Is Alex Jones finally getting his karm-uppance?

Over the past few years I've posted more than a few words about far-right conspiranoia-porn peddler Alex Jones, who, like most of his ilk, is an irascible ranter, atrocious bully, or pathetic whiner as it suits his needs. More often than not, he is all three at once.

Unless you've been totally unplugged from the news (which actually doesn't seem to be such a bad idea, even if I can't bring myself to do it), you're probably aware that Jones has been both in whiny and irascible-rant modes lately because his defamation trial in Texas has not been going his way at all. And his misfortune in court is a good thing, because Jones has been getting away with spreading his poison, without suffering any personal consequences, for too many years. (Don't get me wrong; I generally support anyone's right to spout off and make a fool of himself or herself in public, but if that spouting off causes harm to others, then the spouter should suffer all appropriate legal and moral consequences.)

One of the high points of the Jones trial, and one that launched a thousand social-media memes, was when it was revealed in open court that Jones' lawyers had "accidentally" sent the entire contents of his phone to the plaintiffs' lawyers -- rendering him not only liable to perjury charges but also shining a spotlight on his possible (probable) role in the January 6 insurrection.

Jones' initial reaction to the news of the phone glitch was a reminder that this is truly the type of situation for which the word Schadenfreude was invented. And let's hope that things continue to not go his way. Punishment via the courts won't bring back the innocent schoolchildren and adult staff members who were slaughtered at Sandy Hook, the mass shooting which Jones crapitalized on for so many years by claiming that it was a hoax, but at least there will be some measure of justice for those who lost loved ones.

True, Jones will no doubt continue to use the court rulings to expand upon his longstanding hero/martyr shtick. It's a shtick that, unsurprisingly, has been reinforced by some of his fellow right-wing conspiranoia peddlers, e.g., Mike "The Health Ranger" Adams, who recently published a piece on his Natural News site about Jones being the canary in the coal mine and a bellwether for all "anti-establishment" press.

And after Jones was hit with a $45.2 million verdict for punitive damages (on top of the $4.1 mil in compensatory damages handed down on the previous day), vile Trumpster and frequent Infowars guest Roger Stone called for contributions to support Jones, saying, "Alex Jones is a good and decent man. He is a God-fearing Christian...and right now he needs our support." (Sandy Hook family attorney Mark Bankston said that Jones' phone record leak revealed, among other things, "intimate messages" with Stone, so that should prove interesting. Stone, for his part, is urging Jones to sue his own lawyer because of the leaked messages.) In any case, Jones is apparently not just a hero/martyr, but a Christian one at that. Praise the Lard.

But if Jones is a financially ruined faux-Christian hero/martyr, that, in my book, will still be justice.

This post has been updated to add the information on the punitive damages verdict and Roger Stone's appeal to Jones' fans and followers for monetary support, as well as Stone's urging Jones to sue his own attorney.

Related on this Whirled:

• September 2021: Scamworld & politix: Eric Trump set to join alt-health/conspiranoid scammers in Nashville in October
  The strengthening alliance between alt-health hucksters (such as Jones) and the American right is not only spreading misinformation that endangers public health, but is also endangering democracy. While Jones himself wasn't featured at the event discussed in this post, a couple of his more notorious allies were: Mike "The Health Ranger" Adams and Roger Stone.
• November 2018 -- Randazzled: hail the free-screech hero of [alleged] rapists and Nazis and trolls
  Notorious free-speech attorney Marc Randazza has made some bank defending loathsome characters, including Alex Jones. He can't claim any moral high ground in this matter, though he has tried to do so.
• August 2018: Alex Jones and the usual whiners: censor-y deprivation?
  Jones has long been one of the right-wing whiners claiming that he is being "censored" and his First Amendment rights being grievously violated. But even though his defamation trial has been relevant to First Amendment rights, his de-platforming by privately owned companies such as Facebook and YouTube are not First Amendment issues per se. This post covers that point, plus some of the nuances in the "censorship" issue that are often overlooked by both the left and the right.

Related Off-Whirled:

• From New York Intelligencer: The Alex Jones Trial Is As Messy As You'd Expect
  Of course, its messiness is what made it so entertaining (at Jones' expense), while at the same time grueling (for the plaintiffs).
• From Variety: 'Alex's War' Review: A Gripping and Disturbing Look at Alex Jones and the Politics of Unreality
  Insightful background on Jones' rise to stardom and his mass appeal.

  ...it wasn’t all conspiracy. Jones was like a preacher, and what he was preaching was a religion — “stop the dehumanization.” And really, who doesn’t think contemporary America is dehumanized and only growing more so? Who doesn’t feel at times, in this society, overly controlled — by technology, by the corporatization that rules the technology, by the government that works hand in glove with the corporations, by not one but two political parties that seem increasingly out-of-touch with the needs of average people? Jones, like Trump, tapped into all that. But what gave it meaning was the way that Jones, a political carny barker, used conspiracy to reverse-engineer history. To him, every disaster, every predicament, everything about our world you don’t like had been planned and caused. By whom? By them. The globalists. The pedophiles. The technocrat corporatists who want to use vaccines to sterilize the population...

• From Ken White (aka @Popehat): Alex Jones At The Tower of Babel
  White, an attorney, makes some good points about the reasons that legal accountability for Jones might not have much of an effect on the larger problem, which is the public's hunger for the kind of slop for which Jones has become obscenely rich by dishing out.

The point is that courts are ill-equipped to deal with people like Alex Jones, and people like Alex Jones are ill-equipped to deal with courts. Jones’ catastrophic testimony in his own defense illustrates this. Jones struggled to fit his bombast within the framework of the law, within the distinction between fact and opinion. It’s a bad fit because that’s not how he uses words...

...It’s fit that Alex Jones is held accountable for the impact of his words. He used false statements of fact to paint his picture, and those false statements of fact caused harm. But I suspect that a vast judgment against Jones won’t have much value as a deterrent or proclamation of truth. Jones is loathsomely rich because people want to consume his art. His landscapes of hate and fear and mistrust resonate with a frightening number of Americans... The plodding technicalities of law are probably inadequate to change their minds...

From TRUTH Social to alt-health scam sites: Trump & other right-wing grifters continue to battle Big Tech, fuel fascism, & rob the rubes

By now you've almost certainly heard about #NeverWasMyPresident Donald Trump's grand plan to launch yet another alternative to major social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook -- his way of sticking it to Big Tech for banning him.

I'm referring, of course, to the absurdly ill-named TRUTH Social, which will be developed by a new enterprise called Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG). Announced by Trump surrogate Liz Harrington on Twitter on October 20, 2021, TRUTH Social is being launched to "stand up to the tyranny of Big Tech."

Trump had famously already failed at least once in the social media arena, promising months ago to immediately launch a platform of his own after he was booted off of Twitter and Facebook due to his incitement of the deadly insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Or maybe his big plans just got delayed. In any case, instead of the promised social media platform, a laughable blog appeared briefly... and was gone within a month. There was buzz for a while that Gettr was the new home for Team Trump and his allies... but that buzz faded too.

