In Episode 107 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with New Yorker staff writer Andrew Marantz, about his new book “Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation. In the book, Andrew reveals how the boundaries between technology, media, and politics have been erased, resulting in the deeply broken informational landscape in which we all now live. This conversation is meant to help us understand what went wrong and how we might go about trying to fix it.
For several years, New Yorker staff writer Andrew Marantz has been embedded in two worlds. The first is the world of social-media entrepreneurs—the new gatekeepers of Silicon Valley—who upended all traditional means of receiving and transmitting information. The second is the world of the people he calls the gate-crashers—the conspiracists, white supremacists, and nihilist trolls who have become experts at using social media to advance their agenda, influence elections, or just make money. Marantz weaves these two worlds together to create an unsettling portrait of today’s America, both online and in real life. He reveals how the boundaries between technology, media, and politics have been erased, resulting in the deeply broken informational landscape in which we all now live. In candid conversations with Silicon Valley executives and social media entrepreneurs, Andrew Marantz discovers a selective community of techno-utopians who took Mark Zuckerberg’s motto, “Move Fast and Break Things,” to heart. Viewing their role as disruptors to be free of any responsibility to actually monitor the tools they have built, they either choose not to police their users’ actions or, in many cases, don’t know where to begin. In fact, in Andrew’s portrayal, such policing is often seen by these techno-utopians as being antithetical to the nature of democracy, which they synonymize with the Internet writ large.
In the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election, it became apparent to Andrew that something was happening online. On Facebook for instance, while many of the traditional gatekeepers to information—like Reason, Foreign Affairs, the Nation, and more—were seeing less engagement with readers, other, darker corners of the platform were thriving. Most people view social media as a reflection of popular will and interest, but the virality industry is built on a large number of small human choices. At every step, there are people behind the curtain, and ahead of the election, someone was attempting to drag the notion of a Trump presidency from the fringes into the realm of the imaginable. But who were these new virologists? Enter the gate-crashers. Marantz spent years analyzing how alienated young people are led down the rabbit hole of online radicalization, and how fringe ideas spread—from anonymous corners of social media to cable TV to the President's Twitter feed. Along the way, he met with the men and women responsible for it all. He ate breakfast at the Trump SoHo with self-proclaimed “internet supervillain” Milo Yiannopoulos; toured a rural Illinois junkyard with freelance Twitter propagandist Mike Cernovich; drank in a beer hall with white nationalist Mike Enoch; and shadowed histrionic far-right troll Lucian Wintrich during his first week as a White House press correspondent. Marantz also spent hundreds of hours talking to people who were ensnared in the cult of web-savvy white supremacy—and to a few who managed to get out.
In the overtime to this week’s episode, Demetri shares stories from his time working at RT, including intimate details from his relationships and encounters with some of the characters discussed in Andrew’s book. The two also continue a conversation about gender and race, as well as the role of power in society.
You can listen to the overtime, as well as gain access to the transcript and rundown to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers also gain access to their very own overtime feed, which you can easily add to your favorite podcast applications like Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Overcast, Pandora, etc.
Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou
Subscribe & Support the Podcast at http://patreon.com/hiddenforces
Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod
In Episode 106 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Joshua Landis, a Middle East scholar and Syria expert about the disorderly withdrawal of American forces from Syria and the larger shift in the balance of power that we are seeing as nations scramble to remake alliances in the wake of America’s absence.
It seems that what we've seen transpire in the Middle East during the past week is a symptom of a much larger trend: the deterioration of the rules-based international order, the fulcrum around which the world has turned for three generations—the entirety of living memory. It is the break-down of national borders, in many cases borders that have been artificially constructed and maintained by the credible threat of American military power. As America begins its long-anticipated withdrawal from the world stage, others will rise to take her place. It was probably naive to imagine that this could happen in a managed way. Perhaps it was always destined to be messy. As much as Trump's detractors wish to blame him for the mess in Syria, the truth is, he is only an accelerant. He isn't responsible for assembling the reactants.
The forces currently being unleashed in what was once Northern Syria remain contained within the Greater Middle East, but Turkey’s involvement creates the potential for spillover into the Balkans and southern Europe at some indeterminate date in the future. Turkey has been flexing its geopolitical muscles with Greece for years. It is no longer inconceivable to imagine that its membership in NATO will prove to be an insufficient deterrent for curbing Turkish military aggression or the expansionary ambitions of Erdoğan in the Aegean. Erdoğan seems to be staking his political career on the vision of a more assertive and expansionary Turkish foreign policy. Turkey remains strategically indispensable to the US & NATO. If he expands Turkey's current activities in Cypriot waters, it isn't clear who will stop him.
