Extra: The DIGITAL FLOOD that drowns democracy – Nick Cohen talks to Peter Pomerantsev

The Bunker – News without the nonsense

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News, Government, Politics, Society & Culture

4.6 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 14 March 2021

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

“Peter explains better than anyone I know the new world of Putinesque, Trumpian propaganda.” In a weekend bonus, Nick Cohen of The Observer talks to Peter Pomerantsev, author of This Is Not Propaganda : Adventures in the War Against Reality, about how demagogues warp free speech into a weapon against democracy. Why is the modern information battle less of a New Cold War and more a New Thirty Years War? Do we even understand the devil’s bargain that tech giants are offering? We can have perfect lives and perfect homes – as long as we don’t mind giving up our information and our freedoms. “Every aspect of freedom of speech has been used against us, to swamp the world and drown out the truth” “However much we’d like to blame these pathologies on Mark Zuckerberg, we can’t.” “It’s no longer about censorship, it’s about overloading democracies with trolls, bots and conspiracies… it’s about swamping us with information” “When you have an economy based on likes and shares, that’s going to reinforce tribal identities” “Extremism is about demonising the other. What we’re seeing is something eternal” Presented by Nick Cohen. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers Jacob Archbold and Jelena Sofronijevic. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:05.5	photography but I turn it into earning a living at 60. I enrolled on a day course.
0:11.8	Well college. I loved going to college. It's good you can retry. I'm enrolled on the day course. But college?
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0:55.3	look after theirs with dental life. Pick up dental life in the pet food aisle. Well hello everybody and welcome to this special edition of the bunker. My name is Nick Cohen. I'm a columnist on the observer among many other things and we try in our occasional series to bring you interesting authors whose books perhaps you haven't read and really should read.
1:28.0	I am delighted, absolutely delighted to have a guy who's influenced my thinking very much and made many people think
1:36.2	about the modern world as well.
1:38.3	Peter Poler Rantstead, who is the author is, this is not propaganda, it's a a follow up to his first book about Putin's Russia and
1:48.6	Peter looks at and explains I think better than any writer I know the new world of
1:57.2	Putin-esque Trumpian politics and how the web has been weaponized to allow all kinds of extremist causes.
2:07.0	Peter, thank you very much for joining us.
2:09.0	My pleasure is all mine.
2:11.0	Peter, if I can get right into it straight away. mine. I don't know how democracy can survive this. Do you believe that yourself or believe it in part and if so why?
2:30.0	Well, I do think we're facing a structural crisis.
	...

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