The idea of alternative Twitters and Facebooks and so forth is not new, of course. Right-wingers have been snowflaking for the past few years about being "censored" online, and many have taken their toxic whines not only to the courts but also to numerous alternate social media apps that have sprung up in recent times. But a Trump-branded social media alternative is truly newsworthy, because Trump unfortunately remains so high-profile, not to mention that he's the biggest and loudest whiner of all when it comes to griping about censorship.

If you think that TRUTH Social is going to be a safe haven for "free speech," however, think again. First off, the site will censor its own users. Saying bad stuff about Dear Leader or his platform or its parent company is verboten.

And if you think that this platform is destined for long-term success, you need to reconsider that too. From The Daily Kos, October 21:

...Most of the attention focused on [the announcement about TMTG] has been centered around the announcement of something called “TRUTH Social”—also known as yet-another-Trump-focused-Twitter-clone. But that’s not the real point of TMTG. The real point is that this is a scheme through which Trump can collect several hundred million dollars, even if his new social platform never posts a tweet, or a toot, or a fart, or whatever they end up being called.

The truth behind TRUTH Social is right there in the first paragraph of the announcement, which is not focused on the technology behind the platform, or anything that Trump is bringing to the table. Instead, that paragraph is dedicated to explaining how the project has been given "an initial enterprise value of $875 million" and "a cumulative valuation up to $1.7 billion." Which is amazing, because what it seems to have is nothing more than a credit line and some highly generic code that was hacked within minutes of the beta address becoming known.

No sooner had the first test invites been handed out than someone spoofed Trump's account and posted, well, as Daily Beast contributor Steven Monacelli accurately puts it, "a photo of a pig defecating on its own scrotum." Two hours after it first went up, the whole site came down.

However, it doesn't matter if the site ever sticks its head above the waste pool again. Because that's not the point. Donald Trump is potentially walking about with $340 million, even if it fails completely. That's the point.

The site seems to be up again now, but right now it's just a page that invites you to "Join the Waiting List!" or to pre-order the app in the Apple Store. The launch is supposed to happen in November of 2021.

But there seem to be a few other bumps in the road, not the least of which are credible accusations that the Trump app's developers appear to have purloined code without giving due credit to the code's creators. Oops.

Coding issues aside, it goes without saying that this whole thing was designed as yet another money op for the former Grifter-in-Chief, who was a grifter long before he infested the White House, and has continued his grifting nonstop since being legitimately voted out. (If you sincerely believe he wasn't legitimately voted out, you're in a cult. Please seek help.) Like countless other media outlets that have reported this news, the Daily Kos article cited above goes on to explain the scheme.

What Trump is attempting here is something called a SPAC, or Special Purpose Acquisition [Company]. It's also known as a "reverse merger" or a "blank check company." It's a scheme in which some low-value shell company that's already listed on a stock market "buys" a private company, then relists itself under the name of that new company. In almost all cases, what's really going on is that the private company is just taking over the empty husk of that shell company—a company that may have existed for no other purpose than to serve as a placeholder for some future SPAC.

Why go through these steps? Because getting listed on a stock exchange generally requires clearing a number of hurdles, including meeting requirements from the Securities and Exchange Commission. SPACS can just pop into existence, taking a fast track to a stock listing while dodging almost every qualifying step.

The Trump SPAC falls under a specific category known as a "celebrity SPAC," in which a high-profile person, known as "the Sponsor," raises capital by taking the SPAC public in an IPO. The SPAC uses the cash proceeds from the IPO and a large stock issuance to acquire a private company and make it public. But unlike traditional IPOs, the Sponsor gets a 20 percent stake without having to invest much of anything -- and there's much less regulatory scrutiny. While not all SPACs are scams, this one almost certainly is. The Kos article describes it as "nothing more than an exchange-based Ponzi scheme in which the original Ponzi is guaranteed to walk away with a mountain of cash." In short...

TMTG isn't a social media platform. It's a scam. Trump doesn't need another social media platform. He needs suckers willing to buy stock. And Trump has always been very, very good at locating suckers.

So while it's fun to point out that TRUTH Social has some of the most restrictive rules of any platform, including rules that prohibit criticizing TRUTH Social, it doesn't really matter. The whole platform can be sh#t pigs all the way down. It can collapse under its own incompetence. None of that means a thing. What matters to Trump is that he gets to walk away with a bundle.

That's pretty much all that has ever mattered to Trump.

The SPAC stock linked to Trump's platform is Digital World Acquisition Corporation (DWAC), and granted, it was quite the talk of the market last week, when DWAC shares shot from $9.96 per share at closing on Wednesday, October 20, to $94.20 per share on Friday, October 22. That's an astounding 845% rally in a mere two days. But as CNBC reported today (October 25), DWAC was down 10 percent after 2:00 PM ET, so there appear to be signs that "the Trump-fueled craze has died down," according to the CNBC piece.

Short-seller Iceberg Research unveiled a bearish position on the DWAC on Monday, saying that investors face uncertainties in this blank-check deal as Trump could become a dominant shareholder after the merger.

“Now that initial excitement has passed, we see only risks for investors in near future. Based on Trump’s track record, at current price, renegotiation is likely to keep more of the merged company for him,” Iceberg Research said in a tweet.

“SPAC holders don’t own a piece of this project yet. Trump has leverage, not them.”

But I'm not shedding any tears for these investors. At this point, anyone who invests in anything related to Trump deserves to lose money. And as far as I'm concerned, that also goes for the countless small donors who have fallen for his myriad fundraising scams --- such as phony "membership cards" and other "exclusive" benefits (or promises thereof) designed to keep the rubes feeling like they're Someone Special. He'll almost certainly continue to run these scams long after the current SPAC cash cow has been milked dry. The cult members will just keep on forking over, feeding his coffers and his ego while he smirks and talks bad about them behind their backs.

* * * * *

Trump may be the most high-profile right-wing grifter to whine about Big Tech and try to compete directly with the major platforms, but he's far from the only one. Take Mike "The Health Ranger" Adams (please). Besides being a particularly vociferous Trump fanboy and advocate of martial law as long as a right-wing president is imposing it, Adams is a longtime peddler of alt-health frauducts and "advice" as well as a promoter of conspiracy theories and far-right-wing talking points. (He was also one of the featured speakers, along with Eric Trump and Roger Stone, at a three-day fascism/alt-health rally in Nashville this past weekend, The Truth [sic] About Cancer Live.)

Years ago Adams, apparently unhappy with the standards imposed by Wikipedia, created his own Wiki platform, "TruthWiki," which is every bit as hilariously misnamed as Trump's TRUTH Social. In an April 2016 Whirled post (under the sub-head, "Trying to conquer the Internet, one comical alt-site at a time"), I described Adams as...

...the guy who is so afraid of people finding out the truth about him and his colleagues that he started his own lame version of Wikipedia: the very ill-named TruthWiki. (Here's the TruthWiki entry about David Gorski. And while we're at it, here's Gorski, as Orac, writing about TruthWiki in 2014.)

Dr. Gorski is an oncologist who's one of the people on Mike Adams' enemies list; Adams has seriously defamed him numerous times in his Natural News blog posts.

