The Charlottesville "Lie" And The Rewriting Of History

[flash2015]

A few days ago, I saw a PragerU video called the Charlottesville "Lie" claiming that President Trump made it very clear from the outset that he wasn't saying neo-Nazis were "very fine people", that the evil "mainstream media" made it up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NM6k8uNAQBA

I am a bit of a masochist but I saw Crowder make the same claim in his "Is Trump A Racist. Change My Mind?":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrMuWLUxtGg

As well as getting millions of views just for these videos, these claims have also gone around a whole host of right wing websites, that the mainstream media "lied" about Charlottesville.

I was doubting myself for a while. Did I mis-remember? I went to the news conference transcript from the Wednesday they are referring to and it was sort of true just looking at that news conference that they may be right.

However after digging into this a bit more, I realized that both PragerU and Crowder are deliberately lying by omission, that they left out the comments Trump originally said on the Saturday (where he just mentioned "the fine people on both sides" without condemning the Nazis) and his Tuesday scripted speech to limit the damage from that. There was also no evidence that there was any rally other than the alt-right/Nazi one(s) and Trump specifically suggests the unauthorized rally with the tiki torches was when he saw the "nice people". Arguments summarized in this video by Shaun:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T45Sbkndjc

And to its credit, the Washington Examiner:

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opin ... ottesville

Given the misinformation being given out by people like Crowder and PragerU, I would argue that someone like Google does have a responsibility to NOT rank this stuff high in its search results when people look up the Charlottesville rally, potentially demonetize the videos for spreading false information and also put them on the restricted list.

What do you think? Am I wrong to think this way...that I am calling for Google to be "biased" against conservatives (I would argue the same if it was a liberal/left-leaning video too, but I just don't see the misinformation as often in the videos I have seen)? I argue that the "free market of ideas" on its own doesn't sort this stuff out. Given how many views these videos had there are now millions of people now that believe this BS about Charlottesville and many other topics...which I think is a real problem. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions but you are not entitled to your own facts.

[Fluminator]

What was the exact thing Trump said about it?

[flash2015]

This is what he said Saturday which is what he was criticised for by Republicans, Democrats and the media for not explicitly calling out the alt-right rally straight away:

"We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides—on many sides. So we want to get the situation straightened out in Charlottesville and we want to study it and we want to see what we're doing wrong as a country, where things like this can happen."

Then he had a press conference Monday (I thought it was Tuesday) with a brief prepared statement condemning the Charlottesville attackers:

https://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/14/poli ... index.html

Then on Tuesday (I thought it had been Wednesday) he goes back to his "many sides" argument that he made on Saturday:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/15/us/p ... cript.html

And he explicitly says the night before rally had "the very fine people":

"But they were there to protest — excuse me — you take a look, the night before, they were there to protest the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee. Infrastructure question. Go ahead."

There is no evidence that those "very fine people" existed. He also lies about the permit thing. There was no permit for the night before rally with the tiki torches and the city confirmed that the counter-protesters needed no permit on the day of the real rally.

There is probably a charitable interpretation of Trump's actions in there somewhere...but to misrepresent what happened then claim the mainstream media "lied" about it (feeding into the "the media is the enemy of the people" thing) is fundamentally dishonest and I don't believe is something that should be promoted.

[Fluminator]

The big problem here is Trump calling some of them very fine people and that's incredibly dumb or evil.

Everyone knows Prager is terrible though.
It doesn't change the fact that mainstream media is also terrible and arguably just as bad. The Covington Kids is a good example. If you censor Prager or Crowder for being bad (another person who i agree is quite disingenuous at times) you have to censor a lot more.

[flash2015]

You are right. Covington was horrible too. Many people jumped the gun and made assumptions about what happened with incomplete information and they should absolutely be castigated for it. Do you think they deliberately lied though? After more information came out I had understood all the main players had updated their stories. I would argue this isn't in the same ballpark as what PragerU/Crowder are doing here.

[flash2015]

Google had a problem until recently that after tragedies/mass shootings/other YouTube would show conspiracy theory videos in the top slots. Would you say it is OK for Google to downrank the conspiracy theorists?

[Fluminator]

Hmmm, I agree PragerU is worse than the average "mainstream media", (I'm not familiar enough with Crowder; I think he claims his show to be a comedy so he doesn't need to fall under the same journalistic standards) but I wouldn't put it past the other media to deliberately lie. They've done it in the past countless times. Heck, they're all reporting Epstein commited suicide right now when he clearly didn't.

I don't think it's google's responsibility to downrank views it disagrees with. I don't know how their algorithm works, but if mass amounts of people think something's a conspiracy, then google should have the results show it.
A startling number of conspiracies end up being true anyway

At the least, I think google should be transparent on what views it downranks and upranks.

[Fluminator]

At this point, over 50% of Americans believe the government is hiding the truth on the 9/11 terrorist attack. If google decides to downrank it, it's deciding it knows better than the majority of Americans.

[Randomizer]

What a majority of people think and what can be supported by facts are not always the same. When there are recording of what someone said, you can go back to them. I know Trump likes to make up that he said something different, but that doesn't change what he said at the time. Now if want to accept mental illness and he is delusional … that makes a more realistic explanation.

It had been demonstrated by the Greeks before the Common Era that the Earth was round with calculations on its size. Then there was a long period where it was believed to be flat. Then with exploration and the circumnavigation of the Earth it was again shown to be round. However there are still people that believe the Earth is a flat disk with the center at the north pole and the military guarding the southern barrier to prevent us from knowing the truth.

[Octavious]

In my experience virtually no one has a realistic feel for the solar system. Frankly the flat earth model isn't much further from the truth than the Star Trek planet hopping crap that most people tend to imagine. There's such a feeble understanding that people will say, with complete sincerity, that the supermoon they've just seen is massively larger than the moon usually is. Some people are so painfully unobservant that they will actually swear blind that the Sun is yellow!

Who really gives a damn about flat earthers? At the end of the day it's just a different flavour of shite.

[NormTheNormie]

On both sides there were fine people though... do you think everyone at the rally were bad people? Of course both side have bad people but also good people

[orathaic]

On both sides there were fine people though... do you think everyone at the rally were bad people? Of course both side have bad people but also good people

Many fine Nazis and White Supremacists? No one who supports their racist views should be allowed in public.

They are sick and should be isolated from public spaces to prevent contamination, not elected to the Presidency.