Category: Gaslighting

Bullshit in the Age of Captured Journalism

Posted on by documentingdescent

Let’s talk about how bullshit and lies get laundered in an environment where billionaires who are allied with fascism control all major media outlets. It’s a major concern to me that people have neither the ability nor inclination to look past even the most surface level of what they’re trying to comment on. In this case, Jonathan Ross, the guy who shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis.

I like to peek at conservative news outlets to see what kind of spin they’re putting on events, and to get an idea of what talking points they’re recycling. Today, I checked out the National Review because I was curious how they were gonna sanewash Trump’s statement that we’re gonna get Greenland whether they like it or not.

They have an article that’s just oh-so-smug about how the foolish progressives got it wrong about Ross being in no danger, and CBS is now reporting that he is recovering from internal bleeding due to injuries suffered when he killed Good. But I’ve seen the video and I smelled a rat. I mean, above and beyond the fact that CBS news is now an arm of the Trump regime under Bari Weiss, and has done nothing but fawn over Trump since the merger that installed her as editor in chief.

No way did Ross suffer those injuries, based on any of the videos I’ve seen. But yet in X/Twitter, on conservative blogospheres, all over, it’s The Unvarnished Truth: Jonathan Ross was severely injured by Renee Good’s attack on him with the car. CBS is reporting it!

So naturally, I went to the source: CBS.

Lo and behold, there was the article. Except, if you actually read the article, it doesn’t say this is the truth. It says this is what Department of Homeland Security officials have told CBS, which has in turn could not as yet be independently confirmed.

So in essence:

  • ICE agent shoots and kills a woman.
  • DHS says she was a domestic terrorist and wounded him.
  • We see multiple videos of him being fine, not being struck by the car, and walking around just dandy.
  • CBS is told by DHS that ICE agent is actually definitely recovering from wounds.
  • The fascism adjacent social media sphere takes CBS’s report as third party confirmation and uses it to manufacture an alternative reality where he was wounded, when we cannot confirm that independently.

Consent is very easy to manufacture when no one is willing to do even a bare minimum of research and verification. It is important that we do not allow bullshit to pass on our watch without checking for it.

404 Media on ICE Lying

Posted on by documentingdescent

I don’t generally want to quote or use articles by other publications except as PDFs to confirm events did, in fact, actually happen. However, there are certain exceptions to that.

404 Media’s excellent encapsulation of the lies being told by the Trump administration, Department of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, ICE, etc… You should have a read. I will place some choice quotes below the link.

DHS Is Lying to You About ICE Shooting A Woman

“In a Truth Social post, Trump wrote, “the woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self defense. Based on the attached clip, it is hard to believe he is alive, but is now recovering in the hospital.” Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said at a press conference, “it was an act of domestic terrorism” and “a woman attacked them and those surrounding them and attempted to run them over and ram them with her vehicle. An officer of ours acted quickly and defensively shot to protect himself and the people around him.” 

DHS lied. Trump lied. Noem lied. The Honda was already turning to the right away from the officers when the one who allegedly feared for his life fired the shots. There were no other officers up the road where the car did fully level out, meaning no other fellow officers were at risk. 

This is a pattern. Some event happens as part of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign, DHS rushes out a misleading, wrong, or incendiary statement that does not reflect reality, and it becomes another piece of ammo for the X.com grifters, right wing media ecosystem, or people who just love the idea of others being hurt. DHS’s serial lying has become such a problem that even a judge called it out. In November, U.S. District Judge Sara L. Ellis wrote a more than 200 page opinion that in large part catalogued DHS officials’ bullshit. Parts of the opinion were scathing: “The Court finds Defendants’ evidence simply not credible.”

DHS has established itself as an agency that cannot be trusted to live in or present reality. Its words carry no weight or meaning for those who care about what really happened. Only those who want to believe what it says.

I have preserved their article as a PDF here, in case it disappears from there server for any reason.

How Do Ya Like That First Amendment?

