TOM EATON: What can we believe in the absence of hard evidence?
Misinformed and misled? Yes. But division is not the only option
“Some newspaper headlines are the opposite of what CIC Julius Malema says on Live Videos, if I didn't watch his live videos I'd be misinformed & misled. Watch CIC Julius Malema Live Videos to get facts. EFF is going to win in large numbers in 2019 National Elections. Asijiki!” As pro-EFF tweets go, this one from last week was mild, even touching in its innocence. Many others, however, seethe with violence or hypocrisy: since the party’s senior champagne socialists have been accused of benefiting from the VBS heist, I’ve seen Twitter Fighters declare that any money, no matter its source, is legitimate if it funds the revolution. All, however, have one thing in common: an unshakeable belief in their rightness. Of course, this is the founding principle of social media — the notion that your smallest thoughts are worth publishing to a mass audience — but when politics enters the fray, the result can be the kind of unblinking self-righteousness and zombie-like repetition of doctrine norm...
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