nbohr1more on 21/10/2020 at 12:03
Quote Posted by Renzatic
The Washington Examiner is a nigh on propaganda site, and Lauren Witzke is a QAnon nutter, once avowed flat earther, and ex-Trump campaign organizer, and is currently merely a senate nominee, and thus won't have access to the type of information she claims to have.
You pick interesting company, Nbohr.
...what the hell is happening to my country?
Pray tell me:
If all the mainstream media assisted in this plot, who else would cover it besides smaller or fringier outlets?
Briareos H on 21/10/2020 at 12:22
Quote Posted by demagogue
I don't know if the US is any more crazy than ever because I remember growing up classmates with dads in militias spouting off batshit conspiracies about the Jews and the coming WWIII race war. It's just that the crazy fringe is empowered and organized via social media in a way it hasn't been before.
I am not sure whether that's a crazy fringe or whether what we see is a concerted redirection of the brainpower of those who do not care or don't manage to apply empathetic critical thinking. Everywhere I look, I come to the conclusion that it's not that people are crazier or stupider, it's that they are increasingly manipulated into contributing to and propagating the crazy and stupid. Human botnets fighting each other in the internet of things.
heywood on 21/10/2020 at 12:23
I think it's much more widespread than before.
Conspiracies were always around. Everyone knew somebody who was into conspiracies, maybe someone in your extended family, or a friend, or a family member of a friend. But if it came up at a family gathering or a party, usually family members or friends would call it out and put it down. Or if it was somebody you didn't know well, you'd probably just roll your eyes and walk away. If they had nobody who wanted to listen to their bullshit, they learned to mostly keep it to themselves. The lack of an audience for these views and some social shaming kept it contained on the fringe. Also, the conspiracies that were mostly widely believed were fairly harmless stuff like UFOs and aliens and 100 mpg carburetors.
But then the internet came along and suddenly conspiracy nuts could find each other, reinforce each other, develop their theories together, put up pages that curious people could find via search. And then social media came along and made it possible for these stories to spread very wide very fast. Somewhere in the last 10 years, it reached a critical mass and people can now live in information bubbles where all their trusted sources of information are spreading the same conspiracies. So now we no longer have a main stream, we have multiple streams, some are still mostly based in reality but some are very disconnected from it.
I can hear the difference just in conservative talk radio. Back around the turn of the millenium, I was coding for a living. The guy I sat next to and I shared a radio, and we'd spend our days listening to talk radio or classical music. We'd listen to NPR, BBC world service, a couple of local conservatives (Howie Carr and Jay Severin), and sometimes Pacifica (far left). I also remember what Rush Limbaugh was like in the 1990s. Back then, even the conservative talk shows were mostly grounded in reality. Obviously a cherry picked version of it to support some slanted point, but we'd listen to them because there was some actual information content that you wouldn't hear from a mainstream source like NPR. Same thing with Pacifica on the other side. Now, whenever I'm feeling curious enough to put on a conservative talk show, I can't stick with it for more than about 30 min because it's ALL bullshit. These people live in a bubble where they make up their own reality. Things really have changed.
Gryzemuis on 21/10/2020 at 13:39
What is really bad is how Trump has smeared the press. The Lügenpresse. Straight out of the cookbook of the German Nazi's. Unbelievable.
News has always been coloured. In NL we have had newspapers that lean to the right and others that lean to the left. That doesn't mean they lie. But they exaggerate. They spend more time and space to some stories ("immigrant did something bad") or to other stories ("multinational did something bad"). Some papers/stations flat out refuse to talk about certain stories. E.g. our national TV station and newsprograms will almost never say something bad about our government. Because that's who pays their salaries. Most papers/stations are always positive about the EU. Always, as if it is a religion. Our papers and newsstation are sometimes silent, but they don't lie. And once a story is out, they will also talk about it a bit about subjects they'd rather ignore.
But now everything is changing. People who don't trust any news anymore. Only what their facebook-feed tells them. Or their favorite "alternate reality news website". Even in my country. There was a newsitem last Sunday where they interviewed a bunch of rednecks ("Tokkies" in Dutch). The nonsense they spouted was unbelievable. I hadn't realized that the issue of fake news had also spread to my own country.
How are you gonna counter this ? I have no idea.
nbohr1more on 21/10/2020 at 13:41
Quote Posted by nbohr1more
Pray tell me:
If all the mainstream media assisted in this plot, who else would cover it besides smaller or fringier outlets?
Now the ball starts rolling:
(
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fbi-purported-hunter-biden-laptop-sources)
more legitimate sites start reporting...
(This is exactly how Andrew Breitbart's "Anthony Weiner" story went from a "partisan conspiracy" to an indictment.)
Gryzemuis on 21/10/2020 at 13:59
Quote Posted by heywood
But then the internet came along and suddenly conspiracy nuts could find each other, reinforce each other, develop their theories together, put up pages that curious people could find via search.
You think this is something that "just happened" ?
Nope. There are people who deliberately start there stories. Who want to cause doubt and confusion. Fox News is one of them. Look up Roger Ailes, ex-CEO of Fox News. He wanted to push Trump, and he did. Using Fox. He was also involved with the elections of Nixon, Reagan and Bush sr. There have always been people like Steve Bannon, Rush Limbaugh, Karl Rove, etc. Arseholes who will do anything for a political advantage. Including cheating, lying, and using any tactic they can come up with. There must be more people like these, who stay in the background. But who invent and execute all these naz-tactics. I don't believe it's just a bunch of Rednecks who, by chance, tell each other these conspiracy stories.
