Lichtman blames bad election prediction on disinformation, Elon Musk; The Hill, November 12, 2024

 DOMINICK MASTRANGELO  , The Hill; Lichtman blames bad election prediction on disinformation, Elon Musk

"Historian and political scientist Allan Lichtman is blaming disinformation and billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk for his incorrect prediction that Vice President Harris would win the presidency. 

“Number one, disinformation. We’ve always had disinformation, but disinformation has exploded to an unprecedented degree. You talked about a grievance election, but a lot of that grievance was driven by disinformation,” Lichtman said during an appearance on Chris Cuomo’s NewsNation show.

Lichtman pointed to conservative media platforms and Musk, who poured millions into President-elect Trump’s campaign and has become one of his loudest media cheerleaders, as a factor in his inaccurate prediction.

Musk had helped fuel the spread of false or misleading information online about issues like immigration, hurricane relief and the war in Ukraine, Lichtman said, effectively “putting his thumb on the scales.”

“And you know, as scholars have shown, once you dissolve truth, democracy dissolves along with it, the way authoritarian takes hold, and it’s taking hold all over the world, not just here, is not through force, but through the manipulation of information, as George Orwell warned in 1984 you know, in that dictatorship, war is peace, famine is plenty,” Lichtman said."

George Orwell, 1984

“War is peace. 
Freedom is slavery. 
Ignorance is strength.” 

― George Orwell, 1984

Why 1984 Isn't Banned in China: Censorship in the country is more complicated than many Westerners imagine.; The Atlantic, January 13, 2019

Amy Hawkins, Jeffrey Wasserstrom, The Atlantic; Why 1984 Isn't Banned in China:

Censorship in the country is more complicated than many Westerners imagine.

"Western commentators often give the impression that Chinese censorship is more comprehensive than it really is, due, in part, to a veritable obsession with the government’s handling of the so-called three T’s of Taiwan, Tibet, and Tiananmen. A 2013 article in The New York Review of Books states, for example, that “to this day Tiananmen is one of the neuralgic words forbidden—not always successfully—on China’s Internet.” Any book, article, or social-media post that so much as mentions these words, the conventional wisdom holds, is liable to disappear.

Even when it comes to the “three T’s,” though, things are a bit less simple than they appear."

We Lose Privacy If We Believe This Fiction; Forbes, July 25, 2017

Frank Miniter, Forbes; We Lose Privacy If We Believe This Fiction

"In this speeding blur of an age we are losing our private lives to a narrative telling us to give up privacy for perceived security. All around are foreshadows of the world Ray Bradbury described in Fahrenheit 451 and that George Orwell warned us of in 1984, but too many of us are having a hard time seeing beyond a false narrative that many in the Washington establishment, from much of the political class to the intelligence agencies, are peddling to empower themselves."