Right-Wing Quick To Spread Lies About Bridge Disaster

 From Charlie Sykes at MSNBC.com:

Early Tuesday morning, a 948-foot containership plowed into Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, which quickly collapsed. Rescue teams spent much of the day searching for victims and survivors. While the region grappled with the human and economic cost of the catastrophe, President Joe Biden and his Cabinet pledged to help local leaders rebuild. 

For most Americans it was a breathtaking disaster and human tragedy. But far-right conspiracy theorists saw it as an opportunity.

In a rapid flood of social media posts, politicians and “pundits” insisted that the disaster could not have simply been an accident. It was somehow Biden’s fault, or the fault of immigrants, or the result of a terrorist attack. Without evidence, they blamed “drug-addled” employees, diversity policies, Israel and even the recent infrastructure bill.

Many of the usual suspects weighed in, moving seamlessly from one big lie to another. Think of this week’s constellation of psychosis as an outgrowth of Bridge Denialism.

Fox News host Maria Bartiromo (whose election lies figured prominently in Dominion’s $787 million defamation lawsuit) tried to link the bridge collapse to what she called “the wide-open border.”Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., who voted against the 2021 infrastructure bill, appeared on Newsmax to complain that the Biden administration did not spend more money on bridge infrastructure. (Perhaps more hypocrisy than denial, but I digress.)

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., took to X to muse: “Is this an intentional attack or an accident?” This despite Baltimore Police Commissioner Richard Worley stating unequivocally that “there is absolutely no indication that there’s any terrorism, or that this was done on purpose.”. . .

None of this dissuaded the right’s most feculent conspiracist, Alex Jones, from declaring the accident an attack. “Looks deliberate to me,” he posted on X. “A cyber-attack is probable. WW3 has already started.”

Lara Logan, the former CBS correspondent who has drifted to the far edges of the fever swamps, was also quick to weigh in. Logan, who once promoted comparisons between Dr. Anthony Fauci and Nazi physician and murderer Josef Mengele, claimed on X that “Multiple intel sources” were telling her that the bridge collapse “was an ‘absolutely brilliant strategic attack’” on U.S. infrastructure. Striking an apocalyptic tone, she claimed with zero evidence that “our intel agencies know” about the attack and that the U.S. has just been divided “along the Mason Dixon line exactly like the Civil War.”

And she, via her unnamed "sources," blamed Barack Obama.

One after another they piled on. Former Trump aide Steve Bannonhinted at foul play: “It’s not right, and I think we need to get the full accounting of this until people say it’s not terrorism.” Right-wing media personality Benny Johnson breathlessly asked his audience: “Is this terrorism? How the hell did this happen? Is this incompetence? Who’s allowing this?”

Kandiss Taylor, who ran for Georgia governor in 2022, also suggested a conspiracy behind the collapse. Taylor — who has claimed “Satan wants to use” Taylor Swift “to elect Joe back into the White House to destroy what’s left of America” — offered no evidence for her bridge theory. Instead, she claimed that she had “watched the video several times.”

“What’s the chance that ship hit the bridge in the exact spot to crumple it up like tinfoil?” she asked. “I don’t believe in coincidences.”

The tragedy also brought racist and antisemitic trolls out of the woodwork. As Media Matters' Matt Gertz noted, blue-checked accounts were quick to try to connect the disaster with Israel. How incredibly predictable.

Other X “influencers” blamed Baltimore’s Black mayor for no other reason, it seems, than he happens to be Black. After Mayor Brandon Scott called for prayers for the victims and their families, a popular right-wing user posted to his 276,000 followers: “This is Baltimore’s DEI mayor commenting on the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge. It’s going to get so, so much worse. Prepare accordingly.” It was a revealing comment in more ways than one.

Well-known MAGA conspiracy-monger Jack Posobiec similarly (and mindlessly) seemed to implicate diversity and inclusion, forwarding a “Titanic” meme on Telegram that used Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s sexual identity to mock DEI policies.

And then there were the commenters whom Maryland journalist Brian Griffiths called, simply, “the ghouls” — like Roger Stone.

Their crudity, along with their cruelty, is the point.

In other words, Tuesday was just another day in the perverse MAGA universe. In this world, any event can be used to spread baseless smears, conspiracy theories, evidence-free attacks, fact-free speculation and lies. All while stoking suspicion, distrust and fear.

18% Believe The Taylor Swift/Deep State Conspiracy

The chart above is from the Monmouth University Poll -- done between February 8th and 12th of a nationwide sample of 902 adults, with a 4.1 point margin of error.

