By David Futrelle
Given how many of today’s alt-right Nazis and Nazi-equivalents grew up on 4chan, the internet’s Troll Central, it’s hardly surprising that they lie about almost everything. What is perhaps a little more surprising is how bad at it they are. Most of their deceptive propaganda is so obviously phony that in many cases the only people they are fooling are each other.
Case in point: In the wake of two violent alt-right rallies in Charlottesville, during which antifascist activist Heather Heyer was brutally murdered by a Trump-loving, Pepe-posting white supremacist, alt-rightists have been doing their best to try to smear Antifa counterprotesters as the real perpetrators of violence in Charlottesville.
They’ve done so in part by flooding the internet with mislabeled photos of other demonstrations, with one of the most widely distributed photos featuring an Antifa graphic crudely photoshopped onto the back of a Greek protester beating a cop.
Lefty Twitterer @2dAmMuslim took apart some of these claims in a recent thread. Let’s just look at his screenshots of the, er, discussion, which started off with a right-winger posting not one, not two, but four different bullshit pics, all of which have been widely distributed by right-wingers in recent days, intended to “prove” that Antifas were the true thugs in Charlottesville.
“Libertas” responded to this rebuttal by … blocking @2ndAmMuslim.
Alt-rightists have also been distributing what they claim is a secret Antifa manual allegedly discovered somewhere on the campus of The Evergreen State College. Its fakeness is so readily apparent — just read the thing — that it could only be convincing to dedicated Fox News viewers and especially gullible channers who don’t actually know anything about actual Antifa beliefs.
My favorite bits come at the end, when whoever wrote this thing basically stopped trying to be even slightly convincing.
But it isn’t just channers who find themselves duped by these crude fakes. Independent Journal Review “journalist” Benny Johnson — who was famously fired from Buzzfeed for plagiarism — recently reported on an obviously phony Antifa Twitter account as if it were the Twitter account of a real organization. The problem with his article was evident just from its headline: “Boston Antifa Thanks Hillary Clinton, Democrats for Their Support as They Burn American Flag.”
Anyone who knows anything about Antifas know that they aren’t exactly big Hillary Clinton fans. It’s a bit like reporting that a group of Boston Red Sox fans was heaping praise on the New York Yankees. See Angry White Men and NYmag for more on this particular debacle.
After Johnson was informed by half the internet that the group was fake, he or his editors added an “Alleged” to the front of his headline.
But this is probably my favorite bit of alt-right bullshit from recent days. Here an enterprising propagandist reuses a picture from a Cleveland rally in order to “prove” that some of the white supremacists protesting in Boston last weekend were black women. Not so fast, ironically-named “TruthInGovernment.”
https://twitter.com/BrettSVergara/status/899003964364120065
H/T — Thanks to Twitter’s Leon Tchotchke (@played_straight) for convincing me to do this post.
I’d say 2nd Amendment Muslim is more “weird twitter” than “lefty twitter” but *shrug*
That Antifa manual is a total wind up, I don’t know who it’s meant to be convincing. It’s clearly some troll’s idea of a joke. It’s right up their with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
They can’t be bothered to try to be convincing. It’s all wank material — and who needs truth in wank material?!
Much of chan culture, indeed, much of conservatism, has bought into the idea that the truth is whatever the loudest voice says it is
@kat
I like truth in MY wank material, thank you VERY much!
Lying on an anonymous board with disposable threads is easier than lying in an environment where fact checking is the norm.
Speaking of which, just the other day my ex showed me this :
http://i.imgur.com/Dt6nztX.jpg
@Virgin Mary:
Some troll who has evidently read Steve Bannon’s favorite novel, The Camp of the Saints.
I mean, it’s obvious to US. But we’re not the ones they’re trying to convince. There are tons of people who will believe it without a second thought.
Ugh, Camp of the Saints. I only read the Wikipedia article about it and I could still feel my skin crawl.
We never went to the moon, 9/11 was a gummint setup, the Sandy Hook shooting was a stage play, Clinton was running a pedophile ring outa the basement of a pizza joint… and the earth is flat n the illuminati have been scamming us for 2000 years about it…
Seriously, people, this shit is WAY BEYOND “get a grip”….
Entirely unsurprising. These people have no interest in reasoned debate. They’re just following Goebbels’ quote:
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”
During the aftermath of the terrorist attack last saturday, some Alt Right commenter tried to spread the nonsense that the man who drove the car into a crowd was a registered democrat.
After being called out on it he went full troll and started taunting in regard to Antifa saying they would punch Nazis.
Authoritarianism isn’t the cornerstone of Nazism, propaganda is.
That libertas guy has no right to have Mario involved in his logo! I haven’t a source at hand, but I distinctly recall reading a Nintendo statement that Mario accepted just about anybody who wasn’t immediately making mischief or running their yap about it.
And with that said, he’d have to if he wanted to live in the Mushroom Kingdom–true, all the humans in the Mario canon are white (unless I’m overlooking someone), but humans are a minority there. He lives in a world with Toads, Goombas, Koopa Troopas, Bob-Ombs, Shy Guys, and myriad other races with both good and bad individuals (though admittedly more good of the others is seen in non-mainline games–and Shy Guys seem to have issues).
…Further comments?
I saw the BS antifa manifesto posted unironically this morning already (a friends “that uncle” who is actually his aunt).
