Putting Strategy above Reality
How High-Functioning Sociopaths Manufacture a Magnitude of Lies
The Firebreak has been reporting on how a group of activists spent a year and $800,000 of Oak Foundation and Agroecology Fund donations on a Lighthouse Reports investigation attempting to show that the news monitoring information service, Bonus Eventus, had received US taxpayer money (see here, here and here).
There was a minor problem though. The researchers were unable to show any evidence of any government funding of Bonus Eventus. Nada.
The consultant behind the group vehemently denied the claim, and their link and logic to prove the government was in on the game was laughably absurd. The best they could argue is that some people working for US government agencies receive the daily Bonus Eventus news monitoring emails.
But this was the headline outrage element behind the entire Lighthouse Reports investigation. The “gotchya” moment of government-funded corporate espionage would certainly lead to the bankruptcy of the information service, show industry and government at its worst and serve as a serious blow to people wanting to keep up to date on biotech news and activist campaigns.
So they flat-out lied and went forward with their claim that Bonus Eventus was taxpayer-funded.
Not only did activists like Margot Gibbs, Carey Gillam and Stéphane Foucart (who claim to be journalists) lie, they did it on the daily, amplifying their falsehood in headlines, throughout their articles and across their hundreds of social media posts. And so many news organizations and millions of followers repeated their lies, without scrutiny, without pause and without reading.
Facts didn’t matter as this manufactured claim of government funding was what people wanted to believe. And if you really want to believe something or someone, then any prompt will suffice. 23 activists, all pretending to be journalists, spent a year investigating Bonus Eventus, and they spent so much money, so when they claim their initial premise with such certainty (that the US government funded the attacks on NGOs), who would seriously question that??? Groupthink is easy when it is driven by emotions such as hatred, revilement, envy and disgust. Throw unlimited foundation funding into the mix and you have fertile ground for opportunistic sociopaths.
High-Functioning Sociopaths
Thinking that the truth doesn’t matter and developing intricate work-arounds to hide any lies and deceptions, on a massive scale, is sociopathic. It is not that sociopaths have lower moral standards but that such values like respect or honesty don’t factor at all into their thinking. Solely ends driven (at scales that would make Machiavelli blush), sociopaths are clever at using persuasive tools to get what they want, charm their followers and paint a reality driven by their strategy rather than facts or values.
High-functioning sociopaths use their position, wealth, authority and influence to extend their fictions at higher levels and capture others willing to be blinded by their interests. Their chronic lies and abuse don’t even register in a world they have woven to feed their aggrandizing self-valuation and interests.
Jeffery Epstein was a stereotypical high-functioning sociopath (believable, manipulative and attractive to others). So was my last boss, but it could be argued that all bosses and all politicians have sociopathic tendencies. For whatever reason, people wanted to believe them, and their willingness not only to lie, but to weave lies into extravagant stories gives them the capacity to enthrall or captivate others.
Many of the leading activists in the anti-chemical movement are sociopathic. While they glorify themselves as freedom fighters in a war against industry, they then justify their lying, embellishing and cherry-picking by arguing how the other side is worse. Repeatedly calling up the ghost of Monsanto (a company that has not existed for over eight years), their lies, if ever caught out, are rationalized as necessary in the fog of war. And besides, you know, … Monsanto.
Activists like Carey Gillam and Stéphane Foucart are good examples of such high-functioning sociopaths. Hungry for power and influence, they declare themselves journalists rather than campaigners funded by interest groups. Gillam once compared herself to Rachel Carson, Foucart an aspiring academic. Both Carey and Stéphane seamlessly lied in their attacks on Bonus Eventus (where, bless them, each had once again called on the ghost of Monsanto to buffer their bullshit).
The Ghost of Monsanto
Monsanto is not only a ghost because it no longer exists, but as an ephemeral creature, conjuring its name can create fear at will, to be spread convincingly by lying opportunists. Some of the lies propagated in this activist war on evil incarnate include how Monsanto paid off every single regulatory scientist who concluded glyphosate was not a carcinogen. Every single one of them! Reminder, Monsanto was a mid-sized seed company with a few products that farmers used. Thousands of regulatory scientists have examined the safety of glyphosate.
