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Open in TheBrain

GAB chat 2 torba

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trifecta

xian natl

encryption? // telegram?

8 22 now main

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GPAHA HATE

11 26

...Andrew Torba, CEO of the unmoderated social media platform Gab, which is popular with extremists, called for the far right to create an “exit ramp” for former Trump supporters leading to more extreme beliefs. Like many others, Torba espoused racist language purporting the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, saying the “browner the nation gets, the more blue it will become. Republicans did nothing to stop this and in many cases they embraced and even accelerated it.”

Here, Torba is saying that immigrants vote Democrat or for pro-immigration Republicans, leading to the further “replacement” of white people. He then called on the GOP to “become the explicit and unapologetic party of White people and White interests.” Similarly, Eric Orwoll, founder of the whites-only Return To The Land (RTTL) settlement in Arkansas, said if people want “better results from Republicans,” they should “run candidates and support advocacy orgs like the RTTL foundation.” In other words, Orwoll is suggesting more white supremacists lobby Republicans, run for office, and support white nationalist projects.

Gab founder Andrew Torba shares racist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory rhetoric saying immigration makes the nation “browner” and suggests following a more extreme form of nationalism. (Source: X).

An account called the U.S. Minutemen, a term commonly used by local militias, responded to a post saying “we have 2 years to find a new Hitler” with a video venerating Hitler and spreading antisemitism.

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Finally, speaking of Partridge, he and his fellow white nationalists like Andrew Torba and Dave Reilly are thrilled to discover that Megyn Kelly is, like they claim all women are, a "natural racist."

rww

12/19/2025

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Kyle Mantyla

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12/10/2025

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Kyle Mantyla

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11/06/2025

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Kyle Mantyla

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Small local organizations called Active Clubs have spread widely across the U.S. and internationally, using fitness as a cover for a much more alarming mission. These groups are a new and harder-to-detect form of white supremacist organizing that merges extremist ideology with fitness and combat sports culture.

:{Active Clubs frame themselves as innocuous workout groups on digital platforms and decentralized networks to recruit, radicalize and prepare members for racist violence. The clubs commonly use encrypted messaging apps such as Telegram, Wire and Matrix to coordinate internally. For broader propaganda and outreach they rely on :{alternative social media platforms such as Gab,:(style="background-color:#ffbb16ff"):}: **Odysee, VK and sometimes BitChute. They also selectively use mainstream sites such as Instagram, Facebook, X and TikTok, until those sites ban the clubs.}:

Active Club members have been implicated in orchestrating and distributing neo-Nazi recruitment videos and manifestos. In late 2023, for instance, two Ontario men, Kristoffer Nippak and Matthew Althorpe, were arrested and charged with distributing materials for the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division and the transnational terrorist group Terrorgram. Following their arrests, Active Club Canada’s public network went dark, Telegram pages were deleted or rebranded, and the club went virtually silent. Nippak was granted bail under strict conditions, while Althorpe remains in custody.As a sociologist studying extremism and white supremacy since 1993, I have watched the movement shift from formal organizations to small, decentralized cells – a change embodied most clearly by Active Clubs.

IFrame Content An investigation by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation tracks down two Ontario-based Active Clubs that recruit and train young men to fight.

White nationalism 3.0

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

According to private analysts who track far-right extremist activities, the Active Club network has a core membership of 400 to 1,200 white men globally, plus sympathizers, online supporters and passive members. The clubs mainly target young white men in their late teens and twenties. Since 2020, Active Clubs have expanded rapidly across the United States, Canada and Europe, including the U.K., France, Sweden and Finland. Precise numbers are hard to verify, but the clubs appear to be spreading, according to The Counter Extremism Project

, the Anti-Defamation League, the Southern Poverty Law Center and my own research. The clubs reportedly operate in at least 25 U.S. states, and potentially as many as 34

. Active U.S. chapters reportedly increased from 49 in 2023 to 78 in 2025. The clubs’ rise reflects a broader shift in white supremacist strategy, away from formal organizations and social movements. In 2020, American neo-Nazi Robert Rundo introduced the concept of “White Nationalism 3.0

” – a decentralized, branded and fitness-based approach to extremist organizing. Rundo previously founded the Rise Above Movement, which was a violent, far-right extremist group in the U.S. known for promoting white nationalist ideology, organizing street fights and coordinating through social media. The organization carried out attacks at protests and rallies from 2016 through 2018. Active Clubs embed their ideology within apolitical activities such as martial arts and weightlifting

:{. This model allows them to blend in with mainstream fitness communities. However, their deeper purpose is to prepare members for racial conflict.IFrame Content

An actor reconstructs how British broadcaster ITV News infiltrated and secretly filmed inside Active Club England, documenting its recruiting process, activities and goals.}:

‘You need to learn how to fight’

Active Club messaging glorifies discipline, masculinity and strength – a “warrior identity” designed to attract young men. “The active club is not so much a structural organization as it is a lifestyle for those willing to work, risk and sweat to embody our ideals for themselves and to promote them to others,” Rundo explained via his Telegram channel. “They never were like, ‘You need to learn how to fight so you can beat up people of color.’ It was like, ‘You need to learn how to fight because people want to kill you in the future,’” a former Active Club member told Vice News in 2023.These cells are deliberately small – often under a dozen members – and self-contained, which gives them greater operational security and flexibility. Each club operates semi-autonomously while remaining connected to the broader ideology and digital network.

Expanding globally and deepening ties

:{:{Active Clubs maintain strategic and ideological connections with formal white supremacist groups, including Patriot Front, a white nationalist and neofascist group founded in 2017 by Thomas Rousseau after the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.Active Clubs share extremist beliefs with these organizations, including racial hierarchy and the “Great Replacement” theory, which claims white populations are being deliberately replaced by nonwhite immigrants.}:

While publicly presenting as fitness groups, they may collaborate with white supremacist groups on recruitment, training, propaganda or public events. Figures connected to accelerationist groups – organizations that seek to create social chaos and societal collapse that they believe will lead to a race war and the destruction of liberal democracy – played a role in founding the Active Club network. Along with the Rise Above Movement, they include Atomwaffen Division and another neo-Nazi group, The Base – organizations that repackage violent fascism to appeal to disaffected young white men in the U.S.}:

Brotherhood as a cover

By downplaying explicit hate symbols and emphasizing strength and preparedness, Active Clubs appeal to a new generation of recruits who may not initially identify with overt racism but are drawn to a culture of hypermasculinity and self-improvement.Anyone can start a local Active Club chapter with minimal oversight. This autonomy makes it hard for law enforcement agencies to monitor the groups and helps the network grow rapidly. Shared branding and digital propaganda maintain ideological consistency.

Through this approach, Active Clubs have built a transnational network of echo chambers, recruitment pipelines and paramilitary-style training in parks and gyms.Club members engage in activities such as combat sports training, propaganda dissemination and ideological conditioning. Fight sessions are often recorded and shared online as recruitment tools.Members distribute flyers, stickers and online content to spread white supremacist messages. Active Clubs embed themselves in local communities by hosting events, promoting physical fitness, staging public actions and sharing propaganda. Potential members first see propaganda on encrypted apps such as Telegram or on social media. The clubs recruit in person at gyms, protests and local events, vetting new members to ensure they share the group’s beliefs and can be trusted to maintain secrecy.

