HAPPY UPDATE: Looks like this little bit of hashtag activism despicable trollish smearing has collapsed; the hashtag is pretty much dead as of now. (5/11/17, noonish Chicago time)
On last Sunday’s episode of HBO’s “Last Week Tonight,” John Oliver once again rallied his fans to stand up for Net Neutrality, now under threat from the Trump administration, urging them to visit Gofccyourself.com, a site that links directly to the FCC page for public comment on the proposed change.
And so some of the worst people on the Internet have launched a new Twitter campaign to smear Oliver as racist — and get him fired.
“Er, what?” you might be wondering.
Well, it turns out that Trump’s newly appointed FCC head is of Indian descent. And the FCC site has been hit with a flood of racist comments attacking him.
The Washington Free Beacon, a right-wing rag the Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf once described as a “decadent and unethical” part of the “ascendant ‘smear wing’ of the conservative movement” has decided that Oliver is personally to blame.
John Oliver’s “grassroots” activism against Federal Communications Commission chairman Ajit Pai is full of bot accounts, fake comments, and death threats against the chairman. ….
However, an analysis of comments to Pai’s Restoring Internet Freedom filing, which Oliver has dubbed “Go FCC yourself,” shows thousands of comments using fake names and bots posing as “Jesus Christ,” “Michael Jackson,” “Homer Simpson,” and “Melania Trump.”
For instance, as of Tuesday evening, there were 1,761 comments filed under the name “John Oliver,” 998 separate comments using the name “Yoni Schwartz,” and 611 comments filed using “1” as the name. …
Pai also received death threats in several submissions. …
Other comments used racial attacks against Pai, the son of Indian immigrants.
Now some of the Internet’s worst people have seized upon this article (and a similar one in the right-wing Daily Caller) as an excuse to attack Oliver as the supposed instigator of this racist harassment campaign against Pai.
https://twitter.com/GasJaredKushner/status/862449448017952768
https://twitter.com/rockie_springer/status/862413212427456517
https://twitter.com/JimMcNulty8/status/862446902398332928
#fireOliver #firecolbert it's obvious who the REAL RACISTS are and these.. the anti Trump democrats!
He is sending Pai threats of violence https://t.co/J4wzxGryb5— American Man (@BrentGrantUSA) May 10, 2017
#FIREOLIVER GO BACK TO THE EU SHITBIRD https://t.co/Hs5Zvho2uS
— John Connor (@JohnConnor0861) May 10, 2017
https://twitter.com/uliw315/status/862396353426731008
So because of John Oliver making multiple accounts to push liberal agenda and attack Trump, pretty much sums up most of Twitter.#FireOliver
— True Patriot (@Common_Sense201) May 10, 2017
https://twitter.com/DeplorableSammm/status/862389346816720897
Could #GoFCCYourself actually be a Russian intelligence psyop on the U.S. Government by Jon Oliver? #FireOliver
— 🇺🇸Jacob Dillon🇺🇸 (@ADudeFromNowere) May 10, 2017
https://twitter.com/RosalynJBurgess/status/862390076596248576
https://twitter.com/dreamedofdust/status/862385631141539841
https://twitter.com/DeportSJWs/status/862386470509658112
I guess staying on message is harder than it seems.
Alongside all the Pepes and Deplorables, the hashtag is currently being spammed by dozens (hundreds?) of egg accounts all tweeting the same thing; it’s not clear who’s responsible for this.
The instigator and main organizer of the Twitter campaign? Alt-right “journalist” and infamous internet troll Jack Posobiec.
https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/862370548063633416
https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/862400904523374592
and these are the same ppl/bots that call us racist, constantly harassing us trump supporters..time for more anti trump karma #fireoliver 🔥🔥
— #TrumpWasRight⭐️⭐️⭐️ (@TrumpChess) May 10, 2017
https://twitter.com/Nik_Kirtane/status/862392588304777216
That last accusation from Posobiec — that Oliver was “making fun of the way foreigners talk” — is especially pungent bullshit, by the way. In the video that Posobiec links to in his Tweet as evidence, Oliver gently chides some of India’s more sensationalistic cable news channels, not by mocking how anyone talks but by pointing out the the ways in which they resemble Fox News. One of the channels he mocks? CNN India, for a misleading headline.
