webodec3ARCHIVEPreview
Open in TheBrain

influencer 3 utube pod

7/20 sparked by Qanon

MERRI OK

trifecta

10 22 rename drop lifestyle

SEE PORTLAND ANTIFA 4 TERROR BS

do they just scan metrics and do whatever to boosts own numbers? even unconsciously? in a loop w/ Algo? instant gratification/fame/$

this is basically THREE  (i forget what lifestyle aspect was, goop paltrow?)

aha 920 thus is just the latest wave of ideol entre, driven by soc med, no longer trying to move up into party GOP hierarchy?

stealth evasion of soc media filters ~ disinfo

social media, talk radio/podcast

telegram rumble spotify?

SEE INCENTIVE / PERMISSION STRUCTURE

// ideol entre, provocateur

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an 8 26

Foreign countries are paying online influencers in the MAGA world, but new reporting revealed it's no longer only about elections.

Politico Playbook reported Monday that the influencer campaign has now taken a turn where foreign money is flowing into MAGA influencers who, in turn, have their own online lobbying campaign targeting Cabinet officials.

After previously caring little, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fl.) wants to do something about it and Democrats are eagerly joining her effort.

“Being an influencer right now is kind of like the Wild West,” Luna said, speaking to Politico Playbook. “There’s a lot of things laws haven’t caught up to.”

The report cited bipartisan support from Democratic Reps. Jared Moskowitz (Fla.) and Vicente Gonzalez (Texas) and Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden (Wis.).

Luna said that the Foreign Propaganda Registration Act would be an amendment to the Foreign Agents Registration Act that would mandate influencers disclose when they're being paid by a foreign government to promote political commentary to their followers.

Luna had a briefing that cited foreign influence efforts and she spoke with government agencies that heard about payments coming "on the back end" of the influencer world.

“I have a number of those people,” Luna said when asked whether she knew there were specific influencers scoring foreign cash. “I’m not going to put anyone on blast. That’s not my job.”

“Some of your biggest profile names ... a large portion of them, in some way, shape or form, have been approached at one point to push a certain position that’s probably tied to a foreign country,” Luna added.

She said she's seen contracts that go into the millions of dollars.

Luna also said that she thinks Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) will be open to the idea, but if he isn't, she said she'd simply do a "discharge petition" and move it forward anyway. In the past several months, Republicans have sidestepped the leadership on bipartisan legislation that Johnson refused to push by using a discharge petition. It requires that 218 lawmakers sign on to support a bill or resolution to be pushed out of committee and voted on by the full House.

Sometimes, it can be difficult to use because members’ signatures are public and can carry political consequences. Though in the last two years, all of the discharge petitions have been in part due to public pressure.

"The fight ballooned in recent months inside MAGA, where the sprawling influencer ecosystem that fueled Trump’s political rise faces growing accusations within its own ranks that foreign governments and other well-funded interests are trying to manipulate it," said Playbook. "Allegations have been leveled against influencers targeting JD Vance, Tucker Carlson and recently that Laura Loomer’s trip to Ukraine was funded by the country — which she vehemently denied."

In April, Alex Bruesewitz, who is in Trump’s inner circle and is also closest to the MAGA influencer world, has been advocating that influencers stamp out such foreign campaigns.

"Bruesewitz has begun flagging suspected paid pressure campaigns as high up as Cabinet officials, warning them who may be behind efforts to influence their agencies," Politico reported, citing two people familiar with the effort.

“If you get paid to promote a swimsuit, you have to say ‘paid partnership.’ If you get paid to tell the president to pull tariffs off of India, you don’t have to disclose,” Bruesewitz told Playbook. “The American public deserves to know what content that is going out on the accounts of their favorite social media personalities is bought and paid for by foreign interests.”

=----

did not see nick b/c arrested just bef he arrived 17 MIN BE ABLE TO TELL KIDS STEPPED UP

only fox tv?

USMC 2 TOURS 45% RULE TO SHOOT, PIZZA WOMAN SHAKING

INFLU INSTIGATORS then run to fox cam

MOLOTOV TENTS BURN NOT BY PROTESTORS

120 DAYS SOLD HOMES

ice enjoy cruelty, post vid soc med; riot staged 2 feds in plain clothes w/ cams? drones? push out 4 blocks 70- 80 guys 4-500 rounds pepper tear, flashbangs then live on X, trump says we send ca ng

15 agents manhandle daca w expired lic; woman w small kid walked when filmed

The Truth Behind "War Ravaged Portland" | Jerrod Zisser | TMR

[

The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder

1.98M subscribers

Dec 31, 2025 The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder

Check out Jerrod Zisser on ⁨@theringoffire3228⁩ Watch the Majority Report live Monday–Friday at 12pm EST on YouTube OR via daily podcast at http://www.Majority.fm Send us IM messages during the live-stream with our free Majority Report App: http://majority.fm/app Subscribe to MR's daily AM Quickie newsletter: https://am-quickie.ghost.io

The Truth Behind "War Ravaged Portland" | Jerrod Zisser | TMR - YouTube

---

9 26 BULWARK SOMMER

PRO-TRUMP INTERNET PERSONALITY Matt Tardio has made a career out of slamming the left. He was front and center last October at the protests outside Portland’s ICE facility, criticizing the demonstrations as violent and lawless. But records show that while in the Pacific Northwest, Tardio ran seriously afoul of some laws as well. And when confronted, he blamed Antifa for getting him high.

Often appearing alongside MAGA activist Nick Sortor, whose arrest at the protests turned them into a national issue, Tardio—a former Green Beret—earned mentions in outlets like the New York Times and NPR, while streaming the clashes nightly to thousands of viewers.

The protests helped Tardio grow his online audience, which stands, nearly a year later, at 375,000 subscribers on YouTube and 113,700 followers on X.

Police and court records I obtained through open records requests show that on August 26, Tardio pleaded no contest in Portland to felony coercion and misdemeanor harassment charges. According to police and Tardio’s alleged victim, Tardio tried to take one of his fans at the protest back to his hotel room to have sex. When she refused, he allegedly became forceful, grabbing the woman and even carrying her down an alley before she managed to escape—a crime caught in full detail, ironically, by surveillance cameras at the ICE facility.

When interviewed by a Portland detective, Tardio had an explanation: Left-wing “antifa” activists had plotted to get him stoned by...$

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Right-wing influencers shape nation and Trump’s understanding of Portland protests

By Erik Neumann (OPB)

:{Oct. 11, 2025

Social media personalities, conservative media outlets and the Trump administration itself are blending online content to serve the administration’s policies.

Trump supporters face off with protesters outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland, Ore., Monday, Oct. 6, 2025.

Benny Johnson, a pro-Trump social media personality from Florida, announced to his followers on X that he had arrived.

“Yo, what’s up!” Johnson said Tuesday as he strolled into the airport. “We are on the ground in Portland, Oregon.”

Johnson was in town to meet with three other social media influencers and U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem to tour the city’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility, where protests had been taking place since June.

“The Trump administration is here today. Follow along. The Trump administration ain’t gonna have any of this,” Johnson said. “This is going to be a rowdy day.”

From there, the influencers packed into SUVs and followed Noem, passing through police lines that had been established around the ICE facility and eventually behind its gates.

Standing on the building’s rooftop, Johnson and the other influencers filmed Noem for their millions of followers online. But the day was less than rowdy.

On the street below, around 20 reporters from local and national outlets stood behind yellow caution tape, along with a handful of protesters. It was a sunny fall day in Portland, far from the burning hellscape portrayed online.

IFrame Content

Still, influencer Nick Sortor warned Noem that she wasn’t seeing the real story.

“This is absolutely nothing as to what it is at night though. It’s really bad at night,” Sortor said. “That sun goes down and it gets totally lawless.”

Social media personalities like those who joined Noem are increasingly shaping the public’s understanding of events in Portland, where the Trump administration has been trying to deploy the National Guard in recent weeks.

While partisan online posting about protests in the Northwest is nothing new, right-wing media influencers are now being welcomed into the federal government to promote its messages. This kind of media access shows a deepening alliance between the administration and an online world willing to misrepresent facts if it means furthering political goals.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem stands on the roof of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in South Portland on Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2025.

*Eli Imadali / OPB

The influencers’ personal content is blended with interviews on Fox News, Newsmax and other outlets, and reposted by federal agencies at times. Sortor and another media personality on the ICE tour, Katie Daviscourt, appeared on a panel at the White House on Wednesday with President Trump, where clips were similarly repurposed and spun out to broader conservative media.

Local media like OPB and The Oregonian/OregonLive have not been given the same access to the ICE building when they requested it. In response to requests to tour the ICE building, DHS officials have asked OPB – a century-old media organization that has covered newsworthy events at the protests since their earliest days - to share links to OPB coverage of the protests before considering access.

‘Counter-protesters themselves’

The current Trump administration is working with these influencers to justify the president’s actions, according to A.J. Bauer, an assistant professor who studies media activism in the University of Alabama’s journalism department.

“The streamers are actually counter-protesters themselves who are going and documenting the protests that they disagree with. The government is actually working hand-in-glove with those folks in order to promote the government’s message,” Bauer said. “That is a new development.”

Masked-up federal agents confront the protesters outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland, Ore., on Sept. 28, 2025.

*Kristyna Wentz-Graff / OPB

There are many examples over the years of mainstream journalists embedding with the government to cover major events, like during the Vietnam or Iraq wars. But those reporters were largely free to be critical of the government.

Bauer said right-wing influencers don’t follow the journalistic norms of balance, independence and not personally participating in stories. Instead, he said, they start out with an ideological vision of the world and then narrate what they see in a way that fits that vision.

“The consequences are that we have two competing visions of reality,” Bauer said.

There have been almost nightly protests outside of Portland’s ICE facility for months. Since June, the Portland Police Bureau has made at least 47 arrests, and federal officials have arrested dozens more, though not everyone has been charged with a crime.

Still, the protests span just one or two city blocks. Many nights, there are fewer than two dozen people. Dancing and whimsical costumes have been a frequent protest tactic since the Trump administration has expressed a desire to send in military troops to suppress the demonstrations.

Protesters recover after gas is deployed at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility, Portland, Ore., Oct. 4, 2025.

*Alejandro Figueroa / OPB

But these influencers tell a story that chaos is rampant. And now, they are having the biggest impact possible by shaping how President Trump views the protests. They repeated a vision of Portland to him at a White House roundtable on Wednesday that many residents wouldn’t recognize.

“The amazing thing is you look at Portland and you see fires all over the place. You see fights. I mean, violence, it’s so crazy,” Trump said during the televised round table. “And then you talk to the governor and she acts like everything is totally normal. It’s almost like, are you waking up from a dream or something?”

A history of clashes

Right wing presence at protests in Portland is not a new phenomenon.

During the president’s first term, counter-protesters were a regular presence in the Rose City when residents and left-aligned demonstrators took to the streets. Provocateurs like Joey Gibson would frequently show up at protests between 2015 and 2020 to film and engage in conflicts with what they described as antifa mobs.

At times, those provocations turned violent, with people being shoved, maimed and even killed as dueling political factions took to the streets.

Patriot Prayer leader Joey Gibson directs people back to the west side of the Willamette River during demonstrations in Portland, Ore., Saturday, Aug. 17, 2019.

*Bradley W. Parks / OPB

Those protests also launched the careers of streamers and media personalities who focused on the conflict with a particular political view, such as Andy Ngo, a former Portland resident who now edits for the Canadian conservative outlet the Post Millennial.

With around 1.7 million X followers, Ngo is an influential voice on the right who appeared at Wednesday’s roundtable with President Trump. He also helped pave the way for the people aligning with the Trump administration against the current Portland protests. That includes Daviscourt, who brands herself on X as an investigative reporter for the Post Millennial.

While activists like Gibson have appeared at the protests outside the ICE building in recent days, the content being produced by the streamers is not restrained to their own feeds and fans, as it largely was during the first Trump administration.

On Thursday, Ngo made a post to his X account warning of an impending attack on federal law enforcement.

“Antifa in Portland have been plastering flyers around the city urging people to try and crash the DHS helicopter flying over ICE,” Ngo wrote just before 9 p.m., sharing an image of a flyer with lasers pointing at a helicopter.

Around three hours later, DHS posted a similar version of the flyer to its X account.

“Antifa domestic terrorists WILL NOT overrun our cities,” the post stated.

Facts on the ground

Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek, Portland Mayor Keith Wilson and most other state officials have rejected the need for the Trump administration to send the National Guard to the city. But their views seem to have little influence on the White House’s stated plans and rhetoric.

Portland Mayor Keith Wilson speaks with Beaverton Mayor Lacey Beaty at a press conference Monday, Sept. 29 in Portland Ore. Wilson and 10 Oregon mayors spoke against President Trump's decision to deploy the National Guard in Portland.

*Saskia Hatvany / OPB

On a recent night outside the ICE facility, conservative podcaster Matt Tardio was live-streaming the Portland protests. Tardio said he’s trying to capture everything that’s going on, not just the clashes between protesters and police.

“I do know that I’ve caught some coming-up streamers or whatever they were, legitimately trying to start problems and having hidden cameramen off to the side trying to capture those problems starting so that they could have their viral clips,” Tardio said. “That’s messed up.”

Tardio, who is a veteran, agrees that the situation on the ground is being exaggerated online.

“I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve said I don’t think the National Guard needs to come out here. I feel that the Portland Police Bureau can handle it,” he said.

But that hasn’t stopped other influencers from repeating the story about a war-ravaged city that gets amplified by Trump officials and repackaged across the media ecosystem.

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nbc no pix lnx

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/portland-ice-protest-trump-nick-sortor-andy-ngo-katie-daviscourt-rcna236332

10 25

Portland's anti-ICE protests have become a magnet for MAGA influencers

Right-wing influencers and media figures have flocked to Portland, helping bring national and Trump administration attention to ICE protests in the city.

Trump supporters face off with protesters outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland, Ore., on Oct. 6, 2025.

Trump supporters face off with protesters Monday outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland, Ore.Ethan Swope / AP

Oct. 9, 2025, 1:03 PM PDT

By David Ingram and Jo Yurcaba

PORTLAND, Ore. — Within a week, Nick Sortor experienced the lows and highs of being a MAGA influencer.

Last Thursday, Sortor was jailed in Portland after police arrested him on suspicion of disorderly conduct. A fan of President Donald Trump with 1.2 million followers on X, he had traveled to Oregon’s largest city to document the protest scene outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility. Police said he was involved in an altercation with demonstrators but was ultimately not charged.

But six days later, Sortor was back on the upswing: By Wednesday, he was sitting at the White House just a few feet away from Trump, as he and other conservative media figures were invited to participate in a roundtable discussion about the anti-ICE activity they had seen in Portland.

“It was not fun sitting in that jail, but I’m glad to see what has come of it,” Sortor, 27, told Trump during the livestreamed event.

The roundtable was a unifying moment for the alternative, right-wing media ecosystem that is helping shape perceptions of protests against Trump’s mass deportation campaign, showing how the MAGA influencers and the Trump administration are playing off one another in response to anti-ICE protests around the country.

Right-wing podcasters, writers and pundits are flocking to Democratic deep-blue cities to document the scene for their massive audiences but also, in some cases such as Portland, to spar with left-wing demonstrators. Their presence has been praised by the Trump administration and criticized by police for escalating tensions.

Federal agents stand guard on a rooftop to keep protesters away from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in downtown Portland, Oregon, on Oct. 6, 2025.

