The final part of the book deals with the transformation of our information ecosystem: the ways in which the automated targeted-advertising machines of social media platforms have been weaponised by rightwing actors to deliver precisely calibrated messages to voters, in ways that are completely opaque to the general public, as well as to regulators. For example, Lawrence Lessig’s Republic, Lost and Jane Mayer’s Dark Money explained how a clique of billionaires has shaped and perverted American politics. Hotjar sets this cookie to know whether a user is included in the data sampling defined by the site's pageview limit.

Facebook sets this cookie to show relevant advertisements to users by tracking user behaviour across the web, on sites that have Facebook pixel or Facebook social plugin. Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Jair Bolsonaro and populists in many other countries are the beneficiaries. Payments made using National Book Tokens are processed by National Book Tokens Ltd, and you can read their Terms and Conditions here.

And if that’s true, the key question for us at this moment in history is: how might our current system fail?

Remarkable’ Observer, Book of the Week Democracy is in crisis, and unaccountable and untraceable flows of money are helping to destroy it.

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Geoghegan investigates politicians, fabulously well-funded partisan think tanks, propagandists who know how to game a rigged system, and the campaigners and regulators valiantly trying to stop them. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.

It’s a great case study in how ruling elites can be infected with policy ideas and programmes via those “second-hand traders in ideas” of whom Hayek spoke so eloquently: academics, thinktanks and media commentators. Peter Geoghegan is a diligent, brilliant guide through the shadowy world of dark money and digital disinformation stretching from Westminster to Washington, and far beyond. For more details, please consult the latest information provided by Royal Mail's International Incident Bulletin. And in the UK, Martin Moore’s landmark study Democracy Hacked showed how, in the space of just one election cycle, authoritarian governments, wealthy elites and fringe hackers figured out how to game elections, bypass democratic processes and turn social networks into battlefields.

ACT Contact / FAQ About Events / Videos Merch / Subs Sign in/up Democracy For Sale : Dark Money and Dirty Politics Geoghegan, Peter More by this author.One of the most striking points the political philosopher David Runciman made in his seminal book How Democracy Ends was that democracies don’t fail backwards: they fail forward. These threats to democracy have, for decades, been visible to anyone disposed to look for them’: Boris Johnson in 2019.