Conservatives Fuel Protests Against Coronavirus Lockdowns
Source: MSN
AUSTIN, Texas — Dave Litrell stood at a socially un-distant length from his fellow protesters on Saturday.
Some shook hands. Others hugged. More than a hundred people rubbed elbows and shoulders, their signs and flags touching, many with their faces unmasked. Mr. Litrell, 46, held his 6-year-old daughter as those surrounding him chanted to reopen the American economy outside the State Capitol building in downtown Austin.
“I don’t fear a potential pathogen,” he said of the fast-spreading coronavirus that had compelled most governors to shut down their states, including the closing of nonessential businesses. “I think there’s potential pathogens around us all the time, and for the most part, we’re healthy.”
Mr. Litrell, wearing a MAGA-style red cap reading “Make Austin Weird Again,” is a bartender in Texas’ capital city. At least he used to be. The restaurant where Mr. Litrell works has cut his shift to five hours a week, from 35. He started getting unemployment.
Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/conservatives-fuel-protests-against-coronavirus-lockdowns/ar-BB12QtBG?ocid=msedgdhp
So this is the RW plan. Oppose testing. Deny deaths caused by COVID-19. Then, arguing that Democrats, the Deep State, Unions and Liberal
Elititists caused the Great Depression due to a COVID-19 hoax. Also, while claiming it is a hoax, simultaneously blame China for not doing enough to stop the spread of a virus, which you claim is a big hoax, to work in the racism and xenophobia.
= new reply since forum marked as read
how the trolls are opening up sites like they did in 2016 and 2018...............same operating playbook.............and the main stream media isn't saying a word................
It is interesting that while Trump's BFF, Putin, is actually pushing propaganda that the U.S. invested COVID-19, with Republicans pushing the countervailing disinformation that it is a Chinese bioweapon, China itself has been pushing info that it is better at responding to the outbreak.
Nation states that persistently disseminate disinformation will absolutely create false narratives about the coronavirus outbreak. Their output will be steady, their sophistication higher on average and over the longer term. The big three—Russia, Iran and China—will use state-sponsored news to advance a few chosen narratives about the outbreak that develop or amplify pseudoscience and revised histories about the coronavirus’s origin and its spread. Over the near term, this will be of lower risk. However, over the long term, if not challenged, nation-state disinformation, will be extremely damaging to the United States due to its persistence. Nation states will push this sustained disinformation in their own languages to cast doubt and assert blame on America. They’ll also program this same disinformation in their near abroad, via local languages on local platforms (hypothetical example: the French language in Africa) and amongst their allies to undermine confidence in the U.S. and create distance between their authoritarian sphere of influence and the West. Finally, these authoritarian regimes will inject bogus conspiracies into American audiences seeking to incite conflict amongst the public and use the coronavirus to drive a wedge between competing groups.
Is it Russia? Or are there other nations at play in coronavirus disinformation?
Talk of Russian disinformation has quickly emerged and the Russians have and will continue to advance charges against the U.S., but they are not alone or even perhaps the most pervasive in doing so. Kremlin disinformation against the U.S., and that of other authoritarian regimes, will be consistent and persistent in laying blame for the coronavirus outbreak through a range of similar conspiratorial narratives. They’ll also blame an inadequate global response to contain the outbreak on the U.S.
Much like the Soviet Union’s notorious Operation Infektion where Russia convinced large swaths of foreign populations the U.S. was responsible for the AIDS epidemic, American adversaries will use repetition to drive the narrative into targeted audiences that it’s the U.S. that’s at fault for the coronavirus outbreak and its impact. Thus far, the chosen narrative appears to be that the U.S. created the coronavirus as a biological weapon. Russia has gotten a good deal of attention thus far for advancing such conspiracies, but I’d assess Iran has advanced this false narrative to a higher degree and the Russian disinformation ecosystem elevates it even further. Iran’s suffering from the coronavirus outbreak and its inability to contain it incentivizes them to churn out a substantial amount of disinformation pointing to the U.S. as a culprit. China also seems to be pushing disinformation, but thus far it’s more focused on reshaping world opinions about the Chinese response to the outbreak being superior to that of other countries, particularly that of the U.S. (Russia and Iran also appear to be boosting the narrative that China’s capabilities and its global response are superior to those of the U.S.)