(Click on the image to see a larger version)

The Rich Are Not Smarter Than Us - Many Are Dumber

The following is some of an excellent op-ed by Paul Krugman in The New York Times:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a crank. His views are a mishmash of right-wing fantasies mixed with remnants of the progressive he once was: Bitcoin boosterism, anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, assertions that Prozac causes mass shootings, opposition to U.S. support for Ukraine, but also favorable mention for single-payer health care. But for his last name, nobody would be paying him any attention — and despite that last name, he has zero chance of winning the Democratic presidential nomination.

Yet now that Ron DeSantis’s campaign (slogan: “woke woke immigrants woke woke”) seems to be on the skids, Kennedy is suddenly getting support from some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley. Jack Dorsey, who founded Twitter, has endorsed him, while some other prominent tech figures have been holding fund-raisers on his behalf. Elon Musk, who is in the process of destroying what Dorsey built, hosted him for a Twitter spaces event.

So what does all this tell us about the role of technology billionaires in modern American political life? The other day I wrote about how a number of tech bros have become recession and inflation truthers, insisting that the improving economic news is fake. (I neglected to mention Dorsey’s 2021 declaration that hyperinflation was “happening.” How’s that going?) What the Silicon Valley Kennedy boomlet shows is that this is actually part of a broader phenomenon. . . .

One sad but true fact of life is that most of the time conventional wisdom and expert opinion are right; yet there can be big personal and social payoffs to finding the places where they’re wrong. The trick to achieving these payoffs is to balance on the knife edge between excessive skepticism of unorthodoxy and excessive credulity. . . .

On the other hand, reflexive contrarianism is, as the economist Adam Ozimek puts it, a “brain rotting drug.” Those who succumb to that drug “lose the ability to judge others they consider contrarian, become unable to tell good evidence from bad, a total unanchoring of belief that leads them to cling to low quality contrarian fads.”

Tech bros appear to be especially susceptible to brain-rotting contrarianism. As I wrote in my newsletter, their financial success all too often convinces them that they’re uniquely brilliant, able to instantly master any subject, without any need to consult people who’ve actually worked hard to understand the issues. And in many cases they became wealthy by defying conventional wisdom, which predisposes them to believe that such defiance is justified across the board.

Add to this the fact that great wealth makes it all too easy to surround yourself with people who tell you what you want to hear, validating your belief in your own brilliance — a sort of intellectual version of the emperor’s new clothes.

And to the extent that contrarian tech bros talk to anyone else, it’s to one another. The tech entrepreneur and writer Anil Dash tells us that “it’s impossible to overstate the degree to which many big tech C.E.O.s and venture capitalists are being radicalized by living within their own cultural and social bubble.” He calls this phenomenon of venture capitalism “VC QAnon,” a concept that I find helps explain many of the strange positions taken by tech billionaires lately.

Let me add a personal speculation. It may seem odd to see men of vast wealth and influence buying into conspiracy theories about elites running the world. Aren’t they the elites? But I suspect that famous, wealthy men may be especially frustrated by their inability to control events, or even stop people from ridiculing them on the internet. So rather than accepting that the world is a complicated place nobody can control, they’re susceptible to the idea that there are secret cabals out to get them.

There’s historical precedent here. Watching Elon Musk’s descent, I know that I’m not alone in thinking of Henry Ford, who remains in many ways the ultimate example of a famous, influential entrepreneur, and who also became a rabid, conspiracy-theorizing anti-Semite. He even paid for a reprinting of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a forgery that was probably promoted by the Russian secret police. (Time is a flat circle.)

In any case, what we’re seeing now is something remarkable. Arguably, the craziest faction in U.S. politics right now isn’t red-hatted blue-collar guys in diners, it’s technology billionaires living in huge mansions and flying around on private jets. At one level it’s quite funny. Unfortunately, however, these people have enough money to do serious damage.

Right-Wingers Blame Trans Woman For Uvalde Murders

 

Right-wingers don't want to admit that this country has too many guns and gun laws that are far too lax, so they look for other excuses. Sadly, they have now decided to blame transgendered people. It's a stupid and bigoted theory, but any conspiracy theory is better for these nuts that facing the truth.

The following is part of an op-ed at MSNBC.com by Katelyn Burns:

It didn’t take long after an 18-year-old brutally murdered 19 schoolchildren and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, before the internet misinformation machine cranked into action. Starting on 4chan, a false rumor began to spread that the school shooter was a trans woman named Sam. Right-wing troll Candace Owens continued to push the false narrative long after it had been disproved. The online chatter even grew to the point where far-right Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona claimed the shooter was trans in a since-deleted tweet.

