US Nasdaq stock exchange under the Blue Gold name. What comes next is murky at best. Blue Gold's new website outlines ambitious plans to reopen the Bogoso-Prestea mine. But Ghana appears to be sticking by its decision to strip Blue of the lease. The dispute is now the subject of international arbitration, according to a stock market filing by Blue Gold, leaving the mine's future up in the air. In an annual report filed in the US, Blue Gold admits that the leases may never be returned, which would reduce the value of the company's assets from $368m to less than $45m. A section on the company website offers little further clarity, stating: 'Subject to resolving legal dispute with the government of Ghana, first gold pour is expected.' The Guardian approached the Foreign Office to ask if the UK government had intervened on Blue Gold's behalf with ministers in Accra. The department declined to comment. Dannatt and Triesman also declined to comment. Glen said he had not discussed the company's Ghanaian dispute with any UK government department, official or diplomat. On the ground in Ghana,local sources say little has changed, with operations still shut down under a new owner and mineworkers still left unpaid. The uncertainty means that, for everyone from local mineworkers to members of the British establishment, the dream of blue gold remains a mirage, tantalisingly out of reach. The Guardian approached Blue Gold for comment. The company referred the Guardian to its website and shareholder filings but did not address questions directly. Paul Bailey did not return requests for comment. RG Insolvency declined to comment.
Daily Mail
a day ago
- Daily Mail
How one million white Europeans - many seized on the south coast of England - were sold to the Muslim world and brutally exploited in the slavery scandal the Left DON'T want to speak about
When Englishman Thomas Pellow was 27, he led a slave-hunting expedition to the West African coast. His orders were to plunder the villages, kill the adults and capture the children. But Pellow was not a mercenary employed in the transatlantic slave trade, which sent millions of its victims across the ocean. He was a slave himself – taken prisoner as a child by the Moroccan Sultan Moulay Ismail. And 300 years ago, he was far from alone. The sultan owned an estimated 25,000 European slaves, many seized in raiding expeditions on the south coast of England as well as countries as far afield as Iceland. Though it is almost forgotten today – suppressed, perhaps, by some squeamish historians – the Muslim trade in both black African and white European slaves was deeply feared for three centuries. Yet, at the time, dozens of memoirs, many of them bestsellers, were published by former slaves who had escaped from captivity, with horrendous stories of torture, rape and cold-blooded murder. Now, a book by historian Justin Marozzi unflinchingly reveals the extent of slavery in Arab countries, which was conducted with unequalled brutality. More shocking still, he shows that it continued in much of the Islamic world well into the 20th century – and, for hundreds of thousands of West Africans born into life as slaves, carries on to this day. For Marozzi to investigate these stories, let alone publish, is courageous. His book invites an inevitable backlash from Left-wing academics and broadcasters who focus solely on the slave trade triangle between Europe, West Africa and the Americas that operated from the 16th to the 19th centuries. To accuse Arabs, Turks and other Muslims of complicity in slavery is likely to be met with accusations of 'Islamophobia'. Yet, as Marozzi's research proves beyond doubt, slavery in the Muslim world has existed for far longer, caused even more deaths and misery and inflicted tortures that exceed anything imagined by the worst of the transatlantic traders. As a single example: in the Victorian era, Sudan exported countless thousands of eunuchs to serve as slaves in Turkey and the Arab countries. Eunuchs, male slaves who had been castrated as pre-pubescent boys, were valued for their inability to procreate, and so could be trusted not to get sexually involved with their master's wives and consorts. An estimated 35,000 pre-pubescent boys died from botched castration in Sudan every year, in order for 3,500 to survive without a penis or testicles. Thomas Pellow escaped castration. But he suffered the worst a life of slavery could inflict in many other ways for more than 20 years. He was an 11-year-old cabin boy on a ship skippered by his uncle, sailing out of Falmouth, Cornwall, in 1715, when he was taken captive. Off Cape Finisterre on Spain's Atlantic coastline, his craft was set upon by North African pirates and, after a battle