In November 2018, it was revealed that Labor leader Avi Gabbay's campaign headquarters was behind fake Facebook accounts, supposedly unaffiliated with the party, that disseminated aggressive propaganda against Yesh Atid Chairman Yair Lapid. Gabbay initially claimed that he had nothing to do with the online slander, but eventually, he confessed his party's culpability. There was no outcry within the leftist camp, the media turned a blind eye to the entire matter, and Lapid didn't file a complaint with the police.
Yet, lo and behold, we were hit over the head with headlines about "research" pointing to a comprehensive "conspiracy" aimed at swaying public opinion via online "bots." The amateur nature of this journalism was quickly exposed, yet despite the proof that some of these alleged "bots" were, in fact, actual people, their accounts were closed without any discernible justification. A direct line links the bot report and banning right-wing Twitter users, the efforts to erase right-wing voices on Facebook, the so-called Israel Hayom bill, and the cries of incitement every time legitimate criticism is voiced against the High Court of Justice. It's always the same attempt by the Left to prevent a pluralistic debate through the silencing and demonization of others.
In the past, it was easy to silence people. Right-wing media outlets were few and far between and vulnerable, and the court even helped the Left shut them down. For example, Channel 7 was shuttered by the High Court. It was never a problem, therefore, to create a false impression of consensus, which was the case for instance during the Gaza disengagement.
Today, however, as social media platforms have risen to prominence and information bubbles to the surface, McCarthyism is more difficult and complex to execute. The effervescent nature of Israeli democracy is a nuisance to those who until recently monopolized public opinion. In the past, the media elites were able to suffocate pluralism of thought and deflect criticism from the desired views. Today they must cope with other opinions. Consequently, traditional hegemonic forces sense that they are losing their grip on public opinion and that the "wrong" people who think "wrongly" are gaining a hold.
So how do they proceed? They transition from attempts to silence entire entities (the Israel Hayom bill) to silencing private individuals; behold the age of micro-McCarthyism. We are thus witnessing more individual initiatives to silence voices (reporting others on Facebook) or more institutionalized initiatives, such as the disgraceful bot report. Instead of contending with the arguments, they stigmatize an entire camp, which is presented as a herd of absent-minded "bots," in an attempt to emphasize who controls the public discourse and who is allowed to direct it.
The bots report is a direct continuation of the efforts to deny the Right any significant inroads into the media and other systems that shape opinion, in the fear that the wrong ideas will resonate. The bottom line is that the Israeli Left isn't really afraid of fake online profiles, or "bots" for that matter. It is afraid of democracy. Like any good Bolshevik, it doesn't want to hear what the public has to say, it wants to tell the public what to do.
