The Four Stages of Republican Misinformation

Show me where.

Cold decreases the probability of criminal acts, it’s well known that crime reaches seasonal lows in the winter. On a night like the night that Smollet claimed he was attacked the temperature was -8 F.  I don’t think that black people don’t “experience racism” (whatever that means) but random racially motivated attacks on black people by white people are so unbelievably rare that when they do occur they make front page news.  Indeed ever since the social media era took off there have been hundreds of hate crime hoaxes, which are widely believed and then immediately swept under the rug when proven false. The idea that such an attack would occur on a night so cold that death from exposure was easily possible, in a liberal bastion, by a group with an extremely low rate of committing racially motivated crimes, in a brazen and dramatic manner, the likes of which occurs MAYBE once every two or three years (if that) and against a celebrity no less? And the hillbillies happened to know his acting work as well lmao. We knew it was fake. Powerful people on the left didn’t. It’s no different than what you’re criticizing here. People believing what they want to believe. 

I would actually argue that Republicans disbelieving the Ohio abortion story is much more defensible than democrats believing the Jussie story. One had many of the red flags of a hoax but turned out to actually be true, one had all the red flags of a hoax and was indeed a hoax. Jaded skepticism produces more accurate prediction than naive acceptance of whatever is alleged, although as I noted the wisest move is to just not comment at all before the facts are known. 

This is splitting hairs. The poll showed that between January and February 2021 Republican “confidence index” dropped a net of 35 points while Democrats rose a net of 49 points. For “current economic outlook” Republicans dropped a net of 25 points and democrats rose a net of 17 points. They did the same thing. 

“Fake News” actually originally came from the left immediately following the 2016 election but was coopted so quickly by Trump that people forgot about it. The leftist version of “fake news” is “misinformation.” Both of these terms refer to a real phenomenon but at also used by people as a catch all  to belittle and dismiss information they don’t like

Compare and contrast to the democratic media. More cautious about it than they may have been with Trump, lots of scepticism, not as many column inches - many articles talking about how fishy it all is, how the New York post journalists didn’t want to put their name on it - etc. It’s an uncomfortable niggle - with a little wariness that there maybe something a little dodgy going on, but no clear smoking gun that highlighted some official act, or leveraging political power against the needs of the people. At worst a little nepotism, some lies, and possibly leveraging former power to make a little money.

Given that this was unambiguously an attempt at a political hit job; has the Trump campaigns fingerprints all over it, and given that at worst Biden did a handful of things that Trump, and most other politicians have been doing consistently before and since and no-one cares about: why the democrats haven’t handed a political nuclear weapon to republicans misinformation machine right before the midterms by opening an investigation - sort of answers itself.

Is it a shining example of the democrats being absolutely 100% above board in all circumstances - of course not, but it’s at least understandable and not wholly unreasonable.

However even that line of questioning and that reaction - demonstrates the huge asymmetry between the democrat and republican misinformation machines.

The suggestion of how bad democrats are, because they won’t launch a public congressional investigation into Biden for various highly implied nepotism on a political hit job laptop - whilst the top to bottom malfeasance and corruption of republicans, Trump and various individuals in his circle is largely uncontested or simply accepted without thought.

It’s as if, it doesn’t matter how badly the republicans act, or how many lies Trump tells, how much money he bilks his supporters for, how much he damages the country - but the moment the Democrats don’t live up to some idealized perfect standard - this is pointed out as “just as bad”.

Is it a little bit hypocritical - absolutely. And you would be right to be concerned if this was normal, rational political environment. But it’s not. The republicans, their media, and their supporters don’t particularly care about Republican corruption, or the media ecosystems drowns out any claims: waiting for the FBI to do their thing, and keep a little quiet until they so that a side that doesn’t particularly care at all about corruption can use it bombard the airwaves with distorted misinformation and lies about democratic corruption right before an election is not something I have a particularly big issue with - we have the right wing media foaming at the mouth to find something real, and FBI investigations - I’m happy relying on that. If this were 1988 republicans - I would be right there asking for an investigation. But its not.

4.) double down. Pivot to racism and fear mongering.

So you’re kinda right that we all do this a little bit. It’s kinda natural. There’s a brilliant example of GP in this thread where he demonstrated this point brilliantly - instead of engaging on the strengths or flaws of the original issue - he pivoted to fear mongering and related whataboutism.

Now this is not to say no one on the left ever does this - but this is taken to extremes on the right.

On the left - we are often wrong. Jesse Smollet - the kid CNN implied was a racist - the avenati guys claims about Kavanaugh. There have been a bunch more. Let’s take Russian Collusion.

The truth is that there are some significant misdeeds and unethical behaviour committed by Trump that he should have known better about; the actions of Manafort, the Trump tower meeting, etc. it’s largely dropped of the radar, with the odd nugget coming back up now and then.

