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    Rightwing radio host and anti-vaxxer dies of Covid

    US newsRightwing radio host and anti-vaxxer dies of CovidDick Farrel was a vociferous critic of Dr Anthony Fauci and urged people not to get vaccinated Edward HelmoreSun 8 Aug 2021 11.09 EDTLast modified on Sun 8 Aug 2021 14.35 EDTA rightwing TV and radio host who was a vociferous critic of Dr Anthony Fauci and who urged his listeners not to get vaccinated against Covid-19 has died after contracting the virus.Dick Farrel, who had described Fauci as a “power-tripping lying freak” who conspired with “power trip libb loons”, had urged people not to get vaccinated as recently as June.He reportedly changed his opinion about vaccines after falling ill and later being admitted to hospital before passing away on 4 August aged 65. “He texted me and told me to ‘Get it!’ He told me this virus is no joke and he said, “I wish I had gotten [the vaccine]!” close friend Amy Leigh Hair wrote on Facebook.Farrel, a native of Queens, New York, anchored radio shows in Florida and also acted as a stand-in anchor for the rightwing news outlet Newsmax, was described as a pioneer “shock talk” host.His partner, Kit Farley, said: “He was known as the other Rush Limbaugh. With a heavy heart, I can only say this was so unexpected. He will be missed.”Described as an ardent supporter of Donald Trump, Farrel went all-in on unsubstantiated 2020 election fraud conspiracy theories about election fraud and questioned the efficacy of coronavirus vaccines.Hair told WPTV: “I was one of one the people like him who didn’t trust the vaccine. I trusted my immune system. I just became more afraid of getting Covid-19 than I was of any possible side effects of the vaccine. I’m glad I got vaccinated.”TopicsUS newsUS politicsThe far rightCoronavirusVaccines and immunisationnewsReuse this content More

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    Battle for the Soul: can Joe Biden beat Trump’s Republicans in the war of words?

    Joe BidenBattle for the Soul: can Joe Biden beat Trump’s Republicans in the war of words? The president appeals to the ‘civil religion’ of Washington and Kennedy. His opponents use weasel words and seek to limit democracy. The stakes could not be higherMichael CornfieldSun 8 Aug 2021 02.00 EDTLast modified on Sun 8 Aug 2021 02.01 EDTJoe Biden declared his third candidacy for president on 25 April 2019 in a three-and-a-half minute video. The format was new, but for Biden relied on an old-fashioned conception of masculinity.Want to make Jim Jordan sing about the Capitol attack? Ask Jefferson Davis | Sidney BlumenthalRead moreHe talked about the 12 August 2017 neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, about which Donald Trump (in)famously said there were “very fine people on both sides”. The incident provided Biden with a good vs evil story frame, which he entered as a sort of superhero.“At that moment,” Biden intoned, as viewers saw white supremacists marching with torches, “I knew the threat to this nation was unlike any I had seen in my lifetime.”
    I wrote at the time that we’re in the battle for the soul of this nation. Well, that’s even more true today. We are in the battle for the soul of this nation.
    If we give Donald Trump eight years in the White House, he will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation. Who we are. And I cannot stand by and watch that happen.
    The core values of this nation, our standing in the world, our very democracy, everything that has made America, America, is at stake.
    Captain America, out of retirement and to the rescue. The Charlottesville setting, adjacent to Thomas Jefferson’s home, Monticello, supplied Biden with a pretext to quote the Declaration of Independence. And the video displayed, in colonial cursive font, passages many Americans could recite from memory.The “battle for the soul of America” narrative frame served Biden well. It helped differentiate Biden’s criticism of Trump, as both personal and constitutional. It converted his age into a campaign asset: a man with historic consciousness would be a good choice for Democrats, a party that usually opted for youth. And it ennobled his call for unity as the solution to Trump’s divisiveness. A Biden victory would win the battle for the soul through an appeal to transcendent patriotic values.Two men, longtime adviser Mike Donilon and the historian Jon Meacham, have worked on Biden’s speeches and the “soul” verbiage. But regardless of the authorial division of labor, it has been Biden’s sign-off, delivery, and persona which give the phrase its public meaning.During the campaign, Biden repeated his theme in speeches on national holidays and historic anniversaries, often in Pennsylvania: at an 18 May 2019 campaign kick-off rally at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia; in a 2 June 2020 speech at Philadelphia City Hall (commenting on the eruption of protest for the George Floyd death and the president’s use of tear gas at Lafayette Square in Washington); and on 6 October 2020 at the Gettysburg battlefield:
    You and I are part of a covenant, a common story of divisions overcome and hope renewed. If we do our part, if we stand together, if we keep faith with the past and with each other, then the divisions of our time will give way to the dreams of a brighter, better future. This is our work. This is our pledge. This is our mission.
