Molly Jong-Fast: We're Witnessing the Post-Truth Midterms

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Tweet text:

VANITY FAIR

@VanityFair
·
Follow
The current midterms cycle has been awash in lies—from the results of the 2020 election to litter boxes to the assault on Paul Pelosi—and an Elon-owned Twitter could further fuel the right’s alternate reality.

Read the latest from @MollyJongFast:

vanityfair.com
We’re Witnessing the Post-Truth Midterms
This cycle has been awash in lies—about everything from the last election to litter boxes to the assault on Paul Pelosi—and an Elon-owned Twitter could further fuel the right’s alternate reality.
6:20 PM · Nov 4, 2022

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/11/the-post-truth-midterms-2022-nancy-pelosi-elon-musk

No paywall
https://archive.ph/e0vD7

On Friday, in the middle of the night, a 42-year-old man broke into the San Francisco home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “Where is Nancy?” David DePape yelled. His intended target was in Washington, DC, but her husband, Paul Pelosi, was home. Pelosi managed to get into the bathroom and call 911. The police arrived at 2:27 a.m., in time to witness DePape assaulting the 82-year-old Pelosi with a hammer. DePape is said to have also had a second hammer, along with a roll of tape, white rope, a pair of rubber and cloth gloves, and zip ties. His plan, he reportedly told authorities, was to hold Nancy Pelosi hostage; he’d let her go if she told “the truth,” and break her kneecaps if she “lied.”

The reality of what happened seems clear: A man consumed by conspiracy theories, ranging from the 2020 election to Covid vaccines, targeted the female speaker of the House, a political figure who had been long demonized by the right. It looks like violent rhetoric, alongside rampant misinformation, led to actual violence. But on a corner of the internet—the right-wing echo chamber—the most rational explanation for events was quickly drowned out by wild and reckless claims. And there’s potential for the conspiracies swirling in that chamber to get an even bigger audience now that Elon Musk is running Twitter.

On Sunday morning, around 8:15 a.m., Musk responded to one of Hillary Clinton’s tweets by sharing a story from the Santa Monica Observer, a site “notorious for publishing false news,” as the Los Angeles Times has described it. The story Musk shared, according to The Washington Post, “unspooled a lurid tale about nudists and a tryst gone terribly wrong” and “speculated about Pelosi’s medical condition and the security at the home he shares with the House speaker in San Francisco’s tony Pacific Heights neighborhood.”

Such is the trajectory of information today: The world’s richest man, using a global communications platform he just bought for $44 billion, promotes a story featuring baseless claims to his more than 112 million followers. Musk wasn’t alone in muddying the waters around the Pelosi assault, with Senator Ted Cruz of Texas using Twitter to cast doubt on the motivation for the attack, thus entering the murky post-truth zone where the GOP base operates in its own alternate reality. (Meanwhile, DePape faces several state charges, including attempted murder, residential burglary, and assault with a deadly weapon, to which he’s pleaded not guilty. He’s also facing federal charges, including attempted kidnapping, to which he has not yet entered a plea in court.)

*snip*