Let's talk for a second about Trump Derangement Syndrome. A friend just sent me this video that a Trump supporter they know (a boomer with a college degree who works as a scientist) had sent them. It claims to show Congresswoman Tlaib advocating for a Muslim takeover of America.
Ted Nugent's FB feed is probably a key source for this fake story. The video has been viewed 3.1 million times so far. The date stamp clearly marks it as 1989. Congresswoman Tlaib was born in 1976. The most basic google (or math) skills would reveal this to be a hoax.
Even a basic google search for "Tlaib cspan hoax" immediately turns up 3 stories debunking this video. Here's the first one that comes up. factcheck.org/2019/05/decade…
Let me repeat, the person who circulated this to my friend in order to convince him of the serious threat Islam supposedly poses to America is a white middle class scientist with a college degree. And they are suffering from a serious case of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
This same person also sent along a chain email attesting to the same point, that Islam and America have always been at war with each other. Take a snippet of the email, google it, and you'll never believe what turns up first in your google search. politifact.com/truth-o-meter/…
One section of the email is taken verbatim from Brad Thor's work of fiction, "The Last Patriot."
On the left is Thor's book. On the right is the email.
Ted Nugent's fake post is still up on Facebook. That fake email chain is still making its rounds amongst conservative Trump fans. Neither "thought leaders" like Nugent nor highly educated Trumpers like this email forwarder give a single hoot about truth.
The irony, of course, is that such people like to think of themselves as the defenders of "Western Civilization" with its belief in reason and science.
Hoaxes like this, fake news, and conspiracy theories have long been with us. What's new is the power that social media gives to misinformation agents like Nugent to quickly and broadly disseminate propaganda like this.
The other thing that feels new is that we have a sitting president whose primary communication strategy is to nurture this sort of derangement in his supporters, to encourage them to suspend their rational faculties in the name of being "patriots."
Trump didn't turn this email forwarder into an Islamophobe. But he's given focus and intensity to this guy's bigotry...made him feel like he's not alone in his "patriotic" hatred of Tlaib. And all of it rests upon 100% made up bullsh*t, debunkable with a simple google search.
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