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The guardian reports on a sobering event in Washington DC.
US police have arrested a man wielding an assault rifle who entered a pizza restaurant that was the target of fake news reports it was operating a child abuse ring led by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her top campaign aide.
[...] The suspect entered the restaurant and pointed a gun at a restaurant employee, who fled and notified authorities, police said. The man then discharged the weapon inside the restaurant. There were no injuries.
[...] [Police] said the suspect during an interview with investigators revealed that he came to the establishment to "self-investigate" Pizzagate, the police statement said. Pizzagate is a baseless conspiracy, which falsely claims Clinton and her campaign chief John Podesta were running a child sex ring from the restaurant's backrooms.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @02:01PM
This is the same Guardian that recently published this:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/28/alt-right-online-poison-racist-bigot-sam-harris-milo-yiannopoulos-islamophobia [theguardian.com]
You really want to start preaching about fake news? That giving Sam Harris's arguments consideration will lead to "online radicalization". How precipitously close a moral, righteous cliche of liberalism came to becoming a member of that most evil alt-right? Because there is absolutely no legitimacy to right-wing views whatsoever.
I've actually studied a bit on war propaganda. One of the bits that people get consistently wrong is that it isn't simply preying upon people's fears (fuck, advertising does that, and most people ignore it completely), but to paint a worst case scenario from a kernel of truth.
Stories such as these:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/07/07/a-big-political-cover-up-of-1980s-pedophile-ring-in-u-k-parliament/?utm_term=.086089bd9fd4 [washingtonpost.com]
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2016/03/22/uk-begins-coverup-of-scalia-paedophile-ring-inquiry/ [veteranstoday.com]
at least inform the possibility of a coverup, nor is it only the right that engages in such tactics
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/Franklin/FranklinCoverup/franklin.htm [whatreallyhappened.com]
Especially given the tenuous and tedious articles published about Trump recently, pointing the finger of "fake news" is going to leave several media sources with their pants down. The whole thing has the feel of a witchhunt, and I am dismayed at the gish gallop the media has chosen to engage in.
Even more that SN is becoming a proxy for the idiocy at large.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @02:21PM
+1 Underrated Post
I am a huge fan of Milo, there is no way any of the loonies on the left can win an argument with him based on facts and logic, so they result to hyperbole attacks claiming that even listening to his arguments is WRONG. I watched video after video of a femi-nazi ambush of Milo, and he always turns it around on them. They cannot win, and it drives them insane.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @03:05PM
I don't even like Milo. I find him to be a blowhard. Same with Harris.
But occasionally, they do make good points.
But that is a pretty long way away from thinking they are some Svengali-like characters, able to corrupt the minds of all that hear them. This is the level of absurdity we are dealing with now.
And most who aren't heavily invested in either narrative (although being moderate is synonymous with being alt-right iat the moment, so maybe there is a point) see this as obvious censorship under the guise of "it's for your own good". If you really want to talk about the start of fascism, it isn't Trump, it's this.
When Micah Johnson went on to kill cops in Dallas, BLM supporters were quick to point out how he was obviously mentally ill, and that it had nothing to do with them.
That this most recent shooting is somehow different just reeks of lies and hypocrisy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @03:33PM
> although being moderate is synonymous with being alt-right
If you consider "white nationalism" to be moderate, you aren't moderate.
> When Micah Johnson went on to kill cops in Dallas, BLM supporters were quick to point out how he was obviously mentally ill, and that it had nothing to do with them.
That logic only works if you believe that BLM's issues are also a falsehood.
Which would be in line with believing that white nationalism is a moderate belief. So I guess you cleared that up!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @06:48PM
Indeed. I like to think of myself as being a Christian evangelical whose politics is center-right. And by center-right I mean the real center-right, not the abomination that the GOP has transmogrified itself into. I want nothing to do with the alt-right. It offends me that anyone would think to equate the two. Anyone who thinks that "being moderate is synonymous with being alt-right" doesn't have a clue what they are talking about.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @02:23PM
> Stories such as these:
What is it with the crazies citing articles that contradict their thesis as proof of their thesis?
You linked to articles describing how the "pedo ring" in the UK parliament was hysterical over-reaction that was not supported by the evidence.
And that's supposed to prove that an editorial saying that hysterical religious stereotyping has real consequences for innocent people should have said, "oh maybe that religious stereotyping might be legitimate?"
The only way your bullshit makes sense if you start with the premise that religious bigotry is appropriate.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday December 06 2016, @03:34PM
There's one glaringly obvious reason that first link isn't "fake news."
I wonder if you can spot it.
It starts with an "O", in bold, at the very top of the page, and it actually appears twice.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @03:56PM
So, wait. Are you trying to say that the events described didn't take place? That this more akin to some performance art?
Or you trying to say that commentary isn't news. Any guess why it is appearing on the Guardian's website then?
I also note you are the submitter of the original story. Any possibility your own biases are clouding your judgment on the issue?
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday December 06 2016, @04:24PM
So, wait. Are you trying to say that the events described didn't take place? That this more akin to some performance art?
What events? Did you even look at the first link? It's clearly an opinion piece describing his thoughts on some crap he saw on the interwebs. Are you claiming he didn't see some crap on the interwebs?
Or you trying to say that commentary isn't news. Any guess why it is appearing on the Guardian's website then?
Yes, that's exactly what I am saying. It is clearly labeled an opinion piece in the opinion section. It's on the Guardian website because they have an opinion section.
I also note you are the submitter of the original story. Any possibility your own biases are clouding your judgment on the issue?
Yes, I am biased towards objective reality.
(Score: 2) by Bill Dimm on Tuesday December 06 2016, @04:00PM
Except that, if you believe him, the "opinion" was written by Godfrey Elfwick [twitter.com], who was trolling. Check out his description of himself on his Twitter account.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @04:26PM
Either that, or the satirist is trolling you.
He made the mistake of offering up as "proof" an identical copy of the article, right down to the punctuation, claiming that he submitted that. The chance that a major newspaper wouldn't make at least some stylistic and syntax changes before publication is pretty small. Sure, its possible that he followed the guardian's style guide perfectly. But that's a big reach.
I think it much more likely that someone who has never had any work published in a newspaper would assume that's how it works. A guy who's some total of work has been self-published would know nothing of the role of an actual editor.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Tuesday December 06 2016, @06:37PM
You are making the mistake of thinking we still live in the day when newspapers had editors, fact checkers and all that. Downsized decades ago. These days even the NYT publishes horrid grammar errors, spelling mistakes, obvious factual errors, even allows 'fake journalists' to publish fiction under their banner for years and when these are pointed out they will admit they lack the resources they once had. It gets far worse as you move down the food chain. Read some copy at cnn.com sometime, you will be appalled; it is like they took the live closed caption stream, spent a couple of minutes fixing the most obvious glitches and then hit publish. Just blogs now, some have bigger budgets but also attempt to produce so much more content they amount of effort going into each post is getting really close to being the same minimum. The race to the bottom is over, everybody is there now.
Once the legacy media admits this, once everyone else admits this, we can move on to rebooting the whole industry. We do need an industry devoted to pounding the pavement and collecting "Who, What, When, Where, Why, How" information and publishing it; we need to find a way to make a profit doing this important work. The current players are good at punditing spinning and analyzing but nobody is feeding much actual raw data into the machine anymore. So we get an echo chamber where everybody is just pointing to somebody else's opinion piece or a press release.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @07:47PM
> You are making the mistake of thinking we still live in the day when newspapers had editors
You are making the mistake of telling yourself stories and believing them to be the truth.
Par for the course for someone so susceptible to conspiracy theories.