About a month ago, as I was browsing twitter, I stumbled upon the following article by Cathy Young:
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/the-making-of-the-maga-hoax-about
At the time, talk about pet-eating Haitian immigrants was all over twitter. Donald Trump had just referenced it in the latest presidential debate, and his his running mate, J.D. Vance had tweeted about it. It was fascinating how the story played out. Every day, I would see a new story that supposedly validated the claim. Also every day, I would find that an earlier story had been debunked. Either it wasn’t about a Hatian, wasn’t about an immigrant, wasn’t in Springfield, or wasn’t about a pet getting eaten. The article seemed like it would be an interesting read.
Early on in the article, I came across the following paragraph:
It started with an X hatefest I happened to catch at the outset. On Sept. 7, a full three days before the debate, I saw left-wing-crank-turned-right-wing-loon Naomi Wolf share a post from misinformation superspreader End Wokeness (an account that may be run by far-right troll and Pizzagater Jack Posobiec), containing what seemed like an obviously made-up story: “ducks and pets” in Springfield, Ohio being gobbled up by Haitian migrants. The evidence: an anonymized Facebook post about a “neighbor’s friend’s daughter” who had seen her lost cat being carved up by the Haitians next door. I decided to post a sarcastic comment, unaware that I was wading into a dumpster fire.
Nothing about this paragraph is factually incorrect as far as I know, but something in there caught my eye: “Misinformation superspreader End Wokeness”
I am familiar with the End Wokeness twitter account. They’re pretty prominent on twitter, and they are not exactly what I would call trustworthy. I can understand why they might be described as an misinformation superspreader. That characterization isn’t entirely wrong, but even so, it put me on alert.
I think what I’m sensitive to is the way this pattern judges a thing at the same time it’s introduced. It wants me to make up my mind about who End Wokeness is before I’ve had the chance to evaluate them and come to my own conclusion.
When I see that pattern, it always puts me on alert. I’m so sensitive to it, that it sticks out like a sore thumb even in articles that I’m predisposed to agree with (like this one). “Misinformation superspreader” isn’t the only example of it here; “hatefest” “left-wing-crank-turned-right-wing-loon” and “far-right troll” are all examples of this pattern.
Furthermore, it’s trying to persuade me of something without being an actual argument. It’s like when a movie plays sinister music just to let me know that a character supposed to be bad. If I didn’t already know who End Wokeness was, I shouldn’t just take Cathy’s word for it that they’re a misinformation superspreader. Any writer can introduce someone with whatever label they want to, regardless of whether or not it’s accurate.
It also indicates bias. It makes Cathy seem predisposed to be against them. With an introduction like that, it seem unlikely that she would give them a fair shake. It may be that they don’t deserve a fair shake, but I still need to get my bearings as a reader. I can’t always be expected to already know who they are, and I need a way to validate their trustworthiness for myself.
Right-wing publications do this too. I think that Cathy herself would be sensitive to it in these cases. Take this passage for instance:
Just when you think the barrel-bottom standards at Politico cannot get any more bottomer or barreler, the disgraced outlet publishes talking points from a man who is not only facing murder charges, but who is alleged to have tried to commit one of the worst crimes imaginable: assassinating an individual who represents the will, hope, and future of tens of millions of Americans — and I would say the same about Kamala Harris had she been a target.
Does that seem like a reliable narrator to you? Do you think they’ll accurately present what the Politico really said? I know I wouldn’t trust them after reading the above paragraph. You can read the full article here.
I’m sure this sort priming is persuasive to some people. That’s probably why It’s so common. Still, it makes me feel skeptical, and I think for good reason. When I get skeptical like this, I’ll occasionally have the patience to go thorough the article, validating and double-checking the whole way through. Most of the time, however, I’m not that motivated, and I will probably decide the article isn’t worth engaging with.
This is a phenomenon I’ve been meaning to write about for some time. I don’t have anything against Cathy young, but when I read the article, the pattern really just jumped out at me, and it seemed like a good anchor point for this article. It’s an even more interesting case due to the fact that it’s an article that I essentially agree with, which means my aversion to it was pure sensitivity to the pattern, and not bias against the content itself.
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Notes -
I suppose we'll never know, but I wonder if in sum the "Eating the pets" thing helped or hurt Trump. My inclination is that it was brilliant subversion of the whole "debunking" culture, weaponizing it against unwitting Democrats, very possibly knowingly by Vance. You tell a salacious story that is intentionally in part false, knowing that it will be simply irresistible to Deboonkers who will only aid you in spreading the story which has a kernel of truth that ultimately helps you. At the end of the day, even if they didn't eat the cats, I think the idea that some random NGO can dump 20,000 Haitians on your small middle-America town is extremely disturbing and ultimately the debunkers only helped spread this fact.
I wanted to write something about this, maybe it's still worth doing a retrospective.
When the news first got out the left went into full "delay, deny, denounce" mode as they fell back. Noah Smith was claiming the Haitians didn't even exist, then that there's no way that many of them were on welfare, and finally anyway why do you care racist?!
Those delaying tactics work if they make you haggle over every step, proving the Haitians are really there, spending another six weeks digging up docs on who brought them, and whoops the public lost interest a month ago and Noah Smith is sneering about how you're so obsessed with this Haitian thing.
This is a pattern that played out millions of times fighting the left between 2008 and now. "It's not happening and anyway you deserved it" is just a specific form of the general mode of propaganda warfare they perfected with their dominance over the media.
Trump was the guy who discovered that you can ram a lance right into the center of the boil so everyone can watch it burst. Suddenly the enemy are dug in defending territory you bypassed hours ago, still doggedly insisting that "no reliable sources admit X", even as their reinforcements have shifted to a "Republicans pounce on X" counter-offensive, abandoning the old front line entirely. Night after night their newscasters have that panicked Baghdad Bob look as they back peddle while lashing out in frustration. Their lies become obvious, and more importantly they look weak.
It's a wonderful way of exploiting the distributed hive-mind nature of the left. Even when all their journalists are coordinating messaging on JournoList, they can't react fast enough because their command network is so bloated and cobbled together out of the rotting remains of skinsuited institutions, often still working at cross-purposes to each other. Sometimes a biological component whose still half-digested brain was hiding shreds of journalistic integrity will even throw a foot out and stagger the beast.
I think we're already seeing evolution towards a new, centralized party-controlled media in response. For example, the Dems have put billions into that network of fake "local news" sites that all publish AI-written variations on the same press release, which in turn get posted to reddit and bluesky for bots to comment on. This bypasses existing institutions that they can only influence rather than control outright in real time, such as the New York Times (which the left have now turned on savagely). At least in the short run this will make them much stronger and more agile, and they will become as adept at parrying Trump-like attacks as late-WW2 armies were at countering blitzkrieg tactics.
It follows the general theme of the cathedral shifting from soft power to directly-wielded hard power as challengers arise.
Just saw some supporting quotes from semafor:
Always feels like you're well-calibrated when the monster you've been analyzing turns round and describes its behavior the exact same way you did, but with a smiley face drawn on the shoggoth mask.
Jesus Christ.
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