Did right-wing media troll and all-around terrible person Mike Cernovich just do the exact thing he’s been accusing financier George Soros of doing for months? Did Cernovich literally pay protesters to attend an event?
Right-wingers have been harping on the “paid protester” non-issue since the start of the 2016 campaign season. Donald Trump regularly accused those who protested against him of being “paid protesters,” with no evidence to back up his wild claims. Yet he was the one who literally paid actors to show up at Trump Tower to cheer him on the day he announced he was running for president.
Trump’s supporters, if anything, have been even more eager to label their opponents as “paid protesters” and “shills,” often accusing financier George Soros by name as being the secret Mr. Moneybags behind it all. During the 2016 campaign, Trump superfan Cernovich was quick to cry foul any time anyone took to the streets (or to Twitter) to say anything bad about Trump — or about Cernovich himself — with absolutely no evidence beyond his own imagination.
https://twitter.com/cernovich/status/756299752401211393
https://twitter.com/cernovich/status/755807480542879744
Now there’s been something of a plot twist. Yesterday, Cernovich tweeted this:
https://twitter.com/Cernovich/status/857632929035411457
Naturally, more than a few of Cernovich’s non-fans were quick to point out the, er, irony here.
So you're literally paying for people to protest?
— The Sigma Oaf (@RicChciuk) April 27, 2017
Paid protesting is a rough business, eh?
— sthippie 🏆🏆🛡🛡 (@sthipp) April 27, 2017
https://twitter.com/seeeeeeeean/status/857775278633996292
But few on the left have seriously accused Cernovich of hiring paid protesters. That’s because they know there is a difference between literally paying people to attend rallies — as Trump’s people did for his announcement event — and paying money to help people get to rallies, which is what Cernovich seems to have done.
Lots of political organizations help to subsidize or outright provide transportation to people who would otherwise be unable to attend events. There’s nothing wrong with this, just as there’s nothing wrong with letting an out-of-town guest crash on your couch so they can attend a protest.
So, no, to answer the question in my somewhat clickbaity headline, Cernovich isn’t the George Soros of the far-right. Nor, I should add, is George Soros the George Soros of the left.
But given Cernovich’s massive hypocrisy on this issue, I can’t say I really object to rubbing his nose in this just a little bit.
eli, she did! She was scarily good at it, too!
@Troubelle
Is your mother likely to acknowledge nuance? i.e. the difference between ‘Soros funds outfits like MoveOn.org’ and ‘Soros personally cuts a check to every leftist or liberal protester ever’
@Dalillama
I have no idea how this damn woman operates. I mean, she didn’t mind at all when I came out as genderqueer, but at the same time, I’m the daughter who she’s betting the most money on (being the most STEMmy of my siblings, I guess) and she’s just…full of issues. Also, I’m pretty sure in hindsight that she’s engaged in emotional and verbal abuse, but I’m not going to get her to say that’s what it was.
WWJD?
I dunno, get nailed to a tree?
It never seems to me like the best advice.
Breaking: Mike might not be, but SOMEONE out there is actually the right-wing version of what they claim Soros is.
Secret donors supposedly gave Milo Yiannopoulos 12 million to put out anti-liberal troll propaganda.
He certainly got off to a good start:
“This generation that’s coming up, it’s about 13, 14, 15, now have very different politics than most other generations. They love us. They love me, and I’m going to be actively hunting around for the next Milo.”
Pedophiles talking about 13-15 year olds loving them is pretty awful. I really hope it was intentional trolling.
Breaking: Mike might not be, but SOMEONE out there is actually the right-wing version of what they claim Soros is.
Secret donors supposedly gave Milo Yiannopoulos 12 million to put out anti-liberal troll propaganda.
He certainly got off to a good start:
Pedophiles talking about 13-15 year olds loving them is pretty awful. I really hope it was intentional trolling.
Cernovich (if it was indeed him) replied to one of my YouTube comments yesterday with “(((Citizen Justin)))”. I wasn’t sure if he was giving me a hug or saying I’m Jewish, and I didn’t bother asking.
dreemr said
Damned if I know; the only forays into the Tumblr I’ve ever had were links from here. I took one look at the comments (which give new meaning to the term “nested”) and noped on out!
I may have to delve into Instagram if I get motivated enough to start sewing again because I’ve started following a couple of people on YT who encourage those of us who get inspired by them to post our creations and I think I might like to do that. But I am a bit trepadacious* about it, I admit.
*might have made up a word, there!
Who wants to bet Milo’s mystery donor is the money he stole from his charity?I’m sure that’s less than a million, but I wouldn’t put it past him to lie about the amount of money he has.
@Hambeast – ah, I could get behind that, as long as you don’t get sucked into some sort of digital wormhole!
