Conspiracy theories aren’t just for conservatives - The Washington Post - "So are all Americans created equal when it comes to fearing collusion and conspiracies? Our recent research suggests that they are. As part of a 2012 national survey, we asked respondents about the likelihood of voter fraud as an explanation if their preferred presidential candidate did not win. Fifty percent of Republicans said it would be very or somewhat likely, compared to 44 percent of Democrats. This contradicts claims by Jonathan Chait that Republicans believe in electoral conspiracy theories far more than Democrats do.Another 2012 national poll asked about fraud in specific presidential elections. Thirty-seven percent of Democrats believed that “President Bush’s supporters committed significant voter fraud in order to win Ohio in 2004,” compared to 36 percent of Republicans who believe that “President Obama’s supporters committed significant voter fraud in the 2012 presidential election.” Again, not much difference. This dovetails with Brendan Nyhan’s findings about “birther” and “truther” conspiracy theories. He found that Republicans were just as likely to believe that President Obama was born abroad as Democrats were likely to believe that 9/11 was an inside job... This graph shows the percentage of Democrats, Republicans, and independents that showed a strong or medium disposition towards thinking conspiratorially. If Republicans and Democrats are equally prone to believing in conspiracy theories, where then is the liberal equivalent of climate change denial? An obvious possibility is the belief that Big Oil conspires to marginalize unfavorable findings or block alternative energies. Our survey, for example, shows that 52 percent of Democrats believe corporations are conspiring against us. And just as climate science is unpalatable for conservatives, there are many lines of scientific inquiry uncomfortable to liberals, such as genetic modification or nuclear power. Research into risks and benefits of these technologies has been met with more suspicion by the left... When you frame questions to separate out science comprehension from the expression of political identity, you find that comprehension of the science is actually pretty good—even among those who are against policies that would address climate change. People do not treat climate change as a question about the state of the science, but as a question about where they stand on climate change as a political and policy issue (see here, for example.) We have to wonder what would happen to liberals’ belief in climate science if the solution to climate change were freer markets and smaller government."
Given saliency and recency bias, it seems Democrats are much more deluded about voter fraud than Republicans
Conspiracy Endorsement as Motivated Reasoning: The Moderating Roles of Political Knowledge and Trust - "“conspiracy theories are for [ideologically motivated] losers” (130). Therefore, in addition to the expectation that conservatives are more likely to endorse conspiracies that impugn liberals and vice versa, given that our data were collected during the Obama Administration, we hypothesize that conservatives will engage in ideologically motivated conspiracy endorsement to a greater extent than will liberals... the conservative theories may have required a lesser suspension of disbelief than the liberal items (e.g., perhaps it is easier to believe that someone can fake his or her birth certificate than that a cabal of government officials knew about the 9/11 plot and willingly kept it a secret, allowing thousands of Americans to be killed). Another difference is that three of the four conservative items in MTurk and both in the ANES are highly salient and are linked to the current president and administration, whereas all of the liberal items are older and are linked to a past Republican Administration"
This explains why liberals are so deluded in the Trump era
Also it's pretty silly to claim that 9/11 being an inside job is as (un)believable as Obama not being born in the US
Conspiracy Theories and the Paranoid Style(s) of Mass Opinion - "In contrast with many theoretical speculations, we do not find conspiracism to be a product of greater authoritarianism, ignorance, or political conservatism. Rather, the likelihood of supporting conspiracy theories is strongly predicted by a willingness to believe in other unseen, intentional forces and an attraction to Manichean narratives"
This liberal claimed that "most right wingers believe in conspiracy
theories". Given how many people with TDS believe Trump is Evil personified, this explains why in the Trump era they love conspiracy theories so much
"They will put us in camps": The New Orleans voters who fear President Donald Trump - "One black woman who chose to speak summed up the feeling of the night: “This is a backlash against everyone who’s started to feel safe in this country.”Panic was very close to the surface. As a speaker described his experiences in underfunded psychiatric wards, a deep voice from the crowd shouted: “They will round you up and put you in camps.” Later, administrative assistant Kathleen Anderson, 34, told me: “I have a lot of immigrant friends and a lot of brown and black friends and they’re scared and I’m scared for them. People are literally talking about concentration camps.”"
