Luke O'Brien
@lukeobrien
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Investigative journalist, magazine writer. Extremism/disinfo. 917-284-8226
Joined September 2008
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The man holding the door for George Santos is Vish Burra, a Steve Bannon henchman and leader of the New York Young Republican Club. NYYRC is an elite fascist networking nexus with strong ties to far-right foreign political parties.
Burra is Santos' "operations director."
George Santos struggles to address questions about his character and slips on the newspaper.
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Far-right American "Stop the Steal" operatives have been in Brazil stoking this kind of violent unrest for months. People allied with Steve Bannon. Like Matthew Tyrmand, who functions as something of an international fascism supereconnector.
Bolsonarista terrorists broke down the police barrier and invaded the Congress ramp and threatened to occupy the chamber and the Senate. The Minister of Justice
@FlavioDino
announced that he is allowing the use of all federal forces against them.
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Twitter just restored the account of lead Stop the Steal architect Ali Alexander, who used this platform to organize an anti-democratic movement to overthrow American democracy.
Alexander is a violence-endorsing far-right fanatic and serial ToS violator.
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Neo-Nazi collaborator Jack Posobiec appears VERY worried about the Douglass Mackey trial.
Why wouldn't he be?
Posobiec, a Duginist political operative w/ ties to Trump, was in the DM rooms with the fascists who attacked our country in 2016 and beyond, according to Microchip.
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In 2020, I proved that Peter Thiel pal Jeff Giesea helped fund the white nationalist movement in America. He gave thousands to Richard Spencer's org & worked closely w/ extremists.
The WaPo omits that info from this story, which uses Giesea as a source.
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This is a far more significant verdict than the coverage from the blinkered prestige media suggests. It's already sending a shudder of fear through the far right, which relies on Twitter and other social media to attack democracy.
Social Media Influencer Douglass Mackey Convicted of Election Interference in 2016 Presidential Race
Announced with
@NewYorkFBI
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The extremists are inside the henhouse. They have American democracy in their crosshairs. Their goal: a version of Viktor Orban's illiberalism here.
Santos is clearly a vessel for their program.
No wonder pro-Kremlin neo-Nazis love him so:
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Burra worked diligently alongside Bannon and other prominent extremists in an effort to overturn the 2020 election.
Now he's strolling the halls of Congress.
Here he is meeting the Hungarian ambassador alongside Gavin Wax, the head of NYYRC.
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Gotta be at least one dude at NASA wondering why Congress thought it was a good idea to make the space program dependent on a dope-addled antisemite with three passports.
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Douglass Mackey is an antisemitic advocate for global white supremacy who spread neo-Nazi propaganda and tried to trick voters of color out of their votes.
Tucker Carlson just called him a "Republican social media influencer."
Fair?
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The Republicans' new Hunter Biden "whistleblower" was just indicted for being an agent for China.
Also charged with arms trafficking, violating sanctions against Iran and making false statements to the feds.
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Nobody has undercut the "he's a billionaire so he must be a genius" myth more than Elon. He's actually done society a service in this regard.
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Wax was recently caught by the SPLC advocating "total war" against the enemies of authoritarianism. His remarks came at a NYYRC gala attended by white nationalists, leaders of extreme far-right European parties, George Santos and Marjorie Taylor Greene.
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White nationalist Trump troll Doug Mackey did not want to answer my questions on his way out of court today with earmuffs on. Pretty sure he could hear me asking him about his connection to Clearview founder Hoan Ton-That.
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Not sure Vish Burra realizes how deep he's in. No turning back for him at this point.
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In trying to understand how the Washington Post overlooked Peter Thiel pal Jeff Giesea funding white nationalism (see below), I began to wonder if the reporters didn't do any digging on Giesea beyond reading his Wikipedia page.
In 2020, I proved that Peter Thiel pal Jeff Giesea helped fund the white nationalist movement in America. He gave thousands to Richard Spencer's org & worked closely w/ extremists.
The WaPo omits that info from this story, which uses Giesea as a source.
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Trump in Iowa tonight: "We've been waging an all-out war in American democracy."
