I happened this morning to see the following meme posted on Facebook:
"Illegal refugees receive $3,874 per month from the Government".
Apparently this has been floating around Facebook for a while now and I had merely been fortunate enough not to see it.
Now, my first thought when I see statements such as this one is "Really?" And so I check the statement to see whether it is true or false, especially given that it would surely strike most thinking people as false from the get-go. Checking such statements is exceedingly easy nowadays, given the glut over the last few years of 'fake' news, Russian trolls, divisive stories, conspiracy theories and so forth. One merely need type the meme into his search engine, which will then produce a debunking of the story from fact gathering sites devoted to debunking false stories.
As it turns out, there are three rather major problems with what is stated in the meme;
1) The stated payment concerns policy in Canada, not in the US.
2) "Refugees" are not considered 'illegal' in any western democracy, and
3) The money was a one-time payment not to an individual but to a family of five and not a monthly stipend.
In other words, this, like most memes, is bullshit.
It seems curious to me that even when so much attention has been given to viral falsehoods such as this, when so much free education has been published regarding their existence and the dangers they pose, people continue to brainlessly re-post rather than investigate first for themselves. Of course, this is because people are inclined to think what they want to think rather than to seek the truth, because the truth may conflict with their prejudices and paranoias.
But that's really not a good excuse, is it.
Nonetheless, this will be repeated ad infinitum, just as Trump tirelessly repeats his lies (biggest inauguration crowd ever).
What strange, what irritating times we live in.
"Illegal refugees receive $3,874 per month from the Government".
Apparently this has been floating around Facebook for a while now and I had merely been fortunate enough not to see it.
Now, my first thought when I see statements such as this one is "Really?" And so I check the statement to see whether it is true or false, especially given that it would surely strike most thinking people as false from the get-go. Checking such statements is exceedingly easy nowadays, given the glut over the last few years of 'fake' news, Russian trolls, divisive stories, conspiracy theories and so forth. One merely need type the meme into his search engine, which will then produce a debunking of the story from fact gathering sites devoted to debunking false stories.
As it turns out, there are three rather major problems with what is stated in the meme;
1) The stated payment concerns policy in Canada, not in the US.
2) "Refugees" are not considered 'illegal' in any western democracy, and
3) The money was a one-time payment not to an individual but to a family of five and not a monthly stipend.
In other words, this, like most memes, is bullshit.
It seems curious to me that even when so much attention has been given to viral falsehoods such as this, when so much free education has been published regarding their existence and the dangers they pose, people continue to brainlessly re-post rather than investigate first for themselves. Of course, this is because people are inclined to think what they want to think rather than to seek the truth, because the truth may conflict with their prejudices and paranoias.
But that's really not a good excuse, is it.
Nonetheless, this will be repeated ad infinitum, just as Trump tirelessly repeats his lies (biggest inauguration crowd ever).
What strange, what irritating times we live in.
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