Then there's Adams' answer to Google, GoodGopher. From the 2016 Whirled post I quoted above:

GoodGopher very carefully filters out what they consider "disinformation" and government/Big Pharma propaganda, instead stacking their search results with alt-nutty and rightwing sites (which are euphemistically called "independent news media") such as NaturalNews (of course!) as well as Breitbart, The Blaze, Washington Times (owned and run by Moonies), Drudge Report, Western Journalism and more.

It's a pretty lousy search engine, but it's tailor-made for the no-evil monkeys who want to avoid any fact or opinion that might shake their carefully constructed world of alt-health advocacy, Scamworld delusions, conspiracy theories and right-wing spin.

I went to the GoodGopher site a little while ago, for the first time in years, and typed a name in the search engine. It was a name for which I knew there were numerous results on GoodGopher; at least there had been when I checked it last. But all I got for search results was a message: "Server is busying [sic] right now, please try again later." All righty, then!

Mike Adams may not be giving Wikipedia or Google a run for their money, but what his sites lack in quality they collectively make up for in quantity. His disinfo empire includes scads of alt-health and alt-"news" web sites, some of which are no doubt generating income from suckers, and with some of these sites he also seems to be succeeding in one important task: spreading the type of political disinformation that is eroding American democracy and further nudging us down the road to authoritarianism and fascism.

On October 18, ArsTechnica published the revelation that Robert Willis, aka "Hacker X" -- the hacker who helped build an enormous US-based disinfo network that helped Trump get elected -- had confirmed that he was actually working for Mike Adams at Adams' NaturalNews.com site.

Willis had joined NaturalNews.com in the run-up to the 2016 US presidential election and helped the site build out a network of anonymized websites that looked independent but secretly promoted the "health" information and pro-Trump political writings of Mike Adams and NaturalNews.com.

NaturalNews has long been linked to disinformation. In 2019, The Atlantic named it one of the top producers of anti-vax content on the Internet. The site has touted homeopathy, urged "natural" remedies for things like cancer, and warned about "chemtrails." NaturalNews content has been banned from Facebook, and the site has been called a "powerful conspiracy empire."

Willis claims to have made little money from his work for Adams, and says that he has remorse "for a few reasons." He claims that he didn't really know what Adams was all about when he first joined his site, which is kind of hard to believe.

As for all the pro-Trump, anti-Clinton "fake news" that Willis eventually helped to propagate, he claimed that the reason he "didn’t know it was fake news at the beginning is because the machine needed to be built before it could be used, so I didn’t spend time inside stories outside of overseeing social media and numbers, at which point I did not factor in the aspect of whether the articles were true or not. I was strictly breaking down stories by headlines and breaking it down into numbers. With an occasional crazy headline that seemed harmless."

Okay, sure. Willis says the whole experience has made him apolitical and that he didn't vote in the 2020 election. Here's his statement about about his actions. And here's a post about "Hacker X" and Mike Adams by the aforementioned David Gorski, the target of some of Mike Adams' most vicious defamation.

* * * * *

If you feel like climbing even further down into the pit of alt-site failures, you might stumble across a silly Facebook alternative created last year by phony doctor/cancer quack/neo-Nazi/Trump fan/alleged predator and all-around evil dimwit Leonard Coldwell, who has been in a perpetual huff for the past decade or so about repeatedly being thrown into Facebook jail. Back in October of 2020 Lenny's favorite handmaid griped about Facebook for about the ten-dozenth time on his main English-language web site:.

Make no mistake accounts are being targeted. Those who have spoken out for truth on matters such as politics, COVID-Hoax, Masks, for natural health and not big pharma, called out Monsanto and Bill Gates, or even Georgy Sorros [sic] who wants to destroy the world as we know it are being scrutinized for every word they type.

Why?

Because Facebook is a communist/socialist website who [sic] is pushing the agenda of the New Normal hard. They want you all to be obedient. They want (end game) for you to be vaccinated mindless drone of a slave to the system.

But never fear; there was a solution from the great "Dr." C:

Dr. Coldwell has created his own version [of Facebook]. Champ book. You are invited! https://champbook.tribe.so/  while much of it is currently in German we also are gaining many English speaking members and would love to have you. There will never be censorship like there is on Facebook.

Which isn't to say that there won't be censorship, I suppose. But it all seems moot because Lenny and most of the rest of the world appear to have all but forgotten ChampBook, as you'll see if you take a look at the endless stream of spam that meets the eye when you land on the site. But I have to admit that there is quite an impressive list of "Most reputable losers users," with a very reputable spammer called Мария Иванцова being number one, and Lenny himself appearing at the bottom of the list of most reputable users when I checked the other day, and not appearing on that list at all when I went back to check today. (Мария was still number one, though.) Poor little Lenny: he can't even compete with spammers and bots on his own site. Sad.

* * * * *

None of what I've written above means that I am opposed to competition, including and perhaps especially in the area of social media and other online forums. Monopolies aren't good for business or, ultimately, for democracy. Nor does it mean that I am blind to the misdeeds -- some of them quite egregious -- of the Big Tech platforms. As more info continues to spill out about Facebook, for example, it becomes ever more painfully obvious that Big Tech companies value profit over any of the other fine values, such as truth or the well-being of their users, to which they pay lip service. But the problems created by Big Tech won't be solved by right-wing scammers, whose ludicrous forums are little more than echo chambers at best, and all too often are vehicles to pick the pockets of vulnerable people.

Grifting is not just a right-wing thing, of course. But these daze, the right-wing grift machine, fueled by an unending stream of fascist bat-crap both online and off, seems to be posing the greatest dangers, not only to public health but also to the health of American (and world) democracy. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated this problem, but it has been brewing for years now. Whether the grift comes in the form of a Trumpian "investment opportunity" and "TRUTH" platform, a slime trail of fake-news sites from "The Health Ranger," or a flaccid Facebook alternative from an angry and deranged little German scammer, it's all part of the same problem.

It has never been more important to stay informed, rather than misinformed or willfully uninformed. And it's never been more important for eligible voters who want to stop the madness to make sure they're registered, and then to get out there and vote.

Scamworld & politix: Eric Trump set to join alt-health/conspiranoid scammers in Nashville in October

 

Would you like a little fascism with your snake oil? Well then, you're in luck. In yet another example of Scamworld and US politix partying together, there's going to be an alt-health conference in Nashville October 22-24, 2021: The Truth [sic] About Cancer Live! convention. The event's anti-vax agenda is pretty blatant, but nearly as obvious is the right-wing political mission, as evidenced by the fact that the top-billed keynoter is none other than Eric Trump. And the conference organizers themselves are notorious perpetrators of The Big Lie that Trump won the 2020 election. The upcoming event is not only a menace to public health, due to misinformation in the service of scamming, but it is also part of a disturbing and long-brewing trend of alliances among alt-health/anti-vax hustlers (and believers) and the far right: alliances that are endangering American democracy.

The media -- well, at least some of them -- have been abuzz with news that #NeverWasMyPresident Donald John Trump's middle and stupidest son, Eric, will be a keynote speaker at an alt-health (translation: anti-vax) event in Nashville in October. From The Daily Beast:

Trump is set to speak at the Truth About Cancer Live! convention between Oct. 22 and 24 in Nashville, joining a speakers’ lineup that includes some of the most prominent promoters of disinformation about vaccines, as well as leading figures in the QAnon conspiracy theory movement.