The WaPo quoting Trump: "They've been waging an all-out war on American democracy."
Should the paper really be cleaning up his quotes like this?
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Here is who and what Jack Posobiec is now defending after the Douglass Mackey guilty verdict.
Posobiec has never had to answer for working with neo-Nazis, including a pair of brothers who allegedly were planning to shoot up a synagogue.
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Wish I could stay to see Doug Mackey aka Ricky Vaughn testify today as the ONLY witness for his defense, especially because I've done so much reporting on him. But I was at the trial on my own dime.
The feds were able to nab Mackey after my 2018 piece:
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The extremists had been collaborating since at least 2016, when they teamed up on several influence ops, including the Wikileaks-Roger Stone-Pizzagate stochastic terrorism campaign.
Pizzagate almost got people murdered by an Alex Jones fanatic.
It started with a Kremlin hack.
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At Mackey's trial, the gov introduced many screenshots of chats among the alleged co-conspirators in Twitter DM rooms. (Twitter is a company that aided/abetted this attack on our democracy.)
Several names were redacted.
We need to understand Posobiec's anxiety in this context.
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Not suspicious at all.
6/Pro-
#Bolsonaro
rioters demanding "source code."
Incredibly familiar.
Notably, some of their banners are in English.
Interesting.
Who exactly has been advising
#Brazil
's ex-president?
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Microchip was my source long before he was talking to the government. He remained my source while working for the government.
He told me many times over the years that he and Posobiec were extremely close.
"We're best buddies," he said to me in May 2020.
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It's weird, I tell ya, but Jack Posobiec of Human Events and Turning Point USA sounds exactly like Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs for some reason.
Almost uncanny. Can't figure it out.
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The SPLC recently got a look at Tyrmand's centrality in this globalized network of extremism, an epicenter of which in the U.S. is now the New York Young Republican Club.
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Gutsy undercover reporting from
@noturtlesoup17
shows how easy it is for insurrectionism-endorsing fascists to gain access to GOP mainstream.
Some of these extremists have close ties to Gavin Wax’s New York Young Republican Club and Charlie Kirk’s TPUSA.
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Like Ricky Vaughn, Posobiec was a useful megaphone to spread anti-American disinfo and radicalization fare.
Not that Microchip had much respect for the intellectually challenged Posobiec.
"The difference between me and Jack Posobiec is that I know what I'm doing," he told me.
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Doug Mackey aka Ricky Vaughn collaborated directly with Daily Stormer webmaster Andrew “weev” Auernheimer when Mackey allegedly interfered in the election in 2016. They discussed a manual for psychological meme terrorism.
Weev has participated in Kremlin-run influence ops.
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A dual-national (Poland) who spreads anti-democratic disinfo and has done work in the U.S. for foreign far-right governments, Tyrmand is tight with the Bolsonaro clan.
He earned a mention in this NYT column.
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Wow. Fake patriot social media network Gettr was run by Guo Wengui, the alleged Chinese fraudster who works with Steve Bannon and is suspected of being a double agent for China.
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For years, Micro sat at the nexus of extremism, foreign influence and the Trump operation. His tentacles snaked deep into the platforms and private rooms where operatives and influencers plotted to destroy democracy. Where they plot still.
Now Micro is working for the feds.
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Yesterday, Posobiec obtained what a court reporter told
@hannahgais
was an "unauthorized" transcript from the Mackey trial.
He used it to lie about me and try to whip up a smear campaign. I'd expect nothing less from a far-right propagandist who worked with Mackey's crew.
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Few anti-democratic organizations in America have worked harder than the Claremont Institute to usher in a Christofascist dictatorship in this country.
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I do hope to share more one day, mainly because I have never in my career encountered a character like Microchip. He's smarter and more devious and dangerous than anyone thinks. He is a marvel of malevolence.
And he changed our politics at the highest level. For the worse.
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A few more thoughts on Doug Mackey...
1) His family wasted thousands of dollars on "treatment" to de-radicalize him. He hasn't reformed and has no remorse for his actions. He's now playing MAGA martyr for the anti-democracy movement in America.
