Carole Cadwalladr: The great British Brexit robbery: how our democracy was hijacked
NB: The outright manipulation of democratic institutions by powerful capitalist vested interests, the increasing relevance of terms like plutocracy and crony capitalism in cases as diverse as Russia, the Philippines, China, the UK, South Africa and the USA - not to mention India and various countries in Africa and Latin America, should revitalise the debate about capitalism and democracy. For all the ideological talk of 'free markets and free institutions', the question cannot be dodged - are they truly connected in a positive way or are they in contra-position? And how free are the so-called free markets? The global economic system is driving the world toward social, political and ecological catastrophe. Yanis Varoufakis' new memoir about Greece has been described as one of the most accurate and detailed descriptions of modern power ever written. A new programme for social- democracy is called for; one that would have to repudiate crimes committed in the USSR, the People's Republic of China & countries of 'actually existing socialism'. But it would have to confront the reality of militarism, plutocracy & ecological ruin that is staring humanity in the face - DS
see also
Can Capitalism and Democracy Coexist?
Is 'Adults in the Room' by Yanis Varoufakis one of the greatest political memoirs ever?
Is 'Adults in the Room' by Yanis Varoufakis one of the greatest political memoirs ever?
Shadowy global operation involving big data,
billionaire friends of Trump and the disparate forces of the Leave campaign
influenced the result of the EU referendum. As Britain heads to the polls
again, is our electoral process still fit for purpose?
“The connectivity
that is the heart of globalisation can be exploited by states with hostile
intent to further their aims.[…] The risks at stake are profound and represent
a fundamental threat to our sovereignty.” Alex Younger, head of MI6, December, 2016
“It’s not MI6’s job
to warn of internal threats. It was a very strange speech. Was it one branch of
the intelligence services sending a shot across the bows of another? Or was it
pointed at Theresa May’s government? Does she know something she’s not telling
us?” Senior intelligence analyst, April 2017
In June 2013, a young
American postgraduate called Sophie was passing through London when she called
up the boss of a firm where she’d previously interned. The company, SCL
Elections, went on to be bought by Robert Mercer, a secretive hedge fund
billionaire, renamed Cambridge Analytica, and achieved a certain notoriety as
the data analytics firm that played a role in both Trump and Brexit campaigns.
But all of this was still to come. London in 2013 was still basking in the
afterglow of the Olympics. Britain had not yet Brexited. The world had not yet
turned.
“That was before we
became this dark, dystopian data company that gave the world Trump,” a former
Cambridge Analytica employee who I’ll call Paul tells me.
“It was back when we were still just a psychological warfare firm.” Was that really what you called it, I ask him. Psychological warfare? “Totally. That’s what it is. Psyops. Psychological operations – the same methods the military use to effect mass sentiment change. It’s what they mean by winning ‘hearts and minds’. We were just doing it to win elections in the kind of developing countries that don’t have many rules.”
“It was back when we were still just a psychological warfare firm.” Was that really what you called it, I ask him. Psychological warfare? “Totally. That’s what it is. Psyops. Psychological operations – the same methods the military use to effect mass sentiment change. It’s what they mean by winning ‘hearts and minds’. We were just doing it to win elections in the kind of developing countries that don’t have many rules.”
Why would anyone want
to intern with a psychological warfare firm, I ask him. And he looks at me like
I am mad. “It was like working for MI6. Only it’s MI6 for hire. It was very
posh, very English, run by an old Etonian and you got to do some really cool
things. Fly all over the world. You were working with the president of Kenya or
Ghana or wherever. It’s not like election campaigns in the west. You got to do
all sorts of crazy shit.”
On that day in June
2013, Sophie met up with SCL’s chief executive, Alexander Nix, and gave him the
germ of an idea. “She said, ‘You really need to get into data.’ She really
drummed it home to Alexander. And she suggested he meet this firm that belonged
to someone she knew about through her father.” Who’s her father?
“Eric Schmidt.”
Eric Schmidt – the
chairman of Google?
“Yes. And she
suggested Alexander should meet this company called Palantir.”
I had been speaking to
former employees of Cambridge Analytica for months and heard dozens of
hair-raising stories, but it was still a gobsmacking moment. To anyone
concerned about surveillance, 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, the billionaire co-founder of eBay
and PayPal, who became Silicon Valley’s first vocal supporter of Trump. In some ways, Eric
Schmidt’s daughter showing up to make an introduction to Palantir is just
another weird detail in the weirdest story I have ever researched…read more
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