Already showing his true colors
The story said that Paul Pelosi was actually attacked in a drunken gay pick-up scene. The new owner of Twitter, in the name of free speech, tweeted it out on his new plaything yesterday.
Disinformation is one of the greatest threats we face. And we have a rich wingnut weirdo conspiracy theorists running one of the largest platforms. Oy…
Here’s Matthew Gertz of media Matters:
1. By week’s end, a sizable percentage of the GOP base will believe an absurd conspiracy theory positing that Paul Pelosi was assaulted by his leftist gay lover.
Allow me to explain.
2. Over decades, the right built a parallel media ecosystem featuring:
A) Numerous outlets that generate conspiracy theories
B) Food-chain mechanisms for their distribution
C) An audience that demands them
D) Minimal internal guardrails
E) Barriers against outside media.
3. Police say the guy who broke into the Pelosi home and assaulted Paul Pelosi was targeting Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The assailant’s recent online footprint is a hodgepodge of recent right-wing conspiracy theories.
This is very bad for the right because those conspiracy theories are either trumpeted or excused at the highest levels of the right-wing media and GOP. They needed to come up with something else, fast.
5. The right’s conspiracy theorists went to work. They operate by putting existing facts – particularly ones from early in a story, when initial reports are often wrong – in new dubious contexts through wild logical jumps. In this case, they draw on two pieces of info.
6. A) An initial, subsequently retracted local news report that the assailant was in his underwear when police arrived.
7. And B) Pelosi was able to trick the invader, call 911 from the bathroom, and, while speaking to the dispatcher “in code” to avoid suspicion, the dispatcher said he referred to the home invader at one point in that call as a “friend.”
8. The right’s conspiracy theorists put those two pieces together, threw in some wild and baseless speculation, and came up with the theory that Pelosi was the victim of a gay lover’s quarrel.
9. That filtered up through low-level RW influencers to… the owner of this site, who is celebrated on the right and has now blasted to everywhere.
10. The site Musk pushed out is not remotely credible, but it reaches a conclusion that is extremely convenient for the right, and that's good enough.
11. Meanwhile, the right has come up with nonsensical explanations for why the assailant’s internet footprint was a forgery and he’s actually a leftist. They cannot accept the reality without taking on responsibility. So they find an alternate explanation.
12. The right-wing press has spent decades building a huge audience for these sorts of convenient conspiracy theories. And their regular denunciations of the mainstream press built a bubble to keep out reality – only the right’s commentators can be trusted.
13. As for those trusted commentators – there are no powerful actors within that bubble who knock down those conspiracy theories. That’s how you end up with Fox hosts pushing QAnon talking points and scoffing at its extremism.
14. So what happens next? I’d expect to see GOP lawmakers and prominent Fox hosts at least winking at the Pelosi conspiracy theory. Someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene or Tucker Carlson might even go all-in, probably with a “why don’t they want us asking questions” frame.
15. Credible news outlets will point out that this is all nonsense. But thanks to the right-wing media bubble, their facts won’t make it to the people inclined to believe it. And so this will become the explanation for the Pelosi attack for a sizable chunk of the GOP.
16. There's not much that can be done for the people who will buy into this.
But what can be done is punishing Musk for his role in the fiasco.
Originally tweeted by Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) on October 30, 2022.