When Disinformation Comes From ‘Important’ People

Misinformation is spreading around the world faster than ever. Only this time it's coming from official high level government sources. That's what's different. According to the Times, a deadly shooting at Brown University was followed by a rapid spread of false online claims. Some of these were amplified by elected officials and top business leaders. I'm talking about billionaires. That's different. That's unique. That didn't used to happen. That were mislabeling the motive and falsely accusing a student. The rumors fueled harassment, death threats and a disruptive police investigation. Or it disrupted the police investigation. Reignited alarms about accountability in an algorithm driven information ecosystem. Experts warned that when leaders join the pylon, disinformation accelerates and trust collapse. That's. That statement alone may be dated because maybe there's no trust left. Let's look at the facts. Two students were killed at Brown University, December 13th. False claims started within hours. One victim was falsely labeled as targeting conservatives. It was, you know, it's this cult of victimization. Conservatives are right when they say there's a cult of victimization in America and it trivializes really bad things and it makes everyone a victim, but they're wrong. And who's guilty of this? Right now we're seeing in our current culture conservatives always playing the victim card. Somebody shot, it must have been because they were a poor victimized conservative and targeted for their conservative beliefs. So that's what we heard initially with regarding these. This Brown murder. Turns out none of it was true. Okay. Palestinian student was falsely accused of the crime. Online. Several members of Congress amplified these fake rumors. Nearly 5,000 posts named particular students, none of whom were guilty. The posts were reposted 130,000 times. Thank you, Mark Zuckerberg. Thank you. Reddit police warned misinformation disrupted the investigation. It was a problem. Now later we found out the killer was a Portuguese scientist, someone who'd been in the country for decades. Apparently a brilliant scholar who just went crazy. Sorry if that's not scientific enough for you, but that's essentially what happened. No particular ideological basis, wasn't a part of any extremist group, far left or far right. But that didn't keep a lot of people who should know better from weighing in. Congresswoman, far right Congresswoman from my own state of Florida, Anna Paulina Luna, started insisting there's a cover up. It's suspicious. The information was removed from Brown University's website following the tragic shooting. No, it wasn't suspicious. You have Sean McGuire, who was a partner at Sequoia Big time, big time powerful venture capitalist firm saying our elite universities have become terror breeding grounds. It's Camp Buka. But in America. Well again, it wasn't terrorism. It was just an idiot who somehow lost his marbles. And we live in America where right wing culture defines basic human rights as everybody. Even mad men get their own guns. Okay, here's something from a bulletin that went out. According to several news and social media reports, the Brown shooter is a radical pro Palestinian activist, Mustafa Karboach, a radical Islamic terror. False. Now let's look at some of the specifics. Bill Ackman, who just can't seem to go more than five minutes without having his name in the media charging that everyone in the world is somehow bias against people he likes. He shared these reports stirring up hatreds that it was somehow a Muslim extremist. Senator Tommy Tuberville, the brilliant brain trust from Alabama specifically tweeted or posted on social media that the Brown University killing, the persons killed were targeted. One of them was targeted because she was a Republican. That's right folks, the cult of victimization lives on. And ground zero appears to be Alabama and Tommy Tuberville, the renowned football coach, renowned in the senate for other things. But everyone's got to weigh in on this. And the problem of course is inherent bias, confirmation bias. And in case of Bill Ackman, you know the bias of if the only thing you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If every single new piece of information comes in, it has to fit into your pre existing narrative of how the world works. Well then yes, any violence is because somebody you like is a victim because of somebody else's religious belief that you don't like. And facts don't matter. Investigation doesn't matter. Guilt or innocence doesn't matter. Just say it. And Tommy Tommerville, Tommy Tuberville, he also went on Benny Johnson, well known right wing influencer to spread this disinformation. And I'm telling you folks, this really does need to stop. Have there ever been a case where those on the left exaggerate things to make it seem as though those on the right were targeting them unfairly? Yeah, you could make a case for that. Yeah, you could make a case that so called black churches burned down at the same rate or less frequently than so called white churches. So it wasn't in fact some racial conspiracy. So I'm more than happy to say that there are those on the left who sometimes instantly pigeonholed facts and even worse things that are not facts into a narrative to paint themselves into a victim, victimhood. But now we have senior. I mean, it doesn't get much higher in the US Government than being a United States senator or member of Congress. To have them spreading misinformation within hours, within minutes of an active police investigation really skews things. It's disruptive to the investigation. And ultimately what they are doing is helping criminals. In this particular case, the criminal was just a scientist who was embittered about his career. This is the same guy who left Rhode island and went to Massachusetts and killed a former colleague of his who was an esteemed professor at mit, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, apparently out of professional jealousy. So no, there were no odes to Muhammad. There were no trashings of Jesus or anything like that. It appears to be a case of somebody suffering mental illness and having access to guns, which is perhaps the number one, are the two most common ingredients to mass murder in America.