Rising fascism in the US

What form of democracy is this? Corbyn barred from running.

Those charges against Corbyn were complete bullshit. Starmer can roast in hell.

"All organisations, whether they are firms, charities or public bodies, have a duty to protect their members and employees. Britain’s equality laws apply to them all. Those organisations in the public eye have a particular responsibility to comply with the law, and to set high standards in tackling discrimination, including all forms of racism.

“In October 2020, following a thorough investigation of the UK Labour Party that found unlawful acts of harassment and discrimination, we made detailed recommendations to ensure that the Party adheres to equality law.

“We have reviewed progress with the agreed action plan since then. On 31 January 2023, we concluded our monitoring as we were satisfied that the Party had implemented the necessary actions to improve its complaints, recruitment, training and other procedures to the legal standards required. This will help to protect current and future Labour Party members from discrimination and harassment.

“No organisation is above the law. Every employer and every public body must take active steps to address racism and all other forms of illegal discrimination. We are pleased that our investigation and action plan has had the desired impact in this case.”

A Republican campaign consultant already known and convicted for his ties for setting up Russian financial contributions to the campaign of former President Donald Trump has been found guilty once again for a similar crime, this time in a different state across the country.

Jesse Benton, who is well known throughout GOP political inner circles, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for allowing a Russian national to make an illegal contribution to former President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign.

Benton will be serving the prison time for charging Russian national Roman Vasilenko $100,000 just to take a picture with Trump, and then donated $25,000 to the campaign. The event occurred September 2016 at the Ritz Carlton in Philadelphia, according to court documents.

Benton, from Texas, was previously convicted for a similar crime in Iowa, and only received probation.

For the crime in Philadelphia, the $75,000 profit margin from the $100,000 photo opportunity went directly to Benton's own company, Titan Strategies. The actual $25,000 donation went to Trump's campaign committee, Trump Victory and the Republican National Committee.

The violation occurred when all three groups--Trump Victory, the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee supposedly unknowingly made false reports to the Federal Election Commission that the donation came from Benton and not Vasilenko.

As standard with federal laws, foreign individuals or foreign companies are not allowed to contribute to domestic political campaigns.

Benton was convicted in November along with co-defendant Doug Wead, both guilty of making electoral contributions by foreign nationals, electoral contributions in the name of another person and causing false records.

Benton's client portfolio includes Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Rand Paul (R-KY). He also has served as the lead chief strategist for Great America PAC, a political action committee that supported Trump.

Trump pardoned Benton in 2021 prior to leaving the White House.

In the sentencing memo U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden stated, "Defendant's conduct here was brazen, intentional and unrepentant."

People with greater cognitive reflectiveness tend to be better at distinguishing disinformation from real information, according to new research. However, in Hungary, voters who oppose the government used their thinking skills to question false information that was both concordant and discordant with their political views, while voters who support the government were far less likely to question fake news. The new findings appear in Scientific Reports.

The dissemination of fake news can have harmful consequences on individuals and society. It can lead to the spread of misinformation, create confusion and division, and even influence people’s behavior and decisions.

“Our interest in this topic originates in a contradiction: Hungary was invaded by Russia/the Soviet Union several times over the course of its history, and the latest occupation took place between 1944-1991, so many Hungarian adults had personal experiences related to the occupation,” explained study author Laura Faragó, an assistant psychology professor at Eötvös Loránd University.

“Nevertheless, due to the systematic disinformation campaigns in the mainstream media, many Hungarians have a pro-Russian leaning, and they even blame Ukrainians for the war initiated by Russia, which is irrational concerning their own personal historical experiences. Therefore, we thought that examining susceptibility to disinformation is at utmost importance in this country.”

The researchers sought to replicate a U.S. study regarding the psychological predictors of susceptibility to fake news. They used a Hungarian polling company to recruit a sample of 991 participants, who completed assessments of fake news discernment, cognitive reflectiveness, and digital media literacy. They also filled out questionnaires regarding their demographic information.

To assess fake news discernment, the researchers presented 15 fake and 15 real news headlines to participants in the format of a Facebook post. Participants were asked whether they had seen the story before, how accurate they believed the claim to be, and whether they would consider sharing it online. The headlines were taken from fact-checking sites and mainstream news sources, and contained a mix of politically-charged (pro-government) and politically-neutral content.

Those who scored higher on the test of cognitive reflectiveness were more likely to recognize fake information. The test contained questions that tend to generate quick and intuitive — but incorrect — answers. In other words, those who score high on the test tend to reflect and deliberate on the problem rather than “going with their gut.”

Additionally, greater digital media literacy was positively related to distinguishing real from fake news. Participants were considered to have greater digital media literacy if they disagreed with statements such as “I have trouble finding things that I’ve saved on my computer” and “I rely on family members to introduce me to new technology.”

