conspiracy theories – The News Desk

US Navy Veteran Who Feds Say Rammed FBI Headquarters Had QAnon-Linked Online Presence

4Apr

By adminNo Comments

Technology

US Navy Veteran Who Feds Say Rammed FBI Headquarters Had QAnon-Linked Online Presence

A former Navy submarine technician was arrested after law enforcement says he drove an SUV into the FBI headquarters near Atlanta on Monday afternoon. It is still unclear why the suspect, Ervin Lee Bolling, attempted to force entry into the headquarters, but research conducted by the nonpartisan public-interest nonprofit Advance Democracy and shared exclusively with WIRED has found that accounts believed to be associated with Bolling shared numerous conspiracy theories on social media platforms, including X and Facebook.Just after noon on Monday, Bolling rammed his burnt-orange SUV with South Carolina license plates into the final barrier at FBI Atlanta’s headquarters, wrote Matthew Upshaw, an FBI agent assigned to the Atlanta office, in a sworn affidavit on Tuesday. Upshaw added that aft...

What a Right-Wing Militia Sounds Like, from the Inside

3Apr

By adminNo Comments

Entertainment

What a Right-Wing Militia Sounds Like, from the Inside

How worried should we be about right-wing militias? If we could eavesdrop on them, what would we hear? Three recent podcasts listen in, with intriguing results. The new season of Jon Ronson’s “Things Fell Apart,” from BBC Radio 4, which does an admirable job of presenting deeply reported, non-exhausting stories about the so-called culture wars, has two excellent episodes involving armed mobs. “If All Else Fails,” from North Country Public Radio, investigates the rise of extremist right-wing groups, some connected with sheriffs, in upstate New York. And the most mind-blowing of the three, “Chameleon: The Michigan Plot,” by the investigative reporters Ken Bensinger and Jessica Garrison, tells the story of the Michigan group accused of planning to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020. Al...

Elon Musk’s X, formerly Twitter, sues Media Matters as advertisers flee over report of ads appearing next to neo-Nazi posts

21Nov

By adminNo Comments

Money

Elon Musk’s X, formerly Twitter, sues Media Matters as advertisers flee over report of ads appearing next to neo-Nazi posts

Elon Musk's social media company X, formerly known as Twitter, filed a lawsuit against liberal advocacy group Media Matters for America on Monday, saying it manufactured a report to show advertisers' posts alongside neo-Nazi and white nationalist posts in order to "drive advertisers from the platform and destroy X Corp." Advertisers have been fleeing X over concerns about their ads showing up next to pro-Nazi content — and hate speech on the site in general — while billionaire owner Musk has inflamed tensions with his own posts endorsing an antisemitic conspiracy theory.IBM, NBCUniversal and its parent company Comcast said last week that they stopped advertising on X after the Media Matters report said their ads were appearing alongside material praising Nazis. The Media Matters report al...

19Sep

By adminNo Comments

Technology

The Dark Economics of Russell Brand

There was a brief, strange moment in 2015 when Russell Brand mattered in mainstream British politics. With an election looming, the opposition Labour Party was trailing in the polls against a coalition government that was the very definition of establishment—led by an Eton- and Oxford-educated prime minister in David Cameron and his Westminster- and Cambridge-educated deputy, Nick Clegg, now president of global affairs at Meta. So the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, went seeking the endorsement of Brand, the actor, comedian, and emerging online provocateur whose anti-corporatist screeds to his 9.5 million Twitter followers and 100,000 YouTube subscribers gave him the appearance of a power player. Miliband got Brand’s endorsement but lost the election.Since then, Brand’s reach has exploded. Hi...

How “Winter Kills” Nails the Paranoid Style

12Aug

By adminNo Comments

Entertainment

How “Winter Kills” Nails the Paranoid Style

Conspiracy theories are faith-based history, and “Winter Kills,” a 1979 neo-noir, riffs on a scriptural pillar of this realm—the assassination of President John F. Kennedy—with freewheeling speculations that feel both heretical and metaphysical. The movie (which is coming Friday to Film Forum, in a new restoration, and is also widely streaming) stars Jeff Bridges as Nick Kegan, an heir without portfolio, whose claim to fame is that his older half brother Timothy was murdered in 1960, while serving as President. Now, nineteen years later, while aboard an oil tanker belonging to their colossally wealthy father, Nick gets a tip regarding the murder weapon, which had never been found. Following up on that lead, he’s drawn into a whirlwind of danger and deceit that shakes the very foundations ...

A former Trump supporter who got caught up in a January 6 conspiracy theory sues Fox News

13Jul

By adminNo Comments

Entertainment

A former Trump supporter who got caught up in a January 6 conspiracy theory sues Fox News

DOVER, Del. -- A former Donald Trump supporter who became the center of a conspiracy theory about Jan. 6, 2021, filed a defamation lawsuit against Fox News on Wednesday, saying the network made him a scapegoat for the U.S. Capitol insurrection.Raymond Epps, a former Marine who said he was forced from his Arizona home because of threats, is asking for unspecified damages and a jury trial.He filed his lawsuit in Superior Court in Delaware, the same court where Dominion Voting Systems sued Fox for lies broadcast following the 2020 presidential election. Shortly before a trial was to begin this spring, Fox agreed to pay Dominion $787 million to settle the charges.Fox did not respond to texts, phone calls and emails seeking comment on Epps' lawsuit.The suit also states that the Justice Departm...

The Alternative Facts of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

7Jul

By adminNo Comments

Entertainment

The Alternative Facts of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

In November, 2007, the junior senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, appeared on ABC News for one of those soft-focus get-to-know-the-candidate segments. Obama admitted that, after he was at Harvard Law School for a while and felt “comfortable” among his hyper-ambitious classmates, he allowed himself to think that maybe he’d run for President someday. “Did you think to yourself, Barack, what kind of hubris is this?” the broadcaster Charlie Gibson said.“I think if you don’t have enough self-awareness to see the element of megalomania involved in thinking you can be President, then you probably shouldn’t be President,” Obama said. “There’s a slight madness to thinking that you should be the leader of the free world.”I was thinking about that moment last week, after finishing a long interview ...