One of the big drivers of rightwing extremism today are aspiring online influencers who try to gain followers by resorting to ever-more incendiary language & stances. This is the story of a woman whose desire for status & influence got her 18 months.🧵/7
justice.gov/usao-sdfl/pr/b… On Jan 6, 2021, Suzanne Kaye watched events unfold at the Capitol from her couch in Boca Raton. She shared livestreams from DC, eager to be part of what she was seeing. She even gave the impression she was there. Weeks later, she got a call from the FBI. They wanted to talk.

🧵There’s a unity on the right that has grown out of the Jan 6 insurrection. Millions of people with a variety of extreme beliefs based in wildly different alternative realities have found common purpose. They come together in what looks and acts like a giant online trade show. Today's right is like a trade show held in a large virtual convention hall, with different booths and speakers. At this trade show, the conspiracists have a booth next door to the New Age spiritualists, who are next to the evangelicals, who are a booth down from the Proud Boys.

According to Jan 6 granny Pam Hemphill, Critical Race Theory is responsible for America’s racism. She calls it a “toxic ideology” that unfairly oppresses white people.

*If you plan to platform Hemphill, please take a look at this & consider asking some questions.*
🧵1/5 Hemphill--who subscribes to the Great Replacement conspiracy--warns her listeners that it won’t be long before it's the "white people" that are rounded-up and sent away on trains, instead of Jewish people. 2/5

After telling followers for months that she's on a mission to "push back" against the "MAGA narrative," Pam Hemphill reneges on that promise. Instead, she asks an "America First Ambassador for Pres Trump" to share her handle & then points it out so followers can go pester. 1/3 For more-than-three minutes Hemphill films this woman giving a "pro-Project 2025" speech & says nothing. There is no "push-back" or "education" before it's shared with her 23K+ followers. Great job, media! You have created another wannabe influencer peddling disinformation.
2/3

🧵Let’s talk more about white women, the media & extremism, and how networks like @CNN provide cover for radical beliefs and extremist behaviors by framing white women through the lens of gendered stereotypes and ageist assumptions. January 6th wasn’t the first time Pam Hemphill relied on her senior status, and role as grandmother, to provide cover for her bad behavior. Nor is it the first time she sought out media attention as her reward for devious actions.
irehr.org/2021/08/04/we-…

🧵Pam Hemphill of Jan 6, demonstrates the sad absurdity of influencer culture. Her decade-long-quest for online fame has taken her on a strange, winding path. The only constant has been her desire for attn & access. That has trumped everything else, even her political beliefs. Her first try was an addiction/recovery self-help YouTube show, “Time to Heal with Pam,” where she shared advice with listeners. But her advice was often unsound. Like in episode 16, when she tells women that if they'd just keep their mouths shut, men wouldn’t need to hit them.

For the past two and a half years, I've been learning the stories of middle-aged women who were convicted for January 6th, trying to understand who they are, how they radicalized, and the ways their beliefs have changed since January 2021.
🧵1/7 The women I talk to have a lifetime of trauma. Sexual abuse, family violence, and addiction are common. Mental health care is hard to find and often too costly. In many cases the result has been dissociation and delusion.
2/7

One of the tactics used by ppl like MAGA Granny Pam Hemphill, is to deflect criticism by attacking the messenger rather than address evidence they can’t refute. It’s made worse when “experts” encourage & validate the denial. One recent example is her interview with Steven Hassan. Hassan, an ex-Moonie who identifies as a "cult expert,” is the owner of the for-profit corporation “Freedom of Mind Resource Center.” Among the services offered are workshops, interventions, trainings, expert witness consultations and estate planning advice for wealth managers.

Part 3 - Brand Management

Pam Hemphill says she has changed and is ready to repent for her sins in the far-right “cult.” As a former addiction counselor and addict, Hemphill understands that the 1st step to recovery is admitting your problem & making amends for your past. This is what Hemphill has been unwilling to do. Instead, she’s trying to erase her past. Hemphill’s long history of far-right extremism is not difficult to find, it just takes a little digging because Hemphill is scrubbing evidence of her bigotry by deleting old accts & posts.

Part 2 - "PAMTIFA"
(Part 1 linked)
Long🧵
Pam Hemphill’s conversion narrative is not what it seems. She did not suddenly realize she had been bamboozled by Trump based on his CNN townhall in May 2023 as she claimed in her July CNN interview.

https://twitter.com/NCookBouton/status/1682573859462205440?s=20

Instead, Hemphill, a longtime far-right activist, was kicked out of MAGA circles when she became the subject of the same kind of conspiracy theory she had been spreading for years.

