r/chomsky • u/Dextixer • Nov 10 '23
Meta Can the moderators explain why misinfo and unconfirmed reports are just allowed to flow freely?
Right before anyone tells me that im an Israeli agent or "Hasbarah" or whatever other nonsense anyone wants to cook up. I am pro-Palestine, Israel is a fascist, colonialist empire intent on subjugating and exterminating the Palestinian people and noone in the world should support them.
Everyone knows that Israel has a strong propaganda machine that is and has been in full swing for a long time now, constantly reframing the conversations from what Israel is doing to anything else. That is very well known.
This employment of propaganda is something that many of us are against, and when stories about children being beheaded etc come out with no proof, we rightfully scoff at that, especially when Israel says that they have proof but dont want to provide it.
Chomsky himself has made a lot of writings about propaganda.
So why then may i ask, are threads like this - https://www.reddit.com/r/chomsky/comments/17reig4/israel_shot_at_their_own_citizens_in_festival/ are allowed by the moderators?
Not only is there already a megathread for ANYTHING that is not "expert opinion", Right now half of the posts in the subreddit are just straight up propaganda barely relevant to the conflict, the thread above is just straight up misinfo. The video is not of the music festival, yet people seem to blindly believe that it is of the festival because a random account that can barely strong together an english sentence says so?
An account which, when it was pointed out that the video was not of the festival, constantly refuses to engage with that and switches the topic?
Tell me everyone, when you read Chomskys writings about propaganda, did you actually read them? Or did you just skim over them and continued on believing that everything that supports your position is true? You do realize that NONE of us are immune to propaganda? RIGHT? So why in the hell are half of the threads here these days pushing literal propaganda!?
And mods, are you asleep or something???
EDIT: Apologies i wont be able to respond to anyone here and their claims that im a Hasbra agent (Which should break the subs rules for ad hom attacks, but i doubt the mods care). Apparently posting literal misinfo is A-okay, responding to is is bad.
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u/Wizzle_Wazzle_WOO Nov 10 '23 edited Nov 10 '23
Said event did actually transpire, so best not use it as an example to prove the same notion.
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u/lucash7 Nov 10 '23 edited Nov 10 '23
Taking a look at your comment history and arguments…you mean well I’m sure, but you’re full of shit often. So I’m taking this with a grain of salt because of that and because, mostly, you talk about propaganda and such and yet don’t cite any sources. Or give analysis.
So it’s just opinion and we are “just supposed to believe you bro”…just saying. Cheers
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u/Atatick Nov 10 '23
Censorship is the worst. Let them say whatever, it's the reader that has to look up facts and learn decent sources. Understanding the source is always smart as well
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u/NoamLigotti Nov 10 '23
I've been having similar general feelings lately. I wouldn't want to see a Chomsky sub become overwhelmed with crackpots and evidenceless conspiracy theories and questionable fringe sources (not like fringe as in non-mainstream and left-wing, but as in "what the hell is this source?").
That said, there are only two or three moderators here, and I would have a tough time dealing with it all if I were one.
And I would heavily lean toward not wanting to just remove posts I thought may be grossly misleading or stupid or questionable, since 1) I wouldn't always know for sure, 2) it would set a precedent for myself and I wouldn't want to be unfair, 3) even stupid and misleading content can sometimes provide valuable discussion, though I still wouldn't want misleading content, and 4) I would hope errors and fallacies would be corrected by commenters.
So I would probably end up allowing a lot of BS and questionable content myself. I don't know what should be done. Maybe some more stringent rules for posting that weren't overly prohibitive? I don't know.
One minor but I think important point of disagreement: Chomsky was careful to say he did support Israel, despite being a frequent critic of certain of the state's policies and characteristics.
I don't think that was just some easy way of skirting around his bad faith critics; I believe he was being genuine. (He said something like he believes they are harming their moral integrity and security.) I believe that is the proper perspective. We should care about nations even if we disapprove of the states which govern them, for nations are composed of people. So we can and should support both Israel and the Palestinians.
(That doesn't mean adopting a moral equivalence or both sides'ing everything. It just means we care about both Israelis and Palestinians.)
