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At a press conference announcing that the suspect in the shooting of Charlie Kirk had been detained, FBI director Kash Patel ended his speech with a personal message to his “brother”, saying: “We have the watch, and I’ll see you in Valhalla.”

Many people commenting on the press conference reacted to this confusing reference to Valhalla with a mixture of amusement and disdain, with some pointing out the contradiction of eulogizing a Christian nationalist with reference to the pagan afterlife.

For scholars of the Vikings, Patel’s reference to Valhalla looked like something far more sinister. To understand why, we need to know both what Valhalla meant to the Vikings, and what it means in political discourse today.

The Norse peoples had a developed concept of the afterlife. The desirable destination for Norse warriors was Valhalla, the hall of the slain, where Odin watched over his band of chosen warriors as they prepared for Ragnarök, the world-destroying battle against the giants. Only those who died a heroic death in combat were brought to Valhalla by the Valkyries.

Those who died by sickness, old age or accident – or who had committed murder and other dishonourable crimes – seem to have been excluded from this martial afterlife. Some believed that you could cheat the Norse gods by arranging to be buried with deliberately worn and damaged weapons as if you had seen heavy combat. There’s a lot we don’t know.

What we do know is that in the 1930s the concept of Valhalla, along with the image of the heroic Viking and many of the symbols of Norse mythology, had a profound appeal to Nazi thought leaders. They looked to Norse mythology as a survival of a wider “Germanic” culture that had been erased by Judeo-Christian dominance.

The Nordic “race” was held up as the Aryan ideal. Norse cultural remnants were used to add legitimacy to the idea of a glorious German past. Heinrich Himmler in particular repurposed Norse symbols for use by the SS.

Today, many white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups continue to brand themselves using a widening range of symbols taken from Norse mythology. One aspect of Norse culture that has gained increasing prominence in the past few decades is the specific co-opting of Valhalla by those who are prepared to kill, and die, in the cause of “protecting” an endangered white supremacy.

Valhalla in terrorist manifestos

The most chilling example of the co-option of the phrase “see you in Valhalla” is found in the manifestos published by far-right terrorists in the wake of their atrocities.

In 2019, Brenton Tarrant carried out mass shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in which 51 people were killed. He published a rambling manifesto in which he attempted to justify his actions, and touted the “great replacement” conspiracy theory which holds that Jewish elites are deliberately engineering the replacement of white populations through immigration.

This has since become a far-right talking point and was pushed by Charlie Kirk on his show. Tarrant signed off his diatribe against multiculturalism and “white genocide” by saying “Goodbye, god bless you all and I will see you in Valhalla.”

Tarrant in turn influenced other far-right terrorists. One such terrorist, Peyton Gendron, was convicted of the Buffalo mass shooting in 2022 in which ten black Americans were murdered. Gendron plagiarised much of his 180-page manifesto, and similarly ends his screed with the statement: “I hope to see you in Valhalla.”

By invoking Valhalla, these terrorists are attempting to cast themselves as warriors in the Viking tradition. There is, of course, nothing remotely heroic about gunning down unarmed civilians.

But the point is that this reference doesn’t require any understanding of the Norse tradition. In this context it comes directly from the Nazi’s fetishisation of violent death to secure the racial purity of Germany.

From terrorists to the FBI

Rather than borrowing from extremist discourse, Patel may have been influenced by the use of “til Valhalla” by the US marines to honour fallen comrades – including those who died by suicide. This is a use which has been traced back to the influence of Norwegian Nato forces in Afghanistan, who may have used “til Valhalla” as a kind of battle cry. Of course, the optics of using a military honorific to commemorate the assassination of a civilian is problematic in itself.

Patel’s “see you in Valhalla” was much closer in its wording to the sign off used by far-right terrorists – but even this phrasing was unlikely to have been lifted directly from extremists. It is more likely an example of a phenomenon often observed in the study of the far-right online ecosystem, which is the seepage of extreme right discourse into more mainstream spaces.

Neo-Nazi groups use memes, s--posting and humour as a deliberate strategy to seed increasingly extreme ideas into groups amenable to their message.

It isn’t hard to find references to Valhalla commercialized, repackaged as inspirational Viking quotes for MAGA consumption, referencing cancel culture, or even using Norse video games as a gateway to white supremacy. In this way, the more mainstream right often ends up sharing and amplifying extremist messaging.

