8.02.2020

Misinformation


Misinformation

I saw references to this post popping up on my Eastern Indiana Teabagistan Twitter and Facebook feeds.

“Left-wing activists bring a stack of Bibles to burn in front of the federal courthouse in Portland,” claimed Ian Miles Cheong on Twitter Saturday.

The post featured a video which showed protestors with “Black Lives Matter” signs tossing bibles into a raging bonfire. The video, which has gone viral, had more than 1.8 million views and thousands of retweets.

“Now we move to the book burning phase,” said Donald Trump Jr. in a tweet Saturday. “I’m pretty sure ANTIFA doesn’t actually stand for what they say it stands for. Maybe just remove the anti part of [their] name and it’s perfect,” he wrote.
and 
The fire was later put out by members of Moms United for Black Lives Matter, who doused the flames with bottles of water and stomped on the embers, according to KOIN 6, a local CBS affiliate television station in Portland.

From this news story it looks like the Flag and a Bible burning did happen but there is no mention of
"stacks of bibles".  Based on what I can find, there was one flag and one bible thrown into a fire. It was a BLM protest so it was probably done by a left-wing activist but there is no proof of that. It could have been a right-winger. Protesting Moms put the fire out.

The main takeaway from the news story was that the protests were mostly peaceful on the first night that federal troops were not there.

Ian_Miles_Cheong
 who looks to be a right-winger and somewhat shadowy, was just stirring shit up. He takes the "a bible", turns it into a "stack of bibles" and places blame on left-wing activists.   (More on Cheong  Cheong isn't on American Soil.) 

His tweet was picked up by the NY POST, who use the tweet for the base of the story then use the KOIN 6 quote to add legitimacy.

Then Trump changes it to "BOOK BURNING" and adds  "ANTIFA"

So now a night of "most peaceful protests since federal troops were removed" has been changed to an image of "flag, bible, and book burning by Antifa" just to scare the hell out of rural Christians in an effort to get them to cling to Trump.


Democracy doesn't stand a chance in the age of world-wide social media.

tnb

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