Imagine if this was Hilary. Hell - just look at Benghazi. The findings of the Mueller report were mostly, but not entirely, accepted - there was no big impeachment push. The collusion narrative would likely have been a constant talking point by republicans - there would have been multiple investigations, likely an attempt at impeachment - and the whole thing would have had far more legs than it did; instead of sort of fizzling out.

This is not to say that you won’t find any democrats that don’t believe in a peepee tape - or that Trump really did collude with Russia in some widespread nefarious way. I for example accept the vague possibility of a peepee tape, and that the evidence points to willingness - and limited collusion; but probably nothing beyond simply highly unethical behaviour - I would not be surprised at all if it was revealed to be more than that; but no one - to my knowledge - is waving the dossier as if it’s 100% accurate. Most democrats probably go a fair bit further than suggested by the evidence - but there’s little I’ve seen that isn’t embellishment or extrapolating from known Kernels of truth.

Compare this to, say, the election was stolen. No basis for this claim. Every single claim has been pretty systematically debunked - and yet if you say the election wasn’t stolen, they are all of the thrown back at you as if you are standing in a room being honked at by a group racist Pingus.

Seth Rich? Uranium One, Biden firing a Ukrainian prosecutor to help his son? Ukraine servers? DNC hack? Unmasking scandal? Or any one of the inordinate number of falsehoods and conspiracies peddled - you will still today get people who continue to push them.

I honestly don’t begrudge anyone being proven wrong and doubling down at the time - that’s how humans work - but you slink off and modify your opinions or stop talking about it - which is mostly - though not always - what happens on the left.

On the right - that doesn’t happen as much - primarily because (2) and (3) either systematically drown out any disproof, and sufficiently muddy the waters or that the misinformation machine has simply given supporters cover to reject the facts.

This is all to say that I would absolutely, and wholeheartedly agree that we have issues on the left. I have no doubt that if the democrats instantiates the same sort of disinformation machines as republicans - democratic supporters would all follow the same path as republicans today. We’re all people, with similar psychological drives that can be manipulated in similar ways. I could argue that perhaps not as many, and that you’d probably find a bigger schism in the Democratic Party than in the right today if they tried - but there are still definite issues. I wish everyone was able to act and behave and believe perfectly, but I’m also a realist.

However to say, or suggest that the issues with the left, or the Democratic Party - whilst similar in some ways - even comes close to matching the extent, magnitude and outlandish extremes of the systemic Republican misinformation machine is so far beyond wrong I can’t begin to express it. Similarly, in many cases the issues with the Democratic Party are often attributable to the impact of this extremism of the right poisoning the entire nature of political discourse - not exclusively, but enough.

A big part of this whole conversation today - not specificaly you - talking about lies, corruption, misinformation, politician machinations, abuse of power appears to be held under the premise that the Republicans are held to a standard of being shitty, machinating, lying misinformation peddlers; and still fail to meet that low standard: democrats are held to the standard of being upstanding, perfect, exact, truth speakers, who should do no wrong; and cannot meet that standard.

The argument then becomes that we’ll, no one meets the standards we hold them to - so they’re the same, and it’s unreasonable for democrats to complain - they’re just as bad.

Bingo. If you do a word cloud for google searches for misinformation (or disinformation) and fake news, which term would you think was the larger term?

“Fake News” was the moniker used initially by the left to describe false information circulating in Twitter, and propagated by a number of news farms that drove fake stories and information for clicks, or in some cases by Russian troll farms with the goal of misinforming the electorate.

It’s currently used by many on the right to describe any news article or story that describes any event, fact or purports any opinion that is negative of the right. It is used exclusively as a means to reject any contradictory information.

Not everyone, but many; with a substantial number of people on this forum definitely falling into this category.

On social media, it’s worse: if you shared a Washington post story, cnn, msnbc, with an average trump supporters - you will almost invariably get multiple responses rejecting the article out of hand. What if a right wing source, source as Fox News, say, called the Election for Biden? Fake news.

While I’m sure there are many on the left who do that; the magnitude, and severity is not the same.

If you shared a Fox News article about a reported fact: an inflation report, economic indicators, or a leaked email - you’ll probably not get far less push back on the facts (based on the source) on the left as you would on the right.

You’d get a lot of push back on the left if you shared oann, newsmax or fox articles for which there is a clear bias or pro trump opinion about some element that is highly factually contested - and you would certainly get push back on any source that has a clear history of lying on multiple issues. Which is almost all of the cases I have seen when a Fox News link has been rejected.