    Pennsylvania is both the state where Biden was born and a perennial swing state. As the city where America’s foundational documents were written and signed, Philadelphia stands out in the national imagination as the Jerusalem of what sociologist Robert Bellah termed the “civil religion”. In his 1966 analysis of inaugural addresses from Washington to Kennedy, Bellah noted that presidents up to the incumbent at that time, Lyndon Baines Johnson, enlarged and deepened their rhetoric by invoking God. It was neither the God of any particular denomination nor a perfunctory bow to the religiosity of the American people. Rather, such references to God legitimated political authority by “supplying moral consensus amidst continuous political change”. Invocations of the civil religion reassure and integrate the disparate members of a pluralistic capitalist society.Biden relied more on the word “soul” than “God” but the functionality was the same. “Soul” is also a word with extensive philosophical and religious lineage. It denotes the essence of a being (or nation, or people). It connotes reason, feeling, presence, expressivity, depth, the substance of a style. In running for president, Biden was embarked on a moral crusade. He was battling, as he put it in another frequently used phrase, for “hope over fear, unity over division, and truth over lies”.And “the idea of America” at the seat of the civil religion was not an empty notion. Jill Lepore’s 2018 one-volume history of the US identified “These Truths” as the nation’s core values: political equality, natural rights, popular sovereignty and the meta-truth that they are “self-evident”, Benjamin Franklin’s Enlightenment amendment to Jefferson’s “sacred and undeniable”.Like most campaign slogans, “battle for the soul of America” was an expedient coinage, tinged in this case with a touch of bravado. Yet it has become uncannily apt. Some Americans continue to resist “these truths” and others. And so Biden has justly continued to use the phrase as president.In his inaugural address two weeks after the assault on the Capitol and Congress he quoted Abraham Lincoln’s attestation that “my whole soul is in it” as he signed the Emancipation Proclamation, and reiterated his claim that national unity was essential “to restore the soul and to secure the future of America”. On Memorial Day, at Arlington National Cemetery:
    The soul of America is animated by the perennial battle between our worst instincts – which we’ve seen of late – and our better angels. Between “Me first” and “We the People”. Between greed and generosity, cruelty and kindness, captivity and freedom.
    These Truths review: Jill Lepore’s Lincolnian American historyRead moreOn 13 July, back at the National Constitution Center, Biden zeroed in on the opposition:
    It’s no longer just about who gets to vote or making it easier for eligible voters to vote. It’s about who gets to count the vote – who gets to count whether or not your vote counted at all. It’s about moving from independent election administrators who work for the people to polarized state legislatures and partisan actors who work for political parties.
    To me, this is simple: This is election subversion. It’s the most dangerous threat to voting and the integrity of free and fair elections in our history …
    We have to ask: Are you on the side of truth or lies; fact or fiction; justice or injustice; democracy or autocracy? That’s what it’s coming down to …
    The Republicans on the other side peddle disinformation and bank on partisan polarization. They seek to negate the truth of the 2020 election results and tilt the certification process against a reoccurrence in 2024. Under the banners of a “stolen” and “rigged” election and a vastly exaggerated claim of election “fraud”, they are conducting feckless audits and enacting voter suppression laws in battleground states, including Pennsylvania. They blocked the establishment of an independent commission to investigate the riot on the day they voted to decertify the election. Biden also cited Jim Crow in view of the racial dimensions of the soul battle. The opposition has launched a coded attack on a misappropriated academic term, “Critical Race Theory”.The soul battle is distinct from the programmatic initiatives and negotiations being conducted under another Biden slogan, “Build Back Better”. In that political domain differences can be monetized and split without recourse to dire dichotomies. However, the emotions summoned over voting cannot be easily compartmentalized and hived off from the dollar figures.Wake review: a must-read graphic history of women-led slave revoltsRead moreThe soul battle also bears on the effort to persuade Americans to get vaccinated, both in Biden’s exhortations to get the shot which appeal to patriotic duty and the opposition’s efforts to brand resistance to vaccination as a stand for freedom against the government. Analyzing that argumentation requires an essay unto itself, although I note in passing that Biden’s rhetorical approach has eschewed the designation of a “czar” to coordinate the administration’s public appeals and briefings, which would put distance between the soul battle and the urgent project of