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u/Dry-Professional-BER Nov 10 '23
This was in the GAZA STRIP and the people in the video are TERRORISTS.
That's not true.
The article on ynet is clearly states only that the helicopter arrived at OTEF (Aza) . "The first pair of combat helicopters that were on immediate alert for the Gaza Division arrived at Otef about an hour or more after the events began, around 8:00-7:30, from the Ramat David camp in the north."
What means "Otef"?
"The Gaza envelope (Hebrew: עוטף עזה, Otef Aza) is the populated areas of Israel that are within 7 kilometres (4.3 mi) of the Gaza Strip border and are therefore within range of mortar shells and Qassam rockets launched from the Gaza Strip.[1] The region is populated by 70,000 Israeli citizens according to the Israeli Ministry of Interior."
So it describes an area outside of Gaza-Strip. The Festival took place in "Re'im (Hebrew: רֵעִים, lit. 'Friends') is a secular kibbutz in southern Israel, and one of the Gaza vicinity villages."
Of course one can't know if the people that got killed are terrorists , visitors of the festival or residents of the villages lying in Otef. And this is, what the article is about. The pilot said it had been impossible to determine who they were shooting at out of the helicopters. So likely there was friendly fire too.
Maybe the headline the OP used isn't well chosen and not precise enough but the story isn't made up as you find several Israeli sources.
I did not see any postings that denied Hamas being responsible killing visitors of the festival and people of all ages living in surrounding villages of the Gaza-Strip.
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u/aramiak Nov 10 '23
I 100% agree that people should be as equally critical of reports that support their pre-existing view as all others.
At least one senior IDF figure has admitted they probably killed civilians during the confusion and so anyone who pins the whole Israeli civilian death-toll to Hamas is either naive or pro-Israel. Pro-Israel sources have also commented on the reality of the IDFs inability to distinguish between civilians and enemies in that time.
However, I have not looked into the above footage to see if that is recording is of that confusion, nor did I notice the original post.
I would say appealing for censorship rather than critical thinking as alarming. What I do in such instances (and I did this just yesterday) is I’ll simply comment my critique under the post. As some have said, the far-left & anarchists and so on are also susceptible to narratives, even if a little less so than those on the right. Looking for a space without that will prove to be a long search.
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u/Slubbe Nov 10 '23 edited Nov 10 '23
I think the issue is that posts showing that israel may have accidentally killed civilians fighting in southern israel is regarded as discrediting Hamas killings, the 1400 death toll is dismissed
But when the Gaza Health authority releases figures they are gospel and only proof of genocide, despite them very clearly never discerning between fighters and civilians (if it’s even possible)
Posts showing Israel used the R9X on a hospital are upvoted as evidence - even when nothing supports it whatsoever
Videos showing Israeli troops finding weapons in schools are deleted in minutes
Everyone should have the ability to process information themselves and find their own conclusion and rationalise it with their principles - but anything other than pro palestine is removed while random Twitter videos from unverified palestinians are upvoted
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u/aramiak Nov 10 '23
The only reason I would want to see posts removed is for being off-topic tbh, ie- not associated with Noam Chomsky. And subs like this are hugely at risk to that, right now. It’s nothing to do with wanting to censor viewpoints.
Noam Chomsky has never been a mouthpiece of hasbara, nor commented on any events that have occurred since his last interview many weeks ago.
Yet such mouthpieces are flocking to subs like this and will do the usual: 1) label anything critical of the Israeli Gov’ and its actions as ‘anti-semitism,’ and 2) accuse every civilian school, hospital or family home hit of being either A- a disguised barracks, arms depot or Hamas war-room, or B- a false flag attack, or C- the result of using ‘human-shields’, and 3) deny verified realities such as the great nabka, subsequent apartheid & now current genocide (using all the usual lines like ‘right to react’ & words like ‘pause’ to do so).
If a flat-earthier came on here and start mouthing off about the U.N.’s logo or gravitational theory, I hope we’d agree that it’s such well disproven nonsense that it doesn’t deserve a millionth rebuttal and also entirely unrelated to Noam’s work, so probably best deleted for quality purposes. Some propagandists that visit this sub do need the same boot, imho.
