Thread by @SethCotlar

Elon has clearly stated his disapproval of most "legacy" media outlets and has stated a preference for "citizen journalism" that supposedly is more "moderate" politically and more likely to be "accurate" and not biased. So what media figures has Musk engaged with today?

The first thing to note is that there's no such thing as a "citizen journalist" since everyone (unless they're rich like Elon) has to get paid. So it's not like someone like this who presents as a "freewheeling, independent" journalist doesn't work for someone. What's Rebel news?

Rebel News, it turns out, is often referred to as the Breitbart of Canada. It was founded by a long-time climate denier and has employed white nationalist fascists like Faith Goldy, Lauren Southern, and Tommy Robinson. Not exactly "moderate." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebel_News

Well how about this Michael Knowles fellow who Musk seems to admire? His Twitter bio suggests he's a lone wolf, but he's actually paid by Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire and Prager U, two well-funded right wing media companies.

Elon frequently engages positively with the content from the "citizen journalists" at The Babylon Bee, an avowedly right wing Christian fundamentalist company. Again, all of these "journalists" Musk likes work for media companies. They're not "independent," they're right wing.

Another "journalist" Musk likes to engage with on here is Jack Posobiec, who used to work for Rebel News...as well as Infowars. So yes, definitely not "legacy journalism," but also not what any reasonable person would call "moderate" or "accurate."

https://twitter.com/SethCotlar/status/1586750841611902976?s=20&t=2ti5DNEPBKuFP-Rt1OQ41A

Other "independent minded" media figures Elon engages positively with include Tom Fitton (involved with planning and then justifying J6 insurrection), Lara Logan (who's now gone full Qanon), Glenn G (Tucker's favorite "liberal" who somehow usually agrees with him), and so on.

Here's the historical context folks need to understand. The US has long had a far right media ecosystem that defined itself as "independent" & "truth telling" in distinction to the "lying (((controlled))) press." Here's a thread with data from 1966.

https://twitter.com/SethCotlar/status/1403099470795927552?s=20&t=2ti5DNEPBKuFP-Rt1OQ41A

The National Review was the furthest left publication on this list. Human Events (who Posobiec now works for) was a few clicks to NR's right. FWIW, Human Events was Ronald Reagan's favorite source of "news." Most of the others on this list were fascist or fascist-adjacent.

The Liberty Letter was produced by the Liberty Lobby, an org run by a neo-Nazi Holocaust denier who held annual Hitler's Birthday celebrations in their offices in DC. The Defender was produced by Gerald Winrod, known colloquially as "the Jayhawk Nazi."

Tjhe Christian Crusade was produced by Billy James Hargis, who got his theology "degree" from an offshore "school" run by Gerald Winrod. Hargis's right hand man was David Noebel, who wrote a book "proving" that The Beatles music was hyptotism intended to turn kids into Commies.

"American Opinion" was the magazine of the John Birch Society, with which you're probably familiar. Dan Smoot was a Bircher himself, and his "Report" was funded by HL Hunt, the nation's richest man who was a Texas Oil tycoon and far right zealot.

The Cross and the Flag was the magazine of Gerald LK Smith, a rabidly antisemitic Christian Nationalist. Common Sense was also anantisemitic conspiracy rag. These periodicals were read avidly by people who disdained the two party system & considered themselves "free thinkers."

Here's a map depicting the enormous network of far right AM radio stations in the 1960s that churned out angry, conspiratorial, and empirically-challenged "citizen journalism." At the time few in the mainstream paid much attention to these "kooks." Now Twitter is their megaphone.

One of the people whose programming was represented in scores of dots on that 1966 map was Richard Cotten. Cotten was a Nazi who wrote a column with the title "Conservative Viewpoint." This is how he sought to recruit "conservatives" for fascism.

https://twitter.com/SethCotlar/status/1589481876808675328?s=20&t=2ti5DNEPBKuFP-Rt1OQ41A

I know about this alternate, far right media universe of the pre-internet era because the brain of the guy I'm studying, Walter Huss, was absolutely pickled in it. He became chair of the OR GOP in 1978 and was thrilled to get a write up in The Spotlight, run by neo-Nazis.

Note all the coded language in this 1978 article. Huss is a "traditionalist" who is trying to push back against "the far left" that controls the mainstream media and the Democratic Party.

Huss was a conspiracy-obsessed, radically antisemitic Holocaust denier with ties to Neo-Nazis and other far right domestic terrorists. But of course, he gloried at the ludicrous idea that his opponents would call him and his compatriots antisemites or a Nazis.

That snippet came from this 1978 letter. The organization mentioned here (ACU) is the same group that puts on CPAC today. The person he's talking about, Phil Crane, was in the role now occupied by Matt Schlapp, who's getting noticed more and more these days.

Huss not only was a consumer of right wing conspiracy-obsessed media, he also produced a ton of it. Here's a thread on one edition of his newspaper that was basically Brietbart or Newsmax or OANN or Daily Wire or Daily Caller ca. 1965.

https://twitter.com/SethCotlar/status/1401236262242066433?s=20&t=2ti5DNEPBKuFP-Rt1OQ41A

What Huss and Crane were up to (and what Rebel News and Babylon Bee and Breitbart and Newsmax and OANN and Daily Wire and Daily Caller are up to today) is the very normal process of dragging the Republican Party rightward.

The strategy they use to accomplish this is to paint "mainstream media" as "radically leftist" and their far right selves as "non-partisan moderates" or "free thinking independents" so as to drag cynical, anti-establishment low information voters over to their side.

Sometimes I think Elon knows full well what he's doing by amplifying these far right voices & outlets. Sometimes I think he really is so self-deluded as to think these folks are "moderates" and "independents" just like he thinks himself to be. Ultimately, the impact is the same.

Which is why as long as Elon is in control at Twitter, anyone who cares about building an informational infrastructure that is democracy-enhancing rather than democracy-destroying should decamp for the time being. #twexit

https://twitter.com/SethCotlar/status/1615599873210081280?s=20&t=2ti5DNEPBKuFP-Rt1OQ41A

Because here's the thing that any historian or media scholar can tell you--propaganda works. That's why billionaires invest so much money in it. Because it works. And building a media ecosystem that can keep it in check is really freaking hard.

Anyone (i.e. Elon Musk) who hasn't thought through the epistemological complexities that arise when one seeks to foster a media environment committed to accuracy and transparency will inevitably just do the bidding of right wing propagandists and the plutocrats who pay them.

I don't know and I don't care if this is Elon's intentional goal or if he's just a victim of a massive case of confirmation bias plus Dunning-Kruger...all I know is he's turning this site into an engine of right wing propaganda and it's a very powerful engine indeed.

The two lifeboats I've chosen at this point are Mastodon and Post. Neither is a full substitute for Twitter yet. But they're both evolving, just as Twitter is devolving. Hopefully Elon will just bomb out and some reasonable people can buy Twitter in a fire sale and rebuild it.

But for now, if I was a media outlet or a major corporation or a university or any institution that did not want to be associated with a democracy-destroying propaganda engine, I'd establish a beachhead on other social media platforms for the time being.

One final point. Folks should absolutely criticize "legacy media" when they mess up. This is not about genuflecting before the NYTimes or WaPo. But there's a different between criticizing institutions and sabotaging them so as to supplant them with institutions YOU control.