The security hackers who began to enter the headlines, such as Kevin Mitnick who at one point was on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, aimed to breach networks and computer systems in order to access protected information.

Sometimes called ‘black hat’ hackers in contrast to ‘white hat’ hackers who tinker without malign intentions, as if they stand on opposite sides of the law in an American Western, criminal hackers emerged amidst a hacker subculture of hobbyists and software developers which had been developing since the 1960s.

Here are 7 notable hackers who made history, some notorious for their criminality, others famous for their contributions to computer science.

1. Bob Thomas

In the computer science communities of the 1960s, ‘hacking’ was used to describe expedient code written by programmers to patch together software, but it would later extend to the use of viruses to gain access to private computer systems. However, the earliest viruses and worms were experimental in intent.

In 1971, the Creeper program was designed by Bob Thomas to test the idea of the self-replicating program. The idea of “self-replicating automata” had previously been spelled out by mathematician John von Neumann as early as 1949. Unlike the epidemic which spells android disaster in the 1973 Michael Crichton movie Westworld, Creeper spread via the ARPANET to a remote system to output the message: “I’m the creeper, catch me if you can!”

2. John Draper

Hacking developed amid the context of ‘phone phreaking’ in the 1960s and 1970s. John Draper was among those who wrestled with and reverse-engineered the North American telephone system, then the largest computer network to which the public had access, in order to make free long-distance calls.

By using a specific tool, “phreaks” could replicate the tones used within the network to route telephone calls. Draper’s use of the toy whistle supplied with Cap’n Crunch breakfast cereal, which was capable of generating a 2600 Hz tone, provided his moniker “Captain Crunch”.

In a 1984 issue of InfoWorld, Draper suggested hacking meant “taking things apart, figuring out how they work… I’m just hacking on my own programs right now.”

3. Robert Tappan Morris

In 1988, American computer scientist Robert Tappan Morris introduced a computer worm to the Internet for perhaps the first time. This variety of malware replicates itself in order to spread to other computers. The persistence of the ‘Morris worm’ was its undoing as it created disruptive system loads that brought it to the attention of administrators.

The worm infected 6,000 systems and earned Morris the first conviction under the novel Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986, as well as a year suspension from Cornell University graduate school.

4. Kevin Mitnick

Kevin Mitnick (left) and Emmanuel Goldstein at the Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) conference in 2008

Image Credit: ES Travel / Alamy Stock Photo

Five years in prison followed the arrest of Kevin Mitnick on 15 February, 1995 on federal offences covering computer hacking and wire fraud over the previous two-and-a-half years, which had already landed him a spot on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.

Mitnick had broken into voicemail computers, copied software, stolen passwords and intercepted emails, while he used cloned cellular phones to hide his location. According to Mitnick, he spent eight months of his sentence in solitary confinement because law enforcement officials were convinced that he could tamper with nuclear missiles by whistling into a pay phone.

5. Chen Ing-hau

The payload of CIH, or the “Chernobyl” or “Spacefiller” computer virus, was delivered on 26 April, 1999, rendering host computers inoperable and leaving $1 billion in commercial damages in its wake. It was developed by Chen Ing-hau, a student at Tatung University in Taiwan, the previous year. CIH wrote its code inside gaps in existing code, making it harder to detect. The event led to new computer crime legislation in Taiwan.

6. Kane Gamble

Kane Gamble was 15 years old when he first targeted chiefs of the US intelligence community from his home on a Leicestershire housing estate. Between 2015 and 2016, Gamble was able to access reportedly “extremely sensitive” documents on military and intelligence operations, while he harassed the families of senior US officials.

His behaviour extended to resetting the passwords of FBI deputy director Mark Giuliano and leaving an intimidating voicemail message for the wife of CIA chief John Brennan. He reportedly bragged: “This has to be the biggest hack ever.”

7. Linus Torvalds

Linus Torvalds

Image Credit: REUTERS / Alamy Stock Photo

In 1991, the 21-year-old Finnish computer student Linus Torvalds wrote the basis for Linux, an open-source operating system which has since become the most widely used computer operating system in the world. Torvalds had been hacking since his teens, when he programmed a Commodore VIC-20 home computer.

With Linux, Torvalds introduced a free operating system which championed distributed development. It was an idealistic project which nevertheless earned the trust of business and became a key reference point for the open source social movement.

In a 1997 interview with Torvalds, Wired magazine described the goal of hacking as, ultimately, to “create neat routines, tight chunks of code, or cool apps that earn the respect of their peers. Linus went much further, laying down the foundation that underlies the cool routines, code, and applications, and achieving perhaps the ultimate hack.”

Celebrating innovation in the face of adversity, here are 10 black pioneers of science who, along with their inventions and innovations, have changed the world.

1. Mary Seacole

Born in Jamaica, Seacole became interested in her mother’s healing work and later took the chance to cultivate her medical expertise while nursing patients during cholera epidemics in Jamaica and Panama during the 1840s and early 50s.

When she heard about the war in Crimea, she raced to England to offer her help. Despite being rebuffed by Florence Nightingale’s nursing team, Mary left for the Crimean front on her own. With money from officers and those who could afford it, she provided food and medicine for all.

Revered for her courage and pioneering nursing, Seacole even became a masseuse for the Princess of Wales after moving to London in 1869.

2. Lewis Latimer

While the light bulb was famously created by Edison, his invention was improved by lesser-known Lewis Latimer, who devised a long-lasting filament made of carbon in 1881. Latimer applied his inventive talents working for the US Lighting Company in 1880 – in direct competition with Edison.

Latimer’s carbon filament light bulbs lasted longer than earlier models, which were typically made of bamboo or other quickly burnt materials and often only lasted for a few days. In 1884, he was invited to work alongside Edison at the Edison Lighting Company.

The Edison Pioneers – a group of former employees of the Edison Company – included Lewis Latimer (front row, second on the left) and Thomas Edison (front and centre with a cane), 1920.

Image Credit: The Latimer-Norman Family Collection / Public Domain

3. George Washington Carver

Born into slavery a year before it was ended, George left home at a young age for school and earned a master’s degree in agricultural science in 1894, becoming the first black American to earn a science degree.

Yet it was his work as an agricultural chemist that demonstrated his innovative mind. Carver experimented with peanuts to find alternative solutions for making soap, face powder, shampoo, mayonnaise, metal polish and glues.