To focus on one of your examples of footage posted and then removed- I didn’t see it, but any rational person would agree that if their country was invaded they’d want armed personnel to go and protect refugees holed up in school halls and community centres and also the immobile sick (who can’t evacuate) in Hospitals, so I truly hope that we can all concede that (post-invasion) these would not evidence Israeli narratives anyway, even if not planted by IDF soldiers for the benefit of that footage. For that reason, I can’t see the sense on deleting something like that to ‘censor’ someone. But if such an incident was something Chomsky has never commented on or wrote about and nothing within the post quoted Noam’s work or highlight what of his worldview this moment challenges- then why is it you think it belongs here?
I am sure the same user could quote an excerpt from “On Palestine” and challenge the assertions within and start nothing but a lively debate. Except they couldn’t because they’ve never read it. They’re not here to discuss Chomsky or to network with those who have worldviews enthused, refined and challenged by his works, they’re just here to shitpost the same hasbara they’ve shitposted on 25 others subs that same hour, all of which they’d never visit before October. Not tolerating that isn’t ‘censorship’. They’d meet the same treatment from mods if they did it it on r/lego.
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u/Slubbe Nov 10 '23
I agree with you
Doesn’t excuse why random palestinian tweets are front page
You made a huge amount of assumptions, those same exaggerated assumptions fuel this sub with palestine propaganda
I mentioned the livestream where weapons were found in a school and you completely excused it, “any rational person wants militants in their schools”
The fact you acknowledge that and that those posts are totally banned in this sub proves my point
As an edit: under the international law you love to point at israel, militants “protecting “ A school doesn’t count.
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u/aramiak Nov 10 '23 edited Nov 11 '23
You’ve misquoted “any rational person would agree that if their country was invaded they’d want armed personnel to go and protect refugees holed up in school halls” to “any rational person wants militants in their schools” to make the point that guns in the vicinity of children could-be (not is) excusable seem flippant. See? In fact, I’m not excusing it because I didn’t see the footage, or (before now) had I heard about the footage, and I certainly haven’t fact-checked or sourced such footage. I’m just commenting on how it would appear propagandists have posted X and asserted that it proves Y when actually Y is not the most rational inference, and how easy it is for us to assume that such lazy messaging has been deleted for our protection, when in fact it may have simply been removed because it was off-topic?
But I do agree with you that screengrabs of Tweets do not increase the quality or focus of this sub, either (tbf). And when there are claims that are exaggerated, false or unreasonable it only harms a righteous cause. I challenged a post on here that made an odd comparison between the Ukrainian and Palestinian invasions. It is what it is. A sub is made up of human users and human mods. No Reddit community will be perfect. Not every word that comes out of a Palestine advocate’s mouth will be solid gold. I hear you, it is annoying when you want to take part in a discussion but reason goes out of the window on occasion.
That said, should propagandists be permitted to just swamp this page without a mention of Noam Chomsky’s observations or works and be allowed to completely displace his actual readers (whether proponents or critics) from finding voice in the sub? Nah, I wouldn’t want that either. Palestine’s advocates are the most censored group on Reddit. Simply calling for a ceasefire in Gaza or acknowledging the Statehood of Palestine has had hatfuls perma-banned from r/politics and r/globalnews. If you believe they’re under-moderated here, then at least you might be forgiven for think that brings some sense of balance within the wider Reddit community.
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u/Slubbe Nov 11 '23
I agree with almost everything
By the idea nobody can post palestine videos is wrong. This sub is filled with unverified of Palestinians forcing kids to recite speeches for propaganda
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u/Any-Nature-5122 Nov 10 '23
There was another bad video about this a few days ago, where a YouTuber seems to suggest most civilians that died during the Hamas attack were actually killed by the IDF. I complained about the video but I got a lot of pushback.
The video you have here is actually from Israeli media, and afaik the accidental killing of civilians is a legit thing that may have happened. The problem is when there are false headlines or claims, such as this claim that the footage is from the festival.
