Links between Brexit and Trump

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From NPR interview with Carole Cadwalladr:

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So Robert Mercer, he's the billionaire hedge fund owner who was the main donor of Trump's presidential campaign. He's also the one who bought Cambridge Analytica, the company that I first started investigating for its role in the referendum. And so that was a very clear link. Steve Bannon, of course, he was Trump's campaign manager. He was a vice president for Cambridge Analytica.

And the link, really, the through-link who I keep coming back to is this character called Nigel Farage. So I don't know how familiar American listeners are with him, but he was the guy who Trump introduced at his rally in Mississippi in the summer of 2016. And he brought him up on stage, and he said, this is Mr. Brexit. And he said very clearly, if Brexit can happen in Britain, then I can get elected in the United States.

And it's this parallel, and the way that Brexit really opened the door for Trump is one of the sort of main strands that sort of kept me going throughout this whole investigation.

The interview goes on to describe how Breitbart and Cambridge Analytica used 'fake news' to sway voters.

Of course, old school propaganda is still employed today (see if you recognize anyone fitting Arendt's description):

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The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth and truth be defamed as a lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world—and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end---is being destroyed.

It's not that people believe that Trump really meant to say 'wouldn't' instead of 'would' or that Trump actually believes Putin's "very strong" denials of meddling in the election -- it's that it doesn't matter.

 

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Here's another article about Sarah Sanders' role in the whole thing.

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In a Sanders briefing, even the most straightforward questions are often met with obfuscation and indignation. Even the most basic matters of fact are disputed. The logic of the battlefield wins out, and the assigned teams face off, and it quickly becomes clear, if you watch for long enough, that the thing being fought for is reality itself: facts, truths, common knowledge. The content and the contours of the world as we agree to understand it. This, too, is a fight.