Federal agents stand guard on a rooftop Monday as protesters gather outside an ICE facility in Portland.Mathieu Lewis-Rolland / AFP - Getty Images

A poll last month from The New York Times and Siena University showed voters deeply divided on the immigration crackdown, with a slim majority, 52%, saying they disapprove of Trump’s handling of immigration and 46% saying they approve. The poll showed 51% believe Trump’s immigration actions have “gone too far,” 35% say they have been “about right” and 12% say they have “not gone far enough.”

At least a dozen out-of-town conservative journalists and influencers were on the ground in Portland in recent days, according to interviews with some of them and posts on social media.

“This is now a full-blown information war that we’re in, so being on the front lines is more important than ever,” said Jonathan Choe, who traveled from Seattle to Portland for Frontlines, a project of the conservative advocacy group Turning Point USA. Choe spoke by phone on Tuesday, a day before taking part in the White House event, with Sortor.

Sortor, whose profile on X says he’s based in Texas and Washington, D.C., did not respond to requests for comment.

In Portland, anti-ICE protests have taken place nearly daily since June, largely confined to a block outside the ICE facility, about two miles south of downtown. The facility, where ICE agents bring people who’ve been arrested and are awaiting processing, was also the site of protests in 2018.

Activists and police say the crowd size and the intensity of the protests in Portland have grown in recent weeks, following Trump’s Sept. 27 announcement that he wants to send in National Guard troops with “full force” and as more influencers have arrived. The crowd sometimes has a circus-like atmosphere, including one anti-ICE regular who wears an inflatable frog costume.

While federal agents protect the ICE facility itself, local police patrol the nearby streets. Portland police say they’ve arrested more than 40 people in the protest area since June, including one man who jumped into the nearby Willamette River on Tuesday night, after police say he stole a tripod from the protest area. Additionally, federal prosecutors say they’ve charged 31 people for federal offenses at the ICE facility, including assaults on officers.

Portland police say that some of the self-described journalists appearing outside the ICE facility are acting more like counterprotesters. In an email made public last week as part of Oregon and Portland’s lawsuit against the Trump administration, Sgt. Andrew Braun named three right-wing journalists or activists who he said were victims as well as a chronic source of emergency calls.

“Despite repeated advice from officers to stay away from the ICE crowd, they constantly return and antagonize the protesters until they are assaulted or pepper sprayed. They refuse or are reluctant to walk away from these confrontations, even when police are in the area trying to meet with them. They even engage in the same trespassing behavior on federal and trolley property as the main protesters,” Braun wrote in the Sept. 21 email.

Among those named was Katie Daviscourt, a writer for The Post Millennial. Daviscourt, who had traveled to Portland from Seattle, fired back on X, disputing the characterization.

“I am beyond pissed. Anyone who knows me, knows that I stand by myself, I am non violent, never approach the crowd, and quietly film,” she wrote. “I cannot wait to see the DOJ absolutely CRUSH this agency,” she added, referring to the Portland police. She did not respond to a request for comment.

Daviscourt said she was hit in the face at a protest last week and was bruised. Police said they were searching for a suspect. Daviscourt was also among the conservative media figures at the White House on Wednesday.

Mike Benner, a spokesperson for the Portland Police Bureau, said the bureau, unlike police in some other cities, does not have a credentialing process for members of the media.

“We recognize the changing landscape of journalism and respect the rights of both traditional and independent journalists to document events,” he said in an email. “We ask all individuals — regardless of media status — to comply with lawful orders and avoid interfering with law enforcement operations.”

Portland Police Chief Bob Day said in a news conference Tuesday that tensions near the ICE facility had risen due to the “influence of social media” and national attention. And in an interview on Monday with Fox News’ streaming service, he criticized influencers’ focus on getting views.

Federal agents, including members of the Department of Homeland Security, stand guard outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in downtown Portland, Oregon, on Oct. 6, 2025.

Federal agents, including members of the Department of Homeland Security, stand guard Monday outside an ICE facility in Portland.Mathiew Lewis-Rolland / AFP - Getty Images

“Their reach is obviously very significant, and so they’re going where they can get the views and create the perception. And our belief is that we are simply managing to the rule of law,” he said.

But the ascendant MAGA influencers have the ears of Trump Cabinet members: Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem met some of them in person Tuesday during a trip to Portland, and on Wednesday, Noem, Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel joined the White House roundtable. At one point during the event, Trump directed Sortor and Bondi to confer about a possible investigation related to one of his videos.

Sortor said on X that he was acting in self-defense prior to his arrest. The Portland-area district attorney’s office declined to charge him with disorderly conduct, saying in a statement that while it believed police had probable cause to arrest him, it did not believe the crime could be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Two anti-ICE protesters who were arrested at the same time are now facing criminal charges.

Accounts of the protests in conservative media often emphasize what they see as the rectitude of ICE’s operations, criticizing those who disagree. These accounts often include shaky video taken at night of protesters and counterprotesters facing off. It’s often close-in footage that lacks perspective on the size of the unrest. MAGA influencers also provide steady content for television networks like Fox News, where some of them have appeared for interviews.

At one point, Trump expressed confusion about the true nature of the situation in Portland, telling NBC News in a phone interview on Sept. 28 that he was getting conflicting accounts.

“I spoke to the governor. She was very nice,” Trump said. “But I said, ‘Well wait a minute, am I watching things on television that are different from what’s happening? My people tell me different.’ They are literally attacking and there are fires all over the place.”

At Wednesday’s roundtable, Trump praised Daviscourt and Sortor, saying he watched a video of Sortor and sent him a note. On X, Sortor said that Trump wrote, “Nick, I saw you on television. Great job. We are behind you 100%. Let us know if there is anything we can do… President DJT”

The influencers descending on Portland fall along a spectrum, with some closer to the role of traditional journalists than others. Choe, the Frontlines reporter, who previously worked in local TV news, said he’s been one of three Frontlines reporters who have been tag-teaming coverage in recent days, posting videos on a common account on X. He’s a Trump supporter and has cheered on Sortor, but he said he personally sticks to reporting facts on the ground.

Some of the MAGA influencers are with established conservative media outlets such as The Post Millennial or The Blaze, while many others are independent. On Tuesday, the gaggle included Florida-based podcaster Benny Johnson, who has nearly 6 million subscribers on YouTube and who flew in to Portland to report on Noem’s visit.

A White House spokesperson, Abigail Jackson, praised the cadre of right-wing influencers and journalists in a statement, saying: “The White House applauds all journalists who are willing [to] blaze their own trail to report the facts rather than go along with the Fake News Groupthink. The situation in Portland is a prime example.”

But some conservative media figures aren’t in Portland only to broadcast and document.

Some MAGA influencers have initiated confrontations with protesters who have set up camp on public sidewalks, walking through their tents and set-ups and interfering with protests.

Matt Tardio, a podcaster, has posted on X about wanting to “parlay with ANTIFA” alongside Sortor and hold a “PATRIOT MARCH” through a camp of protesters on a sidewalk near the ICE facility. He did not respond to a request for comment.

Sortor has repeatedly confronted anti-ICE protesters in Portland, according to videos that he and other influencers have posted on X.

“I’m going to walk through. I want to give a tour of the camp,” he says in one video, just before he advances into a tent carrying an American flag on a pole. As a protestor stands in his way on a public sidewalk, he responds, “Unfortunately, I’m going. Get out of the way. Get out of the way.”

In another video, he steps in and seizes an American flag that protesters had set on fire. On Wednesday, he brought the flag to the White House and showed it to Trump, who suggested the possibility of a flag-burning investigation. (The Supreme Court ruled in 1989 that flag-burning is generally protected speech under the First Amendment. Trump said Monday that he disagrees and believes that flag-burning is a form of incitement to violence — an idea that the 1989 court explicitly rejected.)

Sortor was best known for commentary regarding Maui wildfires in 2023, for which he was criticized for allegedly politicizing the response, including by actor Dwayne Johnson, who called Sortor’s work “toxic, false clickbait garbage.” Sortor replied to Johnson at the time, saying he was focused on getting the government to provide more aid to Maui and was willing to work together.

Since at least 2017, Portland has been a recurring backdrop for street standoffs that pit the far right against self-described antifascist demonstrators clad in black clothing. Conservative writer Andy Ngo was beaten up at one rally in 2019 and now describes himself on X as a Portland refugee in London. He still frequently posts about his former city and was also at the White House event on Wednesday.

For this round of protests, there’s no comparable group of out-of-town left-wing influencers who have traveled to Portland, although local independent journalists have documented the protests on sites such as TikTok and Bluesky.

Julio Rosas, a national correspondent for The Blaze, a conservative media outlet, said there’s a bond among the right-wing influencers and journalists who’ve parachuted into Portland. He was there in 2021 capturing video of Black Lives Matter protests and this year he has taken two reporting trips to the city, including one within the past few days. He said he considers Sortor a friend and “a great patriot.”

“We’re often out there on our own. We’re independent or come from companies with much smaller budgets than other places,” he said. “It’s good to have someone to watch your back.”

But he said he doesn’t relish the assignment in Portland.

“Who wants to spend hours outside where people are angry?” Rosas said.

David Ingram reported from San Francisco. Jo Yurcaba reported from Portland.

---

===

is she poster?

an 4 25 the conv

Trump, met with far-right activist Laura Loomer in the Oval Office last week. Loomer is a figure so extreme that she is shunned by many, even in Trump’s “make America great again” (Maga) movement.

Hours after their meeting, Trump fired a string of national security officials, including General Timothy D. Haugh, the head of the National Security Agency and US Cyber Command, apparently at Loomer’s request. Trump has said Loomer was not involved in the firings, but also praised her judgment.

Even for a president who has always listened to – and, indeed, echoed – fringe voices, the incident stood out. It served as a reminder that Trump is less constrained than ever before, and that his White House is responsive to his personal whims rather than any deliberative policy-making process.

Gone are the days of Trump’s first administration, when aides would at least try to block the most extreme conspiracy theorists from having access to the president. Now, apparently, even a four-star general (the highest officer rank) like Haugh serves only at the pleasure of figures such as Loomer.

So, who exactly is Loomer? She is, first and foremost, a media influencer – someone who made her name in far-right circles by spreading hate and conspiracy theories.

She calls herself a “proud Islamophobe” and “pro-white nationalism”. She has endorsed claims that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were an “inside job”, alleged that the “deep state” manipulates the weather to influence elections, and spread conspiracy theories implying that the FBI let school shootings happen in election years to help the Democrats push gun control.

Loomer’s claims, and her open racism, have sometimes proven too much even for other prominent Maga figures, who prefer to be slightly more subtle in their messaging.

When Loomer said in 2024 that if Kamala Harris won the election, the White House “will smell like curry” and speeches will be “facilitated via a call centre,” she drew push-back from the now vice-president, J.D. Vance, and far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.

But Trump seems to have appreciated Loomer’s commentary all the same. The president has repeatedly praised her in public and backed her unsuccessful run as a Republican candidate for a US House of Representatives seat in Florida in 2020.

Like many other Maga media figures, Loomer has realised that her antics give her direct exposure to a television-obsessed president, and that this exposure can be transformed into access and, ultimately, political power.

Loomer, who is only 31, is entirely a product of the Trump era. As an adult, practically the only conservatism she has known is the conservatism of Maga – openly prejudiced, vindictive, and more a stew of grievance and hatred than a coherent political platform.

Insofar as Loomer advocates for particular policies, they are a crude channeling of these impulses. She has campaigned for a ten-year immigration moratorium and has called for the death penalty for Democrats who oppose Trump.

On a podcast in June 2024 about whether Democrats should be prosecuted and jailed if Trump wins the election over alleged “unscrupulous behaviour,” Loomer said: “Not just jailed, they should get the death penalty. You know, we actually used to have the punishment for treason in this country.”

But the chief way in which Loomer personifies modern American conservatism is her single-minded loyalty to the president. Loyalty to Trump, and fury at the disloyalty of others, is the central component of her identity.

Deep loyalty

This loyalty seems to be both a deeply felt emotion and also a shrewd way of recommending herself to the president. And, more than anything else, it was what landed her in the Oval Office last week.

Loomer’s apparent recommendation that Trump fire a slew of national security officials had its roots in this obsession with loyalty. Many people serving in national security positions in the Trump administration are not card-carrying members of the Maga movement.

This reflects the fact that such positions require deep expertise developed over long apolitical careers in the civil service or military. As the product of a movement that disdains expertise and rationality, few Maga die-hards have the requisite knowledge to do these jobs.

For Loomer, such figures pose a threat. It ought to be emphasised that this is not because people like General Haugh have ever shown open disloyalty to Trump. It is merely that they are not, like Loomer, his fanatical adherents. In her worldview, anything less is unacceptable.

Trump seems to agree, which opens the way to more firings in the future. Sensing her opening, Loomer has declared that she will establish an organisation dedicated to investigating executive branch officials for suspected disloyalty to the president.

Government officials will have to live in fear of being targeted, creating a chilling atmosphere in which pushing back against Trump’s whims becomes impossible.

Loomer’s growing influence also suggests that the Trump White House is becoming more chaotic and unpredictable.

The president’s aides have long claimed that the White House would be run in a controlled fashion this time around, with clear chains of command and questionable outsiders kept away. Loomer’s presence in the Oval Office – at Trump’s personal request – blows that story away.

For her part, Loomer seems to have what she has always wanted: the president’s attention. Where might she direct it next?

Andrew Gawthorpe, Lecturer in History and International Studies, *Leiden University

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

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MMA

MAGA media’s rising influence with the Trump administration

Written by Gideon Taaffe & Jack Winstanley

Research contributions from Kayla Gogarty & Jack Wheatley

:{Published 02/26/25

President Donald Trump has been openly courting MAGA media figures — giving them significant access to his new administration and even appointing former Fox News hosts to prominent positions in the government.

The Trump administration has simultaneously welcomed MAGA influencers into the White House, Cabinet departments, and other federal agencies while restricting access of mainstream media that have long covered those institutions. Many of these right-wing media figures have previously spread outright misinformation and hateful conspiracy theories — and now some of them appear to be giving policy cues to the new administration.

The Trump White House has become increasingly hostile to mainstream media as it favors right-wing influencers}:

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https://www.budget.senate.gov/hearings/denial-disinformation-and-doublespeak_big-oils-evolving-efforts-to-avoid-accountability-for-climate-change video

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sTUDY: Tradwife influencers are quietly spreading far-right conspiracy theories

A Media Matters analysis found interacting with tradwife videos on TikTok led to a deluge of conspiratorial content

WRITTEN BY OLIVIA LITTLE

RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM CARLY EVANS, CHLOE SIMON & AUDREY MCCABE

PUBLISHED 05/01/24

TikTok’s “For You” page recommendation algorithm propels users who interact with “tradwife” content — which promotes “traditional values” and rigid gender roles — down far-right conspiracy theory rabbit holes.

Media Matters coded and analyzed 327 recommended videos after exclusively interacting with tradwife content and documented what happened. We found TikTok’s recommendation algorithm rapidly populated our FYP with conspiracy theory content and fearmongering, which made up nearly one-third of all videos served to the FYP.

Jump to section

To be considered a “tradwife influencer” according to our criteria, a creator had to have a minimum of 20,000 followers, self-identify as a “tradwife,” explicitly promote traditional gender roles, and primarily dedicate their account to promoting homemaking and “traditional values.” Media Matters identified 7 accounts that fulfilled this criteria, then “liked” and watched each account’s 10 most recent videos.

Key findings

* After we interacted with tradwife content, TikTok’s recommendation algorithm began flooding our FYP with right-wing conspiracy theory content.

