Ruhle, Lefty Journo Panic Over Rise of Authoritarianism in US

On Thursday’s The 11th Hour on MSNBC, Stephanie Ruhle brought on leftist journalist Maria Ressa to panic with her over the rise in “authoritarianism” in the United States and then proceeded to blame the rise of social media and the newly liberated Twitter which Elon Musk recently bought to restore free speech to the platform.

“We are sitting here in the United States right now looking at all of the things that are happening, scared,” Ruhle wailed before turning to Ressa to ask her about authoritarianism. “You have witnessed firsthand the rise of authoritarianism. Do you look at what’s happening here and have fears that that could happen here?” 

“It already is” Ressa cried. Ruhle then jumped in and repeated the debunked claim about Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law being the “don’t say gay” law and other ridiculous nonsense about it being evidence of dictators wanting to crush dissent. 

“You’ve also witnessed what happens when there’s dissent against a dictator. We are having things happen here now, squashing speech, don’t say gay,” Ruhle huffed. 

Continuing to cry, Ruhle asked Ressa: “when you talk about holding the line against fascism with free speech comes this awful speech that’s being amplified, hyper speed, on social media, so what do you do with that?”

Ressa proved she’s even loonier than Ruhle when she ranted about “surveillance capitalism” click “expand” to read: 

Well, the first is actually make sure that this doesn’t happen because in the end, this comes from a corrosive business model that we didn’t even have a name for in until 2019. Surveillance capitalism. And in order to fix this, in the long term, it’s education. In the medium term, it’s legislation. We need protection because essentially, what this is doing, it’s manipulating our emotions in order to change our worldviews. Thinking fast first in order to change how you act in the real world. In the Nobel lecture, I called it a behavioral modification system and we are Pavlov dogs. This is based on data. In the short term, it becomes a person-to-person defense of democracy. It is hand-to-hand combat on social media to be able to get your messages out. But again, as you can see, if hate gets most of the distribution, then all of us get dragged and get sucked into this, and it creates emergent human behavior.

Ruhle was concerned that the solutions Ressa laid out aren’t attainable. “If you are saying the long-term solution is education, the medium-term solution is legislation, let’s be honest, we are not getting anything out of the government, and this education you are talking about, people aren’t going to school.”

“What are they doing? They are spending their days scrolling through Twitter, and while we are scrolling through Twitter, Twitter is having more and more layoffs,” Ruhle bemoaned. 

“So how dangerous is this moment that we are in?” Ruhle asked. “It’s become even more dangerous,” Ressa fearmongered. 

This buffoonish segment was made possible by Chase. Their information is linked. 

To read the relevant transcript click “expand”: 

MSNBC’s The 11th Hour
12/1/2022
11:46:30 p.m. Eastern

STEPHANIE RUHLE: We are sitting here in the United States right now looking at all of the things that are happening, scared. You have witnessed firsthand the rise of authoritarianism. Do you look at what’s happening here and have fears that that could happen here? 

MARIA RESSA: It already is, Stephanie. First, thanks for having me, but just listening to kind of, you know we’ve heard earlier, you doubled down — that’s exactly the kind of incentive structure our communications our information ecosystems encourage. And it is not a surprise, that’s the behavior that we see. 

RUHLE: So you’ve also witnessed what happens when there’s dissent against a dictator. We are having things happen here now, squashing speech, don’t say gay. What’s — why is that happening, and what could it mean? 

[…]

RUHLE: But when you talk about holding the line against fascism with free speech comes this awful speech that’s being amplified, hyper speed, on social media. So — so what do you do with that? 

RESSA: Well, the first is actually make sure that this doesn’t happen because in the end, this comes from a corrosive business model that we didn’t even have a name for in until 2019. Surveillance capitalism. And in order to fix this, in the long term, it’s education. In the medium term, it’s legislation. We need protection because essentially, what this is doing, it’s manipulating our emotions in order to change our worldviews. Thinking fast first in order to change how you act in the real world. In the Nobel lecture, I called it a behavioral modification system and we are Pavlov dogs. This is based on data. In the short term, it becomes a person-to-person defense of democracy. It is hand-to-hand combat on social media to be able to get your messages out. But again, as you can see, if hate gets most of the distribution, then all of us get dragged and get sucked into this, and it creates emergent human behavior.

RUHLE: But Maria, if you are saying the long-term solution is education, the medium-term solution is legislation, let’s be honest, we are not getting anything out of the government, and this education you are talking about, people aren’t going to school. What are they doing? They are spending their days scrolling through Twitter, and while we are scrolling through Twitter, Twitter is having more and more layoffs. People who were in charge of content moderation. So what — so how dangerous is this moment that we are in? 

RESSA: It’s become even more dangerous. 

[…]