They’ve paid billions to create Captain Jack Boyle’s and their Joxers…

Neil Scott on the Musk, Zuckerberg et al threat to truth…

When I was on holiday, I went on a cycling trip with a number of other holiday makers. Two of them were teachers from the USA. They were lovely, funny, decent. Both enjoyed travel, both got on with everyone on the trip. Both, it turned out, were Trump supporters who just thought we didn’t get him. They knew he was a selfish narcissist. But they both thought he was clever and had ordinary Americans at the forefront of his policies. They both thought Biden had done nothing other than destroy the economy-Trump was making changes every day… he was a hard working, straight talking business man who put America/Americans first. And they both thought those of us who “didn’t get” Trump, were just ill informed. It was difficult to understand- and difficult to counter, as they, like us, used the language, “you’ve all been fooled.” Those of us outside the silo could not understand as we didn’t know the truth they knew, which came from Trump. Which came from Fox… and a few other “conservative” radio stations, podcasts and youtubers.

It reminded me of Brexit and the decent people I knew who weren’t particularly political who were convinced that Brexit would make things better. They had one thing in common- they poured over social media and they truly believed that immigrants were “stealing” resources from the country, and changing their “culture.” Some were more extreme than others. Once decent housewives were talking about the oppression of ‘poor Tommy Robinson.’ Graduates of a certain age were quoting youtube channel “truthsayers,” and loving mothers were opting out of vaccines. I have to admit- the level of people voting without understanding bias; without understanding issues and without understanding taxation, our tory/Reform decimated welfare state etc frightens me (Reform are part of this as it is made up of a huge amount of ex tories); but the medical conspiracies are pretty horrific.

“Th’ whole worl’s in a terrible state o’ chassis,” said the strutting drunk Captain Jack Boyle in Sean O’Casey’s “Juno and the Paycock,” as he passed out; a man who lived in the world of self deception and narcissism. He described the chaos of the Irish civil war, and also the disintegration of his world- unaware of the murder of his son and the fact that his wife and pregnant daughter have left him. A man who existed in pubs, bars, clubs and gathering places of my youth, but a man dismissed and derided, repudiated and spurned, forced to the end of the bar. I knew a few of these Captain Jacks in the past- some had followers- people like Joxer Daly; ingratiating and agreeing with the deluded Boyles of the bar. “Ignoramus’s”, my da’ used to say. “Eejits,” we called them.

Nowadays the Joxers are in the thousands- millions , in some Boyle silos. They spout unfounded conspiracies, unscientific health advice, and utter lies regarding politics and point to their Captain as the font of knowledge, political purity and Knight in Shitty armour. Our society, once founded on expertise, shared facts, institutional trust, shared reality… is now being torn asunder by Jack Boyles and their Joxers- and our institutions instead of leading, are seeking compromise. Unfortunately, to quote someone from the past, “I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.” Or better still, to quote my friend WillieTelfer, “If you roll with shite, you get covered.”

Where does the rolling with Trump and Farage take us? Where will the Joxers and Jack’s take us? And the fooled- let’s not forget the fooled- and let’s stop disparaging them. The fooled could be us at any time. The fooled have been targeted by billions of pounds from those who want to fool them. The current budgets and sophistication of campaigns by powerful people make Edward Louis Bernays and his “Torches of Freedom” look like a small second hand car dealer with a fetching ‘tache. The fooled stood no chance- the billionaires targeted them. Those of us NOT fooled by conspiracy and political charlatanry were NOT THEIR TARGETS.

Eliot Higgins, founder of Bellingcat, believes if we don’t act now, we’ve lost. Our democracies will be gone. The rich will have inherited the earth bit by bit, Starmer compromise by Starmer compromise hollowing out institutions; giving in to the misled and the mislayers, and we are heading for epistemology fracture – a divide within society where different groups operate with fundamentally different understandings of reality, facts, and truth, making shared dialogue and consensus difficult. So difficult that our courts and science and reasoning will cease to matter. Nothing will be trusted. The power of the extremely rich will become untouchable.

Our previous democratic foundations have crumbled. The ‘better past’ of the future Farage et al expound about is one that will impoverish most of us. The better past they talk about never existed, and it will never exist. In its place will be a liberalisation and commodification of everything. And our debt will be called progress, and our impoverishment will be named laziness. And their power will be untouchable. Trump shall pass causing profitable disaster in his wake, Farage too. And the rich will manipulate the Jacks, the Joxers and the rest of us with billions of dollars pumped into AI/algorithms that captivate and dupe. And they will become untouchable while we argue about the merits or vice versa of hollowed out democratic institutions, hollowed out by the shit covered pig wrestlers and the compromises to the bigotry, the divisive genocidists and the utter ignoramuses, eejits and the hoodwinked drunks who agree with every lie.

Higgins listed solutions on Bluesky– solutions help to rebuild epistemic resilience from the ground up. A smarter, better world. And all of these are doable by activists and those who are concerned for the future of the planet and our children.

What can we do?

-Teach verification and critical thinking from an early age

-Rewire institutions to operate transparently in an open-source world

-Reinvest in investigative infrastructure that spans journalism, law, and education

-Empower people not just to speak, but to influence

-Make deliberation structured, not just performative

-Ensure digital participation has real-world pathways to make impact

-Build hubs, networks, and civic platforms that make engagement consequential

-Create accountability systems that can survive distrust and make those systems evidentiary, peer-verifiable, and independent of elite monopoly

-Open-source investigation isn’t just journalism – it’s a new layer of democratic accountability

I would add to that- create positive, over-lapping REAL communities. Use libraries, and public spaces that are being attacked by the powerful through their useful idiots. And use open source social media. BlueSky and others- and fuck Xitter and Meta Facebook and the horrendous, depressing Meta Instagram. Meeting people must become important again (though not at the expense of the introverted workers who are thriving productively at home!)

As an Irish man who lives in Scotland, but who visits Ireland every few weeks- the death of the communities around church, pub and nightclub have positive implications- but hugely negative ones too. The melting pot of the rite de passage nightclub or pub has all but gone. Instead communities are online. 16 year olds don’t want to pretend they are 18 in the real. They do it with a constructed face, body and image in a RPG with other people from across the globe. Ideological political groups have made way for the enraged online troll and insult. All of this shatters real community, real interaction where challenges and discussion can be something from which we all learn rather than somewhere we try to win from the loneliness of our indoor world.

Community must be built around positive attributes. Arts, sport, local interests, gaming, culture, history, politics. All have their part in rebuilding our shattered, silo’d, shit covered, fooled world.