This post was originally written on July 26 2024 on the now-defunct Cohost platform, which used iFramely embeds to preview the content of links. This article made heavy use of this feature, which is not replicable on my current platform.

I came across this news headline last night on tumblr, underneath was a user captioning it as evidence that the Democrats are still Pro-Israel and voting for them is irresponsible. This NPR headline phrases Kamala Harris as taking a pro-Palestine position, but even in the body of the post it's clear she is actually taking a pro-Israel position. I was piqued by the coexistence of two different narrative in this one post from NPR. I think this is a good way to discuss how your perceptions of what is happening in the world can be easily shaped through the sources of information you consume and how they frame events that occur.

Here is the article in question:

NPR: Harris says she 'will not be silent' about humanitarian toll in Gaza

NPR is generally considered a rather dry somewhat liberal leaning but mostly centrist source. They are not considered to be one of the hyper partisan sensationalistic news sources. It was established via an act of Congress and receives funding through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting which was also created by Congress and distributes public funding. To keep it independent, it's technically a non-profit NGO that also receives substantial funding via donations and advertising. This is one of many semi-public entities in the US which are technically not government services but are funded via a government program. NPR's financial incentives, by receiving funding from a mix of private and public sources, is meant to keep it politically neutral compared to an organization like the Washington Post which is owned by a billionaire, or RT which is owned and operated by the Russian Government.

Here we see a headline where if you were just skimming you could mistake it for saying Harris just came out as pro-Palestine. These headlines are actually not static. Modern news websites change the headlines regularly and sometimes even have multiple headlines that are algorithmically cycled through in the hopes of increasing chances of catching someone's eye enough to lead to a click through. The URLs remain static. This article isn't really headlined with what we are seeing here. The real name of the article is "Harris Gaza War." NPR is less egregious with this practice than other outlets, who might even show you different headlines based on where the article was posted. You may notice the website often has a different headline than the social media posts. Or an outlet's Twitter post is framed differently from its Facebook post and its newspaper print headline or in NPR's case the radio headline. Depending on who you are and your media consumption habits, you might not even be getting the same headlines for the same news articles from the same outlets.

I think it is very likely that Harris and her writers for her public remarks had all this in mind. Their hope was that people would see small out of context news snippets and everyone would have the takeaway that Kamala Harris agrees with their position. If you read the article, it seems like quite the opposite. Neither the Pro-Israel Camp nor the Pro-Palestine Camp seems to like how Harris handled the Netanyahu visit. Unsurprisingly, stating you have an "unwavering commitment to Israel" doesn't sound like a pro-ceasefire or pro-BDS position to anyone who reads past the headline, but she also didn't attend Netanyahu's speech to Congress, which is being taken as a snub to Israel by Zionists. The guy at the end of the NPR article sounds like a cartoon villain swearing vengeance against her it's kinda goofy how mad he is that she had other things to do than attend a rather predictable speech by one of the world's most hated people.

Politicians and news media outlets are very conscious of the way that people aren't really living in the same reality tunnels as each other and they're trying to play multiple tunnels at once. Journalists now understand the outsized impact their words have on how people perceive the world and make decisions, so even outlets previously seen as independent are being increasingly intentional with what they report and how. The New York Times, whenever Biden's polls drop, always begins running headlines about how amazing the US Economy is doing.

Now, here's the thing, everything up to this point in what I'm writing is only what NPR said is what happened. We are about to go on a journey through several different versions of reality.

