Their goal? Further repression of their political enemies.

By Aaron Regunberg (An excerpt)
American politics today are defined by a profound informational asymmetry. The right now controls most of the traditional media institutions, the social media platforms, and the algorithms that shape our attentional ecosystem. They have also built up a far larger network of creators than anything the left has at its disposal. How do you beat opponents who have the informational and attentional firepower to impose deceptive conspiracies on the public and, in many cases, make their lies an accepted common truth? How can we win back the narrative on climate change when they can ascribe every climate-induced hurricane or wildfire to DEI initiatives or weather control technology? How can we address far-right political violence when they can turn an evangelical Trump supporter’s assassination of a Democratic lawmaker into a plot by radical Marxists? How can we protect free and fair elections when they can just deny the results?

I don’t have the solutions to these problems. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the last few days—watching the buzzsaw of MAGA disinformation tear through the factual reality of this mass shooting not far from my home—it’s that we need to figure them out, and quickly. It’s not about finding that oft-discussed “liberal Joe Rogan.” What’s required is the buildout of a media ecosystem that can challenge the right’s extensive informational infrastructure with the full panoply of content creators, revenue structures, cross-platform coordination, amplification systems, and attention-getting strategies necessary to win this narrative war.

Our reality is just what we see in front of us. It can be defined by truth or by lies, by information or disinformation. Ensuring that people start receiving more of the former, and less of the latter, is an incredibly difficult and expensive challenge. But there may not be a way around it. And we’ve got to start building fast, before MAGA’s attentional stranglehold becomes our permanent reality.