Russia is not alone in flooding the Internet with fake news and “comments.” Post something on any reasonably large site saying “You know the Falun Gong isn’t all that bad…” and watch the flood of hate unleashed from China on your comments. It won’t look Chinese. But it is. Governments who are accustomed to controlling the media have put considerable energy into working out how the supposedly open and objective Internet can surreptitiously be harnessed to enforce a political agenda.
The newest wave of fake isn’t in the news arena but is no less coordinated. Terry George (Hotel Rwanda, In the Name of the Father, Some Mother’s Son) has a new film coming out in April, The Promise, with Oscar Isaac and Christian Bale. The film is on the Armenian genocide. In his usual form, George brings the events to us at bone level by weaving them into a personal love story (see trailer).
The problem with the film is that Turkey doesn’t want to acknowledge the fact that in a few years, between 1915 and 1922, they killed somewhere around 1.5 million Armenians; 80 percent of the Armenian population. Some were killed by outright slaughter, some by starvation, some by forcible displacement, including long marches through the Syrian desert without food or water, their own version of the Trail of Tears…