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u/ofnotabove Nov 10 '23
Chomsky is about as close as it gets to a free speech absolutist, so there's no reason to believe he'd support censoring "propaganda" unless it violates a legitimate law, such as directly inciting violence. This very subreddit has been inundated with misinformation about him for nearly two years, and I've never tried to get any of it censored. I've also never reported any of the misinformation spread here in support of the U.S., Israel, Russia, the Soviet Union, China, and many other governments that Chomsky has strongly opposed for decades.
If that thread is spreading misinformation about the Oct. 7 atrocities, that's horrific and hopefully someone here will post a thread debunking it.
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u/VioRafael Nov 10 '23
I disagree. He is in favor of likeminded groups getting together. Banning people from your group is not limiting their freedom of speech. Even Chomsky fans already have disagreements. So it makes it harder when we’re debating people who say there is no occupation in Palestine or the US did not provoke Russia, etc. It’s a waste of time to argue against flat earthers. Chomsky himself says we’re never going to convince hardcore elements of elitist opinion.
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u/ofnotabove Nov 10 '23
He is in favor of likeminded groups getting together.
For sure, that's critical to the real activism that's needed, but is this place supposed to be likeminded? I've always seen it as an open space for anyone interested in subjects related to Chomsky's work. Hard to find any political sub that isn't an echo chamber or heavily censorious. But I agree that most debate is a waste of time.
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u/VioRafael Nov 10 '23
I think debate among people interested in Chomsky’s work is not a waste in this group. However, there are tons of people who are not remotely interested in Chomsky and only come in to purposely attack him on personal grounds or spread debunked lies about Chomsky. I think they should start their own group.
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u/NoamLigotti Nov 10 '23
I don't know. Many progressives and leftists certainly use that reasoning, but Chomsky is uniquely uncompromising when it comes to the spirit of free expression. But he is also supportive of communities deciding what they think is best themselves. So it's hard to say what he would think exactly.
I'm not sure what would be best.
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u/VioRafael Nov 10 '23
Chomsky is quite clear. People can associate with anyone. We are not obligated to include everyone in a specific group. Having said that, we also cannot try to silence other groups, college campus speakers, protesters we don’t agree with, etc.
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u/NoamLigotti Nov 11 '23 edited Nov 11 '23
Yeah, I don't actually know how and where to draw the line as easily he and so many others seem to imagine themselves being able to do. (The difference is sometimes meaningful, but by no means does it seem to offer a simple principle on which we can rely in all circumstances.)
We may associate and not associate with whomever we wish, so we can decide not to associate with some people, but we may never suppress their speech and expression. But what happens when our desire to not 'associate with' someone suppresses their speech?
Many right-wingers are often even more hypocritical because they don't even try to delineate speech and association — everything is just 'free speech' when it suits them and not when it doesn't. But many centrists, progressives and leftists often pretend the distinction of speech and association, or speech and "consequences" of speech, are sufficient for a simple one-size-fits-all principle for every situation, when I don't find that to be the case.
(Certainly these distinctions are sufficient in some instances, but not all.)
[Edit: added points for clarification]
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u/VioRafael Nov 11 '23
What is an example of someone’s free speech being suppressed because they’re not allowed in a group?
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u/NoamLigotti Nov 11 '23
Well the very example we were analyzing: posts in this subreddit.
Sure there can be some rules and standards for posting. And sure we (or the moderators) could say for instance, "No posts advocating [x y or z terrible things]." So we could say that this amounts to us choosing not to associate with say, Nazis or rabid racists or what have you.
But does it really answer the question of what is association and what is speech?
If posts aren't explicitly and clearly violating any rules, then is it freedom of association to remove them or is it interfering with free expression? (Obviously, I don't mean freedom of speech in the strictly legal/U.S.-constitutional sense, as it would clearly not be infringing on that.)
This difficulty applies in so many other areas. When should it be considered justifiable for people to protest a speaker or to shout over them? There's no clear line in my view.
