4chanbak
619
see also gab
see also reddit
rww Tags: 4Chan
https://www.alternet.org/2022/05/4chan-republican-rhetoric-mass-murderer/
The self-identified white supremacist who slaughtered 10 Black people inside of a Buffalo, New York supermarket last week was a known risk to local law enforcement and even published a 180-page manifesto in which he outlined his hateful ideations.
According to an analysis published in The Guardian on Wednesday, GUK however, the ideas that the mass shooter espoused – enhanced by his aridly creepy selection of words – were not his original thoughts. Instead, the outlet found that the gunman copied and pasted his text from various posts that he read on the dark web right-wing hub known as 4chan.
The document "allegedly released by the accused along with a video of the attack, is rife with pseudo-scientific racism, antisemitic conspiracy theories and a call for others to mimic his violence," the investigation revealed, adding that "the screed is mostly plagiarized from other extremists" on 4chan.
Peppered throughout the viciously bigoted musings were references to the Great Replacement Theory, a fringe belief that immigrants with higher levels of epidermal melanin are invading the United States and committing genocide against White Americans.
The hateful treatise "details the baseless racism that underpins the philosophy, including the idea that Jewish people secretly control the world, and that the genetic differences between the races make them incompatible. One particular image, sourced from 4chan, claims to show 'the truth about race' – compiling a handful of debunked, misunderstood, or cherrypicked studies to assert the claim that certain races are inferior to whites," wrote TheGuardian, noting that it "even seeks to back up its claims with the long-abandoned pseudoscience of phrenology, which studies the sizes and shapes of craniums."
Excerpts of missives authored by the indicted domestic terrorist on the instant messaging app Discord that The Guardian obtained indicate that he felt as if he had found a community in which he belonged. The Guardian also pointed out that he viewed 4chan as a dependable source of information, noting that "he confessed to browsing 4chan daily" and admitted that he “barely interacts with regular people."
The perpetrator stated in one exchange that “I only really turned racist when 4chan started giving me facts." In another instance, he claimed that “White genocide is real when you look at data, but is not talked about on popular media outlets."
While 4chan certainly had a profound influence on his worldview, it is not fully to blame for poisoning the assailant's impressionable mind, which at 18 years of age, significant scientific research has determined, is still developing.
The foundation of those repugnant conspiracy theories has been promoted by prominent conservative figures likeFox News propagandist Tucker Carlson and his colleague Laura Ingraham; misogynist podcasters Nick Fuentes, Charlie Kirk, and Ben Shapiro; Republican Ohio Senate candidate JD Vance (whom former President Donald Trump endorsed), and, most notably, Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, who chairs the GOP Conference in the House of Representatives and is the only Jewish Republican currently serving in Congress.
Stefanik in particular has been under heavy fire in the wake of the Buffalo massacre over her cache of anti-immigrant talking points as well as her championing of Great Replacement during conversations with journalists and appearances on mainstream news networks.
The danger they pose is immediate and substantial. But it is not unforeseen.
Last September, The Times UnionEditorial Board warned that the "undeniable echo of Nazi Germany" has been "resonating ever since in the right-wing, repackaged lately in what’s known as ‘replacement theory,’ espoused by conservative media figures like Fox News’ Tucker Carlson. And it has seeped into the mainstream political discourse in the Capital Region, where Rep. Elise Stefanik has adapted this despicable tactic for campaign ads."
Stefanik, the newspaper's editors continued, "isn’t so brazen as to use the slogans themselves; rather, she couches the hate in alarmist anti-immigrant rhetoric that’s become standard fare for the party of Donald Trump. And she doesn’t quite attack immigrants directly; instead, she alleges that Democrats are looking to grant citizenship to undocumented immigrants in order to gain a permanent liberal majority, or, as she calls it, a ‘permanent election insurrection.’ Quite a choice of words, of course, considering that the country is still suffering the aftershocks of the Jan. 6 insurrection in Washington by supporters of Mr. Trump who tried to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election."
Queen’s University Assistant Professor of Religion Amarnath Amarasingam expanded on these points to The Guardian.
“We have seen (the great replacement myth) playing a greater role in mobilizing individuals to violence because it has a somewhat unique ability to foster a sense of emergency,” she explained.“You can hear it all over the Buffalo shooter’s manifesto – a deep sense of urgency that there is an imminent collapse of white people and white culture. Combine all this with the furious nihilism, racism, and angst of 4chan and it all becomes deeply worrying.”
So how did a seemingly unsuspecting teenager become helplessly enraptured by online hate? The answer provided by The Guardian was as bewilderingly simple as it was unnerving.
The culprit whose name was not mentioned in this article out of respect for his victims – "including Aaron Salter, a security guard who tried to stop the shooting; local activist Katherine Massey; and substitute teacher Pearl Young" – reportedly joined 4chan out of "extreme boredom" during the COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020.
He has been charged with 10 counts of first-degree murder.
https://www.mediamatters.org/boris-epshteyn/dead-voter-conspiracy-theory-quickly-spread-4chan-trump-campaign-strategic-advisor
no lnx twt
A dead voter conspiracy theory quickly spread from 4chan to a Trump campaign “strategic advisor”
WRITTEN BY TIMOTHY JOHNSON
PUBLISHED 11/05/20 3:10 PM EST
boris-goback.png
A deranged conspiracy theory promoted on Twitter by Trump campaign strategic adviser Boris Epshteyn is illustrative of how quickly conspiracy theories about voter fraud can spread from the cesspools of the internet to social media and then to high-level figures in President Donald Trump’s campaign.
In the wake of Election Day, Trump has been attempting to steal the election by claiming he has won in states that he has not and by making numerous baseless claims that election results that are unfavorable to him are the result of voter fraud. Trump supporters have already responded to the president’s claims by attempting to disrupt election procedures in Michigan and Arizona.
Of the many false voter fraud claims being used as grist, one centered on Detroit indicates just how quickly far-right trolls and extremists can guide the Trump campaign’s messaging.
On November 4 at 7:44 p.m. CST, an anonymous user of 4chan’s /pol/ message board, which is known for promoting bigotry and anti-Semitism, posted an image that purported to be from a vote-counting location in Detroit. The image supposedly showed that eight people with birth dates 1/1/1900 had successfully voted in the 2020 election -- at the age of 120 years. In reality, 1/1/1900 is the “default date” used by Michigan for instances where the state does not have a registered voter’s birthday. Voters with incomplete registration information can have their votes recorded by providing photo identification at the polls. Furthermore, simple internet searches of the names observed in the image posted to 4chan indicate the individuals’ actual ages are within a typical human lifespan.
4chan post claims to show evidence of dead voters in Detroit
Just 12 minutes later, at 7:56 p.m. CST, a Twitter user who goes by the name of Eric Block, posted a cropped photo from the 4chan post with the message “Dead voters in Michigan. Look at the birth date. @realDonaldTrump.” Block’s Twitter profile, and the tweets he has sent, indicate that he is an enthusiastic supporter of the QAnon conspiracy theory, which includes many anti-Semitic elements, has been labeled a potential domestic terror threat by the FBI, and has been tied to acts of violence, including murder.
Approximately four hours later, Block’s dead voter claim was retweeted by Trump campaign “2020 Strategic Advisor” Boris Epshteyn, who is known for having pushed ludicrous pro-Trump propaganda while working for Sinclair Broadcast Group in between 2016 and 2020 Trump campaign stints.
Boris Epshteyn promotes dead voter conspiracy theory
Block’s tweet is no longer available on Twitter; it is unclear whether he deleted it or Twitter took it down. The original image posted to 4chan is still available on Twitter from the account of Mike Coudrey,who is known for spreading far-right disinformation, including other bogus claims of fraud about election results this week. Coudrey’s tweet has been retweeted more than 4,000 times.
