#SeditionHunters & those who #StandWithUkraine can help by reporting long-time white supremacist Twitter accounts now posting against Ukraine. Here are Cassandra Fairbanks (then at Russia's Sputnik News) and Tim Cernovich making the white power sign at the White House in 2017. 1/
Here is Fairbanks (@ CassandraRules) today mocking NATO and U.S. military. She had been trying to analogize Ukraine and US borders. Fairbanks is now at The Gateway Pundit, supposedly US-owned but the sympathies are the same. 2/
Fairbanks has a bunch of re-tweets telling people not to believe "hyped-up hero stories" (e.g. soldiers Snake Island are still alive!). Meanwhile Mike Cernovich (not Tim, typo earlier!) , an open white supremacist, is busy blaming Zelenskyy. Report him: @ Cernvoich. 3/
Both Fairbanks and Cernovich played a role in the disinfo universe that drew people to the Capitol attack on Jan 6. Fairbanks played a key role in promoting Parler, started 2018 by John Matze shortly after he returned from Russia with his new wife. 4/ docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…
You'll notice that Fairbanks frequently appears with white supremacist Jack Posobiec (@ JackPosobiec), one of the main promoters of the Capitol attack. Posobiec and Parler founder John Matze both married their Belarusian/Russian wives in Fall 2017 after whirlwind courtships. 5/
Posobiec, among the first to promote Ali Alexander's Stop the Steal in 2020, is a little cannier than the others. Some of his recent posts nominally support Ukraine, while others attack Biden and US for being "weak", nod to conspiracy theories (the "Great Reset"). 6/
Posobiec has been posting about Russia and Ukraine since January, often overtly pro-Putin. He arrived on the 'influencer' scene in 2016 as a protegee of Roger Stone, met Mike Cernovich at an RNC event with neo-Nazis Richard Spencer (Charlottesville organizer), Peter Brimelow. 7/
The connections are consistent: Neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes who led over 200 of his 'Groypers' onto Capitol grounds on Jan 6, was in the news this week for saying at his AFPAC conference: "can we have a round of applause for Russia", also praising Hitler. 8/
Fuentes was banned from Twitter, but only in 2021. Cernovich, Fairbanks, Posobiec all still on. It's time to ask hard questions: Why are there consistent links between white supremacism, promotion of Jan 6, & praise for Putin? The pattern is glaring. 9/ docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…
Vice Magazine is now making the link: "Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine Wednesday night, far-right personalities have declared Russia a beacon of anti-wokeness and Putin a strong ethnonationalist." We all need to. 10/ vice.com/en/article/wxd…
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Yes, the NYT is shameful for sourcing an anti-Mamdani article from notorious white supremacist Jordan Lasker. But it's worse. Lasker, who they call an "academic", is a student whose only paper of note is INFAMOUS for unethical data use that got his tenured co-author fired. 1/
Who is the NYT's "academic" source? Lasker is or was a PhD student at Texas Tech, but his only paper of note is earlier, from 2019: "Global Ancestry and Cognitive Ability", whose misuse of data triggered a major investigation and got Cleveland State Prof. Bryan Pesta fired. 2/
The Chronicle of Higher Ed wrote about the scandal. It wasn't just that the article was "racist pseudoscience". It was that the authors misused data from the NIH and lied on their data application - filed by Bryan Pesta. A flagrant ethics violation. 3/ archive.is/KwbGy
Reminder: Elon Musk, whose Starship just blew up on the test stand (with its extra fuel tanks nearby), was allowed for THIRTY YEARS to lie about his training in science. He started lying in 1995, kept lying - and suffered no consequences. But physics itself has consequences. 1/
Just listen to the man's nonsense about how he is shaped by physics and consider: the press allowed him to bullshit like this for 30 YEARS. Of course he got convinced he can just make up his own reality. If anyone died in the Starship explosion tonight, blame the press too. 2/
In 2022 I did a 69-Tweet thread on Elon's fake AstroBoy Genius image, hoping to ward off what was coming: Elon helping to overthrow democracy. What you saw on the launchpad tonight, that's what he's doing now to US science, to our country: exploding it. 3/
Sure, it's funny that Fox News is now using "86" in talking about a fired reporter, when less than a month ago they demanded the FBI investigate "86" as a death threat. But the joke is on us. Performative outrage over bullshit is a test of YOU, to see if you'll accept it. 1/
You can't criticize Fox's words as hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is when someone committed to the truth is inconsistent. Fox and others are post-truth: they're just making noises to see if they can get you to react. They're gaming you. 2/
All of us have a psychological need for rationality. We need to feel that words have meaning, that people mean what they say. We do understand that people lie: a lie is a meaningful but false statement, to deceive. But what Fox is doing here is worse, and harder to cope with. 3/
ABC's explanation of why they suspended correspondent Terry Moran misuses the word "objective". Moran said Stephen Miller was a "world-class hater" and "his hatreds are his spiritual nourishment". Those are objectively true statements. Miller's hatred is deeply documented. 1/
Moran ascribed to Miller an emotion: "hatred". A decade of reporting has documented, objectively, that Miller hates. In 2018, LA Mag interviewed his high school classmates and reported their stories of how Miller hated minorities. "Hate" is their word. 2/ lamag.com/politics/steph…
Terry Moran also said that for Stephen Miller, "hatred is his spiritual nourishment". That's colorful language, but also documented. Here's a high school classmate of Miller's with a story of Miller saying awful, provocative things to immigrants: "he wanted to be hated". 3/
Reminder: Trump has tried this before. It's part of his dream of control, to send in the National Guard against the will of a state or mayor. On May 29, 2020, he Tweeted the threat: "Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts.." 1/
Trump has also overtly sought a Secretary of Defense willing to order the National Guard to shoot at protestors. In 2020 he fired Mark Esper and put in Chris Miller for that reason. Pete Hegseth may face a terrible test now. 2/
On Jan 6, the National Guard arrived late likely because sane heads in the Pentagon delayed them til local police had regained control, out of fear of what Trump might order. There are fewer sane heads now. Hegseth is already failing his test. 3/
Howard Lutnick, our Sec. of Commerce, shows a disconnect from material reality that will make Americans die. A weather forecast cannot be "automated" or MADE AT ALL without data. And Trump is cutting the satellites and weather stations that provide that data. 1/
Lutnick, who is in charge of NOAA and its National Weather Service, seem to think that if you say "web" and "cloud" and "computer" and "AI" then by some magic knowledge appears. But weather forecasts depend on MEASUREMENTS. Which Lutnick is cutting. 2/ kcci.com/article/propos…
The proposed NOAA budget cuts both current satellite operations and planned future satellites meant to make better predictions. Lutnick's testimony suggests: people have forgotten that not everything is a simulation, that reality exists (and bites). 3/ spacenews.com/omb-suggests-n…