CitationMolly Butler / Media Matters

Context

Why would interacting with tradwife content, which is often filled with beautiful imagery of gardening and baking, funnel a user down a conspiracy theory rabbit hole?

Well, we discovered that many popular “tradwife” creators are quietly couching far-right conspiracy theories between videos of bread baking and milkmaid dresses.

Nearly every tradwife influencer we identified pushed baseless right-wing conspiracy theories and right-wing talking points, often focusing on a general distrust of the government and modern medicine. These messages were positioned between soft visuals of baking, gardening, and modest fashion.

Tradwife influencer Jasmine Dinis typifies this phenomenon. In one TikTok video, we see Dinis drinking coffee on her porch with overlaid text reading, “Being a real rebel in 2024 is….” Several baking and gardening clips follow under more superimposed text that answers, “Taking sovereignty over your own health & food sources and not relying on the government for either.”

Her account on X (formerly Twitter) is more overtly extreme, with posts suggestingthat the sun does not cause skin cancer, defending Andrew Tate (a self-proclaimed misogynist on trial in Romania for human trafficking, rape, and forming a criminal group to sexually exploit women) and blaming his arrest on “the matrix,” and describing a worldwide pride festival as “full of mentally ill people and groomers.”

A social media landing page linked to Dinis’ TikTok directs users to PragerU Kids — an offshoot of right-wing propaganda organization PragerU.

Another tradwife influencer, “Gwen the Milkmaid,” follows a similar video formula, posting imagery of prairie dresses, bows, and baking overlaid with text pushing conspiracy theories and right-wing talking points.

In one recent video, Gwen prepares homemade pasta with overlaid text reading, “Trad-wives have been getting a lot of hate recently… And is it really a surprise? The elites have been working for decades to destroy femininity, masculinity, healthy marriages, and families.”

“Everything the trad-wife movement stands for goes against the establishment elite’s agenda,” Gwen wrote. It’s a movement “that knows how much our children need us, instead of letting them be manipulated by culture and government schools.”

She concluded the video caption by writing, “Just my latest conspiracy theory. What do you think about this?”

Right-wing media have also embraced one of TikTok’s most popular tradwife influencers, Estee Williams, who has appeared on Fox News, OAN, and The Daily Wire to lament about the “attack on traditional values."

Notably, Williams’ sister is Rudy Giuliani’s former spokesperson and, according to her X bio, Turning Point USA ambassador Christianné Allen. TPUSA hosts a Young Women’s Leadership Summit that pushes high school and college-age girls to give up their career ambitions and instead become mothers and wives.

Discussion of research findings

Of the 327 videos assessed,100 or (30.6%) contained conspiracy theories, which ranged from seemingly innocent speculation about UFO sightings to extremist claims about elites eating children.

Some of the most notable and repeated conspiracy theories fed to our account’s FYP included:

Video

Video

SHARE

Methodology

To be considered a tradwife influencer, a creator had to meet the following criteria:

We identified and followed 7 tradwife accounts, watching and “liking” each account’s 10 most recent videos....

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PR Series 3 24

We're holding the advertising and PR industry accountable - DeSmog (https://www.desmog.com/ad-pr-industry-greenwashing-accountability/)

about the Series

When it comes to identifying the culprits responsible for the delay and denial of climate solutions, most people are likely to think of fossil fuel companies rather than the slick world of advertising and public relations. But in the words of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, a “massive public relations machine” is “raking in billions to shield the fossil fuel industry from scrutiny.”

We take readers inside the world’s most influential creative and reputation management firms to show just how deep their ties with Big Oil run, and expose where lofty climate rhetoric runs afoul of commercial realities. And we document the struggles of a younger generation of climate-conscious employees to steer their industry onto a sustainable path — despite resistance from the top.

UK/Dozens of Ad & PR Industry Directors Have Ties to Heavily Polluting Industries

:{:{ByTJ Jordan and Rachel SherringtononApr 3, 2024 }:

Dozens of Ad & PR Industry Directors Have Ties to Heavily Polluting Industries - DeSmog (https://www.desmog.com/2024/04/03/dozens-of-ad-pr-industry-directors-have-ties-to-heavily-polluting-industries/)

Insiders fear that conflicts of interest on the boards of the six largest communications firms are quashing effective climate action.

OPINION

Polluters Are Melting the Winter Sports They Sponsor

:{:{ByAndrew Simms and Anna JonssononMar 16, 2024 }:

Corporations are using sport to sell the high-carbon products that are killing our winters, and now we can put a figure on the damage their money does.

ANALYSIS

Oil and Gas Companies Want You to Think They Care About Women — but It’s Just PR

:{:{ByEllen Ormesher, Emily Gertz, Kathryn Clare and Cartie WerthmanonMar 8, 2024 }:

Their ad campaigns for International Women’s Day champion empowerment even as climate change makes women’s lives harder and more dangerous.

Ellen Ormesher and Kathryn Clare Join DeSmog to Investigate Advertising Industry

:{:{ByDeSmogonFeb 26, 2024 }:

Climate accountability in creative and PR agencies is the focus of our growing team.

Investors Challenge ‘Blind Spots’ in Climate-Friendly Ratings for Ad and PR Giants

:{:{ByHugh Wheelan and TJ JordanonFeb 25, 2024 }:

DeSmog investigation finds multiple financial risks of work for fossil fuel clients aren't being assessed.

OPINION

TotalEnergies Has no Place in African Football

:{:{BySamm Farai MonroonJan 31, 2024 }:

Kick Polluters Out says the French oil major wants to sportswash climate-wrecking mega-projects.

UK/Havas London Targeted by Climate Activists Over Agency’s Relationship with Shell

:{:{ByEllen Ormesher onJan 25, 2024 }:

The protest followed a tip-off that the global comms agency may take on more work for the oil major.

UK/Havas CEO Yannick Bolloré Staked His Brand on Caring About the Climate. So Why Is His Company Working for Shell?

:{:{ByGeoff Dembicki, Dana Drugmand, Emily Gertz, Ali Lyon and Isobel MoseleyonJan 23, 2024 }:

The Bolloré family’s business empire — which includes Havas, one of the world’s biggest ad agencies — has longtime ties to the fossil fuel industry.

Illustration of Havas CEO Yannick Bolloré in front of a background of shells.

ANALYSIS

Revealed: Three-quarters of Prestigious Green Advertising Awards Go To Agencies Working for Fossil Fuel Industry

:{:{ByTJ JordanonJan 4, 2024 }:

DeSmog analysis finds majority of Ad Net Zero’s accolade-winners also represent major polluters.

Instagram Influencers Paid to Boost UAE’s Climate Credentials Over COP28

:{:{ByJoey GrosternonDec 14, 2023 }:

The individuals who spoke to DeSmog said they were ‘deeply disappointed’ by the summit and had not fully understood the relationship between UAE and the organisers.

'Inoculate From Criticism': A Closer Look at the Public Relations Companies Active at COP28

:{:{ByCartie WerthmanonDec 9, 2023 }:

Controversies surrounding Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber have underscored the role of reputation management in climate diplomacy.

Reuters, New York Times Top List of Fossil Fuel Industry’s Media Enablers

:{:{ByAmy Westervelt, Matthew Green and Joey GrosternonDec 5, 2023 }:

New report by DeSmog and Drilled reveals extent of commercial partnerships between trusted outlets and Big Oil.

OPINION

Why Saudi Arabia Wins Top Prize in the Bad Sport Awards 2023

:{:{ByAndrew SimmsonNov 28, 2023 }:

Major polluters are wielding sponsorship as a weapon to make polluting products and lifestyles appear acceptable.

OPINION

Badvertising: How Promoting Pollution Prevents Climate Action

:{:{ByLeo Murray and Andrew SimmsonNov 22, 2023 }:

Left unaddressed, the warping of our collective consciousness by fossil industry propaganda will make it impossible to achieve the civilisation level transformation required for life as we know it to survive the 21st century.

UK Advertising Watchdog Bans Toyota SUV Ads on Environmental Grounds

:{:{ByTJ JordanonNov 22, 2023 }:

The adverts “had not been prepared with a sense of responsibility to society,” regulator finds.

McCann to Make New Pitch for Aramco Oil and Gas Advertising Work

:{:{BySam Bright and TJ JordanonNov 16, 2023}:

There is ‘growing unease’ within the PR company about its continued work for one the world’s biggest polluters.

US/Havas Wins Shell Advertising Contract, Drawing Fire from Climate Campaigners

:{:{ByDana DrugmandonSep 19, 2023 }:

Clean Creatives says move is "huge step backward" for the French ad and public relations company.

WPP Has More Fossil Fuel Clients Than Any Other Advertising Company, Report Finds

:{:{ByTJ JordanonSep 19, 2023 }:

Clean Creatives’ ‘F-List’ reveals links between creative agencies and polluting industries around the world.

US/American PR Firm Edelman Enabled Oil Baron Al Jaber’s Ascension to Lead COP28 Climate Conference

:{:{ByCartie WerthmanonSep 13, 2023 }:

Edelman earned millions polishing the UAE’s green image — which helped propel Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber to the top levels of climate diplomacy.

UK/How Shell Used a ‘Granfluencer’ to Promote its Brand

:{:{By Dimitris Dimitriadis, Joey Grostern and Sam Brighton Aug 15, 2023 }:

A Filipino grandma with two million followers is among the hundreds of influencers who have posted content promoting fossil fuel giants.

UK/Revealed: Fossil Fuel Giants Are Using British Influencers to go Viral

:{:{ByDimitris Dimitriadis, Joey Grostern and Sam BrightonJul 27, 2023}:

Some of the world’s biggest polluters are paying social media celebrities and environmentalists to promote their brands to billions of people.

Litigation Over Misleading Climate Claims Has 'Exploded' Over the Past Few Years

:{:{ByDana DrugmandonJul 3, 2023}:

New report details how more “climate-washing” lawsuits and complaints are being filed against corporations’ greenwashing than ever before, and experts warn complicit PR and ad firms could face legal risks.

PR Agency Catering to Oil Interests Led UK Climate Forum’s Communications

:{:{ByBrendan DeMelleonJun 28, 2023 }:

Weber Shandwick also hosted a roundtable on “authentic” climate communication.

Climate Innovation Forum 2023 website showing event details, sponsors/partners, and London Climate Action Week.

Confronting Big Oil at Cannes Lions: The Viral Moment That Exposed the Ad Industry's Complicity in the Climate Crisis

:{:{ByTolmeia GregoryonJun 19, 2023 }:

Climate activist Tolmeia Gregory sparked a social media sensation when she challenged a Shell executive at last year's festival. Now she's back, and urging other creatives to take disruptive action.

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rww 1 24

Former Fox host Tucker Carlson is platforming disgraced climate denier Willie Soon, an aerospace engineer known for accepting over $1 million from fossil fuel companies for writing publications he referred to as “deliverables.”

Carlson invited Soon, a former researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, on his exclusive program on X (formerly Twitter) for an interview on January 9. The two amplified long-debunked hypotheses about what is causing climate change, and clips from the interview have already been viewed over 1 million times on TikTok, likely by a young audience that might not be familiar with Soon’s controversies, which came to light back in 2015.

The spread of these videos highlights TikTok’s ongoing climate misinformation problem, even as it has begun implementing a new policy banning content that “undermines well-established scientific consensus, such as denying the existence of climate change or the factors that contribute to it.”

Though experts dismissed Soon’s false claims, clips of his interview with Carlson have gained traction on TikTok, a social media platform popular with young users
The interview is part of a larger trend of major right-wing media outlets relying more on long-debunked climate deniers
Willie Soon has been exposed for unethically promoting flawed science
Soon has for years been a go-to source for media and lawmakers keen on protecting fossil fuel interests

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After decisions in two states ruled that Donald Trump was disqualified from the presidential ballot because he “engaged in insurrection” on January 6, 2021, right-wing influencers called for Republican officials to retaliate in kind by dropping President Joe Biden from the ballot. It took only days for them to find someone willing to play the part: Jay Ashcroft, Missouri’s secretary of state and a candidate for governor.

Ashcroft said last week that he would enforce “the new legal standard” against Biden in his state if the Supreme Court sustains Trump’s removal in Colorado. He probably won’t be the last to make such a pitch given the incentives GOP officeholders have to follow the lead of the party’s media propagandists.

Colorado’s Supreme Court generated a legal firestorm when it ruled in December that Trump is ineligible for office under the 14th Amendment’s ban on officials who “engaged in insurrection,” for his “overt, voluntary, and direct participation” in the storming of the U.S. Capitol by his supporters. Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows subsequently removed Trump from the primary ballot on similar grounds. Trump has appealed both decisions, and the Supreme Court said Friday it would review the Colorado ruling.

Prominent conservative legal scholars have argued in favor of Trump’s removal on 14th Amendment grounds. As conservative former federal Judge J. Michael Luttig wrote with liberal Harvard Law professor Lawrence Tribe, “any disinterested observer who witnessed that bloody assault on the temple of our democracy, and anyone who learns about the many failed schemes to bloodlessly overturn the election before that” would agree that January 6 was “an insurrection for which Trump bore responsibility.”

But Trumpist propagandists have spent the last three years crafting a bogus alternate narrative of January 6 in which the rioters were victims of a government conspiracy and the then-president who incited them based on lies did nothing wrong. And so they’ve responded to the rulings in Colorado and Maine by urging Republican officials to bump Biden from the ballot in retaliation.

“Due process is not taken into account any more in America in 2023 and certainly going into 2024, so Republicans should say Joe Biden is off the ballot in all the Republican-controlled-AG states because of his links, clearly, to bribery schemes,” Donald Trump Jr. offered on his Triggered podcast on December 28, 2023. “There's far more evidence of that than an actual insurrection.”

“I want to see a secretary of state in the next couple of days just put out the press release,” Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk said Wednesday. “Joe Biden's not going to be on the primary ballot. He's not going to be on the general election ballot.”

Like Trump Jr., Kirk made clear that any explanation for why a secretary of state would do such a thing would be a pretext, saying, “Shot across the bow. Power dynamics. Fight power with power.”

“We need a red state secretary of state to kick Biden off the ballot now,” Daily Wire podcaster Michael Knowles added Friday morning. “And they can come up with some explanation. It will probably be a more credible explanation than the one that the Democrats have come up with for kicking Donald Trump off the ballot.”

Knowles went on to say that a GOP secretary of state could cite a 2020 tweet by Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign asking supporters to donate to a Minnesota bail fund to “help post bail for those protesting on the ground” there following the murder of George Floyd by a police officer.

“Certainly we can say Kamala Harris led an insurrection. She personally fundraised for rioters and criminals who were insurrecting against cities around the country during the George Floyd riots,” he explained. “So OK. Make it Kamala Harris, and then Kamala can't appear on the ticket, and you don't even need to go after Joe Biden.”

The incentive structure on the right is such that once major players like Kirk and Knowles start creating a demand for action, Republican officials will supply it. Ashcroft, who is seeking a promotion to governor but faces a competitive GOP primary against candidates including the state’s lieutenant governor, answered the call later on Friday.

“What has happened in Colorado & Maine is disgraceful & undermines our republic,” the Missouri secretary of state wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “While I expect the Supreme Court to overturn this, if not, Secretaries of State will step in & ensure the new legal standard for @realDonaldTrump applies equally to @JoeBiden!”

He subsequently used the story to direct people to his campaign website, saying on X, “Its time to stand and be counted. The future depends on it.”