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Instead, the Washington Post describes Giesea as someone "launching a nonpartisan think tank." A fella focused on "solving real problems."
Best-case scenario: WaPo reporters/editors remain disturbingly clueless about far-right extremism & subversion. Even after Jan. 6.
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Microchip is the confidential witness in the Doug Mackey trial. Confirmed in court today.
Mackey’s attorney, Andrew Frisch, already referring to him as Mr. Microchip.
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Ketamine fiend Elon Musk is being danced about like a marionette on his own platform by far-right operatives like Ian Miles Cheong, a Malaysian man who used to work for RT and still takes foreign money.
Why is this not seen as a security clearance risk?
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White nationalist-linked former Trump speechwriter Darren Beattie calls Doug Mackey "just an ordinary guy."
Mackey spread Nazi propaganda. He deprived people of color of their vote.
Trump Jr. is a dope. But he has no qualms defending fascism in service to his oligarchic family.
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But how did Posobiec get this transcript? Could it have come from Andrew J. Frisch, who also represents VDARE and has already made several misleading or even false statements to the court about journalists covering the trial?
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Douglass Mackey routinely tweeted fascist, racist, Islamophobic, misogynistic and antisemitic content, including actual Nazi propaganda.
Donald Trump Jr. loved it.
New:
Donald Trump Jr. told a known white nationalist figure — Douglass Mackey, known on Twitter as "Ricky Vaughn" — that he "may be my favorite Twitter account of all time" & "we've probably gone back and forth on Twitter back in the old days and DMs."
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The Troll King appears to be trolling his handlers.
Which makes me wonder how much these DOJ lawyers working a trial about far-right disinfo have actually learned about far-right trolling tactics.
At least one of them got played by the government's own star witness.
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Fifth columnists immediately on message after Navalny's death. This is a Kremlin narrative. These bad actors have been actively sabotaging American democracy for years.
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Donald Trump Jr. last night praised Douglass Mackey on Tim Pool's show, saying:
"That'd be my first pardon, man. That guy that was Ricky Vaughn, right? Like he was one of the great like the original OG like sort of Twitter accounts like MAGA accounts I mean think about."
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...and the insights gained into the psychology of the social media-enabled authoritarians threatening our country.
Microchip led an elite crew of these Trumpian fascists, who weaponized Twitter to upend elections and radicalize conservatives.
He was a cartel boss of disinfo.
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When the government finally arrested Mackey in 2021 for federal election interference, they named several alleged co-conspirators in the indictment -- but only by their Twitter IDs.
I identified a few of them at the time:
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To be very clear, here, in part, is what Donald Trump Jr. is celebrating:
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But I'd expect nothing less from Microchip.
He was trolling the whole legal system from the witness stand.
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Right-wing authoritarism = biggest terrorism threat in the U.S. Sadly, we can expect more of these attacks as Trump and his propagandists whip up fascist nutjobs in a nation awash in guns.
Horrible news out of Jacksonville. Three killed in what local law enforcement describe as a hate-motivated attack. The presence of an apparent manifesto and the markings on the gun are sadly reminiscent of the Buffalo grocery store shooting last year.
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More in this article about Giesea and the attack on democracy he helped finance, organize and unleash in support of Donald Trump and the fascist movement in the U.S.
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Lot of normie bros out there don’t even realize how much Rogan has radicalized them. He spoon-feeds them anti-media, anti-science, anti-"woke" conspiracies. The extremism follows naturally.
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One other relevant detail on Giesea's history launching orgs...
In 2017, he founded a PAC with Mike Cernovich and Jack Posobiec, the far-right propagandists behind the Pizzagate stochastic terrorism campaign.
PAC paid Posobiec over $15k, then shut down.
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Unfortunately, a DOJ attorney also used the sidebar to enter far-right disinfo about me into the court record.
That disinfo could only have come from Microchip.
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The transcript includes a sidebar among the attorneys and the judge that observers in the courtroom couldn't hear. These are sometimes redacted when the transcript is made public.
