Rancid wrote:I didn't click on any of his links, but I bet the killer is black... am I right? That's his "point", some sort of commentary on how black people can be violent (no shit, anyone can be violent).
In the vein of this perhaps...
https://inthesetimes.com/article/the-subject-supposed-to-loot-and-rapeHowever, the (limited) reality of crimes in no way exonerates “reports” on the total breakdown of law and order – not because these reports were “exaggerated,” but for a much more radical reason. Jacques Lacan claimed that, even if the patient’s wife is really sleeping around with other men, the patient ‘s jealousy is still to be treated as a pathological condition. In a homologous way, even if rich Jews in early 1930s Germany “really” had exploited German workers, seduced their daughters and dominated the popular press, the Nazis ’ anti-Semitism would still have been an emphatically “untrue,” pathological ideological condition. Why? Because the causes of all social antagonisms were projected onto the “Jew” – an object of perverted love-hatred, a spectral figure of mixed fascination and disgust.
And exactly the same goes for the looting in New Orleans: Even if all the reports on violence and rapes had proven to be factually true, the stories circulating about them would still be “pathological” and racist, since what motivated these stories were not facts, but racist prejudices, the satisfaction felt by those who would be able to say: “You see, Blacks really are like that, violent barbarians under the thin layer of civilization!” In other words, we would be dealing with what could be called lying in the guise of truth: Even if what I am saying is factually true, the motives that make me say it are false.
There will be no explicit point to characterize the entirety of black Americans, but such an impression is perhaps sought based on the sort of ideas that one hopes to conjure up.
One could characterize the news as having this effect in itself where it sets the tone for discussion based on what it chooses to report and how to report it.
It's not that the facts of the matter are necessarily in dispute always, but we infer the character of those reporting something based how they present it.
It is interesting to note how the meta-beliefs about the news serve to reinforce the view one has, the filtering of the same situation through a different impression. For example, we see also how what is seen as absent in the meaning is the basis for inferring a bias, but what this signifies can be quite speculative also.
More and more I find the biggest issues aren't so much the particular facts of a situation but how they're interpreted.
I remember discussing a video about a black man running away from the cop being shot several times in the back, to some it was justified, to me it was horrific and incomprehensible how it could be justified to shoot someone who was unarmed and fleeing. But how do you get at these beliefs? It seems you can't really directly challenge a belief, you need to be a trusted source of information on something and able to challenge a collection of facts that exist in relation to one another. That the belief is sustained by many accepted facts and their characterization rather than being based on one thing in particular, so you cause change need to chip away at a lot, if you even can in the first place.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/For%20Ethical%20Politics.pdf#page90
-For Ethical Politics