So sure: A significant number of Trump supporters will reject everything any unflattering news article says - but this is not necessarily the same thing as most left wing individuals saying “I’m not watching your Tucker Carlson video on white replacement theory because I think he’s lying sack of sh*t” 

Which segues nicely to this: Other than the sheer magnitude of rejection on the right - issue with the underlying assumption involved in drawing equivalence on both sides - is that it presumes that what is rejected on both sides is equivalent. They’re not.

Comparing the level of bias and broad inaccuracy in CNN to that of say, newsmax; especially given how they have clearly and repeatedly circulated outright lies more vigorously and extensively than CNN ever has. Same with cases like OAN, Fox and infowars. CNN has specific issues, it’s very much sensationalist and lowbrow journalism - but it is no where near the level and nature of factual bias that is present within many popular right wing media channels.

At its very core, the issue with the equivalence is that it’s way, way more valid for people to question the validity of articles coming out of those organizations than it is, say, from the Washington Post or the New York Times. Because of the history.
 
If the right was only calling the YoungTurks or vice “fake news”, you’d probably a fair point, but they aren’t - who publishes it rarely matters. It’s all mainstream media - they’re all lying to you to promote Biden. Of all them, no matter which link you chose.

Which again segues to my next point: consistency. If you present Fox News articles - and someone points out that Fox News is not a reliable source - which arguably it isn’t in some specifics respects - if you present the same facts from other sources, say, the LA times, they’re generally accepted. It’s often not a general objection to facts in the same way it is on the right - but a specific rejection of specific media organizations that show inordinate factual bias in their reporting.

Finally; one key and important contention I would make here is that if you are constantly bombarded with people rejecting a news article because it’s from the Washington Post, or CNN; and then someone shares and equally, or more biased sources, there is very much an element of fair play that starts creeping in - “okay, if I can’t cite sources you don’t like, why is the same not valid the other way around”

These two things are clearly incompatible. The rejection of facts as fake news on the right is deeper, stronger, broader, more extreme and less justified than rejection on the left.

Again this is just another example of clearly different standards being applied to both sides. If the right calls the left liars a million times, at every opportunity, constantly - and the left calls the right liars once: “both sides do it.”

If the right  is constantly calling the left liars, when they aren’t to any particular significant extent : that’s bad.

If the left is constantly calling the right liars, when they are, to a relatively significant extent : that’s not bad.

Equating the two sides in this respect is part of the same underlying attempt at misinformation; to muddy the waters, and drag the conversation into a place where reality and facts don’t actually matter any more.

well, what we really need is a trusted third party

But pointing out the false dichotomy (obvious to all but the fanatically retarded) would make this entire thread pointless.

We can't have that when we have keyboard warriors fighting the good fight for their favorite party hat.

Many people treat politics like a football game when it's clear that the NFL commissioner actually runs the show.

It's all fun and games as long as you get free beer and are not ejected from the stadium for not playing the part of a fanatical lemming.

when the townsfolk are grumbling and forming a mob to storm your castle

the best thing to do is to spread rumors

that the pitchfork people want to outlaw torches

and the torch people want to outlaw pitchforks

crisis averted

Someone is trying to partially quote and dump something to the previous page.

And he does it again lol.

There's no guarantee that Republicans won't implement national Covid mandates and crippling lockouts.

There's no guarantee that Republicans will sell out America to the highest bidder through inflationary spending and the destruction of the free market. 

There's no guarantee that Republicans will continue the big lie about the world ending due to global warming to increase the power of DC over the little guy.

There's no guarantee that Republicans will reverse the trend of a growing Fascist state based in Washington DC that treats the states like subservient colonies.

There's also no Guarantee that Republicans won't use the FBI to turn America into a banana republic.

3rd party is definitely the answer. It's the ONLY SIDE any sane person should be on.

please explain how obama was substantially "better" than bush jr

which "side" are you describing here ?

Why do you feel comparing the president from 2000-2008, and the president from 2008-2016 is an excellent approximation of two “sides” as they stand today?

If you want a specific explanation of the various reasons why one can very much assume the two sides are not the same, I’ve posted ~24,000 characters of justification on the basis of misinformation, and generalized actions in the last couple of pages. I think that pretty solidly spells out many of the clear reasons why one side is objectively far worse than the other.

The side that includes a substantial number of unhinged crazies - significant support for QAnon and various other conspiracies, including rejection of the election results. These far outweigh any equivalent faction of the left.

The side becoming increasingly authoritarian is the right - the side supporting more voting restrictions; more political interference in elections, and who have supported or championed actual efforts to overturn election results - including the encouraging of violence.

