U.S. President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that Hamas had repeatedly raped women and mutilated their bodies during its Oct.7 assault on southern Israel, citing survivors and witnesses of the attacks.
Did I personally downvote it? No. But I get why people would.
Isreal has been caught in so many bald-faced lies that at this point, in spite of Hamas’ history of being absolutely horrible people, we’re still forced to step back from every single claim made about them now and say “But did they really?”
Even if the claim is true, the decision to focus on reporting about specific, morally reprehensible actions by Hamas is a deliberate choice that serves to obfuscate and distract from the sheer unbelievable scale of the atrocities that Isreal is committing and has been committing in Palestine for decades.
Do I find the claim believable? Absolutely. But we have to step back and interrogate the intention behind making it. This is an attempt by the Biden administration to control the conversation, because they know that voters are pissed at them for their unflinching support of Isreal, in spite of their endless litany of war crimes. They’re not willing to give up that support, so instead they have to find any way they can to turn the conversation away from what Isreal is doing.
This is propaganda. Whether it’s true or not, its purpose is to control the way people think about the choices their government is making. And that’s why people are downvoting it.
The point is that this was an informative post about something I don’t like. So why would I downvote it?
Think of it like this. If there was a massive tsunami somewhere and somebody posted a link to a solid news report on it, up voting it is saying “thanks for the news” NOT “I am pro-tsunami”.
If you believe that all news reporting exists only to inform, and never has any other purpose, you need to work on your media literacy.
Even if this is being reported in good faith, which it most likely is, the administration is still pursuing an agenda by putting this story out there to be reported. No one is under an obligation to support that agenda by remaining neutral about the information. People absolutely have a right to say “Please don’t spread this” for various reasons up to and including “It enables genocide” and on platforms like Lemmy the downvote button is basically the “Please don’t spread this” button.
Did I personally downvote it? No. But I get why people would.
Isreal has been caught in so many bald-faced lies that at this point, in spite of Hamas’ history of being absolutely horrible people, we’re still forced to step back from every single claim made about them now and say “But did they really?”
Even if the claim is true, the decision to focus on reporting about specific, morally reprehensible actions by Hamas is a deliberate choice that serves to obfuscate and distract from the sheer unbelievable scale of the atrocities that Isreal is committing and has been committing in Palestine for decades.
Do I find the claim believable? Absolutely. But we have to step back and interrogate the intention behind making it. This is an attempt by the Biden administration to control the conversation, because they know that voters are pissed at them for their unflinching support of Isreal, in spite of their endless litany of war crimes. They’re not willing to give up that support, so instead they have to find any way they can to turn the conversation away from what Isreal is doing.
This is propaganda. Whether it’s true or not, its purpose is to control the way people think about the choices their government is making. And that’s why people are downvoting it.
The point is that this was an informative post about something I don’t like. So why would I downvote it?
Think of it like this. If there was a massive tsunami somewhere and somebody posted a link to a solid news report on it, up voting it is saying “thanks for the news” NOT “I am pro-tsunami”.
If you believe that all news reporting exists only to inform, and never has any other purpose, you need to work on your media literacy.
Even if this is being reported in good faith, which it most likely is, the administration is still pursuing an agenda by putting this story out there to be reported. No one is under an obligation to support that agenda by remaining neutral about the information. People absolutely have a right to say “Please don’t spread this” for various reasons up to and including “It enables genocide” and on platforms like Lemmy the downvote button is basically the “Please don’t spread this” button.