Free Republic

Misinformation and disinformation can be a threat to our democracy. [Almost stopped reading right there] It can divide communities. It can make it harder for people to make informed choices — at the ballot box, at the grocery store and at the doctor's office. No one is immune. “We just don't have the time, the cognitive resources or even the motivation to literally fact-check every piece of information that comes our way,” says Briony Swire-Thompson, director of the Psychology of Misinformation Lab at Northeastern University. How to avoid sharing false or misleading news about the election People trust information more...

CNN partnered with psychologist Ashley Landrum to study how kids see politics, and some of the results were easy to predict and others were pretty disturbing. But the thing that stood out to me was that kids who grew up in Blue areas with Democrat parents were clearly brainwashed to hate Republicans. While Republican-leaning kids (10-11 year-olds) expressed that the political views of another kid didn't matter that much to them, the opposite was true for kids who have grown up in a left-leaning environment. It's not even close and is a great indicator of how well the brainwashing works....

Personalized conversations with a trained artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot can reduce belief in conspiracy theories – even in the most obdurate individuals – according to a new study. The findings, which challenge the idea that such beliefs are impervious to change, point to a new tool for combating misinformation. “It has become almost a truism that people ‘down the rabbit hole’ of conspiracy belief are almost impossible to reach,” write the authors. “In contrast to this pessimistic view, we [show] that a relatively brief conversation with a generative AI model can produce a large and lasting decrease in conspiracy beliefs,...

The Gateway Pundit reporter Cara Castronuova testified today at the hearing along with several others including investigative reporter Yehuda Miller, J6 defendant Treniss Evans, Jessica Rivera, Brandy Bowen, Eden Quainton, and attorney Jonathan Gross. Cara spoke about her reporting on J6 political prisoners as well as Trump supporter Roseanne Boyland’s death that day. MTG has been a passionate voice for J6 political prisoners since the Pelosi insurrection on January 6th. Last fall The Gateway Pundit was informed that political prisoner John Strand was being tortured in isolation after he entered prison. We encouraged our readers to write the prison warden’s...

Schools in the United Kingdom will begin to teach students how to spot fake news and extremist content in the aftermath of riots that spread across the country last week. Schools across the U.K. will look to revamp their curriculum to help children identify and dismiss extremist content by "embedding" critical thinking lessons in subjects such as English and math, according to a report by The Telegraph. "It’s more important than ever that we give young people the knowledge and skills to be able to challenge what they see online," Bridget Phillipson, the U.K.'s secretary of state for education and...

Matt Orfalea, who often works with Matt Taibbi, did a deep dive on Twitter on the Biden campaign's brainwashing operation to convince Americans that Biden was mentally fit. By now it is obvious to even the meanest intelligence that Biden is gone, and once the scales have fallen from your eyes it's clear that he has been declining for about 5-7 years. He is worse now, but in 2019 and 2020 the Biden campaign had data showing that Americans had already noticed that he was no longer all there. If you look at videos from his time as Vice President,...

Strong, credible allegations of high-level criminal activity can bring down a government. When the government lacks an effective, fact-based defense, other techniques must be employed. The success of these techniques depends heavily upon a cooperative, compliant press and a mere token opposition party. Dummy up. If it's not reported, if it's not news, it didn't happen.Wax indignant. This is also known as the "How dare you?" gambit. Characterize the charges as "rumors" or, better yet, "wild rumors." If, in spite of the news blackout, the public is still able to learn about the suspicious facts, it can only be through...

A few years ago after our monthly meeting with Cardinal Bassetti and with all the priests of the diocese of Perugia, Italy (May 2018), at lunch I talked to a priest from Nigeria, who was helping out in a parish in Perugia (Olmo) on the weekends, while studying at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome for his doctorate. During our conversation, HE INDICATED CLEARLY THAT IT IS FINE AND NORMAL AND RIGHT FOR EACH PERSON TO INTERPRET THE TRUTH AND REALITY AS HE OR SHE BELIEVES WITHOUT ANY REFERENCE TO DIVINE REVELATION summarized in the documents of the Church and...

There’s a viral trend on TikTok that got started with a seemingly simple question: Would women rather run into a bear or a man in the woods? Now people are discussing the fact that a lot of women have admitted to preferring the bear. USA Today reports how this debate — simply referred to as “Man vs. Bear” — is said to have been started by TikTok account, Screenshot HQ, who posted a video of women being asked this question seemingly around the United Kingdom about a week or so ago. By the end of the video, all the woman...

Today a unanimous panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit granted the U.S. Department of Justice's petition for a writ of mandamus seeking dismissal of Juliana v. United States, the so-called "Kids Climate Case." The brief order was short and direct. It noted that the Ninth Circuit had previously concluded that the plaintiffs lacked standing and ordered the case dismissed. Contrary to the plaintiffs' claims, no intervening decisions changed that fact, and that there was no basis for the district court to allow the plaintiffs to amend the complaint. This decision should not have been a...