pandemic mitigation. As it is, government messaging on Covid runs through the president and state governors. And it is certainly valid to see the battle against the virus as a test of the force of reason in politics.Occasions for more soul speechmaking dot the national calendar. A rally in Washington DC on 28 August will commemorate Dr Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” address, which the president will probably recognize but not attend. The 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks will necessarily reference the pullout of troops from Afghanistan, but Biden could also validate the House inquiry into the Capitol riot as being in the spirit of the 9/11 Commission. Thanksgiving is the quintessential holiday of the American civil religion. More occasions will crop up after congressional voting on the For the People and John Lewis Voting Rights Acts.But before any of those holidays or events surface on the civil religion calendar there is next Thursday, 12 August, the fourth anniversary of the battle that marked Biden’s starting point. He might do well to travel to Charlottesville and speak at the downtown spot vacated by the 10 July removal of the Robert E Lee statue that sparked the Unite the Right rally. It would be a sign that the mostly nonviolent but deeply conflicted war over the idea of America – for that is what a series of battles amounts to – is being won.TopicsJoe BidenBiden administrationUS politicsDemocratsRepublicansUS voting rightsProtestfeaturesReuse this content More

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    I Alone Can Fix It review: Donald Trump as wannabe Führer – in another riveting read

    BooksI Alone Can Fix It review: Donald Trump as wannabe Führer – in another riveting read Gen Mark Milley saw that the US was in a ‘Reichstag moment’ – four days before the Capitol riot. With this and much more startling reporting, Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker of the Washington Post deliver the goods once againLloyd GreenFri 16 Jul 2021 07.37 EDTLast modified on Fri 16 Jul 2021 08.24 EDTCocooned at his resorts, the Trump Organization indicted, Donald Trump has come to embrace the insurrection.Trump told chief of staff Hitler ‘did a lot of good things’, book saysRead more“Personally, what I wanted is what they wanted,” he tells Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker of the Washington Post.Five people died after a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on 6 January, seeking to overturn the election.Last week, Trump declared: “These were peaceful people, these were great people.”So much for blaming Antifa. Think Charlottesville redux, on a larger stage. Or something even more ominous.In their second book on the Trump presidency, Leonnig and Rucker report that on 2 January 2021, two months after election day and as Trump still refused to concede defeat, Gen Mark Milley, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, told aides: “This is a Reichstag moment.”He was referring to the fire at the German parliament on 27 February 1933, an incident seized as a pretext by Hitler to begin arresting opponents and to consolidate his power.“The gospel of the Führer,” the authors quote Milley as saying.According to the general, the US under Trump was experiencing its own version of the late Weimar Republic, complete with modern-day “Brownshirts”. A graduate of Princeton and Columbia, Milley was not alone in seeing shadows of the past slither into the daylight.Trump, Leonnig and Rucker quote a senior official as saying, is a “guy who takes fuel, throws it on the fire, and makes you scared shitless”, then says “‘I will protect you.’“That’s what Hitler did to consolidate power in 1933.”This is a blockbuster follow-up to A Very Stable Genius, in which Leonnig and Rucker chronicled the chaos of Trump’s first three years in office. I Alone Can Fix It pulls back the curtain on the handling of Covid-19, the re-election bid and its chaotic and violent aftermath.The pair are Pulitzer winners, for investigative reporting. Their book is essential reading. They have receipts, which they lay out for all to see.Of Covid, they capture Marc Short, Vice-President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, telling folks in February 2020: “It’s not that bad.” The families of more than 600,000 dead Americans would probably disagree. (Short later contracted the virus.)Feeling burned by the authors’ first book, this time Trump sat for a two-and-a-half-hour interview. At the end of it, he let it be known – with a “twinkle in his eye” – that “for some sick reason” he “enjoyed it”.Much as he claims to hate the media and the elite, Trump craves their attention. Much as he believes in his own power of persuasion, Leonnig and Rucker were not converted.Trump’s hubris shines through. But for the pandemic, he claims re-election was inevitable. It’s a salesman’s pitch but one sufficiently rooted in reality. He also claims America’s two greatest presidents could not have defeated him. That is just surreal:
    I think it would be hard if George Washington came back from the dead and he chose Abraham Lincoln as his vice-president, I think it would have been very hard for them to beat me.”
