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    ‘Americans are democracy’s equivalent of second-generation wealth’: a Chinese journalist on the US under Trump

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    On a Friday night in late May, Wang Jian was getting ready to broadcast. It was pouring outside, and he was sitting in the garage apartment behind his house, just outside Boston, eating dinner. “I am very sensitive to what Trump does,” Wang was telling me, in Mandarin, waving a fork. “When Trump holds a cabinet meeting, he sits there and the people next to him start to flatter him. And I think, isn’t this the same as Mao Zedong? Trump sells the same thing: a little bit of populism, plus a little bit of small-town shrewdness, plus a little bit of ‘I have money.’”Wang was sitting next to a rack of clothing – the shirts and jackets the 58-year-old newsman wears professionally – and sipping a seemingly bottomless cup of green tea that would eventually give way to coffee. By 11pm, he would walk across the room and snap on a set of ring lights, ready to carry on an unbroken string of chatter for a YouTube news programme that he calls “Wang Jian’s Daily Observations”. It was a slow news night but he would end up talking until nearly 1am. This was his second broadcast of the day. Different time zones, he explained to me, different audiences.Wang, who has more than 800,000 subscribers on YouTube, is representative of a small but influential part of the Mandarin-language media landscape. He is part of an exodus of media professionals who have left Hong Kong and mainland China in the past decade; and one of a handful who have started posting news and analysis videos on YouTube. Wang serves an audience of Chinese expatriates – along with mainlanders savvy enough to get round China’s great firewall – who tune in hoping that he can fill in the gaps left by propaganda, censorship and disinformation.Wang’s fans find him entertaining and reassuringly professional. (“He’s very objective, I think,” one told me.) His broadcast manner moves from the impersonal, rhythmic cadence of a veteran newscaster to personal asides that bring to mind a slightly incredulous university lecturer. He loves a rhetorical question (“Is this the way a US president speaks?”) followed by his favourite English-language interjection: “C’mon.”I have spent the months since Trump’s inauguration watching Wang on YouTube. He was first recommended to me by a journalist working at a prominent Chinese news outlet who, even while reporting for a similar audience, frequently checked in on Wang’s broadcasts. “He’ll be perfect for you,” they said. Americans have always loved looking at themselves from a distance.Watching the US through Wang makes our political reality appear more comical and more dangerous. He centres China in all his broadcasts, offering a kind of been-there-done-that account of authoritarian creep. He places the US on an arc of history we have long pretended to transcend. “Americans are democracy’s equivalent of second-generation wealth,” he told me. They were born into democracy and have no appreciation of what life is like without it. Chinese people, on the other hand, “have been bullied by rulers for thousands of years. We’re very familiar with these situations.”There are many American reporters, Wang said, who report competently on China. But when I asked how the US media was doing covering the US, he burst into laughter. “If I were the New York Times, I would be putting curse words on the front page every day,” he told me. “F-word, F-word, F-word.”In the US, the China narrative can fluctuate depending on the day. We thought, briefly, that the outbreak of the pandemic in Wuhan constituted a “Chornobyl moment” that would undermine the regime. It did not. We wonder, on and off, how China builds rail systems so quickly. We worry about whether China will overtake us in AI development. Our sense of national decline is intensified by China’s rise. In April, a New York Times op-ed by Thomas Friedman ran with the headline, “I just saw the future. It was not in America.” (It was in China.)In China, meanwhile, people looking to understand the US are also subject to a push and pull based on the political climate and – under Xi Jinping, China’s long-serving president – the narrowing space for free expression. China’s propaganda operation no longer resembles the lumbering machinery of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. There are still fustier national newspapers – Xinhua and the People’s Daily – that clearly represent a Communist party perspective. There is also the more nationalistic Global Times. “If the US did not interfere in China’s internal affairs or challenge its sovereignty,” said one recent article, “there would be no need for it to worry about China’s defence development”.View image in fullscreenAt the turn of the last century, these bigger publications were balanced by a handful of independent, market-driven media outlets pushing the boundaries of censorship in China, although these mostly reported on domestic issues. Over time, however, most Chinese media consumers have moved online and today, just like Americans, they get most of their information on social media. Mainland China blocks Facebook, YouTube, X and Google. Instead, information spreads on Sina Weibo or, most commonly, WeChat. These platforms are monitored by human censors and AI programmes that hunt for sensitive phrases or keywords. China’s censorship is not monolithic or infallible, but these combined efforts mean that, typically, the news that spreads is the news that the government permits to spread.“Mostly, the things that spread on WeChat are video clips or screenshots with text,” Yaqiu Wang, a researcher based in Washington DC. Clips that highlight American gun violence, protests or inflation flow freely, without any censorship. She mentioned the popularity of snippets from the Trump-friendly Joe Rogan Experience podcast. Yaqiu Wang’s parents will, not infrequently, call at night, concerned about her safety. They are not reading government propaganda so much as a curated selection of American bombast, spin and disinformation.How much Chinese people know about the reality of life in the US varies wildly. “There are those people with power, or those people working in universities, who will jump the great firewall,” Yaqiu Wang told me. These people can read BBC’s Mandarin news service, for example, or listen to the Mandarin-language podcast run by the New York Times journalist Yuan Li. But if these are too dry for news consumers, Wang Jian is there to chatter the night away. “I think this satisfies people’s needs,” said a Chinese government employee who watches Wang’s programme every day. “You can get real information.”Wang has told viewers that, in all his years as a journalist, the last two had brought about some of the biggest global changes he had seen. Trump, Wang explained, has misidentified the US’s strengths. “Your strengths aren’t your people,” he told me later, expanding on his theme. “I could find a bank teller in Hong Kong, bring them here, and they could do the job of 10 Americans.” What the US has got, according to Wang, is allies and a reliable currency. (“And now you’re threatening to annex Canada?”)Trump, according to Wang, would like to be more like Xi Jinping – a strongman leading a nation with a huge manufacturing base. He likes to point out that the two leaders have birthdays a day apart. Trump would like to take back the supply chain and manufacture everything in the US – an idea that drew a “c’mon” from Wang. There are, in turn, things about the US that Xi would like to emulate – the global influence, the financial power of the dollar. “Maybe we should just let Xi and Trump switch places. We wouldn’t need to do anything. They could leave the rest of us out of it,” Wang joked. “Although I think Xi Jinping would get beat up in the United States.”It’s this kind of irreverence that Wang’s audience most enjoys. His viewers call him “Teacher Wang” and as he talks, a string of congratulatory messages pop up. They often say: “Teacher Wang, JiaYou!” (a term of encouragement that literally means “add oil!” but is closer to “let’s go!”). Sometimes: “Teacher Wang, well said!” And sometimes, when Wang is particularly critical: “Teacher Wang, well scolded!”View image in fullscreenFormally, there are three parts of Wang’s programmes. He opens with a segment of recent news, moves on to a segment that offers opinions and deeper explorations of a particular topic. Finally, he will end with about half an hour of viewer comments and questions. Recent topics have included immigration protests in Australia (“Without immigration, Australia has no chance of being an influential country”) and China’s diplomatic overtures to India. This segment can also involve questions – “Should I emigrate to another country?” “Should I buy an iPhone now?” – that require him to play a variety of roles: agony uncle, consumer advice columnist, financial adviser. He does an episode every year while he makes dumplings. He is part newscaster, part professor, part friend.Few of Wang’s fans wanted to talk on the record, but two of the handful I spoke with pointed to this as their favourite segment. Local news that might be censored in China makes its way out in the comments. Wang will discuss issues viewers have raised about mainland China – complaints, for example, that government employees are no longer allowed to go to restaurants in large groups; or that factory workers are being forced to take Breathalyser tests when they get home at night; or that falling real estate prices have wiped out someone’s savings. Some of his listeners will address the US directly. “Introducing a tariff of this size is suicidal!” wrote one viewer. “Is it too simple to blame it on arrogance and wilfulness?”Wang, when he’s interested in a question, will stare into the camera. “You think Trump has thought it through?” he asks. “I don’t think so. Trump is really simple. He doesn’t think very deeply.” Trump’s brain, Wang told me, is a “qian dao hu” – a lake with 1,000 islands, none of them connected.Wang does not sleep much. He starts preparing for the broadcast somewhere between four and five hours in advance. Wang’s first daily broadcast runs from around 11am to noon. He then eats lunch, sleeps if he can, and spends time with his family. Around 6pm, he starts the process again, aiming to go live at 11pm. And then at about 12.30 or 1.00am, he walks across the yard, back to his house, and gets his second, truncated, sleep.Wang has wanted to be a journalist since he was a teenager. He was born to middle class parents in Nanshan County, China, a protrusion of land in the south-west part of Shenzhen. When Wang, in high school, decided he was interested in studying journalism at university, his parents told him they couldn’t support his choice. Wang understood their reservations. “During the Cultural Revolution, the people who were most targeted were writers and journalists. They were afraid I would be denounced.” Wang, however, had a stubborn streak. He stopped speaking at home. “I had a cold war with my parents,” Wang told me. He held out until they agreed.Wang arrived at Jinan University in Guangzhou in the mid 1980s, intending to study journalism, but it wasn’t journalism, exactly, that he learned. “We studied the CCP’s theory of media,” Wang told me. According to the CCP, facts were secondary to the health of the party and the populace. Then, in 1990, Wang managed to land a job as a reporter in Hong Kong, which was still under British rule and enjoyed relatively robust freedom of the press. (Though the British did not extend Hongkongers the right to elect their leader.)View image in fullscreenIn Hong Kong, Wang was suddenly in the privileged position of writing honestly about his new city and the country that he had recently left. Wang won multiple press awards as a young reporter at the daily newspaper Ming Pao and then, in 2001, he joined Sing Tao Daily – the oldest Chinese-language newspaper in the city. By this time, Hong Kong had been transferred to PRC rule and, while Sing Tao operated independently, it had significant ties to Beijing. Wang would eventually oversee the publication’s international expansion efforts, helping establish offices in New York, Toronto and San Francisco. He travelled to all these places but didn’t do much exploring. He was working or meeting Chinese émigrés for dinner. (“You ask me my impression of the United States. I didn’t have a impression! My impression of New York was only: Chinatown.”)Reporters in Hong Kong, at this time, were in a unique position. In authoritarian systems, reliable information has a special value, and Hong Kong journalists were granted some access to PRC officials. “This access made Hong Kong media influential not only among Chinese audiences but also among Chinese officials, who treated Hong Kong media as an alternative source of information,” says Rose Liuqiu, a professor in the Department of Journalism at Hong Kong Baptist University. This was particularly true for journalists covering the economy, Wang’s speciality.This work required diplomacy. Charles Ho, who owned the Sing Tao Daily, maintained close ties with Beijing. He famously said that if he followed Beijing’s directives 100% of the time, he would lose value in Beijing’s eyes. Wang’s own work has always walked a line between attracting viewers, reporting the facts and balancing the concerns of a global power.The precarious balance that sustained Hong Kong’s media did not last. Business ties between Hong Kong’s media outlets and Beijing grew steadily, as did concerns about self-censorship. After democracy protests swept through the city in 2014, prominent editors and journalists became the targets of violent attacks. Jimmy Lai, the founder of Next Media, had his house firebombed more than once. Kevin Lau, the editor of the newspaper Ming Pao, was hospitalised in 2014 after being assaulted in the street with a meat cleaver. In 2016, Wang decided to retire. Beijing was beginning to limit press freedoms in the city and Wang didn’t think the city would recover the openness that had changed his perspective so drastically as a young man.Wang decided to step back from work and, instead, focus on caring for his young daughter, while his wife continued her work in real estate. At the end of 2018, after a visit to his sister-in-law in San Francisco, Wang decided to move his family to the US. He called his wife and told her that he didn’t think there was much future in Hong Kong. His daughter could attend high school in the US, he reasoned. By the time I met him, Wang told me that many of his friends – editors and reporters at news outlets like the now-shuttered Apple Daily – had either fled or were in jail.Wang thought he was done as a news man. But character is sometimes fate, and Wang loves to talk. In 2019, he started holding impromptu gatherings at his sister-in-law’s house on the weekends. At the time, Trump was engaging in the first iteration of a trade war with China and many of their acquaintances in the Bay Area, most of whom worked in the tech industry, wanted to meet and discuss current events. The weekly crowd grew and it was his sister-in-law who suggested that Wang move the conversation online and out of her back yard. By the end of the year, Wang had started his YouTube channel. It was, initially, a chatty, informal programme. And then the pandemic hit, and Wang became a professional again. “All of a sudden it felt serious,” he told me. “I had a responsibility.”It didn’t take long for Wang to acquire an audience, especially after he started broadcasting twice daily. (His is a volume game.) The pandemic was driving people online and China was limiting the flow of information coming out of the cities it had locked down. One regular viewer I spoke with – another government worker in China who asked to remain anonymous – came across Wang around this time, when they were at home during one of China’s restrictive lockdowns. They still listen to his broadcasts daily, looking for news on the economy – still hoping for information that might not be flowing freely from town to town. “During the comments you get a glimpse of what’s happening locally in China,” they told me.Eventually, Wang hired a handful of researchers – some of whom were journalists who had fled Hong Kong after a crackdown in 2019 – paying them from the advertising revenue from his broadcasts. He also started a membership programme and a Patreon and began offering a small selection of goods for sale. The tea he sells through YouTube, he told me, was sourced by a fan. “We don’t make any money on the tea,” he laughed. “I’m the one who buys most of it.”Wang, and the handful of other newscasters like him, are part of an ecosystem of influencers, often called “KOLs” in China for “Knowledge and Opinion Leaders” (an English term that likely originated in Hong Kong). The KOLs compete for attention with western sources – the Joe Rogan and Fox News clips. Most KOLs are apolitical; posting on TikTok or XiaoHongShu about beauty trends or daily life. Within China, many of these influencers are tacitly approved by the CCP. A woman named Li Ziqi, for example, runs the most popular Mandarin-language programme on YouTube and cross-posts on sites in mainland China. Her videos offer an idealised portrait of village life – making traditional crafts while soothing music plays in the background. Political KOLs are less likely to be making video content, and those within China are either pro-CCP or frequently find their accounts blocked. One, who goes by the name Gu Ziming, is famous for managing to pop up with new accounts after having an old one shuttered by censors.View image in fullscreenWhen I visited Wang, it was Friday evening. His researchers – who also wished to remain anonymous – had submitted the evening’s potential topics via a shared Google document. They laughed about Trump’s negotiation strategies (“No one trusts him!”) and speculated as to why a large job recruitment platform in Shanghai had stopped reporting salaries (“It means they’re scared to issue the report”). They moved topics up and down the list, in the order that Wang would plan to address them. In some cases, Wang questioned the news that they brought to him and urged them to seek out more sources.The proposed topics included elections in South Korea; a systemwide shutdown on San Francisco Bart trains; and a Texas ban on Chinese nationals buying property. “Have those Chinese living in Texas done nothing?” Wang asked. “No resistance or protest?”“I think there were protests before,” came the researcher’s voice through the phone. “But it turns out they’re giving exemptions to some people, but otherwise you have to have a green card.”“That’s fine, then,” Wang answered. “Don’t go to Texas to buy a house, then. The housing prices are falling in Texas anyway. This is a very red state. I can clearly see the momentum of this state.” The topic made the broadcast.Years ago, when I first started reporting on the media landscape in China, I thought of it as a foil to the more raucous and open media environment in the west. Now it feels more like a funhouse mirror – a different, exaggerated version of something fundamentally the same. Chinese readers have long approached their news sources with cynicism. In the US and most of the west, media sources are, for the most part, still free and unrestricted. Facts, on the other hand, are increasingly under attack.According to the researcher Wang Yaqiu, there is a division she sees in the US and China. Those who have political power, money, or enough education or energy, will do their best to seek out reliable information. This was true when Wang Jian began his career in Hong Kong, when Communist party officials looked to Hong Kong media as a reliable source. It is true now, when reliable information often comes at a cost – to unlock paywalled information, or to get a VPN to evade the great firewall. Wang’s programme is free to watch, but accessing it takes knowledge, desire and knowhow. Good information, and the ability to find it, Wang Yaqiu pointed out, is more and more a matter of privilege and money – and this is true on both sides of the Pacific. “The rest of us,” she said, “will all be swimming in the same trash.”Wang doesn’t get asked, often, what to do about the authoritarian creep he is commenting on in the US. He has been in this position nearly his entire life – reporting from Hong Kong as its democratic freedoms were eroded, and now the US. He enjoys enough of a distance to look at things from a bird’s-eye view, able to see events as funny and alarming. He has, at the same time, a truculent, slightly traditionalist, belief in the value of the news. After a lifetime patrolling the boundary between truth and nonsense, Wang believes that people build their realities based on what is available to them: their lived experiences, their teachers, the media they consume. They are reasonable. They just need access to reliable information.In recent months, as political violence and censorship in the US have grown, his references to the value of journalism have multiplied. When Charlie Kirk was assassinated in September, he gave a rapid, dispassionate explanation of Kirk’s record. “Kirk pushed forward conservativism and Christian nationalism,” Wang informed his viewers. “He denied the efficacy of vaccines. After Kirk’s death, Trump ordered all the flags fly half-mast.” The next day, Wang made a fresh argument for his line of work. “Media’s role is helping everyone regulate power,” he told his audience. “China castrated the media.” A few days later, he returned to the question. “How do you change your destiny?” he asked. “You change your destiny with knowledge. How do you gain knowledge?” Wang continued. “You read the news.”Wang issues warnings, but his work is fundamentally hopeful. He often returns to his own experience arriving in Hong Kong. He walked the streets, looked at the buildings, and marvelled at the fact that he could just go and look up who owned them. That had not been possible back home. He read old copies of Life magazine and began questioning the Communist party’s version of history. It was an epiphany. “My mission is to provide everyone with an opportunity to change their view of the world,” Wang told me, as he transitioned from tea to coffee. “This is the value of this programme. You need to know that this world is made up of countless puzzles. This, what is happening in the US, is one of them.”On the night I visited, Wang wrapped up around 1am. He thanked his audience. He sighed, momentarily letting his exhaustion slip through. He asked for upvotes and follows. “Join us as a member and help support us,” he said. And then he closed with his regular signoff. “Broadcast better,” he said. “Be better.” More

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      Jimmy Kimmel comeback breaks his YouTube monologue views record

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      So much for low viewership: Jimmy Kimmel’s comeback monologue is now his most-viewed one on YouTube.The nearly 30-minute segment, in which Kimmel acknowledged his suspension by ABC owner Disney under pressure from the Trump administration, clarified his remarks on the killing of Charlie Kirk and passionately defended free speech, racked up more than 15m views in 16 hours.Numerous Jimmy Kimmel Live! sketches, interviews and other short clips have attracted tens of millions of views over the year, but Tuesday night’s segment marked record viewership for one of the comedian’s monologues.His previous most-watched monologue was from another emotional occasion in 2017, when Kimmel revealed the birth of his son Billy with a congenital heart condition that required immediate open-heart surgery. Other highly viewed monologues include Kimmel’s reaction to Will Smith’s infamous slap of Chris Rock at the 2022 Oscars (13m views), his response to the mass shooting at the Route 91 Harvest music festival in Las Vegas in 2017 (10m views) and his thoughts on Trump’s re-election last November (9m views).The spike in viewership comes after Disney suspended his late-night show under pressure from the Trump-appointed head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) over his comments on the shooting of rightwing activist Charlie Kirk. The decision quickly became a cultural flashpoint, prompting national outcry over free speech and condemnation over the bullying tactics of the Trump administration. Disney reversed course on Monday, following “thoughtful conversations with Jimmy” and pressure from Hollywood stars, free speech advocates, consumer boycotts, union protests and even Republicans like Ted Cruz.Kimmel’s show remains pre-empted on the dozens of ABC affiliate stations owned by the companies Sinclair and Nexstar, which is seeking FCC approval for a $6.2bn merger. Jimmy Kimmel Lives! typically averages about 1.6m broadcast viewers per night, but according to the New York Times, experts expect this tally to be much higher for Tuesday’s show – despite the Nexstar and Sinclair eliminating about 20% of its broadcast audience.Shortly before Tuesday’s show aired, Donald Trump lashed out at the host, a longtime needler and critic, and criticized ABC for allowing his return to broadcast.“I can’t believe ABC Fake News gave Jimmy Kimmel his job back,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “The White House was told by ABC that his Show was cancelled! Something happened between then and now because his audience is GONE, and his ‘talent’ was never there.”“I think we’re going to test ABC out on this,” he added.“Let’s see how we do. Last time I went after them, they gave me $16 Million Dollars. This one sounds even more lucrative,” Trump said, seemingly referring to the settlement he reached with ABC News last year in a defamation lawsuit filed against the network.In his return, Kimmel was neither conciliatory nor fiery. He decried his suspension as “anti-American” – “this show is not important,” he said, “what is important is that we get to live in a country that allows us to have a show like this” – and clarified his stance on Kirk’s death. “It was never my intention to make light of the murder of a young man,” he said. “I don’t think there’s anything funny about it.”“Nor was it my intention to blame any specific group for the actions of what – it was obviously a deeply disturbed individual,” he added. “That was really the opposite of the point I was trying to make, but I understand that to some that felt either ill-timed or unclear, or maybe both. And for those who think I did point a finger, I get why you’re upset. If the situation was reversed, there’s a good chance I’d have felt the same way.”Kimmel also praised Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, for offering the accused killer forgiveness in a televised memorial service over the weekend.“Look, I never imagined I would be in a situation like this,” he later said. “I barely paid attention in school. One thing I did learn from from Lenny Bruce and George Carlin and Howard Stern, is that a government threat to silence a comedian the president doesn’t like is anti-American … Let’s stop letting these politicians tell us what they want and tell them what we want.”Jimmy Kimmel Live! will air as usual on Wednesday night, except on the 28 affiliates owned by Nexstar and the 38 owned by Sinclair. On Wednesday, Nexstar told Variety that it is “continuing to evaluate the status of ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ on our ABC-affiliated local television stations, and the show will be preempted while we do so. We are engaged in productive discussions with executives at The Walt Disney Company, with a focus on ensuring the program reflects and respects the diverse interests of the communities we serve.” More

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      in US Politics

      The students who debated with Charlie Kirk: ‘His goal was to verbally defeat us’

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      In the days after his killing, Charlie Kirk was remembered by his allies as a great debater. A quote taken from a widely shared video of Kirk discussing his life’s work – “when people stop talking, that’s when violence happens” – emblematized such eulogies.Kirk toured American college campuses with his rightwing non-profit Turning Point USA, where he would set up a tent, table and microphone, and debate with undergrads. The goal, he said, was to “save western civilization”, and remembrances after his death positioned him as a budding statesman – a conservative hero who strode across the political divide for the sake of open dialogue.Kirk applied basic rules of civility to his debate style, asking opponents their name and saying it was nice to meet them. He engaged young people in political discourse at a time when society has been split into bitterly antagonistic camps. But his critics are taking issue with any version of his legacy that does not account for the bigoted nature of his arguments. They are also closely examining his very style of deate.“I don’t think Charlie entered debates to come to a common consensus or to discover the truth,” said Mason, a 26-year-old graduate student who debated with Kirk on the YouTube show Surrounded last fall. “I think Charlie came to debates to verbally beat his opponents.”This made him a formidable combatant. “He knew the arguments for nearly every conservative principle and even theological concept, and he spent years to develop that ability, so he was very great at pivoting and changing the conversation when it was not going his way,” said Mason, who is based in Los Angeles.During one debate, Kirk insisted on the truthfulness of a racist hoax about Haitian immigrants eating their neighbors’ pets. In another, he falsely called the term foetus “just a word for a human being”. He goaded college students, who eagerly stepped up to query or challenge him, with leading questions that were intended to elicit strong emotions – “what is a woman?” and “what is racism?” were two of his go-tos.“At its core, debate is supposed to be an academic exercise, with the goal being to be forthright and genuine in the information you present,” said Trent Webb, a professor of writing studies and rhetoric and director of the speech and debate team at Hofstra University. “In a good faith debate, the final goal is to reach consensus. If that doesn’t happen, then a lot of academics would consider it to be an exercise in futility.”View image in fullscreenAfter a Kirk debate, clips spun out on to social media, inviting millions into the fray. In celebration of perceived wins, Turning Point USA titled its YouTube videos things like: “Charlie Kirk ANNIHILATES Smart-Aleck Student Accusing Him of Propaganda”, “Charlie Kirk wrecks DEI talking points” and “Liberal Student Can’t Answer Charlie Kirk’s Simple Question.”Dr Charles Woods, a professor of rhetoric and composition at East Texas A&M University, and the host of The Big Rhetorical Podcast, said Kirk distilled nuanced topics into stifling, good v bad arguments.“Charlie turned myriad opportunities for meaningful dialogic transactions rooted in civility and turned them into confrontational interactions by amplifying binaries in his argumentative structure,” Woods wrote in an email. “What we know is that there is a spectrum of ideologies and worldviews, not just two: Charlie’s and whoever is on the other side of the microphone.”Hasan Piker, the popular leftist Twitch streamer who was scheduled to debate with Charlie Kirk later this month, wrote in a guest essay published in the New York Times that his would-be opponent was an “expert” at “[taking] advantage of people’s resentments and [redirecting] them toward vulnerable communities”.Still, leftists lined up to debate with him. Some, like a sociology professor who appeared genuinely curious to talk about the economic prospects of young people under Donald Trump, desired a meeting of the minds. For his part, Piker told Slate that while he is “not the biggest fan of the debate format”, he finds the forum “entertaining” and “galvanizing”.Perhaps no forum fit Kirk’s shtick better than the platform given to him by Jubilee Media, a YouTube channel that produces Surrounded, a thunderdome of debate where one person is encircled by a ring of ideological opponents who attempt to undercut his stances in lightning-fast rounds of verbal sparring, governed by literal red flags.“Can 25 Liberal College Students Outsmart 1 Conservative?” asked the series’ first episode, an hour and a half of nonstop ragebait released last September. In the show, Kirk debated with his opponents such statements as: “Abortion is murder and should be illegal” (wherein Kirk said yes, he would hypothetically make his 10-year-old daughter carry a child to term if she were to get pregnant from rape); “college is a scam”; and “Kamala Harris is a DEI candidate.” (Consider these Kirk’s greatest hits; he often debated these topics on campuses.)Naima Troutt, a 22-year-old film student at the University of Southern California, said the students made $25 for their appearance on the show, which has since raked in more than 35m views on YouTube and spawned countless viral clips.A campus organizer who was involved with Black Lives Matter and Palestinian solidarity protests, Troutt did not know who Kirk was when she showed up to set that day, which helped her see him as less of a rightwing celebrity and more as a man she disagreed with.View image in fullscreenTroutt described a “camaraderie” between the students, with some of the more “chronically online” trying to explain Kirk’s significance to her before they started filming. But Kirk was not as eager to chum it up. “He was either on his phone, or outright rude. You got the sense that you were an opponent to him even when you weren’t debating.”Troutt jumped into the hot seat twice to spar with Kirk over fetal viability, Harris’s qualifications for president and affirmative action. They agreed on practically nothing, but Troutt found some merit in debating Kirk. “I think I became much better at articulating my viewpoints and defending my viewpoints, because one thing about Charlie is that as much as I disagree with – and at times hate – everything that he believed and stated in the past, the fact is he’s one of the only rightwingers who regularly puts themselves out there,” Troutt said.Troutt is not alone in this opinion. California governor Gavin Newsom, who debated with Kirk on his podcast earlier this year (and admitted his son was a fan), wrote in a statement that he “admired [Kirk’s] passion and commitment to debate”. Representatives for New College of Florida, formerly a progressive school that fell under the control of rightwing allies of Governor Ron DeSantis, announced it will commission a statue of Kirk with his table and mic on campus. The school’s social media officer told Fox News that the statue will represent “what America is all about”.Ultimately it was not rhetorical prowess but an insult that made Troutt a social media folk hero in #resistance circles: after Kirk attempted a gotcha moment by saying that “foetus” means “little human being” in Latin, Troutt called his self-satisfied smile “creepy”.“Smiling is creepy?” Kirk clapped back, to which Troutt responded: “No, your smile specifically.” The quip landed her an Interview magazine feature branding her “the college student who owned Charlie Kirk”. (Foetus in Latin actually means “a bringing forth; producing; fertile”.)In March, Kirk asked her to come to the stage for a 10-minute debate he held at USC, where they tussled over DEI again.“I was shocked by that,” Troutt said. “I literally just roasted this man, and now he wants to debate with me again. But the second time he was a lot nicer. A lot of Trump and Kirk supporters came to watch it, and it was a more hostile environment, but he was less hostile to me.”Mason, who debated with Kirk on Surrounded, describes himself as a progressive and felt it important to showcase leftist values.View image in fullscreen“They’re so often caricatured, especially for those in echo chambers of the right,” Mason said. (He asked that his last name not be shared for privacy reasons.) “As someone who feels very confident in my beliefs and convictions and my ability to communicate, I think it’s beneficial for me to go on a platform like this.”Mason and Kirk’s topic was gender and transgender rights. Mason got Kirk to admit that he did not know the bimodal theory of gender, to which Kirk called him “condescending”; Mason apologized for his tone, but said he was “trying to match” Kirk’s energy toward other debaters. Despite the testiness, the pair had a lively debate.“Having a conversation with him was very easy to do,” Mason said. “I’ve consumed so much of his content that I knew what he was going to say. I wouldn’t say that it was easy for a lot of the other [Surrounded debaters], because he understands the sport of rhetoric and debate, and is really good at controlling the conversation. I had to put in a strong effort to assert myself.”Webb, the Hofstra professor, called the unmoderated format of Surrounded where claims are not factchecked, “unnerving”.“You can’t negate that it’s very interesting to watch,” Webb said, “but those students are not armed with proper data and evidence, and a lot of times they’re speaking to things that sometimes are blatantly untrue.”After the debate, Kirk hinted that he wanted Mason to come on his radio show. That never happened, but the two kept in touch. The second time they debated – about wealth inequality at the USC event – Kirk praised his “high IQ”. But Kirk never put the debate up online. “I like to believe that’s because the conversation didn’t go the way he planned,” Mason said, “but it could have also just been because I don’t have the same online presence as someone like Naima.”The circus around Kirk’s social media did not just advance conservative causes. His work boosted young leftists like Troutt and to a lesser extent Mason. Gaining a platform as “the girl who owned Charlie Kirk” overwhelmed Troutt at first. “It did feel like getting thrown to the wolves,” she said. But she sustained her viral moment and has over half a million followers on TikTok, where she posts about politics.This small online community of Kirk debaters consider themselves an influential voice of reason against “alt-right” internet stars like Kirk, Ben Shapiro and Candace Owens.Hungry for another go, Troutt and other Surrounded debaters were scheduled to star in a reunion episode with Kirk later this month. On the morning of the day Kirk was killed, debaters in a Surrounded group chat were theorizing what topics might come up so they could start preparing. “It was surreal that in the middle of all of that, we got a news article sent by someone, saying: ‘Oh my God, this just happened,’” Mason said.After Kirk died, a range of reactions poured out on social media, with many recalling Kirk’s incendiary takes or honoring his memory. Kirk allies advocated for firing those who they said spoke against him. Meanwhile, some of the debaters were criticized by followers for their eulogies of their former opponent and the sadness they expressed about his killing.View image in fullscreenDean Withers, who appeared on the Surrounded episode and was called “the Democrats’ Bro Whisperer” by the the New York Times, mourned Kirk’s death through tears in a TikTok video. Tilly Middlehurst, a student who Kirk asked about feminism and what defines a woman at an event for Cambridge Union Society, her university’s debate club, choked up as she said the act of political violence left her “shaken and disgusted”.Withers later said that he became emotional watching the violent video of Kirk’s shooting online, because a close friend had been in the audience of the event and because he knew Kirk personally. “My tears weren’t me telling you how you should feel, but rather you happening to see me in how I felt,” he said. Middlehurst made her social media profiles private. (Neither responded to a request for comment. A representative for Cambridge Union Society wrote in an email: “Any comments made by speakers who openly debated with Mr. Kirk during our event earlier this year are expressed in a personal capacity and do not reflect the views of the Cambridge Union.”)Troutt felt “hesitant” to speak about Kirk’s death, though people looked to her for comment. “I don’t want to say the wrong thing and hurt people and lead to more violence. But I do want to help people in this moment process what this means for our country,” she said.After speaking with the Guardian, Troutt posted her own TikTok. “All acts of gun violence are horrible and must be condemned. That is my baseline,” she said in the clip. She added: “Mind your karma, watch what you put online.”Mason believes that “two things” can be true at once: “The video [of the shooting] was incredibly grotesque, this is terrible across the board, and I do grieve for his young children, but that does not make the life or the principles that the victim stood for any more palatable.”He found it hard to square the Kirk he interacted with, if briefly – a professional, nice enough man – with the hateful views he promoted.“I think that speaks to the dissociation that politics allows, where somebody can have these abstract concepts of what a group is, or speak ill of them, but it’s much more difficult to be insulting or vitriolic toward somebody who’s right in front of you,” Mason said.In the aftermath of his death, Kirk’s legacy remains as divisive as one of his debates. But there is no denying his influence on public discourse.“When we teach argumentation and debate in our classrooms, it’s not necessarily agenda-driven,” said Webb, the rhetoric professor.“Social media has taught us to believe that all opinions said online are valid and require response, and because of that, people are nowadays easily baited into these ‘debates’.” More

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      in US Politics

      TechScape: As the US election campaign heats up, so could the market for misinformation

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      X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, announced it will allow political advertising back on the platform – reversing a global ban on political ads since 2019. The move is the latest to stoke concerns about the ability of big tech to police online misinformation ahead of the 2024 elections – and X is not the only platform being scrutinised.Social media firms’ handlings of misinformation and divisive speech reached a breaking point in the 2020 US presidential elections when Donald Trump used online platforms to rile up his base, culminating in the storming of the Capitol building on 6 January 2021. But in the time since, companies have not strengthened their policies to prevent such crises, instead slowly stripping protections away. This erosion of safeguards, coupled with the rise of artificial intelligence, could create a perfect storm for 2024, experts warn.As the election cycle heats up, Twitter’s move this week is not the first to raise major concerns about the online landscape for 2024 – and it won’t be the last.Musk’s free speech fantasyTwitter’s change to election advertising policies is hardly surprising to those following the platform’s evolution under the leadership of Elon Musk, who purchased the company in 2022. In the months since his takeover, the erratic billionaire has made a number of unilateral changes to the site – not least of all the rebrand of Twitter to X.Many of these changes have centered on Musk’s goal to make Twitter profitable at all costs. The platform, he complained, was losing $4m per day at the time of his takeover, and he stated in July that its cash flow was still in the negative. More than half of the platform’s top advertisers have fled since the takeover – roughly 70% of the platforms leading advertisers were not spending there as of last December. For his part, this week Musk threatened to sue the Anti-Defamation League, saying, “based on what we’ve heard from advertisers, ADL seems to be responsible for most of our revenue loss”. Whatever the reason, his decision to re-allow political advertisers could help boost revenue at a time when X sorely needs it.But it’s not just about money. Musk has identified himself as a “free speech absolutist” and seems hell bent on turning the platform into a social media free-for-all. Shortly after taking the helm of Twitter, he lifted bans on the accounts of Trump and other rightwing super-spreaders of misinformation. Ahead of the elections, he has expressed a goal of turning Twitter into “digital town square” where voters and candidates can discuss politics and policies – solidified recently by its (disastrous) hosting of Republican governor Ron DeSantis’s campaign announcement.Misinformation experts and civil rights advocates have said this could spell disaster for future elections. “Elon Musk is using his absolute control over Twitter to exert dangerous influence over the 2024 election,” said Imran Ahmed, head of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a disinformation and hate speech watchdog that Musk himself has targeted in recent weeks.In addition to the policy changes, experts warn that the massive workforce reduction Twitter has carried out under Musk could impact the ability to deal with misinformation, as trust and safety teams are now reported to be woefully understaffed.Let the misinformation wars beginWhile Musk’s decisions have been the most high profile in recent weeks, it is not the only platform whose policies have raised alarm. In June, YouTube reversed its election integrity policy, now allowing content contesting the validity of the 2020 elections to remain on the platform. Meanwhile, Meta has also reinstated accounts of high-profile spreaders of misinformation, including Donald Trump and Robert F Kennedy Jr.Experts say these reversals could create an environment similar to that which fundamentally threatened democracy in 2020. But now there is an added risk: the meteoric rise of artificial intelligence tools. Generative AI, which has increased its capabilities in the last year, could streamline the ability to manipulate the public on a massive scale.Meta has a longstanding policy that exempts political ads from its misinformation policies and has declined to state whether that immunity will extend to manipulated and AI-generated images in the upcoming elections. Civil rights watchdogs have envisioned a worst-case scenario in which voters’ feeds are flooded with deceptively altered and fabricated images of political figures, eroding their ability to trust what they read online and chipping away at the foundations of democracy.While Twitter is not the only company rolling back its protections against misinformation, its extreme stances are moving the goalposts for the entire industry. The Washington Post reported this week that Meta was considering banning all political advertising on Facebook, but reversed course to better compete with its rival Twitter, which Musk had promised to transform into a haven for free speech. Meta also dissolved its Facebook Journalism Project, tasked with promoting accurate information online, and its “responsible innovation team,” which monitored the company’s products for potential risks, according to the Washington Post.Twitter may be the most scrutinised in recent weeks, but it’s clear that almost all platforms are moving towards an environment in which they throw up their hands and say they cannot or will not police dangerous misinformation online – and that should concern us all.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe wider TechScape David Shariatmadari goes deep with the co-founder of DeepMind about the mind-blowing potential of artificial intelligence in biotech in this long read. New tech news site 404 Media has published a distressing investigation into AI-generated mushroom-foraging books on Amazon. In a space where misinformation could mean the difference between eating something delicious and something deadly, the stakes are high. If you can’t beat them, join them: celebrities have been quietly working to sign deals licensing their artificially generated likenesses as the AI arms race continues. Elsewhere in AI – scammers are on the rise, and their tactics are terrifying. And the Guardian has blocked OpenAI from trawling its content. Can you be “shadowbanned” on a dating app? Some users are convinced their profiles are not being prioritised in the feed. A look into this very modern anxiety, and how the algorithms of online dating actually work. More

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      in Elections

      YouTube reinstates Trump’s account after suspension over US Capitol attack

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      YouTube said on Friday it was lifting restrictions on Donald Trump’s official account which were imposed after the violent January 6 attack on Congress.Leslie Miller, vice-president of public policy, told Axios Trump’s “ability to upload new content is restored”.Miller said YouTube had “carefully evaluated the continued risk of real-world violence, balancing that with the importance of preserving the opportunity for voters to hear equally from major national candidates in the run up to an election.“This channel will continue to be subject to our policies, just like any other channel on YouTube.”Trump videos YouTube deemed to incite violence would not be reinstated, Axios reported.Twitter and Facebook have already lifted bans imposed in the aftermath of the Capitol riot. Trump has not returned to either, preferring his own platform, Truth Social.Trump will now be able to buy campaign ads on YouTube.The insurrection Trump incited on 6 January 2021, in an attempt to overturn his election defeat by Joe Biden, is now linked to nine deaths.More than a thousand arrests have been made and hundreds of convictions secured. Authorities have reportedly indicated more arrests to come.Trump was impeached but acquitted in his Senate trial when enough Republicans stayed loyal.Running for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, he enjoys clear leads in polling.He also faces civil and criminal legal jeopardy over the Capitol attack, other election subversion efforts, his retention of classified material, a hush money payment to a porn star, his financial affairs and a defamation trial arising from an allegation of rape.Trump denies all wrongdoing.He has also recorded a charity single in aid of imprisoned January 6 rioters.Twitter and Facebook have already lifted bans imposed in the aftermath of the Capitol riot. Trump returned to Facebook on Friday afternoon with a brief video clip for his 2024 presidential run with “I’M BACK” as the caption. He has not returned to Twitter, preferring his own platform, Truth Social.Jenna Ellis, a lawyer who worked on Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, referred to the new owner of Twitter, who lifted that platform’s Trump ban in November, when she said of Trump’s YouTube return: “You have to wonder whether this would have ever happened without Elon Musk.” More

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      in World Politics

      The Right to Fair Recollection

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      The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

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      in US Politics

      Sandy Hook review: anatomy of an American tragedy – and the obscenity of social media

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      Sandy Hook review: anatomy of an American tragedy – and the obscenity of social media Elizabeth Williamson’s book on the 2012 elementary school shooting is a near-unbearable, necessary indictment of Facebook, YouTube and the conspiracy theories they spreadEven in a country now completely inured to the horrors of mass shootings, the massacre at Sandy Hook remains lodged in the minds of everyone old enough to remember it. Ten years ago, 20-year-old Adam Lanza fired 154 rounds from an AR-15-style rifle in less than five minutes. Twenty extremely young children and six adults were killed.Sandy Hook’s tragic legacy: seven years on, a loving father is the latest victimRead moreIt was the worst elementary school shooting in American history.Elizabeth Williamson’s new book is about that “American Tragedy”, but more importantly it is about “the Battle for Truth” that followed. In excruciating detail, Williamson describes the unimaginable double tragedy every Sandy Hook parent has had to endure: the murder of their child, followed by years and years of an army of online monsters accusing them of inventing this unimaginable horror.Alex Jones of Infowars is the best-known villain of this ghastly narrative. His Facebook pages and YouTube channels convinced millions of fools the massacre was either some kind of government plot to encourage a push for gun control or, even more obscenely, that it was all carried out by actors and no one was killed at all.While a single deranged shooter was responsible for the original tragedy, Williamson makes clear she believes Facebook and Google (the owner of YouTube) deserve most of the blame for the subsequent horror the relatives of victims have endured.As Congressman Ro Khanna reported in his new book, Dignity in a Digital Age, an internal Facebook document estimated that “64% of all extremist group joins are due to our recommendations”.Those recommendations are the result of the infernal algorithms which are at the heart of the business models of Facebook and YouTube and are probably more responsible for the breakdown in civil society in the US and the world than anything else invented.“We thought the internet would give us this accelerated society of science and information,” says Lenny Pozner, whose son Noah was one of the Sandy Hook victims. But “really, we’ve gone back to flat earth”.It horrified Pozner “to see the image of his son, smiling in his bomber jacket, passed round by an online mob attacking Noah as a fake, a body double, a boy who never lived”. Relentless algorithms pushed those “human lies to the top” on an internet which has become an “all-powerful booster of outrage and denial”.Noah’s mother, Veronique De la Rosa, was another victim of Jones’s persistent, outrageous lies.“It’s like you’ve entered the ninth circle of hell,” she tells Williamson. “Never even in your wildest, most fear-fueled fantasies would you have guessed you’d find yourself having to fight not only through your grief, which you know is at times paralyzing, but to even prove that your son existed.”Lenny Pozner regularly saw his dead son described as an “alleged victim”, but it took years before Facebook and YouTube and Twitter took substantial action to quiet the insane conspiracies their own algorithms had done so much to reinforce.Facebook allowed a Sandy Hook Hoax group and dozens of others to operate virtually uninterrupted for two years. Hundreds of videos on YouTube, owned by Google, wallowed in the hoax, drawing thousands who made threats against the families.“Facebook and Twitter are monsters,” says Pozner. “Out-of-control beasts run like mom-and-pop shops.”Facebook “focuses on growth, to the exclusion of most everything else”, Williamson writes. The algorithms are designed to keep all of us on the platform as long as possible, and they operate “with relentless, sometimes murderous neutrality, rewarding whatever horrible behavior and false or inflammatory content captures and retains users”.In 2018, an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg by Pozner and De La Rosa, published in the Guardian, accused the Facebook chief of “allowing your platform to continue to be used as an instrument to disseminate hate”.Two days later, Facebook finally suspended Jones’s personal page but “took no action against Infowars’ account, which had 1.7 million followers”. YouTube removed four videos from Infowars’ channel and banned Jones from live-streaming for all of 90 days.An open letter to Mark Zuckerberg from the parents of a Sandy Hook victimRead moreHarry Farid heads the school of Information at the University of California Berkeley. He describes the perfect storm which is threatening democracy and civility everywhere: “You have bad people and trolls and people trying to make money by taking advantage of horrible things … you have social media websites who are not only welcoming and permissive of it but are promoting it, and then you have us, the unsuspecting public.”Williamson makes the important and usually forgotten point that nothing in the first amendment gives anyone the right to use a social media platform. All it says on this subject is that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”As Farid points out, platforms have an absolute right to ban all forms of content “without running afoul of the constitution” – which is why Donald Trump had no judicial recourse when he was banned from Facebook and Twitter after the Capitol riot.But most of the time, Farid says, the platforms just look the other way: “Because they’re making so much goddamned money.”Last fall, the California Democrat Adam Schiff told the Guardian the blockbuster testimony of the Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen would finally be enough to spur Congress to regulate the worst excesses of the big platforms. So far, their lobbyists have prevented such action. On Saturday, the Guardian asked Schiff if he still believed Congress might act in this session. “There is still a chance,” he wrote in an e-mail, adding that “the degree of Russian propaganda on social media attempting to justify their bloody invasion of Ukraine” might finally provide the “impetus” needed for change.
      Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Battle for the Truth is published in the US by Dutton Books
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      YouTube suspends Rand Paul for video claiming masks ‘don’t prevent infection’

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      YouTubeYouTube suspends Rand Paul for video claiming masks ‘don’t prevent infection’Video platform suspends Republican senator, in latest move against a public figure who has spread Covid disinformation Maya YangWed 11 Aug 2021 13.26 EDTLast modified on Wed 11 Aug 2021 15.04 EDTYouTube suspended Republican senator Rand Paul on Tuesday for seven days over a video claiming that masks are ineffective against Covid-19.It is the latest move against a prominent public figure who has spread disinformation about ways to protect against the virus or about the vaccines developed to fight it.“We removed content from Senator Paul’s channel for including claims that masks are ineffective in preventing the contraction or transmission of Covid-19, in accordance with our Covid-19 medical misinformation policies,” a YouTube spokesperson said. “This resulted in a first strike on the channel, which means it can’t upload content for a week, per our longstanding three strikes policy,” the spokesperson added.In the removed video, Paul cast doubt on the effectiveness of masks, saying, “Most of the masks you get over the counter don’t work. They don’t prevent infection,” before adding, “Trying to shape human behavior isn’t the same as following the actual science, which tells us that cloth masks don’t work.”Many public health experts have advised using masks, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) first recommended the public wear cloth masks in April 2020. More recently the CDC advised vaccinated people to wear masks indoors in Delta surge areas.Last month Paul clashed with Dr Anthony Fauci, the top US infectious disease expert, during a heated discussion about the virus. At one point Fauci said, “Senator Paul, you do not know what you are talking about, quite frankly.”Responding to the YouTube ban, the Republican senator said on Twitter: “A badge of honor … leftwing cretins at Youtube banning me for 7 days for a video that quotes 2 peer reviewed articles saying cloth masks don’t work.”Last week, YouTube removed a Newsmax interview with Paul in which he said that “there’s no value” in wearing masks.Paul’s current strike will be lifted from his account after 90 days if there are no more violations. A second strike within the 90 days will result in a two-week suspension, followed by a permanent ban if his account accrues a third strike.YouTube’s suspension of Paul’s account was issued a day after Twitter suspended Republican Senator Marjorie Taylor Greene’s account for one week for violating the platform’s Covid-19 misinformation rules.TopicsYouTubeRand PaulCoronavirusUS politicsnewsReuse this content More