It can be difficult to tell whether GOP officials are acting in response to right-wing media figures or if they’re converging on the same idea independently because they’re all swimming in the same milieu of Republican base voters. But notably, when Ashcroft discussed the potential rationale he would use to remove Biden from the ballot in an interview with NBC News, it sounded an awful lot like Knowles’ idea from earlier in the day:

Asked how he would disqualify Biden from the ballot for insurrection, Ashcroft said that he's “let an invasion unstopped into our country from the border.” Vice President Kamala Harris, he added, “supported people that were rebelling against the U.S. government during the riots in 2020,” referring to racial justice protests in the wake of George Floyd's murder.

“If this is the standard, does that suddenly mean she's not allowed to run? None of us can say, because there is no standard,” he said.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/amazon/influencers-and-right-wing-figures-are-promoting-crypto-gambling-and-sports-betting-young

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right-wing influencer and Andrew Tate fanboy Adin Ross sits behind his computer and streams brightly colored slot games, blackjack, and roulette to his audience of loyal fans. Ross has blown through gargantuan sums of money while gambling on his livestreams and has won big jackpots.

“You have like tons of different emotions throughout your whole entire body,” Ross said about the euphoria of online gambling during an interview. “It’s just dopamine release.”

If Ross’ audience members are interested in following in his footsteps, he is setting them up to fail.

Ross is an example of influencers and right-wing figures who are promoting crypto gambling and sports betting ventures to their young audiences. Many of these figures, including Ross, have landed major sponsorship deals with gambling companies and are sometimes given house money to gamble with, removing the actual risk associated with online gambling.

Influencers are promoting these games to young viewers as gambling addiction rises among adolescents and horror stories about streamers and followers draining their bank accounts are popping up across the internet.

Meanwhile, a number of streamers have enormous and devoted followings across social media, and the lucrative industry is constantly evolving. Teens and young adults in particular have a fondness for watching livestreamers. According to a report in Wired, 21% of the users on Amazon-owned streaming platform Twitch are between 13 and 17 years old. 

Twitch has had a complicated relationship with gambling and casino streamers on its platform and has placed limits on the kind of gambling that is allowed. Some influencers have spoken out about the unrealistic expectations that gambling streamers create for their fan bases.

Influencers promoting gambling and betting companies

High-profile streamers, influencers, and celebrities have aligned themselves with gaming organizations like Stake, a crypto gambling and sports betting website. These figures share videos and pictures of themselves using Stake, gamble while livestreaming, promote the website, and sometimes share gambling earnings on social media.

For instance, rapper Drake has become an official partner of Stake, and the site has sponsored a handful of other influencers.

One of the most high-profile Stake-sponsored streamers is Ross, who has a “huge, dedicated fanbase” and exclusively streams on Twitch rival Kick. Kick is a new streaming platform that is reportedly backed by Stake and is a safe haven for white nationalist-linked content creators. The website features various gambling categories that viewers can join and watch streamers play.

On Kick, Ross labels some livestreams with “#AD,” appearing to indicate that the gambling he is doing on his stream is part of a sponsorship deal. At one point, Ross was reportedly making nearly $1 million a week from his Stake sponsorship.

Adin Ross Kick gambling

CitationScreenshot from Adin Ross' Kick profile

An 11-year-old Ross fan reportedly admitted to gambling on Stake after watching Ross’ streams.

Ross has publicly acknowledged that young kids watch his gambling streams and that past projects he has sponsored have been scams.

“By the way, that MILF token shit that I did a while back, I already told you guys, don't buy that shit,” Ross said during a livestream about a past crypto project he promoted. “I got paid a bag to do that shit. Like, I don't give a fuck. I hope none of you guys actually bought it."

During an interview on the H3 Podcast, Ross was told about the potential harms that could come from promoting crypto gambling.

“I’m learning a lot, bro,” Ross said after hearing about the potential harms gambling can have on his audience. “I’m honestly overwhelmed right now in my life. Because it’s just — it’s so new to me.”

“You make me rethink about it now, bro. …. It’s just something I — that just doesn’t click right for me,” Ross later added.

But following this interview, Ross did not stop working with Stake and airing gambling streams.

Video

CitationFrom the July 20, 2021, edition of H3 Podcast

Some of Ross’ sponsored streams are bombarded with racist and antisemitic comments, which could also have a negative impact on young viewers.

Ross recently sat down with UFC president and Trump superfan Dana White for an in-person gambling event. Following their meeting, Ross claimed that White hopes to connect Ross with Trump for a stream closer to the 2024 election. (White’s UFC also has an official partnership with Stake as well.)

Jake Paul, a right-wing influencer and professional fighter who has a massive following on social media including many young fans, co-founded Betr, a “microbetting-focused gaming company” that allows users to make monetary bets on specific plays or events, rather than betting on a team losing or winning a game. Paul appears to be hoping that the instant gratification of making money on small bets drives his young audience to Betr. Additionally, Paul has previously been accused of promoting gambling to kids.

Betr also appears to be targeting users on social media platforms that are frequented by young people, including TikTok and Instagram. The company has large followings on both platforms.

Other right-leaning influencers, including professional poker player Dan Bilzerian and gambling streamer Trainwreck (real name Tyler Niknam), have worked as sponsors for gambling companies in the past.

Major media companies are getting in on the sports betting action

Other outlets and platforms in the right-wing media ecosystem have aligned themselves with the gambling and sports betting industry.

Fox Corp., the parent company of Fox News and Fox Sports, is associated with Fox Bet, a mobile app and website that allows users to make monetary bets on professional sport competitions and play casino games. 

Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch has boasted about Fox’s foray into the sports betting world, describing the venture as “a huge opportunity” for Fox Sports’ portfolio.

And in 2021, Fox acquired right-wing sports website Outkick, which includes sports wagering and betting infrastructure. During a 2021 quarterly meeting with investors, Murdoch celebrated Outkick as an outlet that “will deepen our investment in the sports wagering ecosystem.”

The right-leaning media company Barstool Sports, founded by misogynist Dave Portnoy, operates Barstool Sportsbook, a sports betting platform and mobile app that is associated with Hollywood Casino.

Adolescent gambling addiction on the rise

Reports indicate that gambling addictions are increasing among teens and children, and experts are sounding the alarm.

The legal age to gamble in the United States is 18 or 21 years old depending on the state. This has not stopped influencers and gambling and sports betting companies from promoting their products and games to adolescents.

The earlier kids are exposed to gambling, the more likely they are to become addicted to the practice, according to a gambling treatment organization. Gambling addiction has the potential to “completely derail a person’s life,” cause mental health complications, and become a “gateway drug” to other adrenaline-inducing and potentially dangerous activities like drug use.

According to research from the International Centre for Youth Gambling Problems and High-Risk Behaviors, 4% to 6% of high school students are addicted to gambling. Compared to the 1% of adults addicted to the activity, this is a worrisome trend.

Researchers point to adolescents' underdeveloped brain functioning and emotionally driven decision making to understand why teens and children fall victim to gambling addiction.

Some sports betting and gambling groups have been fined for targeting their offerings to people under the legal gambling age.

While speaking with ABC News, Gary Schneider, a national board member of Stop Predatory Gambling, explained that these companies are targeting young users. “They want the next generation. They label it gaming,” Schneider said. “It's really gambling."

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social media influencer was convicted Friday in connection with a plot to undermine 

Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, the Department of Justice said.

Douglass Mackey, also known as “Ricky Vaughn,” was convicted of conspiracy against rights for a “scheme to deprive individuals of their constitutional right to vote,” the agency said.

Mackey faces up to 10 years in prison.

“Mackey has been found guilty by a jury of his peers of attempting to deprive individuals from exercising their sacred right to vote for the candidate of their choice in the 2016 Presidential Election,” U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said in a news release.

"Today’s verdict proves that the defendant’s fraudulent actions crossed a line into criminality and flatly rejects his cynical attempt to use the constitutional right of free speech as a shield for his scheme to subvert the ballot box and suppress the vote.”

Mackey amassed some 58,000 Twitter followers and was ranked as the 107th most important influencer ahead of the presidential election in February, 2016, by the MIT Media Lab.

Prosecutors alleged that Mackey in the months leading up to the 2016 election conspired with other influential Twitter users, among others, to spread disinformation encouraging Clinton supporters to cast invalid votes via text message or social media, the DOJ said.

In the days leading up to the election, Mackey sent tweets suggesting the importance of limiting “black turnout,” tweeting an image depicting an African American woman standing in front of an “African Americans for Hillary” sign.

The ad stated: “Avoid the Line. Vote from Home,” “Text ‘Hillary’ to 59925,” and “Vote for Hillary and be a part of history.”

The fine print at the bottom of the deceptive image stated: “Must be 18 or older to vote. One vote per person. Must be a legal citizen of the United States. Voting by text not available in Guam, Puerto Rico, Alaska or Hawaii. Paid for by Hillary For President 2016.”

The tweet included the “#ImWithHer” hashtag.

At least 4,900 unique telephone numbers texted “Hillary” or some variant of the 59925 text number, which had been used in multiple deceptive campaign images tweeted by Mackey and his co-conspirators.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/diversity-discrimination/beyond-andrew-tate-meet-misogynistic-manosphere-influencers-proliferating

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over the weekend, a special edition of COP, Look, Listen featured network analysis from Graphika, which showed that the anti-environmental, social, and governance (ESG) campaign has become a meeting ground for general rightwing twitter posters, and the climate disinfo-specific actors.

While their advanced network mapping of followers and content consumption used to showed that the climate disinformation group was a distinct sub-set of conservative accounts, now "computationally speaking, climate denialists in our analysis are no longer defined as distinct from right-wing culture wars influencers.

graphika found that "influencers in this group do the work of framing and amplifying climate topics as a culture wars issue, making it more palatable for a broader right-wing audience, beyond the usual climate denial community."

The top-performing ESG post, out of 13,000 tweets in October mentioning the acronym, was from Consumers Research, a group funded by conservative activist Leonard A. Leo as part of his billion-dollar “anti-woke” campaign.

Perhaps unsurprisingly given the financial resources at their disposal, right-leaning actors got more engagement, by far, than the International Environmental Community network.

Despite the fact that environmentalists tweeted way more content about ESG investing, Graphika found that "engagement from ideologically driven accounts far outweighs more consistent, reliable messaging on sustainable investing. It’s not the topic, but rather the divisive framing that wins attention and engagement."

Which means "the climate community needs to double down on support for campaigns to keep greenwashing out of ESG, as companies look for opportunities to backslide on commitments to appease critics. Because social media algorithms amplify salacious content over quality, those spreading outlandish disinformation are rewarded while those posting the (sometimes dry or technical) truth are shouted over."

With their billion-dollar backing and an assist from Big Tech, the Infowars Investors are dominating the digital discussion of ESG issues, and in the course of doing so, have managed to fully merge climate disinfo-specific and general rightwing audiences.

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In avideo posted on Twitter on October 11, frequent Fox News guest and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard announced that she was leaving the Democratic Party. Gabbard’s talking points were right out of the MAGA playbook when she slammed Democrats as “an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness” and declared, “The Democrats of today are hostile to people of faith and spirituality. They demonize the police and protect criminals at the expense of law-abiding Americans. The Democrats of today believe in open borders and weaponize the national security state to go after political opponents.”

Gabbard has gone from praising Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont in 2016 and running for president as a Democrat in 2020 to endorsing far-right “Stop the Steal” conspiracy theorist Kari Lake in Arizona’s 2022 gubernatorial race. Right-wing media, following Gabbard’s October 11 announcement, were quick to paint the former Hawaii congresswoman as an example of someone Democrats have alienated.

But one conservative who isn’t the least bit impressed with Gabbard’s defection from the Democratic Party is Never Trumper and Daily Beast opinion columnist Matt Lewis. In a biting October 20 column, Lewis is vehemently critic of Gabbard and slams her announcement as a cheap political stunt designed to promote “her new role as celebrity influencer.”

READ MORE: Tucker Carlson, Tulsi Gabbard among 'most influential' in spreading Ukraine disinfo: researcher

“To the degree that ‘wokeness’ is the 2022 update of ‘political correctness meets identity politics,’” Lewis argues, “Dems have been trafficking in that for decades…. So, why did Tulsi decide to break up with the Democrats, and why now? Gabbard may want to take a page from ex-Democrat Ronald Reagan, who famously said, ‘I didn’t leave the Democratic Party, the party left me.’ But the two are hardly analogous.”

Lewis continues, “I struggle to find any coherence in Gabbard’s political philosophy or strategy, but as a lifelong conservative, one possible answer may be that the Republican Party has left us. It has become the kind of MAGA party that is attractive to people like Lake, a former Obama voter; Donald Trump, a former Clinton supporter; Kanye ‘George Bush doesn't care about Black people’ West; Dr. Mehmet Oz of ‘Oprah’ fame; and now, the ex-Bernie-booster Tulsi Gabbard.”

The conservative columnist goes on to describe Gabbard’s defection from the Democratic Party as an example of former President Donald Trump’s toxic influence.

:{:{“In these reactionary times,” Lewis explains, “ambitious right-wing newbies just have to make the right enemies, and they are parlaying their fame into taking over not just the GOP, but the conservative movement…. A common thread among the MAGA upstarts is that they are opportunistic and attention-starved. Politics, once dreary and boring to the general public, is now a gateway to widespread attention, and the far right has by far the lowest barrier to entry. In this regard, Gabbard is merely the latest celebrity brand to hop on the conservative entertainment wing’s wagonin pursuit of even more clout.”}:

READ MORE: Tucker Carlson and Tulsi Gabbard are superstars on Russian state television

Lewis continues, “Seen in that light, Gabbard’s conversion, seemingly timed to coincide with the launch of a new podcast, is less confusing…. Tulsi didn’t have to pay her dues or show her conservative credentials — all she had to do is slam her own party. Instant MAGA stardom!.... Welcome aboard, Tulsi. You’ll fit right in!”}:

READ MORE: Legal experts and fact checkers dismantle Tulsi Gabbard’s 'absurd' comparison of press freedom in US and Russia

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When the COVID-19 pandemic was at its worst in 2020 and 2021, a combination of far-right conspiracy theorists, Christian nationalists and so-called “wellness influencers” added to the death count by pushing bogus, unscientific “cures” and falsely claiming that the lifesaving vaccines being offered by Moderna, Pfizer and others were dangerous. But COVID-19, although still highly infectious, hasn’t been in the headlines as much in recent months — and some fake “wellness influencers” and conspiracy theorists, according to Daily Beast reporter Cécile Simmons, have turned their attention to monkeypox.

“Though little is understood about the mysterious outbreaks of the monkeypox virus in Europe and North America,” Simmons reports in an article published by the Beast on June 15, “scientists agree on one thing: It’s nothing like COVID. But that doesn’t seem to have stopped some influencers in the alternative health and wellness community from repurposing COVID misinformation and using this new public health crisis to further their own agendas.”

Simmons adds, “In the early months of the coronavirus pandemic, alt-health and wellness online influencers — from yoga teachers to fitness instructors — became some of the most active propagators of conspiracy theories about COVID-19. With cases now on the decline in much of the West — thanks in no small part to widespread vaccination campaigns — monkeypox has provided new material to rehash the narratives that brought these influencers attention in the early days of COVID, including claims that monkeypox is a plot engineered by global elites to profit from diseases and restrict individual freedoms.”

One of the conspiracy theorists who promoted dangerously false information about COVID-19 during the worst parts of the pandemic was anti-vaxxer Sayer Ji,founder of the alternative medicine website GreenMedInfo.com. In 2022, Simmons reports, Ji has turned his attention to monkeypox.

