mkwt, 1 year ago

I don’t think this is an accurate view of the current border situation, but it’s a view that one might have consuming media from a different kind of media bubble than the Fox News kind.

There really is a situation with migrants who cross the river illegally and immediately turn themselves in and claim asylum. This isn’t a new situation, but the numbers have gotten worse over the last year.

The migrant caravans, plural, really did and do exist. What tends to happen is they gather into thousands strong mass marches in and around Tapachula, after crossing from Guatemala to Mexico. So these big marches start towards the US in southern Mexico, but they tend to break up and thin out over the 1800 mile journey to Texas.

If anyone could organize a mass foot march over the whole distance, that would be an extremely impressive feat of logistics. But that hasn’t happened yet.

Conclusions: this border situation is not completely made up. Many right wing conspiracies going around have some kind of kernel of truth to then.

And some mainstream media outlets (I have this experience with NPR in particular) have started to seemingly impose total blackouts on not just the conspiracy ideas, but also on the little nuggets of true news that get them started.