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Home » Jussie Smollett and confirmation bias

Jussie Smollett and confirmation bias

The New Neo Posted on by

The story of the attack on Jussie Smollett was a suspicious one from the start. I say that for two reasons. The first is that so many of these recent reports of racially motivated attacks, physical or symbolic, have turned out to be self-perpetrated hoaxes. The second is the many inconsistencies, glitches, and lapses of logic in Smollett’s own story (listed by Kyle Smith here).

But this was a story MSM and the left deeply wanted to be true. And as with so many other stories the press deeply wants to be true—the racist MAGA-hatted Covington kids, Christine Blasey Ford’s tale of the would-be teen rapist Brett Kavanaugh, the marauding frat boys of Virginia, the feces-covered Tawana Brawley—when people want a story to be true they tend to suspend disbelief and even logic in the effort to keep believing it.

It’s called confirmation bias:

Confirmation bias, also called confirmatory bias or myside bias, is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one’s preexisting beliefs or hypotheses. It is a type of cognitive bias and a systematic error of inductive reasoning. People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs. Confirmation bias is a variation of the more general tendency of apophenia.

People also tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position. Biased search, interpretation and memory have been invoked to explain attitude polarization (when a disagreement becomes more extreme even though the different parties are exposed to the same evidence), belief perseverance (when beliefs persist after the evidence for them is shown to be false), the irrational primacy effect (a greater reliance on information encountered early in a series) and illusory correlation (when people falsely perceive an association between two events or situations).

Don’t think this is limited to the left. It’s not. But it’s rampant there, perhaps because the left is very “emotionally charged” right now, to say the least.

But reporters are supposed to be especially aware of confirmation bias and to be on constant guard against it. When reporters see themselves as crusaders for a cause, rather than dedicated to truth no matter where it leads them, we have a state of affairs where they can be easily fooled because of their confirmation bias.

Today, though, it’s worse than that. Some may be fooled, but some know that they should be more skeptical and more thorough in investigating something, but purposely suppress that knowledge because of sheer and utter partisanship. That’s not confirmation bias—or, if it is, it’s willful conscious confirmation bias.

Which could also be called purposely writing outright propaganda.

With all of this in mind, I find this WaPo op-ed by Nana Efua Mumford fascinating. Mumford—the executive assistant to The Post’s editorial board—is black, and she seems to have grown up in Chicago. Mumford describes her back-and-forth struggles with the Smollett story this way:

…[W]hen I first heard of the attack on Smollett, I had to pause. On “Empire,” Jamal Lyon came out as gay in front of his homophobic, abusive father; took a bullet for that same father and overcame an addiction to pain pills. Was I reading last week’s episode recap, or did this actually happen in my hometown of Chicago? Almost immediately, I had a terrible feeling that I was victim blaming, or worse, that I am so brainwashed that I no longer can hear cries of hurt and outrage from my own black community. It was a horrifying feeling that I am still trying to work through almost three weeks later.

So for Mumford—who I think is being honest than self-serving here, although I can’t be sure—her initial skepticism was followed almost immediately by self-blame at her own thoughtcrime for doubting Smollett’s story. She seems to still be troubled by her initial failure to follow the dictates of groupthink, rather than being proud of her independent thinking and devotion to logic instead.

I use those Orwellian terms purposely and not as a gimmick, because Orwell was describing the left and the ways in which it controls independent thinking and trains a person to stop all such meanderings from the Truth as the Party sees it and wills it. That’s what Mumford appears to be struggling against.

She writes:

I wanted to believe Smollett. I really did. I know that there is a deep, dark racist history in Chicago and, if proved true, this would be just one more point on the list. I wanted to believe him with every fiber of my being, most of all because the consequences if he were lying were almost too awful to contemplate.

And yet I struggled with Smollett’s story.

So for Mumford this was an enormous struggle, a very real one and certainly not a trivial one. It’s one that is faced by anyone reluctant to change his/her mind (and that’s just about everyone, believe me) about something basic. Perhaps the saddest thing in Mumford’s story is the fact that she would rather the attack on Smollett have been bona fide than that he be found to have been lying and a complicit hoaxer in his own supposed victimization.

Unfortunately (at least by yesterday, which was when Mumford’s op-ed was published) Mumford is still fighting the truth and taking sides against it. That is the strength of groupthink. And in doing so, she commits another error and exposes previous confirmation bias on her part [emphasis mine]:

If Smollett’s story is found to be untrue, it will cause irreparable damage to the communities most affected. Smollett would be the first example skeptics cite when they say we should be dubious of victims who step forward to share their experiences of racist hate crimes or sexual violence. The incident would be touted as proof that there is a leftist conspiracy to cast Trump supporters as violent, murderous racists. It would be the very embodiment of “fake news.”