When should it be considered justifiable for an employer to terminate workers for their political speech even outside of work? When it comes down to it, most people (maybe not Chomsky) including myself think there are cases where it is justifiable. But we act like it's a violation of a simple moral principle when this happens and we don't agree with it.
In sum, I find it very gray and complex.
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u/VioRafael Nov 11 '23
I see it as a simpler issue. If I have a book club, where we discuss a book every month, I would not allow people to join if they don’t read or worse if they think reading is a waste of time.
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u/NoamLigotti Nov 11 '23
Yes, well that's an example where the question is straightforward.
What I'm arguing is there are many instances where it's straightforward, but many where it's not.
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u/VioRafael Nov 11 '23
I think you are talking about a broader freedom of speech. Shouting down a speaker or employers acting against free speech is irrelevant to this group. Having a productive group where we can share and debate is different than arguing over simple facts with people who have never and don’t ever intend to understand Chomsky’s work.
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u/MerryRain Nov 10 '23
misleading reporting and straight up fake news has been increasingly shared and liked on lefty socials for a couple years now.
it's gone into overdrive since october 7th, on every platform, in every community
the story you linked is a great example: i've seen hundreds of posts claiming Israeli pilots fired at random and obviously killed most of their civilians themselves. It's all based on one interview, where one of the officers said [paraphrasing] "we couldn't tell who was who, so we decided not to fire into combat and instead shot at the break in the wall where Hamas fighters were still coming through. Later when the insurgents were retreating we struggled to work out which cars had hostages in so we probably killed civilians at that point". The guy is clearly concerned about the orders he gave that day and the morality of the decisions he had to make, meanwhile lefty twitter - and some pretty major news networks - are cutting 90% of his interview and twisting him into a bloodthirsty butcher.
it's exactly the same kind of limitations on narrative that saw the right descend into antivax and q-anon nonsense: a kind of communal, willful mass delusion created by bad faith actors and propagated by millions of gullible idiots. And ultimately it shares the same goals: incite hatred, justify violence, and make even the most basic forms of progressive politics untenable.
"the elites are lying to us!"
"let's lie to each other instead!"
I hate the future
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u/Voltthrower69 Nov 10 '23 edited Nov 10 '23
If you translate this article it clearly says that they made “difficult decisions” and shelled houses.
There’s another article by Ynet that has an Apache helicopter pilot saying “they couldn’t say for sure who was a civilian and who was an enemy”
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u/MerryRain Nov 10 '23
sure
do you think the way this being talked about on lefty social media, including this sub, is at all reflective of those articles?
do you think those articles support claims that half or more of civilian murders on Oct 7th were in fact committed by the IDF?
do you think those articles support the idea that Israel is deliberately lying about and falsifying the scale of the attacks?
do you think those articles support claims that these pilots were motivated purely by a desire to kill as many people as possible?
no?
that's what i'm talking about, and don't pretend for a second it's not happening, because it's the only fucking thing happening in the thread OP linked and in every other community I've seen it linked in
the information is presented in a misleading way, to make people as angry as possible at Israel, and then they just make shit up in the replies
oh and oceans of ZOG shit everywhere, quoting the OP from the other thread:
Israel controls the west as puppets
OMG5
u/Voltthrower69 Nov 10 '23
No I haven’t seen any of that, I guess I’m lucky to not have that in my orbit
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u/MerryRain Nov 10 '23
so you didn't look at OP's link then, or any other thread on this sub for the last month lol ok
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u/alecsgz Nov 10 '23 edited Nov 10 '23
Dude you are wasting logic on people who are beyond gone.
Hamas could literally admit of doing exactly what IDF said they are doing and this sub would be Hamas is Hasbara. They even both start with Ha
Chomsky is a guy who advocated every country should be the master of its own destiny. So USA should not get involved in the bussines of S America's politics. Which is yoi know fair.
But Russia and NATO. Russia is allowed to get involved.
So you know they are beyond logic and having standards
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u/reddobe Nov 10 '23 edited Nov 10 '23
misleading reporting and straight up fake news has been increasingly shared and liked on lefty socials for a couple years now.
...just a couple of years? lol were you asleep for Russia gate?