Here is the Associated Press:

AP: "Kamala Harris calls for ceasefire in Gaza"

And the BBC World Service:

BBC: Kamala Harris tells Netanyahu "It's time to end the war"

Now, Kamala Harris is calling for ceasefire. The comment on "unwavering commitment to Israel" is barely present in the BBC article. The AP is supposed to be the ultimate Centrist news source (but is de facto left-leaning since reality is de facto left-leaning), and the BBC isn't even an American outlet. It's quite blatantly the state media of the British Empire. (Which according to the AP, is dropping support for Israel)

We aren't even looking at particularly politically different outlets and already we have entered a whole new version of events. These articles read as Kamala being firmly pro-ceasefire and pro-Palestine, calling for an urgent need to proceed towards a two-state solution, something which both Netanyahu and I oppose for extremely opposite reasons. (Israel-Palestine needs to become a single binational secular republic. Either it should just be called the Republic of Palestine, or of Israel-Palestine, or something completely neutral like The Republic of the Southern Levant or the anachronistic Phoenicia.) There are references in this article which we see in many headlines about Kamala telling Netanyahu "It is time to end this war" and that she "will not shut up about the need for a ceasefire and a path towards a two-state solution."

If we look at a right-wing source, like the Daily Wire who I won't give a link to due to Cohost's strangely outsized effect on SEO, what happened is

Kamala Harris Holds Brief Meeting With Israeli PM Netanyahu

That's all. What about? Nothing interesting it seems. Probably doesn't matter. Let's see oif we can get a right wing outlet with a bit more information. Let's see what Breibart has to say:

Kamala Harris Blasts Israel for ‘Human Suffering’ in Gaza After Meeting Netanyahu

Again, we oddly see an impression that Kamala Harris took a Pro-Palestine position. When a left-leaning liberal news outlet frames Kamala Harris as more Pro-Palestine than she really is, it is because they see that as a good thing and want their readers to hold a more positive view of her. When a right-wing news outlet does the same thing, it's because they see that as a bad thing and want their readers to hold a more negative view of her. I think that's really funny but it's also indicative of how different people can see the same words and have very different takeaways. Many right-wing news media outlets chose to not cover the meeting with Netanyahu at all, or to completely leave out Kamala Harris's involvement. OANN states that "Lame-Duck President Joe Biden met with Netanyahu" and Kamala Harris apparently wasn't even there. Nothing about what they discussed is in the headline. Fox News focused entirely on Kamala Harris's "snub" of not attending Netanyahu's speech, and criticizes Joe Biden for allowing her to talk to Netanyahu because it's "not her job."

Now let's look at an explicitly left wing media outlet.

Kamala Harris welcomes “Butcher of Gaza” to Washington: “I told him that I will always ensure that Israel is able to defend itself”

World Socialist Web Site is run by the International Committee of the Fourth International, a Trotskyist organization associated with the Socialist Equality Party, which of course in the Trotskyist tradition is a splinter group from Socialist Workers Party which is a splinter group from the Communist Party USA. In the Trotskyist tradition, running WSWS is their main activity. Upon entering their world, Kamala was 100% Zionist in this meeting and has made no motions towards a ceasefire. There is no reference of the "It's Time to End this War" comment showing up in other media outlets, instead, there is emphasis on her commitment to "Israel's Right to Defend Itself" which is framed as being "defend itself from Hamas" and not from Lebanon or Iran as it is framed by other media outlets.

They make good points in the article that framing herself as pro-Palestine at this point feels disingenuous and untrustworthy given that the weapons being used by Israel have been supplied by Joe Biden and the US. While some of their journalism is sloppy, like using the word "purposeful" which is just not something we can know, they also possibly represent reality the closest. She is making overtures to appear Pro-Palestine to appeal to the Democratic base, which is majority Pro-Palestine, while trying to thread the needle and not actually significantly change the political position of the US in the conflict. My point here is not to claim that Kamala is now suddenly pro-Palestine, I think such a claim would be naive. My point is that through getting our news through WSWS we have entered an entirely different world where the events that occurred are completely inverted from how other news outlets are framing the issue.