Look at the Hunter Biden story. That is not something that just happened. There are people behind the story, who set this up, who fabricated the "evidence", who picked the exact right time to do this, who make sure the mainstream media (like Fox) pick this up, etc. This has nothing to do with democracy. These are full-blown nazi-tactics. Brave New World and 1948 rolled into one story.
demagogue on 21/10/2020 at 14:19
The top-down part is carefully orchestrated. The bottom-up part is people that just collectively react (to the top-down part, but also to each other).
What's happening now is out of the hands of the usual suspects though. Rove was an early never Trumper, and even Bannon got left at some point. I think there are insiders like Steven Miller that are pushing, e.g., alt right signaling from within the White House, but not the stuff going online. I think most of the content generation is Russian intelligence & its proxies/like-minded organizations and then random US influencers (QAnon groupies) just repackage and build on it. Establishment Republicans are pretty much represented by the Lincoln Project.
What I found interesting about the Hunter Biden email leak story was that I remember people speculating that it was inevitable to expect it coming ages ago, because it's the obvious psy-op if Biden got the nomination. It has all the ingredients that worked against Hillary ... a "leak", "emails", "selling us out", "lock him up", etc., etc. Even the details of how they got the emails that both had provenience and shielded the leaker at the same time (laptops sent to a repair shop; some article explained that part really well), their wording, etc. The script writes itself. So much so, you can understand the immediate skepticism. Oh, emails worded exactly as predicted years ago released by Giuliani in exactly the same way he released info in mid-2019 under the same circumstances with the same effect... What a stunning surprise. =/
heywood on 21/10/2020 at 15:44
Gryz - I think you missed what I was trying to say.
Conspiracies always started with some fabrication. It's just that they used to be easy to correct or put down because most people could pick out the real information from the bullshit. There were always believers, but they were mostly isolated on the fringes. Now you have large groups of people who exist in information bubbles, where they're not open to logical thinking and objective information anymore because everything they chose to read or hear is reinforcing the bullshit. The bullshit becomes their reality and anybody with a different narrative is either part of the conspiracy or they are "sheeple".
I don't disagree that propagandists take advantage of it. But the narratives are not all spoon fed by political operatives. The Hunter Biden emails thing obviously is. But the stuff about COVID-19 being a hoax, and mask mandates are meant to make people docile by depriving them of oxygen, the Chinese unleashed a bioweapon, 9/11 was an inside job? Those theories aren't coming from a Bannon or Miller, and I doubt they're coming from Russian operatives either. That stuff grows from the grass roots. The other thing that happens due to social media is that one little seed of propaganda can go viral and turn into a forest. Pizzagate may have started from a planted rumor for political gain, but it quickly took on a life of its own thanks to social media. That opened the door for 'Q' to co-opt it. Now it's grown way beyond some Q account on 8chan making predictions. We have people running for Congress who publicly support QAnon even though they can't explain who or what it is. I think the people at Fox News are just as much victims of it as they are perpetrators. Tucker Carlson used to be an establishment Republican. Now he's wrapped himself in conspiracies about COVID and the deep state, and BLM. And I think he believes it too.
Gryzemuis on 21/10/2020 at 17:01
I think we all agree on the "bottom-up" part of the problem. When there are conspiracies, we understand how they get spread and how they behave. Social media, the Web (I refuse to say "the Internet" :)), informal ways of communicating. Those all help spreading bullshit.
Sure, there will be ridiculous things that spread just because. E.g. I don't think anyone planned the bullshit around flat earth. Or that the moonlanding was fake. Maybe just people who liked to make fun of others, starting the movement. I've read that QAnon might just be a joke that ran out of control. I have no problems believing that. I also think people react to covid because they find it inconvenient to do social distance or wear masks. They rebel just because of their own interest.
But some conspiracies ? Like the Hunter thing ? Those must be planned deliberately. The Pizzagate stuff is something nobody comes up with just for fun. Trump himself keeps hammering stuff (covid is harmless, lock her up, etc). I agree that once the ball is rolling through social media and the web, it will keep rolling by itself. But I think lots of this stuff didn't happen by coincidence. A part of this is orchestrated. It's intentional.
Does this make me a conspiracy nut ?
I don't think our point-of-view is so different. I probably just think that a higher percentage of stories was fabricated intentionally. And you think it's lower. Of course, none of us can give percentages. Maybe another way to express my view is: I think Republicans are more willing to use anti-democratic strategies to get to their goals. And silly Democrats are more likely to want to play according to the rules.
nickie on 21/10/2020 at 17:26
Quote Posted by Gryzemuis
What is really bad is how Trump has smeared the press.
I watched this interview with Retired Navy Adm. William McRaven, this morning. Round about 6 minutes (question really starting at 5.18) he describes how the start of his disenchantment began with Trump calling the media the enemy of the people. He also thinks that if Biden wins, he'll be able to remove the US pariah status in 5 minutes flat (topic mentioned in another post). He's probably right - mostly. I think the whole interview is worth watching though.
[video=youtube;1HNugOXEfng]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HNugOXEfng[/video]
@ dema - thanks very much for the explanation. It's true I was thinking of the Individual 1 case but there are so many possible cases it seems, it's good to have knowledgeable opinion to think about. I do watch Glenn Kirschner legal videos sometimes which have also been quite enlightening.