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Comment by thepasswordis | Hacker News Reader

It’s crazy how when a lie takes hold, it just stays forever.

Another is relayed to January 6th protests. A friend today, a conservative DeSantis supporter, told me that he knew that on January 6th, the protestors killed several police officers.

This is, as we know now, absolutely false. It was based on a rumor, and once the reporting caught up, it turned out to be false.

Similarly I’m sure there will be Canadians who know that there were these mass unmarked child graves at schools. But again: totally false.

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My teenage son was shocked when I told him that none of the three people Kyle Rittenhouse shot were black, and didn't believe me at first until he googled it (and even google showed, on every link, that both of the people he killed and the one he wounded were white). He told his friends, and they didn't believe him until they googled it.

See this story: https://komonews.com/news/nation-world/false-info-about-ritt...

Be careful with your wording here - the suicide of Officer Smith, at least, has been pretty unambiguously tied directly back to trauma suffered on Jan 6th. So while a police officer wasn't directly killed through physical violence on Jan 6th the actions of protestors can be fairly said to have instigated the death of a police officer.

I think the big misstatement of the media here was the unrelated natural causes death of an officer (from essentially a stroke) on January 7th - but law enforcement lives were lost due to January 6th.

This seems like total post-hoc reasoning like the debunked "violent video games cause real-life violence."

Ultimately Officer Smith chose to take his own life; no one made that choice for him. He may have been appalled or traumatized or whatever, but ultimately he's the one who did it. Doesn't make it any less tragic, but it's extremely tenuous absent additional evidence to lay blame at anyone but he himself.

If there was some evidence that he was subject to unique abuse and was personally targeted on that day, then maybe there might be some merit. But of the officers who were there, he experienced roughly what the other officers did, and he was the only one to commit suicide.

Sorry, I had omitted sourcing in my original comment but here:

> Dr. Jonathan Arden, the former Chief Medical Examiner of the District of Columbia was hired by Smith's widow as part of her lawsuit to have her husband's suicide ruled "in the line of duty". His report stated that the "acute, precipitating event that caused the death of Officer Smith was his occupational exposure to the traumatic events he suffered on January 6, 2021".[1]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jeffrey_L._Smith

She hired an expert to get the ruling “line of duty” because it changes and increases his life insurance payouts. It also gives her access to survivors benefits and a slew of other things like part of his pension.

Yes, it was a precedent breaking ruling - which tend not to be given out lightly. That is a strong indicator that during this motion all of the evidence was under even higher scrutiny.

Ask around and be horrified as to how many people confidently think Kyle Rittenhouse shot one or more people who were

1. unarmed 2. black

(edit: I see now someone made the above point a few minutes before i finished typing my message, but I suppose that goes to show how widespread this myth is)

Conservatives get the brunt of blame for "conspiracy theories" and "disinformation" these days, and while I won't deny it doesn't happen (like it has for years), the left has just as much, if not more that I hear every day, but they never realize or take accountability for it because they have the popular narrative that runs all major corporations and the greater internet.

What's really horrifying is how many people seem unaware that the people he shot were under the impression that they were trying to stop an active shooter. You know, do that good-guy-with-a-gun thing, while acting on initially (but not eventually) incorrect information.

It's quite likely that if he were the one gunned down, and not the other way around, the people who did so would have walked, too.

I've seen the video, there was an angry mob of like 20 guys chasing him down and assaulting him

That’s what you’re supposed to do when a gunman is trying to kill you

> the people he shot were under the impression that they were trying to stop an active shooter.

I'm still unaware of that. Do you have a reference?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenosha_unrest_shooting#Second...

At this point in time, shots had been fired, Rittenhouse shot and killed a man, and was identified by the crowd as an active shooter. Huber was trying to disarm Rittenhouse, when he was shot and killed. This happened in front of Grosskreutz, who at this point had every reason to believe that Rittenhouse was an active shooter (And was then shot and injured by Rittenhouse).

Since in an active shooter situation, both the 'good guy with a gun' and 'the good guy without a gun' can't sit around and wait for eight months for a jury trial to find the active shooter to actually be innocent, both Huber and Grosskreutz reacted rather reasonably.

It seems to me that legally, nobody, except maybe Rosenbaum (Who was dead by the time of the events of the second confrontation) was in the wrong in that whole situation. It's all 'good guys with a gun' shooting at eachother because sweet fuckin' Jesus, nobody ever has all the facts about who was justified about killing whom when there's a public gunfight happening.