From fringe to functioning network

Based on current information from the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, there are 187 active chapters within the Active Club Network across 27 countries – a 25% increase from late 2023. The Crowd Counting Consortium documented 27 protest events involving Active Clubs in 2022-2023. However, precise membership numbers remain difficult to ascertain. Some groups call themselves “youth clubs” but share similar ideas and aesthetics and engage in similar activities. Active Club members view themselves as defenders of Western civilization and masculine virtue. From their perspective, their activities represent noble resistance rather than hate. Members are encouraged to stay secretive, prepare for societal collapse and build a network of committed, fit men ready to act through infiltration, activism or violence.

Hiding in plain sight

Law enforcement agencies, researchers and civil society now face a new kind of domestic threat that wears workout clothes instead of uniforms.Active Clubs work across international borders, bound by shared ideas and tactics and a common purpose. This is the new white nationalism: decentralized, modernized, more agile and disguised as self-improvement. What appears to be a harmless workout group may be a gateway to violent extremism, one pushup at a time.

Art Jipson, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Dayton This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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03/10/2025

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Kyle Mantyla

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02/20/2025

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Kyle Mantyla

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01/31/2025

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Kyle Mantyla

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MMA 9 24

Local officials in northeast Pennsylvania have been forced to rebut an anti-immigrant claim spread by antisemitic Gab CEO Andrew Torba, who claimed that there were “busses full of migrants being dropped off” in the town of Tunkhannock. Authorities say they have been “inundated with calls” in response to the anti-immigrant claim, which spread via social media in a situation similar to what is currently encompassing the town of Springfield, Ohio, where baseless anti-immigrant smears spread by neo-Nazis and social media users have led to repeated bomb threats.

Gab is a far-right social media platform that has been a haven for white nationalists, including the 2018 Tree of Life Synagogue shooter. Torba, Gab’s CEO, has pushed white nationalism, Christian nationalism, and antisemitism — including complaining that “pagans, Jews, non-believers, atheists” have too much political power and arguing that Christians are “done being controlled and being told what we’re allowed to do in our own country by a 2% minority.” He also cheered on the January 6 insurrection as it was happening, has called democracy a “failed concept” and a “failed ideology,” promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory, and led an effort to sabotage vaccination efforts during the coronavirus pandemic. Notably, Torba has bragged that Gab helped make the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory “part of the daily mainstream discourse.”

On September 16, Torba posted on both Gab and X (formerly Twitter) that “I’m getting reports from locals that they have spotted busses full of migrants being dropped off in Tunkhannock, PA. I can personally confirm that I’ve seen parking lots full of them at the local park near Tunkhannock.” His post included an image that supposedly supported his claim.

Torba’s post reportedly spread across social media, and local law enforcement officials told ABC affiliate WNEP that they are “being inundated with calls about the post.” WNEP dedicated a segment about the anti-migrant claim, specifically highlighting Torba’s post and speaking with the district attorney of Wyoming County, where Tunkhannock is located, who said, “If it was all true and if they were here, they have disappeared. And even if they were here, there’s no indication of anything illegal.” The district attorney had reportedly “even consulted with Homeland Security personnel who work out of his office” about the claim.

Video

CitationFrom ABC affiliate WNEP on September 17, 2024

Tunkhannock’s police department also addressed Torba’s claim, posting on Facebook a statement that “our Department has been inundated with calls and messages pertaining to” the Gab CEO’s post. The statement, from Police Chief Keith Carpenter, says that the photo simply shows “a group that can be described only as people. People who are respectfully walking along the sidewalk in our town and we see no crime being committed other than the picture being taken from an electronic device while operated upon a roadway.”

“We refuse to infringe without cause upon the freedoms we all expect,” Carpenter added. “My officers will no longer entertain the questions, comments, phone calls and messages of this political pot stir and will continue to focus on the kind of service to the public that is expected of us.”

In response to the rebuttal from local officials, Torba doubled down and mocked WNEP for the segment, accusing the station and officials of telling people to “not believe our lying eyes.”

Torba’s targeting of supposed migrants in Tunkhannock comes as Springfield, Ohio, has been inundated with bomb threats over false claims that members of its Haitian immigrant community were killing and eating animals. Like the situation in Tunkhannock, that claim was also spread by the far right, reportedly originating with a neo-Nazi group, and took off on social media. It was then invoked by former President Donald Trump during the September 10 presidential debate and by his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH).

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July 25, 2024 rww

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robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s group Children’s Health Defense sought support from users of the far-right social media platform Gab in 2021, including white supremacists, QAnon conspiracy theorists, and an open neo-Nazi.

Those users have written things including “White people are kings. F--- jews. n--s are animals”; “Against Jewish Control”; and, regarding Nazi Germany: “This is what the Jewish controlled system does not want us to see. When we kick them out and place our value on our own people, we thrive.”

Kennedy is the founder, chair, and chief litigation counsel for Children’s Health Defense, one of the key spreaders of misinformation about vaccines and COVID-19. He is on leave from the group during his campaign. Kennedy has frequently attempted to appeal to right-wing audiences during his run, as evidenced by his campaign site featuring interviews with Elon Musk, Laura Ingraham, Megyn Kelly, and Breitbart News.

Children’s Health Defense has been using Gab to recruit followers since January 2021. Its profile says it is part of Gab Pro, which is a subscription-based program. CHD has posted to the site over 1,500 times and has touted its account as a way to “fight censorship.”

Gab is a social media platform that caters to those deemed too extreme for Twitter and Facebook. Its user base is populated with numerous antisemites, neo-Nazis, and white nationalists. Many of them express hatred toward and issue violent threats against Jewish people. In 2018, a Gab user allegedly killed 11 people at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue.

The Stanford Internet Observatory analyzed content on Gab and concluded in a June 2022 report that “extreme anti-Semitic, racist and homophobic content is rife, with open praise of Nazism, encouragement of violence against minorities, and ‘Great Replacement’ narratives.”

Andrew Torba is the site’s founder and CEO. He is a virulent antisemite who has said that Jewish people have too much political power and are not welcome in his preferred political movement: “We don't want people who are Jewish.” He has also reposted praise of Gab as a placewhere people can find “differing opinions” on the Holocaust.

Media outlets have scrutinized Gab’s links to antisemitism and white supremacy, especially after failed Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano paid Torba for campaign “consulting.” But Kennedy’s ties to Gab through his organization have previously gone unreported.

CHD’s pointed engagement with the antisemitic platform comes as observers have noted a general increase in antisemitism in the U.S., especially online. Misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic has also worsened the problem. Kennedy received criticism in January 2022 after he said during an anti-vaccine rally: “Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps to Switzerland. You could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did.”

In addition to maintaining an active Gab account, CHD has repeatedly engaged with users who are antisemites and white supremacists. The group also conducted outreach to a neo-Nazi account. Below are numerous examples from 2021:

CHD asked Gab founder and virulent antisemite Andrew Torba to “follow + support” Kennedy and his group. CHD has reached out to Torba (username “a”) to appeal for support, writing on Gab: “@a Please follow + support Children's Health Defense and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. #Freespeech is yet again under attack.” The organization also promoted an event in Torba’s replies and repeatedly sent him links to its website.

