I finally read Wylie’s Mindf*ck. It was recommended to me by my wife, so of course I finally read it, though it took about half a year. This is just to warn anybody of asking me to read a book: it will take time, I in the middle of rereading my whole library as in the future we probably will move to a flat and I have to throw most of these books.
This book tells a strange story. Wylie worked for SCL and Cambridge Analytics, which influences the 2016 US presidential elections for Trump with data harvested from 87 million Facebook users without their knowledge. In 2018 Wylie also revealed that Cambridge Analytics used unethical means in influencing elections and the book Mindf*ck tells the story in 479 pages.
There was also a Russian side-plot. Some hacker, with the name Guccifer 2.0 (named after the Romanian hacker Guccifer) turned out to hack to the USA directly from GRU office so that the IP address pointed to a specific GRU building. I would love to think that Russian military intelligence makes such naive errors (and of course it may be so), but basically anybody, who knows anything of hacking would have gained access through several hacked computers so that tracing the hacker is difficult. Yet, the identification of Guccifer 2.0 as Russian GRU was made by Russian VPN addresses appearing in logs in the hacked computer, not by tracing the hacker through half of the world. I just comment that you can build a network in your laboratory and give the computers any IP addresses that you want, including addresses of some GRU building as long as you do not connect your network to the Internet. By a router, unplugging the Internet connections and replacing it, say with your Wifi-router that connects to your laboratory network e.g. in a vehicle, you do get these your private IP addresses to the logs of the hacked computer even if you never were in Russia. But we are told that this is not so. It is so that Putin personally ordered GRU to influence US presidential elections in favor of Donald Trump, We even know the name of this secret project: Project Lakhta. Why everybody likes Donald Trump?
The settlement of this so called Facebook-Cambridge Analytics Scandal was made in 2019. The CEO of Cambridge Analytics, Alexander Nix, and Alexandr Kogan, the researcher, who had obtained data from 87 million Facebook users via an application that some users had installed in their Facebook account, agreed to delete the data. In 2020 Nix was also forbidden to act as a director of a UK company for seven years because he had suggested that the Cambridge Analytics can use unethical methods in influencing elections.
Apparently nobody went to jail, and indeed, gathering data for micro-targeted advertising is not illegal. We could question Facebook’s privacy policy as it allowed gathering data not only from those users who installed the application (and therefore in a way agreed to give their data) but also from their friends in Facebook. (I was always sure Facebook sells user information and do not have a Facebook account, but most users do not care that much.) If this data, in the way Wylie describes – using the Big Five personality profiles for classifying users for micro-advertisement – is too efficient and ruins the democracy, then we can make the same question of all studies of the voter population and if any advertising of electoral candidates should be allowed.
Unethical means, which in this case means honey traps, bribery stings and spreading anonymously false rumors, are not actually unheard of in politics, especially in developing countries where SCL mostly worked, but they are not accepted and Nix got punished, but not so heavily. So, I was not especially shocked by Wylie’s revelations in Mindf*ck.
Instead, while reading the book I wondered why in 2013 Wylie joined the company SCL having strong connections to the UK Conservative Party. Mindf*ck tells that Wylie is a committed liberal and gay with pink hair, and just the type of person that would not vote for Donald Trump. Wylie did leave Cambridge Analytics in 2014, as he got morally offended by the unethical methods and the use of Facebook user data for micro-targeting in Trump’s 2016 campaign. But even more surprised I was to read from the Wikipedia that in 2015 Wylie’s firm Eunoia contacted Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign head and tried to get work in Trump’s campaign (with the same data of 87 million Facebook users), but without success. Apparently Wylie was not so much morally offended by the methods of Cambridge Analytics in 2014.
But I still could not understand this universal wish to support Donald Trump. Wylie wanted to help Donald Trump to presidency, Nix with connections to British military also wanted to help Trump, and so did Putin. Nix, being connected with British military, employed Russian hackers to help Trump to become the president of the UK ally USA, and Putin was apparently was in this plot. Was he not the less trusted person? Or was is so that Putin independently had the same idea and ordered Project Lakhta?
Or I did not understand this until yesterday, or was it fay before yesterday, when Trump said something controversial in a Jewish Tv show. No, it was Friday in Ari Hoffman Show, but I heard it in the Israel satellite television. Israel sends television in Hotbird in French. You might imagine that they have more people speaking Polish than French, but this is clearly not so: they send the program in English and French, not in Polish. I have recently decided to brush up my French and German as I cannot anymore understand anything spoken in those languages. In Hotbird there is no German station, but there is Swiss. You cannot guess how bad Swiss German sounds, just like their Italian (but their French is good). But in French I have three channels: one from France, one from China and then there is Israel. So, I heard this Trump’s comment on the Israel station. I had to check it from the Web. So, Trump said:
“Well, you know the biggest change I’ve seen in Congress is Israel literally owned Congress – you understand that, 10 years ago, 15 years ago – and it was so powerful, it was so powerful, and today it’s almost the opposite. You have – between AOC [Rep. Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez] and [Rep. Ilhan] Omar and these people that hate Israel, they hate it with a passion – they’re controlling Congress and Israel is not a force in Congress anymore, it’s – I mean – it’s just amazing. I’ve never seen such a change. Israel had such power – and rightfully – over Congress, and now it doesn’t. It’s incredible, actually.”
