Are there any historical examples of (non government-approved) fake news having a strong effect?
Upvote:1
Your question is almost impossible to answer as there is no clear definition what fake news actually is. To a lesser extend this applies to hate speech as well. Certainly the way it is applied today seems to be "it doesn't agree with my opinion, therefor it must be fake news or hate speech!"
Is warning for vaccination fake news? It - in my opinion - most certainly is. Is warning for second hand smoke fake news? Again, in my opinion it is. However, a vast majority will accept incorrect data as correct. Same applies to climate hoaxes. Not agreeing with the popular opinion doesn't automatically make something fake news.
See how difficult it is? You probably will agree anti-vaxers are bat shit crazy. Now it gets more difficult: Second hand smoke being more dangerous than nerve gas has so often been reported it is taken for granted. The same principle is being applied now on climate science and global warming.
Be very careful with regulations of the above, that is known as censorship. Censorship is like smoking: you start with a little, like it, and want it more and more.
Fake news abounds, always has and always will. One of the better examples of the past are the Dutch Tulip craze and the South Sea bubble.
Upvote:4
Just prior to the start of WWII, Nazi Germany managed to use lots of induced street violence and fake stories about German unification supporters being suppressed to take over Austria without themselves firing a shot, and then used fake stories about ethnic Germans being oppressed and abused to do the same thing with the defensible western portion of democratic Czechoslovakia. They were in the process of pulling the same maneuver with Poland (they even had a secret partition agreement worked up with the USSR) when France and England drew the line. At that point it was arguably too late to stop them.
Its not like Hitler invented political subversion propaganda though. This is a time-honored technique of attacking another country indirectly, particularly useful when softening it up for invasion. Democracies are particularly vulnerable to it due to the fact that they must allow dissenting political speech in order to function properly.
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