Patel’s reference to Valhalla was at the very least a huge misstep by a government official trying to appeal to the MAGA base and elevate Kirk’s tragic killing into a heroic warrior’s death.

While he may not have made his reference to Valhalla in knowledge of its association with far-right terrorism, it nevertheless served as a signal to white supremacists. As reported elsewhere, there was a lot of engagement from the extreme right on social media, but their posts tended to ridicule Patel.

His words prompted memes on social media playing on the apparent absurdity of someone of Patel’s ethnicity cosplaying as a Viking. And among this racially tinged mockery, there was also some revelling in the fact that a stock phrase of violent white supremacy had found its way into the mouth of the director of the FBI.

Tom Birkett, Professor of Old English and Old Norse, *University College Cork

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/tucker-carlson-calls-new-zealand-prime-minister-jacinda-ardern-appalling-abuser

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your pre-COP climate denial inoculation

Climate denialists and inactivists are as active as ever, experts and activists warn. David Williams reports

American climate scientist Michael Mann has proved as adept at predicting the behaviour of climate deniers and purveyors of disinformation as he was at using data to prove anthropogenic climate change.

His famous temperature graph, known as the “hockey stick” for its steep rise in the 20th Century showing the influence of humans, attracted fierce attacks, especially after 2001, when it was published in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) third assessment report.

The attacks were scientifically invalid, Mann told :{Scientific American:(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-attachment:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"):}: in 2005, and used “disengenuous arguments and untruths”.

“I imagine it will go on, just as it went on for years and years with tobacco until it was no longer tenable.”

the attacks have persisted, including false claims the hockey stick was proved wrong. (As if problems with a single graph could undo all evidence of climate change, anyway.)

As a Reuters fact check said last year, Mann’s graph shows temperatures rapidly rising since the 20th century, and “multiple studies and independent climate scientists support the findings depicted”.

Some temperatures have been altered and corrected, using more robust reconstruction methods. And as more data has been added the stick head has grown taller – as predicted – underlining the original graph’s reliability.

Just as reliable have been the actions of the merchants of misinformation, deniers, and the promoters of climate delay, whose tactics, often funded by the fossil fuel industry, were on display earlier this week.

“Greta finally gets it!” a headline shrieked on the website Climate Depot, run by well-known denialists the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, or CFACT. (See what they did there?)

CFACT’s director of communications, Marc Morano – who, for some reason, is attending the latest United Nations climate negotiations in Egypt, starting this coming Sunday – disingenuously celebrated climate activist Greta Thunberg’s “moment of clarity”.

“We welcome Greta now understanding that these summits have nothing to do with the climate.”

This is a gross distortion.

Thunberg did dismiss the climate summit, known as COP27, as an opportunity for “people in power ... to [use] greenwashing, lying and cheating”.

The high-profile Swede called the meetings a “scam”, not because they’re about something other than climate but because they “are not really going to lead to any major changes”. “These systems are failing us,” she said at an event in London to promote her book.

Another important reason she’s not going is because of Egypt’s human rights record, and the limited space for civil society groups at COP27.

(A troubling distraction, perhaps, is the controversial appointment of US PR firm Hill+Knowlton, previously accused of greenwashing for oil companies, as communications manager at the Egyptian climate conference.)

Climate Depot also misused Thunberg’s quote, “Blah, blah, blah”, to sum up the last COP, in Glasgow, Scotland.

Earlier this week, on Twitter, Mann, the climate scientist, called Morano “one of the most prominent industry-funded climate change deniers”.

He tells Newsroom via email: “It’s textbook. They can’t deny that climate change is real any more, but they’re sure working hard to prevent anything being done about it.”

Morano has been called the king of the skeptics. He used to work as a producer for shock-jock Rush Limbaugh, and is the former communications director of well-known denier Senator James Inhofe, of Oklahoma.

In 2012, Morano was named Climate Change Misinformer of the Year by Media Matters, and he has said climate scientists “deserve to be publicly flogged”.

In 2009, just before the UN climate negotiations in Copenhagen, Morano’s site Climate Depot helped whip up a media storm by promoting a manufactured scandal. Based on emails – stolen from England’s University of East Anglia – between climate scientists, including Mann, the disinformation campaign tried to cast doubt on climate science by claiming data had been falsified.

The claims were eventually discredited but it cast a shadow over the Copenhagen conference, which ended in disarray.

