Once we are done laughing at CBC and its journalists / Pundits for their agonizing over who was allowed to ask questions of the leaders, we should understand the power-shift that is at play in the political arena.
WORDS OF WISDOM
Perhaps the more interesting part of the post-debate analysis by CBC personalities (both on air and on X) on April 16 was their expression of angst over the fact that ‘far-right activists’ were allowed to ask questions of the leaders in the post-debate scrum. Their unstated (or insinuated) subtext was that these individuals are not real journalists and the organizations they represent are not real media outlets. Reaction to this position will predictably fall along partisan lines (as it has so far), but as someone who likes to dive into the socio-political processes at work beneath the surface, I am more interested in understanding the phenomenon rather than the instance. However, I am also human, so my initial reaction was to criticize the reaction of CBC-ites, which I did in this X post:
As you can see, my post became quite popular. Having slept on it overnight, I realized that the reason why this post resonated with so many Canadians is that it gave voice to what a lot of people are feeling in today’s Canada: the monopoly on deciding who / what is good or bad, and who / what is credible or not, and who / what is justified or not – in short, the monopoly on being the arbiter of *everything* for the great unwashed – that the MSM haughtily believes that it has as a matter of divine right does not sit well with enough Canadians now for it to be a cause of worry for the MSM. By the afternoon of April 17th, I had understood why, and through what process, this was happening, so I thought I should share with my readers the words of wisdom that were penned in 1990 by the renowned futurist of the second half of the 20th century, Alvin Toffler.
POWER-SHIFT
In that year , Toffler wrote the last book in his trilogy, Power Shift (the previous two were Future Shock and The Third Wave). In Power Shift, Toffler talks about ‘the Trinity of Power’, viz., the combination of knowledge, wealth and force. A detailed narration of what he says about these three is out of place here (and would be an insult to the intellect of my readers); my focus here is on what he says about the dispersion of knowledge. According to him, it is the easiest of the three forms of power to acquire – this is why human history is replete with episodes where acquisition of knowledge was prevented by using wealth and force. Fortunately, we are now living in a blessedly exceptional era where that is not the case. In light of that, one can get a sense of why the Canadian government (along with some others) is trying to gain control of the Internet.
Toffler also talks about the transformation of power from one form to another. For example, force can be used to acquire wealth, and vice versa. So far, we have understood (and it has certainly been the case) that acquisition of knowledge enables one to acquire the other two forms of power. However, with the advent of the Internet, and especially of social media and its offshoots (by which I mean increasing one’s reach via social media, such as what I do by posting my articles on X), we now have a situation where knowledge can be used to displace – or at least weaken the position of – those exercising power over the masses. In light of this, the aversion that the said exercisers of power feel towards the ‘upstarts’ is not only natural but in fact literally visceral.
A NEW DAWN
The Internet / social media genie is out of the bottle. Efforts to rebottle it – be they via legislation or outright repression – will ultimately fail. These periods, and efforts, can be called (in the timeless language of all revolutionaries) ‘temporary setbacks’. What is today called ‘new media’ or ‘alternative media’ will become the prevailing paradigm. MSM, which is already on life-support via government subsidies, still sets the narrative on socio-political issues now – but their grip over what people can know and believe has eroded greatly, compared to even 20 years ago.
People who make a living in mainstream media realize, at an intuitive level, how their power is slipping. In democracies, transfer of power at the political level may happen peacefully (and I am not taking away from that stupendous achievement). However, at the societal level, people who have power don’t give it up easily. They will fight tooth and nail to preserve it, because that is what we are wired to do. They may even use unfair means (perhaps you are of the opinion that this is happening already). Whether they are doing so now or not, it is certain that as the ‘alternative media’ gains more following and approval from the masses, the attacks on it by those at the top of the socio-political hierarchy will intensify. The pearl clutching and the tut-tutting that we saw from CBC’s journalists and panelists was just one of those early – and relatively mild – salvos; worse is yet to come. If you enjoy this fight, lick your chops.
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Image Credit: Dave Shea via flickr.com; the image is at this link. Used without modification under Creative Commons License.