epik monster

if our enemy was competent we'd be doomed

A leading libertarian conference invited a Nicholas Fuentes to show his film on cancel culture. Then organizers figured out who he was and canceled his event.

Zachary Petrizzo

Politics Reporter

Will Sommer

Politics Reporter

Published Jul. 01, 2022

The Most Canceled Man in America” has, in fact, been canceled.

Nearly two weeks ahead of thelibertarian conference FreedomFest, a lead conference organizer told The Daily Beast on Thursday night that officials had booted the holocaust-denying, Vladimir Putin-applauding, white supremacist rally-going Nicholas Fuentes from the conference’s lineup.

Fuentes had initially been scheduled to appear on a Freedom Fest panel titled “How to Fight the Information Police.” Fuentes was also supposed to host a screening of his short film, “The Most Canceled Man in America,” according to an agenda obtained by The Daily Beast.

[ Jan. 6 Committee Subpoenas Two White Nationalist Leaders

TALK TO ’EM

But all of that was scratched, after the libertarian conference in Las Vegas thought better of associating with the notorious white nationalist.

FreedomFest would have put Fuentes in the same conference as the likes of other scheduled speakers like Fox News host Lisa Kennedy, former congressman Justin Amash (L-MI), and failed presidential and New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Yang.On Thursday, though, FreedomFest executive director Valerie Durham told The Daily Beast that Fuentes had been banned after several unnamed “leaders” complained about his appearance on the schedule.}:

“FreedomFest strongly believes in the fundamental right to free speech and free expression in our nation’s civil discourse,” Durham said in an email. “However, we also reserve the right not to endorse certain points of view that lead our nation away from such discourse.”

Durham conceded that the conference “did not adequately vet the film.”

“During this time, we were approached by several leaders we respect who gave us further information,” Durham wrote. “Upon learning this information, we took a deeper look into Mr. Fuentes’ ideology. As a result of that further research, we decided to remove Mr. Fuentes as a panelist.”

Fuentes didn’t return The Daily Beast’s request for comment.

“The film festival is about cancel culture, and they cancelled our film lol,” Fuentes said on the social media app Telegram, before urging his fans to complain to the conference organizers.

After his FreedomFest exile, Fuentes now plans to screen his film elsewhere in Las Vegas during the conference.

[Jason Miller’s ‘Free Speech’ Site Boots White Nationalist

BANNED

Another far-right figure allied with Fuentes is having her own fight with FreedomFest. Activist and failed Delaware Senate candidate Lauren Witzke, who has aligned herself with Fuentes’s loyal “groyper army,” complained on Telegram this week that FreedomFest booted her from a panel.

Witzke claimed that one of the sponsors of the event, Epik, a domain registrar known for working with extremist websites, invited her to speakon a panel alongside right-wing radio host Eric Metaxas, conservative operative James O’Keefe, and Epik founder Rob Monster}:.

“I was kindly invited on the panel by Freedom Fest Platinum Sponsor, Epik - to which I am still extremely grateful for the invitation,” Witzke wrote on Telegram.

According to Durham, though, Witzke never got that far. FreedomFest’s lead organizer said the conference never agreed to let her appear at the conference.

“With regard to Lauren Witzke, she was invited by a sponsor to appear at FreedomFest, but we did not consent to have her speak at FreedomFest,” Durham said.

Despite apparently never securing a spot to speak at the conference, in an email to The Daily Beast, Witzke claimed the conference was committing “egregious discrimination against outspoken Christians.”

“I was initially confirmed and approved by Freedom Fest as a speaker on the panel,” she further claimed. “I wouldn't have just purchased plane tickets to Vegas had this not been absolutely confirmed.”

https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/anonymous-hack-fascist-internet/

igor salon

The hacktivist collective Anonymous leaked over 150 gigabytes of private data after hacking the web registration company Epik, a popular domain host for far-right groups.