From 2016
Liberals just pivoted to claiming that the "concentration camps" for "immigrants" (i.e. those claiming asylum and/or who crossed the border illegally) proved they were right. Even if Obama was the one who built the "concentration camps"
How the Left Fools Themselves Into Thinking the Right Are Conspiracy Theorists - "America is once again awash in conspiracy theories, and it's easy to understand why."Studies suggest that conspiracy theories flourish when people feel anxiety, alienation, paranoia, or loss of control," political scientists Joseph Uscinski and Joseph Parent wrote in their seminal book American Conspiracy Theories.By themselves, a once-in-a-lifetime global pandemic, an unprecedented economic recession, or widespread civil unrest are each enough to trigger all of those feelings. Americans are facing all of these events simultaneously.That's why some stressed people have linked the COVID-19 pandemic to the spread of 5G cellular technology, insist that the virus was intentionally created and unleashed, accuse Bill Gates of trying to depopulate the world though vaccinations, theorize that mass protests were meant to start a race war, or contend that face masks are killing people.Moreover, as these unhinged ideas fester and spread, polarization is rampant. Both the Left and the Right nurture their own pet conspiracies and accuse the other side of being a bunch of ideological whack-jobs. However, one side tends to receive the most criticism."Our observation is that such accusations are made more against conservatives," Uscinski and Parent wrote. "We believe the notion of asymmetry has persisted because academics and journalists align largely with the left. This pushes these two institutions to disproportionately dwell on conspiracy theories held by the right." According to surveys, Republicans and Democrats rate about equally in measures of conspiratorial thinking. For every conservative who wrongly claims that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, there is a liberal who erroneously insists that 9/11 was orchestrated by the Bush Administration. As people on the right cry foul about the potential for mail-in ballot fraud, people on the left insist that the Democratic National Committee rigged the 2016 and 2020 primary process against Bernie Sanders. But this conspiratorial equality is frequently lost on those inhabiting the ivory tower of academia, who overwhelmingly tend to be liberal."In political science at least, much of the study of conspiratorial beliefs has focused on conspiracy theories accusing actors on the left..." Uscinski and Parent said. "Searching through... conference archives, we found many papers studying conspiratorial beliefs held by those on the right and nearly none studying conspiratorial beliefs held by the left." Considering that journalists now skew overwhelmingly liberal, with a 2014 survey revealing four times more Democrats than Republicans working as full-time journalists, it makes sense that they would tend to report on these right-wing conspiracy theories more often."The cumulative effect is that our knowledge-generating and knowledge disseminating institutions make the right look chock-full of cranks and the left look sensible and savvy. There is no conspiracy theory here; ideology drives the world views of professors and journalists like it does everyone else""
Here Are Just 10 of the Wild Conspiracy Theories the Left (and Media) Have Tarred Trump With for More Than 4 Years - "The “deranged” Russian spy in the White House told the Ukraine president to drink Clorox and refuses to leave his “illegal” office until every blue mailbox filled with secret messages to “very fine” white supremacists in Prague is removed by incontinent hookers…"
Please, Please, Please Don't Mock Conspiracy Theories | WIRED - "as historian Kathryn Olmsted emphasizes, conspiracy theories have long existed on the right and the left, within white and black communities;, and among those with little power and those with extraordinary power. Some are off-the-wall bonkers, and some are grounded in historical precedent. Some are morally repugnant, and some are understandable. Some even turn out to be true."