The woman targeted by the false accusation eventually had to post a photo of herself holding a sign with the date, which was after the shooter had died by police fire during the attack, to prove she was not the shooter. Later that evening, a teenage trans girl in El Paso was accosted by a group of men who taunted her with the internet rumor, insisting the Uvalde shooter was one of her “sisters.”

This is not the first time a false narrative that a shooter was a trans woman has quickly taken hold following a mass murder. In 2015, a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs, Colorado, was shot up by a gunman who killed three people and injured nine. Not long after the shooting, the far right Gateway Pundit reported that the shooter was registered as female on his voter registration card, and an internet conspiracy theory was born. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz repeated the rumor in a statement to the press, claiming the shooter was a “transgendered leftist.”

In 2018, a cisgender woman carried out a shooting at YouTube’s headquarters in San Bruno, California, wounding three people before dying by suicide. The internet transphobia mob quickly sprang into action, falsely claiming that cis women aren’t capable of perpetrating violence on that scale and concluding that the shooter must have been trans.

They pored over hours of her videos, picking apart her Persian appearance and voice and deeming both to be inadequately feminine to belong to someone born female. This conspiracy theory gained much traction on gender-critical and far-right Twitter, reaching higher profile figures like far-right activist Laura Loomer, who then spread the false rumor to their followers. After a deep investigation that involved speaking with San Bernardino police and the coroner’s office, and obtaining the shooter’s immigration documents, I could conclude that she was not transgender at all.

And now the Uvalde school shooting can be added to a — growing, if we are to be realistic — list of gun atrocities falsely attributed to a trans person.

This keeps happening over and over again because of the larger project of monstering trans people, particularly trans women, that much of the far right and its gender-critical allies have engaged in for the past several years. . . .

The rhetoric has only increased over the past several years. In 2018, gender-critical feminist Sheila Jeffreys told a U.K. Parliament panel that trans women were “parasites.” As the outrageous claims built, some American conservative politicians decided to take action. In Texas, where this week’s shooting occurred, Gov. Gregg Abbott and his attorney general Ken Paxton have sought to essentially make it illegal to be a trans kid or teenager. They’ve deemed providing a trans minor with trans health care a form of child abuse, meaning loving parents who support their children’s well-being can have their kids taken from their homes by the state as a result.

The El Paso teen trans girl who was assaulted by a group of grown men on Tuesday tried to report the incident to her local police department, but the police refused to file an assault report. The 17-year-old tried to contact a local LGBTQ support center but was turned away because the center had stopped providing services to trans people; it became too risky after Abbott’s bill went into effect. She was eventually forced to contact an Indiana-based LGBTQ support line, which also tried to help her report the assault to the police, who again declined to take a report.

The hostile environment against trans people, so often fostered in far-right chat rooms and social media platforms, is amplified largely by right-wing and centrist media. It’s helped create fertile ground for open transphobia, where trans people are easily blamed for every societal ill, even a deadly school shooting. You don’t get to this place where trans people are consistently falsely slandered and denied legal and emotional support through civilized or informed debate. You get here by demonizing a tiny, near powerless minority.

That’s been the endgame for most of the media makers who push these ridiculous transphobic narratives. Let’s keep that in mind the next time you hear some outrageous story about something a trans person allegedly did.

The Most (& Least) Likely To Believe Conspiracy Theories

 

The charts above are from the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between March 26th and 29th of a nationwide sample of 1,500 adults, with a 3 point margin of error. You can go here to get the numbers, but the charts above show those who are most (and least) likely to believe in these three popular conspiracy theories. Conservatives and QAnon believers are most likely to believe in all three, and Biden voters are least likely.

Fox Viewers Are More Likely To Believe Conspiracies

 It has been known for a while now that Fox News viewers are more ignorant of what is really happening in this country. That has been shown by several respected polls and studies. That's because Fox News doesn't bring viewers all the news -- just the news they think makes Republicans look good.

But it is even worse than that. As the charts above show (from the Washington Post / University of Maryland Poll), the Republicans that watch Fox News are more prone to believe conspiracies than Republicans that don't watch Fox -- and the difference is statistically significant.

Fox doesn't just cherry pick the news it likes, it also gives air time to conspiracy theories from right-wing Republicans. This makes their viewers not only ignorant, but conspiracy theory believers. The truth is that Fox is not a news channel. It is a propaganda channel for the Republican Party.

The Seven Craziest Lies About The COVID-19 Vaccines

The social medias are rife with lies and conspiracy theories about the vaccines for COVID-19. PolitiFact has gathered (and exposes) the seven craziest bits of misinformation about the vaccines. 

