Misinformation

Ugh.
jfish26
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Misinformation

Post by jfish26 »

October 6, 2024

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.c ... ber-6-2024
This morning began with a CNN headline story by fact checker Daniel Dale, titled “Six days of Trump lies about the Hurricane Helene response.” Dale noted that Republican nominee for president Donald Trump has been one of the chief sources of the disinformation that has badly hampered recovery efforts.

Trump has claimed that the federal government is ignoring the storm’s victims, especially ones in Republican areas, and that the government is handing out only $750 in aid (in fact, the initial emergency payment for food and groceries is $750, but there are multiple grants available for home rebuilding up to a total of $42,500, the upper limit set by Congress). He has also claimed—falsely—that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is out of money to help because the administration spent all its money on Ukraine and undocumented immigrants.

Trump’s lies are not errors. They are part of a well-documented strategy to overturn democracy by using modern media to create a false political world. Voters begin to base their political decisions on that fake image, rather than on reality, and are manipulated into giving up control of their government to an authoritarian.

Russian political theorists who were key to the rise of Russian president Vladimir Putin after the collapse of the Soviet Union called this manipulation “political technology.”

They developed a series of techniques to pervert democracy through this virtual political reality. They blackmailed opponents, abused state power to help favored candidates, sponsored “double” candidates with names similar to those of opponents in order to split the opposition vote and thus open the way for their own candidates, created false parties to further splinter the opposition, and, finally, created a false narrative around an election or other event that enabled them to control public debate.

Essentially, they perverted democracy, turning it from the concept of voters choosing their leaders into the concept of voters rubber-stamping the leaders they had been manipulated into backing.

This system made sense in former Soviet republics, where it enabled leaders to avoid the censorship that voters would recoil from by instead creating a firehose of news until people became overwhelmed by the task of trying to figure out what was real and simply tuned out.

But it has also worked in the United States, where right-wing leaders have used it to divide the American people and spread disinformation. While “misinformation” is simply false information—which we all spread innocently and correct with accurate information—“disinformation” is a deliberate lie to convince people of things that are not true.

Before the 2016 presidential election, Russian operatives working for Putin set out to tear the U.S. apart and thus undermine the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) they see as stopping the resurrection of Imperial Russia. They called for provoking “instability and separatism within the borders of the United States... encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social and racial conflicts,... [and] support[ing] isolationist tendencies in American politics.”

But they were not the only ones operating in this disinformation sphere. In 2014, then–Breitbart chief executive Steve Bannon explained to a right-wing Catholic group meeting at the Vatican that he believed traditional western civilization was fighting a war for survival. To win, current western-style civilizations must be completely reconfigured to put a few wealthy white Christian male leaders in charge to direct and protect subordinates.

In that year, Bannon set out to dismantle the administrative state that was leveling the playing field among Americans and push Christian nationalism. With the help of funding from Republican megadonors Robert and Rebecca Mercer, he launched Cambridge Analytica, a company designed to develop profiles of individuals that would enable advertisers to group them for targeted advertising. Before the 2016 election, the company captured information from the Facebook profiles of more than 50 million users without their permission or knowledge, enabling it to flood the platform with targeted disinformation.

Bannon became the chief executive officer of Trump’s 2016 campaign. He then served as chief strategist and senior counselor for the first eight months of Trump’s term, during which he worked to put MAGAs in power across the administration and across the country.

“The Democrats don’t matter,” Bannon told a reporter in 2018. “The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with sh*t.” Keeping listeners constantly trying to defend what is real from what is not destroys their ability to make sense of the world. Many people turn to a strongman who promises to create order. Others will get so exhausted they simply give up. As scholar of totalitarianism Hannah Arendt noted, authoritarians use this technique to destabilize a population.

Trump’s administration began with a foundational lie about the size of the crowd at his inauguration. Recent challenges to that assertion from Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Barack Obama rankled as badly as they did for Trump because that lie allowed Trump to define the public conversation. Forcing his supporters to commit to a lie that was demonstrably untrue locked them into accepting others throughout his presidency, for backing away would become harder and harder with each lie they accepted.

Challenging that lie, as Harris and Obama did, challenged all those that came afterward, including the lie that Trump had been the true winner of the 2020 presidential election. Thanks to the October 2 filing by special counsel Jack Smith, we know that Trump was in almost daily communication with Bannon as he pushed that lie.

Scholars of authoritarianism call a lie of such magnitude a “Big Lie,” a key propaganda tool associated with Nazi Germany. It is a lie so huge that no one can believe it is false. If leaders repeat it enough times, refusing to admit that it is a lie, people come to think it is the truth because surely no one would make up anything so outrageous.