And that reason, more than any other, is why I need this story to be true, despite its ugliness and despite what it would say about the danger of the world I live in. The damage done would be too deep and long-lasting.

Mumford says that the Smollett story would be the first example skeptics would cite. Where has she been all her life? In this post, I’ve already cited a few that easily take priority—high-profile cases, too—and I did it just off the top of my head. There are plenty more, and you can find many lists of them: race hoaxes in 2016, some more recent ones here, and that’s just the tip of a huge iceberg, and not a really hidden one at that. If Mumford is unaware of this history, both old and new, it’s due to more confirmation bias, either unconscious or willful.

Right now the status of the Smollett story is that most media outlets are reporting that “Chicago Police believe Smollett paid two men to orchestrate the alleged assault.” That seems most likely, because Smollett’s behavior around the crime was not the behavior of an actual victim (see Kyle Smith’s summary of Smollett’s suspicious behaviors).

So at this point, logic seems to indicate that Smollett was in on it. But I’m open to new information that would tell me that Smollett’s new defense is correct, and that (as he says) these two black guys from Nigeria who are acquaintances of his really did attack him and yell racist epithets, and then framed him by saying he paid them to do it. It’s a bit far-fetched, but stranger things have happened. How two Nigerian guys could masquerade as white guys is a little hard to picture, even if they wore ski masks and gloves and were totally covered up. But it’s possible. Hard to believe, but possible. Phone records, emails, and/or records of any payments by Smollett to the brothers would be part of the evidence that could shed light on this aspect of the whole sordid mess.

But whether it was Smollett himself or whether he was being framed by the brothers, the indictment of the MSM and the left stands: they believed a hoax, and a fairly transparent hoax at that. Or they pretended to believe it for propaganda purposes. Either way, it’s bad.

And for many and varied politicians, the same.

[NOTE: Another thing that’s indisputable is how much Smollett hates Donald Trump, which would serve as a possible motive if he is in fact the hoax’s perpetrator:

Pretty nasty stuff.]

[ADDENDUM: This is satire, right? Right?]

Comments

Jussie Smollett and confirmation bias — 46 Comments

  1. A while back someone at Rod Dreher’s blog commenting on such hoaxes said, “It’s not that there is no racism in this country. It’s just that the demand exceeds the supply.”

    I think that’s rather brilliant, and accurate as far as straight-up let’s-beat-up-this-black-guy racism goes.

  2. “Another thing that’s indisputable is how much Smollett hates Donald Trump”

    I’d argue that “hate” is the driver for the left…full stop.
    Pick your poison & it’s front & center of leftism:
    hate, envy, greed, lust for power, lust for the sake of lust…Each gives permission to destroy someone else or dominate or…

    I assume “lie” straight up as soon as I hear a leftist’s accusation. I’m rarely wrong, and I was spot on with Smollett…from the get go.

    When they finally get what they lie about now they’re going to be surprised just how bad it can be.

  3. It’s diversity or color judgment, the new/old racism, sexism, etc. with a politically correct label.

  5. Smollett’s new defense is … (as he says) these two black guys from Nigeria who are acquaintances of his really did attack him and yell racist epithets, and then framed him by saying he paid them to do it. –neo

    That’s laughable to anyone who has seen pictures of those Nigerians. They are contest-level body builders. If they really attacked him, two-on-one, with fists, feet and “teeth” according to Smollett, they would have hurt him badly.

    Not to mention the idiocy of the intact Subway sandwich and the bleach/noose business.

  6. Chicago police have handled this with Kid Gloves. Afraid to appear racist by not believing his concoction. Yet, the still dug deeper. I understand that Smollett is still not letting the police examine his phone. That is a major sign that the story is a (can I say it) fairy tale. Will he go to prison? Nope.

  7. “But, wait! It COULD have been true!”

    I’d be willing to bet that we start hearing that phrase from some folks, even from some in the media, soon.

    And, even though this guy hates Trump, I cannot help but feel that his use of crude language says more about him than it does about Trump or his hatred of Trump.

  8. Thoughtful article. Thanks!

    Smollett is the poster boy for the truism that when you let yourself start hating, you become its captive. Hatefulness becomes much stronger than confirmation bias – it eventually will destroy you.