Here’s a look at seven scary things that are not in the vaccines:

1. Aluminum that "will kill" the brain.

Aluminum. They use it in pickup trucks, food containers and antiperspirants. But in the COVID-19 vaccines? No.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that small amounts of aluminum — specifically aluminum salts — have been used in vaccines since the 1930s as an adjuvant, which helps elicit a stronger immune response from the body.

But none of the three COVID-19 vaccines currently being used in the U.S. — Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson, all of which have publicly accessible ingredient lists — contain any aluminum.

As for other vaccines, research has shown their levels of aluminum are so low that they can't easily be absorbed by the body, let alone the brain. There has been no evidence of the aluminum in vaccines causing illness or developmental disorders.

2. Nanoparticles that will help people "locate you" via 5G networks.

While your cell phone can help Big Brother, or your mother, locate you via 5G networks, the vaccines cannot. 

Yet some social media users likened the bubbles of fat in the vaccine to the sort of tracking microchips implanted under a pet’s skin. That’s a lot of creepy nonsense.

There is no evidence that the COVID-19 vaccines contain technology similar to pet microchips. The lipid nanoparticles used in some of the vaccines are called "nanoparticles" because they are very, very small. They have nothing to do with 5G networks or tracking technology.

3. "RNA-modifying transhumanism nanotechnology."

This baseless conspiracy theory says that the shots include a technology that changes "what it is to be human." The vaccines don’t contain any such thing.

"None of the vaccines contain nanotechnology of any sort, let alone 'transhumanism nanotechnology,’ which isn’t even a thing," Mark Lynas, a visiting fellow at the Alliance for Science and Cornell University, told PolitiFact. 

"RNA" and the prefix "nano" are valid scientific terms, though. Here’s what they mean:

"RNA" — ribonucleic acid — is a molecule that carries coded genetic information to a cell and a messenger form of RNA is used in the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to send information about the coronavirus to the body’s cells to teach the immune system to identify and prepare to fight off a COVID-19 infection. (Spoiler alert:It does not modify a person’s DNA or RNA.) The Johnson & Johnson vaccine uses a disabled adenovirus to deliver instructions to do the same.

"Nano," as we said earlier, is a term widely used to describe things that are very tiny, and scientists use the prefix more specifically to refer to things on the scale of individual atoms.

4. A "Trypanosoma Parasite" that is one of the causes of AIDS

A chilling, grainy black-and-white image being shared on social media has been described as a "Trypanosoma Parasite" purportedly observed in Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine. Several variants of the parasite, internet users claimed, are lethal and are one of many causes of acquired immune deficiency syndrome or AIDS. 

This is erroneous, on all counts.

Dr. Bobbi Pritt, the director of clinical parasitology at the Mayo Clinic, told us the blurry image likely represents an out-of-focus non-cellular component of the vaccine and doesn’t show a Trypanosoma cruzi or any other parasite. 

As for the claim that this particular parasite causes AIDS, that’s also wrong, she said. 

"The only thing that causes AIDS is an infection with the human immunodeficiency virus," she said, "and this cannot be acquired through the Pfizer vaccine." 

5. Living microorganisms that can "germinate to cause sickness" with "all sorts of uncontrollable byproducts."

A popular video claimed that the Pfizer vaccine contains "particles that could germinate and cause illness" — and that vitamin supplements could stop this from happening. You can bet someone is selling those supplements online.

There’s no truth to this one either. The ingredients for Pfizer vaccines are chemical components — not living organisms. 

"Contamination with spores or other microbial material can theoretically happen during production of any biologic, including vaccines," said Volker Mai, associate professor in the epidemiology department at the University of Florida. "However, quality control is extensive and monitoring occurs continuously. Thus, it is highly unlikely that any contaminated batch would make it into the market."

6. Something that makes magnets stick to you

A vaccine turning you into the Marvel villain Magneto? That sounds terrifying (unless that’s what you wanted.) But don’t worry, the COVID-19 vaccines won’t make you more attractive to magnets.

Social media users have shared videos that appear to show magnets sticking to people’s arms where they say they were injected, and claimed this as proof the shots have microchips in them. 

But medical experts called the claim utter nonsense. 

Al Edwards, an associate professor in biomedical technology at the University of Reading in England, told Newsweek that because vaccine’s ingredients are some of the same things that are in the human body, "there is simply no way that injecting a tiny fragment of this material" could make it respond to a magnet. "Most food is made of similar molecules, and eating food doesn’t make people magnetic," he said. 

A similar claim cites a video showing what looks like small balls connecting and growing on their own. The disturbing clip was described as the COVID-19 vaccine’s reaction once it hits the bloodstream. 