CHD reached out to a former Gab officer who has expressed hatred of Jewish people (“They gotta go. Now”) and support for enslaving Black people.CHD posted a link to its website to “shadowknight412.” The group also tagged that account, along with Gab’s Help account, in asking for “help with analytics for our account.” The shadowknight412 account belongs to Gab’s former chief technology officer Rob Colbert. In more recent posts, he has made clear his hatred for Jewish and Black people. He’s written: “I don't have any questions about why my ancestors kept these retarded man-like creatures locked in sheds with metal collars on their necks that had bells on them. #N-----Bells”; and “N-----s. If only there was a whole continent they could go live on and not have to worry about fitting in with western civilization and our traditions/laws.”

He is also an antisemite who has written, “I don't want to be around ridiculous jews”; “The jew is basically parasitic drag. And engineering has ways of mitigating that”; and “It's always some rat-faced jew. They are schizophrenic and violent. They gotta go. Now. The jew needs to be removed from American education, media, government, finance, and law.”

CHD shared a link to its website with someone whose account states: “F--- jews. n--s are animals.” CHD responded to an anti-vaccine post by “Ytram” by sharing a link to its website. That account states in its “about” page: “White people are kings. F--- jews. n--s are animals.”

CHD reached out to a neo-Nazi account. CHD responded to an anti-vaccine post by “WesternChauvinist1” by posting a link to its website. That account features two SS bolts as its header image with the “14 words,” a white supremacist slogan.

The header image of a neo-Nazi account that Children's Health Defense messaged; screenshot via Internet Archive.

It posts pro-Nazi propaganda, including praising Hitler for being “the only world leader to ever arrest a Rothschild”; claiming that “National Socialism took the German economy from a debt based depression, to a country with the highest standard of living in the world” and “National Socialists valued their own people and Nation as their most prized possession”; and concluding of Jewish people: “This is what the Jewish controlled system does not want us to see. When we kick them out and place our value on our own people, we thrive. When we allow their central banks and debt systems in our homelands, we are reduced to consumers and tax cattle.”

CHD shared a link to its website with an account that’s “against Jewish control.” CHD responded to an anti-vaccine post by “Stevevvs,” which states in its about page that it is “Against Jewish Control.”

CHD posted a link in the comments section of a white supremacist account.CHD responded to an anti-vaccine post by “PoisonDartPepe” by sharing a link to its website. That account’s pinned post is a screenshot of a social media post defending white supremacy; it states: “What they call White supremacy is really just White dignity. The dignity of a homeland. The dignity of cultural integrity. The dignity of communal pride. When they say they want to smash White supremacy it means they want to destroy your dignity as a people and humiliate you.” The account recently stated of Jewish people: “They should stay here in prison forever. A handful might have execution worthy crimes. But the rest - just throw them in gen pop with the n-----s.” Pepe is a common meme name used by the alt-right and white nationalist movement.

CHD also shared links to its website to QAnon influencer Neon Revolt; far-right cartoonist Ben Garrison, who has a history of promoting QAnon, “Pizzagate,” and antisemitism; and far-right bigot Milo Yiannopoulos.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/gab/marjorie-taylor-greene-paid-antisemitic-and-white-nationalist-haven-gab-fundraising-august

gab MTG

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https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/02/magazine/russiagate-paul-manafort-ukraine-war.html

The Untold Story of ‘Russiagate’ and the Road to War in Ukraine

Across the intervening years, Russia's election meddling has been ... while applying ever-evolving disinformation techniques to play to the...

.5 days ago

Council on Foreign Relations

China's Growing Attempts to Influence U.S. Politics

Beijing also has significantly increased its efforts to use disinformation online to meddle in U.S. elections, sometimes simply to cause...

.1 week ago

https://www.voanews.com/a/foreign-election-disinformation-campaigns-well-underway-researchers-say-/6789393.html

Voice of America

Foreign Election Disinformation Campaigns Well Underway, Researchers Say

Both Russia and China have long denied election meddling, but the findings would seem to bolster concerns recently voiced by the U.S. Federal...

.3 weeks ago

WASHINGTON — 

Less than two weeks after senior U.S. officials warned that Russia, China and other adversaries were set to launch a variety of influence operations and disinformation campaigns aimed at the upcoming midterm elections, researchers are finding traces of the malign efforts online.

A report Thursday by the cybersecurity firm Recorded Future warned that Russia and China, in particular, have resurrected dormant social media accounts or have amplified other ongoing influence operations to sway U.S. voters or sow chaos and discontent as Americans go to the polls.

Compared to the 2020 U.S. presidential election, the researchers found that “such behavior has likely only intensified against the backdrop of conventional and hybrid warfare in Ukraine, broad international ramifications of said conflict, lingering effects of a global pandemic, and a broadening distrust in traditional democratic institutions.”

Both Russia and China have long denied election meddling, but the findings would seem to bolster concerns recently voiced by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI warned last week that while the county’s election infrastructure is secure, malicious cyber actors like Russia, China and also Iran “could seek to spread or amplify false or exaggerated claims of compromise.”

SEE ALSO:

Foreign Influence Campaigns Ramp Up to Target US Voters

According to Recorded Future, Russia so far appears to be the most active, despite a deterioration of its U.S. influence capabilities, which have likely been drained by Moscow’s efforts against Ukraine.

Russia

Specifically, the researchers found indications that Russia’s infamous troll farm, the Internet Research Agency (IRA), is back at work, targeting U.S. voters with covert and overt influence campaigns.

Part of the effort, the researchers said, has involved reactivating accounts on social media platforms like Gab and Gettr that cater to conservative audiences in the United States.

One such account under the name “Nora Berka” began posting on Gab in August after a yearlong absence.

“In almost all cases, Nora Berka maintains a highly negative stance toward the policies of U.S. President Joe Biden, with a clear preference for former President Donald Trump, as well as sitting Republican U.S. representatives and candidates for state offices,” the report said. “Comments posted by the persona further maintain that the result of the 2020 election was fraudulent.”

Another recently reactivated account under the name “PaulPedhoven” has been resharing content on the “patriots[.]win” forum, much of it critical of the Biden administration’s economic policies and questioning the safety of COVID-19 vaccines, the report said.

China

Like Russia, Recorded Future found China is also seeding social media with narratives denigrating the U.S. and with what the researchers described to VOA as “political wedge issues related to the midterms.”

Unlike Russia, however, the report said Beijing is mostly relying on diplomats, journalists with Chinese state-run media outlets and political pundits, whose messages are then amplified by fake personas and other inauthentic accounts.

Recorded Future said China’s influence operations, such as a recent campaign that began last month, span platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and Douyin, described as a Chinese-language version of TikTok.

“Many of these [posts and comments] appear to criticize both the Republican and Democrat parties and promote extreme views on both sides,” the Recorded Future report said.

Iran

Analysts from Recorded Future's Insikt Group found few traces of Iranian malign influence campaigns currently targeting U.S. voters, though they told VOA by email that Iranian actors have used the elections to share “propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation … leveraging themes such as an impending U.S. civil war, economic collapse, and a decline in U.S. stature on the world stage.”

Responses

Requests by VOA to the Russian embassy and to the Iranian Mission to the U.N. for comment on U.S. warnings and the Recorded Future report were not immediately answered.