in which young Thomas nearly drowned, he was taken in chains to Meknes in Morocco as a gift for Moulay Ismail – self-styled Prince of the Faithful. The sultan gave Thomas to his own son, Moulay Spha, who forced him to convert to Islam. The boy, brought up a Christian, resisted for months, despite beatings during which he was suspended by the ankles to have the soles of his feet thrashed – a torture known as bastinado. Thomas still refused to renounce Christianity, later writing: 'My tortures were now exceedingly increased, burning my flesh off my bones by fire.' Eventually, he pretended to submit – but 'I always abominated them and their accursed principle of Mahometism'. His youthful defiance must have impressed the Arabs because he was soon back in the sultan's service. Pellow was put in command of a slave-hunting expedition to Guinea, with an army of 30,000 soldiers – all slaves themselves – and 60,000 camels. He was so trusted that the sultan even made him guardian of his 4,000 slave concubines. In addition to his British, Spanish, Portuguese and French slaves, the sultan was estimated to own nearly a quarter of a million black Africans. To breed more slaves, he staged mass weddings for up to 1,600 people, marrying couples by pointing to them and declaring: 'That one takes that one.' Pellow wrote: 'He always yokes his best complexioned subjects [i.e. white males] to a black helpmate, and the fair lady must take up with a negro . . . as firmly noosed as if they had been married by a pope.' Muslims considered all children born to slave mothers to be slaves themselves, regardless of who their fathers were. Brave Thomas finally escaped after 23 years as a captive, fleeing over the Atlas Mountains and reaching his parents' home in Cornwall months later, in 1738, after 'long straying and grievous hardships'. His resulting book proved a sensation, promising 'a particular account of the astonishing tyranny and cruelty of their emperors, together with a description of the miseries of the Christian slaves'. Even Samuel Pepys addressed the topic in his famous diaries. In February 1661, he recorded how he'd been drinking until four in the morning with two British men who had been slaves in Algiers, a Captain Mootham and Mr Dawes. They had survived on bread and water, he wrote, and were regularly beaten on their feet and their stomachs. At night, any slave, male or female, could be ordered to their master's tent and raped. Muslim pirates sailing out of Algiers raided all along the Mediterranean and out into the Atlantic as far as Madeira. By the 1620s, 10,000 European slaves were being held in the city's dungeons, including Scots, Irish, Dutch, Danish, Slav and Spanish captives. Others included Japanese and Chinese victims. The Flemish aristocrat Emanuel d'Aranda, who spent two years as a prisoner doing punishingly heavy labour before he was ransomed, calculated that 600,000 European Christians were enslaved in Algiers between 1536 and 1640 alone. That tallies with the generally accepted estimate that a million white Europeans were enslaved from the 1500s to the 1800s. Raids on coastal villages were horrific and bloody. Devon and Cornwall suffered repeated slave raids in the 1620s; and in 1627, two bands of slavers hit south-east Iceland, capturing more than 400 men, women and children. A man named Bjarni Valdason, who tried to escape, was clubbed over the head and killed, his body butchered into small pieces 'as if he were a sheep', according to one witness. Houses were torched. One young mother and her two-year-old toddler were hurled into a blazing building and burned to death: 'When she and the poor child screamed and called to God for help, the wicked Turks bellowed with laughter. They struck both child and mother with the sharp points of their spears, forcing them into the fire, and even stabbed fiercely at the poor burning bodies.' Those are the words of Olafur Egilsson, a Lutheran minister in his 60s, who was beaten until he could no longer stand, as the pirates tortured him to find out if the villagers had hidden treasure. Distressing and deeply shocking as these individual stories are, they are a few cases among millions. The scale of slavery in the Muslim world was vast beyond imagination. 