Although Block’s tweet is no longer available, Epshteyn has continued to promote other disinformation about voter fraud and election results on Twitter.
https://www.mediamatters.org/maga-trolls/numerous-links-white-supremacist-terror-may-finally-push-8chan-offline
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https://www.mediamatters.org/coronavirus-covid-19/pro-trump-media-claim-cdc-overhyping-coronavirus-because-nancy-messonnier
Dr. Nancy Messonnier is the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Her impressive bio lists a number of top positions that she has held in the CDC, and it also notes that she has received multiple awards.
In recent days, Messonnier has taken a leading role in warning the public about the threat that the novel coronavirus strain known as COVID-19 poses to the United States. The Wall Street Journal noted that Messonnier said it was just a question of when coronavirus will circulate in the U.S. The Daily Beast quoted her as saying, “We expect to see more cases of person-to-person spread among close contacts. ... The goal here is to slow entry of this virus into the United States.” CNBC quoted her calling for schools to divide students into smaller groups or to close entirely and conduct courses online. Many other outlets have quoted her as well.
But right-wing media have begun to coalesce around a conspiracy theory that Messonnier’s warning should be disregarded because she is the sister of former Trump appointee Rod Rosenstein. Rosenstein was a frequent target of pro-Trump propagandists for appointing Robert Mueller as a special counsel in the Russia investigation.
From a QAnon Twitter account to Rush Limbaugh's show
The conspiracy theory about Messonnier and Rosenstein goes back at least to a QAnon Twitter account noting their connection in early January.
It really started to pick up speed this week.
On February 25, Rush Limbaugh ranted about Messonnier, suggesting an anti-Trump conspiracy after he learned she’s related to Rosenstein. It was also picked up by a poster on white nationalist message board 8kun. Soon thereafter, it jumped to 4chan's “/pol/,” a slightly less extreme white nationalist message board. The Conservative Treehouse, a right-wing blog featured on Lou Dobbs' Fox Business show before, also posted about the conspiracy theory.
Others followed suit:
On the morning of the February 26, Joe Hoft (the brother of Jim Hoft, proprietor of the Gateway Pundit) posted about it. Hoft wrote that Messonnier’s remarks while President Donald Trump was in India were “a startling rebuke” and that it was “eerily similar to past Presidential trips when former and corrupt DAG Rod Rosenstein and the corrupt and criminal Mueller gang would drop shocking news as the President was overseas.”
Later on the 26th, Rush Limbaugh returned to the conspiracy theory, with the transcript of his show hyperlinking to Hoft’s post. After suggesting that Messonnier was not to be trusted, Limbaugh quickly changed the subject to suggest that the virus may just disappear once the weather warms up. Scientists have cast doubt on that theory as well.
Meanwhile, Trump is reportedly furious at Messonnier:
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https://www.npr.org/2019/07/30/745484563/it-came-from-something-awful-links-4chan-and-todays-political-discourse
Dale Beran's new book, It Came from Something Awful,
Beran's a writer and cartoonist who got a lot of attention for a 2017 piece he published on Medium titled "4chan: The Skeleton Key to the Rise of Trump."
https://www.c-span.org/video/?463096-1/it-awful
july 30, 2019
It Came From Something Awful
Dale Berantalked about his book, It Came from Something Awful: How a Toxic Troll Army Accidentally Memed Donald Trumpinto Office, in which he profiled the counterculture online hub 4chan.
https://www.amazon.com/Came-Something-Awful-Accidentally-Donald/dp/1250189748
https://www.wired.com/story/dale-beran-it-came-from-something-awful-review/
Further Reading
- ‘The Ambivalent Internet: Mischief, Oddity, and Antagonism Online’ by Whitney Phillips and Ryan Miltner
If you’re still looking for more web weirdness, Phillips and Miltner explore strange internet artifacts—from #YesAllWomen to Boaty McBoatface to Donald Trump’s Twitter account—to understand the ways internet culture can both create community or destroy order.
- ‘The Revolution That Wasn’t: How Digital Activism Favors Conservatives’ by Jen Schradie
Maybe hashtag activism, for all its flashiness and vaunted successes (the Arab Spring, #MeToo), doesn’t actually work. Schradie considers how conservative digital activism has achieved greater success IRL.
- ‘Troll Hunting: Inside the World of Online Hate and Its Human Fallout’ by Ginger Gorman
If you’re still not sure about the difference between lols and lulz or online harassment and Russian meddling, Gorman will enlighten you in this deeply sourced, deeply personal account of digital aggression.
- ‘Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity, and Branding in the Social Media Age’ by Alice Marwick
In the time between the dot–com boom and the App Store, Silicon Valley was coding the bones of the social media platforms that now shape our lives. Marwick explores why the democratic revolution many techno-utopians expected has yet to arrive.
- ‘(Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love: Gender, Social Media and Aspirational Work’ by Brooke Erin Duffy
You know you’re a woman in the gig economy when you’re expected to cheerfully work for free. Duffy’s research into the world of fashion designers, bloggers, and designers illuminates the gendered stakes of the collapsing creative economy.
new
Norway arrests US white supremacist ahead of far-right ...
https://www.cnn.com › norway-arrest-white-supremacist-greg-johnson-intl
1 day ago - Norwegian authorities have arrested a high-profile American white supremacist, hours before he was due to give a speech at a far-right conference in Oslo on Saturday. The detained American, Greg Johnson, is editor-in-chief of the white nationalist Counter-Currents Publishing group ...
Missing: brevik | Must include: brevik
American White Supremacist Greg Johnson Arrested In Norway
https://www.huffpost.com › entry › greg-johnson-norway-arrest_n_5dbf8...
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Greg Johnson Arrested in Norway for Thoughtcrime
https://www.counter-currents.com › 2019/11 › greg-johnson-arrested-in-n...
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Norwegian authorities arrest American white nationalist before ...
https://thehill.com › blogs › blog-briefing-room › news › 468779-norwegi...
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US white supremacist reportedly arrested in Norway | Europe ...
https://www.dw.com › us-white-supremacist-reportedly-arrested-in-norway
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Missing: pro | Must include: pro
/pol/ - HAPPENING >American white nationalist Greg Johnson ...
boards.4chan.org › pol › thread
2 days ago - >American white nationalist Greg Johnson arrested during a rally in Oslo, Norway ...... that Brevik became a terrorist because the Norwegian government used ... It's to send a message to other pro-whites that come to Norway.
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new
https://www.mediamatters.org/maga-trolls/fake-news-and-alt-right-are-pushing-forged-documents-aid-marine-le-pen-frances-election
Forged documents originating on 4chan alleging that French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron was evading taxes spread online thanks to an ecosystem that includes social media, “alt-right” outlets, and fake news purveyors. The campaign was seemingly aided by Russian-linked entities, and it subsequently reached Macron’s opponent, who aired the claim in a public debate.
Macron is competing in a May 7 runoff against far-right candidate Marine Le Pen. On May 3, hours before a scheduled debate between Macron and Le Pen, an anonymous user on 4chan posted documents purporting to show that Macron used a shell company to dodge taxes. Users on the forum responded that the documents should be sent to “independent journalists” and “the alternative media” like “Cernovic (sic), Breitbart, and so on,” and encouraged each other to “spam” the documents “on social media” such as Twitter to get “it trending.” They also said to “send it to Le Pen.” The documents soon spread on Twitter, with many of the Twitter accounts promoting them appearing to have connections to Russia, according to a Belgian researcher. The claim was promoted by “alt-right” media figures such as Mike Cernovich and Jack Posobiec.
That these figures would attempt to smear Le Pen’s opponent is not surprising given that Le Pen is widely admired by much of the “alt-right” and closely tied with Russia.