    Before Covid, the economy was humming. Trump had taken down Qassem Suleimani, a top general in Iran’s Quds force, and the public approved.Joe Biden lost nominating contests in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada. His first win was on 29 February, days after the stock market’s Covid-induced crash, assisted by James Clyburn of South Carolina, dean of the Congressional Black Caucus and House majority whip.On the relationship between Covid and Trump’s defeat, Leonnig and Rucker describe Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s now former prime minister, sharing his thoughts with Tony Fabrizio, a pollster who worked for him and Trump, in early 2020.Netanyahu said: “The only thing that can beat President Trump is coronavirus.”With analytic capacity Trump could never muster and a sense of history he lacked, Netanyahu added: “If you don’t understand what a pandemic is and the mathematics behind how this will spread if we don’t contain it, it will collapse economies, and that changes the ball game tremendously.”In August, Trump reamed out Fabrizio after he warned the president the electorate was “really fatigued”. Trump bellowed: “They’re tired? They’re fatigued? They’re fucking fatigued? Well, I’m fucking fatigued, too.”The book’s rawest revelations concern 6 January. At best, Trump was blasé about Mike Pence’s plight, presiding over confirmation of Biden’s win, stuck inside the Capitol as halls and offices were plundered. Like Nero watching Rome burn, Trump fiddled in front of his TV.As for the rioters, Trump now claims he and they are one: “They showed up just to show support because I happen to believe the election was rigged at a level like nothing has ever been rigged before.”On 6 January, James Lankford of Oklahoma argued against certification, citing constituents’ concerns about voter fraud. He failed to mention it was Trump who spread that very concern.Hours later, however, the senator voted to certify. Months earlier, Tulsa was the venue for Trump’s infamous comeback rally, a flop which cost Brad Parscale his job as campaign manager and Herman Cain his life.Landslide review: Michael Wolff’s third Trump book is his best – and most alarmingRead moreLiz Cheney also makes a telling appearance in Rucker and Leonnig’s story. In a 7 January call with Gen Milley, the Wyoming congresswoman unloaded on Jim Jordan, a hard-right Ohio representative and Trump favorite, as a “son of a bitch”.Stuck with Jordan during the Capitol siege, Cheney discounted his expressions of concern, saying: “Get away from me. You fucking did this.” Cheney is now a member of the House select committee charged with investigating the riot.Leonnig and Rucker also quote Doris Kearns Goodwin: “There is nothing like this other than the 1850s, when events led inevitably to the civil war.”Politicians and acolytes make pilgrimages to Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s mecca in Palm Beach. Each dusk, Leonnig and Rucker write, he receives a standing ovation.Just the way he likes it.
    I Alone Can Fix It is published in the US by Penguin and in the UK by Bloomsbury
    TopicsBooksPolitics booksDonald TrumpTrump administrationUS politicsUS elections 2020US Capitol attackreviewsReuse this content More

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    QAnon and on: why the fight against extremist conspiracies is far from over

    On 7 January this year, a day after the mob stormed the Capitol in Washington DC, a curious exchange occurred in the netherworld of global conspiracy. Alex Jones, the rasp-voiced mouthpiece of fake news for the past decade, was in conversation with the most visible leader of the previous day’s shocking events: Jacob Chansley, the self-styled “Q Shaman” who featured on the world’s front pages, in buffalo horns, animal skins and face paint.Jones, on his fake-news platform Infowars, with its million-plus viewers and sharers, had for years been the loudhailer of unhinged stories that included the belief that Hillary Clinton was the antichrist, that Michelle Obama was a man, that the Pentagon and George Soros had detonated a “homosexual bomb” that turned even frogs gay, that 9/11 had been a “false flag” operation and, most viciously, that the Sandy Hook school murders, in which 20 children and six teachers died, were staged by “crisis actors” to promote gun control. Jones had inevitably been among those who addressed the restive crowd at Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” march (having donated $50,000 for the staging of the rally) and calling for supporters to “get on a war footing” to defend the president. Two days later, however, when faced with the rhetoric of Chansley, whom he had invited on to his show to explain the insurrection, it seemed even he, America’s conspirator in chief, finally couldn’t take the lies any more.As the Q Shaman launched into his justification of the mob violence that had left five people dead, a diatribe involving reference to the supposed QAnon revelations that the Democratic party was a front for a satanic paedophile ring that Trump was destined to expose and destroy, Jones repeatedly interrupted him. When Chansley asked plaintively why he wouldn’t listen (“you’re a hero to me, man”), Jones cut him off: “Because you’re full of crap!” he yelled. “That’s why! Because every goddamned thing out of you people’s mouths doesn’t come true. I knew what you were on day one and I know what you are now and I’m sick of it! I’m sick of all these witches and warlocks… I can’t talk to you any more. Jesus Christ! Lord help me. Aaargh!”This apparent volte face, disowning a web of untruths that he himself had enthusiastically propagated, was a surprise even to the most dedicated of Jones-watchers. During the Trump era, Dan Friesen and Jordan Holmes, a pair of standup comedians from Chicago, had performed the invaluable public service of debunking some of Jones’s wilder theories in a conversational podcast, Knowledge Fight. The events of January, however, gave them the sense that Jones “just felt less and less in control of what he was doing”. They had long been reluctant connoisseurs of the Texan’s rants but from that moment in January onwards, they felt they were witnessing a man flailing in the tide of his own untruths.One reading of this abrupt change suggested that Jones, who had made millions