The conference is the brainchild of Ty and Charlene Bollinger, two major promoters of anti-vaccine disinformation who have made tens of millions of dollars promoting both alternative health cures for cancer and vaccine fears. The Bollingers have dubbed the coronavirus vaccine “that abominable vaccine,” according to a Center for Public Integrity report, and sell a $200 video series promoting vaccine fearmongering on their website.

The promoters of TTAC Live '21 are using every cheesy, cliched marketing trick in the book, including "false scarcity," to push this (likely super-spreader) event.

Silver & Gold Tickets Are Sold Out
Bronze Tickets Now On Sale - Save $100

The "gold tickets" were supposedly $997, and the "silver tickets" $497 -- but if you act now, you can get a "bronze ticket" for the low, low price of only $197 (marked down from $297)! Heck of a deal.

At any rate, most of the reporting I've seen on this event puts the news about Eric Trump's scheduled keynote in the same bizarro category as Daddy Trump's (virtual) appearance at a recent Moonie cult conference on the 20th anniversary of September 11. Be that as it may, Eric, who claims that he himself is vaccinated, poo-poos the idea that the event at which he'll be featured is in any way anti-vaccine.

Trump confirmed his scheduled speech in an email to The Daily Beast.

“I am not there to talk about vaccines,” Trump wrote. “I am in Nashville to talk about the accomplishments of the 45th President of the United States.”

Trump disputed the idea that the conference is “anti-vaccine,” pointing to his vaccinated status.

“As to labeling something an anti-vaccine event, it wouldn’t make much sense for me to attend as a vaccinated person if it was,” Trump wrote.

Well, as anyone with even rudimentary observational skills knows by now, little Eric is not exactly the brightest tiki torch in the white supremacist march. He most likely wouldn't know an anti-vax agenda if it crashed through his window at night and sat on his smug little rodent face (no offense intended to rodents) while Lara watched in feigned shock and reached for her Kiki de Montparnasse Etoile Bullet Vibe. (Look it up; I'm not going to provide a link.)

Face it: the TTAC '21 web site makes its anti-vax (and anti-mask) agenda pretty clear just by its speaker lineup. Several of the scheduled speakers at TTAC, including Sheri Tenpenny and Erin "The Health Nut" Elizabeth, not to mention the Bollingers themselves, are part of the "Disinformation Dozen" who earlier this year were reported as producing 65 percent of the misleading claims and outright lies about COVID-19 vaccines on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. They make the anti-vax part of the conference agenda as glaringly obvious as Donald Trump's fake tan.

As with other media outlets reporting on the event, The Daily Beast mentioned several of these speakers in passing.

Other anti-vaccine speakers at the event [besides Eric Trump] include Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Andrew Wakefield, the author of a vaccination with retracted study linking vaccination with autism—a claim repeated by former President Trump on multiple occasions. Judy Mikovits, who went viral in the summer of 2020 as the star of the “Plandemic” coronavirus disinformation video and has falsely claimed as many as 50 million Americans could be killed by the vaccine, is also scheduled to speak. In promotional copy for tickets to the convention, which range in price from $197 to $997, the Bollingers promise the event will reveal “the truth about vaccines.”

...Edward Group and Mike Adams, two alternative health personalities who have been regulars on conspiracy theory hub InfoWars, are giving speeches as well. Trump adviser Roger Stone is also giving a speech.

(I mentioned Judy Mikovits and her Plandemic "documentary" in a May 2020 post about serial scammer Kevin Trudeau's enablers continuing to push COVID-19 conspiracy tales.)

Notably absent from the lineup, I feel compelled to mention, is fake doctor/cancer quack/scammer/(alleged) predator/neo-Nazi/Trump fan Leonard Coldwell, who for several years was a staple at similar alt-health events, and who claims to have a 92.3 percent "cancer cure" rate. More than likely the omission is because Lenny, despite his nonstop griping about vaccines and Big Pharma and whatnot, has become too irrelevant and insignificant to include in a big-name event.

But I digress. Notwithstanding the blatant anti-vax mission reflected in the speaker lineup, I'd say that Eric Trump is probably on the level about his personal motives for being a keynoter at this scamapalooza. His presence at TTAC as a spokes-doofus for Daddy's "achievements" actually makes perfect sense when you take a closer look at several of the speakers -- I mean, apart from the excruciatingly obvious inclusion of Roger Stone, who's billed as a "health freedom advocate" and will apparently be speaking at least a little bit about cancer because his wife had it, but he'll almost certainly also be blathering about how viciously oppressed he has been by the "illegal" Mueller report and the Clintons and liberals and so on, and about how we can "restore" America and personal freedoms. (For that matter, DaddyT's appearance at the Moonie conference makes sense too, when you consider the rabid right-wing politix of the Unification Church.)

Regarding certain other speakers at the TTAC conference, though: consider alt-health "expert" and professional fear-monger Mike "The Health Ranger" Adams, for example. If you've been following this blog for a few years, you know I've written about Adams several times. And if you've been a reader during the lamentable Error of Trump, you almost certainly know that Adams has paraded himself as a staunch and downright fanatical supporter of Trump and Trumpism. On more than one occasion during the Trump "presidency," he advocated Trump imposing martial law in the US -- and committing other authoritarian acts that would make any old-school dictator proud -- in order to destroy "the left" and recreate America in the image of the neo-fascist wet dream. So there's that.

An even more blatant political connection lies in the organizers of the conference, Ty and Charlene Bollinger. From the Wikipedia entry, which cites external sources:

Bollinger spoke at a "Stop the Steal" rally in Nashville on November 14, 2020, repeating accusations of election fraud.^[25]...

...[Ty and Charlene Bollinger] played a significant role in organizing the pro-Trump demonstrations that culminated in a riot at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.^[31] They coordinated with leaders of the Stop the Steal movement to bring their supporters to the demonstrations. They introduced speakers to their crowd of supporters and according to Darlene, Ty joined the demonstration outside the Capitol; both afterward condemned the violence that took place at the event.^[10][32][4] The Bollingers have been using QAnon hashtags in 2020 and promoted some of the movement's common conspiracy theories.^[21]

To its credit, the Daily Beast article I linked to above does mention the Bollingers' contributions to the January 6 riots.

Along with their anti-vaccine activism, the Bollingers have faced criticism for a rally they organized just blocks from the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. During the event, Charlene Bollinger praised the rioters attacking Congress.

“We pray for the patriots that are there now inside,” Charlene Bollinger said during the event. “They’re trying to get inside that Capitol.”

In case it isn't painfully obvious after my characteristic belaboring of the point: Eric Trump's status as not just a keynote speaker, but the keynoter -- the one who gets top billing along with conference organizers/founders Ty and Charlene Bollinger -- shouldn't be surprising to anyone who's been paying attention. But it is another big red flag, on at least two levels.

First, Eric Trump is obviously a selling point for the conference, and it can't be overstated that, politics aside, the organizers' alt-health agenda is doing measurable damage to public health. Alejandro Ramirez, writing in an article today on the Nashville Scene web site, really gets it.

