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Tag: Conspiracy theories

  • No, ‘Leave the World Behind’ and ‘Civil War’ Aren’t Happening Before Your Eyes

    No, ‘Leave the World Behind’ and ‘Civil War’ Aren’t Happening Before Your Eyes

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    Several people are typing, and they’re all saying Netflix’s Leave the World Behind is wildly prescient. The movie, directed by Sam Esmail, opens on a world where communication has been knocked out following a cyberattack. And earlier this week, when nearly all of Meta’s platforms—Facebook, Instagram, Threads—went down, people took to (other) social media platforms to post and hand-wring about the apocalypse.

    Most of the posts, per usual, were jokes: wry observations to help soothe the agita that comes with being alive when everything feels unstable. “Another dry run for Leave the World Behind,” wrote one X user. “I fear we are moving close to a Leave the World Behind scenario,” wrote another. “These tech glitches are increasingly [sic] with regularity.”

    But there was also a more conspiratorial undercurrent. For those who don’t know, Leave the World Behind was produced by Barack and Michelle Obama through their company Higher Ground Productions. Ever since the movie’s release, a conspiracy theory has persisted online that the film is somehow a warning about the widespread disorder to come.

    This same thread emerged late last month when an AT&T network outage wreaked havoc on US cellular networks. “The predictive programming of the Obama’s [sic] movie, Leave the World Behind, is becoming a little too real right now,” one user wrote on X. “I wouldn’t put it past our own federal government to institute a terrorist or cyber attack, just to blame it on foreign countries like China and Russia.”

    Odds are that nothing of the sort happened. Leave the World Behind is based on a 2020 book by Rumaan Alam and, according to the film’s director Sam Esmail, the former US president came on as a production partner only after the script was pretty much done. “I would just say [the conspiracy theorists] are pretty wrong in terms of his signaling,” he told Collider. “It had nothing to do with that.”

    Not that facts have ever gotten in the way of an online conspiracy before. Case in point, this week’s big trailer drop: Civil War. When the first trailer for Alex Garland’s next film dropped in December, online right-wing pundits speculated that it was also predictive programming, something meant to prepare the populace for events already planned by those in power. When the new trailer dropped this week, people on Reddit and elsewhere seemed to be fretting that the film will become, as The Hollywood Reporter put it, “MAGA fantasy fuel.”

    Ultimately, reactions like these to Leave the World Behind and Civil War merely serve as proof that they’re effective as works of fiction. They’re not part of some psyop to placate the public—they’re reactions to a political era that is fraught at best. Comfort is not a prerequisite for good filmmaking; movies are supposed to be unsettling sometimes. Concerns about a movie being too real are just signs that the filmmakers have tapped in to the collective psyche. Rather than think that Esmail or Garland—or Obama, for that matter—are trying to send some warning, perhaps consider the circumstances for why you’re worried that they might.

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    Angela Watercutter

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  • Inside Election Conspiracy Groups on Super Tuesday

    Inside Election Conspiracy Groups on Super Tuesday

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    Super Tuesday was a blowout for former president Donald Trump, who won 14 out of 15 states. And yet, Trump’s most ardent supporters who believe that all votes and elections are now irredeemably fraudulent spent the day boosting wild conspiracies online, predicting what would happen in November, and guessing how their perceived enemies will conspire to defeat Trump.

    Voting rights groups reported very few issues impacting Super Tuesday voters, but that didn’t stop members of election-denial groups. Instead, they grasped onto anything they could find that seemingly indicated a grand election conspiracy. Accusations of fraud trickled in slowly on Tuesday before exploding around 10:30 am when users of Facebook, Instagram, and Threads all found out that the platforms were offline.

    Rather than wait to find out the real reasons—which turned out to be a technical issue that Meta fixed within 90 minutes—members of election-denial groups and conspiracy channels on Telegram quickly claimed foul.

    “Today is Super Tuesday and almost every single major tech platform is down,” one election denial influencer wrote on Telegram. “That is not a coincidence … The very definition of a ‘Dry-Run’ is a rehearsal of a performance or procedure before the real one.” They then claimed that the fact X, Telegram, and Truth Social remained online was “evidence” that these platforms “may very well be the only ones available on Election Day.”

    The belief that the Meta outage was planned was shared widely on multiple platforms, including X and pro-Trump message boards like The Donald. “Practice run for November?” wrote Rogan O’Handley, a major far-right influencer with 1.4 million followers, in a post on X that has been viewed more than 3 million times.

