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Right-Wing and Fake News Writers Are Now Going After Elon Musk (qz.com)
Fake news galvanized US president-elect Donald Trump's supporters, and sullied his enemies. Now it may be Elon Musk's turn. Quartz adds: The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX has his fair share of detractors, but a new era in a public relations battle to discredit him appears to be taking shape. Bloomberg reports that hard-right groups are lining up to back misleading websites and fake journalists who attack Musk's business empire. Many of the attacks on Musk begin with something factual: His businesses were built, legally, with the help of billions in government contracts and incentives for renewable energy and space transport. But they go on to accuse Musk of fraud and wasting taxpayer dollars; some compare him to a convicted felon. At least three conservative sites have run negative pieces about Musk -- by a nonexistent writer named "Shepard Stewart" -- that include "Elon Musk Continues to Blow Up Taxpayer Money With Falcon 9" and "Elon Musk: Faux Free Marketeer and National Disgrace." Two later retracted the stories. "There's a very obvious precedent" for this, says Sam Jaffe, managing director of Cairn Energy Research Advisors. "That's Hillary Clinton." Musk tweeted this week, "Can anyone uncover who is really writing these fake pieces?"
Folks that can't stand reality conflicting with their hate-based fantasies.
The same argument applies far more to Lockheed with their joint smoking fighter. Instead of going after real waste these cowards are attacking the little kid in aerospace.
Wait - not everything on the Internet is true?
I'm not sure what the motivation is for these attacks. Musk hasn't been particularly political and mainly stayed out of this election. As far as I can tell, the primary motivations are one of two things. Either one, the people behind this are simply hateful and without a major target like Hillary must choose another, or two, they hate Musk because much of his work (electric cars, solar cells, even wanting to use methane for rockets because methane is a potentially renewable resource) has been to deal with issues related to global warming. If the second is the motivator, then it says something really fascinating: that there are elements of the right which not only are convinced that global warming is some sort of evil hoax, but that they actively hate people who disagree with them and are trying to take steps to destroy someone who is trying to help. If that's the case, it is truly a frightening example of the depth that people can sink to, and the levels they'll go to not just ignore facts they don't like but to actively try to harm people who try to deal with those factual issues.
WTF? Didn't you guys get the memo? Fake news was last week. This week it's hacked voting booths. Next week will be hacked fake news sites. Week after we will be voting for fake new hackers (they're actually middle aged).
I doubt this is about pushing any agenda, Fake news drives large amounts of hits/click bait, which in return drives advertising revenue. Their are people all over the world who have realised this and their entire job is to generate fake news, not for any agenda, simply profit. The more controversial and topical the more likely to earn money. Up until a few weeks ago it was all about Hillary and Trump, now they need to move on.
Did you really just point to two of the biggest fake news sites to use them as evidence that a fake person exists?
I think you missed the point of this whole "fake news" controversy. These twenty-something goofballs start a fake news site to make money off the alt-right, and alt-right news sites who don't do any fact checking immediately pick up the stories.
In the past few days, there have been several interesting interviews with some of the people who run fake news sites. The reason they say that fake news doesn't work on the Left will blow your mind.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You say "don't believe the mainstream media!" and recommend going to Breitbart for news? That's so wrong and laughable that I can't even come up with a car analogy for it.
Surely, it couldn't have been all of the FACTUAL information obtained from Hillary's email server, and the DNC's and Podesta's hacked accounts that "galvanized" the Trump supporters. And, of course, it couldn't have been Hillary's march toward globalization and the further degrading of US sovereignty. No, it was the FAKE NEWS boogeyman. OOoohhhh!
Here's a clue: Trump won the presidency because of the continued efforts of the leftist media to muddy the waters with lies, and play interference for Hillary. Welp, we don't like being lied to, and it was apparent where the lies were coming from and who they were meant to benefit. So, on election day, we said "FUCK YOU!" to the liars. We said "Fuck you" to the perpetually scandalous Hillary, and we said "FUCK OFF" to the infantile, shrill, triggered little assholes that continue to plague the streets in protest of the process they claim to support.