The basis upon which I can call them tending towards functionally fascist - replace “radical democrats” with Jews, and the modern Republican Party is sitting kinda around the 1926 Nazi party. With the primary exception being that the Republican Party doesn’t really have an platform of any description. The reason for tending towards that moniker, is based on similar disdain for institutions and democracy; the specific targeting and scapegoating of marginalized groups; pushing an under siege narrative; the domination of misinformation and propoganda; overt militarism, machismo, and patriotism; attempts to purge the disloyal in party, and the begging of a strategy to do the same in government, based in Florida especially - the beginnings of state mandate of acceptable thought and ideas for education. 

Essentially, the overall goals, means, approach, and strategy to win and maintain power is becoming closely analogous - even though explicit ideology is not.

Yes - I understand why they are doing it; I completely disagree with it. It could easily backfire. 

Let’s not lose site, however, that if these crazies win - said lunatics will have been elected by the republicans party, despite being unhinged crazies. Democrats are pushing some in the primaries not because they support or believe in the unhinged craziness - but because they believe it’s a strategy to prevent all the other crazies taking power.

Ratf*cking in this case isn’t a particular ethical strategy;  but again - there’s this inherent disparity - one side can breed dozens of relatively popular unhinged crazy candidates that can command the support of a majority of republicans with the right advertising, the other side gives them primary support to maximize the chance of winning  seats and keeping them out - and the latter is the one people point to as problematic.

Sure, it’s not great - I’d really prefer them not to it; but are we really not going to talk about the election denying crazies as if they’re the actual problem?

Every conversation here is framed this way - as if there is just this level of f*ckmuppetry that is simply tolerated as a normal baseline in Republicans - and yet democrats are always held to that higher standard.

I would be very happy talking about the issues, who’s to blame, how to fix it - in the context of another thread.

The issue for me, however is that are many examples of a ruling elites being blamed for all the worlds ills, as the primary basis for a political movement - few of them end well for the population. 

I think it’s clear we’re never going to see eye to eye on this. I also think, and I don’t mean to sound dismissive when I say this, it’s clear that you do not have any close black friends or spend much time talking to black people.

The fact that something doesn’t end up going viral on social media or make the front page of The NY Times doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Nearly every black person I know has experienced something while not as egregious certainly just as upsetting in their own lives. My friend Julian and I went to Atlantic City NJ one time (not exactly hillbilly country) and a group of 4 guys in a parking lot for absolutely no reason at all started yelling at him calling him a nigger and were ready to beat his ass. We walked away because we were clearly outnumbered, but even then we spent the rest of the day wishing we hadn’t.

We base how realistic something is off of our own lived  experiences, we have little else to go by. So for a white person to claim these kinds of things rarely happen is quite amazing. But more to the point here, the topic is about the propensity to believe misinformation. Part of the reason people like myself are on the left is because we see these things happening in real life, not just on social media. So the fact that we would be more inclined to believe a story like that is frankly common sense. It is not indicative of anything this thread highlights. What matters is not our initial reaction and how accurately our intuition aligned with the actual outcome. What we’re talking about is what we did once presented with the evidence that the allegations were false. No one I know or am even aware of held on for dear life once it became clear the story was false.

Your own source quotes different numbers

No, fake news was a term used by the intelligence agencies and it referred to articles planted with the intention of providing false information to the electorate, normally as part of some foreign interference campaign. Democrats used the term because they were pointing to these instances. This is categorically different from what the right wing has done with the term.

even iff you "prove" one side is less-wrong than the other

that does not make the less-wrong side "objectively good"

strangely, i've actually been listening to FOX radio and other "conservative" talk radio stations over the past year

in order to contrast "what they claim" with radio stations such as NPR and BIN

and "the conservatives" are very clearly PRO-VAXX (the radio hosts even brag about how many boosters they've received)

"the conservatives" are very clearly ANTI-J6 PROTEST (saying they "went too far when they entered the capitol building")

"the conservatives" routinely refer to Q as "unhinged crazies" and specifically describe alex jones as "despicable"

"the conservatives" repeatedly make the point that "biden was fairly elected"

it has already "backfired"

the point here is that when people donate money to the "democrats" i'm sure they never intended that money to be funneled into the coffers of the most extreme lunatics on the "right"

which is clearly amplifying their voices and in some cases, actually getting them elected

Martin Luther King went north to Chicago suburb { Cicero? } when asked to lead civil-rights protest. I lived in a Chicago suburb at the time, and remmember the photos{?} of people holding bricks and they threw at protesters.

Dr King stated afterwords that, ..' people in the south need to come to the north, to learn how to hate '....

Mayor of Chicago was Democrat Richard j Daley

..." Richard Joseph Daley was an American politician who served as the Mayor of Chicago from 1955 and the chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party Central Committee from 1953 until his death. He has been called "the last of the big city bosses" who controlled and mobilized American cities "..

That is until Trumpet began tooting his narrcistic horn in politics.  60 million strong in 2017.  This two years after my original end-date-for humanity 2015.