    “They are practicing shutting down communication, so you don’t report election fraud,” a user of The Donald wrote in a thread.

    Other influencers spent the day harkening back to 2020 election-fraud claims. In the Telegram channel run by David Clements, one of the most influential election-denial figures to emerge since 2020, the day began with the public release of a film he made about the 2020 presidential election being stolen.

    As the day progressed, Clements shared Super Tuesday conspiracies, including an unsubstantiated claim that voters received an error message when they tried to vote in Dallas.

    The claim was based on a picture first posted by a writer for the conspiracy website Gateway Pundit. However, election integrity group Common Cause pointed out in a post on X that the picture wasn’t actually showing a voting machine but rather what’s called an “emergency drawer.”

    “It is a locked, secure ballot receptacle to store and scan ballots ensuring they’re included in the polling place’s count at the end of the day,” the group explained.

    But on Telegram, such explanations were not seen or were otherwise ignored. “Keep watching & pointing out their corruption everyone,” one Clements supporter wrote.

    Later in the day, news broke that Taylor Swift had urged her 282 million Instagram followers to “vote the people who most represent YOU into power.” This, unsurprisingly, was mocked by the election-denial groups, as the pop star was once again accused of being part of a psyop.

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    David Gilbert

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  • Secret history: Even before the revolution, America was a nation of conspiracy theorists

    Secret history: Even before the revolution, America was a nation of conspiracy theorists

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    WASHINGTON — A brutal conflict in Europe was fresh in people’s minds and the race for the White House turned ugly as talk of secret societies and corruption roiled the United States.

    It was 1800, and conspiracy theories were flourishing across America. Partisan newspapers spread tales of European elites seeking to seize control of the young democracy. Preachers in New England warned of plots to abolish Christianity in favor of godlessness and depravity.

    This bogeyman of the early republic was the Illuminati, a secret organization founded in Germany dedicated to free thinking and opposed to religious dogma. Despite the Illuminati’s lack of real influence in America, conspiracy theorists imagined the group’s fingerprints were everywhere. They said Illuminati manipulation had caused France’s Reign of Terror, the wave of executions and persecutions that followed the French Revolution. They feared something similar in America.

    From the witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts, to fears of the Illuminati, from the Red Scare to the John Birch Society to QAnon, conspiracy theories have served as dark counterprogramming to the American story taught in history books. If a healthy democracy relies on the trust of its citizens, then conspiracy theories show what happens when that trust begins to fray.

    Change a few details, add in a pizza parlor, and the hysteria surrounding the Illuminati sounds a lot like QAnon, the contemporary conspiracy theory that claims a powerful cabal of child-sacrificing satanists secretly shapes world events. Like the Illuminati craze, QAnon emerged at a time of uncertainty, polarization and distrust.

    “The more things change, the more things seem to come back,” said Jon Graham, a writer and translator based in Vermont who is an expert on the Illuminati and the claims that have surrounded the group for centuries. “There’s the mainstream narrative of history. And then there’s the other narrative — the alternative explanations for history — that never really goes away.”

    Just like today, these bizarre stories often reveal deeply rooted anxieties focused on racial and religious strife and technological and economic change.

    The most persistent conspiracy theories can survive on the fringes for decades, before suddenly reappearing with new details, villains and heroes, often at a time of social upheaval or economic dislocation. Sometimes, these beliefs can erupt into action, as they did on Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters broke into the U.S. Capitol.

    In America’s early days, the villain was the Illuminati.

    Created in 1776, the group was part of a fad of supposedly secret societies that became fashionable in Europe. It was defunct by 1800 and had no presence in the U.S. Still, claims spread that Illuminati agents were working undercover to take over the federal government, outlaw Christianity and promote sexual promiscuity and devil worship among the young.

    The theory was picked up by the Federalist Party and played a key part in the 1800 presidential race between President John Adams, a Federalist, and Vice President Thomas Jefferson, a Democratic-Republican. Rumors circulated among Federalists that Jefferson was an atheist who would hand America over to France if elected president.

    Jefferson did win, and the Federalists never fully recovered. Tales of the Illuminati receded, but soon the Freemasons emerged to take their place in the wild imaginings of early Americans.

    The Freemasons counted many leading figures, including George Washington, as members. Their influence fueled whispers that suggested the fraternal organization was a satanic conspiracy bent on ruling the world.

