This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
True The Vote, the group behind the wildly popular "2000 Mules" film that purported to document extensive election fraud in Georgia, has admitted to a judge that it doesn't have evidence to back its claims.
Y'all know I love my hobby horse, even if it's beaten into an absolute paste, and I admit at having ongoing puzzlement as to why 2020 stolen election claims retain so much cachet among republican voters and officials. TTV has a pattern of making explosive allegations of election fraud only to then do whatever it takes to resist providing supporting evidence. TTV has lied about working with the FBI and also refused to hand over the evidence they claimed to have to Arizona authorities. In Georgia, TTV went as far as filing formal complaints with the state, only to then try to withdraw their complaints when the state asked for evidence.
The founder of TTV was also briefly jailed for contempt in 2022 because of her refusal to hand over information in a defamation lawsuit where TTV claimed an election software provider was using unsecured servers in China.Edit: @Walterodim looked into this below and I agree the circumstances are too bizarre to draw any conclusions about the founder's intentions.I have a theory I'm eager to have challenged, and it's a theory I believe precisely explains TTV's behavior: TTV is lying. My operating assumption is that if someone uncovers extensive evidence of election fraud, they would do whatever they can to assist law enforcement and other interested parties in fixing this fraud. TTV does not do this, and the reason they engage in obstinate behavior when asked to provide evidence is because they're lying about having found evidence of election fraud. It's true that they file formal complaints with authorities, but their goal is to add a patina of legitimacy to their overall allegations. TTV's overriding motivation is grifting: there is significant demand within the conservative media ecosystem for stolen election affirmations, and anyone who supplies it stands to profit both financially as well as politically. We don't have direct financial statements but we can glean the potential profitability from how 2000 Mules initially cost $29.99 to watch online, and the millions in fundraising directed towards TTV (including a donor who sued to get his $2.5 million back). There's also a political gain because Trump remains the de facto leader of the conservative movement, and affirming his 2020 stolen election claims is a practical requirement for remaining within the sphere.
I know this topic instigates a lot of ire and downvotes, but I would be very interested to hear substantive reasons for why my theory is faulty or unreasonable! I believe I transparently outlined my premises and the connective logic in the above paragraph, so the best way to challenge my conclusion could be either to dispute a premise, or to rebut any logical deduction I relied on. You could also do this by pointing out anything that is inconsistent with my theory. So for example if we were talking about how "John murdered Jane", something inconsistent with that claim could be "John was giving a speech at the time of Jane's murder". I would also request that you first check if any of your rebuttals are an example of 'belief in belief' or otherwise replaying the 'dragon in my garage' unfalsifiability cocoon. The best way to guard against this trap would be to explain why your preferred explanation fits the facts better than mine, and also to proactively provide a threshold for when you'd agree that TTV is indeed just lying.
I'm excited for the responses!
Edit: I forgot I should've mentioned this, but it would be really helpful if responses avoided motte-and-bailey diversions. This post is about TTV and their efforts specifically, and though I believe stolen election claims are very poor quality in general, I'm not making the argument that "TTV is lying, ergo other stolen election claims are also bullshit". I think there are some related questions worth contemplating (namely why TTV got so much attention and credulity from broader conservative movement if TTV were indeed lying) but changing the subject isn't responsive to a topic about TTV. If anyone insists on wanting to talk about something else, it would be helpful if there's an acknowledgement about TTV's claims specifically. For example, it can take the format of "Yes, it does appear that TTV is indeed lying but..."
As I have explained elsewhere, the state that I'm most familiar with definitely had quite a few illegal votes cast. With the fact pattern present, I don't think it's possible to determine how many of these votes were fraudulent in reality rather than just cast illegally, and I think it's a Very Bad Thing that an election was conducted where that is impossible to know with any degree of confidence.
That said, I think it is also true that a lot of right-wing content is produced by liars and grifters. I have no idea if TTV is lying and I tend to not think that's the simplest explanation. Instead, I would favor a model of them being largely disinterested in factual evidence, probably genuinely believing that Georgia was stolen, but having a lackadaisical enough relationship with truth and facts that when the rubber meets the road, they're forced to retreat. Since they lack strong evidence but have made strong claims to profit from people that agree with them, they're put in an awkward position - I bet they still think that the election was stolen, but they got far out over their skis with claims that they can't back. They certainly could be lying, but I have to say, I feel like I increasingly hear commentators claiming that people are "lying" for false statements that the speaker may or may not have actually had the relevant information and intent to deceive. I don't care about this group enough to defend them much at all, but I am not confident they're lying, even if I do think they're pandering and grifting without doing the work to prove their claims.
