"The ruling elites, who grasp that the reigning ideology of global corporate capitalism and imperial expansion no longer has moral or intellectual credibility, have mounted a campaign to shut down the platforms given to their critics. The attacks within this campaign include blacklisting, censorship and slandering dissidents as foreign agents for Russia and purveyors of “fake news.”
No dominant class can long retain control when the credibility of the ideas that justify its existence evaporates. It is forced, at that point, to resort to crude forms of coercion, intimidation and censorship. This ideological collapse in the United States has transformed those of us who attack the corporate state into a potent threat, not because we reach large numbers of people, and certainly not because we spread Russian propaganda, but because the elites no longer have a plausible counterargument."
Chris Hedges, Silencing Dissent
This is the logical progression of the credibility trap.
When one has no credible counter-argument to facts and logically framed critiques, the resort is too often to ad hominem attacks, smearing, and suppression up to and including censorship.
This is the reaction of careerists and ideologues when there is a perceived power imbalance, that is, when they think that they can get away with it.