of dollars selling “potency pills” to his cultish followers, finally understood that the game was up. For the past year or more, he has been losing a series of legal appeals against the right of the Sandy Hook parents to sue him for defamation and end the unpardonable harassment that had seen them hounded by trolls who believed Infowars’ lies (the channel sent “investigators” to Sandy Hook to try to disinter the bodies of their murdered children and posted pictures that purported to show them alive and well; one parent, Leonard Pozner, who has led the case against Jones, has had to go into hiding to protect himself from reprisals). That legal process threatens to ruin Jones financially; later this summer it should see him face a fuller judicial reckoning. Having exhausted all other defences, his last line of argument appears to be that he – and his millions of followers – had known it was simply a joke all along.Another, more widely optimistic, reading of Jones’s meltdown is the proposition that the destructive forces of alt right conspiracy are finally in retreat. It is hard to imagine the rise of Trump without the environment of outlandish falsehood that preceded him. If Fox News offered mainstream support to that war on reality, then Jones was a big part of its militia wing. When Trump first announced that he was running for the presidency he appeared on Infowars to tell Jones: “Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down”, endorsing the host’s message that there was a secret liberal deep state cabal that controlled the world. In the months of campaigning that followed, when Trump shouted “Lock her up” of his opponent, Hillary Clinton, he knew he was preaching to the Infowars converted. On the morning after his inauguration, in 2017, Jones was among the first people Trump contacted to thank him for the help he had given.The optimism that sees the events in the Capitol as the last chapter of that story, however, must be heavily tempered with the fear that rather than representing an endgame, it instead highlighted a first dramatic skirmish in a new kind of warfare. That contention is at the heart of a compelling book, The Storm Is Upon Us, to be published this week, by the California-based journalist Mike Rothschild. The book examines the internet-based conspiracies that led to the assault on the Capitol in forensic detail, in particular the story of QAnon, the obscure series of anonymous “prophecies” that became the declared philosophy of many of those who travelled from across the country intent on overturning Joe Biden’s election victory, the philosophy that even Jones thought was a conspiracy too far.Rothschild’s book is a profoundly sobering read for anyone who retains faith in the inevitable progress of human reason, or a belief that in a free-speech environment where all opinions are given equal weight, Enlightenment views will necessarily prevail over violent untruths. It traces how a series of “data drops” from an anonymous poster QAnon – claiming to be a senior Pentagon insider – on the renegade internet platform 4chan came to be taken as prophetic gospels by thousands of disgruntled middle Americans staring at their screens.There had been precedents for such cultish frenzies of course, particularly in the US, but none has received the kind of official amplification and sanction as QAnon. What began as a development of the wilder culture and antisemitic tropes of so-called Pizzagate, quickly became a catch-all “philosophy” to politicise and explain the many “evils” of the world. That code was amplified by Trump supporters ranging from Jones to former national security adviser Michael Flynn and presidential confidant Roger Stone, who identified with QAnon’s theories about the way the deep state had “stolen” the election and urged Trump to declare martial law – another QAnon prophecy – in advance of the 2020 election. Trump’s sons Donald Jr and Eric both played to a QAnon audience, while nearly 100 Republican candidates declared themselves to be QAnon believers, with several winning their elections, including House representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.As Rothschild details, the bulk of Q followers had little history of extremism but they came to see themselves as “patriotic researchers”, uniquely able to distil fragments of truth from the “drops” of fictional coded information. Some proudly described themselves as “autists,” insinuating patterns unavailable to the unenlightened, patterns that allowed them to understand, for example, “that when [CIA chief] James Comey tweeted about the death of his dog Benji in early November 2018, he was really signalling to the world that George HW Bush would be executed two weeks later – because autists know that pictures of dogs sent by prominent deep-state members are actually secret messages announcing an execution”.So seductive were the internet rabbit holes into which they descended, a process of radicalisation familiar to cult-watchers, that in some cases families were abandoned and plots were hatched, including bomb threats, kidnap attempts and plans to destroy a coronavirus hospital ship. By 6 January 2021, QAnon devotees had for so long promised that a “storm” of mass arrests and executions would sweep “child molesters” and liberals out of government for ever that some were triggered to carry out that long-promised purge themselves.In detailing this radicalisation, Rothschild’s book emphasises the truth that among all the complex crises of our times the fundamental one is that of information, its quality and its reach. I remember at the time of the arrival of social media, 20 years ago, sitting through various presentations from a series of highly paid “internet gurus” who talked in messianic terms about a coming age of “citizen journalism”. Once the “gatekeepers” of the “legacy media” were removed, they argued – all those dogged hacks on local newspapers who have subsequently lost their livelihoods – there would be a wondrous revolution in transparency. This utopian vision could apparently see no potential issues with a mass system of anonymous communication in which there was no accountability for inaccuracy and no barriers to entry. I sat in those presentations thinking: have these people never read a history book?Speaking to Rothschild at his home in last week, he suggested