The Internet calls for a very different set of political and personal talents: confrontation, wit, defiance, spontaneity and rule breaking. Where Clinton and Blair tried desparately to appera normal for the TV camera, digital politicians intentionally court the lulz. The dark money playbook is straightforward. Take advantage of shady campaign financing; circumvent electoral rules where you can; and draw on a network of supportive think tanks, a receptive media run by a handful of magnates and hard-line caucuses within the long-established political parties. As we shall see, the same strategies and tactics are increasingly employed in the UK and across much of the world. From Vote Leave playing fast and loose with electoral law to the international influence campaign underpinning the rise of the populist right in Europe, politicians and their surrogates are increasingly willing to push the boundaries as far as they will go, and beyond. Donald Trump was elected US president in 2016 after a campaign marred by disinformation and electoral interference. Dark money has gone hand-in-hand with the rise of digital disinformation. It is a truism that politics has been transformed in recent years. But it is not just the outcomes, the election of disruptive authoritarian populists, that have changed. Behind Brexit, Trump and a host of other unforeseen ruptures is a paradigm shift in the nature of political communication. The digital world offers voters the opportunity to live in echo chambers where their political prejudices are confirmed and reinforced daily. We can all choose a tribe now and decide not to hear any voices critical of our choice.

In the new world of (digital) political campaigning, small sums of money can go a long way, while multi-million dollar government public relations exercises can prove practically worthless. I used to wonder about how individuals who want to influence politics. Thanks Peter for explaining one of these ways is to set up or at least fund a think tank. Think Tanks were an American invention (Koch brothers who funded Trump are among the most influential contributors) which have been exported to Britain. The IEA is one of the most famous and influential with the UK government. Politicians lie gleefully, making wild claims that can be shared instantly with millions of people on social media. Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Jair Bolsonaro and populists in many other countries are the beneficiaries. Regulators err on the side of institutions, not the public they are supposed to protect. "In all the windows of government, the curtains have been closed". Then there is the shed loads of illegal Dark Money being pumped into various causes, be it Johnson, Trump or Brexit.Among the lessons Farage gleaned from Five Star was the electoral benefit of being seen as coming from outside traditional politics altogether.

While he likes to say that they spent a lot of time abiding by regulations, I would beg to differ. Cambridge Analytica did not even have a data protection officer until 2018, right before they shut down. I begged for one for many years. I begged for more time with our lawyers and was told I was creating too many invoices. And for a long time, because I had multiple law degrees, I was asked to write contracts. And so were other — BRITTANY KAISER: Actually, a lot of it started to come when I saw some of Carole’s reporting, because there were a lot of conspiracy theories over what was going on, and I didn’t know what to believe. All I knew was that we definitely did work in the Brexit campaign, “we” as in when I was at Cambridge Analytica, because I was one of the people working on the campaign. And we obviously played a large role in not just the Trump campaign itself, but Trump super PACs and a lot of other conservative advocacy groups, 501(c)(3)s, (4)s, that were the infrastructure that allowed for the building of the movement that pushed Donald Trump into the White House. Democracy for Sale is an on-the-ground account of Indonesian democracy, analyzing its election campaigns and behind-the-scenes machinations. Edward Aspinall and Ward Berenschot assess the informal networks and political strategies that shape access to power and privilege in the messy political environment of contemporary Indonesia. British politics is comparatively low-spending, especially when set
against the United States, but there is plenty of evidence that the American model of hidden finance and clandestine influence has traversed the pond. Britain, as the London-based American political analyst Anne Applebaum notes, ‘has become a place where untransparent money, from unknown sources, is widely accepted with a complacent shrug’. The relatively small sums involved can make it even easier to get access to the top table of British politics.AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s Steve Bannon in 2018, key to President Trump’s victory and to his years so far in office, before he was forced to — before he was forced out. What was your relationship with Steve Bannon? You worked at Cambridge Analytica for over three years. You had the keys to the castle, is that right, in Washington? And by the way, Cruz’s campaign and the Trump campaign say, “Hey, they were a pretty good data company.” But this whole thing on psychographics was optionality in the deal. If it ever worked, it worked. But it hasn’t worked, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to work. So, it was never even applied. Far from being an aberration, dirty politics is the new normal. What’s so bad about political campaigns not declaring the source of their funds? Does dark money actually matter? It does, profoundly. Even relatively meagre
sums can shift the political needle and generate highly effective lobbying operations. Small purposeful groups are adept at taking control of policy in ways that are very hard to see for those not regularly involved in politics. BRITTANY KAISER: I believe it was owned by the Mercer family, that building. And we would come into the basement and use that boardroom for our meetings. And we would use that for planning who we were going to go pitch to, what campaigns we were going to work for, what advocacy groups, what conservative 501(c)(3)s and (c)(4)s he wanted us to go see.

CHRISTOPHER WYLIE: It’s incorrect to call Cambridge Analytica a purely sort of data science company or an algorithm company. You know, it is a full-service propaganda machine. u201c3/ What does that mean?\n\nSimply put: dominant corporations are not content to just gobble up & abuse their competitors \u2014 once dominant, they\u2019ll use their power to buy control over your government, too.\u201d — American Economic Liberties Project (@American Economic Liberties Project)

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AMY GOODMAN: Brittany Kaiser, can you talk about the “Crooked Hillary” campaign and how it developed? A brilliant description of the dark underbelly of modern democracy. Everyone should read it' Anne Applebaum The genesis of my book took place somewhere less obvious: Seaburn metro station on the outskirts of Sunderland, on June 21, 2016. Two days before the UK voted to leave the European Union, my editor had sent me to report on what voters thought in Sunderland. It was a warm summer’s morning and there were only a handful of people on the open-air platform.