#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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In tonight's military purge, Tump named as Chair of the Joint Chiefs Dan Caine, a retired Lt. Gen so underqualified he'd need a waiver. Oddly, Caine was installed last month at 3 VC firms doing crypto, AI, and defense tech, including Thrive, founded by Jared Kushner's brother. 1/
It does look bad if the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is taking a paycheck from relatives of the president. But since Trump also fired the Judge Advocates General from all four military branches tonight, we might have to wait for an ethics ruling. 2/ military.com/daily-news/202…
The New York Times article tonight calls Lt Gen Caine a "serial entrepreneur and investor", but doesn't mention his role in Joshua Kushner's company. It's not a secret - it's on his LinkedIn. And it's very relevant - the public deserves to understand. 3/ archive.is/8Je1R
For journalists who need a handy reference guide to our new FBI Director, Kash Patel, the Jan 6 "Big Timeline" has 35 entries on him, from his early days attacking the FBI for investigating Trump's Russia ties to his 2024 book calling the FBI "gangsters" and promising a purge. 1/
The "1950-2019" historical tab has 5 entries, starting with Kash's attempts to subpoena the FBI and DOJ for investigating Trump's Russia ties. This is pushback even before Robert Mueller was appointed as Special Counsel. Just ctrl-F search on "Patel". 2/ docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…
The "2020-Jan 6" tab has 6 entries. (More on that later). Kash was installed as part of Trump's maneuvers AFTER he lost the election. Chris Miller was made Acting SecDef and Kash his Chief of Staff. Kash delivered the order to withdraw from Afghanistan. 3/ docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…
As Trump's folks repeat Elon Musk's bs that tens of millions of dead people are getting Social Security, here's the 2023 inspector general report on the SSA's death records - with facts. Yes, there are over 6M dead people in the database, but they are NOT PAID. Link follows. 1/
The false claim matters for two reasons. First, Elon & Trump may use these lies to justify cutting Social Security. Second, they may take credit for work already under way - 'we found dead people.' It's not a discovery! It's routine government stuff. 2/ oig.ssa.gov/assets/uploads…
The report is only 19 pages and Elon seems to have read none of them. This kind of reporting is why the US has an inspector general for all agencies - to look at data, to find mistakes or even fraud. Trump just fired 15 of those inspectors general. 3/
As US envoy Keith Kellogg tries to sideline Europe from talks over Ukraine, please remember: Kellogg has served Trump for years. Kellogg was on the 2019 phone call to extort Zelensky, then testified at Trump's impeachment: "I heard nothing wrong or improper on the call..." 1/
On Jan 6, Kellogg, who was Mike Pence's security advisor, spent the day with Trump instead. Here he is in the Oval Office with Trump. That's when Trump threatened Pence, then rewrote his speech to "re-insert the Pence lines". Kellogg stuck with Trump. 2/
Kellogg first came to public notice in 2016 when then-candidate Trump appointed a council of 5 national security advisors, names so obscure that the NYT called them "confound[ing]". 2 then got more famous in the Mueller report for their ties to Russia. 3/ web.archive.org/web/2016032302…
Today's news is grim: the two factions taking over our government are united on the one issue we had hoped they might split over. Turns out the techbro neo-fascists and the religious-right Project 2025 guys agree: US education should be gutted, privatized, and made religious. 1/
Here's the article laying it out: Elon Musk and Ted Cruz both urge the TX legislature to pass school vouchers that would push public funds to private religious schools. Musk of course is Peter Thiel's former partner, Cruz his first political protege. 2/ fox7austin.com/news/elon-musk…
Musk's announcement is the more surprising. In my taxonomy of the forces behind Jan 6, Ted Cruz is actually a crossover between the two wings: he's a protege of tech overlord Thiel but also deep in the far religious right, who backed him over Trump for president in 2016. 3/
As Elon Musk gives the Nazi salute in DC, let me just say that it was very clear, 4 years ago, at least to me, that Jan 6 was a precursor, and that this would be the result if we did not investigate it thoroughly - not the footsoldiers but the ones who gave orders that day. 1/
Some people say Jan 6 was more like the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch than the 1933 Reichstag fire, but either way, the analogy holds. The attack was planned; the Proud Boys were sub-contractors; there were people on the ground directing. And we missed it. 2/
Jan 6 is still relevant. Because there was so much effort to erase it, one key task is preserving its memory and its evidence. More broadly, resisting in a way that Germany did not in the 1930s. We need to read our history and listen to historians. 3/ lucid.substack.com/p/its-day-one-…