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It’s crazy how when a lie takes hold, it just stays forever. Another is relayed to January 6th protests. A friend today, a conservative DeSantis supporter, to

It’s crazy how when a lie takes hold, it just stays forever. Another is relayed to January 6th protests. A friend today, a conservative DeSantis supporter, told me that he knew that on January 6th, the protestors killed several police officers. This is, as we know now, absolutely false. It was based on a rumor, and once the reporting caught up, it turned out to be false. Similarly I’m sure there will be Canadians who know that there were these mass unmarked child graves at schools. But again: totally false.

tootallgavin 4y ago
Not to mention the Great Lie of brown is black
commandlinefan 4y ago
My teenage son was shocked when I told him that none of the three people Kyle Rittenhouse shot were black, and didn't believe me at first until he googled it (and even google showed, on every link, that both of the people he killed and the one he wounded were white). He told his friends, and they didn't believe him until they googled it.
- sethjr5rtfgh 4y ago
- fortran77 4y ago
  See this story: https://komonews.com/news/nation-world/false-info-about-rittenhouse-victims-posted-to-james-madison-university-instagram-account https://komonews.com/news/nation-world/false-info-about-ritt...
munk-a 4y ago
Be careful with your wording here - the suicide of Officer Smith, at least, has been pretty unambiguously tied directly back to trauma suffered on Jan 6th. So while a police officer wasn't directly killed through physical violence on Jan 6th the actions of protestors can be fairly said to have instigated the death of a police officer. I think the big misstatement of the media here was the unrelated natural causes death of an officer (from essentially a stroke) on January 7th - but law enforcement lives were lost due to January 6th.
- baryphonic 4y ago
  This seems like total post-hoc reasoning like the debunked "violent video games cause real-life violence." Ultimately Officer Smith chose to take his own life; no one made that choice for him. He may have been appalled or traumatized or whatever, but ultimately he's the one who did it. Doesn't make it any less tragic, but it's extremely tenuous absent additional evidence to lay blame at anyone but he himself. If there was some evidence that he was subject to unique abuse and was personally targeted on that day, then maybe there might be some merit. But of the officers who were there, he experienced roughly what the other officers did, and he was the only one to commit suicide.
  - munk-a 4y ago
    Sorry, I had omitted sourcing in my original comment but here: > Dr. Jonathan Arden, the former Chief Medical Examiner of the District of Columbia was hired by Smith's widow as part of her lawsuit to have her husband's suicide ruled "in the line of duty". His report stated that the "acute, precipitating event that caused the death of Officer Smith was his occupational exposure to the traumatic events he suffered on January 6, 2021".[1] 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jeffrey_L._Smith https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jeffrey_L._Smith
    - jtbayly 4y ago
      - weakfish 4y ago
        Er… that’s quite a large jump in reasoning
      - happytoexplain 4y ago
        What is outrageous about investigating a person's motivations/psychology, and why does it become more outrageous if that person is deceased at the time of the investigation? You may disagree with the conclusion for some reason, but it seems like standard practice.
hbn 4y ago
Ask around and be horrified as to how many people confidently think Kyle Rittenhouse shot one or more people who were 1. unarmed 2. black (edit: I see now someone made the above point a few minutes before i finished typing my message, but I suppose that goes to show how widespread this myth is) Conservatives get the brunt of blame for "conspiracy theories" and "disinformation" these days, and while I won't deny it doesn't happen (like it has for years), the left has just as much, if not more that I hear every day, but they never realize or take accountability for it because they have the popular narrative that runs all major corporations and the greater internet.
- vkou 4y ago
  What's really horrifying is how many people seem unaware that the people he shot were under the impression that they were trying to stop an active shooter. You know, do that good-guy-with-a-gun thing, while acting on initially (but not eventually) incorrect information. It's quite likely that if he were the one gunned down, and not the other way around, the people who did so would have walked, too.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    > the people he shot were under the impression that they were trying to stop an active shooter. I'm still unaware of that. Do you have a reference?
    - vkou 4y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenosha_unrest_shooting#Second_confrontation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenosha_unrest_shooting#Second... At this point in time, shots had been fired, Rittenhouse shot and killed a man, and was identified by the crowd as an active shooter. Huber was trying to disarm Rittenhouse, when he was shot and killed. This happened in front of Grosskreutz, who at this point had every reason to believe that Rittenhouse was an active shooter (And was then shot and injured by Rittenhouse). Since in an active shooter situation, both the 'good guy with a gun' and 'the good guy without a gun' can't sit around and wait for eight months for a jury trial to find the active shooter to actually be innocent, both Huber and Grosskreutz reacted rather reasonably. It seems to me that legally, nobody, except maybe Rosenbaum (Who was dead by the time of the events of the second confrontation) was in the wrong in that whole situation. It's all 'good guys with a gun' shooting at eachother because sweet fuckin' Jesus, nobody ever has all the facts about who was justified about killing whom when there's a public gunfight happening.
sethjr5rtfgh 4y ago
bloaf 4y ago
Quillette is cynically using the exact same "social-panic" tactics they're criticizing to create exactly your conclusion. The Q article has exactly two complaints about the facts reported by the media: 1. The media claimed bodies were unearthed, when in fact only scans were taken. 2. The media claimed there were mass graves, when in fact scans only detected masses of individual graves. However, in "social-panic" style, conservatives are taking these two quibbles over terminology and turning them into an Alex Jones-esque conspiracy to deny the graves existence altogether. Note also the subtle racism in the article, where they compare a hypothetical instant-response to the murder of white children to the "very odd" response of the first nation people. The implication being that first nations people are incompetent, uncaring, or untrustworthy by not immediately doing a certain kind of investigation.
- Cupertino95014 4y ago
  > The media claimed bodies were unearthed This is not a "quibble." It's a major falsehood.
  - bloaf 4y ago
    Unearth can be used in a literal sense, which in this case is false. It can also be used in a figurative sense, which in this case is almost certainly true.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - UIUC_06 4y ago
      Don't get too dizzy from all that spinning around. So do you really believe everyone in Canada read that and thought "Oh, they're using the word in a figurative sense! Never mind." If something is, by definition, in the earth and a story says it was "unearthed" it's sorta reasonable to believe it was dug up.
      - munk-a 4y ago
Comevius 4y ago
To be fair 5 officers died not long after the attack. Brian Sidnick was pepper sprayed twice and died a day later suffering two strokes. Howard Liebengood and Jeffrey Smith died by suicide a few days after the attack, and Kyle DeFreytag and Gunther Hashida died by suicide a few months later. A popular Facebook post claimed that Joe Biden said that several police officers died during the attack, which could be the source of the lie. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/jan/19/facebook-posts/no-joe-biden-never-said-dozens-police-were-killed-/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/jan/19/facebook-p...