In the sidebar, Frisch vents about me.
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I'd long suspected that he was an informant. He'd hinted at it to me in our chats, which run over the course of six years.
But the details of how he became such a valuable government asset are also astounding...
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One can only wonder if other recent stories about Peter Thiel -- often casting him as a patriot -- relied on Giesea as an anonymous source...
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Law enforcement "intel" is often disinfo "straight from the rightwing social media fever swamps," according to Brennan Center fellow and former FBI agent Mike German.
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The most significant of them was Microchip. There's much I could say about the notorious far-right botmaster. I know him as well, I think, as anyone outside his family. Maybe better.
What I can say now: He is the king of the trolls.
THE KING.
The devil broke the mold here.
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Thank you
@DempseyTwo
for bringing to my attention that Giesea also participated in a Claremont Institute war game before the 2021 election w/ insurrectionist John Eastman and "Red Caesar" advocate Charles Haywood, among others.
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3) Mackey has a right to be a hateful bigot online. He's not going to prison for that. Or for spreading Nazi propaganda & Kremlin hooey. He's going to prison for trying to deprive American citizens of THEIR rights. That legal outcome triggers fascists and white nationalists.
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Tyrmand was deeply involved in the Biden smear campaign orchestrated by Bannon and other criminals and anti-democratic activists before the 2020 election.
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In court, he spoke about some of his methods/goals -- about infecting normies with his mind virus and using humor to manipulate.
He wasn't exaggerating. I'd watched him work his dark meme magic in real time. Yesterday, I watched him take the stand and charm both jury and judge
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Maybe one day I will get the chance to tell you Microchip's story. To tell you OUR story. For it is the wildest reporting adventure I've ever been on.
It's a story about my hunt for him, the cat-and-mouse game we played, the crazy dysfunctional relationship that results...
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Where is Pizzagate pusher Mike Cernovich now? Where is the great defender of children?
In 2019, rape apologist Cernovich & unethical attorney Marc Randazza were accused of acting as proxies in court for Dershowitz in an effort to discredit and pressure victims. Fits their m.o.
In newly unsealed documents, we learn that Epstein allegedly forced Doe 3 - a minor - to have sex with (be raped by)
@AlanDersh
on numerous occasions. He also witnessed the rape of many others. Dershowitz played a role in Epstein and his associates’ sweetheart deal in Florida.
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I know a guy who in college needed to pass a class so he didn't fail out of school. But he hadn't shown up to class all semester. So he borrowed a baby and synched up his walk across campus to intersect with the professor and explain that life had grown unexpectedly complicated.
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Here's the House GOP uptake of a Kremlin narrative to deflect from or normalize Putin's killing of Navalny. Took roughly a week.
Fyi, Gonzalo Lira was a pro-Kremlin propagandist who emerged from the far-right "manosphere" that produced Mike Cernovich & other Putin sympathizers.
Fifth columnists immediately on message after Navalny's death. This is a Kremlin narrative. These bad actors have been actively sabotaging American democracy for years.
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Yes, Republicans, you should definitely let George Santos into the classified intelligence briefings. Nothing will go wrong. Nothing at all.
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Imagine giving your hard-earned right-wing billionaire money to this person.
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If I worked in the Malaysian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I'd actually be a little concerned that Ian Miles Cheong is promoting statist violence in the U.S. and is also the first introduction many Americans have to Malaysia. Is this really a good thing for the country's image?
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Actually, the way out may be turning state’s evidence.
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Douglass Mackey used Twitter to spread hate, lies, Nazism. He tried to deprive Democrats of their right to vote. Trump Jr. lauded his content.
Mackey now claims his actions "do not reflect his current views."
But he's still doing far-right activism...
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This, by the bye, is Mr. Auernheimer.
Mr. Auernheimer is the webmaster for the world's largest neo-Nazi site.
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So I looked at his Wikipedia page. Well well. It has been scrubbed to remove references to his far-right extremism, many of which I first reported. Here's Giesea's current page and the lingo at the very top:
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4) Publishing the name of an antisemitic extremist hiding behind a Charlie Sheen avatar isn't doxing and never will be. Only fools and authoritarians think otherwise and consider the act of publishing to be censorship. Same crowd that would like to tear down our democracy now.