Along with Twitter, 4chan’s campaign was picked up by forums on 8chan and Reddit; “alt-right” fringe outlets The Gateway Pundit, Got News, Zero Hedge, and Daily Stormer; and fake news purveyor Before It’s News.
The 4chan-based documents eventually reached Le Pen herself. During her debate with Macron, she said, “I hope that we will not find out that you have an offshore account in the Bahamas.”Le Pen later backed down on her claim, and Macron filed a legal complaint against her for the statement.Multiple outlets have reported that the documents were fake, with The Telegraph noting that they were “widely denounced ascrudeforgeries.” Additionally, following Le Pen's accusation, the French prosecutor's office has opened an investigation regarding “suspicions of fake news being spread to influence Sunday's presidential vote.”
The case is yet another example of the way the misinformation ecosystem involving the “alt-right” and fake news purveyor:{s:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: amplifiesfringe falsities and lies (and even Kremlin-connected conspiracy theories). The network has often succeeded in pushing those false claims into more traditional conservative and mainstream outlets and, thus, the public realm.
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new
mma 1019
Users on the anonymous message board site 4chan shared links to a livestream of a mass shooting at a German synagogue nearly 300 times after the shooter reportedly made references to the chans in his video and manifesto, according to a review by Media Matters.
On October 9, a gunman killed two people and wounded two others outside a synagogue in Halle, Germany. The alleged shooter uploaded video of the attack to the livestream platform Twitch, from where it was shared by multiple channels on the Telegram messaging app. White nationalists on Telegram applauded the shooting and video, during which the alleged shooter complained about feminism and declining birth rates and claimed, “The root of all these problems is the Jew.” (One white nationalist channel even urged its followers to target the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League after he condemned the shooting.)
During the livestream, the alleged shooter also called himself “Anon,” seemingly a reference to a term used by the anonymous users of 4chan and 8chan to describe themselves. According to The New York Times, the reported manifesto was written in English “to draw the attention of an audience wider than just other extremists in Germany,” and it also referenced a specific 8chan employee.
A Media Matters search of 4chan found nearly 300 links shared to variations of the livestream, including about a dozen links to a livestream on Twitch and the alleged shooter’s Twitch account, nearly 50 links to the livestream uploaded to video sharing website LiveLeak, more than 170 links to hosting service BitChute, a link to harassment message board site Kiwi Farms, and more than 60 links to an upload of the alleged shooter’s video on a site that describes itself as “the world's leading censorship-free gore site.”
Kiwi Farms 4chan video
Alongside sharing versions of the livestream countless times, some users on 4chan “/pol/”’s message board praised the alleged shooter, calling him a “fucking legend” and a “German crusader” whose shooting was “hot as fuck” and proof that “we are making progress” and “have the power to kill [in real life].” Some users were more critical because of what they considered to be a “very poor score” compared to the death toll of other recent white supremacist mass shootings, although some 4chan users still praised the alleged shooter for having his “heart … in the right place,” “tying the high score,” and “making me laugh.”
4chan Germany shooting
Some users noted that the alleged shooter mentioned “Anon,” calling him “one of us” and a “4channer no doubt.” Another user on “/pol/” asked, “Who of you guys went to the synagogue in Halle today?”
4chan Germany shooting
This is not the first mass shooting linked to the chans. Multiple white supremacist mass shooters have reportedly posted their manifestos on 8chan this year, causing the site to be knocked offline. And users on 4chan have continued to call for violence against minority groups.
new 819
https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/how-duplicitous-trolls-are-using-tulsi-gabbards-candidacy-to-foment-disruption-and-chaos/
nolnx
ous trolls are using Tulsi Gabbard’s candidacy to foment disruption and chaos
Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly August 23, 2019
Tulsi Gabbard is not going to be the Democratic nominee for president in 2020. At this point, her polling averageat Real Clear Politics is 1.4%. Nevertheless, conservative media celebrated the fact that Gabbard won the online poll sponsored by Drudge Report after the first round of debates. Similarly, Gabbard won polls from both Breitbart and Drudge after her performance in the second debate. Those results were not replicated by any reputable polling firm.
Not long after the first debate, we learned what had prompted Gabbard’s success in those online polls.
Users from pro-Trump communities on 4chan and Reddit implored fellow members to vote for lower-polling candidates in online polls, specifically Tulsi Gabbard and Bill de Blasio, in the hours after Wednesday’s Democratic debate — a sign that digital manipulation efforts related to U.S. politics and elections remain very much alive.
Users on 4chan’s anonymous far-right /pol/ message board repeatedly posted links to polls across the web, encouraging one another to “blow the polls out” for Gabbard, the congresswoman from Hawaii who has developed a substantial support base among many of its users…
“GIVE HER YOUR POWER,” read one 4chan post from 1 a.m. Thursday, pointing to a screenshot of the still-active Drudge poll showing Gabbard leading.
Charles Davis highlighted some other Gabbard supporters.
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard is set to have lunch with a prolific conspiracy theorist who argues the mass shooting in Las Vegas was an intelligence operation meant to distract from the Harvey Weinstein scandal — and who is also, by far, the most successful digital fundraiser for her campaign, according to a recent announcement from the Hawaii Democrat’s presidential campaign staff.
In seeking the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, Gabbard, while struggling to register in most polls, has attracted a good deal of support from the fringe of both the left and right, especially online. Even former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke tweeted his support. The congresswoman has repeatedly disavowed Duke’s endorsement. The campaign has, however, embraced some of its lesser-hinged fans.
As Davis suggests, Gabbard also garners support from so-called “progressives” on the left. In critiquing the slogan “Vote Blue No Matter Who,” Kathy Copeland Padden complained that, “the Democratic Party has no incentive to take the candidacy of Progressives like Sanders and Gabbard seriously, no matter how loud the people clamor for them.”
Another Sanders supporter, Michael Tracey, has become one of Gabbard’s strongest defenders. Tracey is one of those people who don’t fit nicely into a linear left-right political continuum. He has been associated with news organizations as diverse as The Young Turks and The Federalist. He garnered a lot of attention on Twitter when he accused Representative Maxine Waters of assaulting him.
@MTracey: REP. MAXINE WATERS JUST SHOVED ME
[flashback]
*old woman gently pushes microphone out of her face*@MTracey: *smiles, sup-nods* pic.twitter.com/gYhcsEkUyW
— Jules Suzdaltsev (@jules_su) June 3, 2017
In other words, the label that might best fit Tracey is “shit-stirrer.” He not only denies Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election, but once suggested that if Russia did interfere, the American public should be thankful.
These days, Tracey is stirring up some shit that is reminiscent of a myth that was promulgated by Sanders supporters during the 2016 presidential primary: that the Democratic National Committee is rigging the game against Gabbard. At this point, the congresswoman from Hawaii hasn’t qualified for the September debate, with the deadline for doing so coming up next week. Even though the DNC announced the criteria to qualify for this debate back in May, Tracey is suggesting that it was rigged to keep Gabbard out. That message is now being picked up by right wing outlets like American Thinker.
Back in January when Gabbard announced her candidacy, I questioned whether Democrats could trust her. That was primarily based on her support for leaders like Syria’s brutal dictator Bashar al-Assad, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Of equal concern is the fact that she has never denounced the leader of the cult in which her family participated during her childhood. There is also the fact that, while she and her supporters tout her as a progressive Democrat, her record in Congress says otherwise.
While I am sure that there are voters out there who genuinely support Gabbard, it is clear that they make up no more than 1.4% of Democratic primary voters. It is the people who are using her candidacy—with or without her consent—to foment disruption and chaos in the process of selecting a nominee that is cause for concern.
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13 hrs after walmart [gilmore?]
Appearing on CNN’s “New Day” early Sunday morning, national security expert Juliette Kayyem lashed out at 8chan, the user-generated chatroom website, for being nothing more than a haven for white supremacists encouraging each other to commit atrocities.