4. Alice Parker

Central heating was not a new idea when Alice submitted a patent for her design during the cold December of 1919. However, existing heating systems relied on burning coal and wood which risked causing house fires and meant leaving your house to gather fuel.

Alice’s revolutionary design used natural gas instead, conserving energy and paving the way for the central heating we use in our homes today. On top of her invention, Alice successfully gained a patent at a time before both the Civil Rights movement and Women’s Liberation.

5. Madame C. J. Walker

Walker was a cosmetics manufacturer and businesswoman who not only became the first female self-made millionaire, but one of the largest employers of black American women in the early 20th century.

She suffered from a scalp condition as a child and, after learning chemistry working for a pharmacist, devised a popular hair-softening cream and shampoo. These products helped heal dry skin and other maladies common at the time because indoor plumbing wasn’t widely available.

Madame C. J. Walker’s company hired and trained thousands of black women to sell her products in shops, by mail and door-to-door. This helped many become more independent when job opportunities were limited for women.

6. Garrett Morgan

Morgan was out driving one day when he saw a terrible car accident. He was already a known inventor, having devised a ‘smoke hood’ to help rescuers breathe in tunnels or smoky conditions. Seeing the road accident prompted him to design a new traffic light.

Garrett Morgan’s traffic light patent, 1923.

Image Credit: US Patent and Trademark Office / Public Domain

While traffic lights had existed since the early 1920s, Morgan’s design included a ‘yield’ or amber light. The additional light would warn drivers of the coming red ‘stop’ light. In 1923, he took out a patent for the new tricolour traffic light, which is still widely used today.

7. Charles Drew

As a physician, surgeon and medical researcher, Drew worked at the Red Cross on ground-breaking developments in blood transfusions. During World War Two, he had a major role in implementing the first large-scale blood banks and donation programs such as ‘Blood for Britain’, which shipped blood from New York to London. He was also responsible for devising the bloodmobile to safely transport donations.

Drew resigned from the American Red Cross after they refused to lift the segregation of blood donation, which only happened in 1950.

8. Dorothy Johnson Vaughn

Vaughn was a ‘human computer’, employed at NASA to complete the calculations of wind and gravity that launched satellites and eventually humans into space. When she was hired, Vaughn’s department was racially segregated.

After 6 years she became the first black manager of her division. A decade later, the department desegregated, allowing Vaughn to join the Analysis and Computation team where she worked on the program that launched John Glenn into space for the first time.

A ‘human computer’ for NASA, Melba Roy, with an IBM computer in 1964.

Image Credit: NASA / Public Domain

9. Shirley Jackson

In 1973, Jackson became the first black American woman to earn a doctorate in nuclear physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her breakthroughs in theoretical physics allowed numerous inventions in telecommunication, including the touch-tone telephone, portable fax and caller ID, as well as the fibre-optic cable.

Today, she is the president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the United States’ oldest technological research university.

10. Mark Dean

In the 1980s, Dean worked for the computer engineering company IBM. As chief engineer, he led the team that created IBM’s first personal computer (PC), which soon became one of the worlds’ most popular models and the blueprint for future PC designs.

Mark also went on to create a colour monitor for PC screens that had previously only displayed in black and white. He then developed the first gigahertz processor in 1999 that allowed PCs to work faster and harder at a pivotal time in computing history. 

Since the late 19th century, the disputed territory in the Middle East has been the scene of frequent clashes and desperate attempts by both sides to forge their own nation-state.

Rarely has a territorial dispute such as this impassioned politicians, activists, and the public alike, yet years later and despite numerous attempts at peace, the conflict continues.

1. The conflict is not a religious one, but rather more about land 

Despite being commonly portrayed as a divisive clash between Islam and Judaism, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one rooted in competing nationalism and territorial claims.

The 19th century saw an increased sense of nationalism in Europe, with countless nations calling for their own independent states. Among the politicians and thinkers advocating nationalism was Theodore Herzl, a Jewish journalist who called for the creation of a state for Jews. Today, he is considered as the founding father of Zionism.

Theodore Herzl, the founding father of Zionism.

Palestinians, having been controlled first by the Ottomans and then colonised by the British, had too long desired an independent and autonomous Palestinian state. Consequently, the conflict was one centred around colliding and fervent ideas of nationalism, with each side failing to recognise the legitimacy of the other’s claim.

2. Despite recent conflicts, Palestine was once characterised by multiculturalism and tolerance

During the Ottoman period, Muslims, Christians and Jews lived, for the most part, harmoniously together. Contemporary accounts tell of Muslims reciting prayers with their Jewish neighbours, allowing them to collect water before the Sabbath, and even sending their children to Jewish schools so that they might learn to behave properly. Marriages and relations between Jews and Arabs were also not unheard of.

Despite Muslims accounting for almost 87% of the population, a collective Palestinian identity was emerging during this time that transcended religious divisions.

3. Issues and divisions began during the British Mandatory period 

Following the fall of the Ottoman Empire after World War One, Britain took control of its Palestinian territories in a period known as the British Mandate. During this time the British created different institutions for Muslims, Christians, and Jews which stunted communication and encouraged a growing divide between the groups.

Additionally, as laid out in the Balfour Declaration, the British facilitated the immigration of European Jews to Palestine. This marked a significant change in relations between the two groups, and in the period between 1920-1939 the Jewish population increased by over 320,000.

The arrival of Sir Herbert Samuel, H.B.M. High Commissioner with Col. Lawrence, Emir Abdullah, Air Marshal Salmond and Sir Wyndham Deedes, Palestine, 1920.

Unlike Palestinian Jews, the European Jews did not share a common lived experience with their Muslim and Arab neighbours – instead they spoke Yiddish and brought with them their own cultures and ideas.

The growing tension is reflected in a statement by Palestinian activist Ghada Karmi:

“We knew they were different from ‘our Jews’… We saw them as foreigners who came from Europe more than as Jews.”

This in turn contributed to the rise of Palestinian nationalism, resulting in a failed revolt against the British in 1936.

4. The 1948 Arab-Israeli War was a turning point in the conflict

In 1948, after years of increasing tensions and a failed attempt to partition Palestine into two states by the UN, war broke out between Israel on one side and a coalition of Arab nations on the other.

It was during this time that Israel made their Declaration of Independence, formally establishing the state of Israel. The day after has been officially declared ‘Nabka Day’ by Palestinians, meaning ‘Day of Catastrophe’. After 9 months of heavy fighting, Israel emerged victorious, controlling more land than before.