Posted on by documentingdescent

Hope you enjoyed your Bill of Rights, because even more than in prior years, it’s the Bill of Rights* – with the asterisk denoting ‘some limitations apply’.

The natural outgrowth of this Charlie Kirk shit has been, rather predictably, for Trump and his minions to decide that cracking down on the Left and the Democratic party is the only way out of this horrible state of affairs. I mean, why wouldn’t they? They’ve been itching for some kind of leftist to punch a cop or look sideways at an ICE agent, to give them an excuse to declare martial law and start crushing people under their boots.

The alacrity with which the administration is moving right now certainly suggests that Stephen Miller already had this plan waiting in the wings, prepped for him to push the button and fire up his brownshirts. Of course, there’s no actual connection between left wing policies and murderous intent, but truth is not a quality that matters much to this admin. The fact that Tyler Robinson may have had a trans roommate or may have been dating them and may have been tired of Kirk’s hate-spreading is less important than The Message: The Left Is Here To Destroy America.

Concurrent to all this, the Department of Justice removed a study they themselves commissioned during Trump’s first term, because it indicates the vast majority of all political violence in the United States is perpetrated by the right wing. Even if you don’t want to spend your time reading through the NIJ report on how conservatives will gleefully murder their opponents, it’s easy to count the attacks and compare figures.

If your memory is bad, go back a few days ago, when Fox News talking head Brian Kilmeade suggested the solution to the homelessness epidemic in the United States would be to just kill anyone who’s homeless. Oh, sure, he walked it back and apologized, but don’t get it twisted: this ghoul meant it, and he’s sorry he got called out for being a psychopath. He’s just saying the quiet part out loud.

And people like him have the temerity to lecture others on being heartless about Kirk’s death? Get fucking real.

Speaking of which, Jimmy Kimmel’s comments on Charlie Kirk has gotten him removed from the air indefinitely – ABC (aka Disney) followed suit after Nexstar (owners of a lot of local, rural TV stations) pulled him. Both pulled him after FCC Chairman Brendan Carr basically said “No mocking Trump or I’ll go out of my way to fuck you over.” Good thing Trump vowed not to weaponize government. So what did Kimmel say that was so horrible?

We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.

That’s it? I say worse things when I stub my toe on the way to the toilet. Sinclair Media’s gone so far as to say they won’t reinstate Kimmel unless he both apologizes and donates an undisclosed sum to Kirk’s Turning Point USA group. Which will happen around half past never.

Make no mistake as to why ABC/Disney and Nexstar are doing this, however: they have no deep-seated love of Trump or his crew. But they do both love money. Nexstar as a proposed merger with TV giant Tegna, and ABC/Disney is trying to buy streaming service FUBO. Both of these require FCC approval. This is 100% pay to play bullshit from the FCC and Carr.

Carr’s gone even further after his success with Kimmel: he says the FCC is gonna pull the licenses for anyone who’s critical of the Trump administration. The linked article says Trump said this – and he did – but earlier today Carr concurred with what Trump suggested. That’s not how FCC licenses work, but when has legality or “how shit works” ever stopped these clowns?

You know you done gone too far into Fascism Central when both Karl Rove and Tucker Carlson are speaking out against what you’re doing. When you lose Bowtie Franco and Turdblossom, you fucked up.

The Feds are also actively grasping with their little hands at voter registration rolls across the United States, claiming they need to “examine voter registration to safeguard election integrity”. Yeah, that’s not within your power or purview, and states rightly should tell you to go fuck yourself.

Transparent efforts to see who to target for intimidation and/or malicious prosecution.

The FBI is also rolling full tilt into insanity, with Kash Patel at the helm. Mr. Internet Troll, Mr. 4chan Shitposter himself. He’s got two big winners here, and I can’t even really comment on them, they’re both so fucking horrifying and stupid.