“Sayer Ji has dedicated his social media channels to making repeated unproven claims about nightmarish vaccine side effects, including death, and that COVID vaccination is a plot masterminded by big pharma and ‘the global government,’” Simmons explains. “And now, with monkeypox on the rise, Sayer Ji has taken to his Telegram channel and Twitter to spread ludicrous claims that monkeypox is the mainstream media’s way of covering up side-effects caused by COVID vaccines to his roughly 50,000 and 11.5k followers, respectively. His Telegram channel includes multiple posts claiming that cases of monkeypox have coincided with the purchase of vaccines by the U.S., among other bizarre theories.”

Another “wellness” influencer/conspiracy theorist pushing wacky claims about monkeypox is Hiighhopess,who, according to Simmons, “recently used her Instagram stories to describe monkeypox as a profiteering ploy manufactured by Bill Gates, and shared claims that the U.S. government is stockpiling vaccines and planning to impose vaccination against monkeypox.”

During the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Simmons notes, Hiighhopess, an anti-vaxxer, “used her Instagram channel to share anti-vaccine and anti-mask content, including posts depicting vaccination as a plot by elites to manipulate the public into submission.”

“This repurposing of the COVID playbook by alternative health and wellness gurus should come as no surprise,” Simmons observes. “COVID has provided a blueprint for conspiracy theories, allowing influencers to develop broad-ranging anti-elite and anti-institutional narratives that can be adapted to emerging public health crises.It has also allowed conspiracy-spreaders to use various techniques, including decontextualizing scientific data and cherry-picking facts to give themselves a veneer of credibility.”

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...In part, the breathtaking success of worldwide anti-vaccination campaigns is due to the fact that there is an entire,incredibly lucrative cottage industry devoted to pumping out vaccine disinformation.Many of the most successful anti-vaccine activists rake in advertising money from their popular YouTube channels; some further enrich themselves through sales of supplements, detox regimens, and other wellness products, the Center for Countering Digital Hate has found. Social media makes it cheap and easy to reach international customers—and international versions of popular social media platforms lack even the basic disinformation censors found in American versions. Children’s Health Defense, the prominent and influential anti-vaccine group led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., recently launched a European version of its site. Joseph Mercola, the influential anti-vaccine osteopath, offers Spanish and French editions of his site; his videos have been translated into many languages, according to the New York Times. In a 2017 affidavit, Mercola reported his net worth to be in excess of $100 million. 

American influencers’ messages often resonate with communities that seem to have little in common with the United States, says Joe Smyser, CEO of  Public Good Projects, a nonprofit in Washington, DC, that collaborates with UNICEF on studying vaccine hesitancy. Recently, his team followed the path of an American op-ed criticizing pandemic restrictions from its origin in the United States all the way to East Timor, where it took off on local social media. And when Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul said he opposed government vaccine mandates, “that got a lot of traction in social networks across Vietnam,” Smyser says. “It was used to push back against the Vietnamese government and Vietnamese public health officials.”

But there is another reason that anti-vaccine content finds its way around the world, with consequences even more dangerous and pervasive than those from anti-vaccine activists. In his study, Wilson’s team found that foreign governments—particularly Russia—were amplifying all kinds of messages both in support of and against vaccines. This is a well-established destabilization tactic that leverages social media to polarize an entire population around a particularly contentious issue—Russia used it to undermine the 2016 US presidential election, for example. The point isn’t to promote any single viewpoint; it’s to sow chaos. “A lot of the time, you’ll have bots pushing six completely contradictory, mutually exclusive stories,” Wilson says. “But what unifies all of them is trying to get people to throw up their hands and say, ‘I guess it’s impossible to know what the truth is.’”

Just as Wilson was wrapping up his study, the pandemic began—and suddenly, his research took on new meaning and urgency. Around the world, social media channels were flooded with wild claims about the new disease and the tools to fight it. He watched in horror as powerful people—even heads of state—amplified the “disinformation campaigns online that have managed to blow it vastly out of the original proportion of a few individuals who were hardcore believers.”

Public Good Project/Nimbus Capture]

Which narrative takes off in any given country depends on the culture and history of the place. In May 2020, Kenyan evangelical pastor Fred Akama posted a rant on Facebook, which began “THE GATES OF BILL SHALL NOT PREVAIL.” Bill Gates “predicted that a viral pandemic would hit the world,” the post continued, with the clear implication that the philanthropist was somehow complicit in and profiting from the creation and spread of Covid. Akama also accused Gates of having unethically close ties with the World Health Organization and vaccine producers and called him an enemy of the Christian faith. He has more than 15,000 followers on Facebook.

Akama wasn’t the only social media influencer in Kenya warning about Bill Gates’ motives. “If you look at the kind of stuff that is circulating in East Africa…you find that the content seems to be very similar,” says Eric Mugendi, who works at Meedan, a San Francisco–based technology nonprofit supporting fact-checking and verification of organizations. “The kind of language that was being used and the types of people who were spreading it—a lot of times it was religious leaders,” Mugendi says, arguing that anti-vaxxers often link their arguments to Gates and liberal philanthropist George Soros. They accuse them of wanting to test vaccines’ efficacy on Africans, profit from vaccine sales, control the human population through microchipping, and prevent the growth of the African population.

“The unifying factor is encouraging distrust of elites and experts and Westerners on any level.”

Disinformation campaigns that play up nefarious motives of powerful people are common worldwide. In the United States, a widely shared video called Plandemic popularized the conspiracy theory about Gates early in the pandemic. This strain of disinformation is particularly effective in Africa because of deep-seated anxiety that Western governments want to slow population growth in the developing world, notes Wilson of Brandeis University. “The unifying factor is encouraging distrust of elites and experts and Westerners on any level,” he says.

Ultraconservative groups in Africa have a long history of spinning a variety of Gates conspiracy theories. The anti-abortion movement in Africa has employed this tactic for at least a decade. In a 2017 article in Pacific Standard, Kathryn Joyce reported on a prominent Nigerian anti-abortion activist Obianuju Ekeocha, who in 2012 spoke out against a Gates Foundation contraceptives campaign. American anti-choice groups helped Ekeocha create a new group, Culture of Life Africa. This complemented an ongoing campaign by Human Life International, a hardline US anti-abortion group operating around the world. Its mission? To spread the message that “Western governments and NGOs are using great sums of money and influence to destroy the traditionally life-loving African culture.”

There’s a convergence these days between seemingly unrelated public health issues, as many of the same US-sponsored organizations that oppose abortion have pivoted their messaging to address Covid vaccinations. One such group is CitizenGO, an ultraconservative petition mill with outposts worldwide. CitizenGO Africa, whose anti-abortion work Mother Jones covered here, is led by a Kenyan woman named Ann Kioko, who was trained in workshops by the American Leadership Institute, a conservative organization that counts former Vice President Mike Pence, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and Karl Rove among its distinguished alumni. 

In 2020, CitizenGo posted an online petition titled “Bill Gates and WHO: Hands Off Africa” intended to send a “firm message to the Bill Gates Foundation and the World Health Organization that Africa is not a test lab, Africans are people with human dignity and Africans will not be used to try vaccines whose purpose is not known.” The petition accuses Gates of having Covid vaccines “tested on Africa as he stages them [vaccines] as the only solution to the pandemic.” It also accuses Bill and Melinda Gates of attempting to control the African population via contraception and abortion. “Melinda Gates told the Washington Post she is frustrated with the Trump administration’s decision to cut funding for international ‘reproductive-rights projects,’ (READ ABORTION) calling it ‘incredibly disappointing,’” the petition read. ...

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maga q vaxxers self ID as good marks for grift, so they are targets for extraction?  will pay for simple immediate  solution?

https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/these-anti-vaxxers-and-wellness-influencers-have-been-applauding-putins-ukraine-invasion-report/

no lnx

These anti-vaxxers and ‘wellness influencers’ have been applauding Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine invasion: report

Alex Henderson March 25, 2022

Support for Russian President Vladimir Putin is by no means universal on the America right. Many conservatives, from Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah to media Never Trumpers like The Bulwark’s Charlie Sykes, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and the Washington Post’s Max Boot, have been blistering critics of Putin — especially during the brutal invasion of Ukraine.

Yet in the MAGA cult, Putin has had his share of apologists — from Fox News’ Tucker Carlson to “War Room” host Steve Bannon to former President Donald Trump. And Mother Jones’ Kiera Butler, in an article published on March 24, focuses on a bizarre trend: far-right anti-vaxxers and online “wellness influencers” who have become cheerleaders for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Butler previously reported on pro-Putin anti-vaxxers in a March 2 article, and since then, the Mother Jones journalist stresses,the “overlap” between pro-Putin propagandists and anti-vaxxers “has only grown.”

“(On March 19), the Toronto Star reported a startling correlation between vaccination status and beliefs about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” Butler explains. “More than 80% of vaccinated Canadians said they believed their country should help defend Ukraine, compared to less than a quarter of unvaccinated people. This dynamic is especially pronounced in extremist spaces. Some of the anti-mandate trucker convoy chats on Telegram now seem dominated by Putin cheerleading.”

Some online “wellness influencers,” according to Butler, have been claiming that President Joe Biden is “trying to pull a fast one on them by painting Russia as the aggressor” in Ukraine.

“Should social media platforms flag influencers’ content as disinformation,” Butler observes, “it only serves to reinforce their belief that they are being punished for their righteous truth-telling. Some influencers have monetized their self-proclaimed martyrdom by sharing disinformation about Ukraine and hawking their own wellness items.”

twt

Instagram, according to Butler, is one of the social media platforms where pro-Putin anti-vaxxers and “wellness influencers” have been plentiful.

“Beyond the oils and the tinctures, influencers are selling something much more valuable: a sense offierce and uncompromising maternal identity,” Butler observes. “The account bios frequently mention natural childbirth, breastfeeding, and attachment parenting — and their posts and stories tie events in Ukraine back to defending their families from what they see as government overreach.”

Anti-vaxxers who are sympathetic to Putin, Butler writes, are also more likely to be influenced by the far-right pro-Trump conspiracy group QAnon.

“Factions of anti-vaccine groups increasingly embraced COVID denialism and dabbled in QAnon,” Butler notes. “The Russians’ initial plan of dividing Americans had worked better than they could have possibly expected — so that by the time Russia invaded Ukraine earlier this year, anti-vaccine activists were primed to believe that Putin was the good guy.”

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https://www.mediamatters.org/lara-logan/fox-refuses-clarify-its-relationship-lara-logan-she-interviewed-qanon-influencer

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/the-trumpified-gop-has-a-whole-new-generation-of-power-brokers-and-influencers-report/

no lnx

The Trumpified GOP has a whole new generation of power brokers and 'kingmakers': report

Alex Henderson February 04, 2022

The fact that so many well-known right-wing Republicans endorsed Joe Biden during the United States’ 2020 presidential race —from former Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona to former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina to Sen. John McCain’s widow Cindy McCain — speaks volumes about how dramatically former President Donald Trump remade the GOP in his image, and how alienated they fell from the party. The GOP landscape is radically different from what it was during the Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama years, and journalists Jonathan Swan and Lachlan Markay describe that landscape in an article published by Axios on February 4.

“Paths to power and winning elections inside the GOP are changing rapidly and radically, spawning a new generation of kingmakers while diminishing the clout of many who lorded over the party for years,” Swan and Markay explain. “Why it matters: 14 of the Republican Party's top consultants and operatives across the country spoke in detail with Axios about how profoundly primary races have changed since 2014 — the last pre-Donald Trump midterm election and the last midterms in which a Democrat occupied the White House.”

The reporters continue, “What we found: Those sources — whose clients range from as Trumpy as they come to establishment Republicans — described a clear shift in the party's power brokers. They spoke of changes to the ecosystem across four categories: institutional upheaval, endorsements, conservative media and donors.”

Swan and Markay go on to list Republicans who “had the power” in the past — a group that includes the National Review, the National Rifle Association, the Drudge Report, Heritage Action and the “Koch network,” among others.

But their “who has the power now” list is much more MAGA.That list includesTrump and his “family and former aides” as well as Breitbart News,Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, Ben Shapiro’s the Daily Wire, former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon and the Susan B. Anthony List.

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Swan and Markay also mention “online influencers, including Candace Owens, Ben Shapiro, Dan Bongino, Joe Rogan, Jack Posobiec, Charlie Kirk and Marjorie Taylor-Greene.”...

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https://www.mediamatters.org/qanon-conspiracy-theory/qanon-influencers-are-urging-followers-get-involved-locally-and-school

many lnx vod

QAnon influencers are urging followers to get involved locally and with school boards

WRITTEN BY ALEX KAPLAN

RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM DANIL CUFFE, KAYLA GOGARTY & CLARA MARTINY

PUBLISHED 01/26/22

This past summer, a woman named Anna Desenze -- an anti-masker who has expressed support for the QAnon conspiracy theory -- spoke at a school board meeting in Broward County, Florida. While railing against a school mask mandate, she falsely claimed that “there’s so much science out there that proves that the masks are more harmful than anything else” and that ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine can effectively treat the coronavirus. She later made similar claims at another school board meeting in October.

In July, the hosts of the MatrixxxGrooove Show, a show dedicated to QAnon, noted that Desenze was a listener of the show and claimed that they had encouraged her to take action. She’s “actually thanking us for her getting out there,” a co-host of the show said. They also posted and hyped the clips of her school board rants on Telegram.

intheMatrixxx Desenze post2

Similarly, in September, a group of anti-mask protesters disrupted a closed meeting of a California school board, forced it to adjourn, and then voted themselves in as new members without any legal basis. One of the protesters, a man named Derek Greco, was named president of the new (illegitimate) school board.

Days before that meeting, Greco had posted a video on Facebook featuring QAnon show host Scott McKay claiming that he had been texting with Greco and that Greco had invoked a post from “Q,” the central figure of the conspiracy theory, while speaking before a city council meeting. Greco -- who has also posted a video about “the Great Awakening,” a QAnon-connected phrase -- wrote that he had met McKay in June and that he had “forever changed my view on how to address these issues in our local governments.”

McKay in turn posted praise for Greco’s school board takeover, writing, “This is where the war is being fought today.” And on his show, McKay claimed that Greco credited the QAnon show host for his actions at the school board meeting. McKay added that Greco “showed you how it works,” in that “you go after these milquetoast pussies and cowards, the dumbest people in America, on these school boards.” McKay declared, “It’s training ground for the city councils. It’s training ground for the town councils. It’s training ground for these city commissioners.”

CitationFrom a stream of Patriot Streetfighter uploaded on Rumble on September 13, 2021

In November, McKay posted an “update” from Greco about “taking over the school board,” claiming the government had “weaponized law enforcement against parent’s asking questions” and asking for help contacting other QAnon influencers.

Desenze and Greco’s actions appear to be part of an effort among QAnon influencers to get supporters more involved with local office elections and school boards. Michael Flynn, a QAnon-supporting former national security adviser for then-President Donald Trump, seems to have played a major role in spurring the movement, which appears to have already shown signs of impact.

In May, Flynn urged followers in a Telegram post to “get involved,” “take responsibility for your school committees or boards,” and “run for local, state and/or federal office.” He also added that “local action = national impact” (the MatrixxxGrooove Show used a similar phrase when it posted about Desenze at the school board meeting). Over the coming months, Flynn continued to make the case for people to take “local action” for a “national impact.”

Flynn May post

Soon after Flynn’s call in May, attorney Sidney Powell also urged supporters to get involved locally. (Powell advised Trump’s legal efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and also has extensive QAnon ties.) During a QAnon conference in May, Powell told attendees that “there are no military tribunals that are going to solve this problem for us” and “it’s going to take every one of us rolling up their sleeves.” She also specifically called for people to target school boards as part of this local effort.

