rigorousintuition.ca

This is a big post & there are probably some typos or faulty links; pls PM if you find any & I'll fix them ASAP. I'm too tired to go over it all now and I just want to get it posted so I can eat something. No rest for the obsessed.

I’ve been asked by an early reader to open this post with a thesis statement. The only problem is, I don’t want this to have a thesis just yet, because the point is to present the data and see what it signals to others. But since I do want people to read this, it probably will help if they know why they should want to. So at the risk of leading, I will say that the data compiled below indicates to me something roughly like this:

David Brock and Correct the Record played a central role in a massive and long-term covert campaign of perception management that spans both Republican and Democratic parties. It involves the “infiltration” of 4chan and the illegitimate use of more mainstream social networking sites (reddit, twitter) in order to redirect and undermine public political debate, polarize opinion, and help "populate and co-opt" an alt-“Alt-right” movement to be associated with racism, misogyny, fascism, anti-Semitism, conspiracy theories, and “fake news.” Many of the agendas, and even players, involved in this can now be seen to congregate in or around the viral memeplex known as “Pizzagate.”

Those are the specifics; the general “thesis” (or question) is something like: to what degree has our ability to engage in meaningful conversation around political and social reality been sabotaged by Brock’s relentless spin campaign, and the larger, more ancient tradition of mass-obfuscation which it upholds and exemplifies? And how can we see the results of that here at RI?

Here’s a quote to add a bit of nuance to that, from Raimond Gaita, “Even Socrates drew the line at spin”:

“Socrates believed that oratory was not a morally neutral skill that can be directed at good, bad or indifferent ends, but intrinsically rotten because it betrays the trust necessary for genuine conversation and, in so doing, erodes the conditions of political (and other forms of) judgment. We should think the same about spin. For many years, we in the democratic West have praised conversation in politics as though it expressed an ideal of democratic accountability. That may be a sentimental illusion about the nature of politics, encouraged by politicians who spin counterfeits of conversational intimacy to make us more vulnerable to manipulation.”
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/ ... 1390x.html

OK, moving on. Expect a lot of copy pasta here, since I want to be thorough. To be kind, I’ve bolded the essential parts for easy skimming. I know how the brain starts to go numb with this stuff.

First up:

Who is David Brock?

Quick answer in a (2015 Los Angeles Times) headline: “David Brock, a Clinton Enemy from the 90s, is now integral to Hillary's run.”

In a 2013 artcile, “David Brock never retired from the hitman game,” Jon Cassidy called Brock “possibly the least honest man ever to succeed in American journalism. . . . Yet this admitted liar has somehow resuscitated his career, as an arbiter of honest journalism no less. The thing is: Brock never changed. He’s still a hit man, just for the other team.”

[Or: a professional perception manager who never harbored any illusions about the ontological realities of “teams,” left or right, outside of the game he was MC-ing?]

OK, now for the Long answer:

From Wiki bio:

David Brock (born November 2, 1962) is an American political operative, author, and commentator who founded the liberal media watchdog group Media Matters for America.[1] He has been described by Time magazine as “one of the most influential operatives in the Democratic Party.”[2]

Brock began his career as a right-wing investigative reporter during the 1990s[3] who wrote the book The Real Anita Hill and the Troopergate story, which led to Paula Jones filing a lawsuit against Bill Clinton. In the late 1990s he switched sides, aligning himself with the Democratic Party, and in particular with Bill and Hillary Clinton.

In 2004, he founded Media Matters for America, a non-profit organization that describes itself as a "progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media."[4] He has since also founded super PACs called American Bridge 21st Century and Correct the Record, has become a board member of the super PAC Priorities USA Action, and has been elected chairman of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).[5][6]

The Nation has described Brock as a “conservative journalistic assassin turned progressive empire-builder”;[6] National Review has called him a “right-wing assassin turned left-wing assassin”;[7] and Politico has profiled him as a “former right-wing journalist-turned-pro-Clinton crusader.”[8]
…
In his 2015 book Killing the Messenger: The Right-Wing Plot to Derail Hillary Clinton and Hijack Your Government, [follow this meme] Brock described “how the Clintons quickly switched from prey to patrons, setting him on his current path as a fundraiser and progressive provocateur.” In the book, Brock accused the New York Times of being a “megaphone for conservative propaganda” directed inordinately at Clinton.[5] He was particularly critical of the Times's senior politics editor and former Washington bureau chief Carolyn Ryan. At the same time, in the words of Politico, he depicted Bill and Hillary Clinton “as personal and political angels”.[5]

Calling the book a “trenchant j’accuse,” Publishers Weekly said that parts of it “read like a fund-raising prospectus” for MMA but concluded that while “Brock’s rhetorical venom and naked partisanship will alienate some readers...his sharp-eyed reporting makes for a spirited challenge to business-as-usual political discourse.”[46] The Daily Beast described the book as “partly a sanitized summary of Brock’s already exhaustively-chronicled personal history, partly an attack on the journalism establishment, and partly a call to arms on behalf of his favorite presidential candidate.”[4] Hanna Rosin wrote that it reads like “pages that bullet-point Hillary’s accomplishments as secretary of state or the achievements of the Clinton Foundation.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Brock