    It certainly seems to have destroyed Jussie, and it’s working hard on Mumford. She better straighten out her mind & do it fast.

  9. Remember the CPD is in the middle of the election for Mayor with an angry black woman who hates police as the leading candidate,

  10. “…COULD…”

    Actually, it SHOULD have been true.

    And therefore, it IS true…even if it isn’t. (That’s right. The truth doesn’t have to be true any more…if your heart—and your politics—is in the right place.)

    IOW, because it IS true (even if it isn’t) it therefore doesn’t matter that it isn’t.

    Smollet’s a victim in every way. That poor guy. Forced to do this thing by that evil, outrageous, orange man. And forced to defend himself from his evil doubters and those racist skeptics. (Don’t they know that his allegations are true even if they aren’t?). Forced to undergo all this unpleasantness….when he’s the victim!

    This, like the Covington affair, like the Virginia leadership soap opera, like the Kavanaugh lynching, like the currently-beginning-to-be-revealed DOJ/FBI/Obama/Hillary scandal will be allowed by all the beautiful people, all the moral people to fade away.

    To be swept under that ever growing rug.

    While they place the entire blame for it squarely all on Trump and those who support him.

    (Oh sure, maybe Fox will continue to push it, but…you know,…Fox…heh…)

    See what you get when you don’t elect the deserving candidate! See what you made us do!!

  11. I do TRY to keep an open mind. Smollett made it hard, because the story was not very believable.

    As I understand it from articles I have read, when Smollett refused to turn over his phone, the CPD quietly subpoenaed the records. Then when he did turn over a call log, they looked at the ones which had been deleted from his records. I think it likely they have phone and payment records to support the fraud charge. We’ll see.

  12. Oh yeah. I was rolling my eyes at the very premise. They NEED this to be true so very badly. Especially after the Covington kids got ultimately viewed with…sympathy. How could Smollett let that go un-answered?

  14. Huxley at 4:27- also, it’s not like he wouldn’t have recognized their voices when they shouted “this is MAGA country!” with their Nigerian accents.

  15. “It’s just that the demand exceeds the supply.” — Mac
    Best laugh of the week, for me.

    “Smollett would be the first example skeptics cite when they say we should be dubious of victims who step forward to share their experiences of racist hate crimes or sexual violence.” — Mumford

    Neo points out that there are tons of other examples. I read half of an Ann Coulter book that discussed a great many. But I think Mumford maybe means that Smollett would be or will be the “poster child” of the hate crime hoax. Or should we call it the attempted lynching hoax? There was a noose.

    It’s an intersectionalism squared issue. Black and gay, check #1. A newly made celebrity and activist, check #2. Tawana Brawley was a nobody until Sharpton, and even Christine Blasey Ford was not much in the public sphere until Kavanaugh.
    _____

    If one thinks of the whole left-wing media response as a exercise in propaganda and groupthink, then the Mumford piece is actually a large crack in the effort. One of the primary points of media groupthink is that the viewer is not allowed to think outside their box. Everyone thinks our way; without exception. (Fox doesn’t count they tell us.)

    So Mumford is hinting that it might be necessary to think outside our box, even though she does not want you to think that it is OK to do so, generally speaking. After all, this is just a one in a million outlier. So please, please don’t discard the box!

  16. Of course, the best solution for the looney left is to support the Narrative by shutting down any site that reports the facts, such as fakehatecrimes.org

    That site went black (unexpectedly?!?) when it posted the facts about Smollett hoax.

    Our betters do their best to control the information flow.

  17. The letter with a message composted from cut-out letters & white powder is the bigger part of this story. When Smollett filed his claim, it was instantly part of the letter-investigation.

    Mumford is professional enough to know stone-cold: “It’s the letter, stupid”.

    She knows it is not, as she claims, the “victims” whom her political adversary will discount, but her own professional industry.

    There is some really significant gaposis in the Smollett affair. Who puts white powder in an envelope, with a Mafioso cut-out-letters message? Who sends a pair of very grateful Americanized Nigerians on a highly sensitive covert mission? These guys would kill him, eat him, and eat the feces 3 times, not to spend the rest of their days in Nigeria.

    [But, I do read that the Bros claim to be born-and-raised in Chicago, and American citizens. More gaposis.]