#1: Backing up Trump’s play, Antifa is a terrorist organization! This doesn’t actually mean shit; only designating something a foreign terrorist organization has legal meaning and unlocks things. Domestic? Well, we generally don’t give a shit about that. He coulda done this at any time, so why now? Somebody pointed out that he’s like a shark when it comes to being in the news: he has to keep swimming or he’ll die. He’s thrown his base red meat, because if he’s not in the headlines, he’s losing. Besides, it’s not like an official declaration will meaningfully change how law enforcement will kick the shit out of you. They were always gonna.

#2: FBI to Categorize Trans People As “Nihilistic Violent Extremist” Threat Group, Report Says. This is coming from Ken Klipperstein and he’s rarely wrong, so I expect this to happen. How the fuck do you categorize a sexuality/identity as… a political movement? You know what, I’m not even gonna bother. It’s evil and it’s stupid and these people should never be given a moment’s peace for the rest of their goddamn lives.

Gaslighting, Hypocrisy, and “the Salute”

Posted on by documentingdescent

One of the most pernicious tactics the current far-right likes to employ is to convince us we did not see the things we have seen, or that what we have seen mean something other than what we have observed. This is rooted in the behavior of places like 4chan’s /pol/, alt-right reddit forums, and now Twitter/X after Elon Musk’s takeover. For years, they’ve loved to play a game where “they were just joking”. Or that we’re overreacting to their coded words and hand symbols, and what we saw was really innocuous and innocent.

Do not believe them.

I remember one user online that I had the misfortune of interacting with whose handle was Alex1488. When it was pointed out that the 14 words was a white supremacist thing, and that 88 was Nazi shorthand for “Heil Hitler”, he naturally claimed innocence with some bullshit about how he liked the number 14 and he was born in 1988. He was, of course, lying, and I blocked him immediately after. I merely wanted to illustrate for others how Nazis, white supremacists, and other fascist types infiltrate while claiming innocence. But their dog whistles are now fog horns, and we need to remember that we do not need to tolerate these people in any public space.

The evening of Trump’s inauguration, Elon Musk went on stage and threw a Nazi salute not once but twice. Immediately the excuses came: it wasn’t a Nazi salute, it was a Roman one. It was him throwing his heart out to the crowd. You’re overreacting. How come you liberals always have to lie.

Elon Musk dressed in a suit at Trump's inauguration party, throwing up a nazi salute on the right. A masked white supremacist in a red shirt at a nazi rally, throwing up an identical one on the left.

I leave it to you, dear reader, to tell the difference.

The answer, of course, is that there isn’t one.

Do not let anyone tell you that what you’re seeing is not what you have seen. This is the bullshit they will try to pull on you. They’ll post still images with Elon saluting and compare it to Taylor Swift, Kamala Harris, Obama, in similar positions and say “See, you can do anything with a still image.

This is their method of making you disbelieve your own eyes. The truth is in the motion, and in the context. Remember, Musk did this not once, but twice in the same 10 second period. Never mind he went on to make Nazi jokes last night about this event.

It doesn’t matter if Elon Musk is throwing out his heart or making a roman salute or making a nazi salute. Any sensible person can see who he is aligning himself with. He’s dumb, but he’s not THAT dumb. He’s trying to align himself with Trump’s followers who are white supremacists. You have eyes. You can see it.

If you doubt me, go into your office. Have a meeting. Make this salute to your boss or the board of directors or whoever. Film yourself. Defend the gesture. I fucking dare you. You can’t, because it’s absolutely indefensible. People have said that this is hypocrisy of the highest order on their side. That they have to talk about it. They don’t. Don’t talk about it.

But what if he meant something other than a Nazi salute?

It does not matter.

He is not a baby. He knows what he did. Maybe it was a joke, or maybe not, but he knows the message he sent. He made jokes about it on twitter the day after. Hypocrisy is not a value they care about. There are rules for them, and rules for their enemies. You are their enemy. They do not care they have double standards. In fact, they revel in it, because it makes sane people doubt what they have seen.