Shows what is going on behind closed doors

It really digs deep to those who really control what and whom. Very thought provoking

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We’re doomed

Confirms all the stuff we already know is going on, with the facts and figures. With so many blatant loop holes damaging our democracy, it leaves you wondering, do we have anyone prepared to make the necessary changes!?

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Great listen,, well narrated., give it a try

Brilliantly researched, great narration by Peter, kept my attention throughout. I do hope more take note of this book and the subject matter, its not about left or right.. It's about democracy

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Brilliant insight into todays populist politics

- ‘Democracy for Sale’ looks at the way that dark money and lobbying groups have illegally and through legal means have managed to corrupt people’s minds by telling lies that aren't true, but making people believe to be true. Vested interests and digital manipulation are eroding our trust in democracy. By exploring how current governments in Europe and USA work, we have corrupted society and turned people through misinformation, lies, stoking fear and uncertainty and doubt to be manipulated. This has eroded our trust in these government that are supposed to represent the people they serve and who elect them. Many people feel that democracy isn't working and would rather have an alternative form such as a strong man rule.
- The book begins by looking at the Brexit campaign and how so much advertising through social media sites such as Facebook and other accounts was funded by excessive amounts of money that went way beyond the limits that we should be paid by government. However, if governments were caught and taken to court, the fines they pay for breaking the law are so small that it's become the worthwhile to just lie, and tell untruths and manipulate people to bend or go in the way that they want you to do. It's illegal but to pay a small fine is all the cost they will incur so it's worth doing it.
- In the last 72 hours before the Brexit vote, the leave campaign spent thousands trying to use Facebook posts of which company come says 98% of what they did used Facebook to sow fear about immigration such as Turkey possibly joining the EU and Turkey have been trying to join the since 1987, but even the EU excepted it is becoming more autocratic and there's no way they're going to be joining, but that didn't stop leave campaign selling this message of misinformation and lies.
- The remain campaign did spend thousand sending leaflets to every single person through everybody's post-box. These were clumsy and ineffective, compared to the targeting through social media systems, and Cambridge analytic, knowing who to target, and with what message to slowly manipulate those who believed in things that weren't true to think the best thing for Britain would be to leave the EU. Dominic Cummins wasn’t trying to sell a sunny, better version of Britain out of the EU, but to sell and sow fear, because this was the tool that he knew would be most effective in making people not vote for Brexit and he did this very effectively. However, ‘take back control’ was a brilliant sound bite.
- It's worth noting that there was probably an influence from foreign agencies like Russia, and it is in their best interest to create division and chaos in Europe, because this is how new wars are fought nowadays. Get the people of a country you are at war with to turn on one another, saves losing lives on a battlefield. But then you also have people like Aaron Banks who funded and made sure that he would create as much disruption with Dominic Cummins, in how this county should leave the EU and that we would be better on our own.
- There's an interesting passage about the bad boys of Brexit, and particularly a focus on Aaron Banks. He sounds like a nasty piece of work, although married to a Russian wife, all Aaron was interested having been caught in shares dealings and of tax evasion, who clearly wanted Brexit because he could see this as a tool for getting him off the hook, who benefited from Brexit. That's the problem with Brexit, it's all about certain people making a lot of profit whilst the rest of us became poorer. Treating politics as a method for supporting individuals as a customer rather than for the good of all citizens and as a benefit for the country rather than the individual. Aaron Banks has a Russian wife and was very close to many Russian agents, and yet there we are listening to someone who has managed to dictate what Russia would want Britain to do, which is to be isolated and on its own. Aaron Banks had possibly 11 meetings with the Russian ambassador prior to Brexit.
- The story of how the DUP influenced funding for issues around Brexit is also incredible and they really had an impact on funding so that they couldn't be questioned at the time in regards to dirty money being used to advise and support Brexit lies that actually ended up impacting on even them.
- A small number of donors who gave more money to the Conservative party, during the last election, had a massive influence on how society and governments works, serving their own self vested interests, managed to manipulate others, and made a stack of money funding, something for their own self-interest rather than the good of the country. There has to be something wrong with politics in this current time
The amount of companies that have helped fund and support vested interested government groups to fight for their own self vested interest, such as Tate & Lyle (Company), BP, (companies amongst others include oil companies), and tobacco firms have all helped to fund and support groups who do not have the Public interest at heart, but their own self vested interests. And these have not been good for the country, but good for themselves as a lobby to fight for what they want in their own company, rather than what’s best for the country of the whole. It's interesting to note how such a small group of lobbyist can have such an influence using dark money to promote their own purposes at the behest of the benefit of the country as a whole, and the basic message is that if you want to sell something, sell it through fear and loss, rather than telling people what a good system will create for a country and rubbish and dismay, the opposition. The way that fear and loss work are that these are more powerful motivators to people than hearing good news, and by promoting fear you can play on human nature and manipulate feelings and truths that people believe, so that you can get the message voters to benefit these self-vested people and companies that support and benefit the country they claim to support.
- The book looks at Cambridge Analytica and how they could collect so much data on people from collecting and harvesting information from their Facebook accounts that they could then learn which people just by putting 30 likes for example for different posts, they could work out more about you than your own spouse would know. This then allowed them to target the right people at the right time with the wrong information or mistruths and lies to promote their own agendas.
- The arrival of populist parties and ideologies, such as Bolsonaro, Trump and Brexit have all occurred because of social media. They have been able to send information without any fact checking or oppositional information to promote stories to send to selected people to make sure they vote the way they governments wanted them to be manipulated.
- The brave new world that has been created and described by Alexus Huxley that you can manipulate people just by entertaining them and then selling misinformation whilst they are busy being distracted, you can then manipulate to create a New World Order and that's really the future politics in the digital age and it will only get worse. The future of how people are going to be manipulated in regards to how they vote is sad and scary.
- People used to sit around, campfires and spout stories and mythologies to their small little groups, but now drivel and lies can be spat out at an industrial scale, using the Internet to spout all sorts of stories that will manipulate people into how they will think, behave and vote. It’s interesting to note that the right use these tool better than the parties on the left.
- The stuff on how digital new age has managed to influence and change people’s perceptions and votes is phenomenal, it didn’t take many seats and by small margins to make sure that Boris Johnson won by a landslide and Donald Trump became the president of United States of America and all thanks to the digital new way of which it is so easy to manipulate and respond and get messages out to people more effectively than knocking on the door or holding public meeting to a small numbers who will also encourage proper debate and explanation – all gone.
- It's also important to know that it isn't just governmental agencies and lobbying groups that are doing much of this digital misinformation that is so widespread using social media, but it is also done by Russia. We learned that after two years and before the government or agencies would come clean in just how much interference was carried out by them. And I can't believe that China and other states are also using these tools to create disruption as a great way to disarm and cause chaos in your enemy, even though you're not at war with them, but it is a kind of modern day warfare