I personally find the manifesto more insulting in it’s laziness than anything. Reminds me of when i used to go on Tumblr and saw the people who usually the people who lost their shit at the Essjws. Two thirds of them would be blatantly obvious trolls, which would be posted to Reddit which would lead to people making more trolls to mocking them and so on I’m an endless cycle of dumb-assholery.
@troubelle
THIS IS THE FUTURE LIBERALS WANT! PRO MUSHROOM KINGDOM IS CODEWORD FOR ANTI WHITE!
This clearly fake-ass manifesto is just as believable as the fake-ass story of liberal feminist, Lana, who aborted her baby because it was male (http://www.snopes.com/media/notnews/abortedboy.asp), as well as the fake-ass Beulah Montgomery’s supposed take-down of a gang of marauding Knockout Punchers, wherein a sweet little old [white] lady is approached by a bunch of young Black men looking for another easy win in their game of Knockout Punch, but she pulls out a great big gun from her purse and either shoots, or shoots at the teens, depending on which version of the tall tale you read. (http://www.snopes.com/politics/crime/montgomery.asp)
Oh, bonus points if you’ve encountered THIS lie: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/business/media/how-fake-news-spreads.html?_r=0
What’s infuriating is how easily right-leaners are duped by things they WISH were true.
My favorite right wing tall tale would have to be Marine Todd
http://gawker.com/marine-todd-is-an-awesomely-stupid-right-wing-meme-th-1555109402
What really gets me is that….even after a rumor’s been proven WRONG….they STILL BELIEVE IT!
I’ve seen that bit of macho silliness.
The thing that gets me is that some of the stuff described in the tales is so absurd that, if it really happened, it would’ve been all over the news.
“Marine Todd” would have been arrested for assault and a tiny elderly woman blasting away a large bunch of street hoodlums would have been extraordinary to say the least (specially since the old woman apparently was psychic because she could sense that a surprise sucker-punch was about to happen).
These stories are so dumb and so stereotypical that it’s ridiculous.
Finally; If these guys feel that they have to FABRICATE things to prove their point….then MAYBE they need to consider that their entire worldview is based on fiction!
….but self-reflection is not something they are capable of.
@Jojo
Honestly, I think Shy Guys would probably be the most oppressed group. As much as I hate to say it, the Paper Mario series is technically a work of fiction within the main Mario universe (or at least the Mario & Luigi series), and they’re never portrayed very well within it–as opposed to Goombas (whose non-Bowser-employed examples can at worst be described as quaint or absentminded), Koopas (which are seemingly the sub-in for Toads for “closest to humans”), and Bob-Ombs (which get stereotyped a bit more in TTYD, but oh well). Shy Guys are always given the short end of the stick, and in the Mario Kart line, they’re shown as either holding various stalls in a bazaar or doing manual labor–or raving. But the highest-power one we see that I’m aware of (outside of General Guy from PM64, who is, again, recursively fictional) is a park ranger in one of the Mario Party games, and even then, if memory serves, they’re portrayed as quite cowardly.
It ain’t fair.
Here’s a more vivid description of that literary garbage Camp of the Saints….
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/steve-bannon-camp-of-the-saints-immigration_us_58b75206e4b0284854b3dc03
@John, hmmm…look at the picture from the Snopes article:
http://www.snopes.com/critters/crusader/cheese.asp
Insert the phrase “I find this difficult to masturbate to” here 😀
But I’m glad that jobs will “flower aplenty” once Antifa takes over the world. I was afraid they’d merely flourish abundantly, and that wouldn’t do at all.
There is some serious, serious cognitive dissonance going on with these folks. This very week a high school ‘friend’ of mine on FB posted a video meme of DJT with him looking vaguely effective and the line “Never has a man been so hated for trying to do the right thing.”
Whaaaa?
Bad enough. But in the comments below, and I paraphrase “Well, other than Jesus. And I’m not saying he’s exactly like Jesus but there are a lot of parallels”.
I’m only culturally Christian now (you can’t wash away the hours of dull Bible study or the congregational hymns which I like) and definitely a small ‘a’ atheist, but dadgummit, I’m pretty sure that’s blasphemy. I’m trying to think of ONE THING that DJT has done that Jesus would have said “yep, keep on trucking brother, that’s the right thing” – but he may have done something by accident.
Just the other day, I had to report an account on twitter (@DreamWeaver61) for posting an Antifa sign that had been photo shopped. When I called them out for it, they had it removed before I could get a screenshot of it. It was people about 3 people dressed in black & likely was Antifa, in a crowd on the street, holding a black banner. The FAKE part were the words: “KILL MORE COPS”.
Today, I found that person/account retweeted another
fake story about Rosa Parks daughter, and it had a picture of Nina Turner. LOL. Rosa Parks had no children. The account the tweet originated from was @mcgihl
This has to stop.
Combat the hate!
REPORT THEM EACH & EVERY TIME!
Hello.
Well, it is not a fake new but a wrong choice of picture , and they call themselves journalists, but… England Breibart has difficulties to verify the picture it uses in its articles…
Let us say that Mr Podolski is not happy with that…
I also read an article in which i think our dear friend Scott Adams pursues his digging in the depths of ludicrousness. I am sure the Invincible Master Persuader Of The United States could give him a coockie, or a medal, or a job at the White House (which begins to feel a bit empty…) as Master Architect and/or Master Designer of Public Relations – allowing Adams to provide Dilbert strips for Trump to use in his tweets.
Have a nice day.
@rugbyyogi
Disrespecting the dead, not rendering unto Caesar, refuse to house people of all lands, unable to take responsibility and incapable of condemning evil. Yep that’s Jesus material right there.