[imagesource:here]

In the words of Barry Bateman, Julius Malema is a …

No, we won’t go there, although you’ll find many South Africans agree with the EWN senior journalist’s description of the EFF leader.

Take your pick from any one of a number of reasons, although the recent exposé of how Malema spent that looted VBS Bank money is a good place to start. It really does make for sickening reading.

Malema pretends to be a man of the people, a la Robin Hood, but Zapiro sees things a little differently.

Here’s his latest effort on the Daily Maverick:

Robbin’ Hood.

Yeah, it ties in quite nicely with Zapiro’s take on the EFF ‘Trash Champagne Revolutionaries’ story.

As we have mentioned before, the EFF’s unofficial response (as in their tactics of spreading misinformation on social media) was basically a screenshot of a Word document, which the red brigade and its supporters shared with glee.

That screenshot contained made-up accusations that members of the judiciary, and the National Director of Public Prosecutions, Shamila Batohi, were bribed by President Cyril Ramaphosa’s election campaign.

This kind of nonsense:

The key here is to treat nonsense like this with the respect it deserves – i.e., none.

Legal eagle Pierre De Vos, writing for the Daily Maverick, has outlined just how farcical, yet still dangerous, this misinformation campaign can be:

…let me use a different example to illustrate how dangerous and toxic it can be when individuals promote an obviously false claim about somebody with the view to discredit them.

Imagine a group of political operatives decide to discredit EFF leader Julius Malema. They create several anonymous Twitter accounts. They type up allegations that Julius Malema has sexually molested several teenage boys, take a screengrab of the Word document, and share it on Twitter. They get many other critics of Mr Malema to share the obviously false claim on Twitter.

An SABC journalist then asks Mr Malema in a live TV interview whether he denies the allegations, which he does. The SABC then publishes an article stating that “Malema denies molesting teenage boys”.

Suddenly, many gullible people are wondering whether the denial does not mean that there might be something to the allegation. Many others, who know the allegation to be false, nevertheless keep it alive by consistently suggesting that Malema has a case to answer.

All of a sudden, this clearly contrived story has legs, it’s grabbing headlines, and those who want to believe it’s true, will.

In the case of the claims against Batohi, it also helps that the EFF’s supporters have long since turned their backs on facts, which can be dismissed with claims of Stratcom and White Monopoly Capital and so on, preferring to gobble up whatever lies the party’s leaders distribute via Twitter.

We’re not alone on that front – Trump’s America is also on the money – but it’s very dangerous territory.

[sources:dailymaverick&dailymaverick]