The internet is a fine place to read things. However, you can’t believe everything you read, and the conclusions you might draw are likely to be the result of sophisticated, targeted manipulation. For that reason, the guardians of truth and democracy have come up with a highly effective countermeasure. Unfortunately, the main reason why it’s highly effective is because it works through sophisticated, targeted manipulation. The countermeasure is called pre-bunking, and before you complain that it is using methods that are just as underhand as those used by its targets, you have to remember one thing: The pre-bunker is honest and enlightened, and so is allowed to be manipulative – it’s just called education. In contrast, the target is a dishonest trickster who peddles falsehoods. And how do I know this? It’s because the pre-bunkers have told me so. But how does this idea bear up under close inspection?

Take, for example, the role played by emotion. The pre-bunker warns me that there are those who appeal to my reptile brain in order to bypass my critical thinking apparatus. So, if your response to reading something is one of fear or anger, the likelihood is that you are being manipulated. A good example of this, say the pre-bunkers, is when climate sceptics raise fear and doubt regarding the practicalities of net zero. They want you to be fearful and angry about net zero because experiencing such emotions disables the careful, critical thinking that would inevitably lead to the ‘correct’ conclusion, i.e. that net zero is a brilliant and essential idea.

That said, the pre-bunkers are remarkably silent when it comes to the exploitation of fear and anger as part of the central strategy of climate activism. Talk of crisis and emergency is designed to appeal to my reptile brain in order to bypass my critical thinking apparatus, but that’s supposed to be okay; I’m just having my risk perception re-calibrated to fall in line with the opinions of the pre-bunkers. Nothing to see here, move on.

And then there is the role played by errors in critical thinking. The pre-bunker warns me that there are those who commit such errors as part of a deliberate attempt to manipulate. So, for example, if you see people cherry-picking the weather to construct a particular climate narrative, the likelihood is that you are being manipulated. A good example of this, say the pre-bunkers, is when climate sceptics point towards a spell of cold weather and say, ‘so much for global warming’. Apparently, that’s just taking advantage of the availability heuristic in order to manipulate.

That said, the pre-bunkers are remarkably silent when it comes to the IPCC’s explicit call to take advantage of the availability heuristic by focusing upon extreme weather, such that every heatwave can be sold as incontrovertible proof of there being a climate crisis. But that’s just having my risk perception re-calibrated to fall in line with the opinions of the pre-bunkers. Nothing to see here, move on.

I could go on, but for once I won’t. There is a very simple idea to be taken away from all of this. Advocates of pre-bunking claim that it is designed to teach people how to think but, in practice, it is telling them what to think — essentially priming them to dismiss certain arguments before they’ve even had a chance to evaluate them. It’s not that such advocates don’t have a point regarding the use of emotion, or indeed the misuse of critical thinking; it is the blatantly partizan manner in which such insights are applied. Pre-bunking is supposed to give people the tools to spot the trick, regardless of who is using it, but that is nowhere near what happens in practice. If anything, pre-bunking is even more sophisticated and targeting in its manipulation than anything else you might find on the internet, because not only does it selectively condone the trickery, it does so whilst claiming to occupy an epistemological high ground. It is this claim that enables it to re-label some manipulations as education whilst condemning others as the machinations of underhand ‘bad actors’, even though both manipulations may be employing the same emotional and cognitive trickery.

Because prebunking campaigns are always one-sided, they act as an epistemic shield for the mainstream narrative. They train the public to have an incredibly high sensitivity to the flaws of contrarian arguments, while rendering them completely blind to the hyperbole, cherry-picked data, and emotional manipulation coming from the institutional side. As a rational man, I’m supposed to appreciate pre-bunking’s call for critical thinking and the avoidance of emotional capture, but when I see it in action, I find myself instinctively recoiling from its Orwellian themes. So, no thank you, I don’t see pre-bunking as the legitimate policy of preferring prevention over cure. I prefer to call pre-bunking what it is – a grubby tool employed in a grubby propaganda war.