WHAT CAN YOU BELIEVE?

Some people think that we should not tax the ultra-wealthy or business very much because to do so would cause enterprises and enterprisers to have less motivation to succeed, and it would have a negative effect on business in the country. I do not agree with that position, but I do not think it is irrational or crazy.

I say this because I consider many ideas of conservative Republicans are indeed irrational and crazy. It is not necessarily irrational to make decisions based on misinformation. Every decision we make is based on what information we have, and we do not always have the best information possible. We can’t always get the best information, and we have to make choices based on the data we have.

However, any choice we make based on false data is not going to have the best result. And if we make a decision based on false data when the real data is readily available is indeed irrational.

Well-known extreme right-wing sources such as QANON and Alex Jones are not the only ones who spread misinformation. Online publication such as Natural News contribute to outright lies and distortion of truth that gets spread over the internet. On August 10 Natural News stated that the governor of Tennessee has issued an executive order authorizing the National Guard to carry out medical kidnappings. According to them, the guard could break into people’s homes, kidnap them at gunpoint, and take them to covid internment camps.

If this were true, it would be shocking, but of course it was not true. What the executive order actually did was authorize the guard to help in the covid emergency by such things as diagnostic testing, nursing, and ambulance services.

The story did not originate with Natural News. It had been posted on Instagram, but it was a satire. Natural News, not realizing that it was tongue in cheek, took the satire as fact and ran with it.

Here are links to two more articles from that source of “news.”

Biden wants to criminalize crossing state lines while “unvaccinated” - NaturalNews.com

Feds declare anti-vaxxers are “terrorists,” unveil 90-day plan to wage false flag violence and blame it on “anti-lockdown extremists” - NaturalNews.com

The social media also spreads false stories. One such story stated that airline flights were backed up across the country because pilots and crew were walking off flights and refusing to take mandated vaccines. In fact, the flight delays were caused by weather.

Another story stated that the Canadian province of Alberta had lifted Covid-19 restrictions because health officials had provided no evidence that the virus exists. In fact, the restrictions were lifted because predetermined goals had been met.

If you challenge anyone who believes wild tales like these, they will say you have been fooled by the mainstream media. But I ask you: What is more believable: sources like the New York Times or sources like Natural News?

THE BELIEVERS

A lot of Americans believe in conspiracy theories, including those put forth by QAnon: that leaders of the Democratic party practice child pornography, and Donald Trump was sent to get rid of those awful people. Further, Donald Trump would have been reelected had it not been for numerous irregularities in the vote. Voting machines had somehow turned votes for Trump into votes for Biden, and election officials had thrown out vast numbers of Trump votes.

What would lead large numbers of people to believe things that others see as irrational and obviously ridiculous? Studies have shown that people who believe such lies have some personality traits in common that lead them to accept these theories. They believe that nothing happens by coincidence. Everything is controlled by secret cabals that permeate all levels of society. These cabals might be Jews or Catholics or liberals or just the rich people who control everything. Believers tend to have feelings of anxiety and uncertainty because they feel they are not in control of their own lives.

Thousands of believers descended on Washington on January 6 to prevent the Congress from formally certifying the Electoral College vote that named Joe Biden president. Many of the rioters were professional people, business owners, off-duty police officers, and even one state legislator. Yet many of these middle class people had reason to feel that their lives were out of control. Sixty percent of them had a history of financial problems. Sixty percent!

One of these, for example, was Jenna Ryan, a real estate agent from Texas. She was paying a $37,000 lien on unpaid federal taxes. She had nearly lost her home to foreclosure, and filed for bankruptcy in 2012, and had faced an IRS lien in 2010.

Jacob Chansley, the man who called himself the “QAnon Shaman,” is another whose life seemed out of control. He has been described as a failed actor. He’s 32-years old, and he lives with his mother.

Both Ryan and Chansley expressed regret for their actions and disillusion with the conspiracy theories had bought them to Washington. Ryan said, “I bought into a lie...and it’s embarrassing. I regret everything.” Chansley said, “I am sorry for raising fear in the hearts of others. That was wrong. Period.” He also said he was “deeply disappointed in former President Trump. He was not honorable.”

