Real contrasts
George Orwell has been on my mind this week. Orwell’s collected essays provide great insight into how fascists manipulate popular media. His ideas help us understand that the imagery flowing over social media from what is left of the White House is not playful, harmless vignettes. They speak to a deliberate destruction of reality anchored in the worst of the American past. Their outrageousness stretches the boundaries of what is allowable, diminishing the realities of constant cruelty.
There are two posts among the more than 60 manufactured since assuming the powers of the presidency that illustrate the core capacity of the “new” media.
The first is the response to the massive outpouring against authoritarian rule by the No Kings Marches last week. Trump’s efforts to erode their impact and meaning were a disgusting AI-generated video showing him with a crown, flying a fighter jet, and dropping excrement on the heads of protestors.
The second, released last July, is of former President Barack Obama being arrested by the FBI in the White House while having a conversation with Trump. Obama if forced to his knees in front of Trump.
These are just two examples of AI-generated fantasies created and spread by Trump. A recent report in the NYT Morning concluded that the use of fake AI-generated images is central to the propaganda efforts of this president. The NYT remarked:
“The fake imagery attacks his political rivals, depicts him flatteringly, mocks criticism, celebrates his administration, and spreads falsehoods about his agenda. It’s a wild and often gleeful medium that matches his freewheeling populist style.”
But there is nothing gleeful or freewheeling about this effort. And that is why I have been thinking about Orwell. Most people know of Orwell’s work because of his fiction depicting the horrors of authoritarian and fascist regimes. The novels 1984 and Animal Farm are the best known.
But Orwell was a prolific essayist and wrote about the intersections of technology, surveillance, propaganda, and fascist governments. In his essays, he often explored the impact of the emerging film industry, not as an art form, but as a propaganda tool.
For Orwell, the power of film to foster fascism rested in its ability to escape “the restrictions of the physical world.” This capacity accentuated the role of fantasy, distortion, and the capacity of film to reveal what is inside the head of someone. Memory, imagination, and subconscious thoughts find their way to the elusive images, made possible by the medium.
What was true of film has been greatly accentuated by the use of AI. Trump is not creating random mash-ups of images. He is using AI to show us the world he actually wants and intends to use his power to create.
He may use AI to create a fantasy about arresting Obama, but his unsuccessful effort to force James Comey to be put on display in a “perp walk” was real.
His disregard for public demonstrations may be a juvenile effort to mock those who organize against him. But there is nothing remotely fanciful about his use of lethal force against immigrants and those who stand up for their humanity. His desire for revenge against those who disagree and to humiliate those who think differently is taking real form with the systematic creation of a militarized force being deployed against all those who embrace a sense of responsibility to others and to the planet.
Each vignette Trump develops is a real signal of the world he is trying to create.
That is why it is important to look at the images capturing the energy and whimsy of the No Kings marches.
Often described as showing that demonstrators are peaceful and give no justification for the force used against them, they show something of the world we wish to see. From Portland to NY and Minneapolis to New Orleans, real people carried real signs proclaiming a love of democracy, a desire for peace, respect for the best of our past, while recognizing our worst moments. Everywhere, more than 7 million people projected that another world is still possible, and we can indeed imagine it. And we can bring it to life together.