Pls Fwd! How The Right Spreads Fear For Profit. Ebola, ISIS, EV-D68, Dirty Immigrants Letter by @spockosbrain

 Pls Fwd! How The Right Spreads Fear For Profit. Ebola, ISIS, EV-D68, Dirty Immigrants Fund Raising Letter 

 by Spocko

Yesterday I got a fund raising email from Phyllis Schlafly, conservative activist, author, and founder of the Eagle Forum titled Stop Disease at the Border (link to Townhall version) 

We all get millions of fund raising letters every day. Recently letters from certain groups on our side of the aisle have been especially dire. "THEY WILL KILL YOUR DOG IF ELECTED! So as Luke Russert would proudly say, "Both sides do it!"

But I found this letter interesting because of the conflation of multiple threats in one brightly colored missive.

The letter starts out quoting Rep. Duncan Hunter's (R-CA) debunked claim that 10 ISIS thugs crossed our southern border--which earned a "PANTS ON FIRE – The statement is not accurate and makes a ridiculous claim" award from Politifact.  Next she quotes Rep. Tom Cotton’s (R-AR) bogus claim that the Islamic State collaborates with Mexican drug cartel. That got Four Pinocchios from the Washington Post fact checker.

 Then she launched into the dirty foreigners and their "disease problem."
The problem of invasion across our border is no longer just a jobs problem. It's a national security problem, a welfare problem, a public school problem and a dangerous disease problem.
It's not a problem of accepting a few lost teenagers who arrived unannounced and demanded admission. It's a problem of our public schools suddenly being invaded by thousands of young adults who have never been to any school, who are not familiar with basic hygiene, who can't read or write, who don't speak English or even familiar Spanish (but speak one of 21 different Spanish or Indian dialects) and who may carry new diseases such as EV-D68.

I hadn't heard of EV-D68, and since she was 0 and 2 with facts, I figured she would get that wrong as well.

Interestingly EV-D68, a polio-like enterovirus, IS a problem. Here's a CDC link with details. However, it appears it's not coming from the recent influx of Central America kids. Snopes knocks down this claim as probably false here. She is 0 and 3 fact wise before she even gets to Ebola.

Since Ebola is hot and EV-D68 is not, she is going to use the most outrageous Ebola  "fact" she can so she quotes Marine Corps General John F. Kelly, commander of the Southern Command, speaking to the National Defense University in Washington, DC  saying that if Ebola comes to Central America there will be mass migration to the US.

 That is followed by this dozy where he claims someone at the Centers for Disease Control reported that "By the end of the year, there will be 14 million people infected with Ebola and 62 percent of them dying."

Now I'm searching for the background on this quote expecting another swing and a miss when I find a non-right wing story link. The quote is from an article by Jim Garamone in DoD News. General Kelly is quoted as saying that exact line.

Since no one else had debunked this one yet, I wrote to the head of communications at the National Defense Univesity asking for a transcript or video for context. I'll let you know what I find out. I expect something like, 'So I asked this CDC guy, "Okay, what's the worse case? Let's say Ebola gets airborne and nobody does anything at all. How bad could it get? What's the World War Z scenario? And the unnamed CDC analyst says, "Welllll. when you put it that way..."

Being a rational Vulcan who has been watching the right wing for years, I expect the out and out lies, fear mongering and immigrant bashing shaped in the form of a claim to "protect our families."  Also, Phyllis Schlafly has made some obtuse and offensive comments about Latinos in the past (Here she is talking to David Pakman) So I think we should just blow her off, as a non-creditable source.

But one of the things I think it's important to remember is that the people these fund raising letters are targeted to aren't going to do what I just did. That letter is going to work. Being sucked into fact checking them might be fun for some and lets us prove how dumb and gullible they are.

But instead of standing back and smirking, is there anything more we can do? What if that letter got forwarded to you from your right-wing sister-in-law? Would you be able to talk her down? Then what?

This is an opportunity to address the fake fears and deal with the real fears. Like, "Yes, our public health care system DOES need help, but not because of ebola. Because of a possible bird flu, so do  you think we should spend some more money on public heath programs and training nurses?"

You can also talk about the non-novel food-borne pathogens that kill thousands every year.  Stop disease at the border? "You bet! Did you know that only 1 percent of the food imported from Vietnam is checked by the FDA at the border?  And that the billionaires running the food industry want to remove inspections all together under the Trans Pacific Partnership scheme?"

Or "Speaking of the CDC, did you know that they keep track of the hundreds of people who die each year from salmonella, yet the chicken industry has denied the rise of  people getting sick from tainted chicken?"

 Late last year I was advising an organization about what messages might work to difference audiences about the Trans Pacific Partnership. I explained to the group that you can't use the same sources, methods and messages to reach the right that you use on the left. Some messages work for both, but I would need different sources for the same info.

We know what stories and methods people use to ramp up fear, part of our challenge is determining ways to deescalate the fear and help people focus on the real problem that have real solutions.

.