China’s embassy on Friday rejected allegations in the Recorded Future report, accusing the researchers and others of spreading disinformation about China.

“We are firmly opposed to this allegation, which is totally groundless and malicious,” Chinese Embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu told VOA in a statement.

“China has always adhered to the principle of non-interference in other countries' internal affairs,” Liu added. “China has no interest in and has never interfered in the U.S. domestic elections.”

Iran has previously rejected U.S. government accusations of election meddling in 2020 as “baseless.”

Violent domestic extremists

Not all the threat streams are from overseas.

Like the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which warned that domestic extremists might seize upon the midterm elections to engage in violence, the Recorded Future report found reason for concern.

“Violent anti-law enforcement sentiment has proliferated on message boards such as Patriots[.]win and alternative social media platforms such asGab and Truth Social, where comments about a new civil war and suggestions to execute FBI agents are now commonplace,” the report said.

And just as Russia has been amplifying its messaging, some of the extremists are doing the same for the Kremlin.

“We’re seeing many election deniers and domestic extremist groups who are completely witting to Russia’s influence and who choose to amplify the lies anyway,” Insikt Group told VOA. “It’s a symbiotic relationship, and Moscow knows it will receive support/compliance from the U.S. fringe without having to obscure its own hand.”

Impact...

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no lnx twt vid

'Cesspool of hate': Jake Tapper explores Gab's digital netherworld of 'hideously racist' posts and 'Nazism'

David Badash and The New Civil Rights Movement October 18, 2022

CNN’s Jake Tapper says the far-right social media platform Gab, run by an antisemitic Christian nationalist, has “hideously racist” posts and embedded “Nazism” as part of its “popular” offerings – and says after he reported his findings founder Andrew Torba called him the “son of the Devil” and claimed the site hosts “pro-life” and “Christian content.”

Tapper on Monday took a walk into the world of far-right social media platforms, after Kanye West announced his intention to buy the flailing site Parler, and glanced at Facebook and Twitter as well, but says the so-called “free speech” sites on the far-right are filled with hate – and that “the hate is the whole point.”

Tapper says of the far-right sites he looked at, Gab has “the fewest rules” and “the lowest standards” when it comes to content moderation.

READ MORE: ‘Yes’: GOP Nominee Mastriano Supports Charging Women With Murder if They Have an Abortion After a 6 Week Ban (Audio)

“I signed up for Gab this morning. I clicked on ‘Explore,’ which took me to ‘popular posts across Gab.’ I came in with an open mind and immediately Gab hit me with this post: ‘We are in a wartime but it’s a quiet war perpetrated by the Jew,’ with a picture of Adolf Hitler,” Tapper told CNN viewers.

“And there was plenty more where that came from. The ‘N-word is super big on Gab. It is a cesspool of hate,” Tapper observed.

And while Gab “takes precautions,” it “doesn’t seem to care about hate speech.”

“The more speech I saw on Gab this afternoon, was more speech extolling Nazis and more speech engaging in Holocaust denial, and more speech sharing more hideously racist posts than I’ve ever seen in one place in my life,” Tapper said. “I saw less of it but still too much of it on Parler today.”

“It’s high time we recognize that the hate on many of these far-right sites is not just an unfortunate result of belief in free speech. The Hate is the whole point.”

READ MORE: Watch: Torba Warns GOP to Not ‘Disavow or Condemn Us’ Because ‘Christian Nationalists Are the Republican Party’

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) calls Gab a “haven for hate and disinformation,” and “an online hub for extremist and conspiratorial content.”

“Gab quickly became known as a platform used by conspiracy theorists, white nationalists, neo-Nazis, members of militias and influential figures among the alt-right,” the ADL adds. “Over the last two years, Torba has worked to insert Gab, himself and Christian nationalism into mainstream society and politics, primarily through relationships with elected officials and candidates.”

Gab founder and CEO Andrew Torba has promoted the white genocide or “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory and has been called an advisor to Republican state senator Doug Mastriano, a far-right 2020 election-denying Christian nationalist running for governor of Pennsylvania, where Gab is based. (While never condemning Torba, Mastriano denies the relationship, but there are receipts of Gab doing “consulting” work for Mastriano, who has also told Torba, “Thank God for what you have done.”)

Tuesday morning Tapper took to Twitter to share that Torba attacked him after his Monday report aired on CNN.

Tapper shared the video of the posts he saw on Gab, which includes the antisemitic one he quoted on-air that had the photo of Adolf Hitler.

“Gab’s antisemitic founder is attacking me with the accusation he makes about folks who report factually about his site, that I’m the son of the devil. Totally normal stuff,” Tapper tweeted.

He also posted screenshots of Torba’s posts on Gab.

[READ MORE: Mastriano’s Consultant Just Posted Video Declaring ‘We Have Multiple Candidates…Who Are Christian Nationalists’

“Jake Tapper reported on CNN tonight that Gab’s Explore page was filled with Hitler memes and n word posts,” Torba wrote on Gab.

“Reality,” he claimed, “pro-life content, Christian content, content from multiple members of Congress, wholesome animal videos, etc.”

But he didn’t stop there.

“Jake Tapper = John 8:44,” Torba added.

For those unfamiliar with every Bible verse, one version of John 8:44 reads: “You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.”

Watch Tapper’s CNN report below, see his tweets above, or at this link.

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https://www.wesa.fm/politics-government/2022-10-12/political-ads-maintain-pressure-on-mastriano-over-ties-to-site-used-by-tree-of-life-shooter

no lnx many

Political ads maintain pressure on Mastriano over ties to site used by Tree of Life shooter

90.5 WESA | By Chris Potter

Published October 12, 2022

David Dermer

/

FR171035 AP

State Sen. Doug Mastriano (R-Franklin), the 2022 Republican candidate for governor, can't escape criticism of his ties to Gab, a social-media site tied to the Tree of Life shooter.

With the Nov. 8 election less than a month away — and the four-year anniversary of the Oct. 27 Tree of Life shooting even closer — Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano is once again being hammered for ties to Gab, an antisemitic website frequented by accused synagogue shooter Robert Bowers.

“Before murdering 11 worshippers at this synagogue, the shooter posted his manifesto on Gab,” says a new 30-second ad that is set to air on western Pennsylvania screens. “Doug Mastriano paid thousands to the same site to recruit supporters.”

The ad is sponsored by gun-control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety Victory Fund, which says it will spend $1 million to place the spot on TV and online in the Pittsburgh market. The spot blasts Mastriano for paying $5,000 to the site, as WESA reported earlier this year, and it calls Mastriano “a far-right conspiracy theorist who compared gun-safety measures to Nazi Germany.”

That’s a reference to statements Mastriano made during a 2018 Congressional race and that resurfaced this year by The Forward, a Jewish news outlet.

“We saw Lenin do the same thing in Russia,” Mastriano said at the time of gun-control efforts in response to a question about how to stop school shootings. “We saw Hitler do the same thing in Germany in the ’30s. Where does it stop?”

Everytown says the ad is part of a $2.1 million spending plan in the state that also features criticism of Republican U.S. Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz.

“The fact that Doug Mastriano is looking for support from the same online forum where the Tree of Life shooter posted his screed tells Pennsylvanians all they need to know about Mastriano’s extreme, dangerous agenda,” said Everytown for Gun Safety president John Feinblatt in a statement.

