h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Well the story gets worse. Still on the subject of farm attacks and murders, a recent post on FB told of the national police commissioner, General Khehla Sitole, denying the reality of farm attacks. According to this post, Sitole said he doesn't believe farm attacks really happen, that instead it's just farmers who complain because they like attention. According to the report, he said that he's more concerned about white farmers killing black people, and that farmers are rich enough to afford their own private security if they're feeling threatened.

Of course when this report was published, many folks jumped on it and shared it and added their own comments about this horrendous lack of awareness and sensitivity in our police commissioner and what not, confirming also that the government is abandoning whites and farmers to the mercy of criminals - at least! Worst being said is that the government itself is actually behind these attacks.

Only ... the commissioner didn't say that. He actually said none of the things attributed to him. He quickly leapt to deny all of that, saying that indeed he considers it a priority to ensure the safety of all South Africans, including farmers and people living in rural areas. The site reporting his alleged words is a fake news site.

That's so and has been mentioned on FB by some of the more alert and discerning posters, right from the start. But for so many, this false report so much confirmed their own ideas regarding the situation that they accepted it uncritically and are now sending these same lies all over the 'web, for many more additional undiscerning and uncritical folks to share wider still. It's a genie that can't be put back into the bottle.

Now once again ... whatever is the real situation behind the farm murders, whether the government has any responsibility for it, or whether they have the responsibility to stop it, or whether they're incompetent with ensuring safety for farmers and anyone else, or whether the police are doing their jobs ... all of that is irrelevant to the actual truth of what a man has said for real. If he did say it, then he did say it, but if he didn't say it, then he didn't, and the news of him saying it is fake, and when people believe it, it unfairly worsens the situation. And so racial tensions keep mounting in this country. And it's being demonstrated how easily anyone whatsoever can throw fuel on the fire by coming up with almost any absurd story at all, which is then rapidly believed and disseminated all over the web, confirming people's biases and stoking up hatred between folks of different races. Still, the extremists are few ... most SA folks are decent, friendly folks who really want to get along, but the minority can indeed make huge trouble ...

You have my sympathy - it's the same here these days. There's something called 'confirmation bias': people believe the stories that support the opinions they already have, whether they're true or not.

This is wreaking havoc with world civilisation, which is beginning to topple like a house of cards.

I think we need to pray for better brains.