This the the man, whose motto was USA first (Some Finn tried to add in Youtube: Finland second, but did not succeed). But this is not a mystery. Israel support in the USA is clearly strongest among Evangelic Christians. They live in the Bible Belt and vote for Republicans. Jews do not live in the Bible Belt and they vote Democrats. Trump also said that he was told that he could have run for a premier of Israel and won easily and lamented that American Jews do not love Israel enough. Trump and Netanyahu were friends. Obama and Netanyahu were not. Of course, I have recently developed a slightly conspiratorial mindset, but the mysterious friends of Trump could be the mysterious friends of Israel, as Trump certainly is a great friend of Israel.
This being a friend of Israel among Evangelic Christians is simply a sign that they have never cared to read the Old Testament several times from one end to the other and to think what it actually says. They surely have read the New Testament, but again I doubt that they have carefully thought what it actually means. Most Americans immediately bought the idea that as the Mayflower puritans had problems in Europe and were innocent (or not?) then the Jews, who also had problems in Europe, were by definition innocent but loved by God, and who did not kill Jesus, by the way, it was Romans, though Saint Paul may have had some negative experiences. But this is a misunderstanding. The reasons for what happened or did not happen were different and Evangelic Christians should really read their Bible and also European history more carefully.
Talking about conspiratorial mindset, Wylie in the book Mindf*ck tells how they targeted future Trumps voters. By using the Big Five personality dimensions they looked for high Neurotism and people, who easily believe in conspiracy theories. Then they invited these people to meat each others and form small groups. Mindf*ck gests that these neurotic people had an important role in winning votes for Trump.
Some of the people, who voted for Trump, were alt-right. I have never met any alt-right person, but some time ago I read the Unz Review quite often, and I assume that many of the people commenting on that site are alt-right. After reading Wylie I started thinking if the people in Unz are of this neurotic conspiratorial mindset. Indeed, there seemed to be two groups of commenters. One group seemed to be old and mostly white men. They did believe in some theories that are commonly called conspiracy theories. These theories include the theory that the WTC buildings were exploded. Most seemed to believe that the trace leads to Israel, as there was the Mossad team making a video and the van with traces of explosives. But this is a quite possible theory. The other theory that these old men seemed to believe is that the Holocaust story is not correctly told. But I did make my own demographic calculations that strongly point to this direction. Then they also believed like Trump that the US Congress was literally owned by Jewish lobby organizations, but unlike Trump, they did not see that something has changed. I am not familiar with this situation, but some columnists in Unz, notably Philip Giraldi, seem quite convincing. So, let us agree that this is more or less true. Additionally they seemed to believe that there are the leftists, who promote LGBT and immugration and that the leftists include many American Jews, but in Israel Jews follow a different policy than what they propose to Christian countries. I must agree that this seems to be the case. Whether they believe on the theory of globalists was not so clear. On the other hand, these Unz people did not seem too receptive to many other conspiracy theories, such as the Moon hoax and UFO theory. Concerning this group of old men those conspiracy theories that these people seem to believe are quite possible, while those that they do not are likely to be incorrect.
The other group was different. They seemed to be younger. They denied the Holocaust completely and seemed to have an obsession on IQ. There is a valid scientific question of how much of the average IQ differences among populations is genetic. We know that much of these differences are environmental, but some may be genetic. I personally have not come to any conclusion yet. Both groups in Unz were strongly on the opinion that the differences are largely genetic, but especially this younger group seemed to represent what is called the white supremacist view. They have also other obsessions, like admiration of Hitler, and a great dislike of Jews. I would suspect that many of them are neo-Nazis. They may well be of the neurotic conspiratorial mindset, those people that Cambridge Analytics manipulated to support Trump. They may have added some small number of votes, but their support probably scares off more voters. Wylie could have done this on purpose, as I would expect that a person like him does not actually want to help Trump, Evangelic Christians or Republicans, not to mention alt-right.
But there is a question, why should neo-Nazis support a friend of Israel like Trump. The question I have had for a long time is if there is a connection between the friends of Israel
and (neo-)Nazis. By friends of Israel I do not mean the majority of American Jews, or the majority of Jews anywhere. Most Diaspora Jews of course have a sentiment for Israel, as would the majority any people have a sentiment to their homeland, even though Israel is an artificially created country. These friends of Israel are a different group. They are not friends of Jews as I strongly suspect that they caused the Holocaust in order to create Israel. The need not all be Jews at all. Anti-Semites, the crazy ones, are useful when correctly used: they keep the flock together and separate them from the other people.
These are only raqndom thoughts from the book Mindf*ck and I have not thought them so carefully. But let us go to one last question in Mindf*ck: does psychological manipulation, as was done by SCL and Cambridge Analytics, psychological warfare, present an threat to democracy? It can and certainly elections can be manipulated in many ways. In 2016 US presidential elections there may have been too unethical psychological warfare, in 2020 there may have been voting fraud ( I find it quite possible that there was). These operations do nullify the idea that people select the leaders. It is not a problem everywhere, but it may today be a problem in many countries, including the USA. What can be done?
My wife once suggested that all candidates to parliament elections should have an IQ over 130. I rejected this because people with IQ between 130 and 145 are the managers and if only they are represented, then nobody represents the interests of the majority of the population. People with IQ over 145, or say 155, are usually very poor managers, so they should not represent anybody but themselves. They are too intelligent and lacking in some other respect. So, it is not selecting people with high IQ. But maybe the problem could be solved by having trusted people with very high IQ – meaning they were mostly trusted men, and old men:) – who would be voted by people and who would select the leaders and could not be candidates themselves. Such election system has been used. It did not really have any major flaw, but it has usually been replaced by a direct election. But it can save lots of money by removing the need for election campaigns. The trusted people would interview the candidates and decide, but they would announce what themes they support so that they could be voted. So, these trusted people we would pick up for some weeks from universities as a duty, no salary, no power, no close connections to the candidates. This could solve the psyops problem.