Shapiro, Mastriano and third-party governor candidates in Pa. on 2022 election issues

Mastriano deactivated his account on Gab, whose founder Andrew Torba is an avowed Christian nationalist who says Jews have no place in his vision of the conservative movement. In a Tweet in July, Mastriano said Torba “doesn’t speak for me or my campaign. I reject antisemitism in any form." He blamed “Democrats and the media” for “smears … to distract Pennsylvanians.”

Everytown’s focus is on preventing gun violence, but it has long linked that agenda to a broader concern about right-wing extremism. The gun-control reforms it supports include a measure to prevent people convicted of hate crimes from being able to purchase a firearm.

And the new campaign echoes an earlier spot aired on TV and radio in Pittsburgh and other markets, as well as online, by the Lincoln Project. That campaign, too, flagged Mastriano’s ties to Gab.

“Mastriano knows what he’s paying for, knows exactly what Gab’s audience is,” the Lincoln Projectspot asserts. “They’re not just Nazis, Klansman, racists and crazies. They’re his base.”

That ad was voiced by Peter Coyote, who was featured as the narrator in a recent PBS miniseries, “The U.S. and The Holocaust,” by noted documentarian Ken Burns.

It is not entirely clear what Mastriano received for his $5,000 payment to Gab. His campaign reported it as an expenditure for “consulting services,” though one media outlet reported that after the payment, Gab automatically enlisted new members as followers of Mastriano’s own account.

And even as he professed to have sundered ties with the site, Mastriano accepted a $500 campaign contribution from Torba — a gift that campaign finance records reflect no effort to return.

The slew of stories chronicling those developments, and messages from advocates for the Jewish community and groups like Lincoln, may take a political toll on Mastriano this fall.

While Jewish voters are disproportionately likely to be Democratic, earlier this week, The New York Times reported that Mastriano was “losing ground with a small but significant part of the Trump coalition, squandering opportunities with more conservative and religiously observant Jews.” The paper cited a number of factors, ranging from Mastriano’s Gab ties to his criticisms of a Jewish day school attended by his Democratic rival, Josh Shapiro, and his children.

Mastriano, whose campaign routinely ignores requests for comment from mainstream media outlets, has said little about Gab beyond his tweet this summer. Gab founder Torba has accused reporters of exaggerating Mastriano’s contribution to Gab, noting that $5,000 is a piddling sum in a statewide campaign.

Compared to the money being spent to flag Mastriano’s ties to the group, it has been.

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an 922

Far right wing extremist, Christian nationalist, antisemite Andrew Torba, the founder of Gab, the social media platform that is popular with white supremacists, is telling the Republican Party that “80 percent” of its base is Christian nationalists, and warns them to not “condemn” or “disavow” them.

Torba has ties to far right Christian nationalist Doug Mastriano, the Republican party’s nominee for governor of Pennsylvania. Torba has also “endorsed” Arizona GOP secretary of state nominee Mark Finchem, a an election-denier and member of the far-right antigovernment group Oath Keepers, and election-denying Arizona GOP state Senator Wendy Rogers.

“We have the numbers, we are the majority. And we are done being the footstool. We are going to wake up the body of Christ in this country. And we’re going to do something about you castrating our children, about you sexually indoctrinating them in the schools, about, you know, taking over our culture and taking over our government and sending all of our money to foreign countries and allowing our border to be invaded,” he says in video published by Right Wing Watch.

READ MORE: January 6th panel will interview Pennsylvania GOP gubernatorial nominee

Gab is home to QAnon and “great replacement” conspiracy theorists, Trump supporters, MAGA and ultra MAGA extremists, white Christian nationalists, white supremacists, antisemites, and anti-LGBTQ extremists.

“We’re done,” Torba continues in his rant.

“We’re done with it, and we’re going to step up and we’re going to rebuild this fallen and corrupt society from scratch, just as Christians have done many times before. And yes, we absolutely are going to get involved in public discourse and in politics, and you’re not going to shut us up,” Torba declared.

“And it’s a message to the Republican party too that they are not to disavow us,” he warned. “They are not to condemn us, because we are 80% of the Republican Party. Christian nationalists are the Republican Party, and they’re going to start doing the will of God,” he says, appearing to order the Republican Party to meet his demands.

“And they’re going to start, you know, supporting biblical policies, and they’re going to start, you know, fighting back against this and not being complacent or they’re going to get out of the way and we’re going to go in there and we’re going to do it ourselves. Those are their two choices.”

READ MORE: 'Are we in China?' Alex Jones refuses to apologize for claiming that Sandy Hook 'might have been staged'

Torba has appeared on Tony Perkins’Washington Watch show. Perkins is the longtime head of the Family Research Council, which appears on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of anti-LGBTQ hate groups.

Last week Jewish Insider reported on an “obscure new book calling for the construction of ‘a parallel Christian society’ to replace ‘the failed secular state'” that seemed to be “performing surprisingly well on Amazon.”

That book, Christian Nationalism: A Biblical Guide for Taking Dominion and Discipling Nations, was written by Torba.

Last month the House Committee on Oversight sent Torba a letter “regarding your company’s response to the surge of online threats against law enforcement following the execution of a court-authorized search warrant by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) at former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club.”

“We are concerned that reckless statements by the former President and Republican Members of Congress have unleashed a flood of violent threats on social media that have already led to at least one death and pose a danger to law enforcement officers across the United States. We urge you to take immediate action to address any threats of violence against law enforcement that appear on your company’s platforms,” the letter reads.

But that letter also said, “On August 15, a Pennsylvania man was arrested and charged with making threats of violence against FBI personnel. He wrote on the social media platform Gab, ‘If You Work For The FBI Then You Deserve To Die.’ He also wrote, ‘Every single piece of shit who works for the FBI in any capacity, from the director down to the janitor who cleans their fucking toilets deserves to die. You’ve declared war on us and now it’s open season on YOU.'”

Watch below or at this link:

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https://www.mediamatters.org/gab/gop-house-nominee-jr-majewski-praised-antisemitic-gab-ceo-andrew-torba-one-americas-greatest

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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/andrew-torba-says-biblical-christian-men-must-take-dominion-over-every-aspect-of-society/

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https://www.mediamatters.org/gab/mark-finchem-frequently-uses-gab-fundraising-and-campaign-help

==

https://www.axios.com/qanons-2020-resurgence-41759d2b-7d08-4d6e-bad0-d2a63b6285ad.html

aug 4

strange realities of 2020 have perfectly played to the kind of fear QAnon thrives on, driving record online interest in the conspiracy theory.

Why it matters: QAnon is not just one fringe conspiracy theory — it's a sprawling network of falsehoods that's seeping into the mainstream. Its growing influence is sowing fear and confusion around some of today's most important issues, such as election integrity and the coronavirus pandemic.

Catch up quick: QAnon is a far-right conspiracy theory that alleges the "deep state" is engaged in a global fight to take down President Trump.

By the numbers: Conspiracy theories tied to QAnon are growing more popular.

Parts of the mainstream Republican party have latched on, helping drive its conspiracy theories mainstream.

