The Rise of Weaponized Flak in the New Media Era. Brian Michael Goss

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СКАЧАТЬ the very beginning, though, I have always been concerned about the impact this might have on the University of St. Thomas. I didn’t want my actions to have a negative effect on the university” (quoted in Winterer, 2012, para. 26).

      Monckton’s 678-word post on the Watts up with that? website engages with flak-in-action in another sense beyond whistling for “winged monkeys” on the internet to send emails. To wit, Monckton makes ten references to libel in his post, an unmissable attempt to play to his grandstand and to simultaneously threaten and intimidate the flak target via the prospect of legalistic flak-in-action. The not-so-veiled threats also channel a desire to criminalize academically-grounded criticism of an unfortunate venture into a field about which Monckton has militantly-held views, but no training. Moreover, Monckton’s flak-in-action threats are not an aberration. Bickmore lists, for example, seven professors against whom “Monckton has threatened to instigate academic misconduct investigations and/or libel suits” for scrutiny of his work. “Before the verdict was in” on one of the investigations he had demanded of a university, “Monckton threatened to sic the police on the university” (2010, paras. 31–32).

      Where Monckton’s threats of lawsuits are concerned, two points are of further interest to a theory of flak. The first is that the threat of a lawsuit from someone backed by a movement with cash to burn (particularly if burning cash will grow the planetary carbon footprint), is anxiety-laden for the target and obviously detracts from the conduct of one’s work and life. Second, wittingly or otherwise, Monckton’s escapades also illustrate the concept of faux flak (that, in similarly alliterative terms, can be called phantom flak). ←40 | 41→In this vein, Bickmore writes that Monckton “keeps claiming (to others) on the Internet that he is going to sic his lawyers on me for ‘Lord Monckton’s Rap Sheet’, but miraculously, I haven’t been contacted by his lawyers, either” (2010, para. 32). That is, Monckton’s huffing reads as tactical flak bluff that postures as incipient flak-in-action for the grandstand. Merely threatening the lawsuit is enough to impugn one’s target to an extent—but without the actual hassle of going to (and near certainty of losing in) a court of law. To bluff in faux flak style is to pretend that, for example, this threatened lawsuit or that tranche of hacked emails are explosively damaging to their target. Act and talk like they are in fact damaging and perhaps the grandstand will believe the faux flak—particularly if the claims are repeated often enough to achieve illusory truth status.

      Personalized/Issue-Oriented/Meta-Ideological Flak

      As noted, Monckton’s performances illustrate a distinction between flak-in-discourse and flak-in-action; two terms that share a permeable boundary as flak-in-discourse often aspires to produce action, such as provoking an employer’s disciplinary measures. Monckton’s performances also illustrate further subtypes of flak. In particular, flak can be personalized at a given target (or, in a variation on personalization, a particular organization). Flak may also orient, more diffusely, to a sociopolitical issue. Finally, flak may be still more “ambient” and pitched toward broad meta-ideological postures that usually implicate the left-right political split. Where personalized flak is concerned, Monckton’s attacks on Abraham have been cited as examples above and bear no repeating.

      As for issue-oriented flak, in Abraham’s case, Monckton’s target leads back to climate science. At the same time, the distinction between the person and the issue is also a permeable one. One quick example will suffice for illustration. Watts up with that? reader/commentator “Kirk Myers” oscillates between personalized and issues-oriented flak in the course of his or her 87-word rally to Monckton:

      I was stunned by the level of scientific incompetence and the unscholarly tone exhibited by “professor” Abraham. Lord Christopher Monckton thoroughly eviscerated Abraham’s presentation, question by question and point by point. Abraham’s amateurish “hit job,” probably orchestrated with the assistance and acquiescence of other AGW [Anthropogenic Global Warming] supporters, once again demonstrates the mean-spirited arrogance of many in the AGW movement, whose final line of defense of a now indefensible theory is the use of lies, distortions and ad hominem attacks. Such is the fallen state of “mainstream climate science.” (emphasis added; 2010, para. 1)

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      Kirk Myers’ canned speech bears no more resemblance to Abraham’s slide presentation than it does to the plot of Casablanca, or a recipe for paella, or any other artifact one could select at random—but we will put that aside. Of interest is that Kirk Myers’ barrage of non-sequiturs assail Abraham the individual for professional conduct that is ostensibly beyond the pale—and then quickly pirouette to the issue of climate science (“AGW” in his or her shorthand) to construct Abraham as synecdoche for the larger flak target. In other words, Kirk Myers weathervanes between flaking at the person and the issue.

      Ambient or meta-ideological flak goes to further levels of abstraction beyond persons (or organizations) and issues. Meta-ideological flak is evident in discourses that gesture toward connections with larger political programs; and, as noted, these programs tend toward flaking or shoring up “right” or “left” political positions. On the meta-ideological flak front, Monckton delivers again in 2014 address in Australia:

      This [environmental treaty] process has nothing to do with the weather. It has nothing to do with man’s impact on the weather. It has everything to do with establishing the socialist international at the heart of the UN and making every nation bow the knee to this new dictatorship, and the climate is merely a fig leaf to cover what they are trying to do. (emphasis added; quoted in Smith & Jalsevac, 2015, para. 7)

      The Life Site reporters solemnly aver that Monckton has—apparently by the sheer force of rhetoric—discovered a “concealed push for a one-world government” that is further asserted to be proceeding to hard-left specifications. To summarize, a person (e.g., Abraham), an issue (climate change), or a meta-ideology (right-wing ideology opposed to regulated capitalism and multilateral climate amelioration) may all stack up on each other in different levels of the same flak discourse.

      Flak from the Boutique/Flak from the Street Corner

      The Monckton discourse also illustrates a distinction between what I am naming as boutique flak and vox pop flak. Boutique flak is conceptualized as flak that presents the look and feel of discourse that is high-brow, scholarly, supported with evidence, fashioned by credentialed and seasoned experts, backed by prestige institutions dedicated to quality control of their products. Monckton’s response to Abraham is ensconced in an aura of pomp and gravity on the Watts up with that? website as a glossy, if wince-inducing pamphlet (Watts, 2010). Vox pop flak, by contrast, emanates from the grass roots, or the ←42 | 43→internet equivalent of the street corner, and speaks in the vernacular. By its nature, vox pop flak can be more plentiful. It may animate, for example, mass letter-writing via email, trending Twitter campaigns, or high-volume comment threads on web pages.

      Having offered a distinction between boutique and vox pop flak, I will now complicate it. To begin, boutique flak is effectively an oxymoron. Flak does not readily lend itself to high-quality research given that it serves instrumental purposes in sociopolitical conflicts. To finesse this problem and generate information that is locked-and-loaded to be weaponized but that looks smart, think tanks of dubious-to-abysmal quality have long been concocted by elite backers (Soley, 1995). When flak disguised as scholarship is the core mission of such an organization it may be called a flak mill or, equivalently, a flak factory. In this vein, I have previously discussed think tank discourse that frequently lacks recognizable methodology or external review of its ideologically-loaded products that unambiguously reason backwards from tendentious conclusions (Goss, 2006).

      However, boutique and vox pop flak can be construed as co-dependent. Boutique flak’s project is to furnish the guy on the street—or the guy up all night in stained pajamas in the flickering aura of his laptop—with putatively wise factoids and phrases in which to express flak talking points. Vox pop flak’s foot soldiers can thusly proceed with СКАЧАТЬ