The standard of evidence I would accept for stating that they're lying would be a clear statement from one of their leads saying that they don't believe there is much fraud or that they know Georgia was above the board. I would absolutely grant the claim if they were saying things privately that directly contradict their public statements.
I draw intent to deceive through their strident refusals to cooperate with authorities once they're required to show their evidence, including their willingness to go to jail over it. The alternative theories are 1) they're telling the truth or 2) they're mistaken but don't know it. If they're telling the truth, I've seen no explanation for why they've refused to cooperate with election authorities. Presumably if you have extensive evidence of serious election fraud, you'd want to do something about the fraud itself besides just making a documentary. If they're mistaken but don't know it, I would still expect them to fully cooperate with election authorities who then would be in a position to further investigate their claims and thereafter inform them that they were mistaken. Instead, TTV's consistent refusals to share their evidence showcases they must be aware that their evidence is bullshit and that sharing it would expose that it's bullshit.
I was unfamiliar with this incident, but it looks just plain weird. They were jailed at the end of October and conducted themselves in a way that I would say moves me in the direction of agreeing with you:
On the other hand, they were released a week later and the story is weird:
I don't know. I again decline to defend the competence of TTV or their honesty, but I don't find it particularly implausible that they thought they were working with a confidential informant, that they should not have to disclose that informants identity, and that they were either surprised to be jailed over it or willing to go to jail briefly as a publicity stunt. I don't think this incident provides strong evidence with regard to whether they're lying or not.
Oh wow, yeah that's my bad. I did not know details about this incident and just repeated what Newsmax/AP said in their article. I looked up the court of appeals decision that reversed the contempt finding and it describes an absurdly vindictive district court judge. The judge granted a preliminary injunction which is based on emergency arguments, but the judge included a requirement to disclose the identity of individuals involved and then almost immediately spun up contempt proceedings before anyone could get their bearings. Contempt findings are fairly rare, contempt jailings are extremely rare, and this is one of the most bonkers contempt jailings I've ever heard of.
I agree with you completely that this incident is too weird to tells us much of anything about TTV and their honesty. I edited my post above to reflect that.
This sort of thing is a good part of why it's difficult to seriously prove matters, and why I push so hard about fair and quick access to neutral and open courts.
Konnech eventually sued LA County, which settled for 5 mill. It's not like this stuff would make TTV's claims credible even if they were true -- their claim was just that Konnech had run a poll worker software server in some way that stored data in China, which would have been a PII boo-boo (that a lot of places struggle with) but said nothing about the actual 2020 vote -- and Konnech had a fair defense that the LA criminal lawsuit was based on claims that, even if true, were more contract breach than criminal violation.
But I can't find much out about whether they were true. Given the LA County DA's office makeup at the time charges were filed, it seems weird to have gotten fooled by TTV shitpost-grade claims, but it'd I'm not sure if it's weirder than five million dollars.
If I had to bet, I'd say that TTV are lying (or being so extremely credulous or indifferent to the truth that the difference doesn't matter), but I don't think this is the best evidence for it, simply because whether or not they believe what they're saying, there's quite a lot of reasons to be willing to go to jail rather than reveal sources (or 'sources') or leave a lot of paperwork anywhere that would.
Remember the Biden Journal thing? Plea bargains aren't proof of anything, but the subsequent rulings make it extremely likely that the journal was real. Annnnnd Veritas founders were had their homes and offices stripped in morning raids that left them standing in their skivvies, the
fedssomeone who must have stumbled on random paperwork somewhere leaked privileged information to the New York Times who was in the middle of suing these guys, the informants/thieves singled out for felony prosecution (with a plea), and the whole mess was at least a small part of why decreasing trust from donors and potential sources drove Project Veritas bankrupt.EDIT: and that wasn't exactly a theoretical example for TTV specifically; they'd been slapped with a Voting Rights Act lawsuit pre-J6 that went to (bench) trial and is in the appeals process today.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link