That’s wrong. The video was actually from a 2015 science experiment by the Stanford Complexity Group, an initiative to bring complexity science to a wider audience, that shows self-organizing wires, which is still weird. 

One more time for the people in the back: None of the COVID-19 vaccines contain microchips or metals.

7. "Graphene oxide," which is "toxic to the human body and causes a number of problems."

An incendiary video that speaks of murder claims that Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine is dangerously packed with something called graphene oxide. 

A Pfizer spokesperson told PolitiFact that while graphene oxide — a material made by the oxidation of graphite — is used in some vaccines, it is not used at Pfizer and is not in its COVID-19 vaccine.None of the listed ingredients is another name for graphene oxide, and the material doesn’t appear in ingredient lists for the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines. 

Ron Johnson Is A Prolific Liar And Conspiracy Theorist

There are a lot of bad Republicans in the United States Senate, and all of them are willing to lie to get what they want.

But Ron Johnson of Wisconsin may be the worst of all of them. There is nothing that he's not willing to lie about, and he's a big spreader of conspiracy theories.

Here's how Steve Been of MSNBC.com describes Johnson's dedication to spreading misinformation:

It was nearly five months ago when the New York Times profiled Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), noting that the far-right senator "has become the Republican Party's foremost amplifier of conspiracy theories and disinformation." The article added that Johnson is now "an all-access purveyor of misinformation on serious issues such as the pandemic and the legitimacy of American democracy."

On a nearly daily basis, the Wisconsin Republican proves the thesis true.

As we've discussed, when it comes to assessing Johnson's propensity for peddling nonsense, it's generally wise to rely on separate categories. The senator has, for example, repeatedly made ridiculous and potentially dangerous comments about COVID-19, vaccines, and the threats posed by the pandemic. He's also been cavalier about his indifference to an FBI warning that he was "a target of Russian disinformation" during the last election cycle.

He's also denied ever having "talked about the election being stolen," despite ample evidence pointing in the opposite direction. There's also the problem, of course, of the senator relying on ugly rhetoricabout immigration when discussing what he sees as efforts to "remake the demographics of America."

But Johnson's ideas about the Jan. 6 attack are especially striking. . . .

While discussing the Capitol attack with event attendees, Johnson said, "I don't say this publicly, but are you watching what's happening in Michigan? ... So you think the FBI had fully infiltrated the militias in Michigan, but they don't know squat about what was happening on January 6th or what was happening with these groups? I'd say there is way more to the story."

The reference to Michigan militias was a likely reference to last year's alleged kidnapping plot targeting Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D), involving right-wing radicals whose group had been infiltrated by undercover law-enforcement officials.

By Johnson's reasoning, if the FBI knew what the alleged would-be kidnappers in Michigan were up to, then it stands to reason that the FBI must've had secret knowledge of the Jan. 6 attack, too. Why? Just because.

Though this certainly dovetails with assorted Republican conspiracy theories about the assault on the Capitol, with some fringe lawmakers suggesting last month that federal law enforcement may have even been involved with organizing the pro-Trump riot.

As is usually the case, the missing ingredient is evidence. The right certainly likes the idea of shifting blame away from the insurrectionist rioters, but the conservative conspiracy theorists have nothing but their own satisfying hunches to work with.

What's more, with Johnson, it's part of a larger pattern. Circling back to our earlier coverage, it was in May when the Wisconsinite arguedthat the violent riot was a largely "peaceful protest," which was obviously absurd. Two months earlier, he insisted there "was no violence" on the north side of the Capitol during the Jan. 6 attack -- a claim that was quickly discredited.

Two weeks earlier, the senator praised the rioters' patriotism and boasted that he was never concerned for his safety on Jan. 6 -- though he added he would've felt differently if the mob was made up of Black Lives Matter protesters.

That came on the heels of Johnson appearing at a Senate hearing, reading an item from a right-wing blog, and peddling the ridiculous idea that the pro-Trump forces that launched the attack on the Capitol secretly included "fake Trump protesters."

Before that, the Wisconsinite falsely argued that armed insurrectionists may not have actually been armed, reality notwithstanding.

But what's especially interesting about this new reporting is the fact that Johnson apparently didn't know his comments would reach the public. Indeed, he literally told the group, in reference to his FBI ideas, "I don't say this publicly."

Some may wonder at times whether assorted GOP conspiracy theorists actually believe what they say. It's possible they know better, but peddle foolishness because it bolsters fundraising, rallies the base, and helps raise the conspiracy theorists' public profile.

But it appears that Ron Johnson, whom Republicans put in charge of the Senate Homeland Security Committee for six years, genuinely believes his own strange ideas.