tootallgavin 4y ago

Not to mention the Great Lie of brown is black

commandlinefan 4y ago

My teenage son was shocked when I told him that none of the three people Kyle Rittenhouse shot were black, and didn't believe me at first until he googled it (and even google showed, on every link, that both of the people he killed and the one he wounded were white). He told his friends, and they didn't believe him until they googled it.

sethjr5rtfgh 4y ago
fortran77 4y ago
See this story: https://komonews.com/news/nation-world/false-info-about-rittenhouse-victims-posted-to-james-madison-university-instagram-account https://komonews.com/news/nation-world/false-info-about-ritt...

munk-a 4y ago

Be careful with your wording here - the suicide of Officer Smith, at least, has been pretty unambiguously tied directly back to trauma suffered on Jan 6th. So while a police officer wasn't directly killed through physical violence on Jan 6th the actions of protestors can be fairly said to have instigated the death of a police officer. I think the big misstatement of the media here was the unrelated natural causes death of an officer (from essentially a stroke) on January 7th - but law enforcement lives were lost due to January 6th.

baryphonic 4y ago
This seems like total post-hoc reasoning like the debunked "violent video games cause real-life violence." Ultimately Officer Smith chose to take his own life; no one made that choice for him. He may have been appalled or traumatized or whatever, but ultimately he's the one who did it. Doesn't make it any less tragic, but it's extremely tenuous absent additional evidence to lay blame at anyone but he himself. If there was some evidence that he was subject to unique abuse and was personally targeted on that day, then maybe there might be some merit. But of the officers who were there, he experienced roughly what the other officers did, and he was the only one to commit suicide.
- munk-a 4y ago
  Sorry, I had omitted sourcing in my original comment but here: > Dr. Jonathan Arden, the former Chief Medical Examiner of the District of Columbia was hired by Smith's widow as part of her lawsuit to have her husband's suicide ruled "in the line of duty". His report stated that the "acute, precipitating event that caused the death of Officer Smith was his occupational exposure to the traumatic events he suffered on January 6, 2021".[1] 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jeffrey_L._Smith https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jeffrey_L._Smith
  - jtbayly 4y ago
    - weakfish 4y ago
      Er… that’s quite a large jump in reasoning
    - happytoexplain 4y ago
      What is outrageous about investigating a person's motivations/psychology, and why does it become more outrageous if that person is deceased at the time of the investigation? You may disagree with the conclusion for some reason, but it seems like standard practice.