Speaking with host Christi Paul, Kayyem got right to the point after it was pointed out that the El Paso shooter posted his racist manifesto on the board just before he went on his killing spree that left 20 dead.
“It’s legal because it is simply the sharing of ideas,” she said of the boards. “But what we are seeing with 8chan and others, it actually has become some sort of the announcement of my terror attack, as we saw it with El Paso, as well as a place that not just promotes this ideology but sort of eggs it on.”
“If you go on 8chan, that is essentially what it is doing, ‘do it, do it!’ this sort of peer pressure where these white supremacist ideologues are creating a safe haven,” she explained. Who knows who is going to go out and do a shooting? That’s the challenge here. Obviously, 8chan exists for this ideology. You don’t go on that platform but for this white supremacy.”
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https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2019/07/31/Right-wing-outlets-tout-post-debate-Drudge-poll-that-4chan-users-had-gamed/224365
no lnx twt
Users of the far-right message board 4chan organized to rig a Drudge Report online poll following the July 30 Democratic presidential debate. Multiple right-wing outlets touted the results. 4chan users similarly rigged previous post-debate Drudge polls.
After the first night of the CNN debate, users on 4chan’s “/pol/” message board shared the poll and urged others to vote for author and presidential candidate Marianne Williamson.
One user cheered that the message board was “rigging the Drudge poll,” calling it “a good thing.”
It is unsurprising that 4chan users would attempt to rig this online poll, because there has been widespread reporting about how they have done it multiple times before -- and will again, regardless of the candidates in the debate. Last month, users on the message board targeted Drudge polls after both parts of the first Democratic presidential debate to vote for candidates Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, and entrepreneur Andrew Yang, along with Williamson. And in May, users on the message board manipulated a Danish tabloid's online poll about Denmark’s then-upcoming elections.
And yet, multiple right-wing outlets wrote up the poll’s results as meaningful. Breitbart touted it in a headline. Media Research Center claimed the poll showed that “the public has spoken,” and organization vice president Dan Gainor wrote an op-ed on FoxNews.com citing the poll as proof of Williamson’s supposed post-debate rise. Gainor’s op-ed even led FoxNews.com.
Network/Outlet
4chan, The Drudge Report, Media Research Center, Breitbart.com, Fox News Channel
Person
Dan Gainor
Stories/Interests
Alt-right and pro-Trump trolls
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http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/4chan-users-incels-extol-reports-of-teenage-girls-death
Police are investigating a death in Utica, New York, of a teenage girl who was killed by a young man who posted graphic violent images of her body on social media sites. Users in far-right corners of the internet are hailing the killing, further demonstrating the proclivity for violent extremist acts among the participants in those digital enclaves.
:{
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The Observer-Dispatch, a Utica newspaper, reported yesterday that Utica police were investigating a death with some details that matched unverified claims that had been shared online about the killing of the teenager identified as Bianca Devins, an aspiring social-media influencer and model. WKTV confirmed today that the victim in question was Devins. NBC New York reports that the death is still being investigated, “appears to have involved an image posted to Instagram” and that police plan to meet with Devins’ family today. Soon after the story broke, the hashtag “#ripbianca” trended on Twitter.
The alleged killer posted graphic images to Instagram showing the teenage girl with her neck slashed, and one of himself with a wound suggesting that he had slit his own throat. (Right Wing Watch reviewed these images and the Instagram account from which they came, but will not be publishing the graphic images in question.) Despite early reports that Devins connected with her killer online, Heavy reports that Devin’s sister “says the suspect was a family friend” and BuzzFeed News reports that Utica police said that “the couple had just attended a concert together and were in a relationship.”
On 4chan and 8chan, users shared graphic images of the homicide and lauded the killer for his actions. On 4chan’s “r9k” board, where discontented young men gather to deride women for their appearances and share their loathing for society, some users argued that the killing was justified; others went as far as to celebrate it. On incel forums online, similar sentiments were shared. Incel communities online exist as places where young men convince each other that they have a right to expect sex from women and encourage each other to adopt extreme and violent misogyny as a response to their failures.
A post allegedly appeared on a now-defunct Facebook page called “Darkcel Gaming” with an image of the suspected killer before reports circulated of the young woman’s death. Users in incel communities have committed multiple murders and acts of mass violence in recent years, including an attack that killed 10 people in Toronto last year.
Social media platforms such as 4chan have repeatedly failed to moderate their sites in order to curb the extremist elements brewed and propagandized on their platforms, and law enforcement has struggled to grapple with the threats of violence these digital spaces help foster.
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https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/04/right-wing-groups-are-training-young-conservatives-to-win-the-next-meme-war/
april 2019
no lnx twit
POLITICS
APRIL 2, 2019
“The Left Can’t Meme”: How Right-Wing Groups Are Training the Next Generation of Social Media Warriors
Memes helped elect Donald Trump. Now well-funded conservative groups are using them to proselytize.
STORY BY STEPHANIE MENCIMER, VIDEO BY MARK HELENOWSKI
Benny Johnson took to the stage at the convention center in Palm Beach, Florida, before an audience of cheering young Trump supporters in December to lead a session titled “How to Own the Libs.”
“I ask myself every day: How do we own the libs?” said Johnson, at the time a reporter for the right-wing Daily Caller. “How do we do it in a way that makes a difference? Because these people deserved to be wrecked.”
According to Johnson, the answer to that question is memes. These bits of humor or political propaganda—generally images overlaid with a caption designed to go viral—are best known for littering social media, but some experts think they might have helped elect Donald Trump. Or as notorious internet troll Chuck Johnson has said, “We memed the president into existence.”
Following that unexpected meme-driven success, well-funded conservative groups are making a more organized push to train young internet-savvy right-wingers in the art of meme-making, enlisting a growing army in what they see as the coming meme war of 2020.Turning Point USA, the conservative campus group that organized the conference, is merely one of these organizations seeking to sway hearts, minds, and elections via meme trainings. And it’s clear that when it comes to political memes, the left—which has never taken them very seriously—is trailing the right badly, and falling even further behind.
“Right-wing speaker training has been around for decades,” says Angelo Carusone, president of the liberal media watchdog group Media Matters, which did a study of Facebook memes last summer. “Memes are a new front in the asymmetry. What you’re looking at here with memes is storytelling around the bend, and what you’re seeing is the future.”
Memes are best known for littering social media, but some experts think they might have helped elect Donald Trump president.
Trump’s presidential campaign keyed into the power of memes early on, monitoring obscure meme sites and boosting pro-Trump images and videos onto mainstream platforms like Facebook. Facebook’s algorithms favor images and videos over more nuanced text posts or links to news articles, so pro-Trump memes quickly went viral. During the campaign, memes also helped spread misinformation about Hillary Clinton’s health and the Pizzagate conspiracy theory that prompted an armed North Carolina man to show up at aDC pizza parlor to break up a nonexistent child sex ring supposedly led by Democratic Party operatives.
Perhaps no one understood the effectiveness of memes better than former Trump campaign strategist Steve Bannon, who had served as executive chairman of the far-right publication Breitbart News. In 2016, only 5 percent of Breitbart‘s posts were of images, but those images accounted for half of the site’s most-shared posts on Facebook.
Jeff Giesea, a consultant who has worked with venture capitalist Peter Thiel and the Koch brothers, is a self-described “memetics” expert. During the 2016 campaign, he joined with men’s rights agitatorMike Cernovichto organize MAGA3X, a grassroots army of online trolls who worked to meme Trump to the White House. The effort produced tens of thousands of social media accounts, all working in concert to promote Trump, with a heavy emphasis on iconography. They even created a flash-mob meme generator to make it easy for Trump supporters to hook up in real life.