It's a cliché, but all bets do seem to be off. If the nations of the world decide that America can no longer guarantee their security or maintain the integrity of their borders, we may start to see a rapid reorganization of the international order along radically different lines. It's hard to believe, but Russia has played its cards better than any one of the major powers. It has capitalized on (and in some cases stoked) the chaos of political dysfunction both within and across the transatlantic relationship. It seems to have positioned itself as the new dance partner for any country suddenly in need of an escort. Its economy may be half the size of California's, but this has not stopped Putin from rebranding the Russian Federation as "the new neighborhood muscle," that will have your back when the US doesn't.
America's leaders have exhibited remarkable incompetence in the area of foreign policy, displaying only flickering instances of humility and foresight since being thrust upon the world stage as the new global hegemon and the only standing survivor of the Cold War. For years, we've been asking ourselves what this new world is going to look like, a world without America guaranteeing security for the liberal, democratic order. The events currently transpiring in Syria may be giving us our first real glimpse of what that world will look like. It's chaotic. It's authoritarian. And it's more violent. This is the new backdrop for which the circus that is American politics will play out in 2020. Democratic candidates who have staked their candidacies on demonizing Donald Trump, while avoiding addressing the forces that brought him to office in the first place risk being totally blindsided by even lower voter turnout and a re-election of Donald Trump in 2020. If that happens, American foreign policy will likely go into crisis. It's really unclear at that point what would happen. The proverbial "Deep State" has resisted his candidacy from the beginning but has not gone so far as to overthrow his popular mandate. Should he be re-elected, what will Washington's elite, its intelligence agencies and wealthy benefactors do? Will they sit by and watch while Trump dismantles what is left of their dysfunctional experiment in American empire? Or, will they impeach him? He certainly hasn't made it difficult with his actions, but they no longer have the credibility to do it without further sacrificing their own legitimacy.
This is truly uncharted waters. We should all pray that a new consensus can emerge in the next twelve months that will bring enough of the country together to stop the bleeding, but it is not clear from what source this unanimity will spring.
This week’s rundown is a 16-page compilation of all the information (including pictures and links material referenced during the episode) compiled by Demetri ahead of his recording with Joshua Landis. You can access this document, along with a transcript to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers also gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily be added to your favorite podcast application.
Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou
Subscribe & Support the Podcast at http://patreon.com/hiddenforces
Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod
In Episode 105 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Jake Hanrahan about the crisis unfolding in the border region between Syria and Turkey following the US withdrawal of forces from northern Syria. This withdrawal precipitated the subsequent assault by Turkish Armed Forces on the Kurdish YPG-controlled region of Rojava. Jake Hanrahan is an independent journalist and documentary filmmaker based in the UK. He has reported from Syria, Iraq, southeast Turkey, and other conflict zones for HBO, Vice News, PBS Newshour, and BBC News, to name a few.
Turkish President Erdogan, after obtaining the consent of President Trump, began his invasion into the Kurdish YPG controlled region of Syria known as Rojava this past Wednesday. During Sunday’s “Face the Nation,” Secretary of Defense Mark Esper confirmed to Margaret Brennan that roughly 1,000 U.S. troops would be evacuated from northern Syria following Trump’s troop withdrawal announcement. There are also multiple reports of ISIS families and fighters previously captured and held by Kurdish forces starting to escape after Tukey’s bombardments. Also, Lebanese broadcaster al-Mayadeen reported Sunday that the Syrian army would enter Manbij and Kobani in the next 48 hours, based on an agreement with the Syrian Democratic Forces (the latter, according to Mohammed Shaheen, the deputy chairman of Euphrates region told North-Press).
It seems that what we are seeing transpire in the Middle East is the disintegration of artificially constructed national borders around sectarian lines. The forces being unleashed have thus far remain contained within the Greater Middle East, but Turkey’s involvement creates the further potential for spillover into the Balkans and southern Europe at some indeterminate future date. Additionally, Turkey has been flexing its geopolitical muscles where Greece is concerned in recent years, and it is no longer inconceivable to imagine that its troubled relationship to the EU and its membership in NATO will prove insufficient as deterrents for curbing Turkish military aggression or the expansionary ideas of Erdoğan in the Aegean.
