MISINFORMATION AND INJUSTICE

Should we control our speech better?

September Massacres (late summer 1792), by Lambert, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 70 years or fewer.

How much instigation does it take for individuals to commit horrible crimes?

We have witnessed how the words of the 45^th POTUS inspired the destructive and murderous August, 2017, Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia; the August, 2019 August, 2019 El Paso mass shooting that killed 23 people and injured 22 others; the January 6, 2021 attack on the U S Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Are there other possible scenarios?

Well, they are playing out in Pakistan. Why do I mention this? Because the level of widespread misinformation and lies about any topic, from religion to vaccines to alleged corruption has escalated in the U S. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) tracks over 1200 hate groups in the U S— from racists, separatists, militias, to “general hate groups”.

GOP controlled Texas lawmakers have called for citizens to arrest those suspected of helping a woman end a pregnancy.

This self-righteous attitude can easily lead to flash mob thuggery, self-appointed “posses”, and lynch mobs, to inflict punishment and even death on perceived transgressors of the “public order”— just like in the KKK climate following the Civil War.

We can easily move past the lone-wolf attacks of recent decades into flash mob thuggery.

You can post on any topic on social media and your post is likely to be hit with aggressive memes that have been generated to promote a particular political candidate or life view. The content of those memes, generally baseless or built on half-truths, sound attractive to a fearful and uninformed sector of the American Public enthralled with conspiracy theories.

What happens when increasingly misinformed extremists adopt an idea and physically attack citizens erroneously identified as dangerous to a concept of what America is or should be?

What is happening in Pakistan could happen in the U S where religion and power politics have formed an unholy alliance. We are tolerating poisonous diatribes from self-proclaimed pundits and politicians with dangerous ideas.

What can we do today to address the inflammatory speech that is threatening civil society?

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