that one of the lessons of the QAnon story is how that naivety worked both ways. “Even now,” he suggests, “there is still something in most people’s mind that believes things that happen on the internet don’t really matter. That it’s not real life.” What the QAnon story shows is that “online communities are more real to a lot of these people than their actual lives”.When Rothschild first started reporting on QAnon, a couple of months after the first drops, most reporters, if they looked at the story at all, viewed it “as just the next version of whatever crazy thing the Trump people were pushing that week”. He detected in its profile something a little different – it had very similar makeup, he thought, to these “affinity frauds” that have been running now for 20 years, which exploit the trust of peer recommendations in certain tight communities to fleece people of their life savings. But here, he says, you were selling not financial investments but “the powerful feelings that you would have when your enemies were brought to justice”.His book examines all the theories about QAnon’s original identity, without needing to come to a conclusion. Among the most plausible is that this was a kind of wicked experiment in human credulity. QAnon understood the power of story and parable. “I think, those early Q drops, the first maybe 130 drops [out of 4,592] were very skilfully written,” he says, “almost like the first chapters of a Tom Clancy novel… and it was a story that a lot of people bought into very quickly, because they wanted it to be true.” The first disciples were more than ready to believe that there was a judgment day approaching for these people at the heart of what Trump, Fox News and Jones had already spent a couple of years calling the deep state: Obama, George Soros, the Clintons. “I mean, there’s a reason why the first post was ‘Hillary Clinton will be arrested’,” Rothschild says. “This represented 30 years of wish-fulfilment. It was a Clinton, but it was almost more about Hillary than Bill. She was the one they really, really hated.”The story quickly found fertile ground among an audience spending many hours looking for the next excitement online, something to shock their followers with, a magnet for likes. Rothschild suggests that in the past some of this repressed anger might have been directed at neighbourhood issues, but in the vacuum of local newspapers a whole class of people who might have stood up in a PTA meeting and vented at the school board now believed they knew more about what was going on at a deputy assistant undersecretary’s office at the White House than at the end of their street. Social media algorithms offered no hierarchy to information and fed them more of what they liked. There was, in this conservative audience, Rothschild suggests, still a vestige of that feeling: “If I’m seeing a piece of media, it’s probably true. Nobody would lie in a news story…”Anybody can get sucked into cults. The moment you feel you are better than everybody else, you might be more vulnerableIn some ways, his book suggests, the only thing that prevented a deeper catastrophe in January was the demographic of those QAnon believers. A 2019 study by researchers at Princeton and New York University showed that Facebook users over the age of 65 were as much as seven times more likely to share fake-news stories and that held true with QAnon. Fortunately, Rothschild says: “This wasn’t Weimar Republic era paramilitaries. These were people who were 40, 50, 60. Many travelled a long distance and had a lot of disposable income to spend on tactical gear and flights and hotels. QAnon brought out something in these people who felt like their way of life was being destroyed by the relentless onslaught of progressivism. Donald Trump became their champion standing in the breach against the rising tide of liberalism.”The vision of that bizarre insurrection served to conclude the ongoing argument with social media platforms about their responsibility for policing extreme and deliberately false content. At the beginning of the pandemic, when it seemed that fake news might overwhelm public health messaging, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube and the rest were finally moved to take down some of the more threatening content, as bodies piled up in New York’s morgues.Jones had been among those who predictably trumpeted the anti-vax lines and 5G mast conspiracy that Piers Corbyn peddles to his mask-averse cranks. “This is the plan, folks,” Jones grunted at his viewers, early on. “They plan – now they’ve fluoridated you and vaccinated you and stunned you and mesmerised you with the TV and put you in a trance – on killing you.” The antidote to the virus, Jones claimed, lay in his own “wellness” products: SuperSilver whitening toothpaste and ABL Nano Silver Gargle that, he claimed, “kills the sars-corona family at point-blank range”. (The only proven effect of the active ingredient in these products, colloidal silver, is that it turns your skin blue.)The fact that social media giants had already cancelled Infowars accounts prevented the wider spread of this lethal nonsense; they now accepted a measure of responsibility to take down posts that claimed that 5G technology caused Covid-19, instead directing people toward accredited information.In the months since the January riots, the social media platforms have cracked down in a similar way on QAnon content, outlawing hashtags and catchphrases related to the conspiracy theory – “WWG1WGA” (“Where we go one we go all”), “the storm” and the “great awakening” – and shutting down thousands of accounts (including those of the ex-president). A report published by the Atlantic Council’s digital forensic research lab concluded that QAnon-related “chatter” surged enormously at the beginning of the pandemic and rose further in the lead-up to the Capitol riot, but had been reduced to a murmur in the months after Biden’s election.It is hard to read Rothschild’s book, however, without coming to the conclusion that the appetite for conspiracy has hardly diminished – some diehard QAnon followers still hold that the recount of the Arizona ballot will be decisive in overturning Biden’s election and restoring Trump to power. Meanwhile, the potent combination of tribal politics and the amplifying powers of social media continues to exert a