Thread by @DavidNeiwert

@ScottAdamsSays @JoannaPrentice1 1) Authoritarian personalities believe that the entire world is divided into sides -- "my side" (i.e, the people devoted to their leader and/or ideology) and "the other side" -- and that the information/media available to the public is similarly divided.

politico.com/magazine/story…

@ScottAdamsSays @JoannaPrentice1 2) Whole, healthy personalities understand that the world is a complex place, and the media ecosystem reflects that. There are both media entities and individual journalists who can be considered more reliable over time because their work is more accurate.

@ScottAdamsSays @JoannaPrentice1 3) Similarly, there are people and entities that are unreliable and prove to be so over time. Making things even more complex is that even reliable sources can either make mistakes or succumb to ideological inclinations to bias their work and make it unreliable.

@ScottAdamsSays @JoannaPrentice1 4) And then there are entities and people who engage in the deliberate spread of mis- and disinformation, promulgated with either political agendas or profits as their objectives. Here I am thinking of outfits such as Infowars, RT, and yes, Fox News.

@ScottAdamsSays @JoannaPrentice1 5) People who are mature and have whole personalities understand that like everything else, sifting through this information requires careful attention and a respect for factual grounding. Inevitably, their worldviews are concomitantly complex.

@ScottAdamsSays @JoannaPrentice1 6) Authoritarian personalities, on the other hand, see only two sides: Anything conjured up by media that is on My Side is accurate and good, and anything from the Other Side is automatically suspect if not false and thus evil.

@ScottAdamsSays @JoannaPrentice1 7) These folks are deeply susceptible to disinformation and propaganda, in large part because their primary criteria for determining factuality is sourcing to the Instinctive Leader whom they all innately trust beyond science, logic, and reason.

theconversation.com/trumps-america…

@ScottAdamsSays @JoannaPrentice1 8) One of the bizarre side effects of this worldview is that, in buying into conspiracism and the afactual speculation comprising it, the True Believers convince themselves that only THEY understand the real truth, and everyone else is a gullible sheeple: pure projection.

@ScottAdamsSays @JoannaPrentice1 9) The oddest aspect of this is that their extraordinary skepticism for any kind of authoritative facts which run counter to their belief system creates an extraordinary gullibility for any supposed “facts” (even those of nonexistent provenance) that support them.

@ScottAdamsSays @JoannaPrentice1 10) @ScottAdamsSays’ little list here is a classic representation of this. Anyone, for instance, who has read The Mueller Report is aware that it fully documents over 250 instances of contact between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence. But “Russiagate”!

@ScottAdamsSays @JoannaPrentice1 11) The more pertinent example here, however, is what Adams labels the “Very Fine People Hoax.” This is the claim that Trump, after Charlottesville, really was not praising the neo-Nazis marching there as “very fine people.”

@ScottAdamsSays @JoannaPrentice1 12) The claim was widely promoted by Tucker Carlson as part of his attempt to whitewash away the growth of white nationalism as a “hoax.” I responded at length to this claim here.

https://twitter.com/DavidNeiwert/status/1162417346041933824?s=20

@ScottAdamsSays @JoannaPrentice1 13) Adams has made similar claims regarding what Trump said, such as at this tweet. What’s actually happened here is that Trump’s defenders are making use of his obvious confusion during the press conference.

https://twitter.com/scottadamssays/status/1159841968647655424

@ScottAdamsSays @JoannaPrentice1 14) So, just for the sake of clarity, let’s roll the tape.

facebook.com/17198178616557…

@ScottAdamsSays @JoannaPrentice1 Also, here is the complete transcript.

politifact.com/article/2019/a…

@ScottAdamsSays @JoannaPrentice1 15) What becomes obvious when you listen carefully and read the transcript similarly is that Trump is deeply confused about what violence took place on what night in Charlottesville. He describes antifascists attacking with clubs—which occurred amid the Saturday riots.

@ScottAdamsSays @JoannaPrentice1 16) As for the “very fine people” that he saw: Well, in fact, Trump was very specific that he saw THOSE people at the Friday night march with Tiki torches: “[If] you take a look, the night before they were there to protest the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee.”

@ScottAdamsSays @JoannaPrentice1 17) He later specifies that he’s talking about that Friday night march. He even claimed that the Friday march had a permit.

@ScottAdamsSays @JoannaPrentice1 18) All of this, first of all, is factually false. The group that had a permit was Jason Kessler’s Unite the Right outfit, which in fact held a rally on Saturday, Aug. 17, to protest removal of the Lee monument, at which there was mass violence culminating in a murder.

@ScottAdamsSays @JoannaPrentice1 19) The Friday night march, however, had nothing to do with the Lee monument, other than it was planned to piggyback off of the UTR event. It was a march not to the monument park, but rather to the University of Virginia campus.

@ScottAdamsSays @JoannaPrentice1 20) This permitless march—with Tiki torches and “Jews Will Not Replace Us!” chants—was in fact organized by white nationalists: specifically, it was the brainchild of Richard Spencer. It was his idea for everyone to bring torches and to wear polos.

youtube.com/watch?v=GVDF_G…

@ScottAdamsSays @JoannaPrentice1 21) Spencer’s whole purpose for this march, as he explained to participants at the time, was to transcend the whole issue of Confederate monuments. He told them he wanted it to be an announcement to the nation that white nationalism was here for real, and here to stay.

@ScottAdamsSays @JoannaPrentice1 22) Let’s also note that this was where the initial violence at Charlottesville occurred, and it was wholly one-sided: A small cluster of antifascists had gathered at the Jefferson monument on the campus, and the alt-righters brutalized them.

propublica.org/article/48-hou…

@ScottAdamsSays @JoannaPrentice1 23) Perhaps the most generous interpretation of all this is that Trump was simply confused, and that he actually was trying to defend the people who came out the following day purely with the intention of defending their Confederate heritage, as they like to put it.

@ScottAdamsSays @JoannaPrentice1 24) Yet it’s inescapable that Trump specified the Friday march. And even if he was merely confused, he nonetheless was placing people who came out to defend their community from attacks such as those on Friday night on a plane with a horde of attacking neo-Nazis.

@ScottAdamsSays @JoannaPrentice1 25) So, no: It was not a “hoax” that Trump defended white nationalists at Charlottesville as “very fine people.” In the end, the only people who believe it’s a false claim are authoritarian personalities who believe any word out of the con man’s mouth.