I did forget Pinterest, which my teenage son calls, “porn for old ladies” lol.
The UK’s Independent say ol’ Mikey was making a white supremacist sign at the White House. To me, it just looks like an ‘ok’ hand gesture, but I don’t really understand the nuances of such things.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/white-power-hand-symbol-cassandra-fairbanks-mike-cernovich-alt-right-white-house-a7709446.html
I would however appreciate if anyone could explain.
OT: Good on Virginia for restoring voting rights
The right thing to do, and helps the Dems going forward. Well done, Governor. Let’s see what other who else follows suit in the next few years
rugbyyogi,
Probably just imitating Trump, since he does this stupid gesture all the time.
So dumb looking.
http://iranpoliticsclub.net/politics/trump-national-populism/images/Donald%20Trump%20Perfect%20Hand%20Gesture%20with%20Flag.jpg
http://blogs-images.forbes.com/robertwood/files/2016/02/Trump1.jpg
http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/55c4ac676bb3f7ad3e585720-3882-3072/rtx1k0zs.jpg
And, well, the Pope does it…
Plus this: ?
So, I don’t think too much of it, actually.
Well, yes and no. It used to be a simple “OK” sign (although in, I think it’s Brazil, it means “asshole”), but nowadays that’s just how alt-righters mask it. It is actually a reference to this:
http://i63.tinypic.com/10curv8.png
That’s good ol’ Pepe the frog from the execrable /pol/ and you can read more about it here.
However, whether it’s an actual “hate” symbol is up in the air. I suspect by now it IS used to signal alt-right leanings, but at first it was probably just dumb-asses.
re: the OK symbol
I believe it’s also used by deep-sea divers as a definite sign to indicate “things are suck, bring us back up”, since it’s something you have to try to do.
How appropriate.
@ troubelle
From my one and only* diving experience the ok sign means, perhaps unsurprisingly, I’m ok’. It can also be used as ‘are you ok?. ‘Something is wrong’ is that shaking your hand gesture like when you’re indicating something could go either way.
With deep sea divers ‘bring me up’ is generally a number of tugs on the cable.
(*There’s conger eels down there!!!)
@Alan
Maybe it’s a thing differing across the nations?
The idea is you aren’t saying ok but forming your fingers to look like a “WP.” There’s a similar gang sign but it uses both hands.
I think it’s just a distraction, though. When Sessions is pushing through racist criminal justice reforms it’s silly to talk about if the hand gestures trolls make signify white power.
The diving thing, Troubelle – could it be you’re thinking of the “thumbs-up” gesture which usually means “good” to us terrestrials, I heard that that means “get up to the surface asap” to divers under water????
The alt-right appropriation of the fingertip-to-thumbtip circle is a new one to me. I shall mentally categorise them all as self-referential arseholes of course. (Is Chiomara around, I wonder? They would know if it’s in Brazil that it’s used in that sense 🙂 )
I bet there’s someone around here who can confirm if I’m right in thinking that the thumbs-up actually meant death in Roman gladiatorial fights, with the thumbs-down meaning life? And how and when did we get it the opposite way round?
It’s sunday morning here; good morning. And who has plans for May 1st? Labour rally tomorrow 🙂
@opposablethumbs
Nobody knows what signals the Romans used fpr anything whatsoever, and AFAICT there’s no evidence the current Western thumbs up/down usage dates to before WWII. It may have been borrowed from Chinese custom by US military aviators.
I disagree. Letting these fuckstacks get away with throwing their signs and salutes in public is a big part of what’s normalised and emboldened them all the way to the Whitest House; we need to call this bullshit out as loudly as we can and drive it back to the history books where it belongs.
Besides, we can focus on more than one thing at a time.
This is my experience. I haven’t dived much, but they made sure to explain to us that thumbs-up means “go back to the surface” and is not to be confused with an “all-is-well” signal.
Re: thumbs up and gladiators
The only contemporary references to this practice come from Pliny and Juvenal.
Pliny unhelpfully just says the thumb was ‘turned’. Juvenal though says the crowd signalled ‘put your sword down’ with their thumbs pointing down. There isn’t an explicit reference to what signal, if any, was used to indicate ‘finish them off’.
So up until the nineteenth century the consensus was that thumbs down meant let the gladiator live.
Then some French(?) painter used thumbs down to indicate death. That painting set the trend for thumbs down = death to enter the public consciousness. But it’s just an example of pop culture getting things wrong in the ‘word of Dante’ sense (to quote TV Tropes).
If you’re into conspiracy theories and have an overactive imagination, the OK sign also forms three 6s. The “WP” interpretation was entirely new to me, but the 666 is one I’ve heard for years.