    There is currently a very unusual incidence of “404” (removed, yanked) articles on this subject, showing up in Google search returns. Particularly but not exclusively on the TMZ-led report of a Grand Jury. This itself is going to be a story; 4, 3, 2…

  18. huxley:

    I agree that it is HIGHLY unlikely that the two brothers are framing Jussie. However, as I said, it’s possible. But only marginally, distantly possible.

    But I don’t think the fact that they didn’t beat him up badly tells us anything about that, because if they were faking an attack and framing him, they wouldn’t necessarily go full force physically against him.

  19. The circumstance that the supposed attack took place at 2am in the temperature of -20 pretty much eliminated any other possible reasons for this attack but it being a fabricated hoax staged by Smollett. No one is going to risk hypothermia or pneumonia just to settle a beef under such harsh conconditions.

  21. “I use those Orwellian terms purposely and not as a gimmick, because Orwell was describing the left and the ways in which it controls independent thinking and trains a person to stop all such meanderings from the Truth as the Party sees it and wills it.” neo

    What is the practical difference between an entrenched ‘confirmation bias’, that is immune to contrary fact, logic, reason and common sense… and ideological fanaticism?

    How does a person who stops “all such meanderings from the Truth as the Party sees it and wills it” differ from an ideological fanatic?

    I can’t help but conclude that the millions of AOCs are well beyond confirmation bias.

  22. That hate mail about Trump even sounds fake, like a generic fill-in-the-blank TDS. Who says stuff like that? It sounds like someone who doesn’t know how to swear, like a granny trying to imitate a tough guy. I bet that was the beginning of the hoax. Then he faked the letter from a Trump Fan supposedly written in response to his hate mail. Another exercise in incredible. When that didn’t get him the attention he wanted he faked the attack of the roving bleach-and-rope bearing Trump Fans stalking him in subzero weather in a progressive Chicago neighborhood. He kept upping the ante but the media didn’t bite until Smollett went full tilt balls to the wall physical beat down. He did what was needful to get their attention. He’s responsible for the fraud but the media is complicit in encouraging and providing a safe space for this melodrama to play out.

  23. American Thinker floats a tin-foil boat on the waters, which covers some of the “gaposis” about why Smollett even tried such a stunt, if “craving attention” isn’t enough to explain it: it was a docudrama staged to support Kamala Harris & Corey Booker’s new anti-lynching legislation.

    https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/02/was_kamala_harris_part_of_the_jussie_stollett_hoax.html

    But another Hollywood guy, a film producer named Tariq Nasheed, who also goes by hip-hop rapper-like names of “K-Flex” and “King Flex,” thinks this isn’t the end of the story. He smells a political rat.

    His series of tweets raises suspicions that the political response to the matter, led by Democratic presidential candidates Kamala Harris (and Cory Booker), is suspicious, real suspicious, and there might have been a staged setup in order to get a law passed and rack up voter points.
    …
    Up until now, it appeared that politicians such as Harris (and Booker) couldn’t have known much about the phony plot and probably just glommed onto the controversy for political advantage the way a lot of politicians do. But Nasheed has pictures of them campaigning together, and even more important, she [sic] notes that Harris and Booker brought out an anti-lynching bill just coincidentally timed ahead of the attack, as if to ensure passage as the momentum built from public outrage (until the attack was exposed as phony). With Smollett a black and gay supposed victim and everyone slathering sympathy on him, who could refuse to vote for the anti-lynching bill, which just happens to have had some gay language inserted at the last minute?

    Will the CPD go down that channel? Don’t hold your breath.
    Even if Harris is involved, there won’t be any emails or phone calls, just a general atmosphere ala Henry II and Thomas a Becket.
    Conservative Tree House commenters climb on board, with pictures of Jussie hangin’ with his peeps, who all seem to be much more important than he is.

    https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/02/18/awkward-moment-candidate-kamala-harris-asked-about-her-jussie-smollett-modern-day-lynching-tweet/comment-page-2/#comment-6721850

    https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/02/18/awkward-moment-candidate-kamala-harris-asked-about-her-jussie-smollett-modern-day-lynching-tweet/comment-page-2/#comment-6721714

  24. But this must have been wha Smollett was really after:

    https://babylonbee.com/news/jussie-smollett-offered-job-at-cnn-after-fabricating-news-story-out-of-thin-air

    “Smollett has exactly the kind of skills we look for at our fine organization,” said CNN correspondent Brian Stelter. “He picked a narrative, made up all the relevant facts and details, and stuck with his story in spite of glaring holes in the plot. It’s hard to find people who understand our core values here at CNN, but Smollett seems to be just the guy for us.”