    To understand why so many were convinced, it’s important to remember the anxiety that followed the American Revolution, said Jonathan Den Hartog, a historian at Samford University. Many people were unsure whether the country would last.

    “Living through this period, a lot of people were very nervous. And when there’s uncertainty and fear, people are going to cast about for explanations,” Den Hartog said.

    Both the Illuminati and the Freemasonscontinue to make appearances in conspiracy theories even today.

    The middle of the 19th century also saw thousands of Americans join new religious movements during the Second Great Awakening. One popular group, the Millerites, was founded by William Miller, a veteran of the War of 1812 who used numeric clues in the Bible to calculate the ending of the world: Oct. 22, 1844.

    Before the appointed day, many of Miller’s followers sold or gave away their possessions, donned white clothing and headed for high land — in some parts of Massachusetts they climbed trees on the highest hills — so as to hasten their reunion with God. When Oct. 22 passed, they came down from the hills. Some returned to their old lives. Others insisted the End had come, only invisibly.

    “It was called the ‘Great Disappointment,’” said J. Gordon Melton, a Baylor University historian and Millerite expert. “A lot of people were very disappointed — Miller included. But others just said, ‘Well, they just got the date wrong.’”

    The belief that the world will soon end — or that a new era will dawn — shows up again and again in popular conspiracy theories.

    QAnon adherents have long predicted a “Great Awakening” that will occur, following “the storm,” when former President Trump triumphs and his enemies — including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and actor Tom Hanks — are exposed and possibly executed on television. Many dates have been suggested for this final, bloody victory, predictions that are later shrugged off when proved incorrect.

    In 2021, thousands of QAnon believers gathered in Dallas after one of their leaders predicted the return of John F. Kennedy Jr., who features prominently in QAnon lore despite his death in 1999. Crestfallen believers later decided they had their dates wrong.

    Something similar happened late last year, when many conspiracy theorists claimed a long-planned test of the emergency broadcast system would activate chemicals contained within COVID-19 vaccines. Those who got the shot would be killed or perhaps turned into zombies, according to this thinking. It didn’t happen.

    The assassination of President John F. Kennedy, along with the Vietnam War and Watergate, later set the stage for our current era of “alternative facts” by convincing large groups of Americans that they could no longer trust their own government.

    Today’s conspiracy theories reflect that same distrust, and an unease with the rapid pace of economic, technological and environmental change. Think of claims that the 1969 moon landing was faked, that the government covered up evidence of extraterrestrials, or that the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were an inside job.

    Fears about 5G wireless towers or vaccines containing microchips, to use two newer examples, reflect fears of government control and new technologies. Claims that climate change is a lie offer an easy answer to a complicated, existential threat caused by people’s own behavior.

    Then there’s the coronavirus pandemic, which created ideal conditions for conspiracy theories: widespread fear and economic uncertainty, a deadly threat that emerged mysteriously from a geopolitical adversary, swiftly created vaccines, and a controversial government response.

    “COVID really cranked all the dials to 11,” said Joseph Uscinski, a University of Miami political scientist who studies belief in conspiracy theories.

    The internet has made belief in conspiracy theories more visible and shareable. Trump and other politicians have learned how to exploit belief in conspiracy theories for their own ends.

    But history shows America has withstood hoaxes, conspiracy theories and cycles of distrust before. Den Hartog, the Samford historian, said he would like to believe the nation can do it again.

    “This gives me some hope, to know that we’ve had problems and we weathered them,” he said. “There is an American capacity to take a breath, to try harder on our civic life and to rebuild trust.”

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  • Grave peril of digital conspiracy theories: ‘What happens when no one believes anything anymore?’

    Grave peril of digital conspiracy theories: ‘What happens when no one believes anything anymore?’

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    WASHINGTON — Days after Maui’s wildfires killed scores of people and destroyed thousands of homes last August, a shocking claim spread with alarming speed on YouTube and TikTok: The blaze on the Hawaiian island was set deliberately, using futuristic energy weapons developed by the U.S. military.

    Claims of “evidence” soon emerged: video footage on TikTok showing a beam of blinding white light, too straight to be lightning, zapping a residential neighborhood and sending flames and smoke into the sky. The video was shared many millions of times, amplified by neo-Nazis, anti-government radicals and supporters of the QAnon conspiracy theory, and presented as proof that America’s leaders had turned on the country’s citizens.