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But it gets weirder. Someone with a Prague IP address made an edit to Giesea's page about Auernheimer.
This editor removed the "false accusation that Mr. Auernheimer is neo-nazi, simply because he was never affiliated with any Nazi party."
I see.
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@RichardBSpencer
If he's not a "Duginist" in the formal sense, he is undoubtedly a dead-eyed disinfo thug who has promoted Duginism, Duginist tactics and Dugin's actual work.
And, yes, he's been carrying water for Mother Russia since 2016, maybe 2015.
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2) I didn't cover Mackey's voter suppression efforts in my 2018 story. I focused on how he spread extremist content, including Nazi propaganda, and promoted and was promoted by a major Kremlin-controlled Twitter account. All of which made him a MAGA hero.
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I've been getting a few messages tonight from Tucker fans eager to defend Doug Mackey, a white supremacist who spread actual Nazi propaganda (and Kremlin propaganda).
But Tucker didn't tell his viewers that. Tucker chose to promote an antisemitic criminal in this moment.
Mackey did not just share unlawful content online, but was a key figure in shepherding white nationalism and antisemitism through the early Trump movement. He is a disgraceful but successful hate monger, which I suspect is why these guys are keen to defend him so hard…
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It's indisputable that Giesea gave $$$ to Richard Spencer's org. Andrew "weev" Auernheimer, a neo-Nazi, described Giesea as a major alt-right funder. Yet the line below was removed from Giesea's page. The only subjective bit is "major," depending on one's definition.
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Posobiec knows that former Daily Caller editor Scott Greer is a longtime white nationalist.
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Tyrmand has been working with fascists, white nationalists and members of the radical right for years.
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Here's the top lingo from an older page. Lower down, you'll find more details (all of them accurate) about Giesea's ties to the alt-right. That info was also removed.
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Here's a bonus pic of Giesea having a gas with a man who claims he invented email and Jason Kessler, the white nationalist organizer of Charlottesville's deadly Unite the Right rally.
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This collaboration was memed into existence by some of the extremists at the heart of this trial.
For years, they thought Mike and I were in cahoots. We were in competition. But we often joked about the triggering that would ensue if we teamed up.
That day has come.
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In October 2022, as the unpopular Bolsanaro was losing at the polls, Steve Bannon and Matthew Tyrmand declared on his War Room show (broadcast on Jason Miller's GETTR) that the election was stolen. Now 3 months later, a riot. Same playbook as in the US. 6/
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Will Giesea's "nonpartisan think tank" examine these matters further in the interest of "solving real problems?" Does a man so proud of his memetic warfare attack on American democracy in 2016 suddenly have the best interests of our republic in mind?
Hmmmm.
No.
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More bonus:
1) Giesea promoting Darren Beattie & term that echoes Nazi rhetoric to demonize journalists.
2) Giesea suggesting that violence against journos may be justified while referencing the far-right "Day of the Brick" campaign intended to incite violence against journos.
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The end product of this authoritarian endeavor was an "instruction manual" for how Trump partisans & citizen "posses" of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers could, "quite literally, round up opposition activists, kill their leaders, and install Donald Trump for a second term in office."
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Twitter has aided and abetted extremists and even terrorists for years. Musk merely formalized the relationship.
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No good explanation has ever been offered for why the feds would permit Posobiec and Ngo to operate so freely.
Posobiec has been promoting Kremlin propaganda for 7 years.
And Ngo has done as much as anyone to create a fake antifa bogeyman to incite conservatives to violence.
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"Conservative influencers" like Tucker, Jack Posobiec and Charlie Kirk are now suggesting/stating that Trump's indictment is a Dem plot to spark right-wing violence so liberals can crack down on Republicans who do things like violently attack the seat of democracy in our country.
Tucker is hinting at right-wing violence in response to Trump's indictment:
"At what point do we conclude that they're doing this in order to produce a reaction?"
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