Between the lines: For all its twisty logic and branching details, Qanon is premised on a simple narrative of the good working to vanquish the evil, who are responsible for all the world's ills. There are very real concerns that may be driving more people to that narrative.

QAnon could pose real-world danger as it grows, scholars and analysts worry.

What to watch: Tech giants are starting to crack down on QAnon, but policies around it are inconsistent and may in some cases be easily dodged.

Yes, but: Studies have shown that users are more likely to seek out bad information when a Big Tech platform flags it as false.

Meanwhile: New platforms such as Parler and TheDonald.win are giving the conspiracy theory places to spread unchecked.

The bottom line: Trust in U.S. institutions is dangerously low, which creates a ripe environment for big-tent conspiracies such as QAnon.

==

==

2018

The murder of 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue Saturday has brought new attention to Gab, the social media service that bills itself as pro-free speech and serves as a gathering place for white supremacists, neo-Nazis and other extremist figures online, and counted among its users suspected gunman Robert Bowers.

Shortly before Bowers attacked the Tree of Life synagogue in Squirrel Hill, Pa., he posted to Gab. “Screw your optics, I’m going in,” he wrote to an audience that included white nationalists, some of whom had been kicked off mainstream sites like Twitter and Facebook and joined Gab, which was founded in August 2016.

According to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, approximately 635,000 people were registered on Gab as of Sept. 10, 2018. By comparison, Twitter boasted an average of 326 million monthly active users during approximately the same time period.

Bowers’s Gab profile was quickly suspended after the site’s administrators were alerted to a verified account linked to the suspected gunman. But the backlash cost the site its cloud host, Joyent, and domain provider,GoDaddy, and as of Monday afternoon, it was offline. PayPal banned Gab a few hours after the shooting, stating that they were in “process of canceling the site’s account before today’s tragic events occurred.” (Stripe, another payment processing company, also dropped the platform.) Gab posted its initial response to the shooting on Medium, but the publishing site has also now suspended the company’s account.

“Gab isn’t going anywhere,” the company’s founder and CEO Andrew Torba declared in a statement posted to the site’s now deactivated homepage. “We will exercise every possible avenue to keep Gab online and defend free speech and individual liberty for all people.”

Torba, who was just 25 when he launched Gab, is the former CEO of an advertising technology company called Kuhcoon (later renamed Automate Ads), which he created from his home in Scranton, Pa., in 2011. Torba moved to California in late 2014, when his startup was picked for theY Combinator, a Silicon Valley incubator. Friends told Bloomberg News that, as a political conservative, he felt out of place in Silicon Valley. In various interviews, Torba has explained that he was motivated to create Gab during the 2016 presidential election afterreading reports that major social media companies like Facebook may unfairly promote posts and topics discussed by liberal users over conservative ones.

“I didn’t set out to build a ‘conservative social network’ by any means, but I felt that it was time for a conservative leader to step up and to provide a forum where anybody can come and speak freely without fear of censorship,” Torba told the Washington Post in November 2016.

“Every major communication outlet, every major social network, is run, owned, controlled and operated by progressive leaders, progressive workers in Silicon Valley,” he said.

Shortly after the election, Torba further alienated himself from many of his peers, getting kicked out of a Y Combinator online alumni group for directing profane, anti-immigrant language at other members.

Torba, a Trump supporter and self-described “conservative Republican Christian,” has maintained that Gab’s mission is to facilitate free speech online and that supporters of all ideologies are welcome. Nonetheless, Gab immediately attracted users from the far right, including a number of well-known alt-right, extremist, and fringe figures, such as Richard Spencer, Milo Yiannopoulos and Alex Jones, who were losing their mainstream social media platforms around the time Torba launched Gab.

“It’s hard for me to dissociate Gab from the reason it was founded, which was quote-unquote left wing censorship,” said Keegan Hankes, an expert on online extremism at the Southern Poverty Law Center. Hankes says Torba established Gab to give a platform to “the most extreme hate groups, leaders and extremists being purged from major social media platforms for blatantly inappropriate and harmful behavior.”

“He looked at that and created a home for those people to come live in, and he knew it,” said Hankes. “The type of behavior [Y Combinator] threw him off for is kind of the type of behavior that is definitely a core part of Gab.”

“The biggest thing about it is there are basically no rules. You can go on there and say anything you want virtually, no matter how disgusting or vitriolic or ultimately dangerous,” Hankes said, adding that the swift suspension of Bowers’s account on Saturday was “the first time I’ve seen them do it willingly, in a proactive way.”

Hankes noted that Torba — who appears to make all the decisions about moderating content on Gab — has only been moved to remove particularly offensive or threatening posts from the site on a couple of occasions, and only in response to threats from online hosting providers.

“That, I think, illustrates how far he’s willing to take this kind of free speech absolutism, and of course that’s why you have every major hate group leader on there, using it,” said Hankes.

Saturday was “the first time that I think there’s been a very, very clear connection between someone’s activity on Gab and some sort of real-world tragedy,” Hankes said, but added that the site is still young. “It didn’t take Gab very long to find itself a bona fide murderer, allegedly, on its platform.”

Most of the organizers and leading figures in last year’s Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville,including those who’ve been arrested in connection to violence at that event, had accounts on Gab before it was taken offline.

Oren Segal, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, said that while he doesn’t believe Torba himself is a white supremacist or an extremist, the free-speech narrative he’s adopted in defense of his platform is similar to the one that has been embraced by far-right groups.

“I think what he has done is not only provide a platform, but has ignored calls for corporate and social responsibility,” Segal told Yahoo News.

Wired editor Nicholas Thompson questioned whether the moral case for shutting down Gab, and other sites like it, should override the free speech argument for keeping it around — and whether the tech companies who have the power to make such decisions  are using it wisely.

“Should Gab have been knocked away? If your first principle is free speech, of course not,” Thompson wrote Monday. “Anti-Semitism is not illegal, and providing a platform where anti-Semites post is not illegal either. Threats of violence are illegal, but Gab says that it does its best to remove them.”

Thompson also raised a practical question about the fallout from dismantling Gab. “Pushing the alt-right off Twitter drove them to Gab,” he pointed out. “Will shutting down Gab just push people to Voat [a Reddit-like forum that boasts a “no censorship” policy], or whatever comes next?”

Segal noted that he and his colleagues at the ADL have recently observed conversations among the extremists they observe online regarding next steps in light of Gab’s current removal from the internet, and whether that Gab will find a new home or be forced to take their content to another platform that shares a belief in uncensored speech.

“This is the beginning of this discussion,” he said, referring to the issue of hate speech online. “Gab being taken down is not the end.”

==

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/fcc-chairman-ajit-pai-alt-right-sympathizer-net-neutrality

On Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 along party lines to repeal an Obama-era regulation to preserve net neutrality, defying Silicon Valley executives and consumer advocacy groups, not to mention the will of the people. A recent University of Maryland survey finds that more than 80 percent of registered voters oppose the FCC's plans.

The move will fundamentally transform the internet as we know it, allowing corporate behemoths like Verizon and Comcast to manipulate loading speeds and charge customers a premium for access to individual websites and apps. Adding insult to democratic injury, circumstantial evidence suggests the man who cast the deciding vote, Ajit Pai, sympathizes with the so-called alt-right.