For Israelis this signified the beginning of their nation-state and the realisation of their long-held desire for a Jewish homeland. For Palestinians though, it was the beginning of the end, leaving many stateless. Around 700,000 Palestinians were displaced during the war, fleeing to neighbouring Arab countries.

Palestinian refugees, 1948. Image Credit mr hanini – hanini.org / Commons.

 5. The First Intifada was the first organised Palestinian uprising  

Beginning in 1987, the First Intifada saw the organisation of wide-spread Palestinian civil disobedience and active resistance, in reaction to what Palestinians claimed to be years of Israeli mistreatment and repression.

This growing anger and frustration came to a head in 1987 when a civilian car collided with an Israel Defense Forces truck. Four Palestinians died, sparking a tidal wave of protests.

The Palestinians employed several tactics during the uprising including leveraging their economic and political power with boycotts of Israeli institutions and refusals to pay Israeli taxes or work on Israeli settlements.

More violent methods such as the throwing of stones and Molotov Cocktails at the IDF and Israeli infrastructure were also widespread however.

The Israeli reaction was harsh. Curfews were enforced, Palestinian homes demolished, and water supplies limited. 1,962 Palestinians and 277 Israelis were killed during the troubles.

The First Intifada has been heralded as a time when the Palestinian people were able to organise themselves independent of their leadership, and gained widespread media coverage with Israel facing condemnation for their disproportionate use of force. A second and far more violent Intifada would follow in 2000.

6. Palestine is governed by both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas 

As set out by the Oslo Accords of 1993, the Palestinian National Authority was granted governing control over parts of Gaza and the West Bank. Today Palestine is governed by two competing bodies – The Palestinian National Authority (PNA) largely controls the West Bank, whilst Hamas has hold of Gaza.

In 2006, Hamas won a majority in the Legislative Council Elections. Since then a fractured relationship between the two factions has led to violence, with Hamas seizing control of Gaza in 2007.

7. Excluding East Jerusalem, over 400,000 Jewish settlers are living in West Bank settlements

Under international law these settlements are deemed illegal as they encroach on Palestinian land, with many Palestinians arguing that they infringe on their human rights and freedom of movement. Israel however vigorously disputed the illegality of the settlements, with claims that Palestine is not a state.

The issue of Jewish settlements is one of the main roadblocks to peace in the region, with many Palestinians forced from their homes as Israeli settlers are moved in. Palestinian President Abas previously stated that peace talks will not be held unless the building of settlements halts.

Israeli settlement Itamar, West Bank. Image Credit Cumulus / Commons.

8. The Clinton talks were the closest both sides have come to forging peace – yet they failed 

Peace talks between the two conflicting states have been ongoing for years without success, including at the Oslo Accords in 1993 and 1995. In July 2000, President Bill Clinton invited Israeli Prime Minster Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat to a summit meeting at Camp David, Maryland. After a promising start, the talks broke down.

In December 2000, Clinton published his ‘Parameters’ – a guideline to resolving the conflict. Both sides agreed to the guidelines – with some reservations – and issued a statement saying that they had never been closer to an agreement. However, perhaps unsurprisingly, both sides were unable to reach a compromise.

Prime Minister Ehud Barak of Israel and Chairman Yasser Arafat of the Palestinian Authority shake hands at a trilateral meeting at the U.S. Ambassador’s residence in Oslo, Norway, 11/2/1999

Image Credit: Public domain

9. The West Bank barrier was built in 2002 

During the Second Intifada, the West Bank wall was built separating the Israeli and Palestinian territories. The fence has been described as a security measure by Israel, preventing the movement of arms, terrorists, and people into Israeli territory, however Palestinians view it more as a racial segregation or apartheid wall.

Earlier in 1994, a similar construction was built separating Israel and Gaza for the same reasons. However, Palestinians claimed the wall did not follow the borders set out after the 1967 war and was essentially a shameless land grab.

Both Palestine and human rights organisations have also argued that the barriers violate human rights by restricting freedom of movement.

Section of the West Bank Wall on the road to Bethlehem. The graffiti on the Palestinian side harks to the time of the Berlin Wall.

Image Credit: Marc Venezia / CC

10. The Trump Administration attempted a new peace deal

Trump’s ‘Peace to Prosperity’ plan was unveiled in 2019 outlining a huge $50bn investment in the Palestinian territories. However, despite its ambitious promises, the plan ignored the central issue of Palestinian statehood and avoided other contentious points such as settlements, the return of refugees, and future security measures.

Despite being dubbed the deal of century, many believed it demanded too few concessions of Israel and too many restrictions of Palestine, and was duly rejected by the latter.

11. Further escalations in the violence threaten war

In Spring 2021, new conflicts arose following days of clashes between Palestinians and Israeli police at a holy site in East Jerusalem, known as Temple Mount to Jews and Al-Haram-al-Sharif to Muslims. Hamas issued the Israeli police an ultimatum to remove their soldiers from the site, which when left unmet was followed by the launching of rockets, with over 3,000 fired into southern Israel by Palestinian militants over the coming days.

In retaliation dozens of Israeli air strikes on Gaza followed, destroying militant tunnel networks and residential buildings, with a number of Hamas officials and civilians killed. In towns with mixed Jewish and Arab populations mass unrest also broke out causing hundreds of arrests, with Lod near Tel Aviv declaring a state of emergency.

With Israel positioning their troops on the border with Gaza and the easing of tensions unlikely, the UN fears a ‘full scale war’ between the two sides may loom on the horizon.

The protests have visible roots in Hong Kong’s recent history. Below is a brief timeline of Hong Kong’s history to help explain the background to the ongoing protests, with a particular focus on the past 200 years.

c.220 BC

Hong Kong Island became a remote part of the Chinese Empire during the rule of the first Ts’in/Qin emperors. It remained part of various Chinese dynasties for the next 2,000 years.

c.1235-1279

A large number of Chinese refugees settled in the Hong Kong area, after they were driven from their homes during the Mongol conquest of the Song dynasty. These clans started to build walled villages to protect them from external threats.

The 13th century influx in Hong Kong’s population was a significant moment during the area’s colonisation by Chinese peasants – a colonisation that occurred more than 1,000 years after the area had technically become part of the Chinese Empire.

1514

Portuguese traders constructed a trade post at Tuen Mun on Hong Kong island.

1839

4 September: The First Opium War between the British East India Company and the Qing Dynasty erupted.

The East India Company steamship Nemesis (right background) destroying Chinese war junks during the Second Battle of Chuenpi, 7 January 1841.