“The goal is always the same – delay climate action.”

– John Cook

It’s got to be a hard gig being a denier right now, surely, in the face of unequivocal evidence of climate change. It’s not just piling up in academic journals, the evidence might be gushing through the window.

Think of Pakistan’s record floods, the alarming warming in Europe, or melting of the Greenland ice sheet.

But climate experts and activists are still warning about misinformation and disinformation ahead of the climate negotations in Egypt.

John Cook is a post-doctoral research fellow with Monash University’s Climate Change Communication Research Hub.

He’s written books like Cranky Uncle vs Climate Change,to give the public the tools to understand and respond to climate science deniers.

Given the weight of evidence showing human-induced climate change, we asked Cook if denial and disinformation tactics are diminishing or changing?

“Over the last few decades, climate misinformation has been steadily transitioning from science denial to attacks on climate solutions,” he says via email. “As the scientific evidence has accumulated, it’s become more untenable to deny the science. But the goal is always the same – delay climate action.”

Motivations differ, Cook says. Fossil fuel companies want to maintain profits. Conservative groups oppose some proposed solutions such as regulating polluting industries. Political groups go on the attack because the public is becoming polarised – often, no doubt, thanks to disinformation.

“Climate misinformation will continue to persist so long as there are people who oppose climate action.”

(Misinformation, it’s said by academics, is when someone unwittingly spreads false rumours, while disinformation is intentionally starting or spreading those false rumours, maliciously.)

Connor Gibson is a former Greenpeace USA staffer who recently compiled a climate misinformation field guide for journalists, through the group Climate Action Against Disinformation (of which Greenpeace is a member).

Gibson’s specialty is opposition research into individual and corporate donors to anti-climate-change groups – such as Charles and David Koch.

He says deniers are just as active as they’ve ever been.

“It’s pretty much the same group of mostly old white men, mostly in the US, who are still perpetuating the same tired set of lies that they have for decades now.”

Since the election of Donald Trump as US president in 2016, and “a fascist wave swept the world”, there has been more outright denial of climate science, he says. But there are a range of tactics – from arguing humans aren’t the main driver of planetary warming, to tapping into economic pragmatism, or pushing a narrative of hopelessness.

“That menu of rhetorical arguments has always existed, but which ones are more effective during different eras, and in different regions of the world, that’s what has shifted over the years.”

Seeding disinformation is easy and relatively cheap when it’s coordinated, he says, and many of these groups have been working together for years.

Some of the more egregious actors Gibson calls out are the American Petroleum Institute, ExxonMobil, the Heartland Institute, and the Heritage Foundation. Many key people in the climate denial machine have links to tobacco and oil companies.

He also mentions the Atlas Network as a worldwide funder of free-market think tanks, whose affiliates and funders have been involved in climate denial.

The website DeSmog reports: “Atlas has cosponsored numerous Heartland Institute events dedicated to the proposition that climate change is not a crisis.”

Greenpeace describes Atlas as a “Koch Industries climate denial front group”.

It turns out Atlas has New Zealand connections.

Its archived webpage shows its list of partners include theNew Zealand Initiative think tank (which earlier this year published a report Pretence of Necessity, Why further climate change action isn’t needed and won’t help) and the right-wing Taxpayers’ Union.

In a recent podcast about charging farmers for greenhouse gas emissions, Taxpayers' Union board member Casey Costello said “climate emissions stuff” was “at risk of a distraction”.

“At the end of the day, when people are struggling to put food on the table, and everything’s really expensive, that’s the highest priority – quality of life, and protection of our most vulnerable, should take precedence over the high ideals of a few.”

Jordan Williams, Taxpayers' Union’s executive director, says via email: “I was not aware Atlas has any interest in climate change policy – I’ve attended about a dozen of their events and I am a graduate of their Think Tank MBA programme and, subsequently, the Smith Fellowship programme.

“Not once have I heard climate change come up as an issue. We have never worked with or been funded by Atlas on a climate change project.”

Oliver Hartwich, NZ Initiative’s executive director, is more succinct: “We haven’t received money from Atlas and haven’t had any interactions with them on climate change.”

Newsroom asked climate experts to dispel some popular myths.

Cook, of Monash University, focuses on an argument the climate has always changed.

“The logic is that climate changed naturally before humans so what’s happening now must be natural as well.

