Misinformation isn’t what we are told it aught be.
Labeling ideas as misinformation is a hoax and a strategy. Information that does not align with what a certain group of people incapable of winning in open debates wish were true, their worldview, their narrative, is being removed from public discourse under the guise of public service.
Put another way, labeling something as misinformation is attempting to control pubic opinion when you know you are on the wrong side of the argument.
Open debates are problematic when people, the general public, prefer being spoon-fed something, even if it is wrong. They want only to listen to information and opinions that support their current opinion. That’s how things like misinformation campaigns have an opportunity of being implemented in a “free” society. Tell people something they don’t want to hear and you run the risk of being called cruel, mean, and words unrepeatable in polite company.
The number of people in this pro-misinformation management camp are an extreme minority. The reason this is the case is because if they were in the majority, they wouldn’t have to waste their time trying to completely control the conversation. Now as a small minority who are on the losing side of the facts they still can’t admit they are wrong for at least two reasons. One has to do with a critical problem and the other with the fact they still wield a lot of power.
Their problem is that if the truth were to come out and be exposed to the wide world they would lose all power and credibility and in some cases might serve time behind bars.
Where they still have control is with media outlets. In other words they can strong-arm social media and news outlets to promote their side of the argument and squash those of their opposition. They may be supporting media outlets financially, like drug companies buying advertising, or are a threat to media businesses by well-honed methods of intimidation. Governmental agencies managed at their highest levels by entrenched party-line bureaucrats and politicians form the members of this group. They can shut businesses down in arbitrary fashion as demonstrated by many governors who exercised more control to close businesses and isolate people in their homes than they were actually by law authorized to do. The IRS and FBI are good at this as well.
It is the peek of hutzpah for anyone to believe their own opinion or understanding ends the need for all debates. Sometimes people in power believe it is better to control public debate in order to protect ignorant people not realizing they often, perhaps always, pose the greater threat. Besides, it’s disingenuous, because if they truly believed they held the truth on something they would not worry about opposing points of view being expressed because each time this would happen there would be yet another opportunity to share the true facts of the matter. Also, because we all get the gist of human nature, we understand how people behave when arbitrarily silenced. The number of times someone has decided they must be wrong because they were not allowed to express their opinion is never.
But don’t ever believe that those who wish to control speech are not smart. They didn’t get to the positions of power they occupy by not knowing a lot of things and having a lot of talent. Instead, it is most likely they are acting out of self-preservation and they are at that point in the game where soon everything will be revealed. In other words, censoring the opposition, in a Constitutional Republic, is a last ditch effort sort of thing.
So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
They answered him, “We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free’?”
Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.
John 8:31-34 (ESV)
Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?”
Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.”
Pilate said to him, “What is truth?”
After he had said this, he went back outside to the Jews and told them, “I find no guilt in him.
Well said.