1841

20 January – The terms of the Convention of Chuenpi – agreed between the British Plenipotentiary Charles Elliot and Chinese Imperial Commissioner Qishan – were published. The terms included the secession of Hong Kong island and its harbour to Britain. Both the British and the Chinese governments rejected the terms.

25 January – British forces occupied Hong Kong island.

26 January – Gordon Bremer, the Commander-in-chief of the British forces during the First Opium War, took formal possession of Hong Kong when he hoisted the Union Jack on the island. The place where he hoisted the flag became known as ‘possession point’.

1842

29 August – the Treaty of Nanking is signed. The Chinese Qing dynasty officially ceded Hong Kong Island to Britain “in perpetuity”, although British and colonial settlers had already started arriving on the island since the previous year.

Oil painting depicting the signing of the Treaty of Nanking.

1860

24 October: At the First Convention of Peking, after the Second Opium War, the Qing dynasty formally ceded a significant portion of the Kowloon Peninsula to the British. The main purpose of the land acquisition was military: so that the Peninsula could serve as a buffer zone if the island was ever the object of attack. British territory went as far north as Boundary Street.

The Qing dynasty also ceded Stonecutters Island to the British.

1884

October: Violence erupted in Hong Kong between the Chinese grass roots of the city and colonial forces. It is unclear how big an element Chinese nationalism played in the 1884 riots.

1898

1 July: The Second Convention of Peking was signed, giving Britain a 99 year lease on what was called ‘the New Territories’: the mainland area of the Kowloon Peninsula north of the Boundary Street as well as the Outlying islands. Kowloon Walled City was excluded from the treaty terms.

1941

April: Winston Churchill said that there was not the slightest chance of being able to defend Hong Kong should it be attacked by Japan, though he continued to authorise the sending of reinforcements to defend the isolated outpost.

Sunday 7 December: The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

Monday 8 December: Japan officially declared war on the United States and the British Empire. They commenced attacks on Malaya, Singapore, the Philippines and Hong Kong.

Kai Tak, Hong Kong’s airfield, was attacked at 0800 hours. All but one of the five obsolete RAF aircraft were destroyed on the ground, confirming Japanese uncontested air superiority.

Japanese forces began their attack on the Gin Drinkers Line, Hong Kong’s main line of defence situated in the New Territories.

Thursday 11 December: The Shing Mun Redoubt, defensive HQ of the Gin Drinkers Line, fell to Japanese forces.

The Japanese captured Stonecutters Island.

Saturday 13 December: British and Allied troops abandoned the Kowloon Peninsula and retreated to the island.

Sir Mark Young, the Governor of Hong Kong, refused the Japanese request that they surrender.

Colour map of the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong island, 18-25 December 1941.

Thursday 18 December: Japanese forces landed on Hong Kong Island.

Sir Mark Young refused the Japanese demand that they surrender a second time.

Thursday 25 December: Major-General Maltby is told the longest the front-line could hold any longer was one hour. He advised Sir Mark Young to surrender and that further fighting was hopeless.

The British and Allied garrison officially surrendered Hong Kong later the same day.

1943

January: The British officially abolished the ‘unequal treaties’ agreed between China and western powers during the 19th century to promote Sino-British cooperation during World War Two. Britain retained its claim to Hong Kong however.

1945

30 August: After three years and eight months under Japanese martial law, the British administration returned to Hong Kong.

1949

1 October: Mao Zedong proclaimed the founding of the People’s Republic of China. To escape the regime large numbers of capitalist-leaning Chinese citizens arrived in Hong Kong.

Mao Zedong declares the founding of the modern People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949. Image Credit: Orihara1 / Commons.

1967

May: The 1967 Hong Kong leftist riots began between pro-communists and the Hong-Kong government. Most of the Hong Kong populace supported the government.

July: The riots reached their height. Police were granted special powers to quell the unrest and they made more and more arrests. The pro-communist protesters responded by planting bombs throughout the city, leading to civilian casualties. Many protesters were killed by police during the riots; several police officers were also killed – murdered either by bombs or leftist militia groups.

20 August: Wong Yee-man, an 8 year old girl, is killed, along with her younger brother, by a leftist homemade bomb wrapped like a gift at Ching Wah Street, North Point.

24 August: Anti-leftist radio commentator Lam Bun was assassinated, along with his cousin, by a leftist group.

December: Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai ordered the pro-communist groups in Hong Kong to stop the terrorist bombings, ending the riots.

A suggestion was touted in China that they use the riots as a pretext to occupy Hong Kong, but the invasion plan was vetoed by Enlai.

Confrontation between the Hong Kong Police and rioters in Hong Kong, 1967. Image Credit: Roger Wollstadt / Commons.

1982

September: The United Kingdom started discussing Hong Kong’s future status with China.

1984

19 December: Following two years of negotiations, UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Premier of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China Zhao Ziyang signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration.

It was agreed that Britain would relinquish control of the New Territories to China following the end of the 99 year lease (1 July 1997). Britain would also relinquish control of Hong Kong Island and the southern part of the Kowloon Peninsula.

The British had realised that they could not viably sustain such a small area as a state, especially as the main source of Hong Kong’s water supply came from the mainland.

China declared that following the expiry of the British lease, Hong Kong would become a Special Administrative Region under the ‘One country, two systems’ principle, under which the island retained a high degree of autonomy.

1987

14 January: The British and Chinese governments agreed to tear down Kowloon Walled City.

1993

23 March 1993: Demolition of Kowloon Walled City began, ending in April 1994.

1997

1 July: The British lease over Hong Kong Island and the Kowloon Peninsula ended at 00:00 Hong Kong time. The United Kingdom handed Hong Kong island and its surrounding territory back to the People’s Republic of China.

Chris Patten, the last Governor of Hong Kong, sent the telegram:

“I have relinquished the administration of this government. God Save The Queen. Patten.”

2014

26 September – 15 December: The Umbrella Revolution: Huge demonstrations erupted as Beijing issued a decision that effectively allowed mainland China to vet candidates running for the 2017 Hong Kong election.

The decision provoked widespread protest. Many saw it as the start of mainland Chinese attempts to erode the ‘One country, two systems’ principle. The protests failed to achieve any changes to the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress decision.

2019

February: The Hong Kong government introduced an extradition bill that would allow people accused of crimes to be sent to mainland China, sparking great unrest among many who believed this was the next step in the erosion of Hong Kong’s autonomy.