“This argument commits single cause fallacy, arguing that whatever caused climate change in the past must be the same cause now, when in fact, climate can be driven by multiple causes and human activity is now the dominant cause.

“This argument is like arguing that people died of cancer before cigarettes were invented, so cigarettes can’t cause cancer.”

New Zealand climate scientist Professor James Renwick, of Victoria University of Wellington, sits on the Climate Change Commission and has been a lead author of IPCC assessment reports. He’s never been to a COP meeting.

We put to Renwick a skeptical view that warming isn’t as bad as early climate models predicted.

“The changes in temperature we’ve seen since the IPCC got going 30 years ago have been in line with the model projections.”

No model is perfect, he says, and model predictions are only as good as the assumptions plugged into them.

“It’s easy enough to find simulations from 30 years ago that had much more warming than we’ve experienced because they had much more in the way of greenhouse gas emissions, and it’s easy to be disingenuous about all of this and say, ‘Oh, look, what really happened was way less than what this model was saying’.

“And that’s because that model was forced with very high CO2 emissions. So when you match up the actual emissions to the modelled emissions you find that model temperatures follow the actual temperatures pretty closely. And the same goes for sea level rise.”

In terms of the seemingly perverse situation of negotiators, politicians, activists, and media taking flights to climate conferences, Renwick says that doesn’t invalidate the arguments that emissions reductions are urgent.

“You don’t have to be a carbon Jesus to talk about climate change.”

Climate action supported

Renwick says he doesn’t think anti-establishment groups vocal during Covid-19 lockdowns and vaccine mandates have shifted led to an uptick in climate denialism in New Zealand.

“I know that some of the main people involved in the Voices for Freedom and so on are anti-climate-change, but I don't have the sense that, that that's really changed the public conversation much.”

Looking beyond our shores, Bronwyn Hayward, a professor of political science and international relations at University of Canterbury, says there’s been a political shift since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015.

“While there’s a storm of social media debate, the fundamentals are that governments and businesses, banks and insurance companies recognise that climate change is a really significant risk now for doing business and for human life and infrastructure. And that's a huge and fundamental shift.”

Public surveys also show support for emissions cuts.

The new denialism, she says, is an emphasis on only adapting to climate change, and not continuing to cut emissions. A sort of doomism that suggests the situation is so bad there's nothing we can do. It’s not true, she says, adding: “Every effort that we make does make a major difference.”

Yet, the need for deep cuts is urgent and the picture of a future warmed world is worrying.

A United Nations Environment Programme report released last week said on current emissions reduction pledges, the world was likely on track for 2.6C of warming on pre-industrial levels.

Incremental change is no longer an option, the report warned. What’s needed is a “wide-ranging, large-scale, rapid and systemic transformation”.

Hayward says any increase over 2C would be dangerous.

“There's millions more people who will be affected by water shortages, heat stress, and storms and sea-level inundation.”

Renwick, of Victoria, hopes policymakers understand the urgency of the problem.

“They’ve been told this over and over again, through the IPCC and any number of other avenues, but I don’t have the sense that it’s really got through.

“You can argue that the political processes are slow, and that can be a good thing. But, boy, this is a problem we need fast action on, and I would love to see some real moves coming from the governments of the world to really start to reduce emissions as fast as we possibly can.”

Confronting the facts

Back in 2009, during the Copenhagen climate summit, I had my own brush with CFACT, at its Climate Sense Conference. As I said in my article for Stuff, it was “really a chat with a few dozen Scandinavian students, bolstered by American imports”.

The “large and prestigious” CFACT delegation of “experts and advisors” included Marc Morano, of Climate Depot. I didn’t meet him, but I interviewed S Fred Singer, the godfather of the skeptic movement, who told me: “We look at the data, we tend to believe what the atmosphere tells us and then disbelieve what the models say.”

Singer, a physicist, said 31,000 scientists agreed with his “realist” views. But they’re not climate scientists? No, but one-third have PhDs. “They know how to read graphs, they know statistics – that’s really all you have to know.”

Then he changed tack – if the science is settled, why spend more money on it? Perhaps to better understand the processes behind the climate.

After taking a deep breath, Singer said: “Yeah, OK.”

And with that, the interview was over.

While they were in Copenhagen, the CFACT delegation was happy to talk to media about the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia.