Why liberals now believe in conspiracies - "Liberals have long discounted reports of mass death in progressive regimes as the work of malevolent propagandists. One such episode occurred in the early 1930s, when revered organs of liberal opinion refused to acknowledge the fact that a huge famine was under way in the Soviet Union. The famine was not a natural catastrophe, but man-made. It was a result of Stalin’s policies – loss of production and livestock during breakneck agricultural collectivisation, extreme requisition quotas demanded of peasants, and large-scale export of grain for foreign currency. The famine of 1932-33 was an artefact of the Soviet state. “There is no actual starvation or death from starvation; but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition.” Published in the New York Times on 30 March 1933, this curious statement appeared at a time when millions of people were dying of hunger in the Soviet Union... The campaign to hush up the Soviet famine worked because it told these liberals what they wanted to hear. Ironically, a part of its success was due to a conspiracy – organised by Lyons and his colleagues in Moscow – of the sort liberals used to insist does not happen. At the same time, an intimation of a conspiratorial turn in the liberal mind was revealed when reports of mass death from hunger were dismissed as the fabrications of a right-wing cabal. For these liberals, the Soviet famine was fake news... [liberals'] belief in the covert orchestration of the recent political upheavals in Europe and the United States has become widespread. Former president Jimmy Carter stated flatly in June of this year that Trump won the election of 2016 because of Russian interference. Somewhat similar claims have been made in Britain about the Brexit referendum by Ben Bradshaw MP and the Observer journalist Carole Cadwalladr, among others... none of its interventions, separately or taken together, come anywhere close to showing that Russia engineered the sea-change that has occurred. The scale, depth and longevity of popular mistrust in liberal ruling elites are simply too great for any such account to be credible... it is a safe bet that plenty of liberals will continue to believe that outside forces have masterminded the decomposition of the political order they once believed permanent. Nothing will induce them to accept that they have authored their own undoing... This is why liberals find conspiracy theory attractive. It serves to exonerate them from responsibility for what has gone wrong... Populism is the creation of a liberal political class that blames its decline on the stupidity of voters. If the liberal idea is dead, as Vladimir Putin has claimed, it is liberals who have acted as his useful idiots and killed it. To be sure, liberals will reject any idea that they have brought about their downfall. If they were ever at fault, it was in not being liberal enough. The remedy for the failings of liberalism can only be more liberalism. To think otherwise would be to accept that their view of politics is fundamentally flawed. How could the most rational ruling elite in history – as liberals perceive themselves to be – fail to comprehend the world around them? Like the nativists they attack, liberals find a strange comfort in the belief that their societies are being subverted by external forces... The persecution of academics who depart from prevailing intellectual orthodoxies on race, gender and empire, for example, is rightly condemned as a denial of free speech. More fundamentally, though, such persecution is an attempt to root out evil – to identify, punish and anathematise thought crimes that supposedly prop up structures of repression. In what is by now a familiar irony, ultra-liberals often lead the Inquisition... Though the Corbyn project may now be broken, the fact that it could conquer Labour’s political heights is a mark of how quickly liberal societies can descend into a politics of hate and delusion"
Of course, today tankies still believe the USSR did nothing wrong
NYT roasted for proffering conspiracy theory about secret messages in Trump’s tweets - "NYT (or the Q York Times, as one pundit called it) is getting roasted for publishing an op-ed which proffers a conspiracy theory that Donald Trump is using his Twitter account to promote … conspiracy theories."
Peter J. Hasson on Twitter - "67 percent of Democrats believe it is "definitely true" or "probably true" that "Russia tampered with vote tallies in order to get Donald Trump elected." There is no evidence of Russia tampering with vote tallies.
Imagine if two years into Hillary's presidency, 2/3 of Republicans thought she won because the Chinese tampered with voting tallies, despite no evidence whatsoever of China tampering with voting tallies. Journo Twitter would be apoplectic"
Replies: "The funny thing is, not only was it testified to before congress by a couple people that the vote count wasn’t changed but obama said the same thing about Russian interference...yet the #FakeNews pushes the Russians are the boogeyman and people (sheep) believe them"
"Two years of this nonsense. Evidence no longer matters to the American left. Unfounded accusations followed by relentless character assassination. How anyone votes for that is beyond my comprehension."
Voter fraud conspiracy theorist Stacey Abrams nominated for Nobel Peace Prize - "Abrams drummed up conspiracy theories regarding voter fraud in Georgia after she lost the election for state governor to Republican Brian Kemp by less than 50,000 votes. Abrams refused to concede the election more than two years after it took place, and many referred to her as Governor despite the loss. An Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation found "no evidence... of systematic malfeasance–or of enough tainted votes to force a runoff election between Republican Brian Kemp and Democrat Stacey Abrams." Abrams ultimately pursued legal challenges to Kemp's victory."
