Nina Jankowicz

What Trump can learn from Boris in fighting fake news

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The US election has, once again, be plagued by a tide of disinformation and fake news. But don’t point the finger at Russia, Iran, or China. With four days left to vote in the presidential election, American politics has become so polarised that the threat of foreign interference pales in comparison to our own domestic untruths.

For months, we’ve been battling falsehoods about the safety and security of mail-in balloting, which president Trump shares with hundreds of millions of social media followers. He has also shared tweets suggesting Osama bin Laden is not dead, and refused to disavow the QAnon conspiracy theory, which a new poll finds half of his supporters believe. Regardless of who occupies the White House in January 2021, the tide of fake news is here to stay. But if America wants to learn how to tackle the nonsense, it should take a look at its old ally. 

It’s true that, in Britain, 5G conspiracy theorists have popped up during the coronavirus pandemic. And the popularity of QAnon is growing: six per cent of Brits support the movement, and a quarter believe related conspiracies, according to new research. But for the most part, British politicians are refusing to amplify these theories. And where the United States has abdicated its leadership in fighting foreign interference, Britain is attempting to fill that vacuum, sending a clearer picture to foreign adversaries like Russia about the costs of their online influence campaigns.

Take the aftermath of Russia’s attempt to poison Sergei Skripal in Salisbury. The British government quickly and resoundingly condemned the Kremlin, declassified intelligence, and released security footage to preemptively debunk the contradictory narratives the Russian disinformation machine generated. In no time at all, Britain cobbled together a coherent counter-narrative to Russian lies. Then it shored up an impressive international rebuke of the Kremlin’s illicit activity, with 28 countries expelling Russian diplomats in response to the attack. 

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