Post Truth and Disinformation

Yesterday’s shooting in Minneapolis was a textbook example of the post-truth age we live in. Before the bodies were cold, we had two contradictory pieces circulating as to the nature of the shooter. Granted, some of the material that’s emerged could support both.

A key rule of thumb: good disinformation has some limited basis in reality.

So, before we go down the rabbit hole and discuss why this is so dangerous, let’s establish some facts. And I think it's important because the rest is based on some of these facts:

* Yes, the shooting happened, no, it was not a false flag. Usual suspects are consistent on this, including the MK-Ultra allusions.
* Robin West, 22, is the shooter, and yes, he was trans. He did legally change his name.
* West attended the school where he shot; he graduated in 2017. I will speculate that bullying likely happened. It seems to be a common denominator with a lot of these shootings.
* His mother worked at the school and retired in 2021.
* It is unknown if he graduated from High School, as this particular school ends its programming with middle school.

* There were two notebooks, one with a suicide note to the family, apologizing for what this was going to do to their lives, the second in a combo of phonetic English, Russian, some Greek, and code. Good luck, FBI. No, I mean it. It is unclear where he acquired the Russian. However, it could be due to Google Translate or simply copying.
* Having gone through some of this material, including all 11 minutes of video, we are dealing with a very mentally ill individual with access to guns. Motive? It's not clear to me. But it could come down to revenge on the school. I know, it's not satisfying, a more political angle is preferred. Was he messing with us with all the writing on the guns? I offer this as a possibility. Yesterday, another Substacker raised that possibility.

This brings me to the screenshots, with different theories of the case.

Now, let’s go down Crazy Town and see how this is an example of disinformation. Let’s tackle the far-right shooter first. Granted, the writings on the weapons seem to support the theory of the case. However, shooting Trump with one of the weapons makes this dissolve like sugar in water. And he did mention Brandon Herrera in the video, a man who was with Trump in 2016.

Granted, some in the far right don’t like Trump anymore…and he said in his video there were no apparent motives, beyond himself. So the motive may be as simple as a broken mind.

Number two, yes, he was trans. It is part of the story. But creating a moral panic seems to be the objective here. Having listened to all 11 minutes, it reminded me of the reporting on the Aurora theater shooting. That young man was sentenced to consecutive life sentences and will never see the light of day.

Like West, there is a pattern here: Holmes had no criminal record. Yes, all guns were legally acquired as well. Yet, we refuse to have that part of the conversation. It is well past time to have it.

Which brings me to the third screenshot. Yes, there were anti-Semitic scrawlings on the guns. However, this individual may be echoing Brenton Tarrant, who also shot up and live-streamed the attack at two mosques in New Zealand. Let's say, those guns had all kinds of not-so-lovely speech scrawled on them. And comparing this shooting to October 7 is looking for a public that will latch onto it.

I am in the target audience. I know better than to take that hook.

And if all this was not enough, the FBI is now investigating this as an anti-catholic hate crime.

Why am I taking the time with this? This is precisely what disinformation and post-truth look like. And if everything is real, nothing is. And now it is so critically embedded in the West that it makes it hard to tell truth from fiction.

Yes, I spent a significant portion of the day yesterday watching 4Chan, where users repeatedly contradicted each other within the threads. It used to be that this behavior was limited to a few online spaces, such as 4Chan, but these days it is no longer confined to those places. So let me close with some Hannah Arendt, because it is relevant:

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists”.

“If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer”.

“A people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge”.

If this fragility of facts were limited to a mass shooting, that’s one thing. However, it is now deeply ingrained in the culture. And we are in a new totalitarian moment, partially fueled by post-truth and worsening economic conditions in Western society. This young man also alluded to that.

How is this related to Russia? They do this all the time, both internally and externally. Not being able to tell the truth is also how they maintain control. However, we should first be concerned about how this affects our societies and how to combat it.

And it starts with us. The first thing you do is you become aware of it. That is the precise first step. There is a war on your mind.