Marjorie Taylor Greene is not the only conspiracist in Washington - "Based on the inflammatory comments made by Democratic politicians in recent years, the Republicans will have no difficulty finding occasions to vote some off their committees in the future. The anti-Semitic comments of representative Ilhan Omar immediately spring to mind. Omar, a member of the media darlings known as the ‘Squad’, accused Jews of ‘hypnotising the world’ to support Israel’s ‘evil’. She said American support for Israel was driven by Jewish money (‘It’s all about the Benjamins baby’). She claimed US politicians were disloyal, putting their ‘allegiance’ to Israel above their own country. As it happens, Omar’s brand of anti-Semitism is more dangerous than Greene’s. The wrapping of anti-Jewish sentiments in the guise of anti-Zionism is much more popular today than wacky notions about the Rothschilds wielding lasers and controlling everything. No anti-Semitism is acceptable, but Omar’s newer version is even more important to combat. But what’s more telling is how the respective parties have handled these two cases. The Republicans have denounced Greene, while the Democrats celebrated Omar. Pelosi appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone with Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the Squad has been hailed as the future of the party. Omar was elevated to one of the most important committees in the House, the Foreign Affairs Committee. When she released her anti-Semitic outbursts, the leaders of the Democrats in Congress pushed aside a motion to censure her, and instead put forward a bland statement against hatred of all kinds, effectively shielding her from accountability. Many Democrats rushed to her defence (as they do today), claiming that Omar, a black Muslim, was the real victim – of racism. In contrast, most Republicans want to distance themselves from Greene, who they view as toxic. There has been no hiding behind her identity, no claims that Democrats are picking on her because she is a woman. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, called her views a ‘cancer’ on the party. Beyond anti-Semitism, another argument for shunning Greene is that she has peddled conspiracy theories. Like her anti-Semitic ideas, these theories should be addressed and dismissed. But Democrats could easily be hoist by their own petard on this basis, too. For many years – and to this day – many Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, and media outlets have propounded the theory that Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election. And it seems that years of an expensive investigation led by Robert Mueller, which found zero evidence of collusion, has done little to dispel this notion among the Democratic faithful. This fantastical conspiracy theory is more of a threat than that posed by Greene’s crackpot notions. Most Republican voters don’t know what QAnon is and much fewer believe in it. But conspiracies about Russian plots are more dangerous because they have become more mainstream, and are viewed as acceptable discourse. As an elected official at the federal level, Greene and her views are fair game for criticism. And her crazy ideas should be criticised. But, at the same time, the national, around-the-clock coverage of her in the media has been wildly disproportionate. It’s clear that all of the attention on Greene serves a broader purpose: as a way for Democrats and the media to tar the entire Republican Party, and those that voted for Trump in the November election, as extreme racists and lunatics. The Democrats have promoted a narrative about the 6 January attack on the Capitol being an ‘insurrection’, and they are happy to use Greene as a way of keeping that narrative going strong. According to this outlook, nearly half the country are white supremacists influenced by nutty QAnon-type theories, and have become so dangerous that they must be treated as ‘domestic terrorists’. Saying the Republicans are ‘the Marjorie Taylor Greene Party’ is just another opportunity for Democrats and the media to justify their recent initiatives, which have ranged from censorship and militarisation of the Capitol to a possible new domestic terrorism law. Opposition to the Democrats today is not a good-faith difference of opinion; it is terrorism in the making."
Government Report Undermines Biden’s Claim That Trump Had Protesters Tear-Gassed - "A government watchdog concluded that then-president Donald Trump did not order police to clear protesters in order to stage a photo op during last summer's Black Lives Matter protests, a claim Joe Biden and Kamala Harris parroted at the time... The Biden campaign echoed the allegation in an ad on June 12, 2020."
