I am utterly aghast by the fake news in circulation about who is sponsoring the farmer’s protest. It is wholly stupid ideological warfare propagated by those who are known to be supporting BJP or RSS. I encountered one such source (I do not want to link to them from my blog). There already has been extensive coverage of how such sites are spreading hatred and fake news to fool people. And it is working! Because we Indians are so freaking gullible and we believe in almost everything that gets shared on social media.
Pratik Sinha of Altnews had done a detailed study of how political affiliation is propagating hatred by posting fake news. And all of this nonsense is targeted to anything or anyone other than BJP or RSS! Which begs to clarify that they are either an unofficial mouthpiece or just fans of BJP/RSS?
Political Parties have been faking news for a long time
The below image posted on the Facebook page and many of our gullible friends are spreading it, who strongly feel that someone else is politicizing the moves. True, the farmers are supported by an Union backed by CPI (M), however that does not undermine the protest!
Let’s do some mathematics now. Apparently, 50000 farmers joined the protest but we’ll still take the figure of 30000 as shown in the image. ₹1,26,00,000 / 30,000 = ₹420! Are we saying that each farmer cannot afford even ₹420? If this is so, gentlemen, joke is on us! (Animesh Mishra)
Are we saying that each farmer cannot afford even ₹420? If this is so, gentlemen, joke is on us!
This is not the first time they have done that. What boils me down is people stop believing the real news, the real issues that farmers are facing? When can we Indians stop being gullible?
Education is not really helping, as I see many of those who have shared this nonsense on my page are also friends I know personally, and until today, I felt were intelligent enough.
This has to stop! I don’t know how, but has to stop!
This is not limited to one website! There are a lot of such sites used by almost all political parties. You either stop them from publishing such stuff (impossible, yeah?) or stop believing that (much easier). Do not give into fake news, period.
I am not sure what other action we can take, at least those of us who realize that such news is harmful for the harmony of the country. If you love the country and are patriotic about it, shed all associations with polictical parties and stop sharing this absolute nonsense of fake news, and avoid it from spreading like a wildfire.
Sharing this fake news is undoing these farmers’ effort of protest, who walked 180 kms over six days. They are the ones who make your food man, how can you not reasonate with them? What has any government done for farmers?
Share this post as much as you can, in an effort to educate people of this atrocity and help identify fake news!
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