Some were written by climate scientist Mann, he of the hockey stick graph, who accused the email leakers of cherry-picking and citing scientists out of context.

Weeks later, in San Francisco, addressing an American Geophysical Union meeting, Mann said: “Scientists must play a key role in combating the disinformation effort, presenting a positive case for science and turning lemons into lemonade, while readily acknowledging the real uncertainties and distinguishing them from manufactured ones.”

Seeding doubt, it seems, is a great deal easier than explaining the complex and nuanced climate science

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/radicalized-right-wingers-uniting-online-many-inspired-by-trump-threaten-democracy-overseas/

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australian researchers published a study this week mapping the online activity of right-wing extremists in New South Wales, concluding such individuals—many of them inspired by U.S. President Donald Trump—pose an "insidious" threat to the country's democracy.

The study, Mapping Networks and Narratives of Online Right-Wing Extremists in New South Wales, was conducted by researchers at Macquarie University and Victoria University, who analyzed the Facebook pages of 30 extreme right-wing groups and tens of thousands of tweets from over 3,300 users in the southeastern state.

The researchers found that on numerous social media platforms—including Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Gab, 4chan, and 8chan/kun—communities of mostly young men are uniting over "the theme of white identity under threat."

Anti-semitism, Islamophobia, and far-right conspiracy theories like QAnon are common narratives used to engage and recruit young men into extremist groups, the study found. Trump plays a significant role in the conversation, according to Macquarie University researcher Julian Droogan.

"Trump is really held up as an example of a defender of white identity by many in this extreme subculture," Droogan told The Guardian. "However, we also see it being presented in a distinctly Australian way."

The researchers found that right-wing extremism fueled by social media poses a serious threat to Australian democracy.

"The propagation of extremist narratives online serves to polarize political debate, and to undermine trust in institutions and democracy," the study asserts. "Social media is playing a key role in the rise of right-wing violent extremism."

As an example, the authors cite the Christchurch terror attack, in which a Trump-supporting Australian white supremacist livestreamed his massacre of 51 Muslims worshipping in a New Zealand mosque last March.

The researchers call on Australian leaders to work to safeguard the nation's political system "from these very insidious and ongoing threats."

[.@ASIOGovAu have repeatedly made clear the real, growing, and dangerous threat right-wing extremists pose in Australia.

In fact, almost half of ASIO’s counter-terrorism work is focussed on right-wing extremists (and COVID has played a role in that).]

The rise in right-wing extremism is reflected in statements from the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation, Australia's domestic spy agency, which recently revealed that up to 40% of its counter-terrorism cases now involve far-right extremism.

https://www.ecowatch.com/new-zealand-climate-risk-reporting-2647698323.html

New Zealand could be the first country in the world to require its major financial institutions to report on the risks posed by the climate crisis.

This means that about 200 of the country's biggest companies and banks would have to report on the impact that extreme weather events or climate polices will have on their business, Stuff explained.

"Today is another step on the journey this Government is taking towards a low carbon future for Aotearoa New Zealandand a cleaner, safer planet for future generations," said Minister for Climate Change James Shaw Tuesday, Scoop reported.

The move builds on New Zealand's emerging legacy of climate action, such as its historic Zero Carbon Bill that committed the country to honoring the goals of the Paris agreement and achieving zero carbon emissions by 2050.

However, New Zealand's parliament is currently dissolved ahead of the Oct. 17 election, The Guardian reported. In order for it to enter into force, Shaw's party, the Green Party, would have to enter a coalition government after the election and the proposal would then have to pass parliament.

If it passes, every New Zealand bank, building society, credit union, insurer or Crown Financial Institution with more than $1 billion in assets will have to report annually on the risk climate change poses to its business or explain why it cannot, according to Stuff. That report would include what the risks are, how the institution is managing them and how it is working to address the impacts of climate change.

"Many large businesses in New Zealand do not currently have a good understanding of how climate change will impact on what they do," Shaw said. "The changes I am announcing today will bring climate risks and resilience into the heart of financial and business decision making. It will ensure the disclosure of climate risk is clear, comprehensive and mainstream."

Shaw said that Australia, Canada, UK, France, Japan and the European Union were developing some form of climate risk reporting, but New Zealand's plan was more ambitious because it included the whole financial system, according to Scoop. The institutions covered by the policy account for 90 percent of the assets controlled in New Zealand, Stuff reported.

