The ‘Alternate Fringe’ of America…..

Fed by different political and regional cultures.
There ARE American’s that exist in a Alternate Reality’ version of America….

Misinformation IS a dsrug some Americans ARE hooked on…..

 

There’s a tendency in this heated political climate to simply reject people who are saying false things and to write off conspiracy theorists writ large.

But as the US approaches the third straight election in which misinformation — and the fight against it — is expected to play a role, it’s important to understand what’s driving people who don’t believe in US elections.

CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan and his team have an hourlong documentary, “MisinfoNation: The Trump Faithful,” airing on “The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper” on Sunday at 8 p.m. ET….

The fringes have infected the mainstream

WOLF: What were you trying to accomplish with this project?

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O’SULLIVAN: So much of mainstream American politics now is being infected and affected by what is happening on what was once considered the real fringes — fringe platforms, fringe personalities.

And I think really what we want to do in this show is illustrate how these personalities may be pushing falsehoods, but they’re no longer fringe. This is all happening right now. And it is having a big effect on our democracy….

 

‘A lot of these people are pretty normal’

WOLF: Your demeanor when you conduct these interviews with people saying incorrect things is friendly. It’s respectful. I was disarmed by that because, while you do point out inaccurate things people say during these interviews, you also ended up talking to people instead of disagreeing with them. How do you go about conducting these interviews?

O’SULLIVAN: I do not view my job as going out there to change people’s minds. There are plenty of other people who can do that or who can try to do that. I want to hear what these people believe and why they believe it.

Obviously, when we present it to our audience, we will make sure people have the facts. But I think it’s very important to go into every single one of these interviews open-minded and with an understanding that we’re all human….

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Fringe platforms foster fringe movements

WOLF: You’ve covered these fringe movements, but you’ve also covered some of the social media stuff and I wonder what you think people should know about the rise of these kinds of fringe social media platforms — Telegram is the one featured in the documentary — that are gaining traction.

O’SULLIVAN: A lot of people got kicked off the major social media platforms after January 6. Trump got kicked off, but I think what a lot of people don’t realize is that a lot of his supporters got banned too because they were sharing election conspiracy theories or things like that.

We meet one of those people in the documentary, Joe Black, who said he got kicked off Facebook after he shared a meme about January 6.

(Note: Black says he felt isolated by not being able to do simple things like buy items on Facebook.)

It has driven people into these darker corners of the internet that can be a lot more extreme and a lot more radicalizing. It’s a dilemma, right? Because major social media platforms like Facebook have these rules. But what happens when you kick a lot of those people off is sometimes they go to platforms that are more extreme.

Obviously, Twitter, X, has changed a lot. (Note: Twitter has changed a lot since many of its moderation protections were ended after it was bought by Elon Musk.) But I think just overall, in 2016, all the guards were down when it came to social media. There were Russian trolls and everything else.

And then in 2020 there was a big crackdown from the social media platforms, which got a huge amount of blowback from conservatives. And now I feel like we’re in a whole new landscape — it has totally changed again…..

More……