In March 2023 Tablet published Jacob Siegel’s “A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century.” Subhead accompanied by the profile of a blackbird’s head: “Thirteen ways of looking at disinformation.” (The subhead and graphic allude to the Wallace Stevens poem). Siegel’s magnum opus runs to some 13,000 words.

I meant to include Siegel’s column in my take on “The year in columns.” Indeed, I had devoted a separate post to it at the time of publication and Tablet had done me the favor of reminding me of it in its #Top Ten 2023 list. However, I slipped a cognitive gear as I worked on my year-end list.

Siegel’s introduction is followed by a table of contents with links to the chapters:

I. Russophobia Returns, Unexpectedly: The Origins of Contemporary “Disinformation”

II. Trump’s Election: “It’s Facebook’s Fault”

III. Why Do We Need All This Data About People?

IV. The Internet: From Darling to Demon

V. Russiagate! Russiagate! Russiagate!

VI. Why the Post-9/11 “War on Terror” Never Ended

VII. The Rise of “Domestic Extremists”

VIII. The NGO Borg

IX. COVID-19

X. Hunter’s Laptops: The Exception to the Rule

XI. The New One-Party State

XII. The End of Censorship

XIII. After Democracy

Appendix: The Disinfo Dictionary

It remains essential reading for 2024.

Matt Taibbi followed up with Siegel in the Racket News post/interview “Tablet’s Grand Opus on the Anti-Disinformation Complex” (behind Racket’s paywall). Taibbi also produced that post in podcast/video form (below, narrated by Jared Moore).

Taibbi’s introduction to the interview is particularly useful. Taibbi writes: “Siegel’s Tablet article is the enterprise effort at describing the whole anti-disinformation elephant I’ve been hoping for years someone in journalism would take on.”