If the proposal passes parliament, the climate reporting would begin in 2023.

Nobel Laureate in economics Joseph Stiglitz praised the proposed plan, according to The Guardian.

"Once again, New Zealand is leading the world… It led the world in showing how democratic countries could manage the risks of Covid-19," he said. "And now, New Zealand is leading the way in showing how we can help manage the risk of climate change."[tags?/relaTED?]

https://www.mediamatters.org/laura-loomer/republican-party-florida-backing-laura-loomer-proud-islamophobe-who-said-shes-favor

Republican Party of Florida recently expressed its support for right-wing commentator and congressional candidate Laura Loomer, who has described herself as a “proud Islamophobe,” has said that she didn’t “care” about the anti-Muslim mass shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand, and has stated that she’s in favor of “more” migrant deaths.

Loomer won the Republican nomination in Florida’s 21st Congressional District on August 18. The district is represented by Democratic Rep. Lois Frankel, who is heavily favored to win the race in November.

Shortly after her victory, the Florida GOP tweeted:

The Florida GOP is supporting someone who has been banned from numerous platforms because of her anti-Muslim hate and has:

Loomer has also worked for Alex Jones’ Infowars network. Jones and Infowars have pushednumerous conspiracy theories about 9/11 and school shootings. The Daily Beast wrote that after the February 14, 2018, school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, Infowars sent Loomer to Parkland, where she “accused students who spoke out against gun violence of being puppets. ‘It’s obvious these kids are reading a screen or notes someone else wrote for them,’ Loomer tweeted of students who spoke out against gun violence.”

That’s just a brief summary of Loomer’s horrific background. More on Loomer’s prior remarks and commentaries can be found here, here, and here.

In addition to getting support from the Florida GOP, Loomer has received backing from President Donald Trump, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), and Fox News hosts Jeanine Pirro and Pete Hegseth.

The Republican Party of Palm Beach County is also backing Loomer:

extensive

https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2019/03/15/after-new-zealand-shooting-far-right-racists-claim-victimhood-hail-killer-hero

==

After every mass murder, journalists, researchers, and horrified members of the public turn to the internet as they struggle to understand why the perpetrator would take so many lives. Often, those searches paint a picture of a disturbed individual who has been radicalized in dark, online rabbit holes.

But on Friday, the suspected gunman behind the Christchurch, New Zealand, mosque shootings appeared to take the process of internet radicalization to a disturbing new level—turning the massacre itself another dark internet rabbit hole designed to draw the attention of like-minded people around the world while attracting new allies to his cause.

“This definitely is a real-life shitpost.”

“This definitely is a real-life shitpost,” said Joel Finklestein, a researcher specializing in the digital spread of extremist content at the Anti-Defamation League and the Network Contagion Research Institute.

Shitposting is an internet term for pumping out low-quality and often ironic online content to get a reaction from other people. Finklestein explained that the gunman—who live-streamed the killings and distributed a detailed manifesto full of references to far-right memes—was able to pull off an extreme and tragic version of what white nationalist internet shitposters do all the time: publish incendiary content to enrage and confuse their opponents.

As Finklestein points out, the Christchurch gunman clearly aspired to do more than spark widespread anger while taking dozens of lives. He also wanted to bring in new recruits. His social media accounts, which were promptly taken down, looked like they had been quickly fashioned into repositories of the message he was trying to spread. His Twitter account was only created in February, and he appears to have not posted anything recently on Facebook until Wednesday, when he unloaded a batch of links outlining his white nationalist worldview.

The gunman left a small archive of his thoughts and actions, live-streaming the shooting on Facebook and leaving a lengthy document explaining some of his motivations, all peppered with bits of trolling to confuse readers and maximize his reach. During the livestream of the shooting, he shouted, “Remember, lads, subscribe to PewDiePie”—a reference to the popular Youtuber who has been criticized for veering too close to alt-right territory. His manifesto included memes popular on hate-filled internet message boards such as 4chan and 8chan; ironic nods to video games such as Fortnite and Spyro; and incendiary—and potentially misleading—praise for a conservative media figure.[tucker?]

It’s impossible to know the precise intent behind the manifesto, but it is filled with references that journalists with little 4chan experience could easily include in news stories or tweets in a manner that inadvertently gives more exposure to the shooter’s white supremacist goals. And more exposure means more potential converts—or, in the words of far-right internet posters, more opportunities to “red-pill” readers.

