All pigs are equal.

Some pigs are more equal.

Those with a lot of money have always been able to determine the outcome of elections.

But now things are going worse …

***

There is a beautiful Scottish proverb that goes: “He who pays the piper, calls the tune!”

That’s exactly how it is in politics. Throughout the entire last century, the rich paid advertising agencies to sell a political agenda to the people like soap. And so, almost always, politicians ruled the Western democracies, primarily serving the interests of their sponsors rather than the interests of the common people. Millions were spent on huge billboards or elaborate TV commercials.

Thus, wealth inequality has always led to massive deficits in democracy. But now we find ourselves in a time where elections are increasingly being decided by completely fabricated facts, moods, and even people, through the means of artificial intelligence and the growing dominance of social media. In the digital fog of the opinion war, all traces are lost. Real existing individuals are swept away by the tsunami of fake swarms of comments, threats, and slanders.

The politically comprehensible public sphere for everyone now only exists on museum-like islands. Tech oligarchs own and control the social networks. Through throttling and the so-called shadow banning to reduce the reach of politically unpopular politicians in the networks, the chances for fair competition are dwindling.

Just as swarms of drones in war render the air defenses of individual states ineffective, politically inconvenient individuals are similarly crushed by swarms of fake accounts on the relevant social media platforms. Fake accounts send complaints to the control centers of Facebook or Instagram about alleged copyright infringements. Suddenly, people online are being banned without being aware of any wrongdoing. As more and more people use the internet and especially social networks as their primary source for political information and opinion formation, the power of tech oligarchs like Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg is growing boundlessly. Since social networks like YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, and whatever else they may be called are private property, there is no binding obligation to treat all network participants with equal fairness. The lords of the virtual rings have no obligation to the democratic public. Instead, they exercise their house rules and can expel anyone from the house whose opinion they do not like. There are no binding laws that require monopoly-like entities such as YouTube, Amazon, or Google to ensure fair and conscientious treatment of all participants in their networks.

The shift of public opinion formation from the open space to the opaque darkness of skillful juggling with algorithms on the internet was explicitly intended by its pioneers as a tool to circumvent and ultimately abolish the bothersome principles of a democratic-pluralistic public sphere through the internet. Peter Thiel had already confessed to this strategy in an article in the house journal of the reactionary Cato Institute in 2009[1]. That was the essay in which Thiel confessed that, in his view, democracy and freedom are not compatible. For, one must consistently follow through with his thoughts, that the stupid rabble prevents the genius entrepreneur from freely developing, that is simply not acceptable. So the people must be made dependent on the mobile phone, in which the message of the powerful is now individually tailored and trickles into the minds of the people. At a Libertarian congress in 2010, Thiel explained that the ideology of the Libertarians could never achieve a majority in a free and open exchange of opinions[2]. So the voter has to bite the virtual hook.

A few practical examples from the present.

Cases are piling up where unpopular politicians and social movements are being quite ruthlessly stymied by the tech oligarchs. Time and again, the tech companies apologize when they are caught red-handed. It was just a technical oversight. Good. That can happen sometimes. However, when such blunders occur systemically as they have now, chance quickly becomes the norm.

In Albania, for example, a nationwide resistance has formed against the Albanian government selling an island to Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, for a song and then turning it into a privatized playground for the rich and famous. For three months now, the so-called Flamingo Movement has been protesting against this expropriation of the people and also against the autocratic excesses of the government under Edi Rama. That’s reason enough for the Meta corporation to delete numerous accounts of protesters[3]. Among those deleted is Arjan Koci, who repeatedly documents with drone footage from the air the crowds of people who regularly participate in the Flamingo demos. Koci had up to 55 million views per month on his Instagram account. Then his account was suddenly deleted. And at the exact same hour, the accounts of numerous other prominent flamingo activists were also deleted. The reason for the deletion was fabricated: fake accounts had complained to Meta that the activists were using copyrighted video material. But that wasn’t true. The posted videos were exclusively from the activists’ own production[4].

The same thing has now happened to the American No Kings movement, which brought up to eight million people to the streets with their protest demos against Trump. When this movement against the neo-feudalism of the Trump administration now wanted to organize its base for coordinated participation in the midterm elections in November, the corresponding accounts on social networks were, purely coincidentally, just blocked. Supposedly, there was also a “technical glitch” here[5].

Even more problematic is the intervention of internet giants in the ongoing presidential election campaign in Brazil. The incumbent president Lula is being blocked by Instagram[6]. Again the same trick as in Albania and the USA: hundreds of thousands of fake internet accounts file complaints against Lula’s publications. This is then used as an excuse to delete the accounts[7]. It doesn’t help if lawyers then prove the lack of merit of the copyright claims and Meta eventually apologizes once again for the “technical glitch.” The damage is done. Because those who are not sufficiently recognized in public eventually disappear from the scene.

