Far Right Disinformation Campaign Takes Aim to Paint Jeb Bush as a Liberal.

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According to Bill O'Reilly, a lot of people get their news strictly from the internet. I do not know how true that is and to what degree but I remember being told by a personal acquaintance, supposedly an informed acquaintance, a number of years ago that he and his wife only get their news on the internet.

This is a frightening thought after observing a few more days of headlines used to distribute disinformation across the internet. The headlines I speak of, make a statement which is a liberally construed interpretation rather than an accurate reporting of news but the headline- all by itself-  is taken as news- true news . To date all of the responders, with an exception of this author, accept the headline as true with no evidence of having read the article to find out anything further about the claim.

Here is one such typical headline

The article is about H.R. 237, a bill written by Congress in response to the new terrorist war strategy being conducted by ISIS, where in ISIS recruits home grown terrorists in the western world who travel over seas to terrorist training camps and then walk right back into their home country with passports.  The headline spins the bill as targeting ordinary Americans.  The bill, however uses the specific words "foreign terrorist organization". It is of course true that any law can be used for an unintended purpose but the headline spins the potential for abuse as the actual intent of the law and the culture of anti-establishmentarians swallow the headline whole without further thought or investigation- never clicking on the link and never reading the actual bill.

http://docs.house.gov/billsthisweek/20150720/H237_sus_FTO.pdf

This is one of the online comments in response to my own observations:

This is how it works. It does not say in the bill that passports can be taken from those who support Isis. What is does say is that any mildly suspected American of supporting any terrorist group can have their passport taken away by the president without due process. Let me spell this out. Do you know what are considered terrorist groups by the US government? Tea party, Young Americans for Liberty, John Birch Society, etc. Do you know what groups aren't considered terrorist groups by the US government at this time? The USA Communist party. Get it.

The only true statement about what is in the bill made in the comment above is that the bill does not mention the name "ISIS" - but why should it? That would limit the authority of the bill to only one foreign terrorist organization when there are many. The bill does not mention Obama. It does not grant authority to the office of the presidency. The authority goes to the secretary of state who must report, within one month of taking passports, to both houses of congress . And the bill specifically uses the words "foreign terrorist organization" excluding domestic organizations.- and yet the comment is written as though on the authority of one who had read the bill.

It is the clear intent of much of the disinformation being distributed through headlines is to fabricate a case against the entire government establishment. The fact that the anti-establishment culture relies on misleading headlines to spread disinformation suggests a lack of an actual basis for their rallying call against anyone with expreince in government - with the exception of Ted Cruz, and even Cruz has been displaced by Donald Trump- who tops Cruz in his qualifying lack of expereince in functioning within a system designed as checks and balances against totalitarian power.

Alinsky's Rules for Radicals: "Known as the 'father of modern American radicalism,' Saul D. Alinsky (1909-1972) developed strategies and tactics that take the enormous, unfocused emotional energy of grassroots groups and transform it into effective anti-government and anti-corporate activism. ... Some of these rules are ruthless, but they work."

 2. Of Means and Ends [Forget  moral or ethical considerations]"The end is what you want, the means is how you get it. Whenever we think about social change, the question of means and ends arises. The man of action views the issue of means and ends in pragmatic and strategic terms. He has no other problem; he thinks only of his actual resources and the possibilities of various choices of action. He asks of ends only whether they are achievable and worth the cost; of means, only whether they will work. ... The real arena is corrupt and bloody." p.24

 http://www.crossroad.to/Quotes/communism/alinsky.htm

If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck- could it be a duck?

Other articles in this series

Far Right Disinformation Campaign Takes Aim to Paint Jeb Bush as a Liberal.