Latest news with #EliotHiggins
The Herald Scotland
22-05-2025
- Politics
- The Herald Scotland
Why Clarkson's cracks about Scotland make him a bloody idiot
The expression "word salad" is often linked to disordered discourse. Eliot Higgins, who runs the investigative journalism outfit Bellingcat, has been discussing it, and seems to be on to something. We talk about living in the post-truth age. Indeed, we've transited through the post-truth age to the post-reality age where disparate groups share no common ground. The death of any shared reality reveals itself in thoughts and ideas – discourse – which seem truly bizarre, or disordered. We hear comments today that frankly would have seen you jeered from the public stage a decade ago. The disorder is a two-way street afflicting both left and right. No group is immune as the very nature of being in a group today – a hard-delineated political subset fixed around identity – means estrangement from all other groups. Estrangement causes derangement, perhaps. The left is guilty, certainly, though it's on the ascendant right where you'll find discourse that's truly disordered. Read more by Neil Mackay Among the left, it's primarily on the swivel-eyed fringes where you'll hear people claim that songs like Walk Like An Egyptian by The Bangles are acts of cultural appropriation, or that The Tempest subjects audiences to colonial trauma (in fact, if you've studied the play, it's more accurately interpreted as Shakespeare's critique of colonialism). On the right, though, grotesque exaggeration, thin-skinned fragility and wild demonisation of opponents is now commonplace. Check any internet message board – even computer game forums, for pity's sake – if you're in doubt. Both sides behave deleteriously towards democracy, but the greater danger lies firmly to the right. Given we now live in a world that's more ridiculous than sublime, it's unsurprising to find Jeremy Clarkson emerging as the zeitgeisty exemplar of disordered discourse. Clarkson, a newspaper commentator, chose to describe the SNP's scrapping of peak rail fares as 'communism'. Clarkson regularly boasts about his terrible A-level results, so history and political science were clearly not his strengths. In theory, communism heralds a workers' utopia. I struggle to see how tweaking train prices ushers in an era of universal brotherly love and income equality. In practice, communism involves marching your opponents into the gulag and shooting them in the head for thought-crime. I'm pretty sure this hasn't happened in Scotland. Evidently, blokey old Jeremy will say it's just the bantz. He's only having a larf, isn't he? Well, yes and no. Firstly, Clarkson is a commentator not a comedian. He can say what he wants, but maybe stand-up suits his talents better than journalism. Secondly, even Clarkson sometimes makes sensible points about sensible issues. So what he's doing with his absurd exaggerations is blurring the line between what's real and should be taken seriously and what's nonsense. He's telling us it doesn't matter if you make stuff up as everything you read is just garbage. At the risk of becoming a po-faced liberal misery, I'm not sure that's wise. Clarkson plays his part in disintegrating intelligent debate. He also comes across as a bloody idiot, frankly. I'm pretty old-fashioned in believing that language should be used in a way which at least attempts to reflect reality. He could have called the rail issue a middle-class bribe, mocked the SNP for constantly changing tack, and said it was all the biggest load of cobblers since the Elves and the Shoemaker. But communism? Surely, he just makes himself and his argument ridiculous? Disordered. And by doing so encourages his readers to be ridiculous and disordered. The more we do this, the more commentary becomes meaningless, the more we carpet bomb ways of speaking to each other intelligently. During the debate about short-term holiday lets in Scotland, an Airbnb host described licensing plans as a "pogrom". A pogrom is defined as the mass murder of Jews. They debased their own argument; they debased the meaning of pogrom. It disintegrated shared reality. Boris Johnson just called Keir Starmer the EU's 'orange ball-chewing gimp'. Funny? Yes. In the pub, I'd spit my pint out laughing. But when an ex-Prime Minister says this he's telling us: don't care about truth, we need no shared way of debating. Britain is a "police state", Johnson says. Why? Because a woman was jailed for inciting racial hatred after tweeting 'set fire to the hotels' following the Southport murders which sparked mass rioting. Police state? Or justice you disagree with? We hear the same in Scotland. The 'Gestapo' and 'Stasi' would arrest you in your home thanks to anti-smacking laws. Just say you want to beat your kids. Don't invoke totalitarianism. The new Pope, who appears politically centrist, has been dubbed a 'woke Marxist' by leading MAGA