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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   31616 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022

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Would it be reasonable to sue/prosecute Ruth Sent Us or MSNBC into oblivion?

Yes. If, in fact, the Supreme Court had not struck down Roe v. Wade, but MSNBC repeatedly claimed that it had for literally years. Maybe if MSNBC repeatedly showed details of the Justices personal lives (as Jones did for the children's gravesites, parents phone numbers, etc) while claiming that they were deep state crisis actors or something. If the Supreme Court Justices were nobody private citizens who suffered their children being murdered instead of public officials who to some degree have sought the spotlight. For good measure, throw in substantial amounts of evidence that MSNBC knew what they were saying was false but said it anyways to sell snake oil penis enlargement pills. And then MSNBC just refused to comply with court orders so they received a default judgment against them.

I have to say if you're using that scenario to calibrate, we took a wrong turn somewhere. There's a debate to be had around publicizing addresses and other personal information of private citizens (all publicly available information if they own property - less of a problem when it was buried in filing cabinets, more of a problem now that apps can look up addresses in seconds), but that's a separate discussion considering all the other crap Alex Jones did.

Also, Alex Jones repeatedly admitted to shooting the children in Sandy Hook himself. Checkmate, conservatives.

I have to say if you're using that scenario to calibrate, we took a wrong turn somewhere.

It was what came to mind when I cast about for other examples of "person inspired to violence by overheated rhetoric." I stand by it being useful as a calibrating tool precisely because it allows us to compare and contrast, and see the reasons people might take differing conclusions. For example, you seem to be taking the fact that Jones was lying as a major aggravating factor; I think that it's helpful to pull that out and make it explicit.

If he had gone on unhinged rants that keyed off, say, Elizabeth Warren being a fake Indian, and viewers had harassed her over it, how much blame do you think Jones should get? If he calmly and reasonably laid out the game theory of dead SC justices during an [R] presidency, and a viewer made a (weak, failed) attempted assassination, how much blame should he get?

You talk about a lot of reasons why Alex Jones is a terrible person, but none of that is relevant, fundamentally, to whether or not angry rhetoric and conspiratorial thinking qualifies as inciting other people to criminal behavior.

To be clear, the report that "the supreme court plans to overturn Roe v Wade and Brett Kavanaugh will be the most moderate justice voting for a full overturn" is proven true beyond a shadow of a doubt, while there is at the very least not enough evidence in favor of the hypothesis that no one died at sandy hook and the parents are all actors to claim that it is obviously true.

I think the true-false(or at least definitely not proven) distinction is highly relevant here, as is the distinction that Politico(which actually originated the story about the supreme court overturn) would mount a legal defense instead of trying to ignore the court.

You talk about a lot of reasons why Alex Jones is a terrible person

No, I listed some of the ways in which the hypothetical OP gave differed from the Jones trial.

whether or not angry rhetoric and conspiratorial thinking qualifies as inciting other people to criminal behavior.

If you're asking legally, I'm not particularly interested in LARPing a lawyer this afternoon and chasing tails with others doing the same.

If you're asking morally, I take a dim view of people doxxing private citizens (including Ruth Sent Us, fig leaves notwithstanding and posting their private contact info. There's enough radicalized people on both sides such that publicizing the private info of any polarizing figure virtually guarantees that some nutjobs on one side or the other will harass them.

So, legally, you're not interested in whether or not non-Jones figures who have said awful things should be held accountable (like Jones was), but you can at least agree they were morally awful.

Well, that's cool, though speaking as someone on Jones' side of the aisle, I'd rather have legal equality instead of moral.

Well I'll be looking forward to seeing the "Diversity is our strength" people getting raked over hot coals for continuing to repeat it for years despite substantial evidence of them knowing that ethnic heterogeneity increases the crime rate, then.

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