Mediaboss Marketing

A wave of planned anti-lockdown demonstrations that have broken out around the country to protest against the efforts of state governments to combat the coronavirus pandemic with business closures and stay-at-home orders have included far-right groups as well as more mainstream Republicans.

While protesters in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and other states claim to speak for ordinary citizens, many are also supported by street-fighting rightwing groups like the Proud Boys, conservative armed militia groups, religious fundamentalists, anti-vaccination groups and other elements of the radical right.

On Wednesday in Lansing, Michigan, a protest put together by two Republican-connected not-for-profits was explicitly devised to cause gridlock in the city, and for a time blocked the entrance to a local hospital.

It was organized by the Michigan Conservative Coalition, which Michigan state corporate filings show has also operated under the name of Michigan Trump Republicans. It was also heavily promoted by the Michigan Freedom Fund, a group linked to the Trump cabinet member Betsy DeVos.

But the protest also attracted far-right protest groups who have been present at pro-Trump and gun rights rallies in Michigan throughout the Trump presidency.

Placards identified the Michigan Proud Boys as participants in the vehicle convoy. Near the state house, local radio interviewed a man who identified himself as Phil Odinson.

In fact the man is Phil Robinson, the prime mover in a group called the Michigan Liberty Militia, whose Facebook page features pictures of firearms, warnings of civil war, celebrations of Norse paganism and memes ultimately sourced from white nationalist groups like Patriot Front.

The pattern of rightwing not-for-profits promoting public protests while still more radical groups use lockdown resistance as a platform for extreme rightwing causes looks set to continue in events advertised in other states over coming days.

In Idaho on Friday, protesters plan to gather at the capitol building in Boise to protest anti-virus restrictions put in place by the Republican governor, Brad Little.

The protest has been heavily promoted by the Idaho Freedom Foundation (IFF), which counts among its donors dark money funds linked to the Koch brothers such as Donors Capital Fund, and Castle Rock, a foundation seeded with part of the fortune of Adolph Coors, the rightwing beer magnate.

IFF have added their slogan for the event, Disobey Idaho, to stickers which they plan to distribute among the crowd.

The event is also being promoted on a website dedicated to attacking Little for his response to Covid-19. That website was set up by the Idaho businessman, pastor and one-time Republican state senate candidate, Diego Rodriguez.

Rodriguez launched the website at an Easter service held in defiance of the governors orders on Easter Sunday, which was also addressed by Ammon Bundy, the leader of the militia occupation of the Malheur national wildlife refuge in 2016 that become a rallying point for the anti-government right in the US.

Bundy has been holding similar gatherings for weeks in Emmett, Idaho, where he now lives. On Sunday, he repeated his opposition to the Idaho orders, writing on Facebook: We all have a duty to defend what is right and to make sure, that what God has given, man does not take away. Especially that great gift of agency, YES freedom!

Ada county, Idaho, where the capital, Boise, is located, has so far suffered 541 cases of Covid-19 and nine deaths, in a state which has a far worse outbreak than neighboring Oregon, which is 2.4 times more populous.

Nevertheless, the ad for the rally on Rodriguezs website advises, We feel that wearing face masks and gloves is counterproductive to the movement, and should be avoided.

In Washington state, meanwhile, which for now has brought one of the worst outbreaks in the country under a measure of control, a Republican state committeeman, Tyler Miller, has organized a protest at the state capitol on Saturday.

Miller, who is active in the Kitsap county Republican party, was involved in passing a resolution in January in support of representative Matt Shea, who was excluded from the state houses GOP caucus after a report commissioned by house found that he had participated in domestic terrorism.

Hundreds of Facebook users have indicated that they will be attending his Hazardous Liberty rally, and a parallel event in Richland, Washington.

Included in that number are members of the 3% of Washington, a group which has held a series of open-carry rallies in Seattle, featuring speeches from the far-right protest leader, Joey Gibson.

As for Shea, he is speaking on Saturday at an online Saving America conference which will discuss an alleged erosion of rights thats been ramped up in unprecedented ways during this Covid-19 crisis.

He is scheduled to appear alongside the likes of close ally Pastor Ken Peters, who has been holding monthly services outside Spokanes planned parenthood clinic; the actor, Maga personality and congressional candidate Mindy Robinson; and the New Zealand-based anti-communist speaker and author Trevor Loudon.

Other similar events have been advertised for Saturday by an anti-vaccination activist in Oregon, and for Friday by a Boston group with alt-right connections.

Read the original:
The rightwing groups behind wave of protests against Covid-19 restrictions - The Guardian

There's many right-wing media influencers who have made a name out of being controversial in public.