    “What if Maui was just a practice run?” one woman asked on TikTok. “So that the government can use a direct energy weapon on us?”

    The TikTok clip had nothing to do with the Maui fires. It was actually video of an electrical transformer explosion in Chile earlier in the year. But that didn’t stop a TikTok user with a habit of posting conspiracy videos from using the clip to sow more fear and doubt. It was just one of severalsimilarvideos and images doctored and passed off as proof that the wildfires were no accident.

    Conspiracy theories have a long history in America, but now they can be fanned around the globe in seconds, amplified by social media, further eroding truth with a newfound destructive force.

    With the United States and many other nations facing big elections in 2024, , the perils of rapidly spreading disinformation, using ever more sophisticated technology such as artificial intelligence, now also threaten democracy itself — both by fueling extremist groups and by encouraging distrust.

    “I think the post-truth world may be a lot closer than we’d like to believe,” said A.J. Nash, vice president for intelligence at ZeroFox, a cybersecurity firm that tracks disinformation. “What happens when no one believes anything anymore?”

    Extremists and authoritarians deploy disinformation as potent weapons used to recruit new followers and expand their reach, using fake video and photos to fool their followers.

    And even when they fail to convince people, the conspiracy theories embraced by these groups contribute to mounting distrust of authorities and democratic institutions, causing people to reject reliable sources of information while encouraging division and suspicion.

    Melissa Sell, a 33-year-old Pennsylvania resident, is among those who has lost faith in the facts.

    “If it’s a big news story on the TV, the majority of the time it’s to distract us from something else. Every time you turn around, there’s another news story with another agenda distracting all of us,” she said. Sell thinks the Maui wildfires may have been intentionally set, perhaps to distract the public, perhaps to test a new weapon. “Because the government has been caught in lies before, how do you know?” she said.

    Absent meaningful federal regulations governing social media platforms, it’s largely left to Big Tech companies to police their own sites, leading to confusing, inconsistent rules and enforcement. Meta, the owner of Instagram and Facebook, says it makes an effort to remove extremist content. Platforms such as X, formerly known as Twitter, as well as Telegram and far-right sites like Gab, allow it to flourish.

    Federal election officials and some lawmakers have suggested regulations governing AI, including rules that would require political campaigns to label AI-generated images used in its ads. But those proposals wouldn’t affect the ability of extremist groups or foreign governments to use AI to mislead Americans.

    Meanwhile, U.S.-based tech platforms have rolled back their efforts to root out misinformation and hate speech, following the lead of Elon Musk, who fired most of the content moderators when he purchased X.

    “There’s been a big step backward,” said Evan Hansen, the former editor of Wired.com who was Twitter’s director of curation before leaving when Musk purchased the platform. “It’s gotten to be a very difficult job for the casual observer to figure out: What do I believe here?”

    Hansen said a combination of government regulations, voluntary action by tech titans and public awareness will be needed to combat the coming wave of synthetic media. He noted the Israel-Hamas war has already seen a deluge of fake and altered photos and video. Elections in the U.S. and around the world this year will create similar opportunities for digital mischief.

    The disinformation spread by extremist groups and even politicians like former President Donald Trump can create the conditions for violence, by demonizing the other side, targeting democratic institutions and convincing their supporters that they’re in an existential struggle against those who don’t share their beliefs.

    Trump has spread lies about elections, voting and his opponents for years. Building on his specious claims of a deep state that controls the federal government, he has echoed QAnon and other conspiracy theories and encouraged his followers to see their government as an enemy. He even suggested that now-retired Army Gen. Mark Milley, whom Trump himself nominated to be the top U.S. military officer during his administration, was a traitor and deserved execution. Milley said he has had to take security precautions to protect his family.

    The list of incidents blamed on extremists motivated by conspiracy theories is growing. The Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, attacks on vaccine clinics, anti-immigrant fervor in Spain; and anti-Muslim hate in India: All were carried out by people who believed conspiracy theories about their opponents and who decided violence was an appropriate response.

    Polls and research surveys on conspiracy theories show about half of Americans believe in at least one conspiracy theory, and those views seldom lead to violence or extremism. But for some, these beliefs can lead to social isolation and radicalization, interfering with their relationships, career and finances. For an even smaller subset, they can lead to violence.

