So pleased and honoured to help Senate Judiciary Committee at such an important time! The Committee have published here my evidence to them on Cambridge Analytica (NB a draft was inadvertently published first, this is being updated). Grateful to Senator Cory Booker in a key committee hearing (watch) for quoting my interview with #SCL‘s Nigel Oakes on Donald Trump – comments which Chris Wylie kindly included in his written testimony.
Read my interviews and listen to audio clips in my published evidence for the UK Parliament’s Fake News Inquiry here and watch the Judiciary Committee hearing here. CA’s political campaigns hinged on lies, and Oakes recognized this and understood it was not without victims. Indeed Oakes knew the kind of false messaging they were deploying has had victims before. He told me,
“sometimes to attack the ‘other’ group, and know that you’re gonna lose them, is going to reinforce or resonate your group, which is why, Hitler… I’ve got to be very careful about saying so… you must never say this… off the record, but… of course, Hitler attacked the Jews because… he didn’t have a problem with the Jews at all. But the people didn’t like the Jews… so if the people thought… […] He could just use them to say… so he just leveraged an artificial enemy, well it’s exactly what Trump did. He leveraged a Muslim- I mean, you know, it’s… it was a real enemy… ISIS or whatever… but how big a threat is ISIS really to America? I mean, really? I mean, we’re still talking about 9-11, well 9-11 is a long time ago.’ ( Interview: Oakes/Briant, 24th November 2017 Original Emphasis – this interview excerpt has been published in parliamentary evidence).
Also very grateful to Senator Feinstein who quoted my interview with #SCL CEO Nigel Oakes who told me:
“At the time, at the time, you didn’t know there was an- … that anyone’s ever going to mention the Russians.” He continued defending the decision to approach Assange saying the Russians weren’t yet in the media, “In hindsight … remember, this is 18 months before … and it was a year before the election. No-one had been in the press.” (Interview: Oakes/Briant, 24th November 2017).
You can read more about their outreach to Julian Assange and much more in my evidence to UK Parliamenary Select Committee on Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Inquiry into Fake News here. You think this is exciting – just wait for the new book! Read about ‘What’s wrong with the Democrats? Media Bias, Inequality and the rise of Donald Trump’ here!