  25. neo: I took your paraphrase literally that they “really did attack [Smollett],” not that they really did fake an attack.

    It was also on my mind that Smollett has been quoted, “They beat the hell out of me.” Though I can’t find a hard source for that.

  26. American Thinker floats a tin-foil boat on the waters, which covers some of the “gaposis” about why Smollett even tried such a stunt, if “craving attention” isn’t enough to explain it

    AesopFan: I’m sure Smollett had multiple reasons.

    As I mentioned in a previous topic, his mother was a serious black activist who had Angela Davis as a good friend. Which is to say, Smollett was steeped in black radical “by any means necessary” politics and is following in that “tradition.”

    Furthermore, Smollett has a noose fixation. He did a black-gay rap video in 2017, “F U W” (Fucked-up World) where at 1:00 you can see a noose prominently swinging behind a black man, then it cuts to some old B&W stock footage of whites laughing in a night club.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c36ykeapeqU

    In the alleged hate mail Smollett received a week or so before the Subway sandwich beat-down, there is a noose in child-like drawing. The hate letter contained some ominous white powder, which turned out to be crushed aspirin.

    The FBI is investigating and if Smollett sent that letter to himself, that may be his fatal mistake.

    Currently there are two lines of speculation about that letter. Someone else sent it and Smollett was indignant the hate mail wasn’t taken seriously enough to his satisfaction, so he upped the ante by staging the hoax attack.

    The other speculation is that Smollett hates Trump so much and is as fanatical as his mother and Angela Davis that he sent the hate mail letter when that didn’t work, he upped the ante to the hoax attack.

  27. Neo
    Kick the false flag agent cicero off please
    There seems to be smollette copycat here
    Racism is not welcome

  28. Remember the huge surge of blacks to the industrial Midwest after the truly Great Mississippi flood of 1927, which made farming in MS and LA impossible for a goodly time: no houses, nobarns, no ploughs, no stores, no domesticated livestock. What were they to do except migrate to good paying jobs?

    For Cicero:

    What has happened down here is the wind have changed
    Clouds roll in from the north and it start to rain
    It rained real hard and it rained for a real long time
    Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline

    The river rose all day–The river rose all night
    Some people got lost in the flood
    Some people got away alright
    The river has busted through clear down to Plaquemine
    Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline

    Louisiana, Louisiana
    They’re tryin’ to wash us away
    They’re tryin’ to wash us away

    –Randy Newman, “Louisiana 1927”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGs2iLoDUYE

  31. Real Trump supporters will never commit hate crimes or post racist comments.
    How do i know?

    Real Trump supporters want Trump to win more than anything else.

    Firstly, 99% of Trump supporters love immigrants and ain’t racists, they just want border security and the upholding of law and order with immigrants coming in vetted, orderly and legally.

    Secondly, the remaining 1% want Trump to win and know better not to hurt his chances by refraining themselves from posting hateful garbage online or commit violent hate crime in public.

    When the real trump supporters don’t act like what the delusional progressives imagined, the progressives have to act out the violence they imagined trump supporters would commit to reveal the true nature Trump supporters working hard to conceal. When conservatives don’t deliver, liberals must manufacture.

    hateful racist comments are usually posted by democrats or smollett inspired progressives pretending to be conservatives to smear us.

  32. Geoffrey Britain:

    It may be a distinction that doesn’t matter all that much except in psychological terms, but the difference is whether the person is consciously lying or whether the person believes what he or she is saying.

    Remember in Nineteen Eighty-Four, when O’Brien is torturing and brainwashing Winston, and he holds up his fingers and asks how many fingers, and Winston keeps saying what he sees?

    O’Brien lifted the grating. Unseen, the frail slip of paper was whirling away on the current of warm air; it was vanishing in a flash of flame. O’Brien turned away from the wall.

    ‘Ashes,’ he said. ‘Not even identifiable ashes. Dust. It does not exist. It never existed.’

    ‘But it did exist! It does exist! It exists in memory. I remember it. You remember it.’

    ‘I do not remember it,’ said O’Brien.

    Winston’s heart sank. That was doublethink. He had a feeling of deadly helplessness. If he could have been certain that O’Brien was lying, it would not have seemed to matter. But it was perfectly possible that O’Brien had really forgotten the photograph. And if so, then already he would have forgotten his denial of remembering it, and forgotten the act of forgetting. How could one be sure that it was simple trickery? Perhaps that lunatic dislocation in the mind could really happen: that was the thought that defeated him…

    …’Is it your opinion, Winston, that the past has real existence?’