In his autobiography Mein Kampf, or “My Struggle,” Adolf Hitler wrote that people were more likely to believe a giant lie than a little one because they were willing to tell small lies in their own lives but “would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.” Since they could not conceive of telling “colossal untruths…they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.” He went on: “Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation.”

The U.S. Office of Strategic Services had picked up on Hitler’s manipulation of his followers when it described Hitler’s psychological profile. It said, “His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.”

The MAGA movement is now based in the Big Lie. Its leaders refuse to admit that Trump lost the 2020 election. Trump’s running mate, Ohio senator J.D. Vance, two days ago actually said Trump won, and as media figures more frequently ask the question of MAGA lawmakers, they continue to dodge it, as Arkansas senator Tom Cotton did today on NBC’s Meet the Press, and as House speaker Mike Johnson did on ABC News’s “This Week.”

Now, though, their lies about the federal response to Hurricane Helene show that they are completely committed to disinformation. As Will Bunch noted today in the Philadelphia Inquirer, when Vance lied again at the vice presidential debate about the legal status of the Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, and complained when moderator Margaret Brennan corrected him, he gave up the whole game. “Margaret,” Vance said, “the rules were that you guys weren’t going to fact-check.” He continued to argue until the moderators cut his microphone.

Bunch points out that MAGA Republicans insist on the right to lie, considering any fact-checking “censorship,” a position to which Vance pivoted when Minnesota governor Tim Walz asked him if Trump won the 2020 election.

Just as Russian political theorists advocated to overturn democracy, MAGA Republicans have created an alternative political reality, aided in large part by the disinformation spread on social media by X owner and Trump supporter Elon Musk.

They continue to be aided by foreign operatives, as well. This morning, on CBS’s Face the Nation, Senate Intelligence Committee member Mark Kelly (D-AZ) warned, on the basis of information he has heard from the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the National Security Agency, that Russia, Iran, and China are generating about 20% to 30% of the political content and comments on social media.

But the largest purveyors of disinformation are homegrown.

Perhaps, though, the very real, immediate damage MAGA’s disinformation about Hurricane Helene is causing might finally be a step too far. In what is at least a muted rebuke to Trump, Republican governors across the damaged area have stepped up to praise President Joe Biden and the federal response to the disaster.
tl;dr:

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japhy
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Re: Misinformation

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This go here?
Former President Donald Trump has been spreading false claims about the Biden-Harris administration’s response to Hurricane Helene, including the baseless claim that the administration is using Federal Emergency Management Agency money to house illegal migrants. Some of Trump’s allies, including Elon Musk, have been amplifying those claims.

Those claims are not true. But ironically, Trump attempted something similar to what he falsely claims the Biden/Harris administration is doing when he was president.

Back in 2019, Trump used money from FEMA’s disaster fund for migrant programs at the southern border. In August 2019, the Trump administration told Congress it intended to shift $271 million in funding from DHS -- including $155 million from FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund -- to pay for detaining and transporting undocumented immigrants and temporary hearing locations for asylum-seekers.

According to a FEMA monthly report, $38 million was given to Immigration and Customs Enforcement in August of that year.

At the time, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer called it "backwards and cruel" to divert FEMA money at the start of hurricane season.

"Congress appropriated these funds to meet the American people's priorities and I strongly oppose this effort to undermine our constitutional authority," Schumer said at the time.
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japhy
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Re: Misinformation

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What about this?
In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, former President Donald Trump has blasted the Biden administration for its handling of the disaster — going so far as to accuse Democratic leaders of ignoring the needs of Republican storm victims.

But a review of Trump’s record by POLITICO’s E&E News and interviews with two former Trump White House officials show that the former president was flagrantly partisan at times in response to disasters and on at least three occasions hesitated to give disaster aid to areas he considered politically hostile or ordered special treatment for pro-Trump states.

Mark Harvey, who was Trump’s senior director for resilience policy on the National Security Council staff, told E&E News on Wednesday that Trump initially refused to approve disaster aid for California after deadly wildfires in 2018 because of the state’s Democratic leanings.

But Harvey said Trump changed his mind after Harvey pulled voting results to show him that heavily damaged Orange County, California, had more Trump supporters than the entire state of Iowa.

“We went as far as looking up how many votes he got in those impacted areas … to show him these are people who voted for you,” said Harvey, who recently endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris alongside more than 100 other Republican former national security officials.

The exchange — not previously reported — drew a dumbfounded response on social media Thursday from President Joe Biden, who summed up Trump’s attitude as: “You can’t only help those in need if they voted for you.”