Giesea has long argued that memes are such a powerful tool they should be used as cyberwarfare to combat propaganda from ISIS and other foreign threats. In 2015, he wrote in a NATO journal on information warfare that “it seems obvious that more aggressive communication tactics and broader warfare through trolling and memes is a necessary, inexpensive, and easy way to help destroy the appeal and morale of our common enemies…Memetic warfare is about taking control of the dialogue, narrative, and psychological space. It’s about denigrating, disrupting, and subverting the enemy’s effort to do the same.”
The same could be said of memes in politics. Cheap, subversive, and designed to provoke an emotional response, memes are a disruptive form of information guerrilla warfare. Republicans have gotten Giesea’s message, while Democrats have all but ignored it.
“Right-wing speaker training has been around for decades,” says Media Matters president Angelo Carusone. “Memes are a new front in the asymmetry.”
Johnson’s skill in this area launched him to Washington media fame for a while, until he was ousted from BuzzFeed and then the Independent Journal Review after being accused of plagiarism. He seems to have found his calling with Turning Point USA, the conservative campus activist group that sponsored the student convention in Palm Beach and is itself something of a meme factory.
Founded in 2012, TPUSA got its startup funding from Foster Friess, a wealthy Republican donor, and it has since raked in donations from the oil and gas industry and organizations affiliated with the Koch brothers. With a budget of more than $8 million last year, TPUSA amplifies its campus presence by churning out endless “Big Government Sucks” memes on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
Turning Point USA
Like most memes, a few of TPUSA’s are clever and spread far, and many more have been trashed by internet trolls, who have created a whole meme subgenre they call “Toilet Paper USA.” Johnson was on hand in Florida to help TPUSA members up their game.
Johnson started his tutorial with “based Lindsey Graham,” a video montage of the South Carolina senator’s angry performance during the contentious confirmation hearing of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was accused of sexually assaulting a woman in high school. “That is a special moment,” he explained, noting that Kavanaugh was confirmed in spite of the allegations.“In your lifetime, there has never been a culture war that conservatives have won except for this.”
He proceeded to walk the audience through the evolution of Graham memes that went viral during the hearing and may have helped change public opinion on Kavanaugh. On the big screen, Johnson showed photos and a video he had taken of Graham coming out of the Capitol after a day of hearings. In the video, Graham is coolly adjusting his tie and smiling, while in the background, a police officer restrains a hysterical-looking woman who’s screaming at him about Kavanaugh. Johnson tweeted that he had just taken “the most thug life @LindseyGrahamSC photos of the entire Kavanaugh saga.”
View image on TwitterView image on Twitter
Benny
?
@bennyjohnson
I hate to brag.
I just took the most thug life @LindseyGrahamSC photos of the entire Kavanaugh saga.
[Story soon]
From there, the internet took care of the rest. “Did this sucker meme?” Johnson asked, laughing. The answer was yes. Creative internet users tweaked and photoshopped the image, both still and video, as it spread. Johnson showed one meme of the tie-adjusting Graham superimposed on the burning Twin Towers. Then one featuring Joe Biden planting a kiss on the screaming woman. And finally, one that turned Graham into a “thug life” rap video star.
Embedded video
Benny
?
@bennyjohnson
???? MUST WATCH: SOUND ON ????
???? MUST WATCH: SOUND ON ????
???? MUST WATCH: SOUND ON ????
???? MUST WATCH: SOUND ON ????
???? MUST WATCH: SOUND ON ????
???? MUST WATCH: SOUND ON ????#kavanaugh
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8:16 PM - Oct 7, 2018
818 people are talking about this
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“This is how you know you’ve made it in this profession,” Johnson told his audience. “When memes take life.”
In February, TPUSA hired Johnson to do this sort of thing full time as its chief creative officer, a sign of just how seriously well-funded pro-Trump organizations are taking the business of memes.
The TPUSA conference also included a second, more interactive session on memes, hosted by two minor Instagram stars, Rogan O’Handley (Instagram handle DC_Draino) and Grant Godwin (the_typical-liberal), who got into the nuts and bolts of the art form—or, as Godwin explained, how to get your Pepe the Frog memes to go viral.
Two weeks earlier, meme training got top billing at the American Priority Conference, which billed itself as an “America First,” pro-Trump political gathering.Speakers included Roger Stone, the longtime Trump associate who was indicted the next month for obstruction and false statements in the special counsel investigation, and AnthonyScaramucci, who lasted less than a week as White House communications director. The conference featured a session on memetics by Tom Shadilay, a producer for Mike Cernovich. (Shadilay’s name may itself be a meme: It’s a popular hashtag on Gab, the social media site favored by the far right, and a code word for trolls on 4chan. Shadilay is the name of a 1986 Italian disco song by a band called P.E.P.E., whose album art featured a cartoon frog that resembles Pepe the Frog. Tom Shadilay does not appear to have any internet presence before his Twitter account was created in May 2017. He stopped responding to my emails after I asked whether that’s really his last name.)
In January, Liberty Con, a national convention of libertarian students, offered advice from David Gay, a libertarian activist who runs the Facebook group Liberty Memes, which has nearly a half-million followers spreading his political message through memes. (Until late 2016, Giesea, the meme expert, was on the board of Students for Liberty, which sponsored the conference.)* Johnson has four events scheduled this month on college campuses on “winning the meme wars.”
Boston University professor Gianluca Stringhini studies memes for a living. When I told him that well-funded right-wing organizations were specifically training activists for the next great meme war, he was surprised. Typically, he says, memes are seen as organic, emerging from the dark corners of the internet, not propaganda directed by people in politics. “Memes are tools for information warfare,” he says. “Probably this is a new way of doing politics. A new weapon that campaigns can use.”
It’s not clear exactly whether memes do, in fact, change public opinion, but conservative groups working to train grassroots troops seem to think so. So do the Russians. In the 2018 report commissioned by the Senate Intelligence Committee to investigate the Internet Research Agency, a Russian troll farm that meddled in the 2016 presidential election, researchers discovered that the IRA was especially fond of memes put out by TPUSA. Using accounts that it created to look like ordinary Americans and spread misinformation and propaganda, the IRA gave TPUSA memes a boost across multiple social media platforms. But the researchers couldn’t determine exactly what the impact of all those memes was.
Last year, Stringhini and six colleagues published a study on the origins of memes, analyzing more than 2 billion social media posts on Twitter, 4chan, Reddit, and Gab, tofigure out where the most popular memes get their start. Stringhini says the most trafficked memes start on right-wing internet forums, places like 4chan’s politically incorrect /pol/ channel and Reddit’s /r/the_Donald/ subreddit. From there, the far right has been extremely successful in getting its stuff to take off on mainstream platforms.Stringhini notes that after the 2016 presidential election, Trump’s campaign spokeswoman, Katrina Pierson, tweeted her thanks to 4chan and Reddit users for making it all happen, putting a sharp point on how much people on the right believe that memes are influencing public opinion.
As a result, conservative groups seem to be incorporating memes into their training arsenal for grassroots activists in a way that has no parallel on the left. In fact, “the left can’t meme” is itself a subgenre of memes, reflecting an idea accepted on both ends of the political spectrum that progressive activists are really bad at this form of political warfare.
One potential exception is long-shot Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, who has recently catapulted to fame thanks to memes. But those memes are coming from the same sources, on Reddit and 4chan, that promoted Trump, not from liberal groups, creating a bizarre movement of Yang fans among white nationalists.
Media Matters’ Carusone says people on the left are more concerned with nuanced facts and gray areas that can’t always be boiled down accurately into a photo with a caption. On the left, he says, “every meme has to have a million qualifiers, so that it’s no longer a meme. It’s a Medium post.” Conservatives, on the other hand, tend to communicate their ideas “in ways that are very reductionist. They’re also much more comfortable lying, and their audiences are much more likely to accept it.”
