Character Motivation and the Trustworthiness of the Watchers
In this early section of the text, of Malka Older’s Infomocracy, the author first explores the character of Mishima, an Information employee who oversees election security operations and combats misinformation campaigns by rogue actors attempting to attack the integrity (or lack of integrity) of the micro-democracy election system. Mishima views her role as safeguarding this election process against propaganda and electioneering designed to either manipulate the system or undermine it. Thus, she returns from a voter motivation party in Buenos Aires with a mission to find out who is responsible for the inflammatory messages she found there, which she views as a threat to the election process. She intends to hold the culprits responsible for this (curiously) illegal activity. Here, Mishima's (and Information's) motivations are on display, but the reader also begins to question how far Information will go to protect the political system.
After evaluating the usual suspects (various regional parties and also larger ones like Heritage), who stand to potentially gain from the message, she quickly rules them out since they don’t stand much to gain or couldn’t have designed such a sophisticated message. She considers Domaine, who is known as an anti-election radical, but can’t prove his involvement. Next, she reviews a number of video feeds on the Information network. She accomplishes these tasks with a degree of omnipotence that resembles the character Ozymandias from The Watchmen. This outstanding metaphor could likewise be applied to Information as a whole, which sees its role as watching over, and guarding the micro-democratic system itself. But is Information worthy of that trust?
Given that the election is fast approaching, there are many news stories breaking at that moment, all of which tie to some degree to the election campaign. Mishima even checks her home centenal in Tokyo, where the SonyMitsubishi party has enjoyed dominance for many years. She seems to have access to a wide array of media sources on her system, which is not surprising given that she works for Information, a company which essentially supplies the world with continuous news, and also not surprising because she is a well-trained professional with the skills and access to uncover anything nefarious at work. She notes the comparative positions of the party platforms and when she examines Liberty, she begins to suspect for the first time that perhaps something illicit may be going on within this seemingly benign party.
One particularly poignant metaphor stands out in the text here: the work of political operatives is compared to a "geopolitical Great Game". This term originally derives from the Victorian Age, where border tension in Central Asia and India between the Tsarist Russian Empire and the British Empire led to decades of intrigue and supposed political espionage. Interestingly, Rudyard Kipling was the author most responsible for popularizing the term in his final novel, Kim.
The scene then shifts at the beginning of Chapter three to Domaine in Addis Ababa. Domaine's motivations are even more explicitly revealed, and it becomes quite clear that Domaine is an opponent of the system who is actively trying to bring down micro-democracy and that he was responsible for the message in burning letters that Mishima was so concerned about. In this scene, he meets with Shamus, a graphic designer from Ireland, descended from African grandparents. Though Shamus does not share Domaine’s views, he nevertheless helped him by producing the burning anti-government message because Domaine pays him well.
Shamus came to Africa because of the first global election twenty years prior. This apparently produced a wave of loosened immigration, as governments largely scrambled to open borders and accept in potential supporters. These actions had unintended consequences, similar to gerrymandering (which the book refers to as mandergerrying), with supportive population groups clustered around the centenals of the governments they support, eroding support for other governments in the centenals that surround them. Domaine is dedicated to his goals and sees himself as a conscientious figure like Mishima or an operative for one of the various campaigns. Both Mishima and Domaine are persistent characters who will play a large role in the events that unfold after this. This reference to Gerrymandering, or the redrawing of election districts to favor or disfavor a particular political party, dates back to 1812, when Elbridge Gerry, then Governor of Massachusetts, approved a congressional map with a district that supposedly resembled a salamander. These contextual clues and metaphors help to set the stage for the events that follow in Chapter Four and onward, where the geopolitical background is explained in further detail.
Works Cited
Older, Malka. Infomocracy. Malka Older, 2016.
