By David Futrelle
The last time I wrote about far-right fake-news site The Gateway Pundit, it was because one of the site’s writers couldn’t stop referring to the men in the famous Honduran refugee caravan as “virile.” Yesterday, the site was in the news for a rather different reason: for posting what it called “EXCLUSIVE DOCUMENTS” allegedly showing that a “very credible witness” was about to come forward and accuse Special Counsel Robert Mueller of rape.
Or maybe not. Over the course of the day yesterday, the story fell apart in such dramatic fashion that The Gateway Pundit — which has a long history of pushing dubious and sometimes outright false allegations — took their post and the “EXCLUSIVE DOCUMENTS” down, announcing that they would be “investigating these accusations” — something most publications would do before publishing dramatic accusations, not afterwards — as well as “looking into” the 20-year-old far-right trickster Jacob Wohl, apparently one of the masterminds behind the smears.
The collapse of the story was quite something to see. A professor at Vermont Law School came forward to say she had been offered money by someone claiming to represent a mysterious firm called Surefire Intelligence to make accusations against Mueller. Several journalists said another woman had told them a similar story.
The clearly misnamed Surefire Intelligence looks to be a phony company concocted by young Wohl out of thin air and stolen profile pictures; one of the company’s alleged contact numbers led to the voicemail box of his mother. Oh, and it turned out that Mueller had reported for jury duty in DC on the day the alleged rape allegedly took place in New York. The FBI is apparently investigating.
Evidently, Wohl and lobbyist Jack Burkman — a longtime pusher of right-wing conspiracies who was apparently Wohl’s co-conpirator in this laughable scheme — were so convinced that most #MeToo stories are fakes that they figured they could fake one themselves without breaking a sweat and get the credulous media to go along with it.
Nope. Turns out that real journalists — unlike the people behind The Gateway Pundit — actually investigate accusations thoroughly before reporting them. Contrary to what many right-wingers believe, there aren’t squads of feminists running around concocting false accusations against Republicans — mostly because that would be completely anathema to the most basic principles of feminism and female solidarity. But they also know that phony stories would get picked apart instantly.
It seems unlikely that many on the right will learn anything from The Gateway Pundit’s latest humiliation. And The Gateway Pundit clearly hasn’t, at least when it comes to making ludicrous accusations based on nothing.
Consider this lurid story they posted today — and no, it’s not a Halloween joke.
Putting aside the sheer shamelessness of accusing the Dems of “deceptive smears” a mere day after pushing the phony Mueller story, let’s consider the substance of this, er, allegation.
First off, it’s not based on any new news — or even new fake news. They didn’t uncover some secret Wicca ceremony amongst Congressional Dems, or photograph Nancy Pelosi in the ceremonial garb of a Satanic priestess. Nope. All their “proof” is old news. Also, it’s not proof.
Here’s the entirety of their alleged evidence of Democratic Satanism, much of which comes from the Podesta emails stolen by the Russians and released by Wikileaks:
- The Dem’s (alleged) “deception operations, manipulation tactics, and mob intimidation are … [a]ccording to biblical theology … the very same characteristics and tactics that are classically associated with Satan and his various cohorts.”
- Some dude who writes for the National Review calls the Dems the ““Satanic Left.”
- Dem insider John Podesta invited a bunch of his fellow Dems to a so-called “spirit cooking dinner” held by artist Marina Abramovic.
- Podesta’s wife once forwarded an email containing the word “Thelema” — a reference to occultist Aleister Crowley’s invented religion.
- Hillary Clinton’s former Chief of Staff once made a reference in an email to “sacrificing a chicken in the backyard to Moloch” which the story’s author doesn’t recognize as an obvious joke.
- Bill and Hillary Clinton once attended a Voodoo ceremony while visiting Haiti in the 1970s.
That’s it.
Pretty much gives you an idea of what sort of publication The Gateway Pundit is. Roughly as credible as the late, lamented Weekly World News, but much less entertaining.
The Gateway Pundit’s extreme, er, laxness about the evidence it requires before running with a story is predictably one-sided. Consider their vendetta against Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford.
Shortly after Ford came forward, the Gateway Pundit smeared her in a headline as an “Unhinged Liberal Professor who [sic] Former Students Describe as Dark, Mad, Scary and Troubled.” They later had to retract the “Dark, Mad, Scary and Troubled” portion of the headline, explaining that “an earlier post referenced Ford as an unpopular professor but we have since learned this was a different educator with the same name.” Oops!
The Gateway Pundit then went on to post numerous stories attempting to discredit Ford and her defenders, one of whom they referred to as a “far left nutcase.” While anything goes, it seems, when it comes to their enemies, they’re suddenly extremely skeptical of any and all evidence when it comes to accusations against people they support.
Pretty much the Trump Era in a nutshell.
UPDATE 11/1/18: Burkman and Wohl held their promised press conference today, without their alleged accuser showing up. It did not go well.