“It’s the most basic part of being president, and this guy knows nothing about it,” Biden posted on X, reacting to a tweet about an earlier version of this article.

Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom piled on, calling the episode “a glimpse into the future if we elect” Trump.

The Trump campaign did not respond to an E&E News request seeking comment.

Both Harvey and Olivia Troye, a former Trump White House homeland security adviser who backed up Harvey’s claim, say Trump is approaching Hurricane Helene with a similar mindset. They say he is politicizing a disaster that has killed more than 170 people in six states. And Troye, who has endorsed Harris for president, accused Trump of trying to divert attention from his own political liabilities on disaster responses.
every accusation....
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TDub
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Re: Misinformation

Post by TDub »

I waa told you wouldn't be fact checking?
Just Ledoux it
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MICHHAWK
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Re: Misinformation

Post by MICHHAWK »

does the kcrim politics bored qualify as a vehicle for mis/dis information.
jfish26
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Re: Misinformation

Post by jfish26 »

MICHHAWK wrote: Tue Oct 08, 2024 11:06 am does the kcrim politics bored qualify as a vehicle for mis/dis information.
Absolutely. Certain posters trot knowingly-false information out there all the time here.
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MICHHAWK
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Re: Misinformation

Post by MICHHAWK »

hypothetically. if MICHHAWK thinks jfish is peddling mis/dis information. and jfish thinks MICHHAWK is peddling dis/mis information. then what.
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JKLivin
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Re: Misinformation

Post by JKLivin »

Oh, there’s misinformation all right. Every time Giggles or KJP open their mouths.
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jfish26
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Re: Misinformation

Post by jfish26 »

MICHHAWK wrote: Tue Oct 08, 2024 11:23 am hypothetically. if MICHHAWK thinks jfish is peddling mis/dis information. and jfish thinks MICHHAWK is peddling dis/mis information. then what.
Then you evaluate the reliability of the information itself, and how the speaker is using it to make or support an argument.
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MICHHAWK
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Re: Misinformation

Post by MICHHAWK »

if someone has a differing opinion/perspective/angle/experience/way of looking at things. i don't automatically go to "mis/dis information."
Last edited by MICHHAWK on Tue Oct 08, 2024 11:45 am, edited 1 time in total.
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MICHHAWK
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Re: Misinformation

Post by MICHHAWK »

who is to say what is reliable and what is not. reliability is in the eyes of the beholder.
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KUTradition
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Re: Misinformation

Post by KUTradition »

MICHHAWK wrote: Tue Oct 08, 2024 11:23 am hypothetically. if MICHHAWK thinks jfish is peddling mis/dis information. and jfish thinks MICHHAWK is peddling dis/mis information. then what.
only one of those entities actually “brings the receipts”, so to speak, which yields a fact vs opinion situation

(extrapolating major patterns from anecdotes quite easily results in opinion, not fact)
Have we fallen into a mesmerized state that makes us accept as inevitable that which is inferior or detrimental, as though having lost the will or the vision to demand that which is good?
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MICHHAWK
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Re: Misinformation

Post by MICHHAWK »

maybe everyone doesn't view funny memes stolen from facebook and twitter and snapchat and instagram and ticktack as a fact situation.
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randylahey
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Re: Misinformation

Post by randylahey »

Fish starting a misinformation thread pointing fingers has to he the dumbest thing I've seen on kcrim in awhile lol
Last edited by randylahey on Tue Oct 08, 2024 12:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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randylahey
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Re: Misinformation

Post by randylahey »

This go here? Which one is the lie

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randylahey
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Re: Misinformation

Post by randylahey »

(Here comes fish to tell me that her 2 contradictory statements are somehow both true)
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MICHHAWK
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Re: Misinformation

Post by MICHHAWK »

i am not going to miss that person. she is the worst.
jfish26
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Re: Misinformation

Post by jfish26 »

MICHHAWK wrote: Tue Oct 08, 2024 11:43 am if someone has a differing opinion/perspective/angle/experience/way of looking at things. i don't automatically go to "mis/dis information."
And nor do I.
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Re: Misinformation

Post by jfish26 »

randylahey wrote: Tue Oct 08, 2024 11:52 am Fish starting a misinformation thread pointing fingers has to he the dumbest thing I've seen on crime in awhile lol
I’m sorry, I guess I should have included a trigger warning.
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Re: Misinformation

Post by Sparko »

Is Randy implying that humanitarian support should be withheld from certain groups in disasters? That supercut was way cool without context. Misinformation would die otherwise.
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