This need the media reporting has to overwhelm and shape conflicts is the new norm. We saw it in full swing at the break out of the Russia/Ukraine conflict, where just months before there were dozens of articles concerned about Azov nazi violence, govt corruption, etc. Likewise MSNBC & Maddow spent 4yrs telling the world the US was being run by a Russian puppet.
Independent/alternative media is just aping the changes to traditional mainstream media, and that has gone to complete shit since Assange & Wikileaks was so effectively silenced. Widespread self censorship has now combined with clickbait culture to breed what we have today.
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u/_Forever__Jung Nov 10 '23
Great analysis. Hard to believe people this easily duped have actually read anything from chomsky as well.
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u/BainbridgeBorn Nov 10 '23
Because this place is a cesspool of deliberate misinformation meant to muddy the waters and lead people down bad paths. I think the mods are either passively or actively letting it happen
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u/VioRafael Nov 10 '23
I don’t think the mods are actively letting it happen. I think they’re reason is freedom of speech. I don’t think it is working well because we’re often debating people who have never read Chomsky or at least watched 2 or three of his speeches on different topics. It’s a waste of time basically
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u/Dry-Professional-BER Nov 10 '23
If I see your comment
or your second one
I won't agree on them.
"...people seem to blindly believe that it is of the festival because a random account that can barely strong together an english sentence says so?"
Good thing you are a native English speaker, many people are not, and accusing them of lacking language skills backfires on you here because you didn't understand the Ynet article and the word "Otef" and it's meaning.
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u/Comfortable-Wrap-723 Nov 11 '23
Most of disinformation comes from Israel and India by Hindu extremists with anti Muslim flavors.
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u/[deleted] Nov 10 '23 edited Nov 10 '23
Did you check the threadh before whining here.
The source of that video is the Israel Air Force reported by Yedioth Ahronot
https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/b111niukzt
Here is the translated text:
"After the pilots realized that there was tremendous difficulty in distinguishing within the occupied outposts and settlements who was a terrorist and who was a soldier or civilian, a decision was made that the first mission of the combat helicopters and the armed Zik drones was to stop the flow of terrorists and the murderous mob that poured into Israeli territory through the gaps in the fence. 28 combat helicopters fired over the course of a day The fighting all the ammunition in their stomachs, in rearming rounds. These are hundreds of 30 mm cannon shells (the effect of a spray grenade for each shell) as well as the Hellfire missiles. The rate of fire against the thousands of terrorists was tremendous at first, and only at a certain point did the pilots begin to slow down the attacks and carefully select the targets. The Hamas army, it turns out, deliberately made it difficult for the helicopter pilots and the operators of the UAVs: in the investigation it became clear that the invading forces were asked in the last briefings to walk slowly into the settlements and outposts or within them, and under no circumstances to run, in order to make the pilots think they were Israelis. This deception worked for a considerable time , until the Apache pilots realized that they had to skip all the restrictions. It was only around 9:00 a.m. that some of them began to spray the terrorists with the cannons on their own, without authorization from superiors."
If you have basic reading comprehension it shows there was utter confusion. The IAF commanders decided to declare a free fire zone and knowingly killed hundreds including Israeli civilians and hostages. This bungling is what led to the enormous death toll on October 7th.
Multiple Israeli witnesses of the massacres acknowledge Israeli Armed forces and Israel Air Force killed many Israeli civilians including hostages including and specifically at the festival.
https://mondoweiss.net/2023/10/a-growing-number-of-reports-indicate-israeli-forces-responsible-for-israeli-civilian-and-military-deaths-following-october-7-attack/
https://youtu.be/1J1I96fTKnM?si=LVcdGnlYo-jL3Aem
https://thegrayzone.com/2023/10/27/israels-military-shelled-burning-tanks-helicopters/
https://electronicintifada.net/content/israelis-filmed-abusing-bodies-palestinian-fighters/39731
https://electronicintifada.net/content/israeli-forces-shot-their-own-civilians-kibbutz-survivor-says/38861
Thanks for your Hasbara post as this is a topic that needs light shed on given the media refusal to question Israeli propaganda.