It’s easy to point at the health care hucksters and laugh, but as several proverbs suggest, comedy and tragedy are often linked. In this case, they aren’t just preying on wealthy science-deniers but also desperate people who are looking for anything to help them or their loved ones survive. We’re talking about vulnerable people, physically and financially.

Secondly, Eric Trump (and Roger Stone) being featured as keynoters at an alleged natural-health conference is an indication of a continuing and growing trend of alliances among formerly fringe factions -- alt-health/anti-vax hustlers and the far right -- that not only care far more about their own power, wealth, and egos than they do about the well-being of the people to whom they so relentlessly pander, but who are also endangering American democracy with their cynical lies. Equally as perilous to democracy are the true believers and the misinformed or ignorant voters who are willing to commit violence to advance the agendas of these cynics, all in the name of "personal freedom" and fealty to a deranged would-be dictator.

And that's no laughing matter.

PS. Wead it and reap, redux
In other Scamworld-meets-politix news, two GOP operatives have been charged with funneling Russian money to the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee in 2016. One of the indicted guys, Jesse Benton, had previously been convicted of multiple campaign fraud offenses, but Trump pardoned him just before leaving office. The other guy, Doug Wead -- and here's where the Scamworld/politix angle comes in -- is a longtime selfish-help huckster and Trump sycophant who authored an ass-kissing book on Trump a couple of years ago. I've written about Wead on my blog, most recently in Nov 2019.

Wead is being represented in the case by two of Trump's former attorneys, Jay Sekulow and Jane Raskin. Commenting on the charges, Sekulow said, “Doug Wead is a respected author and supporter of charitable causes. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges and will continue to respond appropriately in court.” Well, that should be a load off of all of our minds. Respected authors and supporters of charitable causes are always good guys, right?

But I'm thinking that maybe justice and accountability are not a given in this case, since it has been assigned to Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee who donated to Trump's campaign and worked on his presidential transition team. We'll just have to see. 

Related on this Whirled:
Past musings on some of the ways in which Scamworld and US politics intersect. The era of Trump really brought this phenomenon out in the open, since Donald Trump himself has been a Scamworld hustler for decades. As well, some of this blog's most frequent subjects -- most notably, imprisoned (but soon to be released) serial scammer Kevin Trudeau -- has been a longtime admirer of Donald Trump. Or at least he plays one on the Interwebz.

• March 2016 -- The devils at the crossroads of politix and Scamworld
  This is the first post in which I really attempted to explore the deepening connection between US politics and Scamworld, as well as the blurring of lines between information and entertainment. I was far from the first to do this, but I think that this post marked a turning point on my blog.
• May 2016 -- Trump and his Trumpsters: like attracts like
  A closer look at some of the Scamworld luminaries, as well as regular folks, who were and are drawn to Trump.
• May 2016 --: Donald Trump's Scamworld playbook isn't unique
  My friend and blogging colleague Jason "Salty Droid" Jones was way ahead of me on documenting Trump's Scamworld shenanigans, but this post goes into detail about how "Trump University" was far from unique in the industry.
• October 2016 -- Back into the black hole of politix...
  Conspiracy fans were and are naturally drawn to Trump, who for several years was the Conspiracy Theorist in Chief, and who is still driving dangerous conspiracy narratives even though he is out of office. Kevin Trudeau has also banked on conspiranoid tales for many years, and many if not most of the people who were and are drawn to him are big believers in Trudeau's message that he knows the secret truth about things that "They" don't want you to know about. In this post I muse about these matters, and about the fact that I apparently lost some "friends" (and readers) when I began blogging against Trump. These were people I'd "met" because they had become disillusioned with Trudeau's scams, and they considered me an ally and supporter. I was puzzled about these lost allies at first, but as I note in the post, the aforementioned Salty Droid pointed out to me that quitting one manipulative scam or scammer doesn't cure one of the thinking pattern errors that got them sucked in in the first place.
• November 2016 -- Politix and Scamworld on an extended honeymoon
  When Trump chose Betsy DeVos as his Education Secretary, he was not only thumbing his nose at public education but was also elevating someone with notorious Scamworld (Amway) connections -- as well as plutocracy and theocracy creds -- to an influential office.
• October 2017 -- #FreeKevinTrudeau sucks up to Sheriff Joe
  For years, Kevin Trudeau and his minions tried -- unsuccessfully -- to get Donald Trump to free Kevin from prison early and, ideally, to issue a full pardon. One of the tactics the Trudeau camp used was to shamelessly kiss up to the atrocious, racist Sheriff Joe Arpaio, whom Trump had pardoned. Shortly after the pardon, Trudeau wrote a letter to Arpaio, congratulating him and calling him an American hero.
• August 2019: Conspiranoid claptrap & manipulative manifestos cloud narrative about El Paso & Dayton shootings
  Two tragic mass shootings brought out the conspiranoid crazies and power-mad cynics from both Scamworld and the political arena. Most of them -- at least the ones who actually accepted that the shootings were real and weren't merely the latest performances from "crisis actors" -- tried to pin the blame for the shootings on liberals and Democrats. "Health Ranger" Mike Adams, who is one of the scheduled keynoters at the fascism-and-frauducts gathering in Nashville in October 2021, weighed in with his usual right-wing rants. Their arguments didn't hold water, but that didn't stop them.
  
• March 2020 -- Coronacrazy: COVID-19 virus brings out the conspiranoids & fraudsters
  This was just the beginning. Things only got crazier as the months went by.
• March 2020 -- The Lie-land of Dr. Trudeau: Kevin Trudeau joins the ranks of the corona-crapitalists
  Of course Kevin Trudeau, undisputed master of misinformation that "They" don't want you to know, would have to get in on the COVID craze. He spewed out so much crap that I ended up doing a followup post, the link to which is at the end of this one. Trudeau's overarching theme was that COVID is no big deal and that the alarming stats are grossly exaggerated; he even wrote that he actually hoped he would get COVID so he could show the world it's NBD. (He did later test positive for COVID, but apparently he survived. He's been silent on the subject, and on everything else, since he's been out on "home release.") Where does politix come in? I'm glad you asked. One of the highlights of Trudeau's "exclusive" information about COVID -- and he claimed to be privy to seekrit conversations about the plot -- was that the pandemic was a fabrication of a cartel of "Them" in the media and other enemy factions, whose chief purpose was to make Trump look bad so he would lose the 2020 election.
• April 2020 -- Bless this mess with MMS: phony church (and possibly a phony president?) tout bleachy cure-nothing for COVID-19
  Worth a look for the embedded Randy Rainbow video alone. But there's also an exploration of the phony church founded by one Jim Humble, most notorious touter of bleachy cures, whom I'd written about previously on this blog.
• August 2021 -- Oleandrin: Are Trump and cronies trying to crapitalize on a new phony COVID-19 cure?
  I posted this in the wake of early reports indicating that Trumpophant Mike Lindell, the MyShillow guy, is bat-crap crazy. Lindell is definitely a loony with one foot in Scamworld and the other in right-wing politix. But his head is buried in a certain fat orange ass.
• June 2021 -- Covidiocy and the new waves of anti-vax lunacy
  Back when I first started posting about COVID craziness, I never thought I'd still be posting about it more than a year later. But here we are...
• August 2021 -- Covidiocy continues: Canadian crackpot, COVID camps, Carlson claptrap
  Yes, here we are.  

