"War of the Worlds" - Was 1938 Panic Itself a Hoax?

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Re: "War of the Worlds" - Was 1938 Panic Itself a Hoax?

Postby JackRiddler » Thu Nov 02, 2017 12:30 pm

Spiro C. Thiery » Thu Nov 02, 2017 8:40 am wrote:How about "9/11 so shocked Americans that it changed everything, leading them to acquiesce to all kind of..." While that may have been the (relatively enough) plausible scenario that presented itself, I know far too many people like myself who were anything but shocked and immediately quite opposed to everything that came after.


Yes, this is more in the vein of what is being argued by Schwartz. The hoax was not in the simulated Martian invasion fooling people out to grab their rifles and run into the street, which probably did not happen, but in the exaggerated claims afterward concerning how "the people" had reacted. The hysteria about the non-hysteria.

Now that you mention it, pretty much any post-election spin plays the same game. Soon as enough votes are counted (or "counted") to predict a certain result (or "result,") any notion of there having been a competition and coalition building between many voices is abandoned, the result is equated with some notional "center" or even a unified "people" or "America," and a hegemonic top-down interpretation of why this singular collective chose what it did is immediately laid on.

(This was obviously the case with Trump. Struggling, uneducated, disaffected, white, former steelworkers in Wisconsin -- the only voters who count, however notional -- having had enough of Clintons and the totalitarian societal dominance of Marxist identity politics, were seduced into voting for the "populist" "isolationist" "businessman" Trump by Russian fakenews memes on Facebook. Voila!)
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Re: "War of the Worlds" - Was 1938 Panic Itself a Hoax?

Postby 82_28 » Thu Nov 02, 2017 8:57 pm

Here's a perhaps nascent example? It ain't happened yet.

Here’s why right-wingers think a new civil war will begin this Saturday

“Alt right” Facebook groups, subreddits and Twitter groups are ablaze with dire warnings of a nationwide uprising of U.S. anti-fascist forces on Saturday — which they believe will kick off a second civil war.

The Guardian‘s Jason Wilson said that conspiracy-mongering conservatives are girding for a national spasm of violence in which anti-fascists are “planning to kill every single Trump voter, Conservative and gun owner.”

Commenters on posts about the supposed uprising are venting their apprehension and anger with responses like, “One more threat against white people and I swear to God I’m going to take a go**amn car and run over every fucking one of them” — a reference to the murder of anti-racist protester Heather Heyer by an white nationalist in Charlottesville, VA.

Wilson said that hundreds of Facebook groups are posting dire warnings to their members — in spite of the fact that no major anti-fascist groups in the country have any plans for Saturday.

“The whole thing rests on some very slender reeds, according to Spencer Sunshine, who recently wrote a report on the theories for the far right-monitoring group Political Research Associates,” Wilson explained. “In the conspiracy underground on YouTube, he explains, there has been talk that ‘there was going to be a civil war’ starting in November for some months.”

Wilson said that the rumors kicked into high gear after a protest by Refuse Fascism, a small group with connections to the Revolutionary Communist Party. Protesters blocked a freeway and waved signs that said, “Nov. 4 it begins.”

A Facebook group called Vets Before Illegals posted a video, announcing, “Antifa sets a date for civil war,” and then said, “On their website, they are calling for an open civil war that will start in November.”

The video went viral on the far-right, priming conspiracy theorists and true believers for an all-out assault on the public, police and the government.

The story made its way to Alex Jones, whose InfoWars website and radio broadcasts reach millions of conspiracy believers around the country.

Sunshine told Wilson that Jones has become a kind of conspiracy clearing-house, where the Texas-based provocateur “harvests other people’s theories” and rebrands them to fit his own narrative, then pushes them out to his eager audience.

Conservative blog Gateway Pundit’s Lucien Wintrich came in for a special drubbing from Wilson. Wintrich based an alarmist article for the website featuring a tweet from a phony account that promised to “behead white parents” on Saturday.

Caught spreading the phony post, Wintrich declined to back off the article’s message, saying, “The radical left is always making jokes about killing white people. What would happen if I made a joke about killing all black parents? That would be a national headline.”