This conversation is meant to help Hidden Forces listeners develop some context for what has transpired over the past week, the significance of Trump’s decision, and the implications moving forward.
Hidden Forces is listener funded. We rely on you to help us keep the program free of corporate advertising. You can help us do that by subscribing to one of our three content tiers through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers also gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily be added to your favorite podcast application. Your support is deeply appreciated.
Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou
Subscribe & Support the Podcast at http://patreon.com/hiddenforces
Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod
In Episode 104 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Michael Maloney, perennial entrepreneur and host of the documentary series Hidden Secrets of Money about monetary history, libertarianism, and Austrian economics.
Before starting GoldSilver.com, Mike overcame his childhood dyslexia to found a series of companies, including a high-end stereo manufacturer, winning several design awards in the process. Few people know this, but one of Mike Maloney’s own designs is on permanent display at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Mike also grew up dyslexic, leaving school after the 9th grade. Mike’s first job was as a traveling salesman, driving all over the Southwest and as far North as Oregon with a van full of samples and catalogs of automotive parts and accessories that he sold to customers. Eventually, Mike started his own high-end stereo equipment manufacturer, as well as an annual show called the Home Entertainment Show that took place during the same day as the Consumer Electronics Show. It was not until the very early 2000’s that Mike Maloney got the idea for GoldSilver.com, which began as a gold and silver brokerage, and which eventually developed into a reputable source for educational media content on Austrian economics, precious metals, and libertarian thought. For more than a decade now, Mike Maloney has traveled the world, sharing his relentless passion for economics and monetary history with audiences from Silicon Valley to Wall Street and from Hong Kong to Rome. He joins us today on Hidden Forces to share that experience with us.
The overtime to this week's episode includes a lengthy conversation about Tesla, as Mike Maloney is a Tesla Bull, and has taken some issue with our bearish coverage of the electric car manufacturer and its founder, Elon Musk. This segment, as well as the transcript and rundown to the full episode, are available to audiophile, autodidact, and super nerd subscribers through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers also gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily be added to your favorite podcast application.
Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou
Subscribe & Support the Podcast at http://patreon.com/hiddenforces
Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod
In Episode 103 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with cultural psychologist Michele Gelfand, who argues that the world’s cultures can be classified into two categories by virtue of their norms. She offers a lucid explanation of how and why cultures become tight or loose, outlining their different societal attitudes. This episode is full of eye-opening insights for development professionals, policymakers and those working in international business.
According to Gelfand, tight cultures have a large number of social norms that enforce order and conformity and tend to evolve in nations that face many natural and human-made threats. Loose cultures, on the other hand, have more lenient norms and tolerate a wider array of behaviors. They generally face fewer chronic threats – but may tighten up temporarily in the event of an acute threat. Furthermore, says Michele, tight and loose cultures each have advantages and disadvantages and it’s possible to modify a nation’s norms in order to address protracted social problems. This is also true in the private sector. In a particularly relevant part of the conversation, Michele describes how businesses also develop tight or loose cultures and how a cultural mismatch can doom a merger or undermine cooperation among a corporation’s divisions. The example she provides is that of Chrysler and Mercedes Benz, but Demetri also raises the example of AOL-Time Warner, perhaps the most prominent failed marriage of the late 90’s stock market boom.
“Tight” cultures, like Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and Germany, embrace rigid norms and mete out harsh punishments for those who deviate. “Loose” cultures, including New Zealand, the United States, and Brazil, are more tolerant of a wide assortment of behaviors. According to Dr. Gelfand, when countries, families, companies, and US states all act in accordance with their divergent conceptions of “normal,” misunderstandings and conflict often arise that help to explain many of the phenomena we encounter in daily life, business, and politics.
The overtime to this week's episode includes a conversation about changing cultural norms in the workplace, as well as how the norms in some western countries began to change after terrorist attacks.
This overtime segment, as well as the transcript and rundown to the full episode, are available to audiophile, autodidact, and super nerd subscribers through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers also gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily be added to your favorite podcast application.
Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou
Subscribe & Support the Podcast at http://patreon.com/hiddenforces
Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod