Alex Constantine - May 7, 2024
By Alex Constantine
A month after the failed Jan. 6th coup attempt, I traced the web of connections linking Robert Mercer, the CEO of Strategic Communications Laboratories/Cambridge Analytica (SCL/CA) and Trump's biggest donor, to Republican Congressional conspirators, right-wing militias, neo-Nazis and GOP propagandists who advanced Trump's Big Lie confidence game. Mercer developed AI technology for IBM before moving in the SCL/CA, a highly political enterprise that entered into contracts with national political parties around the world to influence elections, often illegally.
Before he unleashes a political strategy, Mercer runs computer models (he is still at it in stealth mode, and he is back in the Trump camp), tweaks algorithms, makes adjustments for ultimate mass psychological advantage, and knows what the outcome of his AI-assisted election meddling will be. The "Big Lie " balloting fraud model element was formulated, run through AI programs, and tested in South America, the Caribbean and African continent for over a decade before Trump hammered it into the heads of his supporters with psychic driving (monotonous repetition of a message to break down mental defenses for the purpose of psychological manipulation).
This is the final section of my February, 2021 Mercer article, but possibly the most important, so I'm reposting it here as a caveat before the upcoming November election.
SCL/Cambridge Analytica has Used the "Rigged Election" Gambit
to Incite Dissent in South America and Nigeria, Often Resulting in Riots and Mass Fatalities
“ ... Behavior can be predicted and controlled. I find it incredibly scary. ... People don’t know it’s happening to them. ...Cambridge Analytica has the technological tools to effect behavioral and psychological change ... but it’s SCL that strategizes it. It has specialised, at the highest level – for Nato, the MoD, the US state department and others ... It models mass populations and then it changes their beliefs." -- Carole Cadwalladr, Guardian/Observer, February 26, 2017
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Propaganda has one goal -- to inspire receptive subjects to act on programmed convictions.
Political meddling by SCL/Cambridge Analytica (SCL/CA) is based on predictors that accurately assess a host of personality traits. Individual behavior is predicted and modified, ultimately converting entire political cultures toward a predetermined end.
Commentators on the cable news networks are completely baffled by QAnon. They shake their heads over the "crazy accusations of Satanism and blood drinking by Democrats," unaware that the bizarre claims are based on complex quantitative models designed to adjust behavior and manipulate the naive into making decisions that are definitely not in their own interest. There is a method to the madness.
Researchers at SCL/CA know that fraudulent election claims incite mobilization. The Journal of Conflict Resolution (February 4, 2019) reports that social networking about election fraud shapes motivation to respond by mobilizing: "We distinguish between the mobilizing effects of actual incidents of election fraud and individuals’ subjective perceptions of fraud. While rational updating models would imply that both measures similarly affect mobilization, we argue that subjective fraud perceptions are more consistent predictors of protesting ... shaped by attitudes, information, and community networks.
"Our empirical analysis uses geo-referenced individual-level data on fraud events, fraud perception, and protesting from the 2007 Nigerian elections." (Cambridge Analytica's central role in Nigerian elections in this period is described below.) "Our analysis yields two main findings: proximity to reported fraud has no effect on protesting, and citizens perceiving elections as fraudulent are consistently more likely to protest, and more so if embedded in community networks."
As an example, the widespread perception of election fraud in 2020 reinforced by participation in networks like Mercer-financed Project Veritas, his daughter Rebekah Mercer-owned Parler, and Mercer-influenced QAnon. Trump "predicted" that the election would be rigged, led supporters to expect it, and this is a key element in the psychological processes modeled by Mercer. Subjective belief in election rigging is not merely a perception of actual fraud. Perceptions can be molded "by preexisting expectations of fraud, political attitudes on democracy more broadly, support for the losing party, among others. ... The motivated reasoning model suggests that individuals systematically disregard information that is inconsistent with pre-existing conceptions."
In one South American country, attempts by SCL/Cambridge Analytica to create perceptions of a rigged election were defused because the company was caught in the act.
St. Vincent of the Grenadines lies southeast of the Lesser Antilles off the coast of Venezuela, a small island in the Caribbean. In January, St, Vincent’s New Democratic Party ((NDP) accused (the opposition party of rigging the recent election.
Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves told supporters at a political rally, "the NDP continues to accuse the Unity Labour Party (ULP) of cheating. The opposition has in the past aligned themselves with Strategic Communications Laboratories/Cambridge Analytica, an entity known for rigging elections all over the world.”
“Imagine the NDP accusing us of rigging elections, and they hired a firm which is notorious for rigging elections in the whole of Africa and the Caribbean,” he said.
The Prime Minister described SCL as “mind benders” known to hack emails to view content a user browses on the Internet, and tap phones illegally.
“They have done it before," he told a local radio station, referring to St. Vincent's 2008 election. "SCL has contempt for black people. The leadership, they are a bunch of racists and those are the people the NDP get themselves hooked up with,” Gonsalves said.
He read passages from "Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America," a book written by Christopher Wyllie, a former employee at CA turned whistle-blower.
"They tried to break SVG before they break America with SCL, but the ULP is stronger than the Democratic Party in the United States. We know how to fight them,” Gonsalves said.
He read a section of Wylie's book concerning SCL interference in elections in Trinidad and Tobago. The company, Wylie wrote, also rigged elections in Africa, the Caribbean, and South Asia.
Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix "once said to a colleague in an email, referring to black politicians in Barbados: ‘they are just niggas’ who vote," Gonsalves said.
Nigeria
Robert Mueller's investigation traced concerted Russian attempts to disrupt elections in the US to 2014, and an infiltration and influence campaign conducted via social media platforms. Cambridge Analytica presented executives of Lukoil, the Russian oil company, with a summary of capabilities, datasets and strategies. The presentation had nothing to do with marketing, but involved election disruption tactics. The first slide prepared by CA executives illustrated how a “rumour campaign” instilled fear during the 2007 Nigerian election with rumors that the “election would be rigged." The last slide bore two logos, Lukoil’s and SCL's, and in bold text: "PSYCHOLOGICAL MESSAGING."
Nigeria is a federal republic with a population of roughly 40 million. The election was marred by coercive violence and accusations of graft. It ended in dispute, and was taken up by Nigeria's Supreme Court.
The AP reported that the court upheld Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua’s election win, "dealing a blow to political opponents who sought to unseat him."
"The seven-justice court ruled that the two runners-up in the vote had failed to show evidence that graft was widespread enough to force an annulment. But the judges acknowledged flaws in the election, and chided politicians on their combative conduct in the vote and during legal challenges since.
“'We’re not saying that all went well in the conduct of the election,' said one justice, Niki Tobi, laying the blame on the country’s political elite. 'The way politics is played frightens me. It’s a fight to the finish.'
There were claims that thugs "openly purchased votes, stole or stuffed ballot boxes, intimidated voters on election day, and about 200 people died in violence during the run up to the vote. Nearly a dozen governorship elections held a week before the presidential ballot have been overturned and several new races run."
A judgement issued by a lower court had held that "former strongman Muhammadu Buhari and ex-Vice President Atiku Abubakar -- who placed second and third in the election -- had failed to prove that the fraud was so pervasive that the official results should be discarded."
The parallels to the 2020 US election are obvious. Robert Mercer, the Jefferson Davis of the current “civil war,” is an artificial intelligence savant. He drew on Cambridge Analytica's networking capabilities and election meddling expertise to foment mobilization of neo-fascist shock troops in the aftermath of the 2020 [residential election. Mercer's deceptive sock puppets, including Trump and Republican congressional officials, directed them to the District of Columbia where the heavily-propagandized dupes stormed Capitol Hill, realizing Mercer's dream of overthrowing a democratic system he loathes. It was General Mercer's opening fusillade.
His ultimate objective: open fascist rule, and American alignment with dictatorial regimes around the globe.