Posobiec, who works for Canada’s Rebel Media, was recently granted a White House press pass. Because that’s the kind of world we live in today.
Now, there are just a few teensy problems with the #FireOliver campaign.
John Oliver is not actually racist. He said nothing even vaguely racist in his Net Neutrality segment on Sunday, nor did he in any way encourage his viewers to launch racist attacks, or even personal attacks, on Pai.
There is absolutely no proof that Oliver has any connection to the troll accounts or the hate campaign, nor does he have any history of using trolls or bots.
You know who DOES have a history positively overflowing with trolls and bots?
Jack Posobiec.
You remember the massive leak of hacked emails from the campaign of current French President-elect Emmanuel Macron? Posobiec was the key person responsible for spreading the hacked data on social media in the West.
Sandy Garossino, writing in Canada’s National Observer, notes that Posobiec has been identified by cyber-security experts
as the origin of the first tweet linking a massive cache of Russian-hacked documents dumped onto the conspiracy website 4chan. He attached the hashtag #MacronLeaks. …
The #MacronLeaks hashtag, from the moment Posobiec tweeted it, was the primary social media propellant of the hacked Macron data, according to cyber-intelligence analysts at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Lab. They also concluded that bots played a significant role from the outset. Some 40 minutes later, Wikileaks tweeted the link with Posobiec’s hashtag, and the Internet erupted.
The appearance of bot activity, observed independently by both the DFRL and Belgian academic Nicolas Vanderbiest, from the first minutes after Posobiec’s tweet, strongly suggests a planned and coordinated campaign.
(For what it’s worth, Posobiec says he had nothing to do with the bots.)
As Garossino goes on to point out, Posobiec was also heavily involved in promoting the #Pizzagate nonsense as well as on last month’s #SyriaHoax campaign. Working alongside internet troll and steroid enthusiast Mike Cernovich, Posobiec helped to promote the
Russian-led social media propaganda campaign that claimed footage of children dying from Assad’s chemical weapons was a hoax.
Analysts expert in propaganda and social media at the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism at The Hague identified the #SyriaHoax as “a clear example of a Russian influence campaign designed to undermine US credibility.”
Both [Posobiec and Cernovich] picked up the hashtag early and propelled it through U.S. social media … .
You may also recall the “Rape Melania”sign that appeared at an anti-Trump rally last year. Though most assumed it was the work of anti-Trump protesters, Buzzfeed later uncovered text messages proving that the sign was in fact the work of, yes, Posobiec, who was attempting to make Trump’s opponents look bad
Huh. That sounds … familiar, huh?
Oh, and one other thing about the supposed pot by Oliver to bombard FCC boss Pai with racist comments and threats: Not only is there no evidence for it, but the very idea makes no sense. Why would Oliver, whose last campaign to protect Net Neutrality was a notable success, decide this time to launch a racist harassment campaign that would only serve to make him and other supporters of Net Neutrality look bad?
And while I’m playing Colombo here, there’s one more thing about the FCC thing that seems a bit off: The FCC says that on Sunday night, the night Oliver’s show aired, it was hit with distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks intended to overload the FCC’s comment system.
The Washington Free Beacon story seems to insinuate that Oliver was behind these as well. This of course would be absurd. Oliver’s campaign depends on people being able to reach the FCC site so they can leave comments there. Why would he launch a DDoS attack that could knock the site offline, or at least make it harder to reach?
My guess is that whoever is behind the harassment campaign is also behind the DDoS attack. And that it’s not Oliver.
So is Posobiec the secret mastermind behind the harassment campaign? There’s no evidence — at least none that I know of — for this. But he’s certainly working overtime trying to blame Oliver for it, and spreading demonstrable lies about Oliver in the process.
I guess this is just what right-wing “journalism” looks like in the age of Trump.
EDITED TO ADD: I added the stuff about Posobiec and the infamous “Rape Melania” sign after being reminded of the incident by @EyesOnTheRight.
I’m not a nihilist, (and you still don’t know what that means) and you are still a liar.
Petra uses deflective gaslighting attack.