To get into USPol for a bit, I do think it's clear that pro-Palestine protests and things like Cardi B saying she won't vote without a ceasefire are having their desired effect of pushing the Democrats away from supporting Israel. I am under no illusion that the Democrats are reading my Cohost posts. The only presence of the DNC is @POTUS—which appears to be someone who thinks they're a comedian ERPing as Joe Biden. If I get a call from a polling organization, my answer is going to be the same as Cardi B. I won't vote for her if she doesn't commit to an unconditional ceasefire. When I write to Cohost, I see myself as writing to an entirely insider left-wing crowd. I don't want a strategic message meant to push the DNC to distort your impression of what you should actually be doing. We are essentially playing a game of Chicken. The DNC should think we aren't going to vote for them because of their pro-Israel positions. They want to call our bluff, but ultimately, if you live in a swing state, I do think you should, secretly, vote for them regardless, because there's more than one thing happening in the world at any given time. If you live in California, go hog wild, do whatever you want, vote for Jill Stein or something. I just don't want anyone whose vote actually matters in our broken system to mistake a messaging strategy for what action is actually, in my view, the most strategic action to take in November. Ideally, the Democrats will win swing states and blue states by the narrowest margin and realize that the votes of their base are not guaranteed. I want MA to be like, 55% Democrat, 30% Jill Stein, 15% Libertarian Party or some nonsense—and WI to be 65% Democrat.

Anyway, back to my main point, which is that your perception of the world is shaped by where you get your information. There are many people who probably earnestly believe that Kamala Harris just called for a ceasefire today and withdrew her support from Israel, and some of those people think that's good and some of them think that's bad. Our original NPR article ended up being the most accurate in the end. She tried to thread the needle. She did not unequivocally take a pro-Israel stance like WSWS said, otherwise Likud would not be so angry about her, but she also did not an unequivocal pro-Palestine stance like Breibart claims.

When you get your news via social media, you have way more individuals curating and framing every single piece of news you get. Remember that, even if this lens is the one you trust the most, that it is still not the pure objective reality. It is being framed and shaped. You are in a particular reality tunnel.

At the Republican National Convention, there was a huge amount of discussion of crime being committed by immigrants—undocumented immigrants in particular. This is something that conservatives earnestly believe is happening, but all evidence points to this being a complete fabrication. These events aren't happening at all. These RNC attendees live in a reality tunnel where they perceive it to be happening because of social media and right-wing news, and so they are out there waving signs calling for mass deportation and genocide motivation by events which are not occurring. There just are not any undocumented immigrants committing crimes to a statistically significant extent. The records of the police don't back this up. John Oliver did a whole segment on this, but that is only going to reach people who watch John Oliver, so, not RNC attendees.

This sort of reality tunnel and filter bubble effect is dangerous. Misinformation on Facebook is considered one of the leading causes of the ongoing Rohingya Genocide in Myanmar. Facebook is an American company which has gone unregulated and left unaccountable by their governing authorities (The FTC, the US Attorney General, the US State Department, etc.) Through Facebook, Burmese people are sucked into reality tunnels where they perceive the Rohingya as taking over the country, when in reality they are less than 10% of Myanmar. Just like right-wing illusions of undocumented immigrants committing crime in the United States driving them to call for mass deportation and ICE raids, the same phenomena in Myanmar lead to widespread support for the Burmese military enacting genocide against a persecuted minority. This isn't new either. Widespread belief in antisemitic conspiracy theories was also a major component to Germans supporting the Holocaust. Much of the misinformation about Rohingya in Myanmar reflects both antisemitic conspiracy theories and anti-immigration rhetoric in the US. This is a recurring problem on a global scale.

In Israel, even "left-leaning" news outlets like HaAretz paint a very different picture of reality. Visit their English language website and you will see a very different world. Now remember that many in Israel consider HaAretz to be far too left leaning, and will only consume news from the free Israel HaYom, owned by a personal friend of Netanyahu and known for its heavily distorted pro-Likud bias. Israel HaYom is the most widely read newspaper in Israel. Other people in the world are not evaluating the same information as you and coming to different conclusions, they are living in an entirely different version of reality where their perspective is obviously correct and everyone else is an idiot for not seeing it the same.