Benny Johnson has his own take on what makes a good political meme. The first step for successful lib ownership, he told the students assembled in Palm Beach, is to “challenge the culture,” as Graham did during the Kavanaugh hearings. Second, “join the conversation” by creating an interaction, but be sure it will “demonstrate the superiority of conservative ideas.”
As an example, he played a goofy video he made withFederal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai. In the video, Pai is dressed like Santa Claus, wielding a light saber, and he defends his plan for “internet freedom” in response to criticism of the Trump administration’s move to end net neutrality. “We were trolling the internet,” Johnson said. And it worked.
He flashed through a host of viral memes that took off after the video was posted. In the video, there’s a shot of Pai in front of a screen eating popcorn and watching a movie. Meme-makers have swapped in clips to make it look like Pai is watching Hitler rallies or the burning Twin Towers. Even Luke Skywalker weighed in:
View image on Twitter
View image on Twitter
Mark Hamill
?
@HamillHimself
Cute video Ajit "Aren't I Precious?" Pai ??-but you are profoundly unworthy 2 wield a lightsaber-A Jedi acts selflessly for the common man-NOT lie 2 enrich giant corporations. Btw-did you pay John Williams his royalty? @AjitPaiFCCorpShill #AJediYouAreNOT
The third step in successful lib ownership, Johnson instructed the crowd, was critical: “Have more fun than the left.” He played a video he had made in 2015 of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz cooking bacon on a machine gun. “Can you think of three thing libs hate more?” he exclaimed with a laugh. “Ted Cruz, bacon, guns.” All the ingredients for a good meme.
Finally, Johnson concluded: “Smile. You’re on the winning side.”
==
==
Actor and ardent Trump supporter James Woods, who is not banned from Twitter, but rather has refused to delete a post on his Twitter profile with the hashtag “#HangThemAll” that would result in his account being unlocked, was also featured as a “prominent” censored conservative voice. Before being locked out of Twitter, Woods also shared a meme of the Christchurch shooter depicted as a clown, part of a push by white supremacists to find a new way to launder their voices into relevance.
ref
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/white-nationalists-adopt-clowns-as-their-next-racist-symbol-yes-seriously/
White Nationalists Adopt Clowns as Their Next Racist Symbol (Yes, Seriously)
By Jared Holt | April 4, 2019 2:54 pm
(Screenshot / 4chan)
Online personalities in far-right and white nationalist online circles are attempting to attribute racism and anti-Semitism to an image of cartoon character Pepe the Frog depicted poorly drawn and as a clown, and that effort has gained notable traction in recent months. Far-right proponents want the broader internet to believe the character directly represents their worldview, but the situation in whole represents an attitude shift in far-right circles online and a slow inching toward even more radical elements of the movement.
The clown render of Pepe the Frog, which KnowYourMeme researchers have identified as being known as “Honk Honk” or “Honkler,” began spreading across the internet last year. In recent months, the meme has gained a foothold in the far-right and is bleeding into racist propaganda. Pepe the Frog, originally from the comic series “Boy’s Club,” was co-opted by an iteration of the white nationalist movement that emerged in 2015 and dubbed itself the “alt-right”—a term created as part of a strategy to obscure the inherent racism and antisemitism of the movement in hopes of making its agenda more palatable among conservatives.
On 4chan, there is an abundance of memes depicting the character lynching black people (depicted in stereotypically racist ways), operating gas chambers, and deploying racial slurs. On February 11, users on 4chan’s “politically incorrect” forum board launched “operation honk,” a campaign with the mission of spreading the character across the internet and boosting its popularity, and then returning the character back to 4chan where it could be associated with racism.The “Operation Honkler” post cited by KnowYourMeme reads: “They will adopt our child, and post Honkler on social media under mainstream memes already in circulation. There will come a time when we must take him back. … Whether of the HONK or not, we must perpetuate this meme to show the world our ideas.”
The sentiment of the “Honkler” meme has also appeared in written format on venues where images won’t fit. A clown emoji and a globe emoji together has been used to convey the phrase “clown world” where the phrase isn’t written out fully. Such references can be found in numerous Twitter profiles, including that of Rebel Media personality Martina Markota,who Salon reported in 2017 as having ties to the far-right. “Honk Honk” memes were also used by “Microchip”—a pseudonym used by a far-right troll who made waves propagandizing in favor of Donald Trump during the 2016 election— to replace slurs and curse words in his posts on Gab.
The phrase “clown world” and accompanying emojis unify far-right social media users in their exasperation over an imagined state of collapse in the Western hemispherethat they largely blame on immigrants and minority groups. The force driving “Honkler” across the far-right is the same bleak worldview that led white nationalists to embrace Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang. In their minds, if there is nothing that they can do to stop the supposed “great replacement” of white people in their “homelands” and no politicians who care enough about their cause to implement real policies that favor their agenda, they may as well accept the outcome and wrench whatever they can out of the system, like Yang’s promise of $1,000 per month universal basic income. This mentality is often referred to as “black pilling."
[twt]
"Honkler” and “clown world” memes were recently incorporated into “Goy Talk,” a new but growing web-based white nationalist podcast. The show’s hosts advocate white nationalism in a detached way, and embody the same increasingly nihilistic attitude among the white nationalist and white supremacist movements in the United States conveyed in the repetition of the phrase “clown world.”
“Goy Talk” hosts express racist and anti-Semitic views as a staple of their programming, with guests that include David Duke, Christopher Cantwell, and Patrick Little. Nevertheless, they are ultimately nihilistic about the state of the world and their ability to change it without mass-organized action reminiscent of the violent writings of James Mason in his book, “Siege.”
A March 28 episode of “Goy Talk” opens with a heavily edited video featuring the Honkler character, and one of the display images used for a show host is edited in “Honkler” style. Additionally, the hosts of “Goy Talk” have modified their profiles on Twitter to include clown imagery.
Online personalities in far-right and white nationalist online circles are attempting to attribute racism and anti-Semitism to an image of cartoon character Pepe the Frog depicted poorly drawn and as a clown, and that effort has gained notable traction in recent months. Far-right proponents want the broader internet to believe the character directly represents their worldview, but the situation in whole represents an attitude shift in far-right circles online and a slow inching toward even more radical elements of the movement.
The clown render of Pepe the Frog, which KnowYourMeme researchers have identified as being known as “Honk Honk” or “Honkler,” began spreading across the internet last year. In recent months, the meme has gained a foothold in the far-right and is bleeding into racist propaganda. Pepe the Frog, originally from the comic series “Boy’s Club,” was co-opted by an iteration of the white nationalist movement that emerged in 2015 and dubbed itself the “alt-right”—a term created as part of a strategy to obscure the inherent racism and antisemitism of the movement in hopes of making its agenda more palatable among conservatives.
On 4chan, there is an abundance of memes depicting the character lynching black people (depicted in stereotypically racist ways), operating gas chambers, and deploying racial slurs. On February 11, users on 4chan’s “politically incorrect” forum board launched “operation honk,” a campaign with the mission of spreading the character across the internet and boosting its popularity, and then returning the character back to 4chan where it could be associated with racism. The “Operation Honkler” post cited by KnowYourMeme reads: “They will adopt our child, and post Honkler on social media under mainstream memes already in circulation. There will come a time when we must take him back. … Whether of the HONK or not, we must perpetuate this meme to show the world our ideas.”
The sentiment of the “Honkler” meme has also appeared in written format on venues where images won’t fit. A clown emoji and a globe emoji together has been used to convey the phrase “clown world” where the phrase isn’t written out fully. Such references can be found in numerous Twitter profiles, including that of Rebel Media personality Martina Markota, who Salon reported in 2017 as having ties to the far-right. “Honk Honk” memes were also used by “Microchip”—a pseudonym used by a far-right troll who made waves propagandizing in favor of Donald Trump during the 2016 election— to replace slurs and curse words in his posts on Gab.