    Again the feeling of helplessness descended upon Winston. His eyes flitted towards the dial. He not only did not know whether ‘yes’ or ‘no’ was the answer that would save him from pain; he did not even know which answer he believed to be the true one….

    ‘But how can you stop people remembering things?’ cried Winston again momentarily forgetting the dial. ‘It is involuntary. It is outside oneself. How can you control memory? You have not controlled mine!’

    O’Brien’s manner grew stern again. He laid his hand on the dial.

    ‘On the contrary,’ he said, ‘you have not controlled it. That is what has brought you here. You are here because you have failed in humility, in self-discipline. You would not make the act of submission which is the price of sanity. You preferred to be a lunatic, a minority of one. Only the disciplined mind can see reality, Winston. You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident. When you delude yourself into thinking that you see something, you assume that everyone else sees the same thing as you. But I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party. That is the fact that you have got to relearn, Winston. It needs an act of self-destruction, an effort of the will. You must humble yourself before you can become sane.’

    He paused for a few moments, as though to allow what he had been saying to sink in.

    ‘Do you remember,’ he went on, ‘writing in your diary, “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four”?’

    ‘Yes,’ said Winston.

    O’Brien held up his left hand, its back towards Winston, with the thumb hidden and the four fingers extended.

    ‘How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?’

    ‘Four.’

    ‘And if the party says that it is not four but five — then how many?’

    ‘Four.’

    The word ended in a gasp of pain. The needle of the dial had shot up to fifty-five. The sweat had sprung out all over Winston’s body. The air tore into his lungs and issued again in deep groans which even by clenching his teeth he could not stop. O’Brien watched him, the four fingers still extended. He drew back the lever. This time the pain was only slightly eased.

    ‘How many fingers, Winston?’

    ‘Four.’

    The needle went up to sixty.

    ‘How many fingers, Winston?’

    ‘Four! Four! What else can I say? Four!’

    The needle must have risen again, but he did not look at it. The heavy, stern face and the four fingers filled his vision. The fingers stood up before his eyes like pillars, enormous, blurry, and seeming to vibrate, but unmistakably four.

    ‘How many fingers, Winston?’

    ‘Four! Stop it, stop it! How can you go on? Four! Four!’

    ‘How many fingers, Winston?’

    ‘Five! Five! Five!’

    ‘No, Winston, that is no use. You are lying. You still think there are four. How many fingers, please?’

    ‘Four! five! Four! Anything you like. Only stop it, stop the pain!’

    Abruptly he was sitting up with O’Brien’s arm round his shoulders. He had perhaps lost consciousness for a few seconds. The bonds that had held his body down were loosened. He felt very cold, he was shaking uncontrollably, his teeth were chattering, the tears were rolling down his cheeks. For a moment he clung to O’Brien like a baby, curiously comforted by the heavy arm round his shoulders. He had the feeling that O’Brien was his protector, that the pain was something that came from outside, from some other source, and that it was O’Brien who would save him from it.

    ‘You are a slow learner, Winston,’ said O’Brien gently.

    ‘How can I help it?’ he blubbered. ‘How can I help seeing what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four.’

    ‘Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.’

    I put up the whole quote because the passage is so amazing. I first read it when I was about twelve years old, and it chilled me to the bone.

    I discuss the phenomenon at greater length in this post.

  33. Unbelievable, this Mumford woman. She NEEDS the world to be full of ‘ugliness’, ‘dangerous’, and hate filled – or her world view and identity will be a lie. Leftism has destroyed her soul. The truth won’t set her free, it will ruin her.
    She need Jesus, or sumptin’.

  34. Mac on February 18, 2019 at 3:57 pm at 3:57 pm said:
    A while back someone at Rod Dreher’s blog commenting on such hoaxes said, “It’s not that there is no racism in this country. It’s just that the demand exceeds the supply.”

    I think that’s rather brilliant, and accurate as far as straight-up let’s-beat-up-this-black-guy racism goes.
    * * *
    FaceBook banned Dreher for posting his article about the now pretty well established hoax even admitted by the MSM, claiming it promoted hate crime.
    You can’t make this stuff up – it’s why the Bee reads like actual news.

    https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/facebook-bans-jussie-wrongthink/

    Facebook will not allow its users to read my commentary on Jussie Smollett’s apparent hate hoax.

