Fascism Watch for 6 January 2024: The Disinformation Disputation Edition

Here, let’s have a bit of good news on a topic I talk about a lot, because there actually is some, and then go into some popular disinformation, how and why it’s wrong, and methods used to create and spread it.

The good news: Democracy might be finally returning to Wisconsin as the state Supreme Court rules along ideological lines that discontiguous districts violate the state constitution and are therefore illegally gerrymandered. Republicans are, of course, screaming to high hell – they’re the one who made these maps to insure they can’t be voted out, after all, and even keep supermajorities when losing the popular vote statewide.

It’s not over, but the odds are good for at least a partial return to representative government in Wisconsin.

Now, to our main topic today, disinformation:

This particular bit of truth is frankly bad, but you need to know it for countering fascist lies: The United States is producing more oil than any country in history. In real terms, again, yes, that’s very bad! But part of the fash argument is that Trump needs to be a dictator to “drill, drill, drill” and we’re right now literally the biggest oil producer ever, and an oil exporter. Even were the argument was being made in good faith – which it literally never is – it’d still be incredibly wrong.

Another popular lie at the moment is that crime is through the roof and soaring; this will be used as a major attack vector against the Democrats, as it always is. The problem is the usual problem in that it’s not true. Some of it has been active disinformation, like the retail group that got caught making up that whole “mass organised shoplifting” story they were giving as a reason to close stores. Yes, that was a complete lie from top to bottom. Another is the murder rate, and while the murder rate did go up for a little while during the peak of the plague – to levels of the 1990s, I might note, still low historically – 2023 had the biggest drop in murders in history. In fact, almost all categories of crime are sharply down. Remember that, and use it.

(I’m serious about that murder rate one. As I’ve written before, I had to talk a couple of months ago with someone I know who should know better about Seattle being yes, actually, basically fine, and not a hellscape from which people are fleeing. That’s how thick the disinformation is. The biggest problem we have is the cost of housing, which is what’s created our homelessness crisis. Tell me: how many burned-down hulks of cities have soaring property values? Not many. Keep that observation handy, you’ll find uses for it.)

Attacked by conservatives, UW misinformation researcher gears up for 2024, reports the Seattle Times. Sadly, the Washington State Republican Party even in the west is not much better than the national party, and in the east, it’s absolutely everything you can imagine – particularly the longest-standing fascists in Spokane Valley. Fundamentally, all Republicans see discussion and description of disinformation campaigns as enemy action, and have been taking SLAPP-style legal action against lead researcher Dr. Kate Starbird (yes, that Kate Starbird, star basketball player for the Seattle Storm; get her in a band and she’ll be our own real life Buckaroo Banzai) to shut her up. But so far, UW is standing firmly behind her.

Our local Republicans are also going after our own Secretary of State for similar reasons, trying to stop his efforts to track election disinformation.

One potentially useful bit of information out of Sen. Ron Johnson stunned when CNN asks him to back up his MAGA lies is that a lot of Republicans have become so used to the coddling and support from the far-right media/propaganda sphere that they’re no longer ready for any kind of pushback whatever, and can be out and out flummoxed when they get it. Handling pushback is a skill like any other, and it atrophies when not used.

This is a weakness; take advantage of it.

Here’s one of the many disinformation angles you’ll be seeing in 2024: Actors Recorded Videos for ‘Vladimir.’ It Turned Into Russian Propaganda. “Microsoft found that celebrities were tricked into making videos used to attack Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.” While yes, obviously, generative “AI” will be used to create the bulk flood of disinformation – as is already happening on Facebook – those who traffic in such trade will use everything at their disposal, and they have a lot of money to spend, so tread – and believe – carefully.

TPM writes about The Russian Propaganda Mill Beaming Out Of A Florida Strip Mall. Ben Swann, the face of the network and a registered Russian agent, naturally comes from the evangelical fundamentalist circles I write about so often, and was born into their culture. They produce Russian propaganda – anti-LGBT programmes, conspiracy theories including pizzagate and vaccine disinformation, “Ukraine is American Imperialism” content for Russia Today and other Russian propaganda outlets, and the other sorts of things you’d expect. The names you want to watch out for are “Rebel Media Productions,” “Sovren Media,” and “Truth in Media.”