When pressed, Wintrich admitted that he does not expect violent leftists to revolt on Saturday.

His bogus article contained a lengthy screed on “Antifa” and the movement’s values. When Wilson asked Wintrich upon what he based his research, Wintrich snapped, “I did go to school at Bard College. I received my education around people who I’m sure are on terrorist watch lists as socialist or communist extremists.”

Refuse Fascism, for their part, told Sunshine that they’re a nonviolent group whose protests are aimed at the Trump administration, not right-wing activists or local police. They attend some of the same protests as Antifa groups, but share no formal ties.


https://www.rawstory.com/2017/11/heres- ... -saturday/
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Re: "War of the Worlds" - Was 1938 Panic Itself a Hoax?

Postby JackRiddler » Thu Nov 02, 2017 9:51 pm

Yes. They may well decide that their vigilance prevented it!
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.

To Justice my maker from on high did incline:
I am by virtue of its might divine,
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Re: "War of the Worlds" - Was 1938 Panic Itself a Hoax?

Postby 82_28 » Thu Nov 02, 2017 10:15 pm

JackRiddler » Thu Nov 02, 2017 5:51 pm wrote:Yes. They may well decide that their vigilance prevented it!


I know right? People in comments were wondering why the "good guys with the guns" couldn't stop the murders in that WalMart near Denver yesterday in this story about how all the other people with the guns hampered the police response.

Shoppers pulled guns in response to Thornton Walmart shooting, but police say that slowed investigation

http://www.denverpost.com/2017/11/02/sh ... -shooting/

Of course the answer was (in comments) shit like this:

Ssssss

2 hours ago

As I see it, everyone with a CC permit successfully defended themselves.
There is no me. There is no you. There is all. There is no you. There is no me. And that is all. A profound acceptance of an enormous pageantry. A haunting certainty that the unifying principle of this universe is love. -- Propagandhi
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Re: "War of the Worlds" - Was 1938 Panic Itself a Hoax?

Postby Spiro C. Thiery » Fri Nov 03, 2017 10:58 am

JackRiddler » Yesterday, 18:30 wrote:
Spiro C. Thiery » Thu Nov 02, 2017 8:40 am wrote:How about "9/11 so shocked Americans that it changed everything, leading them to acquiesce to all kind of..." While that may have been the (relatively enough) plausible scenario that presented itself, I know far too many people like myself who were anything but shocked and immediately quite opposed to everything that came after.
Yes, this is more in the vein of what is being argued by Schwartz. The hoax was not in the simulated Martian invasion fooling people out to grab their rifles and run into the street, which probably did not happen, but in the exaggerated claims afterward concerning how "the people" had reacted. The hysteria about the non-hysteria.

Now that you mention it, pretty much any post-election spin plays the same game. Soon as enough votes are counted (or "counted") to predict a certain result (or "result,") any notion of there having been a competition and coalition building between many voices is abandoned, the result is equated with some notional "center" or even a unified "people" or "America," and a hegemonic top-down interpretation of why this singular collective chose what it did is immediately laid on.

Yes, indeed. The abandonment of the many voice coalition comes as easy as the pundit class' hand-wringing at how they could possibly keep their promises to the voters without massive tax-hikes and cuts that wound the working class, but nary so routine do they express the same concerns about how they're gonna satisfy their big donor base.

JackRiddler » Yesterday, 18:30 additionally wrote:(This was obviously the case with Trump. Struggling, uneducated, disaffected, white, former steelworkers in Wisconsin -- the only voters who count, however notional -- having had enough of Clintons and the totalitarian societal dominance of Marxist identity politics, were seduced into voting for the "populist" "isolationist" "businessman" Trump by Russian fakenews memes on Facebook. Voila!)


It seems only as recent as the twenty-first century will the Framers of the Election go so far afield as to temporarily toss aside the self-assuredness of their pseudo-scientific prognostications in order to be able to interpret by way of their own psycho-projections a state of bewilderment across the spectrum at "how the polling could have gotten it so wrong". The answers to that question that they eventually come up with are at least equally self-serving.[/quote]
Seeing the world through rose-colored latex.
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