Roy Watkins, founder of 8chan, a website that has been linked to white supremacy, Neo-Nazism, and antisemitism, told his supporters, “to go back to their own lives.” One of the followers said, “We all got played.”

Many believers thought that on January 20, Trump would somehow ride to the rescue and arrest members of the “deep state.” Instead they saw Biden get inaugurated. As one of the former believers said, “He [Trump] sold us out.”

One false story that is floating around the internet is that on March 4, Trump will be inaugurated. (Inauguration Day used to be on March 4, but the last time it was on that date was 1933.) When the inauguration of Donald Trump doesn’t happen on March 4, more of the believers will lose their delusions.

The attack on The Capitol on January 6 occurred because thousands of people believed the lies about the government. We cannot allow this to happen again. Even without the attack on the attack on the Capitol, misinformation that has spread through the internet has done terrible damage to the country. People who are willing to lie to move people to illegal action must be made to pay for spreading false information through the internet. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protects web sites from paying for damage caused by anything posted on their sites by a third party. Section 230 must be repealed. If someone posts a dangerous message on the internet, the website where it was posted as well as the poster must be held responsible. If someone is damaged by an irresponsible statement on the internet or anyplace else, the person making the statement must be subject to suit for damages. The web site that posts the misinformation must be held responsible too.

Voting machine companies sued those who had made false statements about them. Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell were sued. So was Fox News and news personnel who told lies about the voting machines. Lou Dobbs lost his job. We must see more of this. Liars who damage others must be made to pay for their lies.

INFOWARS

From Alex Jones’s InfoWars we can learn about the involvement of the U S government in 9/11. The Sandy Hook shootings never happened. The survivors of the Stoneham Douglas High School shootings were crisis actors. The government has programs that can control weather. Prominent Democrats are involved in a child pornography ring, located in the basement of a Washington, DC, pizza restaurant. Where does Jones get his information? Some of it he just makes up. He also gathers stories from sources like RT, a Russian state-sponsored propaganda broadcast.

While you are perusing this misinformation, you can buy products from InfoWars, everything dietary supplements, including a medicine for Covid-19, T-shirts, hats, and coffee cups. You can even get food supplies to keep in store for the coming revolution. I don’t know whether Jones actually believes the ideas that he peddles, but he certainly pulls in a lot of followers. InfoWars attracts 10 million visitors a month, a lot more than a straight news site would attract. People who believe in Jones’s misinformation have made him a wealthy man.

QAnon is an anonymous website that also spreads false information. According to them North Korea’s Kim Jon Un was installed and is controlled by the CIA. Germany’s leader, Angela Merkel, is Hitler’s granddaughter. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and George Soros were involved in a plot to overthrow President Trump. They were also involved in a child sex-trafficking ring. The Rothschild family leads a satanic cult.

QAnon is anonymous, though it supposedly is run by a deep member of the CIA with the highest security clearance. Margorie Taylor Greene believes the QAnon stories. In the last election she was elected to represent Georgia in Congress. Donald Trump’s lies are too numerous to list. According to the Washington Post, which has been keeping track, Trump had made over 20,000 false or misleading statements in the first three and a half years in his administration.

All three of these have had their lies picked up and further spread by the social media. Trump notoriously releases some of his misinformation on twitter. Rather than conduct government business through official channels, he often makes his announcements by a tweet.

One has to wonder whether Trump’s false statements are delusional or a cynical disregard for the truth when he thinks a lie will serve his purposes better. Either way, these misstatements, along with his incompetence, demonstrate how unfit he is for the office he holds. At any rate, over 700 million people voted for him in the recent election and vast numbers of citizens are convinced that the election was somehow stolen from him.

What have we come to? That so many people have fallen for the lies of these charlatans? Unfortunately, it is not just these malignant forces that have captured the minds of Americans. The social media echoes the lies and false conspiration that Alex Jones et al project. From time to time Facebook or Twitter will temporarily suspend Alex Jones or label Donald Trump’s accounts as less than accurate. But it is usually too little, too late. Millions of people depend on sources like Facebook rather than traditional sources for their news.