commentators. Boris Johnson, who said Britain is a police state (Image: PA) But then MAGA owns the disordered discourse crown. Evidently, nothing comes close to telling the entire world Haitian immigrants were eating people's pets. The same disordered thinking appears in extremist claims that all trans women are rapists, all refugees are economic con-artists, and any criticism of Israel is antisemitic. It's silencing. British talk-show host Kevin Sullivan said after this week's new EU deal: 'I like standing in the non-EU passport lines! I'm proud not to join the Brussels-gang losers.' I guess he means he hated the deal, but rather than say that he claims to like wasting his life in queues. Evidently, much of this is attention-seeking. Much is also motivated by the playground mentality of "owning the libs". Thus you get people attacking the "be kind brigade". Since when was being kind bad? I guess if you're disordered it is. This all creates a society incapable of intelligent conversation. In Scotland today every issue is a crisis. Remember when a bottle return scheme was going to bring the nation to its knees, even though other nations had the same scheme? I'm not saying the legislation was right, I'm just saying we could rediscover an ordered way of expressing ourselves. If you cannot talk to your neighbour, you will hate them, and that way hell lies. Neil Mackay is The Herald's Writer at Large. He's a multi-award-winning investigative journalist, author of both fiction and non-fiction, and a filmmaker and broadcaster. He specialises in intelligence, security, crime, social affairs, cultural commentary, and foreign and domestic politics.
Saudi Gazette
08-05-2025
- Saudi Gazette
Misleading posts obtaining millions of views on X
NEW DELHI — India's strikes on Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir have unleashed a wave of misinformation online, with unrelated videos purporting to be from the strikes gaining millions of views. Dramatic clips debunked by BBC Verify have claimed to show attacks on an Indian army base and an Indian fighter jet shot down in Pakistan. One video, which had more than 400,000 views on X at the time of writing, claiming to show an explosion caused by a Pakistani response was actually from the 2020 Beirut Port explosion in Lebanon. An expert told BBC Verify that in moments of heightened tension or dramatic events, misinformation is more likely to spread and fuel distrust and hostility. "It's very common to see recycled footage during any significant event, not just conflict," Eliot Higgins, the founder of the Bellingcat investigations website, said. "Algorithmic engagement rewards people who post engaging content, not truthful content, and footage of conflict and disasters is particularly engaging, no matter the truth behind it." One of the most viral clips, which gained over 3 million views on X in a matter of hours, claimed to show blasts caused by the Indian strikes on Pakistan-administered Kashmir. A search for screengrabs from the video on Google found the footage actually showed Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip on 13 October 2023. While much of the debunked footage has purported to show the immediate aftermath of the Indian strikes, some clips analyzed by BBC Verify appeared to be trying to portray the Pakistani response as being more severe than it actually was. One video, which has racked up almost 600,000 views on X, claimed to show that the "Pakistan army blew up the Indian Brigade headquarters". The clip, which shows blasts in the darkness, is actually from an unrelated video circulating on YouTube as early as last month. Elsewhere, one set of photos purported to show an operation carried out by the Pakistan Air Force targeting "Indian forward air bases in the early hours of 6 May 2025". The images — which appeared to be captured by a drone — were actually screengrabs taken from the video game Battlefield 3. The Pakistani military says it destroyed five jets on Wednesday morning local time. That announcement has led to some users sharing unrelated clips which they claimed showed the wreckage of Indian fighter jets. Some of these videos have obtained millions of views. But two widely shared images actually showed previous Indian air force jet crashes — one from an incident in Rajasthan in 2024 and another in the Punjab state in 2021. Both crashes were widely reported. Prof Indrajit Roy of York University said that the images "are being generated with a view to get support for the military in Pakistan". One clip circulated by the Pakistani military itself was later withdrawn by news agencies after it turned out to be from an unrelated event. "We have jingoists on both sides of the border, and they have a huge platform on Twitter (X). You can see how fake news, as well as some real news, gets amplified, distorted and presented in ways designed to generate hostility, animosity and hatred for the other side." The conflict in Kashmir has long attracted a high degree of misinformation online. In the aftermath of the deadly militant attack on Indian tourists in Pahalgam last month, AI images circulated — with some seeking to dramatise actual scenes from the attack. Vedika Bahl, a journalist with France 24, said the Pahalgam attacks had prompted a sharp "uptake in misinformation from both sides surrounding the conflict". "Lots of this misinformation begins on X," she said. "Eventually this trickles down over time from X to WhatsApp which is the communication tool which is most used in South Asian communities." — BBC