hold. Rothschild reserves his anger in the book for those “conspiracy entrepreneurs”, including Jones and the Trump inner circle, who promoted these theories for financial or political gain, rather than the “digital foot soldiers”, often looking for community or belonging, who were seduced by them. “Maybe not everybody could be QAnon, because it takes a certain mentality,” he says, “but anybody can get sucked into conspiracy movements or cultic movements. You know, the moment you feel like you are better than everybody else, you might be more vulnerable than everybody else.”The pandemic created the perfect petri dish for such radicalisation – forcing people into isolation and to spending more time online. One of the seductive qualities of QAnon in this respect is that rather than presenting converts with a raft of developed theories, it acted as an invitation for them, in that favourite internet phrase, “to do their own research”. “Autists” became active participants in conspiracy creation, piecing together and sharing and creating clues, like medieval Bible scholars. You only have to look at forums such as “QAnon Casualties” on the Reddit platforms, a de-radicalisation and self-help conversation for cultists and their broken families, to see just how deep a hold the ideas can take on individuals.And of course this is far from a US-only phenomenon. Guardian research in the UK from the end of last year, before Facebook shut down tens of thousands of accounts, revealed a sharp rise in the use of QAnon terms among “an unlikely coalition of spirituality and wellness groups, vigilante ‘paedophile hunter’ networks, pre-existing conspiracy forums, local news pages, pro-Brexit campaigners and the far right”. Meanwhile a survey for Hope Not Hate, which monitors extremism, found that 17% of people when questioned said they believed Covid-19 was intentionally released as part of a “depopulation plan” by the UN or “new world order”; a quarter (25%) agreed that “secret satanic cults exist and include influential elites” and a similar proportion (26%) subscribed to the QAnon view that “elites in Hollywood, politics, the media and other powerful positions” were secretly engaged in child trafficking and abuse. The anti-lockdown gatherings in British cities, last week targeting the BBC journalist Nicholas Watt, are one meeting point for such theories.These trends support Rothschild’s suggestion that though QAnon itself has gone silent for six months, and thousands of spreader accounts have been deleted, “you still have a very large group of very malleable people. And it doesn’t take a lot for somebody to step in, start selling those people what they want to hear.”If there is a lesson of the past five years it is the ease and efficacy with which such lies can spread. QAnon is hopefully on its last legs, Rothschild says, “but there is a danger that whatever comes next might be even more powerful. My biggest hope is that we are able to recognise it and take it seriously. Not panic about it. But understand it, try to help debunk it and take it down before it gets to the point that QAnon got to. As we have seen,” he says, “it doesn’t take that long for these movements to curdle into violence.” More

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    White House unveils first national strategy to fight domestic terrorism

    The White House has published its first ever national strategy for countering domestic terrorism five months after a violent mob stormed the US Capitol in Washington.The framework released on Tuesday by the national security council describes the threat as now more serious than potential attacks from overseas but emphasises the need to protect civil liberties.Anticipating Republican objections that Joe Biden could use counterterrorism tools to persecute supporters of Donald Trump, the strategy is also careful to state that domestic terrorism must be tackled in an “ideologically neutral” manner.It cites examples such as “an anti-authority extremist” ambushing, shooting and killing five police officers in Dallas In 2016; a lone gunman (and leftwing activist) wounding four people at a congressional baseball practice in 2017; and an “unprecedented attack” on Congress on 6 January.“They come across the political spectrum,” a senior administration said on a media conference call. “We acknowledge the shooting at the congressional baseball, the attack on police officers in Dallas, just as we acknowledge the attack in Charlottesville and the attack on the Capitol on January 6.“So it’s not motivating politics or ideology that matters for us or, more importantly for the strategy and its implementation. It’s when political grievances become acts of violence and we remain laser focused on that.”The strategy, to be formally announced by the attorney general, Merrick Garland, on Tuesday, follows an order from Biden on his first full day in office for a review of government efforts to address domestic terrorism, which is described as “the most urgent terrorism threat the United States faces today”.An expert assessment of the threat provided by intelligence and law enforcement, a summary of which was released in March, found that its two most deadly elements are white supremacists and anti-government violent extremists.A senior administration said: “Further, it found that violent extremists who promote the superiority of the white race have the most persistent transnational connections and may be in frequent contact with violent extremists abroad.