It is not enough to try to reform the social media. The answer lies elsewhere. In a future post we will look at how we can minimize the damage done by these malevolent forces.

The Damage Done by Facebook

It is the nature of politicians to lie, and not only Republicans. (I did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinski.) But when the President of the United States makes over 20,000 false statements in three and a half years in office, mendacity is brought to a new low. Unfortunately, in these dishonest times the Great Prevaricator has had lots of help. The social media, particularly Facebook and Twitter, have helped him spread his misinformation across the country. The President communicates more through the social media than through official channels, and for the most part these media leave his misinformation untouched. Donald Trump is not the only one who disseminates fabrications through Facebook and others. It is known, for example, that Russia spread lies through these sources to influence the 2016 Presidential election. Facebook was charged with allowing Russians to sow chaos during that election. Since the election was so close, it is very likely that Russian posts on Facebook contributed to the outcome. Other unfriendly powers, like Iran and North Korea, have also spread untruthful statements through Facebook. It is not just foreign powers who spread fraudulent ideas through the internet. Notably QAnon has been posting poisonous ideas for the past three years. QAnon is anonymous, but it poses as an unnamed high-ranking government official. It promotes the conspiracy theory that Democrats are running a pedophile ring, and Donald Trump is leading the fight against the ring. During the 2016 presidential campaign it was charged that Hillary Clinton was involved in such a ring that was located in the basement of a Washington pizzeria, Comet Ping Pong. One man believed the falsehood so strongly that he went to the restaurant armed with a rifle. It turned out that there was no ring, and the restaurant didn’t even have a basement. Marjory Taylor Greene from Georgia seems sure to be elected to Congress. She supports the QAnon conspiracy theories. She also said that Barack Obama is a Muslim, liberal philanthropist George Soros is a Nazi, and she questioned whether a plane really crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11. QAnon undermines trust in public institutions through hate speech and the spread of unfound conspiracy theories. Turning Point USA is another group that has been disseminating fraudulent stories. It published pro-Trump comments and misinformation. One of its affiliates, Turning Point Action, was paying teenagers to post messages. Another affiliate, Rally Forge, paid users to cast doubt on mail-in ballots and spread misinformation about the coronavirus. Many of their accounts used stock photos to create false profiles. In April 2020 websites spreading untruthful stories about health on Facebook drew nearly one half a billion views. The top ten sites peddling inaccurate information and conspiracy theories drew nearly four times as many views as the top reputable sites for health information on Facebook. The false claim that pure alcohol could cure the virus led to 800 deaths and 60 cases of blindness after believers drank methanol as a cure. False information and conspiracy theories downplay the public health crisis, spread disinformation about potential remedies and likely safety risks of future vaccines. The social media have taken some steps toward correcting some of the problems created fabrications on their sites. Twitter, for example, has rules against harassment, hate speech, and incitement to violence. They eliminated many accounts that violated these rules. Facebook removed hundreds of fake profiles linked to Turning Point USA. Twitter suspended over one hundred Iranian accounts linked to issues of social justice. When Donald Trump posted a false message that the flu is more deadly than COVID19, Facebook removed the post. Twitter left it in but added a warning label of misinformation. They also prevented it from being shared. Facebook and Google will block all political ads until after the election. We’re glad that the social media is taking some steps to limit deceitful posts on their sites, but what they are doing is not enough. While Facebook and Twitter have removed or labelled some posts as misinformation, lot of disinformation slips through Facebook’s disinformation system. They have stopped publishing posts from QAnon and its affiliates, but individuals can still post QAnon ideas and fabrications. 93,000 active Twitter accounts refer to QAnon in their profile. Since so many people rely on the internet for information, it is unacceptable that so much of the data in cyberspace is fraudulent. Something must be done to correct this. It is not an easy task. Liberals complain that the cloud contains so much prevarication. Conservatives charge that the social media has a liberal bias because so many of the posts that are removed have been placed by conservatives. In a future post we will look at some of the things that can be done to make the social media more honest.b