15 June: Carrie Lam, Chief Executive of Hong Kong, suspended the extradition bill, but refused to withdraw it entirely.

15 June – present: The protests have continued as frustration mounts.

On 1 July 2019 – the 22nd anniversary since Britain relinquished control of the island – protesters stormed the government headquarters and vandalised the building, spraying graffiti and raising the former colonial flag.

In early August, large numbers of Chinese paramilitary forces have been filmed assembling just 30km (18.6 miles) from Hong Kong.

Featured Image: Panoramic view of Victoria Harbour from Victoria Peak, Hong Kong. Diego Delso / Commons.

As he realised the potential of this creation, he decided to give it to the world for free – making him perhaps the greatest unsung hero of his time.

Early life and career

Born to two early computer scientists in London in 1955, his interest in technology started early on.

Like many boys of his age, he owned a train set, but unlike the others he devised gadgets for making the trains move without him touching them.

A few years later the young prodigy graduated from Oxford, where he had enjoyed practising converting TVs into primitive computers.

After graduating, Berners-Lee’s rapid ascent continued as he became a software engineer at CERN – a large particle physics laboratory in Switzerland.

NeXTcube used by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN. Image Credit Geni / Commons.

There he observed and mingled with the best scientists and engineers from all over the world and consolidated his own knowledge, but as he did so he noticed a problem.

Looking back later, he observed that “In those days, there was different information on different computers, but you had to log on to different computers to get at it…you had to learn a different program on each computer. Often it was just easier to go and ask people when they were having coffee…”.

An idea

Though the internet existed already and was somewhat used, the young scientist devised a bold new idea to expand its scope infinitely by using a new technology called hypertext.

With this he devised the three fundamental technologies which still provide the basis for today’s web:

1.HTML: HyperText Markup Language. The formatting language for the Web.

2. URI: Uniform Resource Identifier. An address that is unique and used to identify each resource on the Web. It is also commonly called a URL

3. HTTP: Hypertext Transfer Protocol, which allows for the retrieval of linked resources from across the Web.

No longer would individual computers hold specific data, for with these innovations any information could be shared instantly to anywhere in the world.

Understandably excited, Berners-Lee drafted a proposal for his new idea, and put it on the desk of his boss Mike Sendall in March 1989.

Despite getting it back with the less than effusive words “vague but exciting” scrawled across it, the Londoner persevered and finally in October 1990 Sendall gave him approval for the pursuit of his new project.

Over the next few weeks, the world’s first web browser was created and the official proposal for what had been christened the World Wide Web (hence www.) had been published.

Initially the new technology was confined to the scientists associated with CERN, but as its usefulness quickly became apparent Berners-Lee began to press the company to release it free into the wider world.

Explaining that “had the technology been proprietary, and in my total control, it would probably not have taken off. You can’t propose that something be a universal space and at the same time keep control of it.”

Success

Eventually, in 1993, they agreed and the web was given to the world for absolutely nothing. What happened next was beyond revolutionary.

The CERN data centre housing some WWW servers. Image credit Hugovanmeijeren / Commons.

It took the world by storm and lead to thousands of new innovations from YouTube to Social Media to darker facets of human nature such as propaganda videos. Life would never be the same again.

But what of the pioneering man responsible?

Berners-Lee, having never earned any money off the web, never became a billionaire like Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

However, he appears to have lead a comfortable and happy life, and now heads the World Wide Web Foundation, dedicated to encouraging the use of the internet for encouraging positive change.

During the Opening Ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games in his home city, his achievement was formally celebrated. In response he tweeted “This is for everyone”.

Hope

It was the first face-to-face agreement between Israel and the PLO and provided the Palestinians with recognised self-government under the Palestinian National Authority. Arafat and Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin were the chief signatories to the monumental and controversial agreement, coordinated by Bill Clinton.

The accords were supposed to provide a road map for peace via the rejection of violence whilst negotiations proceeded over the land for two peoples. The agreement called for an Israeli withdrawal from parts of West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Controversy

In both the Israeli and the Palestinian public spheres the accords provoked fierce disagreement. In Israel the left-wing supported the accord while the right opposed them.

Fatah, the more moderate Palestinian faction leading the negotiations, supported it while Islamist groups, chiefly Hamas, rejected the settlement.

The murder of Rabin by a right-wing Jewish extremist opposed to the Oslo Accords aided the unravelling of the negotiations.

Rabin’s successor Benjamin Netanyahu took a more aggressive stance toward Palestine and opposing the Oslo Accords.

Regret

The return of familiar security concerns following a spate of Hamas suicide bombings saw Benjamin Netanyahu triumph at the next elections, on a platform of far more hawkish and non-conciliatory relations with the Palestinians.

By 2000 the negotiations were officially dead. The timeline of events and the untimely end of Rabin’s premiership has seen the Oslo process become a symbol of regret, as a missed opportunity, in the eyes of Israel’s left.

With the caliphate resurrected as a physical entity and dominating news headlines across the world, it is worth asking several questions. What is a caliphate in historical terms, and can this new state truly lay claim to that title?

Does its inception herald a new age of Islamic unity or will it serve to deepen and sharpen existing divisions? Which movements and ideologies have informed this creation? All can be addressed with an analysis of the history of the caliphate both as a concept and as a real state.

The Caliphate is not only a political institution, but also an enduring symbol of religious and legal authority. Its symbolic value has made re-establishing the Caliphate the principal goal of fundamentalist groups such as Al Qaeda and the ISIS, an inheritance from the past that can still be felt today.

Mohammed’s inheritors and the origin of the Caliphate: 632 – 1452

When Mohammed died in 632, the Muslim community chose Abu Bakr, the Prophet’s father-in-law, as their leader. He thereby became the first Caliph.

Abu Bakr inherited the religious and political leadership that Mohammed had enjoyed during his lifetime, creating a precedent that was developed into the full title of Caliph.

Such a title also became a hereditary title with the rise to power of Muawiya ibn Abi Sufyan in 661, the founder of the Umayyad dynasty.

The Caliphate was a political and religious institution that was present in the Islamic world since the very ascension of Mohammed to Heaven.

The Caliphate 632 – 655.

The Caliph’s authority was commonly justified by quoting the 55th verse of the Al-Nur Sura [24:55], which refers to the “Caliphs” as Allah’s instruments.

Since 632, Islam as a territorial organism,was ruled by the Caliphs’ authority. Although the Caliphate was subject to many changes through time as the Muslim world developed and became more fragmented, the Caliphate institution was always considered, from a theoretical perspective, as the highest religious and legal power.