It’s not very effective.
I’m honored, but wrong. I’m a Christian; she’s an atheist. She smokes, I loathe cigarettes. She’s Canadian; I’ve only gone there twice, and once to see a play. If I were Karen, I’d hardly be complaining to you that i can’t source some of her most damning claims. But then I’ve only had 3 days, apparently more than one of them spent with you (that’s what happens when you don’t sleep 2 nights in a row.
Ooglyboggles, gaslighting? What a lightweight. Gaslighting occurs over a long period in a control relationship. Not two people that just met on a fucking blog.
Red, aka big red, aka the mother of all Shut-the-fuck-up-and-let-me-agree-with-you-and-tell-me-what-you-thinks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvYyGTmcP80
“Knock it off. We know PeeVee; we do not know you. PeeVee gets the benefit of the doubt; you do not.”
Of course. I wouldn’t speak my impressions of him without more evidence if I thought you might take my word for it. I’d be happy to be wrong. But seeing him that way keeps him from hurting me, for the same reason you’re saying shit about me that you know isn’t true. To keep what I’m saying from getting under your skin.
See you later if I’m not banned. Hopefully an hour or more of respite will calm things down. I really don’t need all this attention.
@Petra Pumpkineater:
What are you even talking about right now? When you enter a new space, do you come in and say
every time?
Because that’s what you did here, in your second post on this thread. YOU came in and were rude. YOU came in and made accusations, with no sources to back them up. YOU came in and tried to set the discussion to be something from 2011, and were all up in arms that we weren’t up in arms about it.
YOU keep responding to people with male-sounding ‘nyms, and praising the ones who talk to you while ignoring the ones who challenge you.
If you do say that every time you enter a new place, maybe don’t. People don’t take it well, and it is why you experienced resistance to your ideas here.
Next time you want a discussion, come in ready to actually have one. Don’t give us some odd hypothetical that has no bearing on what’s actually happening in the world today.
Oh for the love of…
Edited to add
ARE YOU KIDDING ME RIGHT NOW. That woman was harassed, like a lot. For telling someone to shut up. Should she have sworn? I don’t care. Should she have received harassment and doxxing?
NO.
@Petra Pumpkineater
I would like to see where you got a definition where length of time was relevant to the meaning of the word.
http://img.izismile.com/img/img6/20130228/1000/where_every_day_abbreviations_actually_come_from_10.gif
Oh, yeah, I’m totally sure a guy with the Twitter handle “GasJaredKushner” is concerned that John Oliver is racist.
You know, Aliens is possibly my favorite film of all time, but not once* did I take off and nuke the site from orbit, just to be sure.
*As far as YOU KNOW
There are very few consistent things about the modern Pepe, but one thing that I have noticed is that they’re so lacking in core values that they’re willing to turn what they perceive as the core values of others against them in an attempt to highlight hypocrisy (as hypocrites are easily dismissed for good reason). Sadly, their cartoon character understanding of gender and racial dynamics ultimately leave them looking like the disingenuous asshats we all know they are. This is a textbook example of it. Last week you saw it with the tantrum they threw over Stephen Colbert.
It was the Twitter user @a_man_in_black that first clued me in to Chan thinking back in the heyday of GamerGate, but once you start looking for a pattern, you start to see it over and over again with the alt-right crowd. After all, if an “SJW” sent out a tweet demanding accountability for racism, that would be “virtue signalling” in their parlance wouldn’t it? So clearly it’s not a genuine demand, merely a sneering “Ha! You’re just as bad as us!” swipe at those they perceive as the enemy. Because the last thing these guys want to do is actually own a position and defend it. That means opening oneself up to vulnerability, and if right-wingers hate one thing, it’s being made to look foolish by a liberal. If everybody’s equally hypocritical, then nobody can claim a moral or intellectual high ground, which only emboldens the Pepes to act even more deplorable.
Lolol.
You are delightfully hilarious.
What a whole lot of pretzely twisty logic goodness.
dreemr, awfully personal questions for me to be answering someone that speaks to me with such loathing and contempt. Feelings I don’t share, btw. I hesitate at this stage to give anyone more info to hurt me. Have said more than I should
Time will tell if you are right about Karen. I’ve seen less than a tenth of what she has, and haven’t been at this long.