    The credible data that exists on crimes motivated by conspiracy theories shows a disturbing increase. In 2019, researchers at the University of Maryland’s National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism identified six violent attacks in which perpetrators said their actions were prompted by a conspiracy theory. In 2020, the year of the most recent survey, there were 116.

    Laws designed to rein in the power of social media and artificial intelligence to spread disinformation aren’t likely to pass before the 2024 election, and even if they are, enforcement will be a challenge, according to AI expert Vince Lynch, CEO of the tech company IV.AI.

    “This is happening now, and it’s one of the reasons why our society seems so fragmented,” Lynch said. “Hopefully there may be AI regulation someday, but we are already through the looking glass. I do think it’s already too late.”

    To believers, the facts don’t matter.

    “You can create the universe you want,” said Danielle Citron, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law who studies online harassment and extremism. “If the truth doesn’t matter, and there is no accountability for these false beliefs, then people will start to act on them.”

    Sell, the conspiracy theorist from Pennsylvania, said she began to lose trust in the government and the media shortly after the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, that left 20 students and six educators dead. Sell thought the shooter looked too small and weak to carry out such a bloody act, and the gut-wrenching interviews with stricken loved ones seemed too perfect, almost practiced.

    “It seemed scripted,” she said. “The pieces did not fit.”

    That idea — that the victims of the rampage were actors hired as part of a plot to push gun control laws — was notably spread by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. The families of Sandy Hook victims sued, and the Infowars host was later ordered to pay nearly $1.5 billion in damages.

    Claims that America’s elected leaders and media cannot be trusted feature heavily in many conspiracy theories with ties to extremism.

    In 2018, a committed conspiracy theorist from Florida mailed pipe bombs to CNN, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and several other top Democrats; the man’s social media feed was littered with posts about child sacrifice and chemtrails — the debunked claim that airplane vapor clouds contain chemicals or biological agents being used to control the population.

    In another act of violence tied to QAnon, a California man was charged with using a speargun to kill his two children in 2021. He told an FBI agent that he had been enlightened by QAnon conspiracy theories and had become convinced that his wife “possessed serpent DNA and had passed it on to his children.”

    In 2022, a Colorado woman was found guilty of attempting to kidnap her son from foster care after her daughter said she began associating with QAnon supporters. Other adherents have been accused of environmental vandalism, firing paintballs at military reservists, abducting a child in France and even killing a New York City mob boss.

    The coronavirus pandemic, with its attendant social isolation, created ideal conditions for new conspiracy theories as the virus spread fear and uncertainty around the globe. Vaccine clinics were attacked, doctors and nurses threatened. 5G communication towers were vandalized and burned as a wild theory spread claiming they were being used to activate microchips hidden in the vaccine. Fears about vaccines led one Wisconsin pharmacist to destroy a batch of the highly sought after immunizations, while bogus claims about supposed COVID-19 treatments and cures led to hospitalizations and death.

    Few recent events, however, display the power of conspiracy theories like the Jan. 6 insurrection, when thousands of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, vandalized the offices of Congress and fought with police in an attempt to disrupt the certification of the 2020 election.

    More than 1,200 people have been charged with Capitol riot-related crimes. About 900 have pleaded guilty or been convicted after trials. Over 750 have been sentenced, with roughly two-thirds receiving some term of imprisonment, according to data compiled by The Associated Press. Many of those charged said they had bought into Trump’s conspiracy theories about a stolen election.

    “We, meaning Trump supporters, were lied to,” wrote Jan. 6 defendant Robert Palmer in a letter to a judge, who later sentenced him to more than five years for attacking police. “They kept spitting out the false narrative about a stolen election and how it was ‘our duty’ to stand up to tyranny.”

    Many conspiracy theorists reject any link between their beliefs and violence, saying they’re being blamed for the actions of a tiny few. Others insist these incidents never occurred, and that events like the Jan. 6 attack were actually false-flag events concocted by the government and media.

    “Lies, lies lies: They’re lying to you over and over and over again,” said Steve Girard, a Pennsylvania man who has protested the incarceration of Jan. 6 defendants. He spoke to the AP while waving a large American flag on a busy street in Washington.

    While they may have taken on a bigger role in our politics, surveys show that belief in conspiracy theories hasn’t changed much over the years, according to Joe Uscinski, a University of Miami professor and an expert on the history of conspiracy theories. He said he believes that while the internet plays a role in spreading conspiracy theories, most of the blame lies with the politicians who exploit believers.