And in July, Lin Wood, another QAnon-supporting attorneyinvolved with Trump’s election efforts and who unsuccessfully ran for chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party, called for followers to “live local and take local action” and to “assemble and protest local school boards mandating masks or worse for our children.”

A number of QAnon influencers have since called for local action, such as telling people to go “to your school board meetings and demand they remove mask mandates and critical race theory.”

In August, “QAnon John,” the influencer who organized the May conference that Powell (and Flynn) attended, wrote that Flynn’s call was “VERY important.” An administrator for QAnon John’s group The Patriot Voice urged others to “get loud and in the face of school boards, city councils, county commissioners, [and] state reps.”

Zak Paine, a QAnon show host who participated in part of the January 6 insurrection, urged his listeners to “please consider running for school board,” adding, “Start going to the meetings and once you’re at the meetings, then you can start learning how they do their business and then you can go ahead and run for school board yourself.”

CitationFrom the October 28, 2021, edition of RedPill78

Jim Watkins -- the QAnon-supporting owner of 8kun, the site where Q posted -- argued that Q’s plan was “no more” and agreed with Flynn to “take action locally” instead. A major QAnon forum also added a banner featuring text from Flynn’s May post.

In October, amajor QAnon Telegram channel even posted a link to an article on how to join a school board, calling it “food for thought” because “this nation ain’t gonna save itself.”

QAnon school board link post

The influencers’ calls may be showing signs of impact, with some QAnon supporters claiming they’ve taken action in response. Some wrote that they were “running for school board” or were “in charge of my kids school board now.” Others wrote that they were helping to get “citizens involved on every level...city/county government, election boards, school boards, etc.,” or that they were “going to keep going every month” to school board meetings to attack mandates, noting that sometimes they were one of the few people there. “GhostEzra,” a neo-Nazi QAnon influencer, encouraged followers to run for office; in response, several said that they were “thinking about running for school board” or other offices like city council, including one follower who appeared to be a poll worker who was called as a “witness” by the Arizona state legislature following the 2020 presidential election to push voter fraud claims.

In response to a link shared in a QAnon channel about how to run for school board, users wrote that they “needed this” and asked for “a guide on how to become part of your city council and how to be appointed or elected to your county’s election board” as well. One follower of a QAnon influencer also bragged that she had joined her town council in West Virginia after encouragement from the influencer, sharing a video of herself being sworn in.

QAnon supporter school board post6

Some QAnon shows have also highlighted what they claim are signs of impact. The MatrixxxGrooove Show highlighted a video of a QAnon-supporting follower of the show making false claims about vaccines at a board of supervisors meeting in California and saying that “nothing can stop the awakening of humanity.” The man wrote that he credited the show’s hosts and Michael Flynn “for giving me the courage to do this,” with the hosts on the show urging Flynn to share the video and claiming that they had sent it to his brother. (Flynn did share the video as well, repeating his “national impact” slogan.)

CitationFrom the November 17, 2021, edition of the MatrixxxGrooove Show

Another QAnon show, SGT Report, has also featured an interview with an Ohio man who “read [his] school board the riot act, the legal riot act,” over mask mandates, and the man credited the show for his action. The host said the incident was part of “a great awakening,” and the man invoked Flynn’s “national impact” line for inspiring his strategy.

Video file

CitationFrom a stream of SGT Report uploaded on Rumble on November 17, 2021

There have also been multiple reported instances of school board members and candidates supporting QAnon in Colorado, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. (While responding to a question about her QAnon posts, the Michigan school board member falsely claimed, “There’s no such thing as QAnon.” She was echoing Q’s call from late 2020 urging followers to stop using the term “QAnon” and to instead deny its existence.) A Rhode Island woman who invoked the QAnon slogan -- “where we go one, we go all,” or “wwg1wga” for short -- formed an anti-critical race theory group to target her school committee and wrote that she planned to “run for school committee.”

Other people who have expressed support for QAnon have also been elected around the country or tried to run for office, such as Tracy “Beanz” Diaz, one of the first people to popularize QAnon, being elected to a position in the Horry County, South Carolina, Republican Party, and QAnon supporter Gene Ho unsuccessfully running for mayor of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

The QAnon community’s focus on school boards was also noted at QAnon John’s follow-up QAnon conference in Las Vegas in October. While discussing how attendees could get more involved, the conference’s emcee said, “What's happening in the school boards is magic.” The National Education Association, a labor union, also warned in June about QAnon school board candidates as an increasing issue nationally.

Citation From the "Patriot Double Down" QAnon conference in Las Vegas on October 23, 2021

In addition to the “local action equals national impact” plan, the QAnon community has also embraced a plan called the “precinct strategy” to sign up as Republican precinct committee members -- who are involved with election activities -- which multiple QAnon supporters have also since done. Others on the far-right have also focused on local positions as a strategy for consolidating power and gaining influence in recent months.

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SUBSTX --> NYT

Emily Sanders is the Center for Climate Integrity’s editorial lead. Catch up with

...Just days after the Big Oil hearing, the Center for Countering Digital Hate, an international nonprofit that “seeks to disrupt the architecture of online hate and misinformation,” released areport finding that posts linking to content from just ten publishers account for 69 percent of Facebook users’ interactions with climate denial content.

Dubbed the “Toxic Ten,” those publishers are:

Examples of viral climate denial content included aWashington Times article claiming there is a “cult of ‘climate change’” whose “worship” is based on unproven science, a Breitbart piece promoting conspiracy theories that climate legislation involves “lockdown decrees,” and a Newsmax article telling readers not to “worry too much about CO2 baking the planet.”

This type of content didn’t emerge on its own. CCDH’s CEO, Imran Ahmed, said the fossil fuel industry has “shown its willingness to embrace new technologies and every tool available to it to create harm — and climate denial is harm.” Social media, he says, is the last frontier for Big Oil to cultivate opposition against climate action that might threaten their bottom line.

“If they can’t win the battle on legislation, they’re going to seek to undermine the consensus, the self-preservatory consensus that underpins the push for legislation. They know that you can’t possibly get political agreement if we can’t even agree on the basic facts,” Ahmed said. “And all they have to do is simulate the appearance of dissent, of debate.”

According to the report, Facebook and Google, which have portrayed themselves as “green” and allies in the fight for climate action, are doing business with denial. CCDH’s research found that Facebook failed to label 92 percent of the Toxic Ten’s climate disinformation, despite the company’s pledge to start placing information labels on posts about climate change. It found that eight of the Toxic Ten have received a combined $5.3 million in revenue from Google ads in the last six months alone. Google promised to stop attaching ads to climate denial content in October, setting its own deadline of November 9 — but it hasn’t acted on that promise yet.

[twt]

...CCDH isn’t alone in calling this out: online climate disinformation has been identified as an urgent and emerging issue in pieces published in The New York Times, The Conversation, and The Nation within the past week.

CCDH’s research was released during COP26, this year’s United Nations climate summit, where at least 503 fossil fuel lobbyists — more than any country’s delegation — were present, according to an analysis by Corporate Accountability and other advocacy groups.

Go figure: the industry’s attempts to halt climate action through third parties have been simultaneously occurring online, where, thanks to internet trolls, right-wing publications, and the cooperation of social media platforms, they can now reach exponentially more members of the public. At least two of the Toxic Ten have historic ties to funding from ExxonMobil: 

Digital platforms make that particularly easy through frequency bias — a fundamental psychological characteristic that causes humans to believe that something must be true or at least popular if we see it frequently enough. And disinformation, whether about vaccinations or climate change or electoral processes, is “sticky,” or “chewy,” in Ahmed’s words — it gets people talking.

Ben Decker, CEO of Memetica, a firm that works to investigate disinformation across digital media platforms, called climate disinformation “the legacy disinformation narrative plaguing America,” and fossil fuel companies the “historical purveyors” of that disinformation.

“The content itself becomes a space where fossil fuel companies can advertise themselves,” said Decker, who says policies to address climate change, not necessarily the science itself, are now the greatest target for these kinds of attacks.

Both Decker and Ahmed referred to the “asymmetry” of these so-called debates, which are manufactured with the help of the fossil fuel industry’s immense resources, and enabled by social media platforms that profit from publishers who advertise climate denial content on their sites.

So how do we tackle the climate disinformation crisis?

CCDH’s report calls on social media companies to stop monetizing and profiting from climate denial, and to comprehensively label climate disinformation on their websites. “It is amazing that the regulatory framework for a bodega in Manhattan is more onerous than that for a company like Facebook, which has literally caused at least one genocide,” Ahmed said, in reference to the violence in Myanmar.

In Decker’s view, it’s important for social media companies to codify exactly what images and words constitute climate disinformation if they’re going to prevent its spread. “They’re coy and smart around the words that they use,” he said of publishers and bad actors that facilitate harm over these platforms.

Growing wells of academic and journalistic research on evolving climate disinformation, and now the ongoing House Oversight investigation, could help define and identify harmful content. But if you ask Ahmed, the problem goes deeper than a lack of consensus or standards.

“We get too tied up in the technology of algorithms, automated moderation, AI and machine learning,” Ahmed said. “It’s a moral choice to gaslight the earth, and that’s what social media companies are doing. They’re making a moral choice to do business with climate denial. These are rapacious companies willing to sell out their communities, nations, and the planet, for their own wealth.”

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ICYMI News Roundup

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https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/12/opinion/climate-change-facebook-glasgow.html

GREG BENSINGER

Social Media Is Polluted With Climate Denialism

Nov. 12, 2021

Greg Bensinger

Mr. Bensinger is a member of the editorial board.

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This fall, Exxon Mobil started targeting New Yorkers with Facebook advertisements that warned about a proposed law that would require electric-only appliances in some buildings. “If your household was required to go full electric, it could cost you more than $25,600 to replace major appliances,” one ad reads.

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But the ad doesn’t tell the whole story: The law would apply only to new buildings, making Exxon’s cost claims specious at best. Other advertisements, among roughly 1,200 placed by the fossil fuel giant found by the artificial intelligence outfit Eco-Bot.Netthis year, claimed oil pipelines are necessary to keep “energy affordable and accessible” and that natural gas helps customers “meet their environmental goals.”

These are examples of so-called greenwashing, or corporate attempts to underplay companies’ true impact on the environment. Along with other climate misinformation on social media, such ads have become a potent threat to efforts to combat global warming.Researchers for the environmental group Stop Funding Heat found that climate misinformation is viewed as often as 1.36 million times daily on Facebook.

Social media companies simply aren’t rising to the challenge of rising sea levels. Climate change is an urgent threat, but the companies are treating misinformation around it with far less urgency than other issues like political conspiracy theories, hate speech and lies about Covid vaccines. Climate content can be considered opinion and is therefore exempt from standard fact-checking procedures, which climate change deniers have seized on to push misleading information onto the sites.

The largest social media firms demonstrated in last year’s presidential election that they can effectively combat some misinformation by appending warning labels, using algorithmic suppression and adding links to more reliable news sources. But such work requires sustained effort, and Facebook, for one, dismantled its well-intentioned civic integrity group overseeing election misinformation shortly after the 2020 presidential vote.

“The results from the American presidential election show that the social media companies have the capacity to address misinformation on a broad scale,” said John Cook, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Climate Change Communication Research Hub at Monash University who is advising Facebook on its climate misinformation efforts. “But they’ve not put the resources or effort behind this that are necessary.”

Even with the rapid shift in public opinion and the outward signs of global warming in recent years, social media companies have been slow to adapt, allowing sometimes blatant disinformation to flourish unchecked on their sites. Under Facebook company guidelines, climate content may be categorized as opinion and subject to no more scrutiny than peer-reviewed scientific research.

Social media companies have a standard playbook for addressing many online falsehoods: add warning labels, push them lower in an algorithmically driven news feed, remove them or penalize their creators by suspending or barring them from using the site. But often misleading posts, such as one that claims combating climate change “involves Americans giving up their freedom and way of life,” carry an incongruous and wishy-washy Facebook label about local average temperatures. Compare that to the labels appended to former President Donald Trump’s voting misinformation posts, which Facebook called “disputed” or “misleading.”

Posts featuring conspiracy theories around Texas’ February power grid failure that left many residents freezing in the dark racked up millions of views on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, particularly ones falsely suggesting that frozen wind turbines or President Biden’s energy policies were to blame. The companies did little to intervene. Representative Lauren Boebert, Republican of Colorado, falsely alleged in a tweet that Mr. Biden’s energy policies were “leaving millions of Texans freezing to death.” Twitter never appended a clarifying label.

Employees at Facebook have wrestled internally with how to approach climate change misinformation since at least 2019, according to documents released by the former Facebook employee Frances Haugen. According to one exchange, an employee seemed flummoxed by the company’s refusal to remove posts featuring climate change denial, because global warming is not a matter of opinion. Another employee said Facebook removes posts when “content may lead to imminent harm against people offline.”

[Opinion Conversation The climate, and the world, are changing. What challenges will the future bring, and how should we respond to them?

What does climate change look like around the world?

From “Postcards From a World on Fire,” these 193 stories show how climate change is reshaping reality.

What should our leaders be doing?

Al Gore, the 45th vice president of the United States, finds reasons for optimism in the Biden presidency.

What are the worst climate risks in your country?

Select a country, and we'll break down the climate hazards it faces.

Where are Americans suffering most?

Our maps, developed with experts, show where extreme heat is causing the most deaths in the U.S.]

Facebook said its policy of not fact-checking or labeling posts from politicians was justified because the company doesn’t “want to limit political speech on the platform” — despite evidence it has that politicians are more likely to be believed than regular users and their posts are more widely shared.

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Facebook, which has called climate change the “greatest threat we all face,” has established only a sparsely visited section on its main site, known as the Climate Science Center, with occasional articles addressing rising global temperatures.

Climate skeptics are simply altering tactics from outright climate change denial to discrediting evidence and shifting blame from corporations to individuals, said Michael Mann, the author of “The New Climate War.”

On YouTube, the nonprofit Heartland Institute, known for attacking climate science, has backed the Germaninfluencer Naomi Seibt, who has posted videos denying climate change “hysteria” and encouraging viewers to live carefree lives. But YouTube rarely appends warning labels directing users to more reliable information, even as her videos garner thousands of views.

YouTube says it uses software to make debunked climate content less likely to show up in people’s recommendation feeds, but the climate activism nonprofit Avaaz found last year that the algorithm still prompted millions of views of questionable videos. The group also found that YouTube was selling ads to run alongside them.

As a result, Google, YouTube’s parent company, recently took a baby step, announcing it will no longer allow websites and YouTube creators to make money off advertising that denies humans’ contributions to climate change or denies global warming. Similarly, Facebook said climate change and global warming were on a list of topics that could no longer be used by marketers to target advertising, starting next year.

But spreading false information on the sites remains as easy as making a few keystrokes.

With the public shifting toward acceptance of climate change, corporate strategies are also evolving, including companies’ use of paid influencers on Instagram and TikTok who embark on idyllic road trips to Joshua Tree National Park using Shell gasoline or who snack on chips from Phillips 66 stations. In an effort to combat legislation to ban natural gas hookups, the fossil fuel industry also is paying Instagram stars to post videos of anodyne tasks like cooking tacos over gas stoves. The aim is to conjure good feelings about the brands, known to be significant contributors to carbon emissions, and perhaps even to convince consumers that they are stylish.

Elsewhere on the web, pages have sprung up with names like Climate Change Is Crap and Climate Change Is Natural to spew denialism on social media — no targeted ads needed. One headline from Climate Realism: “Evidence Indicates Climate Change Doesn’t Threaten Human Health.”