Cass report published by UK's NHS reveals shaky premises of so called “gender medicine”Cass’ study has already led to the closure of Gids by NHS England, a ban on puberty blockers and a transition to a new “holistic” model of care in which under-18s confused about their gender identity will regularly obtain psychological support instead of medical intervention.For years, members of the transgender cult have alleged that “gender medicine”, including puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, merely follows the science, slamming naysayers for “spreading hate” as “extremists” and “bigots”.Recently, however, pediatrician Dr. Hillary Cass published the outcome of her study regarding...

Imagine the ancient god Molech with fire beneath him and his outstretched arms burning hot. Think about Molech’s priests convincing parents to place their babies in those arms — a burnt sacrifice to Satan. That sin finally triggered God’s great judgment of Israel. The people refused to stop this satanic sacrifice of children. So, God stopped it. Satan must really hate kids. Or maybe he attacks them so fiercely because of their vulnerability. They depend on adults to protect them. But too many of those adults whose job it is to shield children — primarily parents and educators — have...

“So you’re voting for Du-taxus?” a woman said to me in 1988. I was a lowly receptionist at a gym called “Women Only,” which was probably later sued out of business. I had to answer the phone with, “We have the way, Women Only, this is Sasha, may I help you?” I was undoubtedly blurting out this mouthful when the client noticed my Dukakis pin, because why wouldn’t she? I told her yes, I was, though I wasn’t “political” back then, and I had no idea why I was voting for Dukakis. He was a Democrat. Being a Democrat wasn’t...

An international team of scientists has created a tool that can aid in increasing climate awareness and climate action globally by highlighting messaging themes shown to be effective through experimental research. The web-based tool, and the methods undergirding its creation, appear in the journal Science Advances. The tool stems from a study involving nearly 250 researchers that drew more than 59,000 participants from 63 countries, including Algeria, China, Denmark, Germany, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Peru, and the United States. "We tested the effectiveness of different messages aimed at addressing climate change and created a tool that can be deployed by...

“As we’ve seen too often in the last decade, what happens online can have the most terrifying of real-world impacts. From climate denial to vaccine conspiracy theories to the January 6 attack on our nation’s Capital, the spread of online misinformation has had global and deadly consequences.”

Google spent $26 billion to hide this phone setting from youGoogle goes to great lengths to be your default search engine and keep you from switching. Here’s why you should make your own choice. There’s a setting on your phone and web browser that Google is desperate to keep you from discovering. How desperate? In 2021 alone, Google paid Apple, Samsung and others $26.3 billion to keep it buried. That’s more money each year than McDonald’s makes selling burgers. This setting affects who gets to track your location and watch what you look up online. It affects the usefulness...

Dr William Makis has reviewed 8 published papers that clearly show the techniques employed by governments world wide to ensure vaccine uptake. From punishments and threats to employment and reputation, to rewards for complying, studies show that the Covid vaccine rollout was aided by the the greatest psychological fear campaign in human history using tried and tested brainwashing techniques.Propaganda Series – Brainwashing Techniques Used to Increase COVID-19 Vaccine Uptake – 8 papers reviewed, looking at the psychological manipulation of the massesThis article originally appeared on makismd.substack.com by Dr. William MakisPapers Reviewed:2023 Jun – Steffens et al – “Testing persuasive messages...

During the public comment section of a recent school board meeting, a Florida mother attempted to share a sexually explicit image featured in a school library book, but she was promptly interrupted, the New York Post reported. Julie Gebhards, a Tampa resident, addressed the Hillsborough County school board, hoping to bring attention to an inappropriate graphic novel in the district’s libraries. Gebhards explained that “Blankets” by Craig Thompson, which features sexually explicit images and passages, was approved unanimously by Plant City High School’s seven-person panel, despite being challenged by parents. “This is in children’s libraries here in Hillsborough County,” she...

We see signs of climate change’s devastating impact all over Orange County — in rising sea levels in our coastal cities, such as in Seal Beach and Newport Beach; wildfires in Laguna Niguel and Silverado Canyon; coastal erosion in San Clemente ... In response, Sacramento is implementing a slew of bold environmental laws and regulations. However, these much needed changes are unlikely to succeed without buy-in from the public. We need to raise the public’s comfort level with the drastic changes needed to combat climate change. People need to be convinced that a future in which their cars, houses, stoves...

Elon Musk is on the warpath against an elite Los Angeles school, the Crossroads School for the Arts & Sciences, which he accuses of “brainwashing” his child, who is now transgender and a self-declared communist. It’s not the first time Crossroads has been in the spotlight. Eighteen years ago, the school was exposed as a center of wacko far-left indoctrination by Andrew Breitbart in his debut book, Hollywood Interrupted. Breitbart’s book devoted nearly a whole chapter to Crossroads, an example of what the conservative firebrand considered “warped Hollywood child-rearing.” Even by the standards of the liberal education system, Breitbart found...