Popular far-right platforms like Parler, Gab and 8chan, as well as far-right extremist groups like the Proud Boys and QAnon, recently migrated to Epik being banned from other platforms following the Jan. 6 Capitol riot for violating policies on hate speech and spreading misinformation. Last week, Anonymous dumped what it said was a "decade's worth" of company data in a torrent file, including passwords, internal emails, home addresses, and phone numbers.

"After years of bolstering the worst trash the Internet has to offer, this is, truly, the Epik moment we've all been waiting for," the group said in a statement it published along with the data dump, which was first reported by independent journalist Steven Monacelli.

"This dataset is all that's needed to trace actual ownership and management of the fascist side of the Internet," the statement said. "Time to find out who in your family secretly ran an Ivermectin horse porn fetish site, disinfo publishing outfit, or yet another Qanon hellhole."

Extremism researchers say the leak is akin to a "Rosetta Stone to the far right" and is helping them find new links among the groups.

"It's massive. It may be the biggest domain-style leak I've seen and, as an extremism researcher, it's certainly the most interesting," Megan Squire, a professor atElon Universitywho studies right-wing extremism, told the Washington Post. "It's an embarrassment of riches — stress on the embarrassment."

Epik drew national headlines earlier this month after offering support to Texas Right to Life, an antiabortion group whose website was removed from GoDaddy because it solicited information on women who solicited abortions in violations of Texas' new near-total ban. But Epik ultimately stopped working with the site because it violated their rules against collecting private information. Epik has in recent years become a safe space for far-right platforms that were booted from major web hosts like Amazon Web Services, though it has tried to take steps to shed some of its most toxic clients, cutting ties with the neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer and 8chan.

"The company played such a major role in keeping far-right terrorist cesspools alive," Rita Katz, executive director of SITE Intelligence Group, which studies online extremism, told the Post. "Without Epik, many extremist communities — from QAnon and white nationalists to accelerationist neo-Nazis — would have had far less oxygen to spread harm, whether that be building toward the Jan. 6 Capitol riots or sowing the misinformation and conspiracy theories chipping away at democracy."

Epik founder Robert Monster has drawn growing criticism for hosting extremist content. Monster has denied holding extremist views but following that Christchurch shooting in New Zealand that killed 50 people, he uploaded links to the shooter's video and published his so-called manifesto. Monster insisted that his employees watch the video, which he claimed was faked, according to Bloomberg News.

Monster acknowledged the hack in an email to customers last week, alerting them of an "alleged security incident."

"You are in our prayers today," he wrote, according to the Post. "When situations arise where individuals might not have honorable intentions, I pray for them. I believe that what theenemy intends for evil, God invariably transforms into good. Blessings to you all."

But the company has come under "ridicule" from researchers who have "marveled at the site's apparent failure to take security precautions," according to the report. None of the files were encrypted, researchers say, including data revealing the administrators of far-right websites and passwords. The hack also exposed personal data from Anonymize, a privacy service the company offered to users that wanted to hide their identity.Previous similar hacks have drawn investigations by the Federal Trade Commission and hefty settlements.

"Given Epik's boasts about security, and the scope of its Web hosting, I would think it would be an FTC target, especially if the company was warned but failed to take protective action," David Vladeck, the former director of the FTC's consumer protection bureau, told the Post. "I would add that the FTC wouldn't care about the content — right wing or left wing; the questions would be the possible magnitude and impact of the breach and the representations … the company may have made about security."

Epik initially said it was unaware of the hack but Monster, on a "rambling three-hour live-stream" last week, acknowledged there was a "hijack of data that should not have been hijacked," according to the report.

"If you have a negative intent to use that data, it's not going to work out for you. I'm just telling you," he said. "If the demon tells you to do it, the demon is not your friend."

But extremism researchers have likened the leak to the "Panama Papers of hate groups," Emma Best, co-founder of the nonprofit whistleblower groupDistributed Denial of Secrets, told the Post.

"A lot of research begins with naming names," she said. "There's a lot of optimism and feeling of being overwhelmed, and people knowing they're in for the long haul with some of this data."