Extra: The DIGITAL FLOOD that drowns democracy – Nick Cohen talks to Peter Pomerantsev

“Peter explains better than anyone I know the new world of Putinesque, Trumpian propaganda.” In a weekend bonus, Nick Cohen of The Observer talks to Peter Pomerantsev, author of This Is Not Propaganda : Adventures in the War Against Reality, about how demagogues warp free speech into a weapon against democracy.

Why is the modern information battle less of a New Cold War and more a New Thirty Years War? Do we even understand the devil’s bargain that tech giants are offering? We can have perfect lives and perfect homes – as long as we don’t mind giving up our information and our freedoms. 

“Every aspect of freedom of speech has been used against us, to swamp the world and drown out the truth”

“However much we’d like to blame these pathologies on Mark Zuckerberg, we can’t.”

“It’s no longer about censorship, it’s about overloading democracies with trolls, bots and conspiracies… it’s about swamping us with information”

“When you have an economy based on likes and shares, that’s going to reinforce tribal identities”

“Extremism is about demonising the other. What we’re seeing is something eternal”

Presented by Nick Cohen. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers Jacob Archbold and Jelena Sofronijevic. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production

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