“However, it’s important to underscore that the study provided to us by ODNI [Office of the Director of National Intelligence] did not find a robust nexus between domestic terrorism and foreign actors. This is largely today an inside-out problem, not an outside-in problem, although we do know that our adversaries are seeking to sow divisions in our society.”The strategy consists of four pillars: efforts to understand and share information regarding the full range of domestic terrorism threats; efforts to prevent domestic terrorists from successfully recruiting, inciting, and mobilising Americans to violence; efforts to deter and disrupt domestic terrorist activity before it yields violence; long–term issues that contribute to domestic terrorism that must be addressed to ensure that this threat diminishes over generations.The prevention aspect includes a focus on working with big tech companies such as Facebook, which has been strongly criticised for allowing rightwing hate groups to thrive and coordinate, including ahead of the 6 January insurrection.An official said: “We as the government see different things from what any particular tech company might see, Any particular tech company often knows its own platform very well but the government sees things such as threats of violence across platforms … The process has already begun between the government and the tech sector and it will continue.”Biden’s budget for fiscal year 2022 includes more than $100m in additional resources for analysts, investigators, prosecutors and other personnel and resources to thwart domestic terrorism.The government says it is improving employee screening to enhance methods for identifying domestic terrorists who might pose “insider threats”. The defence, justice and homeland security departments are pursuing efforts “to ensure domestic terrorists are not employed within our military or law enforcement ranks and improve screening and vetting processes”.The strategy does not take a position on whether there should be a new statute criminalising domestic terrorism, leaving the question to a review by the justice department.Despite its plea for neutrality, a White House fact sheet does cite key Biden legislation – the American Rescue Plan, American Jobs Plan and American Families Plan – as providing “relief and opportunity” that can help counter long term distrust in democracy and its ability to deliver.It adds: “Government will also work to find ways to counter the polarization often fueled by disinformation, misinformation, and dangerous conspiracy theories online, supporting an information environment that fosters healthy democratic discourse.” More

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    Idaho candidate for governor endorsed by rightwing militia leader, video reveals

    Idaho’s Republican lieutenant governor and gubernatorial candidate, Janice McGeachin, attended a gathering where she was endorsed in a glowing introductory speech by a rightwing militia leader, as revealed in a video obtained by the Guardian.The video shows Eric Parker, who was charged over his role in the standoff in 2014 at Bundy Ranch in New Mexico where he was pictured pointing an assault rifle at federal agents, reminding McGeachin that she told him at an earlier meeting that “if I get in, you’re going to have a friend in the governor’s office”.In the same speech, Parker tells the small audience that when he sought McGeachin’s assistance in the case of Todd Engel, another Bundy Ranch attendee who was sentenced to 14 years in prison in 2019, he showed her sealed evidence from the trial.He recalled saying to her: “I’m not sure this is legal” and that she replied: “I want to see it,”after which time he said she “started writing letters to the Department of Justice” and “rallying support” on behalf of the imprisoned man.Parker posted the speech video on his Telegram channel on 19 May, the same day that McGeachin publicly announced her candidacy for governor, where she may be up against the incumbent, fellow Republican Brad Little, who is yet to clarify his intentions.In his endorsement, Parker tells the audience: “We need to do everything we can to get her where she can do the most good for us … we got to get her in there for us.” A few moments later McGeachin walks into frame and the two embrace.McGeachin has encountered previous controversies involving links with extremist groups. In 2018 she refused to answer media questions as to whether she was using Three Percenter members as security during her gubernatorial run. In 2019, she was pictured with Three Percenters who were rallying in support of Engel.She has also offered support to anti-mask and anti-lockdown protesters in the state, who include Ammon Bundy’s Peoples Rights Network.In his speech in the video, Parker also recalled McGeachin signing a letter in support of him, as part of an effort led by far right Idaho representative, Dorothy Moon, during his own federal prosecution in Nevada for his own role in the standoff.Parker pleaded guilty in 2018 to a misdemeanor after two hung-jury trials on felony charges including including conspiracy, extortion, assault and obstruction, and eighteen 18 months in custody. Engel’s trial was vacated by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals last August.Earlier that year, Parker founded the Real 3% of Idaho as an unincorporated nonprofit organization. In late 2020, he claimed that the organization had 2,500 members around the state, and has repeatedly denied that the group is a militia.A 1 June video on Parker’s 3% of Idaho YouTube channel shows Parker and Engel drilling with assault rifles on a rural property, and features the title “Eric and Todd, Idaho’s gunmen celebrate Memorial day”.Parker is not shy of controversy. In a 2 May photograph on Parker’s Telegram account Parker stands side by side with Nate Silvester, who was at that time still a deputy with the marshal’s office in Bellevue, Idaho, just miles away from Parker’s address in Hailey in Blaine county. Parker identifies Silvester only as “Officer Funny”, presumably a reference to the fact that the Deputy was enjoying a moment of viral fame after he posted a video to TikTok mocking the tweets of LeBron James, who had tweeted protesting at the fatal police shooting of Ohio teen Ma’Khia Bryant.Following Silvester’s 24 April video, which said among other things that the officer who shot Bryant “did the right thing”, the city of Bellevue placed him on administrative leave, and then fired him on 29 May.Lindsay Schubiner, program director at the Western States Center, a progressive non-profit whose work includes monitoring extremist groups in the region, said that Parker’s video “demonstrated his cozy relationship with McGeachin”.She described the relationship between such a senior politician and the far-right militia figure as “deeply disturbing”.Schubiner added that McGeachin “has consistently sought the support and backing of extreme, anti-democratic movements in Idaho”, and that “no public official has any business advancing the agenda of an anti-democratic paramilitary group”.Neither McGeachin nor Parker responded to repeated attempts to contact them for comment. More