Related off-Whirled:
Don't just listen to me. Here are a few pieces that offer some larger historical and cultural perspectives on the unholy marriage between Scamworld and right-wing politix.

• These 'Conservative' Grifters Will Be The Death Of Our Republic
  Though Donald Trump may be the Grifter-in-Chief, he's hardly the first or only republican/conservative scammer. Not that Democrats and liberals are immune to the temptation to grift, but the republicans have taken the practice to dangerous new levels over the past few decades. Political commentator and progressive radio talk show host Thom Hartmann writes:

...it surprises nobody to discover that when Donald Trump and the people around him learned, in mid-November of 2020, that there was absolutely no meaningful voter fraud in that month's election, they chose, instead of acknowledging the truth, to go ahead with a plan to raise over $200 million dollars (and counting). That even today "President Trump" is sending out one or two fundraising emails a day, each one with the tiny "make this a recurring donation" box pre-checked.

Grifters occupy a unique niche in the world of criminals: they avoid direct violence, but live and act only to enrich themselves, whether it's with money, sex, power or all three. They're typically high-functioning sociopaths who sneer at the rules of civilized society the rest of us take seriously.

Republican appointees on the US Supreme Court cracked open the door for professional grifters in 1976 when, for the first time in American history, the Court redefined politicians taking money from billionaires away from being "political corruption" and "bribery"—what such behavior had been called since the beginning of the republic—to instead say it was a mere "exercise of free speech" on the part of the morbidly rich...

Hartmann traces the history since 1976 of the ways in which the legislative, judicial, and executive branches of government paved the way for epic scamming by those in positions of power.

• Why some New Age influencers believe Trump is a "lightworker"
  Once upon a time, way back during the dawning of the Age of Aquarius (as documented by the tribal love-rock musical Hair), new-agey/McSpirituality types tended to be either blissfully apolitical or earnestly left-leaning. They were famous not only for sex, drugs, and rock and roll, but also for protesting the war in Vietnam and embracing progressive social causes such as racial equality, feminism, gay rights, and a better, kinder, more loving world. I learned long ago that the love-and-light crowd wasn't and isn't all love-and-light by any means -- that new-age gurus and believers are just as prone to egomania and pettiness and back-stabbing and dishonesty and hypocrisy as anyone else (perhaps even more so) -- but even after those hard-learned lessons sank in, there were many years when I still pretty much took it for granted that new-agers who thought about politics at all were progressives or liberals.
  
  That's no longer the case, though, and at first it came as a bit of a surprise to me when I began to discover that many in new-age/New-Wage/McSpirituality circles are right at home with right-wing ideologies. It isn't so surprising that some of the less overtly "spiritual" Scamworld luminaries -- motivational gurus, infomercial hucksters, and Internet marketing grifters -- would lean rightward, or would at least be rabid libertarians, for the obvious reason that the fewer regulations and consumer protections there are, the more a scammer can get away with. But it does seem a little counter-intuitive that the more touchy-feely types would be right-leaning. Yet there's a perfectly logical explanation for this seemingly illogical phenomenon.
  
  In March 2021, Salon staff writer Nicole Karlis shed some light on the phenomenon of new-agey "lightworkers" embracing Donald Trump as a fellow "lightworker." She too acknowledged the changing demographics.

  This notion that Trump is a lightworker shares obvious parallels with the belief, held by some evangelicals, that Trump is comparable to Jesus; similarly, some QAnon followers believe that Trump is the "world leader" whose mission is to "save the children."
  
  Yet what makes the lightworker theory especially odd is that it has emerged from a demographic that would have previously been described as apolitical, or even far-left.
  
  However, as the January 6 insurrection on the Capitol showed, QAnon and Trump adherents are no longer just middle-aged, conservative white men like the Republican Party of yore. Many of those who embrace right-wing fringe beliefs are yogis, and love-and-light types, too. Take Jake Angeli for example, the so-called "QAnon Shaman" who donned a horned hat and spear-tipped American flag as he stormed the Capitol building on January 6. The 33-year-old, who identifies as having "shamanistic" beliefs, was recently granted the right to be fed an all-organic diet in jail in line with his religious practice...

This piece also explains the phenomenon of "conspirituality," a word I wish I'd coined. It's well worth reading if you want to begin to understand the forces behind the craziness that's all around us. Perhaps the most disturbing aspects of this craziness are the historical parallels to the role that mysticism played in Nazi Germany -- a connection that my friend Chris Locke at the dormant Mystic Bourgeoisie blog documented very well some years back (this is just one link of several on his blog). Everything old is new again.

•  Hacker reveals right-wing health care network made millions off ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine
  Snake oil is bigger business than ever these daze because of COVID. And once again we find Scamworld cozily in bed with (right-wing) politix.

  According to The Intercept, there’s a nice “network” of health care providers who have made millions on ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine during the pandemic. Do you remember the right-wing conspiracy theory-laden group of white medical uniform-wearing folks who called themselves America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLDS)? They promoted hydroxychloroquine as a miracle answer to COVID-19, and were able to get Republicans like Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine to reverse course on hydroxychloroquine bans. Guess what The Intercept found?

  America’s Frontline Doctors, a right-wing group founded last year to promote pro-Trump doctors during the coronavirus pandemic, is working in tandem with a small network of health care companies to sow distrust in the Covid-19 vaccine, dupe tens of thousands of people into seeking ineffective treatments for the disease, and then sell consultations and millions of dollars’ worth of those medications. The data indicate patients spent at least $15 million — and potentially much more — on consultations and medications combined....

  And there's more!

  • Another prominent AFLDS person you might recognize is its founder, Simone Gold. The doctor and lawyer who helped get AFLDS off the ground was also known for telling the world in a May 2020 video: “We’re all acting as though there’s a huge medical crisis. I’m not sure that it’s front-page news.” Instead, Gold told viewers that “constitutional rights” being “trampled on” were the real issue. Now, Gold is better known for her more recent appearance as an insurrectionist on Jan. 6, 2021. Gold—who spoke into a bullhorn after trespassing into the Capitol building rotunda—is now facing five counts for her part in the insurrection.
    
    But as The Intercept discovered, the AFLDS wasn’t just saying awfully misleading and incorrect things into microphones, they were the propaganda wing of a nice money-making medical network. The network included telemedicine company SpeakWithAnMD.com, medical consultation platform CadenceHealth.us, and online pharmacy Ravkoo. They way it works is that AFLDS refers its followers to SpeakWithAnMD.com, which uses the Cadence Health and Ravkoo platforms to offer up $90 phone “consultations” with doctors who have supposedly been trained by the AFLDS to prescribe you drugs like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin.

  Nice work if you can get it. Too bad people are dying because of schemes like this, while folks who have a legitimate need for the substances in question are unable to get them due to hoarding by greedy and cynical snake oil pushers and scads of gullible, misinformed yahoos.

 

Covidiocy and the new waves of anti-vax lunacy

 Over the years I've written a few times about the anti-vaccination, or anti-vax, movement, mostly in conjunction with some of the Scamworld hucksters who perpetually sound the (false) alarm about vaccinations chiefly in the service of promoting their own frauducts, flopportunities, and general quackery and crackpottery. (Leonard Coldwell and Mike "The Health Ranger" Adams, I'm looking at y'all.)