Then this happened:
https://twitter.com/AlexThomasDC/status/1058072798365655041
H/T — I learned of The Gateway Pundit’s Satanic accusations from a tweet by The Daily Beast’s Will Sommer, who was also one of the journalists who helped to unravel Wohl’s story.
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To be fair, there was this: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/15/witches-public-hexing-brett-kavanaugh
@Moggie:
Apprentice-mind. 😉
@Moggie : I bet they pray for the left demise. Which is the same general principle as witchcraft, down to not actually working.
If witchcraft worked, Dump and a good 2/3 of congress would be hopping around the bottom of a well-kept terrarium* somewhere, I guarantee.
Back when I was actively practicing witchcraft (of which Wicca, it must be noted, is only a tiny fraction of the many traditions thereof), I took part in a rite designed to transform then-president George ‘Dubya’ Bush into a frog. It was hoped that this would improve his character considerably, a frog being a big improvement over a war-mongering genocidal puppet politician.
Alas, after the ritual we discerned no outward change in Mr. Bush. However, we joked about it for weeks afterwards and it lifted our spirits immensely in a trying time, and we used that to overcome despair and do actual work, like protests and letter campaigns.
So it’s not that practicing witchcraft has no effect. Just not the obvious one, TV sitcoms notwithstanding.
Speaking of TV sitcoms, has anyone watched the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina? I’m curious about it but haven’t seen it myself.
* This presumes that the Secret Service would still attempt its mandate, because unlike the folks they’re guarding they are decent, honorable persons who believe in their duty to their charges.
These are the same guys who whine a lot about false rape accusations, aye?
Because he’s a Republican.
Those fuckers are pure evil, and proud of it.
Blessed be, errybody!
Actually, just on the topic of moral panic and bullshit stories, I listened to an absolutely fascinating interview with folklore expert Lynne McNeill on Matt Binder’s DOOMED Podcast about how these stories come about and how they’re transmitted, and how much of it has to do with trust in the person they’re coming from rather than critically thinking about the story itself. Which is something we all do: for the most part, I’ve come to trust stories from the Toronto Star, as an example. But if that unquestioning trust is placed in Sean Hannity… well, that’s how we get Seth Rich conspiracies spread around.
Satanic panic is one such pre-internet urban legend (or contemporary folklore as McNeill calls it). I still giggle at the Surviving Edged Weapons police video and its dramatization of a dagger-wielding Satanist that the poor cops are forced to gun down:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ircYs5M-dqo
I am kinda surprised that even the legendary Stupidest Man On The Internet Jim Hoft is getting in on a moral panic that seemed anachronistic in the 80s when it was in its heyday. I still remember the Cinema Snob highlighting the Halloween propaganda scare films put out by fundamentalist Christians about how Halloween == Pagan == Satan, and it hits on numerous urban legends about child abductions and ritual sacrifice by people obviously lying through their teeth:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h28P7phJvH4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77pkCjrSE-E
In other news, Candace Owens has a sad after doing the same shit she did back during GamerGate by slapping other people’s names to a shit idea only to have those people disavow her afterwards. I’m sure she’ll be back with another grift pretending she never supported that awful Donald Trump fellow.
John Rogers had a predictable reaction to this utter lack of tradecraft.
“The amount. of FUCKING TIME. We put into our FAKE CRIMES for our TV SHOW…”
@Cheerful Warthog:
Commenter on that twitter thread:
This reminds me of a chapter of The Long Goodbye where the main plot goes on the backburner for a bit so we can see a more typical week in the life of Philip Marlowe, Private Eye: it’s all stuff like a client who suspects her roommate of stealing from her purse, so she wants Marlowe to call their phone line and throw a scare into her.
“But couldn’t you have anybody do that for you?”
“Yes, but you’re a detective.”
@Katamount:
Fred Clark over at Slacktivist talks about the Satanic Panic fairly often, particularly with regards to the similar Panics still going on, all as part of an ongoing thread of ideas he refers to as the worst LARP ever. (He’s repurposed the X-Files ‘I want to believe’ poster with pizza, among other things.)
His analysis boils down to these folks thinking ‘I need to imagine something even worse than me so I can feel morally superior’. Which is why they so often tend to get upset when you tell them that no, these horrible things aren’t actually happening… they need to believe that everybody not them is utterly depraved so they have someone to look down on, and removal of the horrible things they think other people are doing is thus a personal attack.
His round-up article today links to a post about how a lot of the White Evangelical hatred of Hallowe’en has less to do with Pagan connections (though that’s what they’ll say) and more to do with the fact that All Hallow’s Eve and All Saint’s Day are Catholic.
The article also links to a Wonkette article about Wohl and the whole mess with the attack on Mueller, quoting the part where it points out that the reason the people behind this almost certainly expected these fake allegations to work is that, at some level, they believe that all #MeToo allegations are fakes designed to attract attention and attack powerful men. He compares that against the whole ‘Planned Parenthood sells baby parts’ video, which showed a comparable level of really stupid tradecraft, but which is still believed by its actual target market for similar reasons.
