Sacha Baron Cohen tried to trick me for one of his projects in February of 2018. An email sent by an Ashley Winthrop asked me to fly to D.C. to accept an award and sit down for an interview. The over-the-top flattery made me instantly suspicious, so did my inability to find anyone I knew in multiple circles who could vouch for either Winthrop or the television company she claimed to represent. I ignored the request (click to enlarge).

But that was for comedy, Cohen says, so it’s different from propaganda because (the intimation) apparently comedy can’t be propaganda and cannot influence people. In a new op/ed Cohen demands censorship of social media because social media enjoys the very freedoms he does. His justification?

Some critics have said my comedy risks reinforcing old racial and religious stereotypes.

I admit that most of my comedy over the years has been pretty juvenile. However, when Borat was able to get an entire bar in Arizona to sing “throw the Jew down the well,” it revealed people’s indifference to anti-Semitism. When, as Bruno, I started kissing a man in a cage fight in Arkansas and nearly started a riot, it showed the violent potential of homophobia. And when, disguised as an ultra-woke developer, I proposed building a mosque in one rural community, prompting a resident to proudly admit, “I am racist, against Muslims,” it showed a wide acceptance of Islamophobia.

[…]

All this hate and violence actually has something in common: It’s being facilitated by a handful of Internet companies that amount to the greatest propaganda machine in history.

That immunity has warped their whole worldview. Take political ads. Fortunately, Twitter finally banned them, and Google says it will make changes, too. But if you pay Facebook, it will run any “political” ad you want, even if it’s a lie. It’ll even help you micro-target those lies to users for maximum effect. Under this twisted logic, if Facebook were around in the 1930s, it would have allowed Adolf Hitler to post 30-second ads on his “solution” to the “Jewish problem.” Here’s a good way for Facebook to “live up to” its responsibilities: Start fact-checking political ads before running them, stop micro-targeted lies immediately, and when ads are false, don’t publish them.

The solution to undesirable speech or reactions isn’t to limit said speech or reaction, it’s to meet it with more, better, dissenting speech and reaction. Cohen’s conclusion is already formed upon entering these prefab scenarios, he simply tries to manufacture the best situation to deliver upon his own bias and presents the result as a universal rule rather than a carefully crafted exception. (One might argue that this itself is propaganda.) An example: Cohen failed to trick a gun store owner who called him out during filming. It was omitted from Cohen’s show because it didn’t fit his narrative. Cohen only includes things which confirm his bias — his stated goal isn’t to prove that certain lines of thought exist (particularly racist, anti-Semitic thought), but that its ubiquitous nature justifies Cohen’s own propaganda and misrepresentation.

Additionally, Cohen ignores the history of political ads, which have always been sensational. Since the dawn of the press in the United States the media, political punditry, and political advertising has always been high-stakes emotion. Good grief, we’ve already had this exact same discussion little more than ten years ago.

As Cohen invokes Godwin’s Law to boost his argument, Ashe Schow points out:

Even beyond that, Cohen’s claim that Facebook would have allowed Hitler to post a 30-second ad “on his ‘solution’ to the ‘Jewish problem,’” is a perfect example of exactly what Cohen was condemning.

Cohen insists Facebook would have helped Adolf Hitler, completely ignoring the fact that mainstream media outlets — such as The New York Times, which Cohen no doubt considers a truthful and worthy outlet — helped support Hitler in the early half of the 20th century.

A 1922 Times article suggested Hitler’s anti-Semitism wasn’t genuine and shouldn’t concern readers.

The Times has also recently allowed Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to publish opinion pieces for the newspaper.

And let’s not forget that TIME Magazine chose Hitler as its Person of the Year in 1938. 

I’ll ad that while the outlets Cohen would likely defend gave Hitler a platform, they did not give Hitler’s detractors the same billing or access at the time, a very important distinction between legacy media and social media, a key to the latter’s success. Even with the titled field of algorithms and occasional biased corporate censoring, there are too many platforms, too many voices, too much access by too many people to entirely snuff out truth. Cohen is again making an argument counter to his stated desire for truth.