At the same time, Lula’s challenger Flavio Bolsonaro is being pushed into the presidency with countless fake accounts. Swarms of artificially generated bots flood the accounts of the disliked individuals, creating an almost threatening image of an overwhelming majority for Flavio Bolsonaro. It goes so far that entire film sequences are manipulated by AI. A young blonde woman, supposedly 22 years old and a perfect dream for men, was scantily clad and turned into the figurehead of Bolsonaro’s election campaign. She provocatively jumps between Brazilian machos and has five thousand followers or even more on her account. Minor flaw: this blonde dream girl in a perpetual bikini doesn’t exist[8]. The girl in the cosmetics is a complete creation of artificial intelligence. Bolsonaro’s aides simply superimposed this provocative creation onto real people. And sell this cheap trick as an attraction to frustrated single men.

One wonders that political puppets favored by Trump are now being elected as presidents everyplace in Latin America: in Argentina, Chile, Peru, and recently also in Colombia. The last bastions are now Mexico and Brazil. And Brazil could soon be firmly in Trumpist hands as well – thanks to AI.

Only in the USA could Trump himself come under pressure from the midterm elections in November. But – don’t worry! His buddy Elon Musk has control over social media. And besides, Musk is investing a staggering 366 million dollars in Republican candidates for the congressional election[9]. Yeah, he who pays the piper, calls the tune. Two rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2010 and 2014 made it possible for oligarchs to now invest unlimited sums in their political racehorses[10]. The upper limit per candidate is capped at ten million dollars. But Musk then spreads his rain of money evenly over the Republican swing candidates. Musk’s political opponents have to make up for the lack of advertising space in the mass media with laborious door-to-door campaigns. Let’s see who laughs last.

Even the unrest in Paris is not spared from the machinations of the invisible manipulators. Interested parties are launching AI-generated videos that are supposed to give the impression of an Arab and Muslim takeover of France. The social protest is being used to portray the Palestinians as dangerous occupiers of France. So, a video is circulating on the internet showing a Palestinian flag fluttering from the Eiffel Tower[11]. Now, a reasonably mentally intact person should notice that the supposed Palestinian flag includes a star that is not present in the real flag. The scale is also incorrect. The flag would have to far exceed the dimensions of a football field if the proportions are to be correct.

I myself have also experienced what happens when the tech barons don’t like my opinion. I run a page on Facebook with five thousand friends (wow, I have a lot of friends!). I had expressed my solidarity with the student protests against conscription on September 25 and texted: “By the way, nationwide school strikes are taking place today against conscription and war in general. Support!”[12] Well, I don’t do much on my Facebook page, and that’s why an average of maybe five people comment on my posts. But this time, a tsunami of well over four hundred comments from alleged accounts praising conscription overwhelmed me. Amazon, on the other hand, is now removing my book “Hitler’s American Teachers” from their inventory and only offering a used copy for 169 euros—despite all other retailers regularly offering the book as new. An egregious harm to my business existence as a small publisher. A kind of cold book burning.

Let’s leave it at these examples. I could continue for pages. Let’s summarize the methods the tech oligarchs are using to shape elections and public opinion in their image:

• They create an atmosphere of artificial approval for their favorite candidates using bots;
• The opponent is deliberately harmed. It goes so far that AI-generated videos make an undesirable politician say absurd things that he never said.
• The authorship of the perfidious distortions gets lost in the fog of the internet war;
• The network operators can amplify their favorites through algorithms – and likewise restrict opponents’ reach;
• The network operators have the house rules. They can silence and kick out anyone whose worldview doesn’t suit them.

Fake news are a real problem. The situation is further exacerbated by the fact that the EU government and its network of organizations are weaponizing the issue of fake news against political dissidents, instead of truly confronting the erosion of the last remnants of democracy by the tech oligarchs.

It’s up to us. We must free ourselves again from this deadly embrace of the opaque internet world. We must once again make the effort to meet each other in person, three-dimensional, and in color. Only in this way can we reclaim public space for ourselves.

*

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Hermann Ploppa is a political scientist and journalist. Ploppa recently published the book “Der Neue Feudalismus – Privatisierung, Blackrock, Plattformkapitalismus” (The New Feudalism – Privatization, Blackrock, Platform Capitalism). As Amazon does not yet stock the book, it is best to order it from the author at: [email protected]. Visit the author’s blog here.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Notes

[1] https://hermannploppa.substack.com/p/die-geistige-entwicklung-eines-libertaren?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web&embedding_publication_id=5734834

[2]Peter Thiel at Libertopia 2010

[3] https://www.politico.eu/article/meta-blocks-accounts-politicians-journalists-and-activists-protesting-jared-kushner-linked-albania-resort/

[4] https://www.wired.com/story/metas-copyright-system-is-being-weaponized-against-albanian-protesters/

[5] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/18/no-kings-instagram-account-suspended-during-protests

[6] https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/meta-employees-said-lulas-accounts-were-hindered-during-brazil-election-folha-2026-10-16/

[7] https://www.intercept.com.br/2026/10/16/flavio-pagou-empresa-eua-sistema-manipular-eleicoes/

[8]Exposed: How the US is meddling in Brazil’s election

[9] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/13/elon-musk-political-donor-midterm-elections

[10] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/boundvolumes/558bv.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com

und https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/boundvolumes/572BV.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.co

[11] https://www.tagesschau.de/faktenfinder/frankreich-proteste-fakes-100.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com

[12] https://www.facebook.com/hermann.ploppa/

[13] screenshot: https://t.me/liepsenverlag

Featured image is from the author

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