'At one time,' the eminent historian Professor Robert Tombs says, 'everyone knew about it. It was one of the main hazards of Mediterranean commerce for Western sailors. But today, most people are completely unaware it ever happened.' Partly, that is due to the current insistence that the British empire was the source of all historical evils. It does not suit the politically correct narrative to admit that Muslim slave traders were the scourge of Africa, long before the Europeans arrived . . . and long after they left. Citing the Encyclopedia Britannica, Marozzi estimates that in 1861, at the start of the American Civil War that would put an end to U.S. slavery, there were more slaves in the Muslim states of West Africa than in the Confederate states of the Deep South of America. The Arab slave trade dated back long before the beginnings of Islam in the 7th century. The Prophet Mohammed owned 70 slaves including Persians, Ethiopians, Copts (Christians from modern-day Egypt) and Syrians. Between that time and the First World War, up to 17 million people were taken prisoner and used as slaves in Muslim armies and in brothels, on building sites and in private homes. That could be 50 per cent more than the total number of Africans transported across the Atlantic, a figure usually put at 11 million to 15 million. By sickening tradition, the treatment of women was especially brutal. A witness at the Persian court of Musa al-Hadi, in the 8th century, described how the caliph once left in the middle of a meal after receiving a message from a eunuch. When they returned, the eunuch was carrying a platter covered with a napkin, and trembling. Hadi whipped away the cloth, revealing, 'the heads of two slave girls, with more beautiful faces and hair, by God, than I had ever seen before'. Hadi explained, as though nothing unusual had occurred: 'We received information that these two were in love with each other. So I set this eunuch to watch over them and report to me. I found them under a single coverlet committing an immoral act. I thereupon killed them.' The castration of boys to make them into eunuchs was still practised as recently as the 19th century. The French aristocrat and explorer Count Raoul du Bisson saw it performed in Abyssinia (now Ethiopia), calling the operation 'barbarous and revolting'. 'The little, helpless and unfortunate prisoner, or slave, is stretched out on an operating table,' he wrote in 1863. 'His neck is made fast in a collar fastened to the table, and his legs spread apart, and the ankles made fast to iron rings; his arms are held by an assistant. The operator then seizes the little penis and scrotum, and with one sweep of a sharp razor removes all the appendages.' A bamboo catheter was then inserted into the urethra, to prevent it from scarring over, and hot oil, honey, tar or mule dung smeared over the cuts. The boy, typically aged between six and 12, was buried in warm sand up to his neck to stop him from moving while his wounds healed. A majbub, or eunuch without his penis, fetched a much higher price at slave markets than a khasi, one who had merely had his testicles removed. A khasi was more likely to serve as a soldier or policeman than a majbub, who could be trusted in the harem. British people 200 years ago were no less repulsed by such stories than we are today. As well as leading the way in ending the transatlantic slave trade in the 19th century, Great Britain put intense pressure on the Ottoman empire in Turkey and the whole of the Arab world to end slavery. 'Even while suppressing the transatlantic slave trade,' says historian and ethicist Professor Nigel Biggar, 'the British empire was busy trying to suppress the Arab slave trade in Africa – especially East Africa – including using the Royal Navy to intercept slave ships between Zanzibar and the Middle East.' But in much of West Africa, slavery continues today. In Bamako, the capital of Mali, Marozzi met an escaped slave named Hamey, in his late 50s, who was living in destitution with his two wives and 12 children. 'I didn't choose to be a slave,' he said. 'My father was a slave, my grandfather was a slave, and many more generations before them. I was a slave until the day I refused to go on. I'd had enough of it. And that's when the violence began.' Hamey spoke out because he was sick of seeing his wives and daughters raped. 'They can do it whenever they like. I could never accept that. My master used to tell me: "She may be your wife but I can take her whenever I want her." ' But when he pleaded for his family to be given their freedom, Hamey was set upon by the head of his village and a group of young men. 'They ripped off my clothes and, while I lay naked in the dirt, they whipped and kicked me and beat me in public. Everyone was watching. The whole community. They were cheering and filming it all on their phones. 'It lasted five hours, then the youths rushed to my house and drove me and my family out. They took my cows, my goats and my sheep. Suddenly, I had nothing, but I still had everyone to feed.' It's a bleak prospect: slavery or starvation. And for an estimated one million slaves in Mali, an Islamic country, that is all life holds to this day.
