Remember the media frenzy that tried to debunk the possibility that Covid came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology? The idea was frequently branded as dangerous misinformation. People expressing their suspicion over Wuhan were often declared ‘wild conspiracy agitators’ who were doing ‘harm’ to the community. The community had to be protected from such reckless speculation! (Or so the debunking argument went.)

The Australian government is now proposing a law that would close down so-called dangerous misinformation. The law will force digital platforms (Facebook, etc.) to be the determiners of what is ‘true’. The law will require digital platforms to block and close down views, information, and opinions that are declared false and dangerous by the digital platforms ‘truth police’.

This information/truth control process is already being done by Facebook and other platforms via algorithms and community standards enforcers, but the new law will require them to do so.

There’s one big problem with this. Who says what is the ‘truth’?

For example, when Albert Einstein published his now-famous theories around 1905, he did so by challenging the established ‘truth’ of Newton’s laws of physics. Einstein was attacked by the scientific establishment at the time who were wedded to, and whose careers depended on, Newton’s laws. Many sought to stop Einstein. However, Einstein’s theory ultimately became the new ‘truth’.

This is how humans advance. ‘Truth’ is a view or perspective that is universally held until such time as it is challenged, found to be faulty, and replaced by a new view that becomes the new ‘truth’.

If we check in on Covid, it’s now emerging that the Wuhan lab theory is likely true. That is, the suspicion is firming up that Covid was developed at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China and then escaped.

If you subscribe to the Australian, I strongly recommend reading this exposé published over the weekend (29 July 2023). The exposé is an eye-opener.

The exposé uses evidence from US Congress testimony, email trails from high-level US health authorities obtained through Freedom of Information, extensive interviews with the most senior health officials in the USA, and more. The Australian’s evidence forensically details that at the time of the Covid outbreak in 2020 and beyond, the most senior US health officials strongly believed that Covid came from the Wuhan laboratory.

Further, those US health officials allegedly undertook a disinformation campaign to cover up the Wuhan truth. Why? Because those same officials were believed to be involved in organising US funding for the Wuhan Covid research and had deep collaborative links with the Chinese researchers involved in the project. That is, these top US health officials’ response to Covid was to first protect themselves, their careers, and the institutions they ran.

The Australian alleges that the Chief Medical Advisor to the US President ‘…downplayed suspicions from scientists that Covid came from a lab to protect his reputation and deflect from risky research his agency had funded…’

The Australian also says, ‘There is a preponderance of evidence that ties the Wuhan Institute of Virology to the outbreak: the nature of its research, its hospitalised scientists well before the wet market cluster, its spending spree on security and safety equipment and … the temporary shutdown of the Wuhan laboratory, along with the silencing and disappearance of whistleblowers.’

If the analysis by The Australian in correct, then the people of the world have been subjected to the greatest health crisis probably since the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, and that crisis was created by a cabal of top global ‘health’ scientists. Further, there was a global cover-up of the truth requiring a huge disinformation campaign that was initiated, organised, and perpetrated by the most powerful of government health officials.

This assumes that The Australian exposé is accurate, and The Australian does add, ‘Now, as the misinformation perpetuated by scientists is exposed and intelligence efforts persist, the rest of the world inches closer to the truth, too.’

What this story brings to the front of mind is that the worst misinformation and disinformation is historically manufactured by governments themselves. They say they do this ‘for the common good’. In reality, they do this more often to deflect attention from wrongdoing by the government itself, or at least wrongdoing by powerful individuals within government.

Such disinformation can be expected from authoritarian dictators. Disinformation is their modus operandi! In the rule of law, democracies want to believe that transparency, honesty, and accountability are hallmarks of government activity. But this is an Alice in Wonderland fantasy. People who run governments are no different to people anywhere else. They have the same human capacity to do both good and bad, like any person.

This is where the planned Australian government misinformation/disinformation law is bad on a grand scale. The law would ramp up the government’s ability to conduct misinformation and disinformation campaigns against us, the people.

This law is a major move toward the disintegration of democracy. Democracy is a pretence, a con, and a fraud when the free flow of information, opinions, and facts find themselves throttled … which is what this law would do. Democracy is a pretence when ‘facts’ and truth go unchallenged by government decree.

This law is an invitation to Australians to sleepwalk toward a form of dictatorship. It’s a push for dictatorship by entrenched, powerful, bureaucratic establishments both within government and those outside government sanctioned and endorsed by government.

Is this an exacerbation? Perhaps? You judge!

The government has put out a ‘Fact Sheet’ about this planned law and they are asking for your input.

The Fact Sheet is here (with markups). They invite your response here, which you can do online or send an email to information.integrity@infrastructure.gov.au. I encourage you to respond and have your say but here’s my take from the Fact Sheet.

The planned law is very broad in its reach covering ‘misinformation and disinformation’ that will ‘cause serious harm’.

• It defines misinformation as ‘content that is false, misleading or deceptive’ but doesn’t define what those things are, leaving that open to interpretation.
• It doesn’t define what is ‘harm’, leaving that open to interpretation.

But:

• The ‘Fact Sheet’ talks of ‘harm’ that ‘…affects a significant portion of the Australian population, economy or environment, or undermines the integrity of an Australian democratic process’.

That is:

• The law will cover almost anything that anyone says or thinks and that what is ‘true’ is to be determined by ‘truth authorities’ that supply ‘truth’ determinations to Facebook and other digital platforms.
• The law will not be constrained to criminal or potential criminal incitement, or to issues of defamation and so on. The law will cover anything.

In ‘truth’, this law is an attempt by government (through third parties) to control what they, the prevailing establishment/s in society, decide/s is ‘true’. It will enable misinformation or disinformation that an establishment wants propagated as their ‘truth’ to be the only authorised ‘truth’.

Take this further example from the opinion/‘truth’ website Wikipedia on the flat earth theory:

It is a historical myth that medieval Europeans generally thought the Earth was flat. This myth was created in the 17th Century by Protestants to argue against Catholic teachings.

That is, one religious group used the ‘flat earth’ allegation to take issue with a competing religious group. This is what humans have always done. ‘Truth’ and ‘facts’ are manipulated for purposes of power and oppression. This 17th Century example is surely just one historical ‘fact’, like the Einstein example and countless other examples where ‘truth’ is always manipulated.

The beauty of Wikipedia is that almost anyone can put up an opinion on their ‘truth’. Wikipedia allows competing opinions on ‘truth’ to flourish. But this law will surely suppress this feature of Wikipedia.

The only way to limit this is to allow the broadest of human expression and challenge to existing ‘truths’. Humanity regresses when ‘truth’ is controlled and unchallenged.

Ken Phillips is Executive Director of Self Employed Australia and is on Substack

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