The White House put out a fake photo. Here’s why we should all be outraged

How do you know what you know?

Did you learn it at school or read it in the newspaper? Did you get your information from social media or chatting with friends?

even in an age misinformation and disinformation (which we need to start explicitly calling propaganda) we continue to rely on old ways of knowing. We assume that if we really need to get to the truth, there is a way to do it; even if it means breaking the pages of a book, one of the bearers of ancient wisdom.

However, we are entering a period in America where it will be difficult to access information. It would be easy to dismiss this escalation of the war on truth as just another piece of Trump’s nonsense, but it is much more than that. In the short term, authoritarians seize power by using fear and perhaps force. In the long run, they rely on ignorance; the erasure of information to make people believe something other than what it is exists.

Thus, our children, that is, future generations, are taken under control. They don’t know what happened and are therefore at a huge disadvantage in imagining what could happen.

White House this week Nekima Levy changed Armstrong’s photoCivil rights lawyer arrested for protesting at a church in Minneapolis.

Original photo shows Armstrong He is led away by a handcuffed federal officer, his face blurred. Armstrong is calm and steady in this image. He looks as one might expect as a veteran of social justice movements and a trained lawyer, his expression troubled but calm.

In the photo published by the White HouseArmstrong sobs, his mouth hanging open in despair. This situation, which is nothing but blatant racism, shows that his skin has darkened. Her braided hair, carefully styled in the original photo, is disheveled in the Trump image.

A strong, calm resister becomes a weeping, weak failure.

“AGAIN, I share this message with you to those who feel the need to reflexively defend the perpetrators of heinous crimes in our country: Law enforcement will continue. The memes will continue. Thank you for your interest in this issue.”

this was that Official response from the White House Questions were asked about the photo shared on social media.

The same week the Trump administration took office. Destroying exhibits at the President’s House in Philadelphia It told the story of nine Black people held in captivity there by George Washington. I went to that exhibit and had planned to take my kids this summer to learn about Joe Richardson, Christopher Sheels, Austin, Hercules, Giles, Moll, Oney Judge, Paris, and Richmond.

These are names that barely make it into American history. Many have never heard of them. Now this administration is trying to erase them.

How do you know what you know? Most of what I know about these people I learned from signs that are probably in a dump somewhere now.

The information we once took for granted on government websites like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention no longer exists. climate change information; LGBTQ+ information; even agricultural information. It’s gone (although the courts have ordered some to be repaired).

National Law Enforcement Accountability DatabaseThe organization that tracked federal police misconduct was shut down.

The Smithsonian is undergoing an ideological review.

And now our government is telling us that it will manipulate images of dissidents in real time to create its own narrative; It demands that we believe the narrative they create, not our own eyes or our own knowledge.

“Let me finish with this, we’re being told a completely different story than what happened,” he said. Cumberland County, Me., Sheriff Kevin Joyce.

He was specifically referring to an incident this week in which a new corrections officer in his town was detained by ICE. Video captured by a bystander shows about five agents removing the man from his car as he was returning home after work. They then leave the car running on the street while they take him away.

Joyce told reporters the man had a clean background check before being hired, had no criminal record and was working legally in the country. The sheriff has no idea where the man is being held.

Joyce’s point that what we are told is not what actually happens applies to almost everything we see with our own eyes.

Was a woman shot in the temple through the side window of her car? You don’t understand what you see. Our vice president said this was justified without even having to investigate.

Goodbye Renee Good. They are trying to erase his reality in real time and instead turn him into a domestic terrorist committing “heinous” crimes, maybe even worse.

“There is a small group of very left-wing people who are doing everything they can to make ICE the ultimate enemy and join this weird, small-scale civil war.” Vice President J.D. Vance said this week:.

The protests turned into civil war.

Next, AI enters the deletion game. Scientists warn that those who want to destroy reality will soon unleash operations run by artificial intelligence, and in these operations, thousands, if not millions, of social media posts will present the alternative reality desired by those in control. Under the pressure of this avalanche of lies, many people will believe.

The message the White House is sending with Armstrong’s photo is that they control the truth, they decide what happened.

Our job is to fight for the truth, to know it when we see it, and to demand that it not be erased.