Ignacio Ramonet (Redondela, Pontevedra, 1943) is one of the world’s best-known journalists and communication theorists, and has disseminated his critical thinking about the world, power, and media through his twenty books and lectures. Between 1990 and 2008 he directed the French edition of ‘Le Monde diplomatique’ and founded Media Watch Global (International Media Observatory) and the organization ATTAC, organizer of the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre. He currently teaches at the Sorbonne in Paris and is a guest at the Cornellà Creació Fòrum this Friday. In this interview with EL PERIÓDICO DE CATALUNYA of the Prensa Ibérica group, he discusses the phenomenon of ‘fake news’, the challenges posed by artificial intelligence and the geopolitical changes of a turbulent time.
Artificial intelligence opens the doors to a world full of challenges.
Yes, it is obvious that it will affect the sectors that have benefited from new technologies so far. Publishers are very worried about this because, although the books still have human signatures, they are partially written by artificial intelligence. Some of the best-selling science fiction books in the United States are based on artificial intelligence and are signed as such. In Hollywood, which is why they’re on strike, AI is producing better scripts by making them faster and more diverse. There are already many types of journalism that use artificial intelligence, such as meteorology or sports event summaries.
Could it end media as we know it today?
Journalism is irreplaceable. Fear of death arises every time technology changes. But there is no doubt that there will be no need to devote so much time to many types of journalism, because artificial intelligence will be able to handle the most repetitive actions. In case of investigation, AI will help create the story, the journalistic narrative, it can even replace the narrator, but the materials must be provided by the journalist.
Where do you think the media is heading?
Nowadays, these news are being replaced by networks of false news – ‘fake news’ – which include irrationality and beyond the truth. The number of readers of both print and digital media is gradually decreasing. And being well informed is elite. What happens is that people don’t care because fake news has the same value as real news, if not more. Because fake news is bigger, it spreads better, surprises more, and arouses more curiosity. It has been scientifically proven. This especially happens when society becomes polarized, people behave as if they were on a football field. If you go to watch Barça, you will be applauding your own team, not your opponent, no matter how badly they are playing. You will act not in a rational way, but in a fanatical or clannish way. And this happens with too much information.
What can authorities do to limit the spread of ‘fake news’ without violating freedom of expression?
Herein lies the difficulty. In many countries, precautions were taken and even laws were passed. In some authoritarian regimes, such as Singapore, if a news story is proven to be false and against the nation, the author of the news faces imprisonment. However, it is very difficult to limit freedom of expression in democracies, even if they do not allow everything.
His latest book is ‘The Age of Conspiracy’. ‘The cult of lies and the attack on the Capitol’ Trump fully analyzes the phenomenon of ‘fake news’. How did conspiracism manage to find its way and convince more and more people to believe politically motivated lies and advocate crazy theories like those of Qanon?
Qanon is the most extraordinary thing you can imagine. But this summer, when ‘Oppenheimer’, ‘Barbie’ or the latest ‘Mission Impossible’ are released, the most successful movie in the United States is the use of Qanon in the USA and many other countries, a hormone that guarantees eternal youth. It is run by a pedophilic cult whose main purpose, in addition to sexual abuse for the purpose of consumption, is to kidnap and devour children. And there are millions of people who believe something as crazy as this. Because? Believing in the incredible is the characteristic of faith. There is no non-existent belief in Cartesian things. That’s what science is for. But people are motivated by fanaticism not for something believable, but for something incredible.
Is there a vaccine against conspiracy?
Since the 18th century, we thought that vaccination was science, logic and rationality. But this is crashing. Until now, as Goebbels said, it was thought that a lie repeated a thousand times would become true. But today, paradoxically, this situation has reversed. Today, a truth repeated a thousand times turns into a lie. Why does a man like Milei win the primaries in Argentina with the deviations he says? Why did Trump, Bolsonaro or Duterte win? Why is the far right on the rise? How can people follow Vox in Spain? We have to understand that this is what works today.
Trump was recently accused of promoting these lies and even encouraging his followers to attack the Capitol. Will the challenges he faces prevent him from running for president again?
What is shown is that each time he is convicted he gets more publicity and more support. He made a trophy with his passport photo and earned $7.5 million in 24 hours. Moreover, the American Constitution stipulates only three conditions to become president: being born in the USA and being an American citizen, living in the USA for at least 14 years and being over 30 years old. Trump does all three. Now a number of jurists have said that if he was convicted in Georgia, where he was accused of organized crimes aimed at subverting and subverting the Constitution, an amendment to Article 13 of the Constitution should have been made in 1868, three years after the expiration of the Constitution. Civil war. This amendment says that anyone who has participated in subversion or has been convicted of a coup or being a coup leader cannot nominate himself. It was written to prevent Confederates from becoming president. Other legal experts say that even if that works, if he is prevented from becoming president it would lead to a civil war because half of Americans are in his favor.
In a recent interview, he harshly criticized coverage of the war in Ukraine.
Just open your eyes. We don’t know anything about what’s going on. I’m not saying that the media in the West are not right, I myself am against the invasion of Ukraine and I think it is aggression, but the problem is that I don’t know what it is because there is some kind of general opinion. censor. You can only speak well of our Ukrainian friends, who never did anything wrong, who were perfect, who waged a clean war, who did not kill anyone they did not have to kill. It’s a fairy tale. Something like this had never happened, even during the Iraq war, when there were supporters and opponents of war in every country. Not here, although we think that pluralism will increase with the proliferation of social networks, a consensus has been formed. The war in Ukraine is an indication that today we are more manipulated than ever before, with or without networks.
Recently, the BRICS group (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) announced that they will open their doors to new members. Do you think this expansion challenges the hegemony of the West?
We are witnessing a situation that we can call international politics moving away from westernization. On the one hand, no one appeals to the United Nations anymore because they are completely absent and silenced, they do not function. Moreover, since the war in Ukraine, the world has been divided into two, happy globalization has ended. And finally, we see how the vast majority of the 195 countries in the world do not care about the sanctions imposed by the USA against Russia due to the war. They don’t respect them. The USA is no longer an empire.
He thinks that along with the end of globalization, neoliberalism has also ended and capitalism is in search of a new model. Where are we going?
The model of capitalism was globalization; This pattern lasted for 40 years until 2008, when the financial crisis showed that wealth could no longer be created through finance alone. On the other hand, the neoliberal model based on the transfer of business units to southern countries where labor is cheap is disappearing. There is now a desire for reindustrialization, which is the Biden model. But it will not be that easy, because reindustrialization requires finding specialized workers, which are not available. Universities do not train enough engineers.
In his opinion, socialism is the future of humanity, but some attempts to implement it have failed miserably. How do you think this model should be implemented?
What essentially failed was authoritarian communism. They failed everywhere. So what should be understood from socialism? A more peaceful society where people are taken into consideration and decisions are more collective no matter what. During the Covid pandemic, it became clear that we could no longer continue to live as we did before, because 40 years of neoliberalism had torn our societies apart. We are now in a period where two very strong dynamics dominate our society: environmentalist and feminist. They can only find more energy and more meaning in the transformation towards a more open society rather than an authoritarian, sexist, old-fashioned capitalist society. That’s how I see it, but it’s quite utopian.