🧵This is a multi-part story about how mainstream media like CNN platform far-right women and their ideas by failing to consider that polite, nicely dressed, older white women can be extremists.

Rebranding the Maga Granny, Part 1 Instead of properly vetting these women the media often lets savvy, experienced, far-right activists manipulate traditional gender roles to hide their long histories of bigotry and hate.

Among the most disturbing parts of last weekend's Conscious Life Expo was the clear exploitation of children as "other worldly" mystic healers. And the hypocrisy of the Q-signaling adults who promote them. Kirsten Sandefur describes herself as an "Oracle, not a fortune teller," explaining that "fortune tellers are historically charlatans."
Between 2019/2021, she ran a blog with 4 followers, YouTube channel w/326 subscribers, and IG & FB accts w/1,937 & 149 followers respectively.

🧵On the large & growing fringes of the spiritualist movement are radical and radicalizing branches of new-agey millennialism. These people think something huge is coming--end of days, spiritual ascendance. And for all the talk of peace & love, there's a very dark edge to this. The Conscious Life Expo was based as much on preaching far-right radicalism as it was on opening chakras. The literal base of convention--the entire lower-level of the Hilton hotel--was called the "rabbit hole," the Expo's welcoming home of conspirituality.

The exhibitor hall was packed last Saturday afternoon at the 21st annual Conscious Life Expo in LA. Walking past the stalls felt a lot like walking through a tradeshow where hustle is the name of the game & the slightest acknowledgement means listening to a lengthy spiel. 🧵1/9 Trying to get my bearings, my attention was drawn to the orgasmic sounds made by a woman in an adjacent booth. A man in scrubs with a “Light Worker” patch sewn to the sleeve was using a fuzzy mallet to strike a metallic bowl, holding the tools inches from her chest.

Many of the January 6 women I have been tracking continue to sink deeper & deeper into online conspirtuality. With the Conscious Life Expo a relatively short drive away, I went to learn more about what it's all about.

This is the first 🧵from a strange and disturbing weekend. No one at expo was particularly concerned about the breaking news of three separate UFOs being shot down over the weekend--because most of the people there were convinced that ETs have been living among us for thousands of years. In fact, many believe they themselves are aliens.

🧵Last month I noticed a signature inside a wooden-covered, WWII-era scrapbook I had bought at an antique store 20-some years ago. It was one of my favorite vintage collectibles. Not because it held any monetary value, but because it held a piece of someone’s story. I was unpacking moving boxes & stopped to flip through the book & for the 1st time noticed a signature on one of the drawings: Irene Kowaza. I spent that afternoon searching online & learning as much as I could about the creator, a Japanese American teenager from Boise, Idaho.

🧵I’ve spent the past eighteen months learning the stories of women who participated on January 6th and trying to understand who they are, how they radicalized, and the ways in which they have continued to radicalize since January 2021. Most of the women I talk to have a lifetime of unprocessed trauma. Sexual abuse, family violence, and addiction are common themes. Several women have complained that mental health care is hard to find.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

The online far-right uses memes & symbols to obscure their extremism. Emojis, aesthetics & coded language are dog whistles to the likeminded & a recruitment tool for the curious. It is a form of communication that transcends language barriers. 🧵

wired.com/2017/05/alt-ri… This shared culture creates an insider ethos among those who are in on the "joke," leaving the everyday user unaware of the account holder's extremist views.

(Note: Most accts w/these emojis are NOT extremists sending hidden messages. A click or two can usually inform you)

My research on women and rightwing extremism keeps leading me to a phenomenon I don't think is getting enough attention: tradwives. Short for "traditional wife," these anti-feminist accounts mostly pass under the radar because they don't advertise their radicalism.
-short🧵 They post well-crafted, serene photos on Instagram and hide the radical politics in imagery, hashtags, and coded language. They are the softer side of the alt-right and their numbers are growing.

Here is a look at how quickly the Q Anon self-generated conspiracy machine can flip far-right bad news into a new rallying cry. This sad story involves a case of extreme child neglect that right-wing activist Ammon Bundy turned into a protest to defend the neglectful parents. Ammon Bundy is an anti-government extremist who made national news in 2016 for occupying a wildlife refuge and for the standoff with the feds that followed.

In 2020 he created People’s Rights; a “rapid response” network of other right-wing extremists.
splcenter.org/hatewatch/2020…

The backstory makes it even more bizarre...
*thread*

https://twitter.com/seditiontrack/status/1440777345116172289?s=20

Felicia was informed she was pregnant by the medical officer at the Arizona jail when she was arrested and briefly incarcerated for storming the Capitol on Jan 6, claiming to be part of the Kansas City Proud Boys (no really).