Kaitlin Bennett, also known as the Kent State Gun Girl, has now been accused of antisemitism after recently leaked messages between her and a group of other young, right wing media figures.

Bennett runs a libertarian media organisation called Liberty Hangout, a kind of alt-right media outlet for young people.

In the screenshots of messages from 2017, first reported by Its Going Down.org, an American news organisation, Kaitlin and other members of the group sent messages where they posted photos of someone else and said that they looked Jewish.

They also criticised other organisations such as Turning Point USA (TPUSA), a right-wing media organisation for young people, and called them Turning Point Israel, and used three sets of parantheses when referring to donors to Turning Point. The three sets of parantheses is an anti semitic dog whistle, used by members of the alt-right to identify people who are Jewish online as targets for harassment.

Another member of the group said that they cant wait to get back to being normal Nazis. Several other interactions in the group include posting photos of people, postingscreenshots mocking kosher meal requests at a TPUSA conference, and drawing a link between Israel and other prominent right wing commentators.

In 2016, Liberty Hangout was the subject of controversy after posting a Twitter poll asking whether the Holocaust had happened as it had been reported, and then doubling down on Holocaust denial after people pointed out what they were doing. Those posts have since been deleted.

Liberty Hangout continues to maintain an active presence on social media, and recently posted in support of Trump declaring himself king after remarks he made at a press conference.

More:
'Gun Girl' Kaitlin Bennett accused of antisemitism after leaked messages from a group chat surface online - indy100

Many right-wing media outlets from Fox News to white AM talk radio have promoted a great deal of misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic, which radio host Rush Limbaugh infamously compared to the common cold. But not only all right-wing media outlets have downplayed the severity of coronavirus: The Bulwark has offered an abundance of quality reporting on the pandemic. And Bulwark journalist Jonathan V. Last, this week, slams some of the bizarre contradictions that have been coming from coronavirus truthers.

Ive been consistently boggled by the loose affiliation of coronavirus-truthers, America Firsters, Catholic rad-trads, and economic boosters who have come together over the last month to insist that: (1) COVID-19 isnt so bad. (2) The real problem is the economy and the lunacy of shutting America down, Last asserts in an article published on Thursday.

Coronavirus truthers, the conservative journalist adds, are demanding that the U.S. economy reopen and insist that social distancing is going too far.

These people all seem to have different reasons for wanting America to reopen, Last explains. The only thing they have in common is that they all from the Taliban Catholics to the alt-right trolls, from the conspiracy cranks to Peter Navarro love them some Trump.

Last adds, however, that coronavirus truthers overlook the fact that Trump himself supports social distancing for the rest of April and that Dr. Anthony Fauci, who many of them hate, is part of Trumps coronavirus task force.

If you have seen someone from the #ReopenAmerica brigade blame Trump, please send me the clip, Last writes. Because as of now, I have literally never seen anyone from that part of the world blame Trump for Americas shutdown. How could that be? Hes the president! Last adds, If Anthony Fauci is the villain in all of this, and Trump hasnt fired him by now, then Trump is at least a dupe and maybe an accomplice.

Moreover, Last writes, the coronavirus truthers are giving Trump a pass for when it comes to social distancing.

On March 16, Trump urged Americans to social distance for 15 days, Last notes. He later extended that timeline. If COVID-19 is really no big deal and if reopening America is the most important thing in the world, then why arent these people flaying Trump every minute of every day and exhorting him to stop this madness? Truly, it is a mystery.

Last is among the conservative journalists who like Jennifer Rubin and Max Boot at the Washington Post or Joe Scarborough at MSNBC certainly cannot be accused of downplaying coronavirus severity. In a separate Bulwark article published on April 15, Last slammed the coronavirus truthers who ignorantly claim that its no worse than the flu.

Pointing to a scientific graph that compared flu and COVID-19 data, Last stressed that COVID-19 is not only deadlier it is also easier to spread.

Coronavirus is so much more dangerous to the American people than the flu that anyone who suggests equivalency is either deliberately lying, or does not know what they are talking about, Last wrote.

then let us make a small request. The COVID crisis has cut advertising rates in half, and we need your help. Like you, we here at Raw Story believe in the power of progressive journalism. Raw Story readers power David Cay Johnstons DCReport, which we've expanded to keep watch in Washington. Weve exposed billionaire tax evasion and uncovered White House efforts to poison our water. Weve revealed financial scams that prey on veterans, and legal efforts to harm workers exploited by abusive bosses. And unlike other news outlets, weve decided to make our original content free. But we need your support to do what we do.

Raw Story is independent. Unhinged from corporate overlords, we fight to ensure no one is forgotten.