Social media could be a forum f or healthy debate about climate action, but the companies’ flimsy policies around policing climate change misinformation stand in the way. Automated software systems are simply not enough to combat misinformation about an unalterably changing Earth.

Facebook, YouTube and other companies have shown they have the power to amplify facts and suppress lies — will they use that to help protect Earth from its most dire threat?

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.

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commodification monetization of person /brand

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/bitclout-the-dystopian-crypto-based-social-app-popularized-by-stop-the-steal-leader-ali-alexander/

bitClout: The Dystopian Crypto-Based Social App Popularized by ‘Stop The Steal’ Leader Ali Alexander

ByKarim Zidan | April 21, 2021 12:49 pm

Website of the BitClout social media network with sing up button on the smartphone screen. (Viktollio / Shutterstock.com)]

“The future of social media just got a lifeline.”

These were the words spoken by Ali Alexander, the far-right organizer behind the so-called Stop the Steal movement, during a recent interview on”The Reality Operating System” YouTube show. Dressed in his signature plain orange sweater and seated against a beige backdrop that gave no hints as to his whereabouts, Alexander spoke about BitClout, a decentralized social media platform developed on blockchain technology that allows users to buy and sell tokens based on people’s reputations or “clout.” Creators and celebrities can monetize their internet presence by allowing their fans to invest in their “creator coins,” while general users can speculate and invest in people and posts to drive up their value as they would on the stock market.

In a nutshell, BitClout is a combination of Twitter, Patreon, and Robinhood—a one-stop shop that provides a social media platform and crypto-exchange for influencers and content creators.

Alexander’s fascination with BitClout is unsurprising. The application serves as an alternative to mainstream social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, both of which have banned his accounts after the events of Jan. 6. And while sites such as Parler and Gab have fashioned themselves as censorship-free alternatives to Twitter, BitClout stands out because of its decentralized nature. According to BitClout’s official website, the application has “no company behind it—just coins and code.”

“It is the most exciting thing I have seen on the internet—ever,” Alexander, who refers to himself as “The BitClout Oracle,” explained during the interview. “This is going places.” 

While BitClout has excited users clamoring for a censorship-resistant social media platform,  the application has already courted plenty of controversy since its launch in March 2021. The start-up has been criticized for prepopulating its network with some 15,000 accounts created around popular Twitter profiles without their account-holder’s permission, allowing users to invest in coins for people like Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Kim Kardashian, YouTube sensationMr. Beast, and Ariana Grande.

BitClout’s commodification of individuals is eerily dystopian. It also raises questions about the future of decentralized social media and the people who profit off it.

A Decentralized, Dystopian Social Space

When a Twitter user informed William Shatner, the renowned Canadian actor best known icon for his portrayal of Captain James T. Kirk in the original “Star Trek” series, that he had an account on BitClout, the actor was not impressed.

“It’s a scam and I’ve not authorized my name or likeness to be used,” Shatner wrote on Twitter in March. “So if you see my name or photo there it’s not been authorized.” 

Shatner, whose coin price is currently valued at $553 despite never signing up for an account, is not the only public figure to complain about BitClout’s controversial tactics. Other celebrities have complained about having their likeness monetized without their permission, while prominent crypto law firm Anderson Kill P.C. sent a cease-and-desist letter to the BitClout’s alleged founder on behalf of their client Brandon Curtis, the chief research officer at decentralized cryptocurrency exchange Radar Relay, for using his private information without his consent.

“Adopting Bitcoin’s aesthetic to raise VC funding to carry out unethical and blatantly illegal schemes like BitClout: not cool,” Curtis tweeted.

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/04/republicans-fantasy/

in the real world, there are real problems that serious people are worried about: global pandemic, climate change, economic inequality, systematic racism, mass shootings, and gendered violence, just to name a few. The problem for Republicans, of course, is that they are, quite literally, on the wrong side of pretty much each of those issues, and spend their time either actively making problems worse or getting in the way of people who want to fix things. Outside of sociopaths, Fox News hosts, and people with "Pepe" memes in their Twitter profiles, however, few people want to look in the mirror and see a villain gazing back at them. So right-wing media, which has always been addicted to selling its audiences on imaginary threats and preposterous fairy tales of conservative victimhood, has only been escalating such nonsense in recent months as the Republican policy agenda has been increasingly exposed to be nonexistent.

If your "team" is on the side of the Capitol insurrectionists and Derek Chauvin, it's hard to suppress the haunting fear that you're the baddies. So Fox News is on hand to spoon out alluring fantasies that recast liberals as the bad guys and conservatives as the long-suffering heroes.Tucker Carlson — a Fox News host who clearly relishes being a cartoon villain (think: "Dan White Society") — coughed up an almost too-perfect sample of the form Monday night, when he encouraged his audience of millions to harass ordinary people minding their own business under the guise of "helping."

Using as cover the recent reports that much of outdoor masking is unnecessary to prevent the transmission of COVID-19, Carlson told his audience that people wearing masks outside are "the aggressors" and that "the next time you see someone in a mask on the sidewalk or on the bike path, do not hesitate" to get in their face and demand they remove the mask. Carlson claimed this can be done "politely but firmly," but of course, it's categorically impossible to "politely" boss other people around about choices that simply do not affect you. And no, his story about how masks "prevent intimacy and human contact" is not enough. Strangers on the street do not owe you "intimacy," despite what creeps who follow women around and demand smiles might wish to believe.

Carlson then escalated by asking his viewers to call the police when they see children wearing masks because it "should be illegal." [call cops and cps till they show] Of course, Carlson also knows full well how dangerous such nuisance calls (which are *actually* illegal) can be if the target is a person of color — and likely, he's counting on it, Derek Chauvin defender that he is.

Skipping a mask outside does, indeed, seem to be mostly harmless, which means that the common-sense response is to simply leave other people alone while you also do what you want. But conservatives want revenge because they've been made to wear masks where it is necessary. Carlson is only too happy to feed them a narrative that allows them to pretend to be heroes while continuing to be jerks for no good reason whatsoever.

Over the weekend, we saw another comically over-the-top example of right-wing fake victimhood narratives when a totally fake — and obviously fake — conspiracy theory about President Joe Biden imposing severe beef rations tore through the right-wing media and exploded on social media.

Jon Skolnik explained here at Salon how right-wing media distorted a study about reducing meat consumption to impact climate change, pretended it somehow was part of Biden's infrastructure plan and ran wild with it. But what was truly remarkable wasn't just that the folks at Fox News and other outlets deliberately misled the public with false claims that Biden planned to "limit" beef consumption to four pounds a year. It was how this lie managed to spread rapidly, infecting every corner of the country, in record time.

"It's tempting to dismiss this attack as too absurd to be believed," Dan Pfeiffer wrote in his Message Box newsletter, but warned that, "But too often, Democrats focus on the absurdity of the specifics and ignore the believability of the general impression."

Indeed, watching the "Biden's banning beef" lie spread out over social media, boosted by supposedly "apolitical" Instagram influencers and other such conduits, it was easy to see how this worked. Many people — possibly most — had wholly emotional reactions when they heard or read the lie, and were too focused on lashing out angrily to think critically about the story. So many reactions online were variations of "how dare you criticize me" and "fake meat tastes bad," instead of the more helpful "is this even true?"

The best right-wing B.S. works in this way, by activating people's pre-existing guilt and making them feel defensive. A lot of Americans, even on the right, already feel bad about how much beef they eat. It's not just because it's bad for the environment, but because they know it's bad for their health, and American discourse around food and health tends to be highly moralistic. The Biden beef lie works first by activating that sense of shame and then giving people a story that makes them feel better about themselves, about how they're actually the good guys here. They get so focused on trying to make their defensive feelings go away that they don't stop to search Snopesor Politifact and find out if it's even true.

Carlson is playing the same game with his mask nonsense.

Conservatives obviously have a lot of sublimated guilt over refusing to take the pandemic seriously and are therefore on a hair-trigger for defensive reactions. So they're ready to hear how someone else wearing a mask is a judgment on them, about how they're the "real" victims, and mask-wearers are the "real" bad guys. Truth and common sense are crowded out by these over-the-top emotional reactions, driven by their own — in many cases, completely earned — sense of shame.

As Pfeiffer notes, the only way to push back on nonsense like this is for ordinary people to confront those who are spreading it on social media. The problem is that these right-wing freakouts are fueled by conservatives feeling angry, ashamed, and judged — frankly often because they deserve to feel bad about their behavior. Unfortunately, that means that the smarter reactions are ones that turn the temperature down, not up. It can help a lot for interlocutors to focus on facts, instead of moral judgments about things like mask-wearing or beef-eating, and save the moral discussion for another time, when folks are in a less defensive mindset.

Either way, the amount of culture war debris that the right-wing media will be churning out is going to be immense over the next few years. Conservatives have a lot of guilt for their terrible behavior and beliefs, and therefore will be easy marks for any and every story that lets them believe they're the victims and not the victimizers. Right-wing media, as these examples show, is incredibly good at kicking up fake controversies that feed off those defensive feelings. Conservatives are addicted to these lies, and like most addicts, they need increasingly stronger stuff to get their fix. Be prepared.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

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ref2 selena gomez

ookwithangelika

:{:{didn't eat all this beef and fill my body with the most nutrient dense food on the planet to just let it be taken away from me without a fight. there comes a point where we need to fight back for our rights. who else has had enough of this unconstitutional tyranny?}:

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#conspiracyrealist #healthyeating #funnyvideos #comeandgetit #beef #:(style="background-color:#ffffffff"):}::{beefiswhatsfordinner #carnivorediet #:{animalbasednutrition #nutritiontherapy #animalbased #beefbones #beefporn}:}:

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https://www.salon.com/2021/04/26/plant-based-beer-and-beef-bans-how-larry-kudlow-set-off-a-right-wing-anti-biden-smear-campaign/

fox Business Network host and former economic Trump adviser Larry Kudlow set off something of a right-wing smear campaign over the weekend when he went on a tirade against President Joe Biden's nonexistent plan to force "plant-based beer" upon the American public, calling Biden an "ideological zealot" intent on scrapping America's most cherished tradition of meat-eating.

In an interview on Thursday, Kudlow erroneously attacked Biden for putting forth a climate plan that calls for the elimination of meat, eggs, and dairy from the American diet. "There's a study coming out of the University of Michigan which says that to meet the Biden Green New Deal targets, America has to…stop eating poultry and fish, seafood, eggs, dairy, and animal-based fats," he started. "Ok, got that? No burger on July 4. No steaks on the barbecue. I'm sure Middle America is just going to love that. Can you grill those Brussels sprouts?"

Kudlow, notably livid over the thought of grilling vegetables –– let alone *foreign *ones –– continued to rail against Biden's new climate action plan.

 "You can throw back a plant-based beer with your grilled Brussels sprouts and wave your American flag. Call it July 4th Green. Now, I'm making fun of this because I intend to make fun of it. This kind of thing is stupid. It comes from a bunch of ideological zealots who don't care one whit about America's well-being. Not one whit."

It should be noted that beer, generally made from water, grain, hops, and yeast, and barley malt, is already, in fact, plant-based. Furthermore, nothing in President Biden's plan so far calls for a prohibition on meat consumption. The original culprit of this misinformation, a ThursdayDaily Mail article headlined "How Biden's climate plan could limit you to eat just one burger a MONTH," speculated that Biden intends on "cutting red meat consumption by 90% and animal products by 50%." 

The article, quickly feasted upon by Kudlow and amplified by Fox Business News without the slightest fact-check,was then picked up by Republicans in government, including Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott, Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who spread the lies to their voting bases.

"Joe Biden's climate plan includes cutting 90% of red meat from our diets by 2030. They want to limit us to about four pounds a year," tweeted Boebert. "Why doesn't Joe stay out of my kitchen?"

"Not gonna happen in Texas!" Gov. Abbott tweeted, with a screenshot of Kudlow's broadcast. 

Greene, posting a picture of Biden eating a hamburger with others a table, echoed: "The Hamburglar. No burgers for thee, but just for me."

The misinformation also came into the good graces of Donald Trump Jr., who declared most proudly, "I'm pretty sure I ate 4 pounds of red meat yesterday. That's going to be a hard NO from me."

On Saturday, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman explained how Kudlow's remarks planted the seeds for a concerted misinformation campaign.

"If you read what Kudlow actually said,'' Krugman argued on Twitter, "he's cagey — doesn't say that Biden proposed this, only that some people say this is what would happen. But Fox viewers won't notice, which is the intention. This is what right-wing politics is down to. It's all false claims about evil liberals, which the base is expected to believe because it's primed to believe in liberal villainy. They're not even trying to engage on actual issues."

The White House has thus far released scant information about any formal plan to address emissions. According to the Washington Post, on Thursday, the President made vague remarks about investing in "American infrastructure and American innovation" in order to build "a critical infrastructure to produce and deploy clean technology."

The right's outrage was widely mocked online by the left, who were quick to point out that Biden's apparent political aversion to meat has no factual or historical basis at all. On Sunday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., took a jab at his conservative colleagues . "Excited to be watching the Oscars with an ice cold plant-based beer," he tweeted, with a picture of himself holding a beer while watching the Oscars. "Thanks Joe Biden."

JON SKOLNIK

Jon Skolnik is a staff writer at Salon. His work has appeared in Current Affairs, The Baffler, AlterNet, and The New York Daily News.

MORE FROM JON SKOLNIK 

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accel /[amp] just metaphor?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trumpism--young-earth-flat-earth-anti-vax-qanon/

no lnx anti-vaX mama meme graf // stop steal to vax

anti-vax advocacy groups online are helping to radicalize the QAnon movement

The unhinged QAnon conspiracy cult has become a ‘new constituency’ for the Republican Party: report

]

Meaghan Ellis November 28, 2020

The alliance between anti-vaxxers and QAnon followers is rapidly increasing as they continue their plight to spread massive amounts of disturbing misinformation amid the pandemic. One glaring example centers around one incident that occurred last week.

Facebook opted to nix a massive anti-vaccination propaganda group with more than 200,000 members last week. However, the group was not shut down for the dangerous public health misinformation its members posted, but rather, the disturbing promotion of QAnon, reports Huffington Post.

On Monday, Larry Cook, the founder of the "Stop Mandatory Vaccination" movement took to Facebook in his final Facebook Live video before the group was removed to warn that vaccines were a plot "to literally enslave every human on the planet," In the video, Cook also included the QAnon hashtag #WWG1WGA in the upper left corner and the QAnon logo in the upper right corner.

"The purpose of vaccination is to literally slaughter the population and dumb everyone down and render them helpless," Cook said. "It is a global plan to literally enslave every human on the planet."

As he spoke, comments poured in from viewers who expressed gratitude for the "truth" and "awakening" he shared in his video. Like Cook, other anti-vaxxers including David Wolfe along with Ty and Charlene Bollinger have all begun to expose their large followings to the QAnon rhetoric.

Laura Muhl, one of Instagram's most popular anti-vax influencers has also shared relatively dangerous claim insisting the government "engineered" many of the problems currently plaguing the United States. In a meme, she criticized the media with a comparison of covering up the so-called "rigged election" to an attempt to cover up "the truth about vaccines."

"The virus is engineered. The pandemic is engineered. The second wave is engineered. The need for a vaccine is engineered," said the mother of five.

Now, the anti-vaccination pushback and in misinformation rapidly circulating on social media hasacceleratedwith groups joining forces with QAnon. The result is accelerating the effort to discredit science and the integrity of public health.

