"How I Became Fake News" report from Charlottesville

[ehrnst]

On Saturday morning, I witnessed James Fields smash his car into a crowd of demonstrators, killing Heather Heyer and wounding 19 others. Although I immediately shared the footage with police on the scene, it took me a half-hour to decide to post it publicly. I was concerned about how the footage might be used by the "alt-right" and felt uncomfortable knowing that I had probably filmed someone’s death. I did not want the attention posting the video was likely to bring. I consulted with friends and family, some of whom were also at the counterprotest and some of whom were watching the coverage from outside Charlottesville. They all urged me to share the video, and when I heard from friends that some media outlets were suggesting that it might have been an accident or that the driver might have been attempting to escape an angry mob, I knew I had to post it. The video I took—and the scene I witnessed with my own two eyes—clearly showed the attack was intentional. Fields drove down two empty blocks and plowed straight into the crowd before fleeing in reverse.

...........................

Within the next 24 hours, nearly every major American news network and a variety of international press outlets asked to interview me about the attack. I was too shaken to sleep on Saturday night, but I spent all day Sunday conducting interviews. I tried to give a frank account of what I had seen on Fourth Street and respond clearly to questions about the situation more broadly. I said there was one side and one side alone responsible for the death I witnessed—the Nazis and white supremacists who brought their ideology of violence and hate to our town. It was their man who drove his vehicle into the crowd. I thought these points were straightforward and uncontroversial.

Boy was I wrong.

Hours after an interview I did with Alex Witt of MSNBC, neo-Nazi commentators started posting about me on 4chan, Reddit and YouTube. These crack researchers bragged that they had discovered I worked for the State Department (it’s in my Twitter bio), that I have a connection to George Soros (he very publicly donated to the campaign of my former boss, Tom Perriello), and that I spent time in Africa working in conflict areas (information available in major news outlets).

Desperate to lay blame on anyone besides the alt-right, they seized on these facts to suggest a counter-narrative to the attack, claiming there was no way that someone with my background just happened to be right there to take the video. Even ignoring the fact that someone with my background—raised in Virginia, UVA graduate, lives in Charlottesville, worked to resolve ethnic conflicts overseas, politically progressive—is exactly the kind of person you’d expect to find at a protest against Nazis, their theories were absurd and illogical. They wrote that I was a CIA operative, funded by (choose your own adventure) George Soros, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, the IMF/World Bank, and/or a global Jewish mafia to orchestrate the Charlottesville attack in order to turn the general public against the alt-right. I had staged the attack and then worked with MSNBC and other outlets controlled by the left to spread propaganda. They claimed my ultimate goal was to start a race war that would undermine and then overthrow Donald Trump on behalf of the “Deep State.” (I’m generalizing here as the theories are widely variant and logically inconsistent, and I’m only aware of the small percentage I could be bothered to read.)

As these theories spread, I started receiving hate mail. Some people sent me fairly tame comments on social media like, “God has a special place for you Gilmore,” “you are a lying communist Nazi” and “fuck you cuck.” Others threatened to kill me. One commenter posted that he’d like to torture me to see “the extent of my CIA training.” I was followed and accosted on the street in Charlottesville, and there have been many attempts to hack into my online accounts. One site posted all of my known addresses and family members, including the house I grew up in, where my parents still live.
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By introducing doubt about what happened, even if their theories conflict with one another, these sites make it easier to argue that the Unite the Right rally was not just about white supremacy. In fact, we heard the president say that there were good people who were just there to defend Southern history and culture and peacefully protest removing the Robert E. Lee statue. Just as his equivocation and failure to condemn the alt-right enables and helps grow their twisted movement, the president’s warm embrace of conspiracy theories, rejection of journalistic standards, and propagation of noncredible sources of information embolden and grow the numbers of Americans looking for another explanation besides the uncomfortable truth.

Sometimes the story is not complicated: Nazis are bad, and I just happened to witness one of them commit a terrorist attack. I didn’t want the attention that came with having seen this horrific act, but I will continue to join the millions of Americans speaking out about its undeniable cause.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/21/fake-news-charlottesville-215514

[joeybee12]

1. Knr. This how they operate

This article should be a guide as to how to fight the fascists

[SweetieD]

2. This is their modus operandi.

[underpants]

3. A few days later I saw a FB post using the video to blame the crowd not Fields

I didn't post it on DU. I do post things I hear on talk radio because I think it's important that we know the disinformation and pure bullshit the right is being fed but this was so convoluted that it was ridiculous.

Someone took the video and presented it in Alonzo to establish what the viewer was supposed to see/think. The crowd hit the back of his car with what looked like an umbrella so he justifiably try to get out of there. Then it was shown at full speed. Then there were 20 or so step by step photos.

FB friends of mine (who I served in the Army with) swore it was proof that it wasn't Field's fault. WHAT IF.... you were in a strange town....etc. purebullshit and I spelled it out to them. I've only seen this 'evidence' twice but I'm sure it become legend and lore on RW sites by now.

[PatrickforO]

4. Yep. Introducing doubt works.

It has a history of working.

It worked for big tobacco, oil and gas, coal, pesticides, herbicides, and GMOs.

Why not for nazis?

There's nothing to do but what you are doing: continuing to speak out.

[rurallib]

5. don't forget what they did to John Kerry

[Stryst]

9. Yeah, but unlike big tobaco and big oil

You can uppercut a Nazi. I mean, they chose to put the armband on. And they didn't even get offered fifty creds a week.

[tblue37]

6. K&R for visibility. nt

[mn9driver]

7. This kind of insanity would be rarer, slower and more difficult without the Internet.

It makes a lot of good things possible, but this is part of the dark and evil side of universal web access.
The problem is obvious. The solution, not so much.

[Amaryllis]

14. A young friend of mine is fond of saying the wonderful and terrible thing about the internet is you

can post anything.

[Stryst]

8. Ok, seriously....

If I had friends over at my house smoking weed all the time, and a bunch of cannabis plants growing in my yard, the police would not only arrest me, they'd seize my house.

But 4-chan, Stormfront, and the Daily Stormer LITERALLY tell their users and encourage their users in illegal (and immoral) harassment. WAY before the Nazi thing, 4-chan was already a cress-pit and users regularly engaged in cooperative harassment of people "for lolz". Stormfront has always had user bases encouraging each other to "direct action" as they call it. What they mean is throwing carbolic acid into Planned Parenthood clinics.

When the hell is enough enough?

[heaven05]

10. out of the 66million

that voted for the idiot-boypotus, how many would have liked to have been in Charlottesville to fight decency and the democratic experiment and how many would still do what this terrorist-murderer did with his car? A sizable portion, I AM SURE. These fucks want to see blood running in the streets....period....66 million votes for the idiot boypotus...damn!!!!!!!!!!!

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

11. Typical, and despicable, alt-right techniques of harassment.

And, apparently, little that can be done to stop them. Especially when we have a pResident boosting their confidence and and attempting to normalize them.

[ehrnst]

13. You would need to ask the writer of the piece. (nt)