The fact that most of you concede that the two issues I sourced are evils that I’m right to repudiate, makes me look forward to coming back with more sources. The fact that you can admit I’m right about the merits of those cases is, in my eyes, a big win for you and for this forum. Sorry if you don’t feel I’m worth your time; I find you worth mine. You owe me nothing and have no obligation to converse with me.
Right?
Fortunately, the #FireOliver hashtag is dead, according to David’s tweet.
Yay?
Finally, something good to put in my diary tonight!
Again, Petra, you do not rise to loathing and contempt. Minor annoyance, kind of confusingly and unnecessarily hostile, but that’s your dealio, not mine.
Please, don’t bother to come swinging in with more disconnected sources to prove a thesis you haven’t actually articulated, at least, not very well nor very concisely.
If you had, you’d probably find that you’re getting outraged at the wrong group of people. Seriously, simmer down, go through the archives, and see what we actually talk about and believe.
You’ve slithered all over the place rhetorically, you’ve alluded to different issues, you’ve linked to a grand total of two after a lot of dilly-dallying and insults, and you’ve made a big dramatic show of how hurt you have been by us and how self-protective you have to be. You’re the one that came out swinging, Petra.
@Gussie Jives – thank you for the insight, very interesting and I hadn’t encountered it before.
Yeah, the repeated
kind of statements are going to earn a side-eye from me every time.
Petroll thinks I’m embarrassed that I know they’re a troll and a probable sock?
Oh, that’s just precious.
Poor Pepe’s creator, Matt Furie, killed off his creation.
http://wtop.com/tech/2017/05/pepe-croaks-cartoonist-kills-off-frog-turned-hate-symbol/
On an unrelated subject, did anyone else here watch the Eurovision Semi-finals tonight?
I know, right? Are mortified with shame? I know I am at being a nihilist who suddenly became a man. /s
They seem to think that people from India are shields. They did not say why the racism and the social criticism were connected. Let me try to help them.
[Criticism of FCC]/[Racist criticism of FCC]
That’s racist criticism as a subtype of criticism. I get it though. You want to pretend that it’s just an icky feeling and not a set of characteristics applied to you. Just kill that way of thinking anyway because it’s tends to leak over into other kinds of thinking. Especially about [Them].
The pumpkineater argues very much from the neocon perspective that
1) they are always correct
2) everything is two-dimensional and very simple
3) you’re either too stupid to see their correctness or you have “an agenda”
ETA: as for the pumpkineater, their only purpose is to enlighten you
Dang, am I gonna have to arrange for a fumigation in here?
By the way my “They” in my comment was aimed at the people in the original post. I did not even get the chance to see what Petra said that was on topic with the original post.
I do love a good troll bait. One of the pleasures of coming here. (Petra – I’m sorry you’ve been abused, but as others have pointed out, that is not unique round here, and it is particularly not an excuse to bounce into the forum acting like a dick, and treating others badly)
On the upside, I’ve learned the meaning of “sealioning” and “nihilist” tonight. I love learning new stuff.
I’m surprised that after 54 years on this planet I didn’t know the definition of nihilist (Petra – you should try looking it up, it is clear you don’t know it from your usage of it). On the other hand, it is not a word I’ve had a lot of need for: I don’t meet many.
sealioning I’m less surprised about – it looks a bit new fangled to me 🙂
OK – that’s my interjection done with… as you were.
No, I don’t. Not unless some of the people in the room are being obtuse and pretending that I’m somthing that I’m not, while one of them is a thoughtful chap that I think might be smart enough to laugh at my princess bride reference. Example of what I mean by obtuse:
Right. ALL she did was say fuck and shut up. I explained at more legth how she made herself the face of the felony coercion against the group to silence them. And if you think that words over the internet are worse than what her vicious little group did to shut them down, then you can get right off my leg right now. That’s the sort of bigotry that I was mocking when I channeled Andre the Giant in a wheelbarrow, you humorless twerp. What sort of a brain sees a name like Petra Pumpkineater and then takes my Andre the Giant speech as some sort of threat?
Get thee to a safe space, illiterati