‘Astroturfing is an artificially manufactured political movement designed to give the appearance of grassroots activism. It involves presenting a biased or skewed view of public opinion as if it were a genuine grassroots movement when in fact it is a coordinated effort by a small group of individuals or organisations.
Unlike natural grassroots campaigns, which are people-rich and money-poor, an astroturf campaign tends to be the opposite, well-funded but with little actual support from voters. It is recognised as a problem in social media, e-commerce, and politics. Astroturfing can influence public opinion by flooding platforms like political blogs, news sites, and review websites with manipulated content.’ (politicaldictionary.com & (A good brief is on wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing).
The term ‘astroturfing’ was created in 1985 by Texas Democratic Party senator Lloyd Bentsen when he said, ‘a fellow from Texas can tell the difference between grass roots and AstroTurf, i.e., generated mail.’ He was describing the large amount of correspondence received by his office to promote the interest of the insurance industry.
But the origins of the use of astroturfing can be traced way back to Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar when Gaius Cassius wrote fake letters from the public to convince Brutus to assassinate Caesar. In the early 1900s, it was used in political campaigns but one of the earliest examples of its use was in 1936, when the tobacco industry used fake protests, much as we may be seeing in Guyana today, to counter the negative impact of scientific studies linking smoking to cancer.
Astroturfing is many-sided and for me the most memorable attempt at ‘smoke and mirrors’ in Guyana occurred when then President Bharrat Jagdeo publicly declared that former president and de facto head of the PPP, Ms. Janet Jagan, was just an ordinary citizen who should not have been taken too seriously. The intention was to quell the widespread belief that, much like Irfaan Ali today, Janet Jagan did have a substantial say in what happened in the PPP and its government.
But this is how democratic centralist Marxist parties operated: the head of the party took precedence and Janet Jagan remained in control of the party until the day she died. Of course, the implication of this has enormous consequences for the Jagans’ legacy in relation to the various incidents and human carnage that took place in the early Jagdeo regime: but that needs not detain us here.
With the development of technology, a University of Illinois Chicago study estimated that at present about one-third of all consumer reviews on the Internet are fake. The New York Times claimed that astroturfing has made it hard for one to tell the difference between popular sentiment and manufactured public opinion. The authors argued that astroturfing that is ‘purposefully designed to fulfill corporate agendas, manipulate public opinion and harm scientific research represents a serious lapse in ethical conduct.’
In 2003, GOPTeamLeader.com offered the site’s users ‘points’ that could be redeemed for products if they signed a form letter promoting George Bush and get a local paper to publish it as a letter to the editor. More than 100 newspapers published an identical letter to the editor from the site with different signatures on it. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget’s Fix the Debt campaign advocated to reduce government debt without disclosing that its members were lobbyists or high-ranking employees at corporations that aim to reduce federal spending.
In October and November 2018, conservative marketing firm Rally Forge created what The New Yorker described as ‘a phony left-wing front group, America Progress Now, which promoted Green Party candidates to hurt Democrats in several races. Its ads on Facebook used socialist memes and slogans to attack Democrats and urge third-party protest voting in several tight races.’
Seven weeks into the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the BBC published the results of investigation of a network of Facebook groups with the overall aim to promote the Russian president Vladimir Putin as a hero standing up to the West with overwhelming international support. Members, activities, and interrelations in ten pro-Putin public groups with more than 650,000 members between them boasting names such as Vladimir Putin – Leader of the Free World, were analysed. Over a month, researchers counted 16,500 posts, receiving more than 3.6 million interactions.
The case of the Mohameds in Guyana has all the hallmarks of astroturfing. They were involved in local politics for the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) and very friendly with its oligarchic leadership. After substantial investigations by the United States, they were accused of drug trafficking and money laundering. A government permanent secretary who is a member of the PPP has also been accused in relation to these events, and she was promoted by that party after being identified by the US.
The PPP is apparently attempting to publicly distance itself from the Mohameds and they have seemingly become involved in anti-PPP national politics. A public quarrel between the two is in progress but from press reports during this period large sums of money were being exchanged for work done and/or possibly donations.
Largely because of migration, in recent times governments in Guyana have been elected by marginal mainly ethnic votes. Furthermore, the PPP government has been designated an autocratic regime that has captured and is unilaterally using the state.
The Mohameds are relatively wealthy and most of their sudden political support has been by way of the social media and small protest groups comprising essentially the African supporters of the opposition party. While it does all it possibly can to consolidate its own Indian ethnic support, the PPP has over decades been doing everything possible, including stultifying their development, to control the ethnic African supporters of the opposition People’s National Congress.
The PPP regime wants to be in the good books of the US government and has little choice but to deal with the issues surrounding the Mohameds. And with astroturfing, this can be done to the benefit of both sides: reputationally it veils the actual reason the regime is going against the Mohameds and present another opportunity for the PPP to influence Opposition supporters if not to vote for it, to support a third party or become sufficiently disillusioned to abstain from voting.
The normal tool of astroturfing is very much in play: vociferous claims and counterclaims by the parties, the sudden materialisation of political support on and by social media, a few protest gatherings and their disruption, testimonials and letter writing attesting to the good or bad name of the parties, public claims that the ethnic vote of the PPP that for decades has held solid has suddenly fallen to the Mohameds without one iota of evidence, etc., all intended to demonstrate that a genuine quarrel exists and that the Mohameds are a legitimate alternative to the PPP and PNC.
‘It is essential for ordinary citizens to be aware of astroturfing and to stay alert in this era of fake news and social media deceit. The manipulation of facts, information, and narratives forces people into making decisions that are not in their best interest. It is high time that we recognize the dangers of astroturfing and condemn these underhanded political tactics to preserve democracy (https://politicalmarketer.com/smoke-and-mirrors/).
Astroturfing is difficult to detect so it is best to always to adopt the worst-case scenario when assessing dubious political claims, largely generated by social media.
