Confirmation bias

[Kevin]

Interesting article in the NY Times about how fast disinformation and lies can spread in a hermetically sealed right wing media sphere when people have been primed for 30 years to believe it.

At 1:51 p.m. on Jan. 6, a right-wing radio host named Michael D. Brown wrote on Twitter that rioters had breached the United States Capitol — and immediately speculated about who was really to blame. “Antifa or BLM or other insurgents could be doing it disguised as Trump supporters,” Mr. Brown wrote, using shorthand for Black Lives Matter. “Come on, man, have you never heard of psyops?”

Only 13,000 people follow Mr. Brown on Twitter, but his tweet caught the attention of another conservative pundit: Todd Herman, who was guest-hosting Rush Limbaugh’s national radio program. Minutes later, he repeated Mr. Brown’s baseless claim to Mr. Limbaugh’s throngs of listeners: “It’s probably not Trump supporters who would do that. Antifa, BLM, that’s what they do. Right?”

What happened over the next 12 hours illustrated the speed and the scale of a right-wing disinformation machine primed to seize on a lie that served its political interests and quickly spread it as truth to a receptive audience. The weekslong fiction about a stolen election that President Donald J. Trump pushed to his millions of supporters had set the stage for a new and equally false iteration: that left-wing agitators were responsible for the attack on the Capitol.

In fact, the rioters breaking into the citadel of American democracy that day were acolytes of Mr. Trump, intent on stopping Congress from certifying his electoral defeat. Subsequent arrests and investigations have found no evidence that people who identify with antifa, a loose collective of antifascist activists, were involved in the insurrection.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/01/u...itol-riot.html

[CactusCurt]

What’s interesting is that some people are finally starting to wake up to what’s been going on for decades. And yet they overlook the underlying cause yet again in favor of process analysis.

There is more than one segment of society that doesn’t like the direction the country is taking.

I’m speaking big picture of course.

[Kevin]

Would you elaborate on what you mean? What do you see as the larger problem?

Process is at least part of the problem. Where and how one gets their news has changed and this article illustrates the inherent danger of a closed, self-referential system.

[CactusCurt]

I only meant to criticize the analysis of the processes used by the “trump supporters” to assemble, instead of asking what really motivated these people to be there. The motivation behind the analysis is clearly to restrict these folks ability to assemble.

I’m not a big fan of ridiculous processes, or conformity in general. I worked for someone who valued his own processes much more than the people he entrusted them to. Whenever there was a failure, it was always of some poor fool who didn’t follow the process. As you can imagine, it led to some spectacular failures that are still making waves over a decade later.

I see the larger problem as assigning too much credit to trump for getting these people there. Trump was the ringleader, but these people have real grievances that aren’t being heard. We have a very clear example of that with wolves here in Colorado.

[Kevin]

I think that the reason these people were there at the rally, at least the vast majority of them, was because they had been fed a self-serving lie that the election was stolen from Trump.

Many there had other political grievances that they carry, I am sure but the reason for this particular rally was not, in my view, to air those at that time. The rally was organized in response to perceived election fraud.

[Kevin]

As to your larger point, I agree that Trump is the focal point for many people with legitimate issues and concerns. I don't think those concerns are being unheard, though. I see those concerns as being less important to a more powerful group interested in other things.

In other words, one group doesn't really care about the other group. When conservatives had power, that was true of them and when liberals had power, that was true of them as well.

I think we've lost the ability to give a crap about anyone we disagree with.

[CactusCurt]

I think we've lost the ability to give a crap about anyone we disagree with.

We’re past being ambivalent about those we disagree with. There is an outright effort to silence them. Cancel culture is what we are calling it today I guess.

[Kevin]

I agree and at the risk being accused of bothsiderism, this is a both sides problem. Listen to either - both describe their opponents not as those holding a different but legitimate viewpoint but rather as evil people that need to be silenced.

And, to be fair, there are bigots among conservatives and socialists among liberals. Most people cannot be characterized by the extremists in their group, though.

[UTAH]

...bothsiderism...

Today - that's what I learned here.

This site never disappoints.

Hunter