BBC News
07-05-2025
- Politics
- BBC News
Kashmir: India strikes unleash wave of misinformation online
India strikes unleash wave of misinformation online 6 minutes ago Share Save Matt Murphy, Olga Robinson & Shayan Sardarizadeh BBC Verify Share Save Reuters India's strikes on Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir have unleashed a wave of misinformation online, with unrelated videos purporting to be from the strikes gaining millions of views. Dramatic clips debunked by BBC Verify have claimed to show attacks on an Indian army base and an Indian fighter jet shot down in Pakistan. One video, which had more than 400,000 views on X at the time of writing, claiming to show an explosion caused by a Pakistani response was actually from the 2020 Beirut Port explosion in Lebanon. An expert told BBC Verify that in moments of heightened tension or dramatic events, misinformation is more likely to spread and fuel distrust and hostility. "It's very common to see recycled footage during any significant event, not just conflict," Eliot Higgins, the founder of the Bellingcat investigations website, said. "Algorithmic engagement rewards people who post engaging content, not truthful content, and footage of conflict and disasters is particularly engaging, no matter the truth behind it." One of the most viral clips, which gained over 3 million views on X in a matter of hours, claimed to show blasts caused by the Indian strikes on Pakistan-administered Kashmir. A search for screengrabs from the video on Google found the footage actually showed Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip on 13 October 2023. Follow live: Tensions escalate as Pakistan vows response to Indian strikes after Pahalgam killings What we know about India's strike on Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir Why India and Pakistan fight over Kashmir While much of the debunked footage has purported to show the immediate aftermath of the Indian strikes, some clips analysed by BBC Verify appeared to be trying to portray the Pakistani response as being more severe than it actually was. One video, which has racked up almost 600,000 views on X, claimed to show that the "Pakistan army blew up the Indian Brigade headquarters". The clip, which shows blasts in the darkness, is actually from an unrelated video circulating on YouTube as early as last month. X/Sulaiman Ahmed Elsewhere, one set of photos purported to show an operation carried out by the Pakistan Air Force targeting "Indian forward air-bases in the early hours of 6 May 2025". The images - which appeared to be captured by a drone - were actually screengrabs taken from the video game Battlefield 3. The Pakistani military says it destroyed five jets on Wednesday morning local time. That announcement has led to some users sharing unrelated clips which they claimed showed the wreckage of Indian fighter jets. Some of these videos have obtained millions of views. But two widely shared images actually showed previous Indian air force jet crashes - one from an incident in Rajasthan in 2024 and another in the Punjab state in 2021. Both crashes were widely reported. X/Sulaiman Ahmed Prof Indrajit Roy of York University said that the images "are being generated with a view to get support for the military in Pakistan". One clip circulated by the Pakistani military itself was later withdrawn by news agencies after it turned out to be from an unrelated event. "We have jingoists on both sides of the border, and they have a huge platform on Twitter (X). You can see how fake news, as well as some real news, gets amplified, distorted and presented in ways designed to generate hostility, animosity and hatred for the other side." The conflict in Kashmir has long attracted a high degree of misinformation online. In the aftermath of the deadly militant attack on Indian tourists in Pahalgam last month, AI images circulated - with some seeking to dramatise actual scenes from the attack. Vedika Bahl, a journalist with France 24, said the Pahalgam attacks had prompted a sharp "uptake in misinformation from both sides surrounding the conflict". "Lots of this misinformation begins on X," she said. "Eventually this trickles down over time from X to WhatsApp which is the communication tool which is most used in South Asian communities."