- Manipulating Brexit voters which really came to the form in the new age of digital manipulation and selling, spent billions on sending out to 9,000,000,000 wavering voters that had all been targeted with the right message to make them hopefully change or move towards a leave campaign and this is when the new age of governmental manipulation and changing the public viewpoint began to work.
- The digital age is having more of an influence on how the public vote than almost anything else. The general strategy is to group people into fragments so that you can target them with specific messages dependent on their viewpoint, to help sway and win political notes, especially when it's in their own invested interest, by manipulating the public through these stories and having harvested information and data on the right people to target.
- Small companies with vested interests are flooding Facebook and other social media sites with false narratives, but trying to find out who funds this when these companies are often subcontracted and giving information that is false, but unable to be fact checked and then the information is taken away or taken down from Facebook pages so that there's no way of finding which sources paid for these messages using dark money. These posts often paint a dystopian future, and that fear changes people’s minds. Another strategy used is to post viewpoints from independent sources, rather than labour or conservative. An example of this is that people were shown three Facebook posts, all of which were the same, one with the labour logo, a second with a Tory logo and a third by an independent source. Labour supporters would click on a labour post, Tory’s supporters would click on a conservative post, but people from both sides would click on a source from an independent source.
- RUSSIA: It's so fascinating to listen to amount of Russian interference, played part in the negativity of Hillary Clinton, and possibly influenced the Brexit vote. I'm not saying it was something that changed the course of how people voted, but the influence of creating disruption is a powerful influence and importance to agencies like Russia. The Russia report that the conservatives may even covered up and refused to release. Brexit is not in their interest, but these dark forces and dark money are playing in how people are changing their way of voting and corroding our trust in democracy, which is what these people want.
- The other thing is that if enough people think democracy is broken, this then paves the way for a new form of government, which will become more populist and more fascist and controlling with strong arm tactics. These are the very ideas that Russia wishes to sow in people as everybody else seems to think that everybody is lying. Do people really want authoritarian government like China, Russia, and North Korea – some people are certainly being swayed, just look at Trump and America as well as Brexit.
- It's interesting to know how many of these parties put in messages from opposition parties that are designed to stoke fear about others rather than sell a more positive message. Tory’s might send out posts about how Labour are going to support banning Christmas because that's what Muslims want, all of which is untrue. The Tories set up a fact checking site on Facebook which they themselves created about their own policies and looking as if this fact checking showed independent supporting for their policies. Highly dishonest. Yet these things which are immoral and illegal, but in the state that we live in have become accepted, even though lots of people do know that they are lying.
- Human psychology and social media and Facebook show that you can send out stories that focus on religion, race and other areas of interest such as immigration that people feel are not able to talk about as it's to PC so that by targeting these people and coming up with local stories that focus on outliers of things have happened, promotes fear and anxiety around certain issues. If you can draw and tap into that particular area, you can then sell misinformation and sway people in their voting intentions. Most people nowadays seem to not vote for a party in what it will bring, but in voting against a party they disprove of. Once you send out a message and target your specific audience and locality, particularly if it's around the UK, you can then have messages passed on and resent around the world. You don't even have to pay postage on such information and a small organisation can target and generate thousands of misinformation to the public
- A main reason why the ride is more successful at these kinds of campaigns, rather than the left is that they are so much better at generating fear and concern amongst the electorate. These sites also support confirmation bias where people will only look for information that supports their viewpoint and reject anything that it goes against it and this is human nature. This information will also reconfirm your cognitive biases
- It's also important to know which buttons to press, and the most powerful button is to incite and get anger going, and also people will want to share these pieces of information, because then that means that they can become the public centre of attention which is what many of us crave in sending out this information?
- Another tool for distorting democracy has been the right wing press with papers, like the Telegraph, Daily Mail and Daily Express which constantly promote misinformation that attract many readers. There is an interesting study that suggested that because the Liverpool people have boycotted the Sun. It was one of the reasons that it chose to remain rather than leave when the Brexit election occurred. Another interesting factor around the press, and the depiction of selling misinformation and supporting causes that are in more in the in the interest of big companies, rather than the public, as the those who own these papers aren't even owned by people who pay taxes in the UK or actually live here, such as Murdoch and yet they influence and manipulate and control how the people will vote what they will hear and behave through their editorials. One of the most blatant ones with Boris Johnson constantly as both a member of Parliament and a journalist.
- Another tool that is used by the conservative government is the dead cat, so when a story looks bad for the government and Boris Johnson, that what you do is you come up with the dead cat, a story so large that it removes any embarrassing story about the Tory party or Johnson and becomes the new story itself. One example was that there was a report sent out the Matt Hancock that was particularly embarrassing. Boris Johnson then said that he had been hit by some journalist and this story then spread and became the new story thus taking away any embarrassing stories around Boris Johnson himself. The dead cat was put on the table.
- The book also said how the same influences have been occurring throughout Europe, and often using religion, all those kinds of tribal roots to influence how people should vote. When you think about religion, it is often being led by a set of rules by an imaginary person who around some thousands of years ago and everyone follows that influence how people should behave. Religion and government or politicians are tapping into that same source to influence people who might be religious and who follow rules believe in the world to believe we are in some mystical pain.
- However, America and the UK have influenced and been involved in in some estimates up to 60 times in dealing or trying to manage other people or countries political ideologies and the same is true and Russia and China.
- Another tool that is used by many of these populist organisations is to have a boogie man. So when you think of the war fighting against the Nazis, it was Hitler and the same has been true of countries such as Hungary and America who have used George Soros as their bogeyman. It’s a tactic that many government use nowadays, because again, it is still fear and that's what drives anger which then makes people want to vote for those parties or ideologies such as Brexit.
- Older people believe that democracy is important, but only one in three of younger people believe that it is important, but the problem is they don't know the alternatives which could then result in a fascist or communist rule and one role parties. They are also weak on knowledge around the past – I often ask young people about the ‘cold war’ and for many, their knowledge about this stop’s after they mention ‘Russia’. Many people have no idea of what is going to happen or might happen, and you only have to look at China to see how it manipulates its people. Sadly, It seems to be something that people want and that is scary, but people certainly have lost trust and faith in democracy, particularly in UK through with people like Boris Johnson who are just lying which supports these ideas.
- A brilliant political read about the world we are living in and the governments that are promoting propaganda over truth.

