Tuesday, September 15, 2020

How does democracy recover from the internet/right wing media led intensification of conspiracy?

Politico writes:

MIAMI — George Soros directs a “deep state” global conspiracy network. A Joe Biden win would put America in control of “Jews and Blacks.” The Democratic nominee has a pedophilia problem.

Wild disinformation like this is inundating Spanish-speaking residents of South Florida ahead of Election Day, clogging their WhatsApp chats, Facebook feeds and even radio airwaves at a saturation level that threatens to shape the outcome in the nation’s biggest and most closely contested swing state. 

The sheer volume of conspiracy theories — including QAnon — and deceptive claims are already playing a role in stunting Biden’s growth with Latino voters, who make up about 17 percent of the state’s electorate.

“The onslaught has had an effect,” said Eduardo Gamarra, a pollster and director of the Latino Public Opinion Forum at Florida International University.

“It’s difficult to measure the effect exactly, but the polling sort of shows it and in focus groups it shows up, with people deeply questioning the Democrats, and referring to the ‘deep state’ in particular — that there’s a real conspiracy against the president from the inside,” he said. “There’s a strain in our political culture that’s accustomed to conspiracy theories, a culture that’s accustomed to coup d'etats.”

And  David Roberts tweets:

And he further notes:

I wonder, though:  does Rupert Murdoch have the ability to dampen down QAnon?   As I understand it, Fox News pretty much ignores it, and while it's happy to hype hysteria over THE LEFT WANTS TO KILL US ALL to its mostly elderly audience, promoting the idea that children are being detained underground by devil worshipping Democrats seems just a stretch too far for the network.

But what would happen if the Murdoch family put out the message to its opinion "stars" along the lines "this is getting out of control - people have to believe our conspiracies, but a sensible democracy can't work if people live in complete and utter fantasy land" and told them to actively promote the line that believing QAnon is nuts and has disproved by false predictions so many times that you can't believe a word of it?  Who knows, perhaps they could sell it as a Democrat led conspiracy so extreme as to hurt Trump because it is so nuts?    

I tend to think that a united front from Fox News to attack QAnon at least could not hurt - perhaps giving Republicans cover to come out and call it out themselves.  



 

1 comment:

Not Trampis said...

Why would an idiot who believes in this guff believe what fox News says.

would not they say Fox was now captured