Back in November, the FCC chairman and Trump appointee unveiled his plans to junk the net neutrality rules established in 2015, arguing that websites and social media platforms, rather than internet service providers (ISPs), posed the greatest threat to an open internet. At the time, Pai singled out Twitter for blame.

“The company has a viewpoint and uses that viewpoint to discriminate," he told the R Street Institute, a libertarian-minded think tank. "And to say the least, the company appears to have a double standard when it comes to suspending or deverifying conservative users’ accounts as opposed to those of liberal users. This conduct is many things, but it isn’t fighting for an open internet."

It's difficult to know exactly who Pai had in mind, but Slate's April Glaser notesthat Twitter recently deverified the accounts of several prominent white supremacists, including Laura Loomer and Jason Kessler. The former is a YouTube sensation on the alt-right who was recently banned from Uber and Lyftfor her Islamophobic tweets, while the latter was one of the organizers of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. In October, Kessler was indicted on a felony perjury charge after falsely accusing a man he'd assaulted of attacking him first.

"What’s weird about Pai’s comments is that while these are all figures on the right, conservatives don’t typically count them among their ranks," Glaser writes. "And while conservatives do sometimes cast themselves as ideological victims of Silicon Valley's overreach, there have been no recent deverifications of prominent right-wing figures, 'conservative' or otherwise, not known for promoting hate. In other words, according to Pai, the demotion of racists on a social network is a bigger deal than an action that could radically change the architecture of—and who succeeds on—the internet."

Weirder still is the video Pai released Wednesday in conjunction with the Daily Caller assuring millennials that they can still "gram their food" and "post photos of cute animals" if net neutrality is scrapped. (In May, he made a separate appealto America's youth by reading aloud the meanest tweets about his proposals, a nod to the popular segment on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!") When he's not wielding a fidget spinner and assuring viewers they can still binge-watch "Game of Thrones," he can be seen doing the Harlem Shake next to a woman named Martina Markota, a far-right conspiracy theoristwho has speculated that Hillary Clinton's former campaign chair ran a child sex ring out of the basement of a Washington pizzeria.

Before joining the Daily Caller, Markota appeared in a video for the Proud Boys, a self-described "Western Chauvinist" men's club with ties to the alt-right, where she claimed that the (thoroughly debunked) Pizzagate was real. “This is not something I’m making up because I’m trying to...put in my fantasy version of what’s going on and interject it into these email scandals," she says at one point. "This is independent of the campaign. I know what cheese pizza is."

Pai, the son of Indian immigrants, has been a subject of racist attacks himself in recent months, some of them bearing the hallmarks of the alt-right. "We all have the power to murder Ajit Pai and his family," an FCC commenter wrote in May. "Jk jk." No one stands to lose more from the repeal of net neutrality rules than the patrons of websites like 4chan and Reddit, which internet service providers will soon be able to slow to a crawl, so it's difficult to imagine white nationalists embracing Pai as an ally, and vice versa.

And yet. After the FCC chairman pleaded his case that social media networks were suppressing free speech, he earned the effusive praise of far-right radio host Matt Forney and Andrew Torba of Gab, a platform where users "are generally free to be as racist or anti-Semitic as they’d like without fear of being reprimanded or censored," according to Slate.

It's possible, even probable, that Pai was unaware of Martina Markota's history before he recorded his latest video for the Daily Caller. But the fact remains that Jason Kessler got his start as a contributor for the right-wing publication, and Pai had no reservations about lending it his imprimatur. With a White House that has excused and enabled white nationalists at every turn, no one in the Trump administration has earned the benefit of the doubt.

===

BAK

see also reddit

619 bak capt

congrats feck primary 3x 2 days shooters?

bottom of the escalator // qanon

uber1: https://webbrain.com/brainpage/brain/6950F840-FB80-FCB0-D505-8AB1FA685F08#-6900

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torba kuhcoon

https://www.alternet.org/2021/03/gab-trump

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elected to gop in SC

russia hackers amplified or created an amp/escalator?

https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-election-qanon-cyber-idUKL1N2HD00Z

disputed see homegrown?

QAnon received earlier boost from Russian accounts on Twitter, archives show

By Joseph Menn

Nov 2 (Reuters)- Russian government-backed social media accounts nurtured the QAnon conspiracy theory in its infancy, earlier than previously reported, according to interviews with current and former Twitter executives and archives of tweets from suspended accounts.

:{:{}:

}:

Researchers said in August that the archives showed Russian accounts had helped spread QAnon in volume beginning in December 2017, reut.rs/2TFWoWc, but that team did not examine the history of specific QAnon promoters. bit.ly/2HTReUh

:{:{}:

}:

A more granular review by Reuters shows Russian accounts began amplifying the movement as it started, early in the previous month.

From November 2017 on, QAnon was the single most frequent hashtag tweeted by accounts that Twitter has since identified as Russian-backed, a Reuters analysis of the archive shows, with the term used some 17,000 times.

The archives contain more than 4,000 accounts that Twitter suspended for spreading Russian government disinformation in 2018 and 2019 but preserved for researchers.

The trove shows that some of the Russian accounts tweeted about QAnon’s most important popularizer even before the anonymous figure known as Q emerged, then rewarded her with more promotion when she put videos about Q on YouTube.

Asked about support for QAnon, the Russian embassy in Washington said Moscow does not interfere in U.S. politics.

“Malicious activity in the information space contradicts the principles of Russian foreign policy, national interests and our understanding of interstate relations,” a spokesman said.

A current Twitter executive said Russian accounts are not driving the present iteration of QAnon, which has expanded to include baseless claims about COVID-19 and other issues.

The original posts associated with the QAnon conspiracy theory appeared in late October 2017, purporting to be from a Trump insider with “Q” security clearance who said Hillary Clinton faced arrest and her allies were running a massive child-sex ring.

The fantasy was confined to a small piece of the internet for a few days until conservative video blogger Tracy Diaz, known online as TracyBeanz, began to post regular videos promoting it. She soon began amassing undisclosed donors and now has more than 10 million video views on YouTube.

A few Russian accounts had been retweeting Diaz as far back as April 2017, according to the archives of suspended accounts. After her first Q video on Nov. 3, the number of Russian tweets pushing Diaz’ handle surged to 40 monthly through the following spring, the archives show.

Diaz did not respond to an email seeking comment.

It remains unclear how much the Russians influenced Diaz before she hit it big. But former Twitter security staffers said a handful of accounts that tweeted to Diaz from mid-2017 illustrated the extreme difficulty of detecting covert influence.

Now suspended for undisclosed reasons or abandoned by their operators, these accounts claimed to be American but displayed unusual interest in Russian issues. The visible tweets between them and Diaz were first flagged to Reuters by open-source researcher Chris Scott.

One account called CrusadersPost retweeted obscure Russian officials and appeared to be the first account to use the term “Q Anon” on social media, on Nov. 2, according to people with access to all public tweets.

CrusadersPost had reached out to Diaz in April to wish her a happy birthday and offer to help her with a new project.

“YOU ROCK,” she replied. The account also encouraged Diaz to publicize MegaAnon, which preceded and resembled QAnon.

Another Diaz fan ran an account called SlicksTweetz, which the banned Russian accounts mentioned 871 times. The day of her debut Q video, Diaz publicly thanked SlicksTweetz for sharing it.