For years the hero of the anti-vax movement was a disgraced former doctor named Andrew Wakefield, an arrogant Brit whose work regarding the dangers of vaccination has been soundly debunked. To this day, however, fervent anti-jab believers defend him and falsely claim that he has been completely vindicated. In their eyes, he's nothing short of a saint.

Well, move over, Wakefield: the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has injected fresh new triple-doses of crazy into the anti-vax crusaders and conspiranoids, who are all over the Internet with dire warnings about the deadly dangers of COVID vaccines. Among these Covidiots are rising stars such as a right-wing rabble-rouser named Bret Weinstein, and a veterinary virologist named Vanden Bossche. One of my favorite journalists and commentators, Jef Rouner, has taken aim at this newest wave of dangerous anti-vax nonsense (link is in the next paragraph). I first discovered Jef's work when I was writing a post about the fact-checking web site Snopes a few years ago, and came across Jef's guide to arguing with Snopes deniers. I've been reading his work ever since.

What the hordes of anti-vax zealots apparently don’t realize — and that Jef deftly documents in this June 29 article for the Houston Press — is that Saint Wakefield’s own anti-vax crusades were motivated far more by money than by any genuine concern about public health. And Jef makes a good case for the exact same thing being true for today’s loudest voices in the fight against COVID-19 vaccines, like the aforementioned Weinstein and Bossche.

Whenever Jef writes just about anything, he gets a volcanic mountain of responses from various types of crazies, and his writings about COVID are apparently no exception.

Two months ago, I implored people to get vaccinated against COVID instead of taking horse dewormer, and my email has been a circus train of screwballs ever since. By far, the largest number of messages I get implore me to seek out the work of Bret Weinstein, a “professor in exile” and podcaster. I did just that, and I now believe the world is now in the beginning stages of Andrew Wakefield 2.0...

Following this, and for the benefit of those unfamiliar with the history, Jef goes into the story of Wakefield's folly, and then segues into the current darlings of the anti-vax lunacy legions, Weinstein and Bossche.

It's pretty obvious that these alarmists all love attention, which as I've often said is its own powerful form of currency, particularly in today's shallow social-media-dominated "culture." But like all hucksters and scammers, they also love real money. Concludes Jef:

The people who claim that current vaccination efforts are harming us, such as Weinstein and Vanden Bossche, do not appear to be arguing in good faith. It looks like a con, an old one at that, and we fall for it at our peril.

Amen to that. Here's that link again.

Related on this Whirled:

• March 2020: Coronacrazy: COVID-19 virus brings out the conspiranoids & fraudsters -- I wrote this when the pandemic was still pretty new. Not a whole lot has changed, except for the millions of deaths from COVID-19 (worldwide) that have occurred since then.
• March 2020: The Lie-land of Dr. Trudeau: Kevin Trudeau joins the ranks of the corona-crapitalists -- Talk about someone who promotes "health" advice and conspiracy narratives solely in the service of lining his own pockets; serial scammer Kevin Trudeau has been the master of this art for decades (even from prison). Pretty early on, he jumped on the COVID crisis as an opportunity to once again market himself as a one-of-a-kind source for seekrit information that "they" don't want you to know, and that you could only get from him (and you could find out more if you joined the seekrit club he founded, GIN (the Global Information Network)). Never mind that everything he wrote was a repeat of various conspiranoid narratives that were growing wild on the banks of the online fever swamps. He took all of that crap and branded it as his own.
• April 2020: Lockdown, schlockdown -- Kevin Trudeau is still pooping out COVID-19 nuggets from Camp Cupcake -- More of the same corona-crapitalism. Through a proxy, Trudeau wrote quite a few of these missives -- although interestingly enough, he's been silent recently, about COVID and everything else, since he's been on "home release."
• April 2020: "Dr." C: the "C" is for Covidiot -- Cancer quack, fake doctor, faux-tivational speaker, right-wing nutcake and alleged predator Leonard Coldwell is one of the most hysterical voices among the anti-vaxxers. It's too bad for his sick and bloated ego that most of the world hasn't heard of him, but in any case, his Covidiocy (and general idiocy) are pretty typical of the science-denying, conspiracy-swallowing masses who are both amusing and dangerous.
• April 2020: Bless this mess with MMS: phony church (and possibly a phony president?) tout bleachy cure-nothing for COVID-19 -- More quackery, this time involving The Former Guy in the White House...
• August 2020: Oleandrin: Are Trump and cronies trying to crapitalize on a new phony COVID-19 cure? -- And still more quackery, involving the same Former Guy.
  
  
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Right-wing whiners celebrate (unconstitutional) Florida bill against Big Tech "censorship"

 As you've no doubt heard by now, Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed a Big Tech "censorship" bill into law on May 24, 2021, boasting that it provides, at long last, a defense against Silicon Valley banning conservatives from social media. At least in Florida. From the Orlando Sentinel:

The law would slap daily fines of $100,000 on Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, and Amazon for each statewide political candidate removed from their platforms, and $10,000 a day for other candidates.

Other users must be notified when they’re banned or censored, including when a warning or other notice of false or disputed information is attached to their posts. Users also have the ability to sue companies for violating the law.

A provision of the bill, however, exempts companies that own a theme park, such as Walt Disney Co., which runs Disney+, a streaming service.

Since theme parks are such big business in Florida, the exemption for companies that own them is understandable from a strictly capitalistic perspective, but not from a perspective that has anything to do with free speech or moral principles or any of the other factors that contemporary republicans like to posture about. But even from a capitalistic perspective it's nonsensical in light of the fact that it will probably sabotage efforts by local governments to woo tech firms to Florida. Oops.

Here is a link to a page that provides links to everything you could possibly want to know about the history of Senate Bill 7072 (which apparently began life, appropriately enough, on April Fool's Day). Here's a link to a PDF of the text of the bill.

Over the past few years I've written numerous blog posts about the rantings and ravings of right-wing nuts who whine that they're being censored because of their "conservatism" -- f'rinstance, Scamworld hucksters like cancer quack/right-wing fanatic/predator Leonard Coldwell; lunatic rabble-rousers like Alex Jones or Mike "The Health Ranger" Adams; politicians like California's Devin Nunes, or the bastard children of Scamworld and politix such as Donald Trump and Junior.

All of these folks have spent a great deal of time snowflaking about being censored and persecuted and even death-threated because they're bold and fearless "truth tellers" and because the entire social media universe is in a conspiracy against "conservative voices." It's a given that if you're a republican or self-styled conservative these daze, you have a persecution complex that's bigger than Trump's butt in a pair of tennis shorts.

So it's no surprise that in the lead-up to the signing into law of the Florida bill, right-wing republicans from across the country were engaged in their usual moaning and pearl-clutching about being "censored" on tyrannical social media platforms. On May 6, 2021, one of my favorite bloggers and Facebook posters, Jim Wright, mused on the utter hypocrisy of the repubs' complaints.

Right Wing congresswoman Elise Stefanik [New York] is mad. Mad! Raging mad. Because her communications director was (briefly) suspended from Twitter.