    Facebook will apparently not allow its users to say that police believe Smollett, a black gay actor, may have paid his two “assailants” to attack him last month, and blamed it on white Trump supporters — this, even though that is being reported by multiple national media outlets.
    …
    I didn’t much use my Facebook account, so it wasn’t a big deal to delete it, which I did this morning after seeing what Team Zuckerberg did. I invite all of you to consider what it means when Facebook will prevent its users from discussing facts and drawing conclusions that do not reflect well on preferred progressive narratives.

    I fully support Facebook or any other social medium having a policy of banning certain material (porn, neo-Nazi propaganda, etc.). But when you can’t talk about hate hoaxes in general, or about a celebrated hate hoax in particular? Presumably my blog post violated Facebook’s “hate speech” prohibition (I can’t find any of their other Community Standards that it might have violated). Facebook’s policy on “hate speech” is here. This, I suppose, is what my blog post violated:

    [can’t copy the image, but you know the drill: “Mocking the concept, events, or victims of hate crimes…” — they must have gotten him on the “mocking” part …]
    …
    But the entire reason for the post is new evidence indicating that Jussie Smollett was NOT a victim of a hate crime, but rather faked a hate crime!

    Just after typing that line, the same friend who sent out the tiny url blocked by Facebook texted to say that Facebook is no longer blocking my Jussie Smollett post. If true, that’s good news — but the fact that FB blocked it in the first place is a very troubling sign. I’m not going to reinstate my account. I’m done with Facebook.

    The first bolded part is where we conservatives keep getting into trouble: banning any speech is still banning speech.
    As at least two of Rod’s commenters pointed out, the Left thinks HE IS a Neo-Nazi.

  35. om: I found that map of Africa surprising. I was never aware you could geographically fit the US, China, Europe, India, Mexico and Japan into Africa.

    Shocka!

  36. MAGA hats and a noose at 2am in the teeth of a subzero Chicago polar vortex would have commanded top dollar in a screenplay. Tarantino and Spike Lee would have bid against each other in hopes of another clownishly absurd blockbuster (MAGA Country). Paydirt.
    Instead Smollett dialed 911.
    Most unfortunate.

  37. Back in the day, the communists of the highlander school would present a young white couple buying a home… in the south… after all was done, a black couple moved into the home… BUT when the southerners didnt care enough to do anything about it, they decied to make history by burning crosses and blowing up the young couple they put in the home…

    they also set off bombs in nyc pitting the hasidic community against the black community to this day… [the ADL was blamed for it]

    Lovestoneites

    A so-called Left Opposition centered around James P. Cannon, Max Shachtman and others, supported Leon Trotsky and were expelled in 1928 to form the Communist League of America. Soon thereafter, another cleavage emerged, this time between the supporters of Nikolai Bukharin and Joseph Stalin. When Bukharin was purged from the Soviet leadership, his supporters in various countries, known as the Right Opposition, were also expelled or left the various national parties. In the United States this tendency was led by Jay Lovestone, former General Secretary of the Communist Party.

    [just so you know what the idiots fighting are fighting over… ]

    The organization took another stab at a Yiddish-language periodical with its launch of Arbeiter Kampf (Workers’ Struggle) in 1933.

    The cause of communism is needed a “hundred years’ task”, as the saying goes, and it defiantly cannot be accomplished at one stroke. In different countries this undertaking has to go through different stages, and different enemies must be defeated, before a communist society can gradually be established. – Liu Shaoqi – How to Be a Good Communist

    The test of a Party member’s loyalty to the Party, the revolution, the cause of communism is whether or not he can subordinate his personal interests absolutely and unconditionally to the interests of the Party whatever the circumstances.

    DID SMOLLETTE do this? 🙂

    At all times and all questions a party member should give first consideration to the interests of the Party as a whole and put them in the foremost and place personal matters and interests second.

    The supremacy of the Party’s interests is the highest principle that must govern the thinking and actions of the members of our Party. In accordance with this principle, every Party member must completely identify his personal interests with those of the Party both in his thinking and in his actions of the members of our Party both in his thinking and in his actions. He must be able to yield to the interests of the Party without any hesitations or reluctance and sacrifice his personal interests what ever of the two are at variance.

    Unhesitating readiness to sacrifice personal interests and even one’s life, for the Party and for the proletariat and for the emancipation of the nation and of all mankind – this is one expression of what we usually describe as “Party spirit”, “Party sense” or “sense of organization’.

    It is the highest expression of communist morality, of the principled nature of the party of the proletariat and of the purest proletarian class consciousness.