:{:{}:

}:

A week later, as she worked on new videos, she replied to him: “There are so many connections—that’s a good one I hadn’t seen yet :).” (Reporting by Joseph Menn. Editing by Jonathan Weber and Steve Orlofsky)

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gab ad?

https://www.mediamatters.org/gab/doug-mastriano-paid-campaign-consulting-gab-social-media-haven-violent-extremists-and-white

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12 21

a massive outbreak of tornadoes left scores dead across eight states this weekend, and given that this weather arose in a warmer, changed climate, President Biden, his FEMA Administrator, numerous news outlets:{, }climate:{ }:scientists:{ and }:meteorologists:{ }:discussed:{ how such an extreme event could be influenced by climate change.}:

Despite all that qualified nuance, the right (predictably) went nuts. Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post and Fox News were very mad but didn’t exactly have anyone on hand who knew the science well enough to offer any science to the contrary

For their attempted refutation, Breitbart cited Steven Koonin, who in turn cited now-quite-outdated reports and their wishy-washy trend observations (which aren’t the point!). Town Hall cited Steve Milloy, as did the Daily Caller, because apparently defending Big Tobacco gives you climate expertise to answer questions actual scientists are still working out.

In an email to supporters, Climate Depot’s headline claimed a “Meteorologist calls Biden’s tornado climate link ‘utter bullsh*t,’” quoting and linking to Chris Martz, who is in fact not only not a meteorologist, but not even a college graduate, having just completed his first semester at Millersville University. (Though Chris did note that geophysics PhD and American Meteorological Fellow Michael Mann “oversimplifies the issue” and “isn’t a trained meteorologist.”)

Marc Morano’s email also cites an old post by climate satellite mistake-maker Roy Spencer, followed by a reference to Roger Pielke Jr., who is making good use of his cramped office by tweeting quotes from the IPCC as though the consensus view of tornado trends has a bearing on this specific event’s conditions. (Generous of Jr. to stop publicly airing his weird daddy issues long enough to give his opinion on tornadogenesis!)

After Pielke is our favorite climate-, covid-, Sandy Hook- and Obama birther-conspiracytheorist: Tony Heller. He excerpted a bunch of old newspaper clippings to prove that, since tornadoes happened in the past before climate change, that means climate change must not be changing the climate in which they form now. (Makes sense, right?)

But Pielke Jr.’s appearance in Morano’s email alongside his apparent peers Chris Martz (class of ‘25) and Tony Heller (no class at all) is just the warm-up, the paltering of what past trends may or may not mean for a current situation.

And others in conspiracy-land are offering their opinions and asking some “legitimate” questions, and it’s pretty entertaining, in the dark and depressing way this sort of thing is amusing.

As Media Matters reported, Alex Jones, fresh off his court losses regarding aforementioned Sandy Hook school shooting conspiracy theories, told his InfoWars audience that the Biden administration “officially” ordered Texas to turn off the power last February. Which means “the question is did [President Biden] use weather weapons to cause the tornadoes? That’s a legitimate question to ask.”

It’s not like this is the first time an InfoWarrior has offered some creative explanations for extreme weather. Remember back in 2018 when Jones’s co-conspiracy-theory-conspirator suggested thatJohn Kerry saved Hawaii from a hurricane with an energy beam fired from Antarctica? (Or is that not a legitimate question to ask? We’re unsure of the meaning of the phrase at this point.)

Even that’s not the craziest take thoughRemember the Wobble prediction that aliens are controlling the Earth’s movement — the real cause of climate change — and are soon going to wobble us so hard it reveals the mystery planet Nibiru?

Well, since Tony Heller’s banned from Twitter he’s taken to:{ **Gab, and his fellow poster there ROGTruth1 has an update for us on The Wobble we discussed the other day: It’s what actually caused the tornadoes, and a bunch of other events!}:

“The temporary wobble in the earth’s axis has been superseded by a severe wobble. So, the regular disturbances which have been a true cause of climate change are now manifesting as more significant events.” From an earthquake in Peru on November 28th, to cold in Europe, earthquakes in Japan, windstorm in Turkey and tornadoes in the US, the wobble’s just getting started.

Apparently “soon” in December, a “Massive New Madrid Adjustment (unzipping) will occur over a period of 3 weeks” leading to the “entire region west of the Mississippi” to “sink” and “shift Southwest,” causing “major disruption through the Ohio valley and up through the St. Lawrence Seaway.” After that 3 week cataclysm but also still in “December soon” will be a 150 foot tsunami that “will hit the UK and Western Europe,” while “backwash of up to 50’ will hit the Eastern seaboard of the USA.”

If you’re as concerned as we are, rest assured that while there will be “no warnings from the elite that are fully briefed and aware,” the good news is that “half of humanity has been subliminally contacted.”

Those of you who have been contacted already, you know the plan. Those that haven’t? Sorry, we can’t say anything further, but you should consider listening to the “experts” cited here if you’re worried, they seem to have things pretty well figured out.

==

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insurr

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1/25/21 an

A new video and report published by the New York University School of Law'sJust Security reveals stunningly damning evidence of how President Donald Trump's carefully-crafted January 6 speech to rally-goers incited the Capitol insurrection barely hours later.

The video (excerpt below) includes clips of user-created recordings, most of which were uploaded to Parler, a social media platform that has attracted white supremacists and other members of the far right, showing how, in real time, Trump's words were received and how attendees – who had been invited and urged to attend by Trump and his team and allies for weeks – responded to and interpreted his remarks.

These video clips show "how the crowd reacted in real time to some of the most potent lines in Trump's speech at the Ellipse," write Just Security's Ryan Goodman and Justin Hendrix. "The videos, along with other information in the public record, provide strong evidence of a causal link between Trump's messages to his supporters and their dangerous, illegal conduct. The collection of videos, viewed chronologically, also shows the ways in which Trump placed the life of Vice President Mike Pence, among others, in grave danger."

Remember, Trump had tweeted about the January 6 rally weeks earlier, telling supporters it was going to be "wild."

He also had to have known how his attacks on the results of a free and fair election were working, because his social media team reportedly monitored not only Facebook and Twitter, but far right social media platforms like Parler, Gab, numerous groups on Reddit, along with the QAnon groups.

At his Senate impeachment trial Trump reportedly will try to make the argument he was merely invoking his First Amendment rights on January 6, but he clearly had to have known the effect his words would have.

Just before his father addressed what would soon become an insurrectionist and domestic terrorist mob Donald Trump. Jr. recorded video of the President in a tent by the stage watching with glee the already ramped-up crowd, which he would explode into insurrection.

Former federal prosecutor Paul Butler tells Just Security that the "video contains strong evidence that Trump did incite the insurrection, regardless of whether that was his intent. The rioter's words 'we were invited here' were exactly right, and the refrain 'fight for Trump' was directly responsive to Trump's demand. In criminal law, we would say this video proves the act but perhaps not the mental state – that Trump intended to cause the insurrection or knew it would happen as a result of his words."

Here's a two-minute excerpt of the 10-minute video:

New video footage: shows the crowd’s immediate reactions to Trump’s most potent remarks at January 6 speech. Verdi… https://t.co/lqWV8DgpUh

— Ryan Goodman (@Ryan Goodman)1611583756.0

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