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No One's Supposed To Know Much About Seattle's Autonomous Zone
Conservative Media Is Outright Lying About SeattleBy Mark Sumner
On the ground:
... City officials have helped to make sure that services within the area are continuing, and that sanitation supplies are secure. Seattle’s police chief has continued to express frustration, particularly after police deserted and boarded up a precinct house, but the perimeter of the “zone” has largely remained open for people to come and go, and is free of the lines of heavily armored forces seen around protests nationwide. For the most part, local officials seem content to simply wait, so long as the area stays peaceful.
But peaceful is not what Fox News or OAN viewers are seeing, what visitors to right-wing blogs are reading, or what listeners to the vast array of right-wing radio stations are hearing. On those sources, the zone is not a small area where people are distributing free pizza and constructing a somewhat pitiful community garden—it’s a hotbed of violence where buildings are burning and people are dying.
To support that position, Fox News hasn’t just been making up stories—it’s been manufacturing images and video. As the Seattle Times reports, Fox has “digitally altered” images to make the situation in the area seem dire. That includes putting together elements from multiple images to create a misleading collage, lifting signs and symbols from one area to impose them on another, and it means that many of the images Fox is using to present the image of chaos in Seattle … aren’t even from Seattle.
Images that appear to show masked and armed men inside the zone are in fact composites taken on different dates and in different places. Burning buildings are actually from shots taken in St. Paul during the first days of the protests there. Some of the pictures Fox has merged together in their “coverage” of the current Seattle are actually two weeks old—or elements from two-week old pictures have been inserted into current scenes to make the situation appear worse than it is. Fox has also continued to report, and other sources have repeated, claims that businesses inside the zone are being extorted for protection payments, even after the police chief in Seattle investigated these claims and found nothing to them. The protesters within the zone are anarchists in the sense that there is no formal leadership, which has led to numerous voices claiming to speak for the group and issue various lists of demands (some of which have appeared on Daily Kos). But the most prominent demands of those in the zone are a defunding of the Seattle police, charges against police involved in violence toward Black people, reparations for past victims of police violence, and a dismissal of charges against protesters. In the last few days, representatives from the police have met with some of those inside the zone in hopes of finding points of agreement.
But peaceful is not what Fox News or OAN viewers are seeing, what visitors to right-wing blogs are reading, or what listeners to the vast array of right-wing radio stations are hearing. On those sources, the zone is not a small area where people are distributing free pizza and constructing a somewhat pitiful community garden—it’s a hotbed of violence where buildings are burning and people are dying.
To support that position, Fox News hasn’t just been making up stories—it’s been manufacturing images and video. As the Seattle Times reports, Fox has “digitally altered” images to make the situation in the area seem dire. That includes putting together elements from multiple images to create a misleading collage, lifting signs and symbols from one area to impose them on another, and it means that many of the images Fox is using to present the image of chaos in Seattle … aren’t even from Seattle.
Images that appear to show masked and armed men inside the zone are in fact composites taken on different dates and in different places. Burning buildings are actually from shots taken in St. Paul during the first days of the protests there. Some of the pictures Fox has merged together in their “coverage” of the current Seattle are actually two weeks old—or elements from two-week old pictures have been inserted into current scenes to make the situation appear worse than it is. Fox has also continued to report, and other sources have repeated, claims that businesses inside the zone are being extorted for protection payments, even after the police chief in Seattle investigated these claims and found nothing to them. The protesters within the zone are anarchists in the sense that there is no formal leadership, which has led to numerous voices claiming to speak for the group and issue various lists of demands (some of which have appeared on Daily Kos). But the most prominent demands of those in the zone are a defunding of the Seattle police, charges against police involved in violence toward Black people, reparations for past victims of police violence, and a dismissal of charges against protesters. In the last few days, representatives from the police have met with some of those inside the zone in hopes of finding points of agreement.
https://crooksandliars.com/2020/06/story-conservatives-are-getting-about?utm_source=social&utm_medium=facebook&utm_content=32038
Four years ago, #Pizzagate showed how online virality is a manipulatable and sustainable by just a few influential social media accounts. When people want to believe a source they decide they want to believe (US Navy reserve officer Jack Posobiec) with no other fact check, such a fabricated network of lies has dangerous results in the real world. We've read of other real world translations of sock organizations, sock individuals and sock causes that sow fearful actions and doubt. This will never end. 2016 networked "active measures" will continue.
A thing called the "power law" doesn't describe the runaway millions on social media; it describes a handful of key nodes on the networks. These super spreaders click "share" and, like the fomenter of Pizzagate, they can redirect the attention of huge swaths of the Internet. They're on every platform. And minds love one dramatic lie more than six boring truths or on the ground facts.
MIT data scientists found that lies and false stories spread six times faster than real ones -- "farther, faster, deeper and more broadly than truth in all categories of information," they said. How useful for authoritarian leaders who want to control huge populations' minds.
Trump is one of these super spreaders. Like Pizzagate in 2016, Trump now turns on Seattle, his bigger beta test of translating his net power to ground in 2020.
We need to support Seattle, its protesters and their Autonomous Zone. More. The Internet is our tool, too. The more we spread this on the ground truth, the more democratic reality comes through.
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