    “Who was the bigger spreader of COVID misinformation: some guy with four followers on Twitter or the president of the United States? The problem is our politicians,” Uscinski said. “Jan. 6 happened, and people said: ‘Oh, this is Facebook’s fault.’ No, the president of the United States told his followers to be at this place, at this time and to fight like hell.”

    Governments in Russia, China, Iran and elsewhere have also pushed extremist content on social media as part of their efforts to destabilize Western democracy. Russia has amplified numerous anti-U.S. conspiracy theories, including ones claiming the U.S. runs secret germ warfare labs and created HIV as a bioweapon, as well as conspiracy theories accusing Ukraine of being a Nazi state.

    China has helped spread claims that the U.S. created COVID-19 as a bioweapon.

    Tom Fishman, the CEO at the nonprofit Starts With Us, said that Americans can take steps to defend the social fabric by turning off their computer and meeting the people they disagree with. He said Americans must remember what ties them together.

    “We can look at the window and see foreshadowing of what could happen if we don’t: threats to a functioning democracy, threats of violence against elected leaders,” he said. “We have a civic duty to get this right.”

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  • MTG Releases New Tell-All Book – Bill Tope, Humor Times

    MTG Releases New Tell-All Book – Bill Tope, Humor Times

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    MTG shovels the dirt on friends and foes alike in new tell-all book.

    Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R), representing Georgia’s 6th Congressional district since 2021, has come out with a tell-all book, a memoir of her years of political enlightenment which she states began in 2015, with the escalator ride taken in Trump Tower by future President Donald J. Trump.

    tell-all book, Marjorie Taylor Greene
    MTG counts how many actual facts are in her new tell-all book. Photo by Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0.

    In the book, titled I’d Drink His Bathwater: My Loyalty to The Donald, Greene recounts the highlights of her career so far. For example, she promulgates many controversial political (conspiracy) theories, including that the 9/11 2001 attack on the Twin Towers in New York was a so-called inside job, perpetrated by elements of the “deep state.” Greene states the actual perpetrators were not Saudi radicals, but in fact Jews and seminal figures of the nascent Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement.

    Another theory put forth by Greene is that the spate of destructive wildfires which ravaged the Pacific Northwest some five years ago was the work of space lasers manipulated by Rothschild family “bad Jews.” Said Greene: “They’re always up to shit.”

    Still another conspiracy theory she sets forth in detail is that rogue Democrats, also enmeshed in the deep state, operated a cannibalistic child-sex-trafficking ring out of a Washington D.C. pizza parlor. “They wasn’t just puttin’ pepperonis on them pies,” claimed Greene in a post on Twitter. Hillary Clinton, stated Greene, “was the bitch behind this disgraceful episode.”

    Greene, who divorced her husband of more than 30 years in 2022, has been linked romantically in the tabloids with former President Donald J. Trump. When Trump was temporarily incarcerated in Fulton County, Georgia last year, to have his mug shot and fingerprints taken, Greene allegedly had a conjugal visit with the ex-president. Trump reportedly said that if such interludes continued to occur, then he’d “be happy to spend more time in the clink.”

    MTG’s political career has been a mixed bag. Although she was stripped of her committee assignments during her first term, due to imprudent public remarks and posts on social platforms, Greene. a fast friend of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, has in her second term gained membership on the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability and the House Committee on Homeland Security where, she wrote, she has “consistently raised hell.” She has personally introduced bills to impeach some 40 members of the Biden administration, including all the cabinet members.

    On Jan. 20, 2021, Greene introduced a bill of impeachment against newly-inaugurated President Joe Biden. It was his first day on the job. And she has said that she would move to vacate the Speaker’s chair if new Speaker Mike Johnson managed to pass legislation which would afford military aid to Ukraine, which is involved in an on-going war with Russia.

    “That there’s a territorial dispute,” cried Greene on the House floor, gnashing her teeth. “We got no business helping out them Ukraine Nazis,” she recounted, quoting herself. Greene went on to write that, when Donald Trump is reelected, then “he’ll nuke them sons’o’bitches!”

    Green concludes her tell-all book by looking to the future, a future with Donald J. Trump at America’s helm. “Trump has already had a big effect on my life,” she wrote. Emulating the 45th president, she has taken up golf. She said her low score matches her record at the dead lift — 325.

