Category Archives: Politics

[P]eople on online forums worked aggressively to undermine news reports about a troubled teen accused of killing 17 people

The Washington Post: We studied thousands of anonymous posts about the Parkland attack — and found a conspiracy in the making.

“Forty-seven minutes after news broke of a high school shooting in Parkland, Fla., the posters on the anonymous chat board 8chan had devised a plan to bend the public narrative to their own designs: “Start looking for [Jewish] numerology and crisis actors.“

The voices from this dark corner of the Internet quickly coalesced around a plan of attack: Use details gleaned from news reports and other sources to push false information about one of America’s deadliest school shootings.
[…]
The success of this effort would soon illustrate how lies that thrive on raucous online platforms increasingly shape public understanding of major events. As much of the nation mourned, the story concocted on anonymous chat rooms soon burst onto YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, where the theories surged in popularity.”

Link via Garret.

“Why is there suddenly so much traction? Has the country just finally had enough with these mass shootings?”

The Atlantic: The Parkland Students Aren’t Going Away. “American teens are shaping a new kind of debate about gun violence—but why now?” By Alia Wong. Feb 24, 2018.

“It quickly became clear that these survivors were poised to spearhead a political movement whose message is so loud, and so raw, it’s continued to dominate mainstream news coverage and radio shows and even late-night comedy a week after the shooting—an unusual phenomenon in today’s real-time news environment. They’ve written haunting op-eds and delivered viral speeches; they’ve instigated rallies and prompted nationwide walkouts by students and teachers.”

See the website March For Our Lives.

“Another person with a gun won’t necessarily help you.”

dangerousmeta!: “My favorite thing to do for people who believe ‘more guns’ is the answer, is to drive them to the graveyard in Cimarron, New Mexico. The original “Wild West.” Often held up as some sort of John Wayne version of perfect American society. Well, here’s that society, as reflected in the cemetery:

Everyone had guns.

And they shot everyone.

Men. Women. Children. Dear lord, they even SHOT THE TOWN PREACHER.”

“Exit wounds can be the size of an orange.”

The Atlantic: What I Saw Treating the Victims From Parkland Should Change the Debate on Guns. “They weren’t the first victims of a mass shooting the Florida radiologist had seen—but their wounds were radically different.” By Heather Sher, radiologist.

“In a typical handgun injury that I diagnose almost daily, a bullet leaves a laceration through an organ like the liver. To a radiologist, it appears as a linear, thin, grey bullet track through the organ. There may be bleeding and some bullet fragments.

I was looking at a CT scan of one of the victims of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, who had been brought to the trauma center during my call shift. The organ looked like an overripe melon smashed by a sledgehammer, with extensive bleeding. How could a gunshot wound have caused this much damage?”