On the topic of Russian-leaning far-right propaganda sources, “Verified” (paid) users on X-Twitter dumped out massive amounts of disinformation this past week about the big earthquake in Japan, all while X-Twitter itself rate-limited and silenced actual information from Japan’s emergency services. Similar ratios have been happening over the Israel-Hamas war and ongoing disaster in Gaza.

COVID disinformation: Arizona MAGAt Kari Lake latest made-up bullshit claim is that COVID-19 was engineered and released to hurt Donald Trump in particular as part of a global conspiracy against the God Emperor. And Ron DeSantis’s ideologically-appointed surgeon general is using completely made up batshittery – I realise those are highly technical terms, but I did do original research in genetics, so forgive me – to push for a ban on mRNA-based COVID vaccinations.

The Party of Plague is still the Party of Plague. If nothing else, never forget that.

Yet another study again demonstrates that the anti-LGBTQ lies about “transition regret” are, indeed, lies, with this one again showing the typical less-than-1% regret rate amongst transitioners. I note that this is much lower than almost all if not all other surgeries, including specifically CIS-gendered people’s gender affirming surgeries, which have a regret rate over 14 times as high. (It’s also lower than the regret rate for non-gender-related surgeries, such as “medically necessary heart surgery.” That’s from memory but I’m confident I’m remembering it right.)

A federal judge hearing a challenge to a transgender health care ban for minors and restrictions for adults noted… that Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis repeatedly spread false information about doctors mutilating children’s genitals even though there’s been no such documented cases. Obviously, this is a standard lie of the far right in general now, a lie made up to use as an election issue by raising fear and hate against LGBT people. What’s notable here is that a judge is saying it, and that has some weight.

Leaked emails reveal that the tech giant Palantir has hired Topham Guerin to pay influencers to attack Good Law Project on social media – but the source of the money is to be kept ‘confidential’. You might recall Palantir as a major force behind far-right energizing in the 2016 election, and pushing Brexit through dis- and misinformation.

I don’t typically report on the beefiest of domestic Russian conspiracy theory batshittery, but it’s so firmly established at this point amongst the highest levels of Russian media and society that I think I have to now. Normally, it’s nonsense like “We’ve already killed all the Ukrainians, there aren’t any left, we’re fighting NATO troops now” and “Satanic United States, the Satanic Catholic Pope, and Satanist Zelensky are all literally Satan and we’re literally the forces of light.” But my favourite from the last month is probably this one:

A Russian State Duma deputy, an FSB general and others have co-written a ‘scientific paper’ about the genocide of Russians by “beast people”, feminists who worship the demoness Lilith, a lack of men due to a US plot, reptilian infiltrators, and oral sex.

The St. Petersburg-based journal “Legal Science: History and Modernity” has published a paper which argues that Russia is under siege from ‘non-humans,’ defined as Westerners, Asian migrants and supporters of democracy and liberalism.

The authors divide the world’s population into two groups: humans, created by God, and non-humans, created by the Lord God:

“In the Bible there are two main cosmic entities, God and the Lord God. … There are two main kinds of human beings living on planet Earth: ‘people of the Earth’, created in the image and likeness of God; and people created ‘from the dust of the earth’ with the help of cosmic gene technology. …”

It goes on at the link. I recommend the full thread, as well as most of what Russian Media Monitor puts out. The Russians are deep into real L. Ron Hubbard batshittery here – straight up, this in particular literally sounds like something stolen from Mission Earth – and it’d be hilarious if they didn’t 1) like war, 2) want to restore a lost empire, and 3) have nukes.

Oh, and if anyone you know pretends Russia would stop at Ukraine, please tell them to stop. The Duma have been busily repudiating the documents signed breaking up the Soviet Union, so as to claim they are the lawful government of all the former member states. Russian propagandists say outright they’re coming for other former-Soviet countries next – and maybe Poland or Finland, or both, for good measure.

As I like to say when quoting the fundamentalist movement: this isn’t me saying bad things about them, this is me reporting what they themselves actually say.

Putin wants the Soviet Union back, and absolutely will not stop at Ukraine.

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