    “I would,” she quipped on the last page of the memoir, quoting the book’s title, “drink Trump’s bath water.”

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  • New Hampshire's aging ballot scanners pose challenges. Problems could prompt conspiracy theories

    New Hampshire's aging ballot scanners pose challenges. Problems could prompt conspiracy theories

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    When New Hampshire voters cast their ballots in Tuesday’s first-in-the-nation primary, many will do so using scanners that are at least 15 years old — with some potentially dating back to Bill Clinton’s presidency.

    Election experts say the aging AccuVote ballot tabulators in use across roughly half the state’s towns and cities don’t pose additional security risks. The concern is their age.

    With a dwindling supply of replacement parts, breakdowns could create Election Day headaches for local election officials, who might be forced to count ballots by hand — a process that could delay reporting their results. Malfunctions and ballot-counting delays in other states in recent years have sometimes been used to promote conspiracy theories that undermine public confidence in the vote, despite no evidence of any widespread problems with voting machines.

    Franklin, a small city about 20 miles north of the state capital, has no wiggle room if something goes awry with its scanners.

    “We have three machines and three polling places. That’s it, no backup,” said Olivia Zink, a member of the Franklin City Council who also is executive director of the voter advocacy group Coalition for Open Democracy. “If one goes down, we hand count.”

    Zink, who will be working at her local polling place Tuesday, said she is less worried about hand counting even if turnout is robust among the 4,500 registered voters because the ballot contains only the presidential primary. She urged everyone to be patient if results are delayed. One potential glitch: If it’s snowy or rainy, damp ballots can mess up a ballot scanner.

    “If it’s a sunny, beautiful day, we’re in great shape,” Zink said.

    Reducing the chances of a major disruption is the ballot itself, with just a single race and a state requirement that vote counting continue uninterrupted until finished. New Hampshire will hold primaries for state and local races later in the year.

    All New Hampshire voters mark their ballot by hand, but how those ballots are counted depends on the city or town. Just under half opt to hand count and have done so for years, but those are among the least populated in the state. The most populous towns and cities use machine tabulators, so most ballots cast in the state are counted electronically using the AccuVote scanners.

    The same type of ballot scanners are used by local voting jurisdictions in five other states, according to Verified Voting, a nonpartisan group that tracks U.S. voting equipment.

    “You could say it’s primitive technology. You could say it’s simple and reliable technology. Both of those things can be true,” said Mark Lindeman, the group’s policy and strategy director.

    He said New Hampshire’s tabulators have been kept in good condition and that the biggest challenge for election officials is finding replacement parts. He sees the worst-case scenario as local election officials having to resort to hand counting because a tabulator has failed and they don’t have access to a backup.

    “As worst cases go, that’s a pretty good one,” Lindeman said. “The ballots are safe. This will not prevent New Hampshire voters from voting or prevent New Hampshire voters from having their votes counted.”

    Even so, any problems with voting machines or ballot counting devices provide an opening for those who want to cast doubt on the outcome. Former President Donald Trump, who won this week’s Iowa caucuses but faces a potentially tougher test in New Hampshire, regularly signals that an anticipated close election will be “rigged.”

    His false claims about widespread fraud in the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden, has produced a tsunami of conspiracy theories about voting machines.

    “If there are major failures and results come really late, and if there is not information ahead of time to the public that we might be hand-counting and what that involves — in a worst-case scenario the vacuum that leaves could allow folks to come forward with conspiracy theories and question what the results are,” said McKenzie St. Germain with the voter advocacy group America Votes NH.

    In Derry, south of Manchester, Town Clerk Tina Guilford tested her eight tabulators this week to ensure they were working properly and counting ballots correctly. It’s a process being repeated across the state as local election officials prepare for the primary.

    Derry’s tabulators are roughly turn-of-the-century technology — each about 20 to 22 years old, Guilford said. The town agreed to buy replacements that officials hope will be in place by March when new tabulators will be certified for use in the state.

    Derry, with its nearly 20,000 registered voters, doesn’t need all eight AccuVote scanners running at the same time, so they have options if one were to be taken out of service, Guilford said. It has happened before, when hand sanitizer gummed up a machine in 2020 during the pandemic.

    “I don’t foresee any issues,” she said.

    Secretary of State David Scanlan, New Hampshire’s top election official, said he has been encouraging local officials to make sure they have enough staff to handle any hand counting that may be necessary.