Yet Another Media Tale -- Trump Tear-Gassed Protesters For a Church Photo Op -- Collapses - "For more than a year, it has been consecrated media fact that former President Donald Trump and his White House, on June 1 of last year, directed the U.S. Park Police to use tear gas against peaceful Lafayette Park protesters, all to enable a Trump photo-op in front of St. John's Church. That this happened was never presented as a possibility or likelihood but as indisputable truth. And it provoked weeks of unmitigated media outrage, presented as one of the most egregious assaults on the democratic order in decades. This tale was so pervasive in the media landscape that it would be impossible for any one article to compile all the examples... There were some denials of this narrative at the time, largely confined to right-wing media. ABC News mocked “hosts on Fox News, one of the president's preferred news media outlets, [who] have spent the days since the controversial photo op shifting defenses to fit the president's narrative.” Meanwhile, The Federalist's Mollie Hemingway — in an article retweeted by Trump as a "must read” — cited sources to assert that the entire media narrative was false because force was to clear the Park not to enable Trump's photo op but rather “because [protesters] had climbed on top of a structure in Lafayette Park that had been burned the prior night” and the Park Police decided to build a barrier to protect it. But as usual, the self-proclaimed Superior Liberal Truth Squad instantly declared them to be lying. The Washington Post's "fact-checker,” Phillip Bump, mocked denials from Trump supporters and right-wing reporters such as Hemingway... All of this came crashing down on their heads on Wednesday afternoon. The independent Inspector General of the Interior Department, Mark Lee Greenblatt, issued his office's findings after a long investigation into “the actions of the U.S. Park Police (USPP) to disperse protesters in and around Lafayette Park in Washington, DC, on June 1, 2020.” Greenblatt has been around Washington for a long time, occupying numerous key positions in the Obama administration, including investigative counsel at the Department of Justice's Office of Inspector General and Assistant Inspector General for Investigations at Obama's Commerce Department. The letter released by Greenblatt's office accompanying the report makes clear how far-reaching the investigation was... The IG's conclusion could not be clearer: the media narrative was false from start to finish... In sum, the media claims that were repeated over and over and over as proven fact — and even confirmed by "fact-checkers” — were completely false. Watch how easily and often and aggressively and readily they just spread lies, this one courtesy of CNN's Erin Burnett and Don Lemon... Over and over we see the central truth: the corporate outlets that most loudly and shrilly denounce “disinformation” — to the point of demanding online censorship and de-platforming in the name of combating it — are, in fact, the ones who spread disinformation most frequently and destructively. It is hard to count how many times they have spread major fake stories in the Trump years. For that reason, they have nobody but themselves to blame for the utter collapse in trust and faith on the part of the public, which has rightfully concluded they cannot and should not be believed."
Time for the Ministry of Truth to activate the memory hole!
Addendum: On the NPR Facebook lots of people with TDS were just refusing to believe this. So much for post-truth being a bad thing
HuffPost on Twitter - "A tape might exist of Trump doing something in an elevator, though exactly where that somewhere is and what that something might be, no one in media can say. That’s because no one in media seems to have seen the tape — or is even confident it exists."
The state of the media
Journalists, Learning They Spread a CIA Fraud About Russia, Instantly Embrace a New One - "That Russia placed "bounties” on the heads of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan was one of the most-discussed and consequential news stories of 2020. It was also, as it turns out, one of the most baseless — as the intelligence agencies who spread it through their media spokespeople now admit, largely because the tale has fulfilled and outlived its purpose... The story appeared — coincidentally or otherwise — just weeks after President Trump announced his plan to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2020. Pro-war members of Congress from both parties and liberal hawks in corporate media spent weeks weaponizing this story to accuse Trump of appeasing Putin by leaving Afghanistan and being too scared to punish the Kremlin... What was missing from this media orgy of indignation and militaristic demands for retaliation was an iota of questioning of whether the story was, in fact, true. All they had was an anonymous leak from “intelligence officials” — which The New York Times on Thursday admitted came from the CIA — but that was all they needed. That is because the vast majority of the corporate sector of the press lives under one overarching rule:
When the CIA or related security state agencies tell American journalists to believe something, we obey unquestioningly, and as a result, whatever assertions are spread by these agencies, no matter how bereft of evidence or shielded by accountability-free anonymity, they instantly transform, in our government-worshipping worldview, into a proven fact — gospel — never to be questioned but only affirmed and then repeated and spread as far and wide as possible...