We need your support in this difficult time. Every reader contribution, whatever the amount, makes a tremendous difference. Invest with us. Make a one-time contribution to Raw Story Investigates, or click here to become a subscriber. Thank you. Click to donate by check.

then let us make a small request. The COVID crisis has cut advertising rates in half, and we need your help. Like you, we believe in the power of progressive journalism and were investing in investigative reporting as other publications give it the ax. Raw Story readers power David Cay Johnstons DCReport, which we've expanded to keep watch in Washington. Weve exposed billionaire tax evasion and uncovered White House efforts to poison our water. Weve revealed financial scams that prey on veterans, and efforts to harm workers exploited by abusive bosses. We need your support to do what we do.

Raw Story is independent. You wont find mainstream media bias here. Every reader contribution, whatever the amount, makes a tremendous difference. Invest with us in the future. Make a one-time contribution to Raw Story Investigates, or click here to become a subscriber. Thank you.

Follow this link:
Its a mystery: Conservative wonders why coronavirus truthers never blame Trump for anything - Raw Story

Mindy* listened to the rabbi preside over her uncles funeral on Zoom. The virtual event has become commonplace during the COVID-19 pandemic, but it still felt surreal to her. Her father and uncle Ralph had been unusually close their dad died when they were young, and Ralph helped raise his little brother. The rabbi was talking about the siblings relationship when the screen went white, and black letters started to appear. The scribbles looked like the handwriting of a child. Thats weird, Mindy thought. Someones kid must have taken over the screen. The letters began forming words: Die Jew.

Mindy was stunned. She realized she and her family were being Zoombombed something shed only read about in the news. A white supremacist had snuck into the call to spread hatred and anti-Semitism. It was like a punch to the gut, Mindy says. She jumped up, trying to cover the screen with her body so her daughters, ages 12, 13, and 16, wouldnt see. But it was already too late. Large swastikas began to appear, followed by porn and more profanity. The 13-year-old burst into tears.

The incident Mindy and her family experienced is part of a wave of Zoom attacks targeting the Jewish community. As Americans stay quarantined due to the pandemic, events that used to take place in person town halls, weddings, and funerals are now streaming on the videoconferencing platform. The trend has brought with it a new form of digital harassment: Zoombombing, where trolls enter meetings uninvited and stream disruptive or offensive content.

Online bigotry didnt start with the quarantine. Oren Segal, vice president of the Anti-Defamation Leagues Center on Extremism, says, weve been dealing with issues with hate online well before coronavirus. Anti-Semitism in particular has long been a part of internet culture. Its just recently migrated to Zoom.

The videoconferencing platform has moved to quickly fix the glaring security issues that made such attacks possible. On April 5th, Zoom rolled out meeting passwords and waiting rooms as the new default setting for all users. CEO Eric Yuan also announced the company would temporarily stop developing new features and shift its engineering resources to focus on privacy and security.

But the Anti-Defamation League says this short-term emphasis on safety might not be enough. Extremists wont stop. They never do, says Segal. Zoom cant stop looking at new ways theyll be exploited.

Zoom was not designed to be social. Its a corporate business tool that suddenly became the pandemics go-to communications platform. Yuan probably didnt anticipate his software turning into a concert hall, much less a school or a therapy office. Then the novel coronavirus started to spread, shutting down much of the worlds economy. From December 2019 to April 2020, Zoom went from 10 million users a day to more than 200 million. A product that used to be utilized by business professionals became a lifeline for students, families, and religious communities.

Yuan was as surprised as anyone. I never thought that overnight the whole world would be using Zoom, he said in an interview with Bloomberg. Unfortunately, we did not prepare well, mentally and strategy-wise. The lack of preparation was underlined by the fact that most Zoom attacks werent the result of sophisticated hacking. People posted meeting links publicly. White supremacists found them. Chaos ensued.

Some of the attackers are well known members of the alt-right. On March 24th, Andrew Alan Escher Auernheimer, known by his pseudonym weev, interrupted a class at a Jewish community center to go on an anti-Semitic rant. But others were just trying to cause mayhem. To the victims, the distinction didnt matter. They were shocked and traumatized either way.

A wave of bad press hit in March. TechCrunch broke the story about Zoombombing. Vice discovered Zoom was leaking peoples email addresses to strangers. The Intercept realized the company had been claiming its meetings were end-to-end encrypted (they were not). An engineer found that Zoom was evading macOS administrator controls and installing its app without final consent.

Yuan argued this was all a function of an enterprise product becoming a consumer tool overnight. We did not design the product with the foresight that, in a matter of weeks, every person in the world would suddenly be working, studying, and socializing from home, he wrote in a blog.