(Screenshot / Twitter)
The phrase “clown world” and accompanying emojis unify far-right social media users in their exasperation over an imagined state of collapse in the Western hemisphere that they largely blame on immigrants and minority groups. The force driving “Honkler” across the far-right is the same bleak worldview that led white nationalists to embrace Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang. In their minds, if there is nothing that they can do to stop the supposed “great replacement” of white people in their “homelands” and no politicians who care enough about their cause to implement real policies that favor their agenda, they may as well accept the outcome and wrench whatever they can out of the system, like Yang’s promise of $1,000 per month universal basic income. This mentality is often referred to as “black pilling.”
Nicholas J. Fuentes
?
@NickJFuentes
Understanding Yang Gang:
- The country is doomed
- The rules don’t matter
- We might as well get $1,000 a month
2,743
6:55 PM - Mar 12, 2019
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“Honkler” and “clown world” memes were recently incorporated into “Goy Talk,” a new but growing web-based white nationalist podcast. The show’s hosts advocate white nationalism in a detached way, and embody the same increasingly nihilistic attitude among the white nationalist and white supremacist movements in the United States conveyed in the repetition of the phrase “clown world.”
“Goy Talk” hosts express racist and anti-Semitic views as a staple of their programming, with guests that include David Duke, Christopher Cantwell, and Patrick Little. Nevertheless, they are ultimately nihilistic about the state of the world and their ability to change it without mass-organized action reminiscent of the violent writings of James Mason in his book, “Siege.”
A March 28 episode of “Goy Talk” opens with a heavily edited video featuring the Honkler character, and one of the display images used for a show host is edited in “Honkler” style. Additionally, the hosts of “Goy Talk” have modified their profiles on Twitter to include clown imagery.
(Screenshot / Twitter)
The Twitter account for “Goy Talk” posted an image yesterday of an anti-Semitic meme modified to depict a racist caricature as a clown.
https://twitter.com/willsommer/status/1115346306300616709?lang=en nz shooter
==
mma
Saturday, there was another mass shooting at a synagogue. A man opened fire inside the Chabad synagogue in Powoy, CA, just outside of San Diego. NBC's Ben Collins and Andrew Blankstein reported that an open letter was posted on far-right forum 8chan in the shooters name, which also took credit for an unsolved arson of a nearby mosque. According to the San Diego County Sheriff, the alleged shooter is now being investigated for that arson as well.
Over at Bellingcat, Robert Evans took a deep dive into 8chan, which was also the place where the Christchurch mosque shooter posted his manifesto. Media Matters' Cristina López has previously written about how board users launch harassment campaigns using 8chan. 8chan is also the hub of the QAnon conspiracy theory which has swept pro-Trump media; a number of prominent right-wing figures have amplified that conspiracy theory. And board users absolutely love Sean Hannity.
Over at The New York Times, Charlie Warzel wrote about how these mass shootings have become a meme in the far-right internet: "The pattern is eerie: it starts with a crude genealogy of the shooter’s ethnic roots, then a self-aggrandizing Q. and A. with himself, followed by a litany of toxic in-jokes meant to confuse the media and those less savvy in far-right online culture. ... Like the Christchurch massacre, the Poway shooting is not only tailored for the internet but also sickeningly standardized. The digital footprint and manifestoes of these white nationalist terrorists follow a familiar template — one that each shooter fills in with their own hideous details. Indeed, it seems real-world murderous hate crimes have become a message board meme of sorts. And like any online meme, the creation cycle only seems to be accelerating, refining itself and, horrifyingly, increasing in frequency."
On Fox News, a guest was linking the rise of anti-Semitism to Trump's permissive rhetoric about the far right, specifically Trump's defense of white nationalists in Charlottesville who chanted "Jews will not replace us." (Trump even doubled down on that characterization on Friday in an interview with Mark Levin.) But as the guest described this, the show suddenly cut to commercial. The guest was invited back on later in the day, but the discussion moved quickly beyond Trump's rhetoric to an assertion that Trump could not possibly be personally anti-Semitic.
Fox News never stopped pushing the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that motivated the Tree of Life shooter. Glenn Beck was on Fox News earlier this month pushing it. And earlier this week, a Fox Nation guest fearmongered about George Soros infiltrating the census, harkening back to when a guest was banned from the network for complaining about the "Soros-occupied State Department."
==
https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/10/28/analyzing-terrorists-social-media-manifesto-pittsburgh-synagogue-shooters-posts-gab
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/03/the-shooters-manifesto-was-designed-to-troll/585058/
nl lnxtwit
In the hours after the horrific mass shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, people desperately searched the internet for any sign of a motive or meaning behind the attack. Early Friday, a number of unverified social-media posts surfaced, along with a bizarre manifesto posted to 8chan, rich with irony and references to memes.
Together, the posts suggest that every aspect of the shootings was designed to gain maximum attention online, in part by baiting the media. The shooter live-streamed the attack itself on Facebook, and the video was quickly shared across YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram. Before committing the act, he shouted, “Remember, lads, subscribe to PewDiePie,” a reference to Felix Kjellberg, who runs YouTube’s most subscribed-to channel. The phrase itself is a meme started by PewDiePie’s fans, and its goal is to be reprinted.
Read: YouTube extremism and the long tail]
Kjellberg, who has previously found himself embroiled in controversy over alleged anti-Semitism, disavowed the shooting on Twitter Friday morning. “Just heard news of the devastating reports from New Zealand Christchurch. I feel absolutely sickened having my name uttered by this person. My heart and thoughts go out to the victims, families and everyone affected by this tragedy,” he wrote. By forcing Kjellberg to acknowledge the attack, the shooter succeeded in further spreading the word about the crime to Kjellberg’s tens of millions of followers.
@loudmouthjulia
"Subscribe to PewDiePie" is a meme that encompasses a misled belief that it's a fight for the disenfranchised; those constantly being pushed down. It's David vs Goliath. It's used on boards like 8chan as a rallying cry. It doesn't belong to PDP anymore — but we need to examine it...
Significant portions of the manifesto appear to be an elaborate troll, written to prey on the mainstream media’s worst tendencies. As the journalist Robert Evans noted, “This manifesto is a trap … laid for journalists searching for the meaning behind this horrific crime. There is truth in there, and valuable clues to the shooter’s radicalization, but it is buried beneath a great deal of, for lack of a better word, ‘shitposting.’”
[The Tech White Power Used to Go Viral
OLGA KHAZAN]
Shitposting is a slang term used to describe the act of posting trollish and usually ironic content designed to derail a conversation or elicit a strong reaction from people who aren’t in on the joke. Certain aspects of the shooter’s manifesto fall into this category. He includes Navy Seal Copypasta, a meme that originated on 4chan. He claims that Spyro: Year of the Dragon, a video game, taught him ethno-nationalism and that Fortnite taught him to “floss on the corpses,” referring to a viral dance move from the game. These absurd references are meant to troll readers
Jasmin Mujanovic
?
@JasminMuj
Replying to @JasminMuj
One more thought: the shooter makes repeated references to the “remove Kebab” meme, which is based on a propaganda video produced by Serb nationalist forces during the Bosnian War & Bosnian Genocide in 90s. Meshes w/ Obilic references & clear Breivik influence.
...
The shooter also credits the far-right personality Candace Owens with helping to “push me further and further into the belief of violence over meekness.” Though the shooter could be a genuine fan of Owens, who has been known to espouse right-leaning views on immigration and gun control, this reference might be meant to incite Owens’s critics to blame her.