    It’s expected that every jurisdiction will have to count some ballots by hand given Biden’s decision to skip the state’s primary in favor of a revamped Democratic schedule that elevated South Carolina over Iowa and New Hampshire. That has prompted a write-in campaign for him, and any ballots with write-in candidates will have to be tallied by hand.

    In recent years, hand counting has gained favor among those pushing conspiracy theories about the 2020 election as they seek to ban voting machines and electronic tabulators. While hand counting is used in some parts of the country, it usually occurs in small jurisdictions where the process is manageable.

    Last year, New Hampshire lawmakers rejected a proposal that would have required all votes to be counted by hand.

    Experts say not only are machines faster, but studies have shown they are more accurate. Many election officials do rely on some measure of hand counting as part of their post-election process to verify that the machines worked correctly.

    Scanlan said he has been encouraging voters to understand that it’s not unusual for some machines to have problems and stressed that election officials have plans to deal with it, even if it means a delay in releasing results.

    “That just happens in any election,” he said. “I would expect that this election is going to be no different than any other election we’ve conducted in the past.”

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  • Jeffrey Epstein list release sparks Donald Trump conspiracy theory

    Jeffrey Epstein list release sparks Donald Trump conspiracy theory

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    The release of previously sealed court documents relating to the late disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein has prompted theories that it was intentionally timed to coincide with a separate disclosure by Donald Trump.

    On Wednesday, a U.S. District Court in New York published the names of alleged associates of the sex offender, after Judge Loretta Preska found that there was no legal justification for continuing to withhold the names in December.

    Included on that list were two former presidents: Trump and Bill Clinton. A Trump spokesperson said the release “thoroughly debunked” any claims regarding his relationship with Epstein, while Clinton reiterated that he had cut ties with Epstein before any allegations about him came to light.

    The highly-anticipated documents did not insinuate any wrongdoing on the part of those named, whose lawyers were able to view the files before they were unsealed and lodge objections if any.

    Late financier Jeffrey Epstein (L) and former President Donald Trump (R) pictured together at Mar-a-Lago, Palm Beach, Florida, on January 1, 1997. The unsealing of court documents relating to Epstein has prompted theories that it was intentionally timed to coincide with a separate disclosure by Donald Trump.
    Davidoff Studios/Getty Images

    The release came within hours of Trump taking to his social media site Truth Social to publish a 32-page dossier that claims to provide evidence for his allegation that the 2020 presidential election—which he lost—was subject to fraud in five swing states.

    The former president claimed the report was “fully verified” and “compiled by the most highly qualified Election Experts.” He warned that if the supposed issue was not addressed, “it will happen again, and be virtually impossible for Republicans to WIN ELECTIONS in the future.”

    The document did not name any of the experts that Trump claimed had compiled it.

    Trump continues to claim the 2020 election was rigged despite no official investigation supporting the assertion, and he has already suggested he thinks the 2024 election too could be subject to interference.

    The timing of the two releases prompted some conservatives on social media to suggest the Epstein document had been unsealed to undermine attention towards Trump’s report.

    “Is it any coincidence that within hours of Trump exposing the largest voter fraud operation in history, they unseal the Epstein court docs?” David Leatherwood, a self-described “ultra MAGA,” wrote.

    “Did yall [sic] realize Trump just released the entire proof of election fraud in the swing states the same time the Epstein files are released. Coincidence?” another user said.

    “Don’t let Trump’s just-released damning summary of 2020 presidential election fraud be overshadowed by the newly-released Epstein list,” Susan Bearry argued. “They are masters at diverting our attention.”

    Newsweek approached a spokesperson for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York via email for comment on Thursday.

    Included in the dossier was supposed evidence of election fraud in Georgia. Trump is currently facing a criminal trial in the state over allegations he attempted to overturn the 2020 election result, as well as another, federal trial on similar charges.

    In 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty to procuring a child for prostitution in 2005 and served 13 months in prison. He was accused of sexually abusing as many as three dozen underage girls.

    He was arrested again in July 2019 on federal charges of trafficking minors for sex in Florida and New York between 2002 and 2005 but died in a Manhattan jail cell in an apparent suicide.

    Epstein was also alleged to have flown underage girls to his private island in the Caribbean and to have offered them to wealthy and influential associates for the purposes of blackmail. While his long-time girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell was found guilty in 2021 of the sexual trafficking of minors, no other person has been criminally charged in relation to the claims.