This was only partially true. As Casey Newton wrote in The Verge, the company purposefully designed its product to be as consumer-friendly as possible. Asking users to enter a password or download an app before joining a meeting creates friction. Zoom wanted to be frictionless. Consumer-grade ease of use is essential for a tool like Zoom, wrote Newton, but so is enterprise-grade security.

This is especially important during the COVID-19 pandemic, when fear and anxiety are running high and people are isolated from one another. Theres this desperation for community and safe spaces at a time when safety seems hard to attain, says Segal. When somebody comes into that space and abuses that, it shatters the normalcy and connection. Hate is bad always, but when you add that to the current environment and the fear and anxiety, its an extra notch problematic.

Segal added that the issues Zoom is experiencing should serve as a warning for the rest of the tech community. As people continue to spend more time online, extremists are sure to find new ways to spread hate and fear. I hope that we learn our lessons from Zoom so the problems arent repeated on other platforms, he says.

For Mindy and her family, the Zoombombing incident shattered their ability to find closure at her uncles funeral. Even worse, it traumatized her children. That was so ugly, her daughter said in the wake of the attack. Why do they hate us? Do they know where we live? Mindy didnt know what to say. For my kids, it was a shock, she says. Theyve never been subjected to that before. Im not quite sure they have ever felt what its like to be the subject of such hatred.

In a statement emailed to The Verge, a company spokesperson for Zoom said: We have been deeply upset by increasing reports of harassment on our platform and strongly condemn such behavior. We are listening to our community of users to help us evolve our approach and help our users guard against these attacks.

The ADL now has a running list of anti-Semetic Zoombombing incidents to track the ongoing attacks. On March 27th, a synagogue in Maryland reported that virtual shabbat services were interrupted by someone yelling Heil Hitler and Jewish scum. One of the Zoombombers had a swastika tattoo and exposed his genitals to the group. On March 30th, a Jewish nonprofit was hosting a call with over 100 people when a Zoombomber started yelling death to the Jews and Heil Hitler. Then on April 1st, a weekly Talmud class led by a rabbi near Detroit was interrupted by someone who pointed a rifle at the camera.

Extremists never miss an opportunity to leverage a crisis for their hatred, says Segal. Theyre now trying to bring it into our homes.

*The Verge agreed to only use Mindys first name to protect the identity of her family.

Go here to see the original:
White supremacists are targeting Jewish groups on Zoom - The Verge

Staff at a US-based non-profit have received death threats linked to erroneous claims about its work on digital ID in a case propelled by the tide of misinformation over coronavirus and false accusations against Bill Gates.

Dakota Gruener, CEO of New York-based non-profit ID2020, told The New Humanitarian the threats were linked to patently false online conspiracy theories about COVID-19, and described the episode as pretty frightening.

The head of the World Health Organisation, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has warned that false and fringe ideas can undermine international efforts to contain the coronavirus pandemic and sow panic, confusion, and division.

Research by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism found that the largest category of COVID-19 misinformation involves public authorities, including government and international bodies. Social media platforms have made commitments to remove the worst misinformation and provide free placement to the WHO and other official sources. A recent addition to WHOs series of mythbusters, for example, debunks false claims about 5G.

In a matter of weeks, ID2020 has gone from niche international policy operator, to the subject of thousands of hostile media postings, to having to call in the FBI.

The results of being caught up in COVID-19 conspiracy theories, meanwhile, can be dramatic.

In a matter of weeks, ID2020 which advocates for digital ID for the billion undocumented people worldwide and under-served groups like refugees has gone from niche international policy operator, to the subject of thousands of hostile media postings, to having to call in the FBI. Heres how.

A public-private coalition members include representatives from Microsoft and Accenture as well as NGOs, academia, blockchain firms, and others ID2020 is advising the government of Bangladesh on a vaccination records system.

The non-profit, which does not work on embedded microchips, is falsely accused of being part of fictitious plans that allege Bill Gates supports mandatory vaccination and the implantation of microchips or quantum dot tattoos into patients.

The claims about Gates have been debunked by fact-checkers at Reuters, but ID2020 is not listed in the leading database of COVID-19 debunks.

(Disclosure: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is one of several funders of The New Humanitarian.)*

Since mid-March, the outfit, which had an income of $1.4 million in the 2017 tax year, has been mentioned alongside false claims about Gates and COVID-19 in tens of thousands of social media postings, videos, and memes, amplified to millions after being shared by members of impassioned communities.

