Men in Black Trumped Democracy. But they were not Russian, Says Frenchman

It's not Russia's interference with the 2016 elections that tilted the vote Trump's way, but rather a dark force hiding in the shadows of his campaign, which is the subject of the French journalist and documentarian, Thomas Huchon's film, Trumping Democracy: Real$ "Fake News" "Your Data,"  that was released last December.

  As we take our "mystery tour," through Huchon's film, we travel down paths of dark money, algorithms, sharp tools of the digital trade, and psychometrics, as we learn who moved Donald J. Trump into the oval office

  Huchon's revelatory documentary, broken down into three parts, shows how the players of the Trump campaign team all worked together to capture the 45th presidency.  

  The first part delivers valuable information about this historic election and the movement of fake news, taking the false narrative and the political lie to heights never before witness in the United States.

  Huchon interviews political strategists, pollsters, and journalists who help corroborate the facts about how the dark side of the Internet creates false information and passes it off as real. One of the examples of blatant fakes news came from Breitbart: "Would you rather your child had feminism or cancer?"

  Breitbart, which has come to be known as the "alt right" news, is one of the main "characters," if you will to strut across Huchon's screen. It's a perfect centerpiece and transition from the first part, that examines fake news and Trump's lies, to the second part, which is about the shadow men behind Trump; the men that made Trump, not America, great.

  What was probably one of the most striking revelations, was that it was not, as Trump would have us believe, his populist rhetoric and celebrity popularity that won him the election, but a much more nefarious entity; The men in the shadow, Robert Mercer and his stalwart, Steve Bannon, worked a high tech psychological operation) into the digital heartland of the American people.

"Trumping Democracy," breaks down how Robert Mercer's campaign strategy used data mining to subconsciously influence potential Trump voters by using their data to feed them "dark posts," via a little known Facebook feature. These posts would appear as a personalized message in the "dark web" that could very well sway the individual's vote.

  For example, something might appear on one's Facebook feed that claims that Hillary Clinton is trying to take away our gun rights. This message will only be seen by the particular user, and then disappear into the dark void of the web, and before the person realizes it, his mind is being manipulated.

  Trump's campaign team manipulated voters' minds without their awareness, which seems eerily Orwellian.  

  Cambridge Analytica, a company formed by Mercer when he partnered up with the UK firm, Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL), focuses on data mining and data analysis.

  Huchon carefully reveals the mysterious Robert Mercer's character, as he splatters bits and pieces of the man throughout the film to help us better understand how and why he was the dark entity behind Trump's victory.

  We learn Mercer is secretive and prefers the company of cats. We learn he pioneered algorithm trading at IBM when he was a mere computer scientist. This, we learn paved the way for him to become a billionaire, who essentially bought the 2016 elections using  Cambridge Analytica's data profiling technology.

  Mercer exemplifies and promotes the ultra conservative views of limited government and extreme capitalism. He could perhaps, have something in common with Ayn Rand's John Galt. Mercer, it is revealed, expects his policy preferences to be met by his candidate.

  The film shares Trump at one of his rallies say, "I know that corruption has reached a level like never ever before in our country." We know, through filmmaker Huchon, the dark forces that lurk in Trump's shadows who used data mining to create "the right message to the right person at the right moment," using psychometrics, or data profiling.

  Huchon reveals that SCL's services help them to learn, "What motivates human behavior the better to influence them."

  The 77,000  votes Trump needed  to win the Electoral College votes of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, were, as the film revealed, achieved through the high tech methods employed by Cambridge Analytica.  

  Did Trump's voters own their own thoughts or did psychometrics and the digital world own them?  Was it right that 77,000 voters should make the decision for all? Questions about the Electoral College and the dark side of the web are raised in the film.

  What was revelatory about the film was how the technology that permeates the dark web has its way of traveling through the veins of our data and into our brains without our awareness.

  Is the world of Trumping Democracy an Orwellian world where ignorance is strength?

  The first thing one might have impulse to do after seeing the film is to temporarily suspend his or her Facebook account. That might be, the first step in letting go of one's attachment to the world of alternative facts

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