The Caliphate enjoyed its golden age under the Abbasid rule during the Ninth century, when its territories extended from Morocco to India.

When the Abbasid dynasty crumbled in 1258 as a result of the Mongol invasion of Hulagu Khan, the Islamic world fragmented into different smaller kingdoms that aspired to conquer the authority of the Caliph’s title.

The Last Caliphate: The Ottoman Empire: 1453 – 1924

In 1453, Sultan Mehmet II established the Ottoman Turks as the main Sunni power when he conquered Constantinople. Nevertheless, the Ottoman Empire did not become a Caliphate until they acquired the Holy Places of Islam (Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem) from the Egyptian Mamluks in 1517.

With the absorption of Egypt and Arabia’s heartland into the Ottoman power structure, the Turks were able to claim religious and military supremacy within Sunni world, appropriating the Caliphate.

The Ottomans maintained their leadership until they saw themselves removed and outplayed by the European empires. As a consequence of the Caliphate’s decline and the rise of European imperialism, vast areas of the Muslim world were absorbed into the complex colonial machinery.

The position of the Caliphs swung between attempts towards modernisation such as Selim III’s military reforms, or policies that tried to revitalise the cultural and religious significance of the Caliphate, such as Abdulhamid II’s propaganda.

In the end, the Ottomans’ defeat in World War One provoked the disappearance of the empire and the rise to power of the nationalist premier Mustafa Kemal Attatürk’s pro-Western nationalists.

Discover how British double-dealing during the First World War ignited the conflict between Arabs and Jews in the Middle East. Watch Now

Secularism and post-colonialism: the end of the Caliphate: 1923/24

After the Ottoman Empire signed the Peace of Lausanne in 1923, it turned into the Republic of Turkey. However, despite the Sultanate becoming extinct, the figure of the Caliph remained with a purely nominal and symbolic value with Caliph Abdulmecid II.

During the following year, two opposed movements that had been born as the result of constant interaction with the European nations, would struggle for the defence or dissolution of the Caliphate:

British rule in India provoked a renaissance of Sunni political and religious thought in the subcontinent. The Deobandi School, established in 1866, supported a new reading of Islamic principles purified of Western influences, mixed with a strong, modern nationalist view.

The Khilafat movement, also created in India, originated from this stream of thought. The Khilafat had as its main goal the protection of the Caliphate against Attattürk’s secular party.

On the other hand, the Turkish Nationalists, controlled by the army, received their intellectual inspiration from Europe, especially from the French constitution, and supported the complete abolition of the Caliphate and the establishment of a secular state.

Following some suspicious activities carried out by the Khilafat movement in Turkey, the last Caliph, Abdülmecid II, was dethroned by the secularist reforms that the nationalist premier Mustafa Kemal Attatürk sponsored.

Attatürk’s secular program ended the Caliphate, the system that had ruled the Sunni world since Mohammed’s death in 632.

The Caliph’s descendants: Pan-Arabism and Pan-Islamism after 1924

Dan sits down with James Barr to discuss how the effects of the Sykes-Picot Agreement are still being felt in the Middle East today, 100 years on. Listen Now

It is not necessary to have studied geography in order to spot the obvious differences between the borders of countries like China, Russia, or Germany, and those of Middle Eastern countries.

The precise, almost lineal frontiers of Saudi Arabia, Syria, or Iraq are nothing but lines drawn upon a map, and they do not reflect accurately the cultural, ethnic, or religious reality.

The decolonisation of the Arab world created nations that lacked identity or homogeneity in the way that European nationalism had defined it in the 19th century. This lack of “modern” identity, however, could be compensated by a golden past as a unified Arab – or Muslim – civilisation.

The overthrowing of the last of Mohammed’s inheritors in 1924 was the result of ideological division that had emerged as a consequence of the colonial experience.

Decolonisation brought to the fore two opposing views that had been born as a consequence of imperial dominance: a purified and anti-Western version of Islam, and a secularist and pro-Socialist movement.

Both these movements had their origin in the early years of decolonisation. The leadership of Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser served as the cornerstone for the Pan-Arabist movement, an idiosyncratic mixture of socialism and secular nationalism that tried to achieve the unification of the Arab world.

Nasser started his reforms nationalising many foreign companies established in Egypt, and creating a system of state-directed economy, even taking over the Suez Canal from its British and French owners.

Smoke rises from oil tanks beside the Suez Canal hit during the initial Anglo-French assault on Port Said, 5 November 1956. Credit: Imperial War Museums / Commons.

In 1957, U.S. President Eisenhower, alarmed by Nasser’s successes and its pro-Sovietic tendency, decided to support Saudi Arabia’s king, Saud bin Abdulaziz, in order to create a counter-balance to Nasser’s influence in the region.

Pan-Islamism

Pan-Islamism emerged as an alternative that could unify the Muslim world as Nasser fell in disgrace and the Baath governments of Syria and Iraq showed symptoms of exhaustion. Pan-Islamism originated in 19th century Afghanistan as a reaction against British and Russian colonial ambitions in the area.

Pan-Islamism did not put as much emphasis on ethnic and cultural differences as on the unifying role of Islamic religion.

The crash between the secularist ideas of Pan-Arabism and the religious principles of Pan-Islamism became especially evident during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, when the Taliban and the recently created Al Qaeda were able to defeat the Afghan Communist government and its Russian allies with the help of the United States.

The fall of the Soviet Union in 1989 further weakened the nationalist and secularist position of Pan-Arabism, while Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries increased their global influence after the 1973 Oil Crisis.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq witnessed the crumbling of the Baath in that country, leaving the Pan-Islamist movement as the only viable alternative that could achieve – and struggle for – the unity of the Arab world.

Tom Holland sits down with Dan to discuss ISIS and the history behind this terrorist organisation. Listen Now

The Caliphate represents Islam’s organic unity. While the Caliphate existed, the unity of the Islamic world was a reality, although a tenuous and purely nominal one. The abolition of the Caliphate left a vacuum in the Islamic world.

The institution of the Caliph had been part of political culture since Mohammed’s death (632) until the disappearance of the Ottoman Empire (1924).

This vacuum became a constitutive part of the radical dream, and it seems to have come back to life with the Islamic State’s Caliphate, proclaimed the 29 June 2014 by Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, who took his name, precisely, from the first Caliph Abu Bakr.