The Guardian
a day ago
- The Guardian
Beware the blizzard of lies: US advice on how to handle Farage's Trump tactics
Truth, the progressive California politician Hiram Johnson once said, is the first casualty of war. His oft-cited remark was supposedly made in 1918 in reference to the first world war, which had by then caused millions of human casualties. More than a century later, truth is again caught in the crossfire, this time as a casualty of 21st-century culture wars. If Donald Trump is the high priest of disinformation, then Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform, is showing signs of being a willing disciple, if his behaviour in the UK this week is anything to go by. Farage has proposed sending prisoners abroad – including to El Salvador, where the Trump administration has sent hundreds of deportees and suggested sending US citizens. He also suggested an extensive police recruitment drive and prison-building programme all while cutting health and education spending. The parroting of Trump's policies by a UK populist has not gone unnoticed in the US. And for those who have studied the president's modus operandi, there is one particular tactic the British public should be braced for: the blizzard of lies and false statements that frequently overwhelms his opponents. The Trump experience, they say, contains sobering lessons for Farage's critics. US pro-democracy campaigners says Trump has become even harder to factcheck since his first term, thanks to a combination of factors including looser social media content moderation and a reluctance among some media owners to stand up to his intimidation. The Washington Post, which tracked more than 30,000 lies or misleading statements from Trump during his presidency, lost subscribers and public trust after its billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, reportedly vetoed an editorial endorsing the Democratic nominee Kamala Harris for president. 'It's become more difficult because there's less commitment from those who are in the best position to do the factchecking,' said Omar Noureldin, a senior vice-president for Common Cause, a non-partisan group. 'Seeking the truth here comes with costs and risks.' Complicating matters is the loss of trust in institutions, with many consumers relying on social media platforms for news. 'Even the best factchecking can be unpersuasive, because we're not just facing an information crisis here, but also a trust crisis in the American information ecosystem,' Noureldin said. Media watchers say the political environment has become so deeply polarised that factchecking can even have the counter-productive effect of further entrenching misplaced beliefs. 'From a lot of research, we're reaching the conclusion that factchecking hasn't been as effective as one would want,' said Julie Millican, the vice-president of Media Matters for America, a media watchdog. 'One reason is that information and disinformation spreads faster than you can check it. It takes a lot longer to factcheck something than it does for it go viral. 'But the other thing is factchecking can backfire. People so distrust institutions that factchecking can validate the misinformation in their minds and make them more inclined to believe the lie they believed in the first place.' A 2022 report from Protect Democracy suggests this is the result of a deliberate strategy of authoritarian regimes. 'Disinformation is spread through coordinated networks, channels and ecosystems, including politically aligned or state-owned media,' the report said. 'The goal is not always to sell a lie, but instead to undermine the notion that anything in particular is true.' Further complicating the problem in the US has been Trump's appointment of allies to key government agencies that have traditionally served as sources of accurate and reliable data for factcheckers. A case in point is Robert F Kennedy Jr, who has engaged in anti-vaccine theories. As Trump's pick for health and human services secretary, he is in charge of the country's vast health bureaucracy. Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion 'Factchecking wasn't working very well in the first place, but now you can't even get access to the facts that you need be able to factcheck as well as you used to,' said Millican. The outlook seems bleak, but campaigners say that does not make the problems insurmountable. One answer is to invest in independent, non-partisan research. A prime purpose would be to increase media literacy among young people, who primarily get news from platforms such as TikTok which can be subject to disinformation tools such as AI-manipulated videos. The aim is to teach consumers how to spot doctored footage. 'Media literacy is extremely important and something that should be invested in and taught at a young age,' said Millican. Another solution is the development of 'pre-buttal' strategies to inoculate the public against disinformation, in effect getting the truth out first. Media Matters for America and Common Cause used this approach during last year's presidential election, partly by producing videos designed to counter anticipated false narratives surrounding voting procedures in certain areas. Also important, said Shalini Agarwal, special counsel at Protect Democracy, is calling out the demonisation of vulnerable groups, such as immigrants, as soon as it happens. A crucial role is played by media, even as Trump intensifies his assault on journalists as 'fake news' and tries to exclude certain established outlets from press briefings. 'It's really important when there are opportunities for one-on-one briefings and there are multiple reporters,' Agarwal said. 'Part of it is a sense of collective action. Often, whoever is speaking at the podium won't give a straightforward answer or gives a false answer and then tries to move on – it's incumbent when that happens for other reporters to jump in and say: 'Wait. What about what the other reporter asked?'' Millican has two pieces of advice for Britain and other European countries hoping to arm themselves against any coming authoritarian onslaught: fortify the media and preserve legislation designed to combat disinformation and illegal content online – represented by the online safety act in Britain and the digital safety act in the EU. 'The first thing that's going to happen in these authoritarian takeovers is they're going to try to silence and take over the media and information landscape,' she said. 'Any efforts to rein in hate speech or misinformation on platforms will be seen as tantamount to suppression of conservative thought or free speech. 'I can't stress enough trying to buffer the pollution of your information ecosystem as much as possible. One of the first things that they're going to do is just take down any barriers they can.'