If you read Al-Jazeera instead, the world is again severely different from Israel HaYom. Al-Jazeera, in my opinion, has far better reporters and journalistic practices than most news outlets mentioned in this post. Al-Jazeera did not write their own article on Kamala Harris's meeting with Netanyahu. They just have the video of her remarks edited to only include the pro-Palestine sound bites, and in their coverage of the Netanyahu visit, always emphasizes in every headline that there are huge pro-Palestine protests all over the US and outside of congress. Al-Jazeera is, like NPR, a private news organization that receives public funding from the government of Qatar—a small monarchy with a generally poor human rights record. I like Al-Jazeera and get a lot of my news from them, but even Al-Jazeera will paint for you a very specific picture of the world that is not shared by many.

You may have seen advertisements for a service called Ground News which aggregates news from across the political spectrum. I generally really like Ground News and they do a lot to try and break you free from filter bubbles and biases, but even Ground News is not immune. If an outlet does not report on a story, then their perspective is absent from Ground News. When I look at the Ground News coverage of the Kamala Harris meeting with Netanyahu, I get the impression that most outlets are reporting that she leaned more pro-ceasefire than pro-Likud. Since Al-Jazeera didn't write their own article, they just aren't in the aggregate presented to me by Ground News. I do not see the world on the front page of Al Jazeera, where these remarks are a minor footnote, and the biggest story is that new attacks from Israel have killed 21 more Gazans today, and there is evidence that Palestinian prisoners held by Israel are being tortured. It is not just about how individual incidents are framed and reported, but also how the world is framed and reported, and what information is placed in front of you. I like that Ground has a "blindspot checker" meant to help with this, meant to present stories to you not being reported on by certain political tendencies, but I still do not see on the front page of Ground any mention of the latest attacks on Gaza that fill half of my screen on the front page of Al Jazeera. Even the website meant to break your bubble, so their marketing claims, ends up presenting a particular view of the world. You do not see the world from the eyes of Qatar.

When I ask you to think about these things, it is not because I want you to be open-minded to the opinions of conservatives. I don't think conservative ideas are generally accurate or useful for improving the world. What I want is for you to try and keep yourself moving fluidly between different reality tunnels, to see how others are seeing the world not because they all have a little truth to learn from, but to prevent yourself from getting sucked down a reality tunnel so isolated from others that you begin to believe things that may be detached from more plausible realities. Understanding what other people are experiencing helps you understand why other people are behaving the way they do. Understanding what other people are experiencing helps you avoid social isolation at the hands of cults and extremist groups. You are not immune to any of the ways of thinking that right-wingers fall into just because you have better values. Do not join the Red Guards or a Neo-Trot cult. Do not find yourself denying the Great Famine in Ukraine or claiming that Ukrainians are somehow deserving of Russian invasion or undeserving of our sympathy (these are real things leftists have said in my presence.) Do not find yourself defending Baathists. Do not convince yourself that masturbation is petit bourgeois or that transgender people are western decadence.

I used to make poor financial and health decisions because I believed that there would be a civil war in the United States before I turned 30 that would subsequently lead to my early death. That didn't happen. I am now having to reconcile decisions I made in my 20s with the likely possibility that I am going to live until age 70+ and should take good care of my body and try to have some savings. Apparently, I am not going to be martyred in the glorious revolution of the people's liberation army, but instead have to live my entire life as a chronically disabled person working in a career known for burning people out. I am in deeper debt than I needed to be in because I didn't think the Department of Education would even exist to hold me to my loans by the time I had to start paying them. We only get one life to live. Don't spend it beating up elderly DSA members because Comrade Dallas said they're the real threat to global liberation.

Nobody is immune to falling prey to cults or even just to strange perceptions of reality that aren't doing them well. If you have a strange belief, I want you to at least know that it is uncommon and created by your own world that you are living in. Nobody is directly experiencing objective reality. We are all having a subjective experience shaped by our environments and preconceptions. Always keep that in the back of your mind. When something does not make sense to you, this is often why.