This wasn’t Zuckerberg’s first attempt at creating a social networking site. His previous efforts included Facemash, a site that allowed students to rate one another’s appearance. To create Facemash, Zuckerberg hacked into Harvard’s “facebooks,” containing images of students to help them identify each other.

The website was a hit but Harvard shut it down and threatened to expel Zuckerberg for violating student privacy and breaching their security.

Take two

Zuckerberg’s next project, theFacebook, built on his experience with Facemash. His plan was to create a website that linked everyone at Harvard together. Within twenty-four hours of launching the site, theFacebook had between twelve hundred and fifteen hundred registered users.

Mark Zuckerberg speaks during the TechCrunch Conference in 2012. Image credit: Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Within a month, half of the undergraduate population of Harvard were registered. Zuckerberg expanded his team to include fellow Harvard students Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, Andrew McCollum and Chris Hughes.

Over the next year, the site expanded to other Ivy League universities and then to all universities across the United States and Canada. In August 2005 the site changed to Facebook.com when the address was bought for $200,000. In September 2006, having spread to colleges and schools across the globe, Facebook was opened to everyone with a registered email address.

The fight for Facebook

But it wasn’t all plain sailing. Just one week after launching theFacebook, Zuckerberg became embroiled in a long-running legal dispute. Three seniors at Harvard – Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra – claimed Zuckerberg agreed to create a social networking site for them called HarvardConnection.

They alleged instead that Zuckerberg had stolen their idea and used it to create his own site. However, in 2007 a judge ruled that their case was too flimsy and that idle chat between students did not constitute a binding agreement. The two sides agreed to a settlement.

According to records for September 2016, Facebook has 1.18 billion daily active users.

I have explored Stonehenge and Bronze Age settlements in the North Sea. I have veered from 2nd Century BC China to NASA veterans of the Apollo Missions.

History, it strikes me, is everything that has ever happened to anyone who has ever lived on this planet, and the stuff humans have got up to off it too. History is Henry VIII, Catherine the Great and Abraham Lincoln, but it is also happening now.

History is politics and politics is history

The Brexit process, the midterm elections in the US, and, yes, Donald Trump, are truly historic. Not only will they be poured over by historians of the future, but they are all rooted in deep historic traditions.

Brexit sees Britain wrestle with the ancient question of the exact nature of its relationship with its European neighbours, so near and yet so far.

Donald Trump’s election to the US Presidency in 2016 caused a political earthquake and represented a rejection of established order.

Trump appeals to history all the time. He talks about past greatness and promises to restore it. He defines himself as a nationalist, while his enemies brand him a fascist. Historians must weigh in and help the rest of us interpret what is going on.

The past explains the present

As it turns out, the anonymous critics are wrong on what the audience seem to want too. The podcasts about contemporary politics always have a historic element – like understanding what the 18th century Founding Fathers envisaged when they framed the constitution. They also always have people tuning in.

People want to know why hung parliaments, Trump, Brexit, the German far-right, Gaza riots and IS demolitions happen. They all have roots deep into the past, yet their historical dimension is too often ignored in the normal news cycle.

Trump and historical parallel

It has been an extraordinary privilege interviewing historians about Trump over the past two years, asking them to rise above the tweets and give us a considered view on what it all means.

From Sarah Churchwell explaining the genesis of the term ‘American Dream,’ to Ruth Ben-Ghiat on parallels with Mussolini and Joshua Matz on the development of impeachment in the US constitution, I have had some of the world’s best scholars sharing their insights and their fears.

They all agree that Trump is not literally a fascist. Fascism in Italy was a phenomenon particular to the time and society in which it was born.

However, there are fascinating similarities between the rhetoric, methods and even body language of Trump and Mussolini.

His certainty that he alone can fix society, he can protect it from the evils that stalk its margins, he can return it to a state of past glory, these are all tropes of dictators throughout history.

Likewise, his demonisation of the opposition, of the judiciary and the media. He identifies ethnic groups as threats and insists that he is, above all, a protector. He uses new technology to reach beyond traditional platforms for disseminating information and embraces conspiracy to undermine and obscure reality. He and his allies do what they can to suppress voting.

One of the most memorable recent podcasts was Calder Walton on Soviet attempts to influence American elections during the Cold War, by pushing misinformation, undermining trust and reinforcing division.

It was a terrifying conversation, yet a great example of why history is for all of us, right now. All this stuff has happened before, we would be wise to pay heed to it.

On both occasions the President was often hostile to the press audience, while accusing CNN of being ‘fake news’ and making derogatory remarks about both Acosta and his employer. Only on the second time, Trump set a new precedent – he called Jim Acosta an ‘enemy of the people’ and had his White House press access revoked.

I’ve just been denied entrance to the WH. Secret Service just informed me I cannot enter the WH grounds for my 8pm hit

— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) November 8, 2018

These two press conferences are important markers in the Trump Presidency. In the first, Trump essentially opened his attack on the established media by accusing them of ‘fake news’. The second illustrates the White House’s propensity to act on it, after nearly two years of ingraining it into the media lexicon. It has chilling effects for press freedom, and not just in the US.

A very Trump-ian trend

Donald Trump has a paradoxical yet fascinating relationship with the term ‘fake news’, beyond the barrage of accusatory tweets have almost become normalised. The recent trend history of the term illustrates its remarkable rise into common usage, which is seldom explained in any detail. But that rise is almost completely wedded to Donald Trump.

The graph above shows global Google searches for ‘fake news’. These clearly rose after Trump’s election victory, and have remained at a higher average level, including several peaks, since.

It is almost as if one could not exist without the other. If Donald Trump was not in office, then the phrase would not have become so commonly used; he regularly tweets about it to tens of millions of people. Meanwhile, it is often argued that Trump would not have won the 2016 presidential election without it. But how has this phrase evolved in recent years?

Fake news and the 2016 Presidential election

The background to the growth lie in the growth of a ‘fake news environment’ before the 2016 Presidential election. The detailed causes of this, and the motivations of actors within it, could easily fill a book. But for brevity, there were two main actors:

Rogue entrepreneurs – these worked out how to profit from viral traffic. They had a free publishing system in WordPress, a low cost distribution point with Facebook and poorly regulated access to display advertising (largely via Google) so they could profit.

State sponsored actors – it is proven that the Russian ‘Internet Research Agency’ did act favourably towards the Trump campaign (given he was far more sympathetic to Russia than Clinton) through misinformation and Facebook advertising. Some 126 million Americans may have been exposed to it.