With regards to Candace Owens… so, I see that she has taken ‘Lord, grant me the confidence of a mediocre white man’ and continued to run with it, and still refuses to believe she has ever done anything wrong.
Catalpa – I was going to agree with Ohlmann; on their side, it looks like imprecatory prayer (asking God to smite one’s enemies.) But as I think about it, all those chants could work that way for them, too; a sort of emotional incantation.
Rabid Rabbit – I dabbled in Wicca for a while and according to them, that’s dark magic and expressly forbidden. Most Wiccans won’t even do a spell to help someone without that person’s knowledge and permission.
Thanks for the link @Jenora Feuer! Been a while since I’ve check out Slacktivist….
I liked his summary of Wohl’s ‘tradecraft’:
Oh my smegging Christ, is anybody watching the livestreams of these morons’ “Press conference”? Highlights so far include Wohl accusing an inflatable rat of being an Antifa spy (I’m not making this up) and Burkman throwing a tantrum about Dril while his fly was down (I’m still not making this up). It’s the most glorious clusterfuck since The Sarkeesian Effect.
@Jenora Feuer:
Not sure how much crossover there is between evangelical, fundamentalist and Mennonite, but my experience with the last is of a very, very simple and pure brainwashing: demons are real, pagans are honest-to-god demon worshippers and Halloween is a celebration of demons and the devil.
Could be that extremists like the ‘mites have a different way of operating than your everyday christian right-winger, or maybe the people pulling the strings from the top think like how Mr Clark says, or maybe I just became a heretical turncoat the day before I was supposed to get my handy evangelical guidebook.
@Jane Done:
Well, Fred Clark mostly focuses on the white evangelical right-winger, as that’s the sort of person he grew up with. Their stream of thought started out with a lot of Puritanism and general Protestant leanings, added the Southern Baptist attitude of finding biblical reasons to justify slavery and Jim Crow, went through all the various cults and louder groups of the Great Awakening, then got actively suborned for political purposes with Nixon’s Southern Strategy and the appeal to racism. It’s also a pretty hierarchical group, and heavy with grifters, operating largely like a distributed cult.
I’m less familiar with Mennonites, and they certainly have their own internal divisions as well. I suspect there’s some crossover, but not a huge amount. (Heck, there’s some crossover between the modern American Evangelicals and American Conservative Catholics, due to their shared interest in making abortion illegal, something which wasn’t even on the Evangelical radar until after Nixon and the Southern Strategy.)
That said, ‘the reasons the followers believe’, ‘the reasons the leaders believe now’, and ‘the reasons this was originally done’ can all be different. If something was set up because ‘it was too Catholic’ but sold as ‘it was too Pagan’ a century ago, well, all the modern people running things are the ones who learned the ‘public’ reason before, and the original underlying reason may have been lost over the generations.
That’s the sort of thing that led us to Trump in the first place: a couple of generations of grifters getting people wound up with fake stories and promises they never intended to keep because keeping the promise would remove the ability to get the people wound up to vote… and the people at the top are now being replaced with those who grew up on the public stories, never realized it was all supposed to be a scam, and are trying to actually do the things that were promised before.
I just randomly ran into this satire from 2015:
http://reductress.com/post/hillary-clinton-allegedly-used-secret-email-addresses-to-cast-spells-on-enemies/
(Thanks to David for introducing us to the Reductress)
@SFHC, I haven’t watched the press conference, so can you confirm that this is real, from Will Sommer’s thread on it:
Because holy crap.
Let’s see Wohl compose a few operas. 😛
I’m sure he’s a huge virtuoso on the Wohl-itzer.
Seems Gateway Panderer has just severed ties with Wohl.
There’s a shock.
It’s actually impressive to be *that* incompetent. Not everyone can fuck up that much.
I suspect Whol need to have a nurse with him in permanence, just in case he suddenly forgot how to breath.
He’s referring to Wolfgang Imadumbass Mozart, the less successful brother.
@Shadowplay:
Sadly, it won’t help him. He’s still the Dumbest Man on the Internet™.
(Frankly, his unsarcastic use of the word “pundit” is a dead giveaway there. Everyone I’ve ever seen who called themselves that was invariably a total feckin’ eejit.)
It reminds me of those weird robo-calls people in Alabama received when Roy Moore was up for election, with THE WORST “New York Jew” accent straight out of The Jerky Boys, basically saying “This is Jewwy Jewishstein of the Jew Media Washington Post looking for anyone willing to make up false accusations about Roy Moore for money, please call…”
That’s what they think is happening every time, and what, we’re just that much better at it than them?
That being said, how are their fakers (James O’Keefe included) always so obvious and incompetent, and how do so many people on their side believe it regardless?
I know, “I WANT TO BELIEVE” is a helluva drug