Well . . . define “new”, this dude cited Jones, David Icke and Glenn Beck as influencing him to load up on guns and head to the ACLU and Tides Foundation in CA to “start a revolution” back in 2010.
You can’t publicize rumors and conspiracy of this serious a nature and just expect everyone will just shrug it off. It used to be you only heard this kind of crap on sort-wave radio late at night, now it’s everywhere, it’s big money for people like Alex Jones.
I figured that must be a parody website, since Deep Underground Military Bases is DUMB, but it looks like a real site…
Such as, ironically, the “modeling agency” tRump ran, apparently so he’d have a supply of young (including underage) girls to pimp out to business associates, according to people who attended his parties.
The thing about these conspiracy theories is that I’m quite sure that some of the people involved are just taking the piss, but the others involved don’t realize that.
Pizzagate got its start at least partially as an act of trolling, after all…
Pizza trolls?
I could piss on your leg, the way you are mine?
“Yes, but” is the sentence construction of someone who wants to use words to avoid change. it’s lazy and enabling.
You are clearly NOT your brothers keeper. .
Neither of those are actual arguments made by those against GMO. I’ve never heard either of them before, and if they are offered in caricature, they are inapt and demeaning.
Really, this leg pissing habit of yours is tiring, at best.
so how do we hold them accountable for their part?
I’m not. Though if my brother believed in Pizza gate I’d talk to him about it.
The tail thing was an exaggeration with an attempt at humor. Some natural food nuts think anything not from nature will cause you to get cancer.
But I will ask again, pragmatically, what can you do about shit like this? The tabloids have been spreading crazy rumors for forever. Art Bell, alien conspiracies, NWO, etc etc. Heck even BB posted this year about a rumored pedophile ring in Hollywood. Remember the rumored day care center that raped and sacrificed babies in Satanic rituals in the 80s?
What exactly does one propose to combat that? Especially in the day where anyone can make a website and post what ever they want?
Maybe we should go back to the standard where, if one claims to be reporting “news,” one is held to the standards of journalism. Sites & shows like InfoWars either need to have credible sources and fact-checking or make a big disclaimer that they are for entertainment only, not news.
I can try to point out to naysayers that their energies could be more authentically applied to an issue they claim to want to see fixed, than to engage the well intentioned (who might yet get round to discussing the possibilities) in pedantic and contrarian semantics I can also spend precious little time doing this.
I would propose something like Snopes, which debunks myths, fact-checks news, and encourages critical thinking about the stuff we read on the internet. However, Snopes already exists, and you can lead a horticulture but you can’t make her think.
Remember when Ray Comfort thought that the word “bibliophile” was a made up liberal word that was a “cross between pedophile and Bible” and threatened to ban anyone that used that word from his Facebook page? (bonus points for the original user saying that it mean “lover of books” and that “I’d never cast that aspersion upon you” and Ray accepted that as an apology and not a stealth insult)
I honestly don’t think a disclaimer that this is meant for entertainment, not news, will do anything. Especially anyone who takes it seriously. Heck, it might make some sites worse.
That and people like John Oliver actually HAVE fact checking and standards, but are also using satire and humor for entertainment - infotainment.
This isn’t an issue for me. I don’t digest Alex Jones or any other fringe sources. As a kid I love the idea of Atlantis and ancient aliens, but later in life I realize the world was much more boring than that.
The control and spread of information and misinformation is a very old battle. It is one reason all the Bibles were in Latin at one point. The tools and talking points are new, but it isn’t a right wing only issue, as bad information permeates our daily lives.
So I don’t see myself as a naysayer per se, I also don’t see how one can really stop this sort of thing. A focused education campaign can help some, but there will always be those who gravitate to this sort off thing.
Well that is the problem - the truth is out there, but people are either too lazy to find it, or think that truth has some how been corrupted by unseen powers.
The way the rest of the world deals with it is through laws like this:
Americans tend to be allergic to that sort of thing, though.
Well America does have Hate Crime laws.
But in the example of Pizzagate, there was no racial angle to vilify.
You’d literally need to pass a Constitutional Amendment.
The only restrictions of speech that have been deemed as Constitutionally allowable are:
Restrictions on “hateful” speech have been tried again and again, and struck down again and again.
In a country where 45+% of the voting public is willing to vote for a President whose whole modus operandi (sorry, @modusoperandi, I don’t mean you), is hate speech, I don’t think there is the political will to pass such an amendment.
Which is where these laws come in:
http://www.findlaw.com.au/articles/4516/what-is-incitement-and-how-is-it-a-criminal-offenc.aspx
I’m not sure how it could get worse. Also, I’m not just talking about a disclaimer here. I’m talking about a legal standard. What Jones did is the journalistic equivalent of shouting “fire” in a crowded theater, and he should bear responsibility for it.
The incident came very close to the beginning scenes of the 1991 Robin Williams/Jeff Bridges film The Fisher King, in which a radio shock jock incites an unstable man to murder a bunch of people in a restaurant. Eerie.