And now, as we repeatedly hear the drums of "fake news" and "hate speech" beat to the rhythm of the same lying lefty news orgs, we see it for what it is: an attempt to silence the voice of opposition. Racism, hate, white supremacy... it's so sad that these words have lost all meaning. These words call out ugly ideals and behavior, but the klaxon blowhards of the left have been crying wolf for too long. Now, it's time to eat crow, motherfuckers.
sig: sauer
Says you. Also, I heard he killed Vince Foster.
I think you missed the point of this whole "fake news" controversy. These twenty-something goofballs start a fake news site to make money off the alt-right, and alt-right news sites who don't do any fact checking immediately pick up the stories.
In the past few days, there have been several interesting interviews with some of the people who run fake news sites. The reason th doing it. Alsoey say that fake news doesn't work on the Left will blow your mind.
I heard about this story yesterday on NPR, about an alt-right fake-news writer living in Los Angeles.
TL/DR: Jestin Coler (the fake-news writer) claimed that he does it to show how easily hoodwinked people are by fake news, but when pressed, he admitted he could make lots of money doing this. A few interesting quotes from his interview:
The whole idea from the start was to build a site that could infiltrate the echo chambers of the alt-right, publish blatantly false or fictional stories and then be able to publicly denounce those stories and point out the fact that they were fiction.
[...]
We've tried to do similar things to liberals. It just has never worked, it never takes off. You'll get debunked within the first two comments and then the whole thing just kind of fizzles out.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Regardless of how you feel about tax subsidies for businesses, you can't fault Musk for taking them. I think corn subsidies in the US are stupid, but if I were a corn farmer, I guarantee I would take them, otherwise I would be at an unfair advantage.
Then why don't we have subsidies for tomatoes and carrots and spinach, you know, healthy foods. The corn subsidies are complete political payoffs to mid-western farmers -- the "rugged individual" rural folk who are over-represented in the Electoral college, Senate and House.
This is the kind of crazy that comes from existing in an echo chamber where everything good is left-wing and the right are scary enemies. It's self-reinforcing and is quite ignorant as well.
The entire space program was thoroughly right-wing and patriotic from the beginning. It was a giant dick-waving competition with the Soviet Union over who was better, communism or capitalism. The few leftists in the space program were engaged in trying to steal the tech and deliver it to the Soviets. Wehrner von Braun, the father of the Saturn V rocket, was a Nazi and you can't get more right-wing than that. Science and STEM occupations in general are regularly attacked by the left for being exclusionary, unwelcoming to women, and all of the other crimes that we know so well. Now suddenly the right can't do calculus?
The really crazy part is the sudden left-wing identification with weapons. The left has long been hoplophobic and now they suddenly overnight lost their fear of guns? These are people who won't even be in the same room if an unloaded pistol is lying on a table. They'll leave the building, it freaks them out.
You also notice in this post there is no difference made between the right wing (most people in America) and the alt.right (a few thousand people). They are put together in the same bucket so that the odious beliefs of the alt.right may contaminate the entire right. The principle is: add a thimble of wine to a gallon of sewage and you've got a gallon of sewage, but add a thimble of sewage to a gallon of wine and you've got a gallon of sewage. This is just plain ignorant, but it's the new philosophy of the ctrl.left and sadly it has a good chance of working.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Breitbart was more widely *read*. Readership has no bearing on credibility. That's exactly the problem. You cannot derive whether they are a trustworthy site simply from the fact that many people trust them. Trustworthiness comes from having your statements vetted by other people -- you claim that X is true... can I independently demonstrate that X is true? If I cannot, your trustworthiness should decrease. The problem we are facing is that it instead sometimes *increases* because of the partisanship. Rather than say "Site Y claims X but no one else can validate X so Y must be wrong", we get people who say "Site Y claims X, no one else can validate X, so everyone else must be engaged in a coverup conspiracy" or some variation on that theme.