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Ben Collins

Jun 6, 2020 • 5 tweets • 3 min read

@BrandyZadrozny

New from @BrandyZadrozny + me:

Armed residents in small towns all across America, warned by social media and local police, have been gathering to fight off "busloads of antifa," coming to loot their towns.

They never show up.

So what happens next?

nbcnews.com/tech/social-me…

"They came with shotguns, rifles and pistols to protect their businesses from outsiders.

They had heard that antifa, paid by billionaire philanthropist Geoge Soros, were being bused in from neighboring cities, hellbent on razing their idyllic town."
nbcnews.com/tech/social-me…

Some members of these small towns see the antifa panic for what it is.

In Curry County, Oregon, a local couple wrote an op-ed In the local paper, after 200 armed people showed up to fight antifa downtown:

They called it "taking on an imaginary enemy."

nbcnews.com/tech/social-me…

Rumors of marauding antifa buses have popped up on local social media all across the country this week.

Locals in Washington felled trees with chainsaws to block a bus, thinking it was antifa.

It was a multiracial couple heading home from a campsite.

nbcnews.com/tech/social-me…

NBC News saw screenshots of Nextdoor and local Facebook group posts warning about the imminent arrival of antifa buses from suburban and rural neighborhoods all throughout the country.

The fearmongering was everywhere, and the rumor was identical.

nbcnews.com/tech/social-me…

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More from @oneunderscore__

Ben Collins

@oneunderscore__

Feb 21

Quick thread:

Antivaxxers, QAnon people and the anti-CRT crowd have coalesced around a new tactic to intimidate school boards into doing their bidding.

It’s called “paper terrorism.”

They took it from sovereign citizens, and they have a playbook for every state in the country.

Here’s the new antivaxxer/anti-CRT plan for school boards:

— File a mountain of phony lawsuits against schools

— Make ridiculous demands, like closing all vaccine clinics and banning books they say “promote pedophilia”

— If they don’t cave, ask for millions in damages

It goes like this:

Antivaxxers demand money from surety bonds, basically liability insurance for school districts in case an employee commits a crime, like embezzling money.

Q people think they can file a claim if the school is teaching CRT. Obviously, that’s not how it works.

Read 10 tweets

Ben Collins

@oneunderscore__

Feb 19

@BrandyZadrozny

This NY Times story about who's behind QAnon is good!

Also, @BrandyZadrozny and I ID'd this same person four years ago.

nytimes.com/2022/02/19/tec…

Here's that story from 2018.
nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news…

Hm, have they? Not me!

Read 4 tweets

Ben Collins

@oneunderscore__

Feb 12

Quick thread:

You’ve probably seen a Facebook group about American “trucker convoys” who want to block traffic in LA or DC.

Guess what? Some of those groups were created by fake people in Romania.

But some of them are now very real, and they’re really planning something.

There are dozens of these “Trucker convoy” accounts with tens of thousands of followers.

Some are real. Some are created in places like Vietnam, but targeted DC or LA.

The fake ones were previously anti-mandate/pro-Trump pages that renamed themselves to reference convoys.

These foreign, stolen accounts and groups are called “Nick accounts,” according to Harvard’s Joan Donovan.

You can buy them on the dark web cheap.

They even have great customer service. Did your convoy group get banned from Facebook?

Call them. They’ll give you another.

Read 13 tweets

Ben Collins

@oneunderscore__

Feb 8

NEW + exclusive from me:

I talked to a half-dozen domestic violent extremism investigators working behind the scenes for January 6th Committee.

Here's a behind the scenes look at where the investigation is headed, and how it's looking beyond the riot.

nbcnews.com/politics/polit…

Something I learned talking to January 6th Committee investigators:

The networks behind the attack on the 6th might've been formed at Covid lockdown protests, counterprotests to racial justice demonstrations, and armed protests at state Capitols in 2020.

nbcnews.com/politics/polit…

The Jan. 6 Committee's domestic violent extremism investigation is split up into teams, like the "red team" and "purple team."

Red is hunting down networks in day-of events. Purple is looking into events and ideologies that led to the insurrection.

nbcnews.com/politics/polit…

Read 4 tweets

Ben Collins

@oneunderscore__

Feb 8

I am really, really enjoying this bot that makes stories out of whatever two ideas you plug into it.

For everyone who's asking, here's the link. And another story.

narrative-device.herokuapp.com/createstory

https://twitter.com/fischinwater/status/1491122241412923392

There are a lot of good ones in the comments, but this one is my favorite. I can't stop laughing at it.

https://twitter.com/fischinwater/status/1491122241412923392

Read 4 tweets

Ben Collins

@oneunderscore__

Jan 23

Robert Malone, the anti-vaccine doctor from Joe Rogan's podcast, just opened his speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial by invoking Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech at the March on Washington, adding that antivaxx marchers in D.C. today are "standing on the shoulders of giants."

Uh oh.

We are onto the original acoustic guitar music about the vaccine portion of the antimandate rally so I will be blending something while using a powersaw for the next five to ten minutes.

Read 8 tweets

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