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Scary stuff

A very well written account of how elections and referenda are manipulated. I’m hoping to see more from this author.

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Politicians selling us out

I am not naturally left leaning but am increasingly worried that successive Governments since Grdon Brown have simply managed a decline in living standards for most people. This book made me realise the extent that the elite game the system although it was not clear why / what their objective is. Worth a listen

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We need to stand up and take notice.

Thank you for writing this book and also for the audiobook. We need to stop thinking of having less tax on our wages and fight for our future and our children’s future. 👌

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Scary stuff

How did the Conservatives gain a massive election victory in Labour held seats in 2019, despite 10 years of austerity, screwing up Brexit and being led by an incompetent lying fool? This book explains it.
Well written, well researched and well told. Everyone needs to read this book to help guide you through the minefield of politics in today’s digital life.

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2 people found this helpful

Frightening yet underlining all thyour worst fears

For something that could be dry and heavy the machinations around Brexit are laid out for our examination in this, and it's worrying and frightening. The UK democratic political system is shot, ruined and finished, and this explains how and why and shows that we were asleep at the wheel a few years back. Geoghegan makes a good effort to finish positively but we're in a worse position now than we were when he wrote it. An important document that should be read by all.

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1 person found this helpful

important and interesting

I felt it was interesting but missed an opportjnity to discuss the fundementals of humans, populism and the mechanisms of manipulation.... focused on the how rather than the why

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