Becca Lewis, who studies online political subcultures at Data & Society, a digital research institute, recalled on Twitter how this happened with past coverage of massacres perpetrated by members of extremist internet communities. She pointed to how the term “incel”—which refers to “involuntary celibate” men, who often espouse misogynist rhetoric online—was virtually unknown until it was mentioned in media reports about murders carried out by people linked with that community. “Then any disillusioned young man could start googling his way down a rabbit hole just by using that search term,” Lewis noted.

Joan Donovan, another internet extremism researcher at Data & Society and Harvard, argues that the New Zealand gunman was deliberately trying to provoke a similar media reaction.

“The manifesto is bait. It is loaded with keywords that lead down far-right rabbit holes. Do not repost,” she advised on Twitter. “Most of the NZ shooter’s social media is new.It’s an attempt to get journalists to see a unified narrative.”

“He tried to meme himself into existence by producing a press kit and quoting memes and social media influencers while carrying out such violence,” Donovan told Mother Jones.

The Christchurch shooter also exploited an unwitting ally—technology companies who have proven themselves unable or unwilling to stop the spread of hate speech on their platforms. Even though the murder video violated YouTube’s, Facebook’s and Twitter’s policies, it still spread rapidly across their platforms. Social media users and reporters documented how even hours Facebook took down the original livestream, copies of the footage were still careening across the social networks. It was instantly accessible to anyone who could search for the gunman’s name on the internet’s most popular websites.

The result: a horrific event made all the more devastating by the perpetrator’s ability to turn some of America’s most profitable companies into distributors of his ghoulish white nationalist recruiting video.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/03/the-shooters-manifesto-was-designed-to-troll/585058/

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In the hours after the horrific mass shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, people desperately searched the internet for any sign of a motive or meaning behind the attack. Early Friday, a number of unverified social-media posts surfaced, along with a bizarre manifesto posted to 8chan, rich with irony and references to memes.

Together, the posts suggest that every aspect of the shootings was designed to gain maximum attention online, in part by baiting the media. The shooter live-streamed the attack itself on Facebook, and the video was quickly shared across YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram. Before committing the act, he shouted, “Remember, lads, subscribe to PewDiePie,” a reference to Felix Kjellberg, who runs YouTube’s most subscribed-to channel. The phrase itself is a meme started by PewDiePie’s fans, and its goal is to be reprinted.

Read: YouTube extremism and the long tail]

Kjellberg, who has previously found himself embroiled in controversy over alleged anti-Semitism, disavowed the shooting on Twitter Friday morning. “Just heard news of the devastating reports from New Zealand Christchurch. I feel absolutely sickened having my name uttered by this person. My heart and thoughts go out to the victims, families and everyone affected by this tragedy,” he wrote. By forcing Kjellberg to acknowledge the attack, the shooter succeeded in further spreading the word about the crime to Kjellberg’s tens of millions of followers.

@loudmouthjulia

"Subscribe to PewDiePie" is a meme that encompasses a misled belief that it's a fight for the disenfranchised; those constantly being pushed down. It's David vs Goliath. It's used on boards like 8chan as a rallying cry. It doesn't belong to PDP anymore — but we need to examine it...

Significant portions of the manifesto appear to be an elaborate troll, written to prey on the mainstream media’s worst tendencies. As the journalist Robert Evans noted, “This manifesto is a trap … laid for journalists searching for the meaning behind this horrific crime. There is truth in there, and valuable clues to the shooter’s radicalization, but it is buried beneath a great deal of, for lack of a better word, ‘shitposting.’”

[The Tech White Power Used to Go Viral

OLGA KHAZAN]

Shitposting is a slang term used to describe the act of posting trollish and usually ironic content designed to derail a conversation or elicit a strong reaction from people who aren’t in on the joke. Certain aspects of the shooter’s manifesto fall into this category. He includes Navy Seal Copypasta, a meme that originated on 4chan. He claims that Spyro: Year of the Dragon, a video game, taught him ethno-nationalism and that Fortnite taught him to “floss on the corpses,” referring to a viral dance move from the game. These absurd references are meant to troll readers

Jasmin Mujanovic

?

@JasminMuj

Replying to @JasminMuj

One more thought: the shooter makes repeated references to the “remove Kebab” meme, which is based on a propaganda video produced by Serb nationalist forces during the Bosnian War & Bosnian Genocide in 90s. Meshes w/ Obilic references & clear Breivik influence.