Both types of actor capitalised on the extreme polarisation of the campaign; the candidates were almost Ying and Yang opposites, while Trump played a populist card and was a master of gaining attention. He was also prepared to side with conspiracy theories.

The Trump Clinton Presidential race was the most polarised in recent history. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

A formula for the fake news environment before 2016 might be:

Increasingly polarized politics + untruthful candidate + low public trust x low cost website + low cost distribution + inability to regulate = advertising revenue and/or political gain.

There was fake news being spread which favoured both Republican and Democrat sides, but its overall tone, volume and how much it was seen overwhelmingly favoured Trump. These headlines illustrate the point:

• Pope Francis shocks world, backs Trump for President (960,000 shares)
• Hillary sold weapons to ISIS (789,000 shares)
• FBI Agent Suspected in Hillary Email Leaks Found Dead (701,000 shares)

But while fake news was seen as a menace, the media weren’t yet taking it very seriously. BuzzFeed was alone in the lengths it went to report its pervasive spread.

On 3 November 2016, it published an investigation exposing a network of over 100 pro-Trump news sites in the small Macedonian town of Veles, run mostly by teenagers who were making large sums of money through Google Adsense

In the week’s before the election, and having been repulsed by Trump’s campaign, the American media came out in such force for Hillary Clinton that Trump was the least endorsed candidate in campaign history. Clinton gained 242 endorsements, and Trump just 20. But these seemed to count for little as he swept to the American Presidency by 304 electoral college votes to 227.

The media reaction

Trump’s shock victory left editors scratching their heads. Realising their endorsements had counted for so little, they began to point the finger squarely at Facebook and the fake news on the newsfeeds within.

Max Read flatly declared in New York Magazine: ‘Donald Trump won because of Facebook.’

In the week after Trump’s 2016 victory, Google searches for the term ‘fake news’ shot up five times compared to the last week of October, and more than three times above the week of the election. It was driven by a sudden press interest in the role of fake news being a factor in Trump’s victory.

Donald Trump’s inversion

Trump showed little public interest in the immediate trend after the election, and he only tweeted about ‘fake news’ once in 2016. However, his first press conference as President elect on 11 January 2017 was a watershed.

In the days before that press conference, CNN reported that ‘Intel chiefs presented Trump with claims of Russian efforts to compromise him,’ but they stopped short of publishing the 35 page compilation of the memos.

BuzzFeed then decided to publish the entire dossier, “so that Americans can make up their own minds about allegations about the president-elect that have circulated at the highest levels of the US government.” This action, which was heavily criticised by the other news outlets, sent Twitter into the howls of a comedy meltdown, but it had an adverse effect.

It allowed the Trump administration to invert the term ‘fake news’ away from genuinely fake stories that seemed to support him, and back towards the established media. In the ensuing press conference, Donald Trump refused to take a question from CNN’s Jim Acosta, growling, “Your organisation is terrible… you are fake news.”

Donald Trump’s first press conference as President-elect covered in a report by ABC News. His attack on Jim Acosta is at 3 minutes 33 seconds.

Towards peak ‘fake news’

Searches for ‘fake news’ in the week 8 – 14 January 2017 reached double the previous monthly average. From then on, Trump essentially used the term to call out news organisations that were criticising his policies or attempting to investigate some of the more unsavoury elements in his ascent to the Presidency.

In July 2017, several CNN journalists resigned over a story into Russian collusion that was published, but didn’t meet editorial guidelines. Trump was quick to react on Twitter, calling out CNN and retweeting a CNN logo that replaced the C with an F, thus becoming Fake News Network:

The original thread is on Twitter.

Clearly, this was another opportunity for Trump to go on the offensive, and the attention around the resignations was so great, that the number of Google searches for ‘fake news’ notably jumped.

He tweeted about the American media being ‘fake news’ a hundred times in 2017, and he claimed he ‘came up’ with the term in October. It was used so regularly that the Collins Dictionary named it their ‘Word of the Year‘, stating its usage had risen 365% since 2016.

Key points in the search trend for ‘fake news’. There was clearly little interest until Trump was elected President.

In January 2018, Trump even announced “The Fake News Awards, those going to the most corrupt & biased of the Mainstream Media”. After the ‘awards’ were published on the Republican website blog (which actually went offline on that evening), searches for ‘fake news’ reached their peak.

The Fake News Awards, those going to the most corrupt & biased of the Mainstream Media, will be presented to the losers on Wednesday, January 17th, rather than this coming Monday. The interest in, and importance of, these awards is far greater than anyone could have anticipated!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2018

All the while, more evidence of Russian meddling in the 2016 US election was coming to light, alongside data mishandling and misinformation scandals that led to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg having to appear before US Congress. The real fake news was being deflected.

The trouble with fake news and its effects

The recent history (etymology) of the phrase ‘fake news’ is really one of inversion and deflection, through which its meaning has become warped.

It was used as a moniker to group misinformation that apparently caused Trump’s 2016 election victory. Then, because some outlets went too far in their attempts to undermine the new President, the term was inverted by him to attack them.

His Presidency has seen major news outlets denied entry to White House Press briefings, and he has called for network news licenses to be “challenged and, if appropriate, revoked” because they have become “so partisan, distorted and fake.” Jim Acosta’s White House ban is, unfortunately, one of a growing list of press attacks and obstructions.

While this has the effect of further muddying the divides between fact and fiction for the American public, it has further and perhaps more chilling consequences.

Network news has become so partisan, distorted and fake that licenses must be challenged and, if appropriate, revoked. Not fair to public!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 12, 2017

In December 2017, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported, Record number of journalists behind bars as Turkey, China, Egypt pay scant price for repression, laying some of the blame with President Trump, stating that his:

“insistence on labelling critical media “fake news” serves to reinforce the framework of accusations and legal charges that allow such leaders to preside over the jailing of journalists.”

No matter of people’s opinions of the ‘mainstream media’, the throttling of a free press leads us into a warped version of reality. As the new slogan of The Washington Post says, ‘Democracy dies in darkness.’

The mess of information

The term ‘fake news’ is really a name for the giant mess of information in the age of social media.

Everywhere, there is a waning of trust in authority and what people hold to be true. The press blames social networks and fake news websites for duping the public, the public may share the content of fake news websites, but also blame the media for breaking their trust, while the man in the most world’s highest office uses social media to berate the established media for being fake.

Donald Trump might well have existed without fake news, but its current imprint on the public’s consciousness couldn’t have happened without him.