How Brexit And Trump Are Deeply Connected

[BocaRear]

The great British Brexit robbery: how our democracy was hijacked

Facebook was the source of the psychological insights that enabled Cambridge Analytica to target individuals. It was also the mechanism that enabled them to be delivered on a large scale.

The company also (perfectly legally) bought consumer datasets – on everything from magazine subscriptions to airline travel – and uniquely it appended these with the psych data to voter files. It matched all this information to people’s addresses, their phone numbers and often their email addresses. “The goal is to capture every single aspect of every voter’s information environment,” said David. “And the personality data enabled Cambridge Analytica to craft individual messages.”

Finding “persuadable” voters is key for any campaign and with its treasure trove of data, Cambridge Analytica could target people high in neuroticism, for example, with images of immigrants “swamping” the country. The key is finding emotional triggers for each individual voter.

Cambridge Analytica worked on campaigns in several key states for a Republican political action committee. Its key objective, according to a memo the Observer has seen, was “voter disengagement” and “to persuade Democrat voters to stay at home”: a profoundly disquieting tactic. It has previously been claimed that suppression tactics were used in the campaign, but this document provides the first actual evidence.

But does it actually work? One of the criticisms that has been levelled at my and others’ articles is that Cambridge Analytica’s “special sauce” has been oversold. Is what it is doing any different from any other political consultancy?

Cambridge Analytica
This is pyschological warfare.
Blatantly using military backed technology to manipulate the public
Might be the best article I've read all year
Oh yeah Steve Bannon was the former Vice President of this firm too

 

[Regular_P]

The voters staying home thing has been beaten to death and given a million excuses. If Hillary campaigned in the midwest instead of staying home, she'd be president. Michigan and Wisconsin have Republican governors and she made one combined visit to those states as if they were already in the bag. Florida was the biggest potential swing state and Trump made a lot more visits down there than Clinton.

Apathy kicks in when you're ignored.

 

[BocaRear]

The voters staying home thing has been beaten to death and given a million excuses. If Hillary campaigned in the midwest instead of staying home, she'd be president. Michigan and Wisconsin have Republican governors and she made one combined visit to those states as if they were already in the bag. Florida was the biggest potential swing state and Trump made a lot more visits down there than Clinton.

Apathy kicks in when you're ignored.

Apathy was intentionally manufactured.
It's not some made up phenomenon nor is it an excuse.
Billions of dollars were spent to fund intelligence firms in Canada and the UK to disseminate carefully tailor-made propaganda based upon people's internet data.

What’s been lost in the US coverage of this “data analytics” firm is the understanding of where the firm came from: deep within the military-industrial complex. A weird British corner of it populated, as the military establishment in Britain is, by old-school Tories. Geoffrey Pattie, a former parliamentary under-secretary of state for defence procurement and director of Marconi Defence Systems, used to be on the board, and Lord Marland, David Cameron’s pro-Brexit former trade envoy, a shareholder.

Steve Tatham was the head of psychological operations for British forces in Afghanistan. The Observer has seen letters endorsing him from the UK Ministry of Defence, the Foreign Office and Nato.

SCL/Cambridge Analytica was not some startup created by a couple of guys with a Mac PowerBook. It’s effectively part of the British defence establishment. And, now, too, the American defence establishment. An ex-commanding officer of the US Marine Corps operations centre, Chris Naler, has recently joined Iota Global, a partner of the SCL group.


This is not just a story about social psychology and data analytics. It has to be understood in terms of a military contractor using military strategies on a civilian population. Us. David Miller, a professor of sociology at Bath University and an authority in psyops and propaganda, says it is “an extraordinary scandal that this should be anywhere near a democracy. It should be clear to voters where information is coming from, and if it’s not transparent or open where it’s coming from, it raises the question of whether we are actually living in a democracy or not.”

 

[Pressure]

The voters staying home thing has been beaten to death and given a million excuses. If Hillary campaigned in the midwest instead of staying home, she'd be president. Michigan and Wisconsin have Republican governors and she made one combined visit to those states as if they were already in the bag. Florida was the biggest potential swing state and Trump made a lot more visits down there than Clinton.

Apathy kicks in when you're ignored.

While partially right, I think this is a gross oversimplification.

 

[Regular_P]

While partially right, I think this is a gross oversimplification.

Perhaps, but Michigan was a 10-11K difference, Wisconsin was around 20K and Florida was a little over 100K. Those are pretty narrow margins and extra campaigning could have made a huge difference.

 

[Pressure]

Perhaps, but Michigan was a 10-11K difference, Wisconsin was around 20K and Florida was a little over 100K. Those are pretty narrow margins and extra campaigning could have made a huge difference.

I agree.

 

[theworldismine13]

trump and brexit happened because of immigration, period

 

[GnauzBookOfRhymes]

white (inter) nationalism

 

[BocaRear]

trump and brexit happened because of immigration, period

Yup.
Intelligence firms played on white supremacy and its irrational hatred of immigrants and created specific propaganda to target those who are suscepitable to this type of shyt.
Cambridge analytica is the stuff of nightmares and these



Propaganda is at its most effective when the victim starts believing the suggested thoughts are their own

 

[85 East]

Bexit and Trump are the neighbors on the block who came to your house, took all the best ingredients out if your fridge, went back to their homes and had a bomb ass BBQ that the whole block could smell. When your kids get hungry and you realize you have no more ingredients for your own BBQ you politely go over to the U.K. house or Trump house expecting then to offer you a plate, but instead they pull out the shotgun and threaten to call the police on you if you don't get off of their property. All the while your child is screaming because of hunger pains, and they tossing plates in the garbage because they can...