Just when I was starting to look forward to next October’s municipal election in Nanaimo, along comes this alarming piece from Canada’s National Observer.

According to the investigating reporters, I will need to do more than just take in what appear to be the prevailing public views on the candidates running. That is, if I want to head confidently to the polls believing I’ve selected the individuals who best represent my own perspective. The reason: because the information I use to make my selections may be … well, fake news.

Like what’s now going on in Squamish.

The column’s authors claim that after extensive investigation, they learned “that ads run by “Squamish Voices” and at least a half-dozen other supposedly grassroots Facebook pages are linked to Canada Proud, a right-wing political influence group…” The numerous published ads have called Mayor Karen Elliot corrupt and incompetent, and have similarly hammered away at most members of the town council.

In a bit more background, Kate Dommett, a digital campaigning expert in the UK, told the authors that such groups often have a “veneer of being a community organization to subvert the ‘well-established’ democratic principle that advertisers shouldn’t be anonymous.” The “organizations behind these types of campaigns often create posts designed to draw people in, asking for comments on issues like traffic or housing … to increase engagement and public trust. Then, in the lead-up to an election … page administrators bombard followers with explicitly political content or smear campaigns.”

Sound familiar?

As elsewhere, Squamish’s “local” groups typically come from the ultra conservative and alt-right fringe. But don’t think of them as being necessarily less effective just because they’re on the fringe. In fact, they can be dangerous because of their heavy use of a constantly in-your-face strategy to create misconceptions as to their numbers and broad acceptance of their views.

Humans have biases and use heuristics (mental shortcuts) to make choices efficiently even if they are sometimes wrong. Our saliency bias interprets the alt-right’s in-your-face presence as meaning they are more established than they really are. When paired with our consensus heuristic, we can become receptive because we mistakenly think they are the majority opinion.

So the most important take-away of the cited article is this: even at the local level, we must be very careful about being misled by fake messaging like that currently appearing in Squamish. We need to be very careful when adopting any opinion or perspective just because it shows up frequently or appears to have a lot of people subscribing to it.

We always need to do our own due diligence on candidates – and on important issues. We always need to take a deeper-than-surface look at the reasoning and motives of those who represent the purportedly widespread views on an issue or a candidate. And, just like for a lot of other areas these days, we need to take on the responsibility of doing that work ourselves.

Right-wing political operatives masquerading as local grassroots groups on Facebook. Canada’s National Observer. March 17, 2022. “A[n] investigation has found ads run by at least a half-dozen supposedly local Facebook pages are linked to one of Canada’s top right-wing communications strategists and his associates.”