I thought you were saying that he was initially chased and attacked because the (first) person he shot thought he was an active shooter.

You're saying that after he was an active shooter, people were chasing him because they thought he was an active shooter? If so, I don't think that no one knows this, I think no one cares.

-----

edit: The statement you made was "the people [Rittenhouse] shot were under the impression that they were trying to stop an active shooter." I asked for a reference. You begin and end the reply to that request by saying that the first person he shot wasn't under the impression he was an active shooter.

My problem is the deception. I am a proud left-winger, and I think Quillette is trash. I'm disturbed that people are intentionally trying to cloud the facts about issues to score political points. When you say that the people Rittenhouse shot were under the impression that he was an active shooter, and somebody looks that up and finds out that it is untrue, they'll think that people who hold the same opinions as you are liars. That affects me, and the things that I believe in.

To be fair 5 officers died not long after the attack. Brian Sidnick was pepper sprayed twice and died a day later suffering two strokes. Howard Liebengood and Jeffrey Smith died by suicide a few days after the attack, and Kyle DeFreytag and Gunther Hashida died by suicide a few months later.

A popular Facebook post claimed that Joe Biden said that several police officers died during the attack, which could be the source of the lie.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/jan/19/facebook-p...

Quillette is cynically using the exact same "social-panic" tactics they're criticizing to create exactly your conclusion.

The Q article has exactly two complaints about the facts reported by the media:

1. The media claimed bodies were unearthed, when in fact only scans were taken.

2. The media claimed there were mass graves, when in fact scans only detected masses of individual graves.

However, in "social-panic" style, conservatives are taking these two quibbles over terminology and turning them into an Alex Jones-esque conspiracy to deny the graves existence altogether.

Note also the subtle racism in the article, where they compare a hypothetical instant-response to the murder of white children to the "very odd" response of the first nation people. The implication being that first nations people are incompetent, uncaring, or untrustworthy by not immediately doing a certain kind of investigation.

> The media claimed bodies were unearthed

This is not a "quibble." It's a major falsehood.

Unearth can be used in a literal sense, which in this case is false.

It can also be used in a figurative sense, which in this case is almost certainly true.

Don't get too dizzy from all that spinning around.

So do you really believe everyone in Canada read that and thought "Oh, they're using the word in a figurative sense! Never mind."

If something is, by definition, in the earth and a story says it was "unearthed" it's sorta reasonable to believe it was dug up.

I actually think "unearthed" as in "discovered" is the more reasonable read - along with someone thinking they're clever in making a pun. When history is "unearthed" with radar, we generally assume some folks took a big expensive machine aimed it at the ground and walked away with a strong indication that something exists down there - when it comes to delicate items (like, for instance a decaying longboat that exists in the earth merely as concentrations of plant fiber in a suspicious shape) and especially when it comes to human remains (that people are often very reluctant to move due for cultural reasons) that's especially the case.

Yeah, I don't think most editors would think a pun about First Nation graves would be a clever idea.

What kind of journalist uses "unearthed" metaphorically in a story about purported graves?

The implication seemed (to me at least) to be that first nations people were not being afforded the same respect as their white counterparts would have been.

> scans only detected masses of individual graves.

Possible graves. How many were unambiguously confirmed? And how many would we expect from normal high-at-the-time child mortality?

So the graves need to be confirmed, because you are skeptical they exist?

But if/when they are confirmed, then its not a big deal because it's just some of the graves that you know exist?

Do you see the contradiction here?

The contradiction in what? Wanting proof that the death rate was higher (and how much higher) than in any other school?

Do the graves only exist if the rate was higher?

You seem determined to downplay these graves, but the kettle logic of "these graves don't exist and also they do exist and we all know about them but they aren't a problem" undermines your argument.

Are you seriously going to pretend that these suspected graves aren't being used to allege that the treatment of natives in Canada was worse than previously believed?

Yes? I think people are just generally a little underinforned about this kind of stuff, so the actual details can be shocking.

And some people still overreact and try to cover it up and whitewash it.

The US Civil war being about slavery still seems to be considered an eleborate hoax to some people.

And they do the same "yes well the centuries of slavery, death, rape and murder is all true, and well established historical fact obviously, but <minor historical innaccuracy>! So basically they're overreacting and undermining our great nation by talking about stuff that happened." and it's cringe in both cases.

Not to mention the Great Lie of brown is black

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