"Republicans are united in fighting back against Big Tech’s tyranny?"

Something has to be done about this tyranny ... of an automated system briefly flagging an obscure functionary with 24 followers and then restoring the account a few hours later -- like pretty much every poor proletarian who's ever used social media.

Give me unrestricted Twitter or give me death!

Republicans are united in fighting against this tyranny!

Republicans. Yes, Republicans are united against the tyranny of big ... business?

Really?

The same 256 congressional Republicans who VOTED AGAINST NET NEUTRALITY and DELIBERATELY gave the very same big tech companies the power to decide who could and could not access the internet?

THOSE Republicans?

Are THOSE the Republicans united against Big Tech's tyranny?

The same "tyranny" they very specifically GAVE those very same companies?

The VERY SAME REPUBLICANS who are "on the march" currently passing laws in a multiple states making freedom of speech and the right to protest illegal in direct violation of the 1st Amendment?

THOSE REPUBLICANS?

Are those the republicans we're talking about here? The VERY SAME REPUBLICANS led by Ron DeSantis who just just passed draconian anti-voting laws in Florida this very morning and barred the press from access to the signing?

Is THAT one of the Republicans we're talking about? The VERY SAME REPUBLICANS who handed Big Tech billionaires a massive tax giveaway? And who rewarded the very same companies they're now complaining about with massive tax breaks? The same Republicans who said those companies were PEOPLE with more rights than actual people? The VERY SAME REPUBLICANS who side with billionaires and corporations and banks over ACTUAL AMERICAN CITIZENS every fucking day?

Are those the Republicans we're talking about?

I mean, godDAMN! Tell me more about these Republicans who are fighting Big Tech, standing up for the little guy, the average citizen.

Let's hear about THOSE Republicans.

Man, I love THAT fucking fairy tale.

That's about the size of it.

But hypocrisy hasn't stopped right-wing nutcakes from celebrating the Florida bill as a win. And some apparently can't wait to start suing those big tech companies, since the law allows individuals to take their grievances to court.

Well, I hate to rain on anyone's parade... no, I don't. I love doing that, at least if it's a fascist parade... but anyway, this bill is almost certainly unconstitutional. The wonderful Electronic Frontier Foundation, which advocates for free speech and equal access online, explains the constitutional flaws of the bill in this May 5 piece, posted a little over two weeks before DeSantis signed it into law. Following a brief history lesson regarding a similar-in-spirit bill from nearly 50 years ago, the writer nails the real reason for the current legislation.

...you might wonder why the Florida Legislature would pass a law doomed to failure, costing the state the time and expense of defending it in court. Politics, of course. The legislators who passed this bill probably knew it was unconstitutional, but may have seen political value in passing the base-pleasing statute, and blaming the courts when it gets struck down.

Politics is also the reason for the much-ridiculed exception for theme park owners. It’s actually a problem for the law itself. As the Supreme Court explained in Florida Star v BJF, carve-outs like this make the bill even more susceptible to a First Amendment challenge as under-inclusive.  Theme parks are big business in Florida, and the law’s definition of social media platform would otherwise fit Comcast (which owns Universal Studios' theme parks), Disney, and even Legoland. Performative legislation is less politically useful if it attacks a key employer and economic driver of your state. The theme park exception has also raised all sorts of amusing possibilities for the big internet companies to address this law by simply purchasing a theme park, which could easily be less expensive than compliance, even with the minimum 25 acres and 1 million visitors/year. Much as Section 230 Land would be high on my own must-visit list, striking the law down is the better solution.

The EFF piece acknowledges, as I have myself in previous blog posts, that there are real issues that need to be tackled regarding Big Tech's control over public conversation. I think most of us have experienced firsthand the confusion and frustration of being arbitrarily warned, suspended, or even banned by one of the social media platforms for a minor or accidental infraction, when others continue to get away with posting offensive or hateful or bigoted or threatening content. Or maybe, like me, you've reported offensive or threatening content to the platform and have been informed that it doesn't violate their community standards.

Long-time readers of this blog may recall that a few years ago, I was receiving harassing messages and emails as a direct result of a series of Facebook screeds posted by the notorious Leonard Coldwell, in which he falsely accused me of killing his favorite dog (!). He published my home address and cell phone number, the latter of which he could only have gotten from a mutual former friend of ours, or from an inquiry I had sent to the Mount Pleasant, SC police department regarding a police report about Coldwell (I never received a response from the PD, but later found out that my inquiry, address and all, became part of that report).

Along with the doxxing, Coldwell openly invited his followers to get in touch with me directly and let me know exactly what they thought about my vicious act. It was his lame and cowardly attempt to silence me, by inciting his followers to do his dirty work for him, because he was angry about the blog posts I had written about his quackery, scams, and general awfulness.

People were threatening to burn down my house in the middle of the night, and they were holding public discussions on Coldwell's Facebook page about all of the things that should be done to me as punishment for killing the dog -- shooting me, poisoning me, slowly torturing me to death...oh, yes, I got to read all of those sick and twisted fantasies posted by the sick and twisted followers of a sick and twisted man. Coldwell also posted some graphically detailed -- and false -- allegations about me sexually harassing him. I was blocked from participating on his forums so I couldn't even defend myself.

I reported these posts to Facebook... and Facebook said the posts didn't violate their community standards. Nice. Ultimately most of the posts were taken down, but some still remain.

So yeah, there's a lot that needs to be worked out with the tech giants; they do need to be reined in. A good starting place: The Santa Clara Principles On Transparency and Accountability in Content Moderation, which the EFF and numerous other non-profits came up with a few years ago. It's a reasonable basic guideline.

But unconstitutional laws like Florida's SB 7072 that pander to right-wing lunatics and whiners are not the answer to this problem that affects every one of us -- conservative, liberal, or apolitical.

Update, 2 July 2021: On Wednesday, June 30, a federal judge blocked this new law from going into effect July 1. U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle issued a preliminary injunction via a 31-page order, citing SB 7072 as unconstitutional and discriminatory. From the Miami Herald:

Calling it “riddled with imprecision and ambiguity,” a federal judge Wednesday blocked a new state law targeting social media behemoths such as Facebook and Twitter that can strip politicians and other users from their platforms.

U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle issued a preliminary injunction as he sided with online industry groups NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association, which filed the lawsuit challenging the measure pushed by Gov. Ron DeSantis and approved by Republican lawmakers this spring.

“The legislation now at issue was an effort to rein in social-media providers deemed too large and too liberal. Balancing the exchange of ideas among private speakers is not a legitimate government interest,” Hinkle wrote in Wednesday’s 31-page order.

Hinkle directed the state to suspend implementation until a final ruling on the lawsuit is released. He made it clear that he knows this law is politically motivated, and took several swipes at it during a hearing on June 28, saying to lawyers representing the DeSantis administration, "I won't put you on the spot and ask you if you've ever dealt with a statute that was more poorly drafted."

Of course, like most stories in both Scamworld and politix, this one has no neat and tidy ending, at least not yet. The right-wing whiners, led by Governor DeSantis and others, have no intention of giving up the battle. DeSantis is confident the state will prevail in the lawsuit. If it does, that will set an appalling precedent.

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