    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

    WHICH history do you have in your head of the Reichstag Fire that is always brought up? the ACTUAL history or the fake one created by Willi Munzenberg for he Commenterm?

    WHICH history of AIDS do you carry in your head, the faked one that tried to establish it as a ecaped vilation of the bio warfare treaty, which it so happens russia just had happen with their weaponized illegal anthrax (they apologized for this disinformation campaign, but how many live in a personl world that this is not aligned with the real world?)

    How many people know Arafat was a KGB stooge? Indira Ghandi? who else?

    given that communism is the highest cause anyone in mankind could join, what isnt allowed? what personal sacrifice is too great?

  38. I’ve prepared a boilerplate statement for use by the usual suspects, once the fraud becomes undeniable.

    Gussie is an actor, a man of color, and a sexual minority. As an actor he has a unique social responsibility to educate us on the truth of his life in this racist and bigoted society. Gussie is not to be condemned for shouldering this burden, but commended for a revolutionary and transgressive act of punching back at the face of oppression!

    What rightwing haters who attempt to make “truth” the enemy of lived truth fail to realize, is that this defiant act of street education was fully justified as well as necessary, in order to expose what rightwing haters would do if only they felt safe in doing so, and were not restrained from acting by indifference, a fear of the law, or social ostracism.

    Their attempt to cloak their guilt behind a veneer of civility and disinterested tolerance hardly needs to be remarked upon. We all know what the hate filled minds of their kind are capable of if vigilance is ever relaxed and the crimes of the past as well as the would-be crimes and aggressions of the present were not continually refreshed in the consciousness of the community.

    Just because these MAGA hatted exploiters cannot be seen committing outright crimes under what must be admitted as a system of archaic and insufficiently nuanced legalism, does not mean that they are not guilty. Their very lives of privilege and their depraved indifference to the struggles of “others” for self esteem and affirmation give testimony to their guilt, whether it be overt or hidden in the dark recesses of their hate filled minds..

    We owe Gussie a debt of gratitude for reminding us of this! I stand in solidarity with Gussie!

  40. “Acting is the perfect idiot’s profession.” Katharine Hepburn
    Jussie is certainly proving that true.

  41. Ray: In a Playboy interview long ago Marlon Brando said he didn’t consider himself or any actor to be an artist.

    Which struck me as sad, because as far as I’m concerned Brando, however imperfect a human being, is one of the all-time great film actors. And yes, I do consider that an art.

    Yet, I do understand the contempt Katherine Hepburn and Brando might have for their own profession. Hollywood is a profoundly corrupt place and actors do not create in that top-to-bottom way that, say, painters and novelists work.

  42. Which struck me as sad, because as far as I’m concerned Brando, however imperfect a human being, is one of the all-time great film actors. And yes, I do consider that an art.

    Yet, I do understand the contempt Katherine Hepburn and Brando might have for their own profession. Hollywood is a profoundly corrupt place and actors do not create in that top-to-bottom way that, say, painters and novelists work.”

    Ever seen One Eyed Jacks?

  43. You have to admit, though, that this fuss covered up the Kyle Yorlets murder. So they have that going for them.

    I’d like to take a shot at backing off the confirmation bias issue. What if they, or some of them, are just as skeptical as any of us but they hope they can sell this and its outcomes and political and social results to the rest of us?

  44. AesopFan observed,

    “American Thinker floats a tin-foil boat on the waters, which covers some of the “gaposis” about why Smollett even tried such a stunt, if “craving attention” isn’t enough to explain it: it was a docudrama staged to support Kamala Harris & Corey Booker’s new anti-lynching legislation.

    https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/02/was_kamala_harris_part_of_the_jussie_stollett_hoax.html“

    Yes, and this reminds that we should take a modicum of care not ‘kh’ ourselves with any ‘modern lynching’ conclusions of our own. Towit, I have seen two other ‘pilot script’ suggestions … and none of these are any more bizarre that what we are assuming he did. And for why.

  45. I watch, and have a collection of, classic movies. We go to a theater three times a year, maybe. We saw Dunkirk, which was OK. We saw “They Shall Not Grow Old” twice. I watch “My man Godfrey” at least once a year and ditto for “It happened one night.”

    Movies today are mostly cartoons. “Iron Man” And the “Iron Giant” were pretty good,

  46. I have no idea what this is about because I never read any story about J or S or whatever.

    See how easy it is to firewall off enemy mind control propaganda? It is why Republicans are losing. They think “paying attention” to the enemy is how they win.

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