London's Mayoral Race Is a Harbinger of What's to Come in the US

If you follow British politics at all, you'll be familiar with Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, who is up for re-election in May. His campaign and the politics surrounding his current term are providing a glimpse of the craziness that is likely to come in the next six months before November's US elections. 

Wired has taken a long look at what's been going on in London. It's not pretty. 

Last summer, one of Khan’s flagship policies—a benign pollution reduction measure—was fused with the global conspiracy, sucked into a nightmarish mass delusion about climate authoritarianism, and co-opted by populist culture warriors to justify a rollback of carbon emissions targets. The chaos that ensued shows how the drip of online conspiracy and radicalization, driven by algorithms and exploited by opportunists, has warped political discourse in democratic societies. It is now much harder for elected leaders to manage the compromises needed to keep cities—and countries—together and functioning. That battle is becoming ever more one-sided, fueled by conspiracy theorists and cheap and convincing deepfakes. Khan’s bid for reelection in May will be the UK’s first major vote in this strange new world, a precursor to a national election happening some time this year—and, quite possibly, a warning sign of how dangerous the merging of populism, extremism, and technology has become.

There's a lot more in the article, including a sophisticated deep fake. 

In the fake recording, an authentic-sounding version of Khan’s voice could be heard calling for the ceremony at the Cenotaph war memorial in London to be called off in favor of the Gaza rally. “I don’t give a flying shit about the Remembrance Weekend,” the voice said. The mayor, it said, controlled the police.

The message pressed every button on England’s paranoid fringes: an insinuation of support for Hamas, an apparent denigration of British history and memory by a Muslim left-winger, and a sense of backroom deals being done. A secret woke plot that plugged straight into the grand online conspiracy that unites the far right, anti-vaxxers, and climate deniers.

There are obvious implications for the coming local, state, and federal elections.