The ID2020 theory attracts attention, for example, from adherents of the QAnon conspiracy, the alt-right, objectors to 5G telecommunications, and Christians considering apocalyptic prophecies such as the mark of the beast.

Asked by TNH about the Gates and ID2020 conspiracy, Tedros praised the extraordinary commitment and sincerity of Bill and Melinda Gates and thanked them for their contribution.

In a telephone interview with TNH, Gruener, the ID2020 CEO, said it had been a wild ride and she was mystified, adding: I dont know whos behind this. Gruener could, however, trace the beginnings of the firestorm back to October 2019.

A 23 October monologue by Alex Jones on the InfoWars website falsely alleged that an ID2020-linked pilot project was implanting chips into homeless people in Texas he refers to an article that appears to misinterpret the word biometric.

Jones is banned from several social media platforms for his misleading claims and is almost certainly the most prolific conspiracy theorist in contemporary America, according to the US watchdog the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The Jones monologue referred to a September press release in which ID2020 announced its largest ever venture alongside the vaccine alliance Gavi advising the Bangladesh government on its immunisation records. The statement also mentioned the Texas pilot project. In Bangladesh, it announced that the government would create a database of childrens immunisations linked to their parents biometric information most likely a digital fingerprint.

The implementation of ID and biometrics in developing countries can attract real controversies, and the initiative may yet run into criticism for things it really does mean to do: ID2020 also plans trials of biometric recordkeeping of children, including babies.

As reported by TNH last year, the technology for infant biometrics is not fully mature, and raises practical and ethical questions.

According to Gruener, the flurry of chatter started by Jones who has long promoted rumours of plans to microchip the public died down in October but re-surfaced recently in much greater strength amidst the flood of COVID-19 misinformation.

An 18 March Q&A by Gates on the website Reddit provided fuel for the conspiracists: he said digital certificates could be used to prove future COVID-19 vaccination status. This was linked, without evidence, by commentators to the possibility of implants and a range of much wilder hypotheses.

Gruener said ID2020 would not consider chips or implantables because they could be used without the users consent. For the same reason, it does not support facial recognition, she said. Gruener insisted that ID2020s vision is the opposite of deeply frightening... Orwellian large-scale surveillance systems. ID2020, she said, is trying to put the individual in charge of their data, and allow them to use digital certificates as credentials, for example for driving or for professional qualifications or vaccination records.

Online searches for ID2020 spiked in March, according to Google Trends, showing that the name had started to percolate. A YouTube video describing the made-up plans as Satanic and posted on 21 March has racked up 1.8 million views.

News articles about ID2020, almost all negative, also picked up, according to monitors GDELT and Media Cloud. Multiple petitions have also been mounted against ID2020, including one which repeats false accusations on the White House website. Others, but not all, have been removed by petition website operator Change.org. YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook all carry significant amounts of videos, memes, and false allegations against Gates and ID2020.

According to the Reuters Institute study, Facebook and YouTube had taken down about three quarters of the misinformation found to be false by fact-checkers in its sample. Twitter had only removed 31 percent.

TNH analysed a sample of 58,000 tweets and retweets mentioning ID2020 between 31 March and 12 April and found at least 50 percent mentioned Gates (he has no direct relationship with ID2020 although Microsoft the tech giant he co-founded is a member) or other conspiracies. A single tweet by one alt-right reporter was retweeted by people with a collective following of nine million. Hundreds of negative or politicising hashtags were used, ranging from #5G and #plandemic to #markofthebeast. About half the postings with hashtags used a negative hashtag.

The accusations against ID2020 are clearly false but, as with much misinformation, grains of truth in the conspiracy theory are being spun into the bigger lie. A couple of examples:

A recent experimental study, seized upon by the conspiracists, describes a skin patch used on rats that delivered a vaccine and a quantum dot at the same time. The tiny tattoo only becomes visible under a near-infrared light. The authors suggest the technology could be useful in the developing world for intradermal on-person vaccination recordkeeping. The experiment was partially funded by the Gates Foundation. Its abstract has been viewed tens of thousands of times on a science journals website.

Some of the alt-right commentary focuses on a UN plan: that may refer to the UNs Sustainable Development Goals, which include a target to provide legal identity to all, including birth registration, by 2030. It makes no mention of digital or biometric technology.

Gruener told TNH she saw ID2020 as collateral damage for conspiracy theorists: We are part of a bigger vortex.

Graphic shown in header image is an undirected network graph of co-occurring hashtags in tweets about ID2020.

* Added 16 April 2020 forfull disclosure. About TNH.

bp/ag

Subscribe to our coronavirus newsletter to stay up to date with our coverage.

Go here to see the original:
What is ID2020? - The New Humanitarian