This Is How Q-Crazies (And Other Self-Terrorized "Conservatives") Promote Falsehood, Representing It As "God's Truth"

 

Here's where American conservatives ran off the rails.

"There are two ways of lying, as there are two ways of deceiving customers. If the scale registers 15 ounces, you can say: 'It's a pound.' Your lie will remain relative to an invariable measure of the true. If customers check it, they can see that they are being robbed, and you know by how much you are robbing them: a truth remains as a judge between you. But if the demon induces you to tamper with the scale itself, it is the criterion of the true which is denatured, there is no longer any possible control. And little by little you will forget that you are cheating."

Denis de Rougemont

The truth behind the rhetoric.

By Salvador Rizzo  Email The freedom of the press is crucial to the Fact Checker. No one likes getting Pinocchios, but we hand them out every weekday to the most powerful politicians and organizations in the United States  — on both sides of the aisle. Celebrate World Press Freedom Day, and our ability to call out false claims, with a subscription to The Washington Post. Just $29 gets you a full year of unlimited access to everything The Post publishes, from our Pulitzer Prize-winning climate team to our book reviews to all of our Opinions columnists. Click here to subscribe now. Four Pinocchios for the New York Post and Fox News The story was “too good to check.” The New York Post reported that migrant children from Central America were being greeted at a federally run shelter in Long Beach, Calif., with “welcome kits” that included a children’s book published by Vice President Harris in 2019. The article ran on the New York Post’s front page on April 24, along with a photograph of a single copy of Harris’s book, “Superheroes Are Everywhere,” placed on a cot at the Long Beach shelter. How did a photo of one book become “Kamala swag for all the kids”? Fox News quickly picked up and amplified the New York Post’s story. It spread to other parts of right-wing media and eventually became Twitter fodder for top Republicans including Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel, both of whom suggested Harris might be enriching herself with taxpayer funds. All based on a single photograph of a single book. When we reached out to Long Beach officials, they told us only one copy of the children’s book had been donated during a citywide book-and-toy drive organized for the migrant children. We published a fact-check on Tuesday, awarding Four Pinocchios. Little did we know a chain reaction would ensue. First, the New York Post took down two articles with the false claim about “welcome kits.” Then, the articles were restored with corrections. The reporter who had written the original New York Post article resigned, claiming on Twitter that she had been “ordered” to write an “incorrect” story about the vice president. Fox News eventually appended a correction to its own article (after flogging it for two days on TV). It’s a good example of how misinformation spreads on right-wing media and gets amplified by Republican leaders. The claim had begun to spread like wildfire, even forming the basis of a Fox News question at a White House press briefing, before we debunked it. For the full fact check, click here. "Trump Is A Traitor By Virtue Of Normalizing Falsehood And Teaching Americans To Do The Same" https://newsfrombarbaria.blogspot.com/2020/07/trump-is-traitor-by-virtue-of.html "Compendium: Trump And His Minions Lie-And-Mislead More Easily Than They Metabolize, With A Special Guest Appearance By Master Bull-Shitter, Kayleigh McEnany" https://newsfrombarbaria.blogspot.com/2020/11/compendium-trump-and-his-minions-lie.html  "Truth Infuriates People Whose Lives Are Lie" https://newsfrombarbaria.blogspot.com/2021/01/truth-infuriates-people-whose-lives-are.html "Trump Lies Shamelessly, Compulsively, Continuously... And His Followers Suck The Sludge" https://newsfrombarbaria.blogspot.com/2020/10/trump-lies-beyond-any-bound-and-his.html "Unless Truth Is Richly Contextualized, It Is Likely That Uneducated, Ideologically-Driven People (Who Never Learned How To Think In Context), Will Use Fragmented Shards Of Truths To Tell Colossal Lies" https://newsfrombarbaria.blogspot.com/2020/08/unless-truth-is-richly-contextualized.html "How Conservatives Use Decontextualized Shards Of Truth To Tell BIG Lies"  https://newsfrombarbaria.blogspot.com/2020/08/how-conservatives-use-decontextualized.html "Donald Trump's Identity Revealed" https://newsfrombarbaria.blogspot.com/2021/01/donald-trumps-identity-revealed.html Earlier Today, I Heard A Trump Supporter Say: "You Don't Know What To Believe." Once Trump Gets You To Throw Up Your Hands, You Won't Be Able To Determine What's True. Instead, You'll Be More Willing To Accept Lies As Truth. This Is Why Trump Lies So Much And Says "Who Knows? We'll See" So Often. Hannah Arendt Has The Details https://newsfrombarbaria.blogspot.com/2020/12/earlier-today-i-heard-trump-supporter.html Pat Buchanan, The Republican Presidential Candidate And Living American Who Has Served Longest As Senior White House Official, Says Republicans Are In It For "Power Only" And "To Hell With Principles" https://newsfrombarbaria.blogspot.com/2020/09/pat-buchanan-republican-presidential.html