Related Articles Around the Web

How QAnon Conspiracy Is Spreading In Christian Communities ... ›

He's a former QAnon believer. He doesn't want to tell his story, but ... ›

QAnon conspiracy theory gaining ground in UK, analysis shows | US ... ›

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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/right-wing-operative-ali-alexander-leads-stop-the-steal-campaign/

right-wing political operative Ali Alexander has brought back “Stop the Steal,” a campaign to get right-wing activists to discredit mail-in voting, disrupt vote-counting, and ​falsely accuse Democrats of stealing the presidential election—presumably because legally cast ballots are being counted in states that have yet to declare the winner of the 2020 presidential contest. (Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden appears to be prevailing among votes cast by mail-in ballots.)

The move comes after President Donald Trump declared a premature victory in the early morning hours Wednesday and accused Democrats of mass voter fraud, a false narrative he’s been pushing for months about mail-in voting. At a Wednesday afternoon press conference in Philadelphia, Trump’s legal team, including conspiracy theorist and Trump sycophant Rudy Giuliani, doubled down on those claims, as have right-wing activists. The race is still too close to call, but as more mail-in ballots have begun to be counted, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has taken the lead. 

In a panicked Periscope broadcast Wednesday evening, Alexander said he was “busy organizing thousands and thousands and thousands of people” to join “voter integrity” rallies in Phoenix, Arizona, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Detroit, Michigan, Madison, Wisconsin, and Atlanta, Georgia, (and perhaps Nevada) to protest. Alexander said the first rally would feature “Pizzagate” booster Mike Cernovichat the capitol in Arizona at 7 p.m. Wednesday evening, claiming that they’d have hundreds there and 10,000 attendees there by Friday. Asecond rally took place Wednesday night in Las Vegas. Alexander encouraged viewers to go to a website where they could register with the campaign and explained how he hoped to draw attention to these rallies. 

“We’re matching influencers with operatives, so every influencer will have an operative there also working with local media, capturing all the vehicles going in and out ‘dropping of ballots,’” Alexander said. “We’re gonna capture everything.”

“If you need a plane ticket, I’ll PayPal you money, because people have sent me money,” Alexander said, before clarifying, “We’re flying giant influencers. We’re flying those people who are offering to share their audiences.”

Earlier in the day, Ali had put out a call for right-wing political operatives to lead the campaign in a number of states where Trump and Biden are in tight races or where Biden has won by a slim margin.

He called on Scott Presler and far-right activist Jack Posobiec to join the effort in Pennsylvania; Turning Point USA Founder Charlie Kirk and Cernovich in Arizona; Alex Bruesewitz in Wisconsin; and CJ Pearson and Daniel Bostic, a producer of “The Plot Against the President” in Georgia. He also called on Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch, a right-wing legal outfit that doubles as a communications shop, to work the legal network and Amy Kremer of Women for Trump and Ed Martin of Phyllis Schlafly Eagles to work the campaign nationally. He also said that Ed Martin, Amy Kremer and Kyle Jane Kremer would be “running point” for aWashington, D.C.event 1 p.m. Thursday. 

At Wednesday’s rally in Phoenix, Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, who has his own ties to far-right nationalists, introduced Cernovich to the assembled crowd waving Trump flags. Taking the megaphone, Cernovich claimed that 200 anti-fascist activists had planned to disrupt his rally, but he said they’d never show up because, “I’ll get sent to prison after kissing their asses—legally and lawfully under self-defense laws.”

Cernovich went on to attack Fox News. “Do you think Fox News is suppressing pro-Trump vote?” He asked the crowd. “Yes!” The crowd shouted back.

Alexander also lashed out at Fox News in his Periscope, saying the conservative, pro-Trump network’s coverage of the presidential election was why he launched the campaign. He asked his viewers to spend 15 to 20 minutes after his Periscope harassing Fox News reporters and producers.

“Fox News is about to call the election for Joe Biden. How does this happen? They called Arizona too early. … I think it’s going for Trump,” he said. “If they call Nevada for Biden, then they will accidentally be forced. You need to tweet the hell out of everyone at Fox News.” 

In September, Alexander took to Periscope to float the idea of revamping “Stop the Steal” for the 2020 presidential election, Jared Holtreported for Right Wing Watch then. At that time, Alexander had said that the 2020 “Stop the Steal” campaign would bypass social media by collecting phone numbers from supporters. 

Theoriginal “Stop the Steal” campaign was led by Alexander in 2018, along with convicted felon and self-described “dirty trickster” Roger Stone, who Alexander said came up with the phrase, and his associates, including Posobiec. The campaign featured protests and misinformation against a ballot recount in Florida’s 2018 Senate race between Republican Rick Scott and Democrat Bill Nelson. In that campaign, pro-Trump activists from around the country descended on Florida to protest and spread misinformation, a seeming reboot of the so-called “Brooks Brothers riot,” which broke out following Florida’s contested presidential election results in 2000. Stone was behind that riot, which shut down recount efforts in Miami-Dade.

For the 2018 “Stop the Steal” campaign, Alexander said that he had recruited QAnon followers as well as people experiencing homelessness to fill spots at the protest. Politico reported in 2016 that Alexander’s PAC had received a large donation from billionaireRobert Mercer; Ali claims to not be taking money from him for this campaign.

It appears the 2018 “Stop the Steal” campaign was an attempted dry run for the 2020 presidential election. On Twitter, Alexanderclaimed to have approached Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel about running the campaign and that she had mocked it. On Wednesday, Alexander lashed out at those around Trump andMcDaniel, who he called “the dumbest woman in history.” He said that the RNC, McDaniel, and the Trump campaign were not doing the campaign. [twt  forced errors in messaging and non-legal and non-protest actions coming out of the GOP right now is simply stunning. Trump may ruin his own efforts before they start. Why is no one around him doing this right?]

alexander claimed that his campaign of right-wing and far-right activists just want “a fair, predictive, determinative result” and that “This election is going to be conducted fairly where it produces a legitimate result that both sides can come together on.”

“I’m going to be here in Texas, just providing my friends with support,” Alexander said. “What I want to do is bring this country as much together as we can and have a certain outcome and ride off into the sunset.”

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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/its-back-after-2019-outrage-american-priority-festival-and-conference-2020-promises-golf-tournament-and-a-whos-who-of-far-right-speakers/

doral

It’s Back: After 2019 Outrage, American Priority Festival and Conference 2020 Promises Golf Tournament—and a Who’s Who of Far-Right Speakers

By Kristen Doerer | September 15, 2020

Simona Papadopoulos (left) poses with her husband George Papadopoulos (center) and another model after her bathing suit fashion show at the American Priority Festival and Conference. Screenshot of Simona Papadopoulos' since deleted tweet.]

At last year’s American Priority Festival and Conference, a macabre video that superimposed President Donald Trump’s face on a figure shooting the president’s perceived political opponents in a mass killing spree, reported on by The New York Times, caused outrage. This year, the AMP festival, unhindered by the global coronavirus pandemic, will feature a who’s who of right-wing and far-right speakers, all gathered together at the Trump National Doral Miami Oct. 8-11.

The “YUGE lineup”—their words, not ours—includes returning speakers, such as far-right Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, convicted felon Roger Stone, whose sentence was commuted by President Donald Trump, and far-right activist and One America News Network figure Jack Posobiec, who pushed the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory, according to an organizer’s email Monday.

Anti-Muslim activist and right-wing conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer will also return to the stage. After winning the GOP nomination to represent Florida’s 21st Congressional District in the U.S. House in August, Loomer received Trump’s congratulations as she rubbed shoulders with a series of far-right figures at her victory party. Failed congressional candidate and QAnon conspiracy theorist DeAnna Lorraine, who recently accused Trump of “taking his base for granted” by wearing a mask, is another featured speaker. (We’ll see how many COVID-19 cases come out of this year’s festival.)

George Papadopoulos—who went to federal prison for making false statements to FBI agents about the timing of his contact with Russian intermediaries in 2016—will return to Trump Doral as well. Last year, Papadopolous spoke on an “Unmasking the Russian Hoax” panel, while his wife Simona Papadopolous held a swimsuit fashion show during the pool party portion of the festival.

Described as “Four days of God, country, and MAGA at the spectacular Trump National Doral resort in Miami, FL,” the conference promises “everything you could want in a patriot event.” And in case that description doesn’t excite you, the email promotes a golf tournament for an additional cost, a “MAGA pool party”—which no doubt means more patriotic swimsuits—and even spa deals:

AMP is also hosting a celebrity golf tournamenton the world-famous Blue Monster course with net proceeds benefiting the American Priority Foundation! Come play golf with some of the most patriotic names in sports, TV, and politics. Tournament entry is $500 and available as an option when you register. This makes a great gift for those golf fans!

AMP is also hosting a screening of Dinesh D’Souza’s blockbuster new film ‘Trump Card’, shooting a music video for a brand new patriot anthem by Alex Jordan, kicking off with a MAGA pool party, and hosting many surprise special guests.

The festival and conference was conceived as a pro-Trump, millennial-focused alternative to the annual Conservative Political Action Conference held in Washington, D.C., byAli Alexander, a right-wing political operative, and Alex Phillips, a conservative donor who owns a small telecom company in Virginia. Alexander—who previously went by Ali Akbar and who has ties to far-right figures such as Unite the Right white supremacist attendee Matt Colligan—has recently floated the idea of revamping a 2018 effort discredit mail-in voting ahead of the 2020 presidential election, dispatching Trump supporters to places where ballots are being counted?. Posobiec, who helped announce the first AMP festival in 2018, also promoted Alexander’s latest ploy to discredit mail-in voting.

The first AMP festival, held in 2018 in Washington, D.C., was effectively a flop, with one speaker even canceling after seeing the dismal turnout. Last year’s event, held in Doral, managed to attract more attendees but not quite the millennial and Gen Z crowd that was intended. Though younger conservatives were in attendance, the event attracted plenty of Generation X and baby boomer attendees, featuring such groups as the graying “Bikers for Trump.” Millennial MAGA stars were featured, including the Deplorable Choir, Ricky Rebel, a singer-songwriter known for being unapologetically both pro-Trump and gay, and right-wing activist Scott Presler.

It also ironically prevented reporters from covering its events—centered around the concept of free speech and the First Amendment—by allowing only “invited” media, barring Right Wing Watch’s Jared Holt from entry. In 2018, Alexander had explained the “invite only” policy this way: “Frankly, any press reporter who writes a hit piece on us is not getting a press credential.”

An Aug. 7 email promises panels with “leading experts on Medical Tyranny, Tech Censorship, Educational Freedom, The China Threat, Pandemic Response, and much more!” Last year, speakers peddled conspiracy theories and called for civil war. After coverage of the events and the crude video by the New York Times, ProPublica, and other outlets, AMP temporarily took down its page.

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As Right Wing Watch reported last year, “The conference could have been dismissed as a meeting of the fringe, but big-ticket speakers like Don Trump Jr. and Sarah Huckabee Sanders lent legitimacy to the conference, as did more respectable Republican groups like the Leadership Institute, which held a series of trainings in side rooms.” While AMP 2020 has yet to secure high-profile Trump administration or Trump family speakers, its location at the Trump Doral and the degree of coziness Trump has gotten with such formerly fringe figures say enough.

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hard to know what to call this:

https://www.corporateaccountability.org/2020-corporate-hall-of-shame/

British American Tobacco

Big Tobacco wrote the playbook on modern corporate abuse. Literally. From spreading junk science to dividing and undermining opponents, to getting politicians to do their bidding, the tobacco industry was at the leading edge of it all.

And they’re still up to these dirty tricks. This year, British American Tobacco (BAT) has exploited the global COVID-19 pandemic to market its harmful and addictive new products by co-opting hashtags meant to spread public health information and using influencers to push its brand.BAT also helped fund a junk science study that claims tobacco consumption (which leads among other things to respiratory disease) might reduce the danger of the novel coronavirus (a respiratory disease). And cynically using a global pandemic as a marketing ploy, BATannounced it had begun researching a COVID-19 vaccine.

We nominate British American Tobacco for exploiting the COVID-19 crisis to peddle its harmful and addictive products on social media and make unproven, dangerous health claims that further undermine public health policies.

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https://www.insider.com/hilary-duff-responds-to-qanon-conspiracy-theories-about-child-trafficking-2020-5

HOME  CULTURE

Hilary Duff appeared to respond to baseless QAnon conspiracy theories saying that she was involved in child trafficking

Rachel E. Greenspan

hilary duff qanon theories hilary duff qanon theories

Hilary Duff. Aaron Poole/E! Entertainment/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images]

Hilary Duff has appeared to respond to baseless QAnon conspiracy theories falsely claiming she's involved in child trafficking.

"Everyone bored af right now I know..but this is actually disgusting..... whoever dreamed this one up and put this garbage into the universe should take a break from their damn phone. Maybe get a hobby," she said in a tweet.

QAnon theories attacking celebrities have only further amplified its reach, as people like Duff and Oprah Winfrey respond to the viral accusations, which have no basis in fact.

Hilary Duff has responded to outlandish conspiracy theories spread by the QAnon conspiracy theory movement that claimed she was involved in child trafficking.

In a May 23 tweet, the actress appeared to respond to the false claims, which began after a now-deleted tweet alleged a photo of her with her son, Luca, proved that she had been involved in the practice of selling children, according to The Daily Dot.

"Everyone bored af right now I know..but this is actually disgusting..... whoever dreamed this one up and put this garbage into the universe should take a break from their damn phone. Maybe get a hobby," she said in a tweet.

—Hilary Duff (@HilaryDuff) May 23, 2020

The photo that followers of QAnon — a movement centered on the conspiracy theory that there's a group of "elites" in the US who are out to get President Donald Trump and engage in pedophilia and child trafficking, among other things — used to attack Duff allegedly showed her son with "white markings all over his body." In the original Twitter thread, the user called this "a message to the devils of the elites that her son is for sale," The Daily Dot reported.

The QAnon movement's conspiracy theoriestargetting celebrities have only further amplified its reach,as figures like Duff respond to the viral accusations, which have no basis in fact. The theories about Duff participating in human trafficking are part of a larger trend among QAnon supporters, who continue to falsely allege that various famous people are involved in such crimes.

In March, Oprah Winfrey responded to a hoax claiming she had been arrested on human trafficking charges. Even the police department of Boca Raton, Florida, tweeted to clarify that it had not arrested Winfrey.

The QAnon movement has clearly made its way into the mainstream. Now, there's even a slew of lifestyle influencers on Instagram sharing this kind of misinformation, which stems from the fringes of the internet, with hundreds of thousands of followers. Plus, Trump continues to share theories on Twitter, like Obamagate, which is strongly linked to the QAnon community. 

"When you've got the president of the United States promoting these themes and theories," Alexander Reid Ross, a researcher who tracks white nationalism and a doctoral fellow at the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right, told Insider in a previous interview. "You can say that they're fringe, in terms of the competent, rational mind, but you can't say that they're out of the mainstream," said Reid Ross.

Read more:

Lifestyle influencers are using COVID-19 to spread QAnon conspiracy theories: 'I truly believe I owe it to my audience to be more for them during this turning point in our culture'

Facebook banned a cluster of 'fringe conspiracy' QAnon pages for breaking its rules on manipulation

A QAnon conspiracy theory about Oprah Winfrey went so viral that it provoked her to respond, showing the scope of coronavirus misinformation

Celebrities, politicians, and influencers are largely accountable for the spread of false coronavirus information, according to a new study

NOW WATCH:

More: Digital Culture Hilary Duff QAnon Conspiracy Theories

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