When people want to desperately believe the lying rants of a sociopath, they lose perspective of how stupid the claims can be. This spectacular fiction that all scientists are bought and paid for by Monsanto, and act as their stooges, was most recently propagated by a Zembla documentary, for Dutch national TV, through the caricature of Kenny Crump. Kenny was simply some old man who would say anything when under pressure from two manipulative activist journalists. Followers want to believe poor Kenny was a Monsanto operative, so they ignored Bayer’s denials (and basic common sense) and fêted the sociopathic producers who had relied on three American conspiracy theorists and ruthless opportunists to scare Dutch viewers into going organic. In the end, all was for good, so what they did to the poor old man was justifiable.
In the case of Bonus Eventus, its founder, Jay Byrne was depicted as a former Monsanto executive. The Lighthouse Reports investigation cites when he started working for the company, but failed to mention that he had only worked for Monsanto for two years. Why didn’t they mention that? Because it would be less convincing. Why didn’t they mention that Monsanto’s owner, Bayer, has not been involved in any of the consultant’s activities? Because it would be less convincing. If Margot Gibbs, lead author of the Lighthouse Reports attack piece on Bonus Eventus, wants to convince you, she has to be creative with the little information she managed to dig up after that wasted year.
The facts didn’t matter since everyone in the swamp they swim in wants to believe it. So these activists can just embellish any claim with the ghost of Monsanto. It makes lying much easier, makes the liar smell better, and maybe helps them sleep at night.
What is True?
Truth doesn’t matter in a social media-driven world where sociopaths herd their followers into their echo chambers of ignorance. The Lighthouse Reports attack on Bonus Eventus is pure fiction, even if it is repeated a million times. (Joseph Goebbels would be so proud Margot Gibbs!) If all of the lies and half-truths were fact-checked and declared as propaganda, it still wouldn’t matter because, point blank, people will believe what they want to believe. And their claims are sensational.
What bothers me most is not the lies … that is to be expected from these sociopaths. Rather, it is the sheer hypocrisy of these liars. What they claim industry is doing, well argued to raise outrage and disgust, they themselves are doing in spades. For example:
They claim Bonus Eventus distributes smear documents to criticize and bring down anti-chemical campaigners. (It is actually a database on all people who publish, including myself). Meanwhile activist groups have smeared me and others relentlessly on public sites, revealing my personal information and frequently distorting my image. US Right to Know proudly doxes whomever they can and they support Paul Thacker, who keeps a website to personally attack their long list of enemies.
They claim that industry funding (of scientists, the media, the government, the courts…) is polluting democracy and industry must be excluded from the policy process. In my past experience, industry pays by the thousands while the foundations and tort law firms funding the NGOs pay by the millions. The Firebreak has shown how mainstream media organizations are now largely funded by foundations that are aggressively using these funds to direct the news groups toward reporting on their special interests. Foundations are now funding NGOs more creatively, as fiscal sponsors or via dark, donor advised funds where interest groups can anonymously fund campaigns via foundations. This does not even take into account the millions funded by the organic food industry lobby to create fear about conventional agriculture.
They claim that industry is not transparent. Actually, everything that industry does is under intense scrutiny so they cannot hide anything. All companies have and publish ethical codes of conduct that insist that transparency is essential to keep public trust. Meanwhile activist groups, that have no ethical codes of conduct and celebrate rule breaking, do their best to hide their funding. Lighthouse Reports has never come clean on the foundation funding behind their attack piece. NGOs like US Right to Know take advantage of anonymous (dark) donor-advised funds where interest groups finance their campaigns via sweet-sounding, skeletal foundations.
They claim that industry is ghost writing articles to be published by academics and the always cite one example from a vague email in the Monsanto Papers leak. But NGOs have large budgets that they openly declare to fund academics to publish their campaign materials in pay-to-play journals. They see nothing wrong with this.
They claim that industry is trying to silence these poor activists who are merely trying to reveal the truth. I don’t see that but I see how these activist groups have directly tried to censor me (by shutting down my first blogsite and having me fired from an academic post). The goal of the Lighthouse Reports attack on Bonus Eventus is to scare industry from using their services and, ultimately, to shut the small organization down. Ignorance achieved.
We should be asking: Who are the hypocrites? Who are the ones lying to hide their interests and opportunities? Who are the sociopaths trying to manipulate me?
Forget about the question: What are the facts? It’s too late for facts when the sociopaths have the microphone.