...

The shooter also credits the far-right personality Candace Owens with helping to “push me further and further into the belief of violence over meekness.” Though the shooter could be a genuine fan of Owens, who has been known to espouse right-leaning views on immigration and gun control, this reference might be meant to incite Owens’s critics to blame her.

That doesn’t mean the racism expressed throughout the 74-page manifesto isn’t genuine. But the complexities of the crime are still unfolding, and as the New York Times journalist Kevin Roose cautioned, “The NZ shooter’s apparent manifesto is thick with irony and meta-text and very easy to misinterpret.” Unfortunately, when journalists report on these horrific acts, the shooter’s hateful messages are sometimes amplified in the process. But the origins of that hate and the shooter’s public postings do need to be examined, even when taking them at face value is difficult.

Mass killers have long exploited the media environments they operate within. The Zodiac killer gained notoriety by persuading newspapers to publish his cryptic messages. In 2015, a shooter in Virginia killed people during a live television broadcast.

As the internet and social media have democratized access to information, much of it spreads without necessary context. As the Verge writer Elizabeth Lopatto noted in 2015, “Our interactions with these killers were mediated by huge media gatekeepers—their manifestos were left at their homes, or sent to newspapers and TV stations. If the manifestos appeared at all, they were quoted from, rather than released in full. This is no longer the case.”

Read: The dangerous spread of extremist manifestos]

While this system of gatekeeping itself was undoubtedly problematic, since many of the gatekeepers upheld norms and power structures built on privilege, technology has upended our media environment so quickly that many people are ill-equipped to handle the new information environment. We’ve seen the consequences of this play out in the rise of fake news, thriving misinformation campaigns, and bizarre viral hoaxes warped by trolls to capitalize on people’s worst fears.

Before people can even begin to grasp the nuances of today’s internet, they can be radicalized by it. Platforms such as YouTube and Facebook can send users barreling into fringe communities where extremist views are normalized and advanced. Because these communities have so successfully adopted irony as a cloaking device for promoting extremism, outsiders are left confused as to what is a real threat and what’s just trolling. The darker corners of the internet are so fragmented that even when they spawn a mass shooting, as in New Zealand, the shooter’s words can be nearly impossible to parse, even for those who are Extremely Online.i

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| March 15, 2019 5:33 pm

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In 2017, New Zealand's parliament granted the Whanganui River, called Te Awa Tupua by the Maori, the legal rights of a person, something the local Maori had petitioned for since 1873. The move honored the persistence of indigenous activists, who are often on the forefront of struggles to protect the environment, and signals that settler governments might finally be willing to learn from a worldview that places fewer separations between human beings and the planet. The legislation included money for compensation and for improving the river's health, and paved the way for Mount Taranaki to be offered similar legal status later that year.

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The work of these groups also supported the Wise Use movement; radical property rights activists and corporate front groups that attacked environmental laws and regulations on behalf of landowners, ranchers and the oil industry (Helvarg, The War Against the Greens).]

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RWI spreads into commonwealth nations

Barry Brill

Day Job: New Zealand-based lawyer and the former Minister of Science & Technology and Minister of Energy. He is currently chairman of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition.[franchise, see goreham)

Industry Ties: Has served as chairman or director at Power New Zealand Ltd.,  Electricity Supply Association of NZ, Business New Zealand, Pacific Energy Corp, Petrocorp Exploration, and more fossil fuel companies.

Climate Expertise: None

He said it: "The official temperature record is wrong."

Dr. Jennifer Marohasy

war on the greens or some book had extensive coverage on crypto

Secrets and lies : the anatomy of an anti-environmental PR campaign / Nicky Hager and Bob Burton

Hager, Nicky

Monroe, ME : Common Courage Press, 2000

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McH Stacks  HD9768.N42 H33 2000    NOT CHECKD OUT   

*Investigating & exposing - Nicky Hager (NZ), one of the authors of Secrets & Lies

The author of Secrets & Lies: The Anatomy of an Anti-environmental PR Campaign describes the investigative reporter's quest for whistleblowers. This book exposed a campaign promoting rainforest logging run by the British-based public relations company Shandwick at the behest of the New Zealand government - the aim was to "neutralize" environmentalists opposed to logging.