As the CIA became one of the leading anti-Trump #Resistance factions — a key player in domestic politics to subvert the presidency of the 45th President regarded by media figures as a Hitler-type menace — the bond between the corporate press and the intelligence community deepened more than ever. It is not an exaggeration to call it a merger: so much so that a parade of former security state officials from the CIA, NSA, FBI, DHS and others was hired by these news outlets to deliver the news. The partnership was no longer clandestine but official, out in the open, and proud. The first goal this story served was to weaponize it in the battle waged by pro-war House Democrats and their neocon GOP allies to stop Trump's withdrawal plan from Afghanistan... this alliance of pro-war House Democrats — funded overwhelmingly by military contractors — and the Liz-Cheney-led neocon wing announced amendments to the military budget authorization process that would defund Trump's efforts to withdraw troops from either Afghanistan or Germany (where they had been stationed for decades to defend Western Europe against a country, the Soviet Union, that ceased to exist decades ago). They instantly weaponized the NYT/CIA story as their primary argument... The U.S. media was somehow more militaristic and blindly trusting about this CIA story than even this pro-war union of lawmakers. That the CIA’s leaked claim to The New York Times should even be questioned at all — given that it was leaked anonymously and was accompanied by exactly zero evidence — is not something that even crossed their journalistic minds. These people who call themselves “journalists” do not view pronouncements from the U.S. security state as something that prompts skepticism let alone requires evidence before believing... As usual, the media figure most loudly and dramatically enshrining the CIA leak about Russia as Proven Truth was the undisputed Queen of demented conspiracy theories, jingoistic rhetoric, and CIA propaganda: MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. Over and over, she devoted melodramatic segments to denouncing the unparalleled evil of Russian treachery in Afghanistan (because the U.S. would never pay bounties to kill Russian soldiers in Afghanistan), at no point pausing her histrionics for even a second or two to wonder whether evidence ought to be presented before telling the millions of #Resistance liberals who watch her show that she is vouching for the truth of this story. Predictably, now that this CIA tale has served its purpose (namely, preventing Trump from leaving Afghanistan), and now that its enduring effects are impeding the Biden administration (which wants to leave Afghanistan and so needs to get rid of this story), the U.S. Government is now admitting that — surprise! — they had no convincing evidence for this story all along... What made this admission particularly bizarre — aside from rendering weeks of decrees from media figures and politicians humiliatingly reckless and baseless — is that the Biden administration continued to assert this claim as truth as recently as Thursday. When announcing new sanctions aimed at Moscow and diplomatic expulsions of Russian diplomats — primarily in response to allegations of Russian hacking — the White House said “it was responding to reports that Russia encouraged Taliban fighters to injure or kill coalition forces in Afghanistan.”... commanders in Afghanistan were saying months ago they could not find convincing evidence for it... But these doubts were virtually non-existent in most media reports. Indeed, one of the New York Times reporters who broke the story publicly attacked me as a conspiracy theorist back in September when I cited that NBC News story about the lack of evidence while pointing out what a crucial role this uncorroborated story played in stopping troop withdrawal from Afghanistan and claiming Trump was beholden to Putin. And while The Daily Beast on Thursday said there were reasons to doubt the story from the start, that same outlet was one of the most vocal and aggressive in pushing the story as true. Even worse, other media outlets — led by The Washington Post — purported to have “independently confirmed” the NYT/CIA tale of Russian bounties. Twice in the last year, I have written about this bizarre practice where media outlets purport to “independently confirm” one another's false stories by doing nothing more than going to the same anonymous sources who whisper to them the same things while providing no evidence. Yet they use this phrase “independent confirmation” to purposely imply that they obtained separate evidence corroborating the truth of the original story. For months, pro-war members of both parties and leading members of the NYT/CNN/MSNBC media axis pushed a story — an inflammatory, dangerous one — based on nothing more than the say-so of anonymous CIA operatives. How can anyone do this who knows even the bare minimum about what this agency does and what its function is: to spread disinformation not just to foreign countries but the domestic population as well? It is both mystifying and toxic. But for people who call themselves “journalists” to repeat, over and over, evidence-free CIA claims, telling those who trust them to believe it, is nothing short of repulsive. If you think that, upon learning yesterday's news, there was any self-reflection on the part of the media figures who spread this, or that they felt chastened about it in any way, you would be very, very wrong. In fact, not only did few if any admit error, but they did exactly the same thing on Thursday about a brand new evidence-free assertion from the U.S. Government concerning Russia: they mindlessly assumed it true and then stated it to millions of people as fact. They are not embarrassed to get caught spreading false CIA propaganda. They see their role, correctly, as doing exactly that... Do you think journalists learned the lesson that they just had rubbed in their faces hours before about the foolishness of assuming official statements to be true with no evidence? Of course that is a rhetorical question: too many to count instantly proclaimed that this story was true without spending an ounce of mental energy to question if it was or apply any skepticism. Here’s Maddow’s MSNBC comrade showing how this is done"
When you control the media, you control the people
Escape The Echo Chamber - Posts | Facebook - "The British courts are not beholden to the American law enforcement community. In a recent ruling a British court awarded damages to individuals named in the Steele Dossier. The ruling also mentioned evidence that the FBI new from the beginning that the Clinton campaign was behind these false reports. The judge also confirmed previous reports that the information was inverted and was actively being leaked as well as being shopped to the State department."