That doesn’t mean the racism expressed throughout the 74-page manifesto isn’t genuine. But the complexities of the crime are still unfolding, and as the New York Times journalist Kevin Roose cautioned, “The NZ shooter’s apparent manifesto is thick with irony and meta-text and very easy to misinterpret.” Unfortunately, when journalists report on these horrific acts, the shooter’s hateful messages are sometimes amplified in the process. But the origins of that hate and the shooter’s public postings do need to be examined, even when taking them at face value is difficult.
Mass killers have long exploited the media environments they operate within. The Zodiac killer gained notoriety by persuading newspapers to publish his cryptic messages. In 2015, a shooter in Virginia killed people during a live television broadcast.
As the internet and social media have democratized access to information, much of it spreads without necessary context. As the Verge writer Elizabeth Lopatto noted in 2015, “Our interactions with these killers were mediated by huge media gatekeepers—their manifestos were left at their homes, or sent to newspapers and TV stations. If the manifestos appeared at all, they were quoted from, rather than released in full. This is no longer the case.”
Read: The dangerous spread of extremist manifestos]
While this system of gatekeeping itself was undoubtedly problematic, since many of the gatekeepers upheld norms and power structures built on privilege, technology has upended our media environment so quickly that many people are ill-equipped to handle the new information environment. We’ve seen the consequences of this play out in the rise of fake news, thriving misinformation campaigns, and bizarre viral hoaxes warped by trolls to capitalize on people’s worst fears.
Before people can even begin to grasp the nuances of today’s internet, they can be radicalized by it. Platforms such as YouTube and Facebook can send users barreling into fringe communities where extremist views are normalized and advanced. Because these communities have so successfully adopted irony as a cloaking device for promoting extremism, outsiders are left confused as to what is a real threat and what’s just trolling. The darker corners of the internet are so fragmented that even when they spawn a mass shooting, as in New Zealand, the shooter’s words can be nearly impossible to parse, even for those who are Extremely Online.i
==
https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2019/03/15/New-Zealand-mass-shooting-illustrates-failure-of-tech-companies-to-prevent-radicalization-/223153
Discussing the shooting at two New Zealand mosques that left at least 49 dead at the hands of an anti-Muslim extremist, NBC reporter Ben Collins noted that the alleged shooter showed signs of “getting radicalized by these same algorithms” on tech platforms such as YouTube that previously influenced other mass shooters.
YouTube has a serious radicalization problem because its algorithm sometimes pushes far-right content via recommendations, which Collins noted can cause people to “go down rabbit holes” and “maybe they start as racists and they end up as extremists,” leading to harassment, racist violence, and terrorism. Collins also compared the alleged Christchurch shooter’s reported announcement of the attack on far-right message board 8chan to the alleged Pittsburgh, PA, shooter’sannouncement of his attack on Gab, a social media platform that is a hotbed for white nationalists.
The alleged New Zealand mosque shooter livestreamed the attack on Facebook, and it was also shared on YouTube and Twitter, but the social media platforms have struggled to remove the video. Tech companies have been ill-equipped to proactively deal with this kind of content, in some ways leaving the task of combating it to the most affected communities.
...
==
==
To the astonishment of colleagues, the Fox co-host Kimberly Guilfoyle often prepared for “The Five” by relying on information provided to her by an avid fan: a viewer from Georgia named David Townsend, who had no affiliation either with Fox News or with journalism. She’d share the day’s planned topics with Townsend, and then he’d e-mail her suggested content. A former colleague of Guilfoyle’s says, “It was a joke among the production assistants—they were, like, ‘Wait till you hear this!’ She actually got research from him! It was the subject of hilarity.”
Townsend is a frequent contributor to the fringe social-media site Gab, which Wired has called a “haven for the far right.” (He has promoted the idea that “physically weak men” are “more likely to be socialists,” and has argued that it is not anti-Semitic to observe that “the most powerful political moneybags in American politics are Zionists.”) The server company that hosts Gab removed it from the Internet temporarily after it was revealed to have posted hate-filled rants by Robert Bowers, the gunman who killed eleven people at a Pittsburgh synagogue, last October.
When I asked Townsend about his e-mails to Guilfoyle, he said, “Mind your own business. I’m just a Fox fan. I’m a keyboard warrior. I’m a nobody.” He said, “I’ve sent stuff to various people at Fox for years, and I don’t get a penny for it,” and added, “I don’t know what tree you’re barking up but you better be careful.”
nyer mayer
https://www.alternet.org/2019/02/democratic-primary-candidates-targeted-by-sustained-and-ongoing-disinformation-campaign-report/
Wednesday, POLITICO reported that several politicians floated as challengers to President Donald Trump are being targeted by a “sustained and ongoing” propaganda campaign on social media designed to divide the Democratic Party — possibly of foreign origin.
The most aggressively targeted figures are Sens. Kamala Harris (D-CA), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Bernie Sanders (I-VT), all of whom are running for president in 2020, as well as former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX), who is currently deciding between running for president and a second campaign for Senate. All of them are being targeted on Twitter and other platforms, with the apparent goal of damaging their reputations before the primary can begin:
The cyber propaganda — which frequently picks at the rawest, most sensitive issues in public discourse — is being pushed across a variety of platforms and with a more insidious approach than in the 2016 presidential election, when online attacks designed to polarize and mislead voters first surfaced on a massive scale.
Recent posts that have received widespread dissemination include racially inflammatory memes and messaging involving Harris, O’Rourke and Warren. In Warren’s case, a false narrative surfaced alleging that a blackface doll appeared on a kitchen cabinet in the background of the senator’s New Year’s Eve Instagram livestream.
According to information analyzed by Guardians.ai on behalf of POLITICO,much of the activity around these candidates on Twitter is being driven by 200 accounts, both organic and likely automated — during a recent 30 day period, these accounts were responsible for 2 to 15 percent of all mentions of these four politicians on the site.
The most targeted politician seems to have been Harris, who is currently the tentative frontrunner in polls of declared candidates. She has been subject to a barrage of sexist attacks on her youthful relationship with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown. If this activity is part of a disinformation campaign by foreign state actors, it would not be the first time. There is strong evidence that Russia created several of the accounts in 2016 that were responsible for spreading rhetoric meant to divide supporters of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, who had very similar platforms but ended up in a toxic primary battle that left Clinton wounded ahead of the general election. Moreover, there is a consensus that the stolen Democratic emails distributed through WikiLeaks and propagandized out of context in the 2016 cycle originated with Russian hackers.
But that is not the whole story, becauseat least some of the energy to poison the primaries appears to be coming from fringe troll sites like 4chan and 8chan, where users have taken up explicit calls to attack Democratic candidates from the left (one user explicitly told fellow posters to spread information about how Warren was a Republican until 1996). It is unclear how many of these users are foreign state actors from places like Russia or Iran, versus organic right-wing activists in the United States, but data experts believe it is a mixture of the two.
It is clear that social media is still a place where toxic attacks and partisan propaganda can spread rapidly — and those who make it a part of their media diet should be on guard.
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https://www.thewrap.com/far-right-social-network-gab-back-online-after-finding-new-host/
cute frog logo no accident?]
Gab.com returned over the weekend after spending roughly a week offline. A visit to the site Monday revealed things were up and running normally under a new hosting provider, the Seattle-based Epik.com.
“Here is our press release the media. You failed,” the website announced triumphantly on Twitter. “We are back online. We grow stronger by the hour. Free speech lives at Gab.com. This is only the beginning. May God have mercy on you for what you people have done this past week. Peace, love, and prayers.”
is our press release to the media:
You failed. We are back online. We grow stronger by the hour. Free speech lives at :{http://:(style="position:absolute !important;overflow:hidden !important;width:1px !important;height:1px !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px) !important"):}:Gab.com:{ :(style="position:absolute !important;overflow:hidden !important;width:1px !important;height:1px !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px) !important"):}:. This is only the beginning. May God have mercy on you for what you people have done this past week. Peace, love, and prayers.
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