hbn 4y ago

Ask around and be horrified as to how many people confidently think Kyle Rittenhouse shot one or more people who were 1. unarmed 2. black (edit: I see now someone made the above point a few minutes before i finished typing my message, but I suppose that goes to show how widespread this myth is) Conservatives get the brunt of blame for "conspiracy theories" and "disinformation" these days, and while I won't deny it doesn't happen (like it has for years), the left has just as much, if not more that I hear every day, but they never realize or take accountability for it because they have the popular narrative that runs all major corporations and the greater internet.

vkou 4y ago
What's really horrifying is how many people seem unaware that the people he shot were under the impression that they were trying to stop an active shooter. You know, do that good-guy-with-a-gun thing, while acting on initially (but not eventually) incorrect information. It's quite likely that if he were the one gunned down, and not the other way around, the people who did so would have walked, too.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  > the people he shot were under the impression that they were trying to stop an active shooter. I'm still unaware of that. Do you have a reference?
  - vkou 4y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenosha_unrest_shooting#Second_confrontation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenosha_unrest_shooting#Second... At this point in time, shots had been fired, Rittenhouse shot and killed a man, and was identified by the crowd as an active shooter. Huber was trying to disarm Rittenhouse, when he was shot and killed. This happened in front of Grosskreutz, who at this point had every reason to believe that Rittenhouse was an active shooter (And was then shot and injured by Rittenhouse). Since in an active shooter situation, both the 'good guy with a gun' and 'the good guy without a gun' can't sit around and wait for eight months for a jury trial to find the active shooter to actually be innocent, both Huber and Grosskreutz reacted rather reasonably. It seems to me that legally, nobody, except maybe Rosenbaum (Who was dead by the time of the events of the second confrontation) was in the wrong in that whole situation. It's all 'good guys with a gun' shooting at eachother because sweet fuckin' Jesus, nobody ever has all the facts about who was justified about killing whom when there's a public gunfight happening.

sethjr5rtfgh 4y ago

bloaf 4y ago

Quillette is cynically using the exact same "social-panic" tactics they're criticizing to create exactly your conclusion. The Q article has exactly two complaints about the facts reported by the media: 1. The media claimed bodies were unearthed, when in fact only scans were taken. 2. The media claimed there were mass graves, when in fact scans only detected masses of individual graves. However, in "social-panic" style, conservatives are taking these two quibbles over terminology and turning them into an Alex Jones-esque conspiracy to deny the graves existence altogether. Note also the subtle racism in the article, where they compare a hypothetical instant-response to the murder of white children to the "very odd" response of the first nation people. The implication being that first nations people are incompetent, uncaring, or untrustworthy by not immediately doing a certain kind of investigation.

Cupertino95014 4y ago
> The media claimed bodies were unearthed This is not a "quibble." It's a major falsehood.
- bloaf 4y ago
  Unearth can be used in a literal sense, which in this case is false. It can also be used in a figurative sense, which in this case is almost certainly true.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - UIUC_06 4y ago
    Don't get too dizzy from all that spinning around. So do you really believe everyone in Canada read that and thought "Oh, they're using the word in a figurative sense! Never mind." If something is, by definition, in the earth and a story says it was "unearthed" it's sorta reasonable to believe it was dug up.
    - munk-a 4y ago

Comevius 4y ago

To be fair 5 officers died not long after the attack. Brian Sidnick was pepper sprayed twice and died a day later suffering two strokes. Howard Liebengood and Jeffrey Smith died by suicide a few days after the attack, and Kyle DeFreytag and Gunther Hashida died by suicide a few months later. A popular Facebook post claimed that Joe Biden said that several police officers died during the attack, which could be the source of the lie. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/jan/19/facebook-posts/no-joe-biden-never-said-dozens-police-were-killed-/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/jan/19/facebook-p...