Meme - "Donald J. Trump: This is a battle to save the Heritage, History, and Greatness of our Country! #MAGA2020"
"Laurie Voss @seldo" This tweet has 14 words, 88 characters, and a superfluous capitalized "HH". The president is a fucking Nazi."
I remember when the people doing this sort of reach mocked Christians for "The Bible Code"
Escape The Echo Chamber - Posts | Facebook - "Will Trump become a fascist dictator? An essayist in the Washington Post seems to think so and Hillary Clinton hinted at the possibility over the weekend. Plenty of people seemed to be concerned based on how links to this article have been flying around the internet. It’s a serious claim with significant implications. Below, is a response from the tribal right playing the reverse Uno card. But what would the takeover by a budding dictator look like? History has the answer. The first sign is a leader who tells the citizens that government has the power to solve their problems. The populace has to believe that central management can positively affect their lives. When the leader takes power the clock starts ticking. They need the support of a majority of the citizens to ensure a re-election. The cheapest, most effective way is to reward the poor. Ideally the country has a large poor population. Maduro found the money by nationalizing the Venezuela’s oil industry. He provided cheap fuel and food assistance (until the money ran out). From the start, the budding dictator has to work toward removing the constitutional protections from a dictatorship. This takes votes in the legislature. Loyalist politicians get to help dole out the money. Opposing politicians are charged with bribery, extortion, treason, and corruption. The media must be controlled early on. If it is not nationalized then it is punished for not reporting favorably. Journalists that don’t play along are beaten, jailed, and charged with crimes. Some may just disappear. With media in line and politicians on board then the groundwork to lock in lifetime control begins. Checks and balances are removed under the guise of making the government more efficient at controlling the economy. Term limits are ended. Controls are enacted over businesses so they can be punished if they don’t fall in line. ‘Corrupt’ judges are forced out and replaced with cronies. The next election is critical. The process is turned over to loyalists who can stuff the ballot, and loyalists who use their power to distribute goods and favors to force support. Along the way, loyalists are put in charge of the military and bribed with large sums of money to remain loyal. The police are put under the control of the federal government, if they aren’t already. Over time the press is being positive, the legislature develops a supermajority to change the constitution, the military supports the leader, the police enforce compliance, and the judges operate under the orders of the leader. Eventually, the leader has enough power to rule for life. If Trump is a budding dictator, he is doing it wrong. He’s put in two Supreme Court justices that will readily oppose him. He’s been shrinking the administrative state. He’s made no steps to amend the Constitution, he’s thrown no opponents in jail, he’s nationalized no industries, and he’s not cowed the press. Instead of building a culture of loyalists, he’s made enemies in the press and throughout the government. Trump had two years when his party controlled Congress and did nothing with it to consolidate power. When the courts have gone against him, he has complied. Less than four months away from election, Trump has no control of the ballot box (which is run by the states), the House has become a stronger force against him, he has no control over the nations police forces (which are becoming less powerful), he has not gained support from a majority of the masses, and every constitutional check and balance is still in place. As a budding ‘fascist’ he’s failed miserably. If you go through the Washington Post’s 12 warning signs they boil down to his blustering and small exercises of power that have been employed by previous administrations. Lots of sound and fury. The constitutional structure of the country prevents Trump from becoming a dictator, so the question is: “Why is this irrational fear being drummed up?”"
Washington Post adds lengthy correction to report on Trump call with Georgia elections investigator - "The Washington Post has added a lengthy correction to a bombshell report from early January that had said then-President Trump told Georgia's top elections investigator during a phone call to "find the fraud" and that they would be "a national hero" if they did so. "Two months after publication of this story, the Georgia secretary of state released an audio recording of President Donald Trump’s December phone call with the state’s top elections investigator. The recording revealed that The Post misquoted Trump’s comments on the call, based on information provided by a source"... The correction comes days after The Wall Street Journal obtained audio of the December call between Trump and the investigator... The original Post report shook the political world"
Of course, you're only allowed to criticise the "Conservative" media for spreading fake news, and demand it be shut down. But if you criticise the mainstream (i.e. liberal) media you're a fascist