“Our study found that analytic thinking and digital literacy skills lead to better recognition of disinformation,” Faragó told PsyPost. “Nevertheless, analytic thinking interacted with partisanship: the impact of analytic thinking on fake news discernment was more significant for opposition voters compared to supporters of the government. However, the visibility of news sources (mainstream media vs fake news sites) did not have an impact on individuals’ ability to recognize fake news, which contradicted our expectations.”

When it came to politically-neutral headlines, cognitive reflectiveness was a stronger predictor of fake news discernment than partisanship. But when it came to politically-charged headlines, partisanship was a stronger predictor of fake news discernment than cognitive reflectiveness. The researchers also found that participants were better at distinguishing real from fake news if the news content was consistent with their political orientation.

When examining the interaction between partisanship and cognitive reflectiveness, Faragó and her colleagues found that those who opposed Hungary’s conservative government used their analytic capacities more to question fake news, while pro-government participants struggled to discern real news from fake news.

“Our study is a replication of an American study (the original study was conducted by Pennycook and Rand in 2019),” Faragó said. “Pennycook and Rand compared supporters of Clinton and Trump in terms of media truth discernment.”

“According to their study, although Clinton supporters recognized misinformation significantly better than Trump supporters, even Trump supporters also generally considered real news to be more credible than fake news (media truth discernment scores were positive for all types of misinformation). Despite this, in Hungary, average media truth discernment scores of government supporters were negative, meaning that they consider fake news to be more accurate than real news. This is frightening.”

Fake news is a rapidly evolving phenomenon, and studying it can help researchers understand how technology is changing the way we consume and share information, and how this can impact our perception of reality and our decision-making processes.

“The real question that we try to respond to in further research is how much we can attribute this asymmetry in fake news acceptance between supporters of the government vs. the opposition to the overexposure to disinformation in the public domain, and how much to the ideological predisposition of the voters (e.g., being liberal vs. conservative),” Faragó said. “Future studies are needed to answer this question.”

When the pandemic began and a mass of COVID-“skeptical” self-proclaimed experts began appearing on the scene, they had a shared set of goals. Together, they opposed vaccine mandates, fearmongered about the vaccines themselves, promoted unproven or discredited treatments, and, in general, created a tidy little self-sustaining alternate universe. Their mutual support was important: They constantly praised one another as brave, heterodox experts, appeared on each other’s podcasts, hyped each other’s work on Twitter, and linked to each other’s Substacks. Now, though, the cracks are beginning to show, the beefs are increasingly public, and lawsuits are being filed. The COVID truther movement has discovered the true enemy and it is, predictably, within.

The most public and sprawling set of beefs centers around Dr. Robert W. Malone, who claims to have invented mRNA technology and rose to prominence by asserting that mRNA vaccines were unsafe and the process used to roll them out was rushed. (While Malone made important contributions to the development of mRNA, no one else involved agrees that he “invented” that technology singlehandedly; like most scientific advancements, it was the work of many.) Malone has appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show to promote his various talking points and also, of course, on Joe Rogan’s show, where he claimed that people getting vaccinated were suffering from “mass formation psychosis,” a briefly trendy claim in the anti-vax world.

Malone has also managed to develop a truly impressive number of feuds with other COVID truthers, which are becoming more acrid by the hour. In October 2022, he filed a defamation lawsuit in federal court in Virginia against a number of other COVID contrarians. They were Dr. Peter Breggin, a psychiatrist who wrote a book alleging that the pandemic was engineered by “global predators” for their own sinister purposes; Ginger Ross Breggin, an author and Dr. Breggin’s wife; Dr. Jane Ruby, a vaccine “skeptic” who is omnipresent on alternative social media sites like Gab and places like the Reawaken America tour; and America Out Loud, an online talk radio website that platforms these folks and others exactly like them. Malone also sued Red Voice Media, which publishes the Stew Peters Show, where Jane Ruby is a frequent guest.

Peters is a talking head and yet another COVID truther, who has stirred frequent controversy even among other truthers with his documentaries Watch the Water and Died Suddenly, both of which advanced complicated and extremely not-true conspiracy theories about the pandemic, vaccines, and whether the whole thing is connected to snake venom.

As the Daily Beast reported back in October, Ruby and Peters have previously suggested that Malone is linked to the CIA. Malone denied this to the Beast, telling the outlet: “I have been sustaining just continuous attacks from the conspiracy theorists. Stew is just one of them.” (Red Voice Media didn’t respond to a request for comment from Motherboard.)

News of the lawsuit was first shared on Twitter by Mallory Harris, a PhD student at Stanford who studies misinformation. In the suit, Malone accused the defendants of making any number of exotic claims about him, namely that he is “controlled opposition” and working with sinister globalist forces to do something or other.

