A look at what didn’t happen this week

A summary of some of the most popular but completely bogus stories and visuals of the week. None of them are legitimate, even though they have been shared widely on social media. The Associated Press verified them. Here are the facts:

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The NRA is not trained to defend African Americans against the KKK

CLAIM: Juneteenth is “the day the Republicans freed slaves from Democratic slave owners.” Soon after, “the NRA was formed to help black people defend themselves against the Ku Klux Klan of the Democrats.”

THE FACTS: The NRA was not formed to help black people defend themselves against klan. Rather, it began as an organization to improve marksmanship among members of the New York National Guard after the Civil War. The slaves were freed by the Union army, not by a political party. The false allegations circulated after President Biden enacted the June National Independence Day Act, making June 19 a federal holiday. The holiday marks the date Union soldiers announced freedom to enslaved blacks in Galveston, Texas. Although the Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves in the South in 1863, it could not be implemented in many places until after the end of the Civil War in 1865. The passage of the law sparked many conversations on social media, including historical disinformation. A message falsely claiming a relationship between the formation of the NRA and enslaved blacks circulated on Facebook and Twitter after the bill was signed on June 17. According to report by the AP, the KKK was created by Confederate veterans, not the Democratic Party. “The KKK was a terrorist guerrilla organization. So talking about the KKK in terms of open party affiliation doesn’t make a lot of sense because we’re all talking about a different type of entity, ”said Joseph Lowndes, professor of political science at the University of Oregon. “There were Democrats in the South who supported the KKK. And there are Democrats who weren’t. The NRA was also not formed to help defend black people against the KKK. “The National Rifle Association was formed in New York City in 1871, by a group of former Union Army officers and veterans. They trained the NRA to improve the shooting skills of the New York National Guard in preparation for future wars, ”said Frank Smyth, author of“ The NRA: The Unauthorized History ”. “They had nothing to do with the KKK or the freed slaves.” Smyth added that NRA co-founder William Conan Church, in his book “Ulysses S. Grant and the Period of National Preservation and Reconstruction,” never mentioned that the NRA aided or armed freed slaves who were mistreated and killed during reconstruction. It is also not historically accurate to claim that Republicans “freed slaves from Democratic slave owners.” “It was the Union Army, not the Republican Party, that freed the slaves of the Confederate States of America. It was not a Republican versus Democrat conflict, ”Lowndes said. “The Republican and Democratic parties have ceased to function within the rebel states. And there were a lot of Democrats who fought in their Union Army to end slavery as well. “Moreover, today’s Republican Party bears little resemblance to that which was born in the North in 1854.” says Lowndes. “After the Civil War, the Democratic Party was the dominant party in the South and represented the maintenance of Jim Crow’s segregationist political order, but after 1964 the southern white Democrats changed parties.

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Video manipulated to make Thunberg look like he denied climate change

CLAIM: Video shows Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg claiming climate change is not real.

THE FACTS: Teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg hasn’t reversed her stance on climate change, but a manipulated video that has circulated widely on Instagram this week has been edited to look like this. In the clip, MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan asks Thunberg how she would react if the president asked her how to tackle climate change. Thunberg replies that she wouldn’t tell him anything, because it wouldn’t be democratic, and she wouldn’t want an elected leader to do anything without the support of the voters. “So I would tell him to tell the situation as it is,” said Thunberg. The camera seems to jump slightly, and Thunberg continues, “Since the climate crisis does not exist, how can we expect people to want climate action? Instagram users shared the clip with captions saying Thunberg called the climate crisis a “hoax” and “speaks in a different way than she had about climate change.” However, the edited clip cuts off a key part of the interview which reveals that Thunberg’s point was to underscore the severity of the crisis, not lessen it. In the original version Interview on March 7, after explaining that she would not want an elected leader to act without voter support, Thunberg said world leaders should convey the gravity of the crisis to their constituents. “So what we need now is to raise awareness and create public opinion,” she said. “Treat the crisis like a crisis. Because if people are not aware of the crisis we are facing, of course, they will not put pressure on elected officials. So I would just tell him to tell the story as it is. Because, I mean yeah, you could say… I meet a lot of world leaders and they say, “I can’t do nothing because I don’t have the support of the voters. Well, how can you expect voter support and pressure if you don’t treat the crisis like a crisis? Since the climate crisis does not exist, how can we expect people to want climate action? “

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Texas heat didn’t melt the wind turbine

CLAIM: Photo shows a wind turbine that melted in the heat of Texas.

THE FACTS: The recent damage to a wind turbine in Southeast Texas was unrelated to the heat, according to a spokesperson for RWE Renewables, which operates the turbine. The company is investigating how the damage occurred, with a recent storm being a potential cause. A photo of the wind turbine with its blades drooping towards its base circulated widely on Facebook and Twitter this week, with social media users claiming a heat wave in the southwest was responsible. “The current heat wave is melting a wind turbine in Texas,” wrote a Facebook user in an article viewed more than 50,000 times. The image shows actual damage to a turbine in Matagorda County, south of Houston, but the high temperatures in Texas did not cause it to fail. “The damage to the turbine was certainly NOT related to heat or high temperatures,” RWE communications manager Matt Tulis said in an email to The Associated Press. “We sustained damage to one of our project’s turbines in Matagorda County, Texas, potentially resulting from a storm last week. Our on-site team is evaluating the cause and extent of damage to the affected turbine. The local branch of the National Weather Service tweeted on June 14 that the turbine failure was linked to wind from a storm that passed through the area that day, but an agency meteorologist told AP on Monday that ‘he couldn’t say that for sure. “There was a thunderstorm, but it didn’t look particularly severe,” meteorologist Dan Reilly said. “It’s been hot, but it’s not unusual for South Texas. Some social media users have speculated that a lightning strike could have done some damage. Tulis said his team had not ruled out the possibility.

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Immigration quote is from Senator John Kennedy, not JFK

CLAIM: Former President John F. Kennedy said, “There are people in Washington, DC, in positions of power for whom the border is just a nuisance. And I think some of them think illegal immigration is a moral good. It’s not.”

THE FACTS: The quote is from Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, not the former president. A Liberty University Standing for Freedom Center Facebook post this week mixed up two very different John Kennedys: a former Democratic president and a sitting Republican senator. The post, which was later withdrawn, included a quote berating people who view the border as a “nuisance” and believe it is “moral good” to allow people to live in the United States without legal permission. Next to the quote, it showed a photo of the assassinated former president on November 22, 1963, while in Dallas, Texas. In fact, the quote belongs to the other John Kennedy, who commented on Fox News in 2019, when then-President Donald Trump was about to unveil a new immigration proposal.

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