“The Statements are materially false,” Malone’s complain reads. It continues, colorfully and at length:

Dr. Malone is not controlled opposition. He does not work for and has no connection to the CIA/DOD or the intelligence community. He is not an operative of any government or organization. He has never orchestrated a “psyop”. Dr. Malone does not and never has supported totalitarian global predators who have been committing mass murder under the guise of COVID-19. He is not dangerous. He is not a supporter of any apologist for political mass murderers. He is not a Hitler apologist and/or a Hitler “excuser”. Dr. Malone has not ever engaged in fraud and is not engaged in deliberate fraud to blind anyone to any “predators”. He is not a “protector” of any “predators”. He does not and never has promoted baseless scientific theories.

While this is all a bit too silly to get into at length, the gist is that Malone alleges that Stew Peters called him a “mass murderer” due to his involvement in developing mRNA technologies, and that the other defendants misrepresented various statements he’s made.

“Defendants juxtaposed a series of facts so as to imply a defamatory connection between them, including that Dr. Malone had ulterior motives and that he apologized for predators and Hitler,” the complaint reads. “In addition, Defendants left out material facts, including the scientific basis of Dr. Malone’s statements and his true affiliations, in a way that intentionally conveyed a false meaning and that rendered the challenged Statements defamatory.”

In a fundraiser they’ve launched to respond to the suit, the Breggins deny defaming Malone, and question why he’s requesting $25 million in damages.

“The effect of what he is doing should be obvious,” they write. “It threatens us with financial ruin and ties up our energies. Does he want to make us too afraid and too exhausted to criticize his public policy theories and his numerous highly destructive attacks on leaders of the health freedom movement?”

This particular attack — whatever its motives— may not get very far. According to court records, the suit is at risk of being dismissed because Malone and his attorney have not served a summons on any of the named defendants. According to a filing from a court clerk, the suit will be thrown out without prejudice on January 30th if they aren’t served. Meanwhile, though, Malone and the Breggins have all continued the beef on Substack; the Breggins are claiming that Malone is pursuing them legally to silence their critics, and have darkly claimed he’s doing the same to other people as well. “We do not know how many other people have been intimidated into silence,” Ginger Breggin wrote. “But we know it is happening to others. If but a few begin to go public, the power of his unfounded legal threats will evaporate. He will have to stand toe to toe in public debate.” (Malone, the Breggins, Jane Ruby and Stew Peters all did not respond to a request for comment from Motherboard.)

All of this beefing has drawn the attention of Dr. Paul Alexander, a Canadian health researcher turned vaccine “skeptic” who was briefly appointed as a science advisor in the Department of Health and Human Services under Trump. (He is best known for promoting a herd immunity strategy for COVID, recommending that non-high-risk people “open up and flood the zone” and all get infected at once.) Alexander is now, like most of the rest of these characters, a Substack guy; he wrote a florid post calling Malone a “grifter fraud,” adding, “Malone has been firing off lawyer letters to McCullough and everyone he could, anyone he could bully, and his groupies, so he attacked now, so welcome Robert, to my world, lets dance! you fraud!” Alexander also claimed in the same post that Malone was “attacking” Dr. Peter McCullough, yet another name in the fringe COVID “medical expert” world. It’s not precisely clear what’s going on there, but Malone claimed in a tweet that McCullough has blocked him on Twitter and “will not talk to me.” (McCullough also did not respond to a request for comment from Motherboard.)

And finally—for now, anyway—Malone is also beefing with ex-journalist turned full-time COVID troll Alex Berenson; Malone has said no one should take Berenson seriously, while Berenson has dismissed Malone and others as “apocalyptic screamers” peddling “Book of Revelations” fantasies about vaccines while he alone tells the truth.

Meanwhile, as if this impressive display of dysfunction were not enough, Berenson is also in turn feuding with Steve Kirsch, a tech millionaire who’s been dubbed a “misinformation superspreader.” Berenson criticized Kirsch for claiming that NFL player Damar Hamlin was likely “brain dead” and called on him to apologize. (Kirsch has not yet responded, perhaps because he is, at the moment, too busy vowing to sue the FDA and the CDC for not reading his emails.)

This is, of course, not the first time that extremely spicy and very stupid internecine feuds have overtaken the truthers. Most recently, some of its other players were arguing about Died Suddenly, the viral and powerfully under-researched anti-vax documentary made by Stew Peters. Elsewhere, America’s Frontline Doctors founder Simone Gold continues to be sued by the organization; its current director has claimed she’s trying to illegally wrest back control.

In all, this is an impressive number of blowups, meltdowns, blood feuds and Substack screeds. And it creates an especially potent degree of awkwardness since Malone, Alexander, and McCullough all sit on the board of a purported health freedom organization named The Unity Project.