From a 1995 piece “The Real David Brock: A Right-Wing Hatchet Man,” By Steve Rendall:

Brock is responsible for the reporting on Clinton’s alleged extramarital affairs that became known as “Troopergate” (American Spectator, 1/94), he’s also the one who called Anita Hill “a bit nutty and a bit slutty” (American Spectator, 3/92), and later wrote a book called The Real Anita Hill. Brock’s mix of right-wing politics and sexual scandal-mongering have won considerable attention for his magazine–and influenced the debate in Washington.
…
“From 1997 to 2002, Brock wrote several drafts of his conversion story. From “Confessions of a Right-Wing Hit Man,” published in Esquire, to the final, book-length version, “Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative,” Brock developed a narrative aimed at ingratiating himself with the left. It worked. In The New Yorker, Hendrik Hertzberg vouched for the conversion from hit man to respectable Democrat.
…
“I would say without any hesitation that he is incapable of recognizing the truth, let alone of telling it,” Christopher Hitchens wrote after reading Brock’s memoir. “The whole book is an exercise in self-love, disguised as an exercise in self-abnegation. How could he, asks the author of himself, have possibly gone on so long in telling lies, smearing reputations and inventing facts? The obvious answer — that he adored the easy money and the cheap fame that this brought him — was more than enough to still his doubts for several years. However, his publisher seems to have required a more high-toned explanation before furnishing him with a fresh tranche of money and renown. And Brock’s new story — that he was taken in by a vast right-wing conspiracy — is just as much of a lie as his earlier ones.”
…
Brock had a decade to come up with something about progressivism that he supports, and he still hasn’t managed. Instead, the most promiscuous slanderer of his generation says that he is an agent of tolerance.”

http://fair.org/extra/the-real-david-brock/

As a curiosity, the first mention of Brock on RI was in 2005, by chiggerbit at The Franklin Cover-Up thread, as follows: “Writer David Brock noted the gay skeletons in the Republican Party when he was attacked for his own gayness following the publication of his book The Seduction of Hillary Clinton.”

Brock’s connections to “Pizzagate” (the fact and I suspect the fiction, too) are legion. Here’s one for a teaser:

In 2010, (convicted inside trader) George Soros donated $1 million to David Brock's Media Matters. Soros also gave Brock’s American Votes group $1,160,000 in 2006 and $1 million in the 2007-2008 period; and $1.5 million to Brock’s American Bridge 21st Century in 2012 & 2014.

American Bridge 21st Century has made payments to James Alefantis’ Comet Ping Pong in 2012-14:
http://docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/fecimg/?13941306270
http://docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/fecimg/?13940775420
http://docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/fecimg/?14960793887

An FEC search also shows payments made to Brock’s lover Alefantis from the Clinton Campaign and pro Clinton PACS.

But before we get into that can of spaghetti, we need to talk about:


Astroturfing & 4chan

“Astroturfing is the practice of masking the sponsors of a message or organization (e.g., political, advertising, religious or public relations) to make it appear as though it originates from and is supported by a grassrootsparticipant(s). It is a practice intended to give the statements or organizations credibility by withholding information about the source's financial connection. The term astroturfing is derived from AstroTurf, a brand of synthetic carpeting designed to resemble natural grass, as a play on the word "grassroots." The implication behind the use of the term is that there are no "true" or "natural" grassroots, but rather "fake" or "artificial" support, although some astroturfing operatives defend the practice.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing

Astroturfing is the name of Brock’s game, or at least of one of the primary moves in it. Creating fake movements, to obscure, discredit, hijack or counteract real movements. ARGS, and stuff. Social & cultural engineering. Meme-seeding. Perception management. Bad-jacketing. Lot of ways to describe it, probably because a) it’s so pervasive and multifaceted, and b) when you’re having it done to you, it’s damn hard to see it, much less understand it.

Here’s a breakdown of a big slice of Brockian astroturf & of how it can backfire (or maybe not, let’s just say, just how “inflammatory” it can be):

Drawing the Public Eye: The Unintentional Consequence of "Astroturfing" by Political Organizations, November 10, 2016

tl;dr Donald Trump candidacy was a literal joke. Internet “astroturfers” paid by the Clinton Campaign, injected seriousness into an intentionally absurd community, creating a backlash that lost her the election. It turns out, the joke is on Hillary.

About two years ago, the decision makers in Hillary Clinton's campaign made a critical error. Her paid Internet shills began to respond to a long running joke on 4chan, where the posting culture is specifically geared towards making the most absurd posts possible. [David Brock’s] Correct the Record (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correct_the_Record ) lacked the situational awareness and basic intelligence to understand that the posts were not serious and, as a result, began to launch a political attack on 4chan.

https://sites.google.com/view/webofslime/article

For more about this, there’s a Daily Beast piece from April 2016, “Hillary PAC Spends $1 Million to ‘Correct’ Commenters on Reddit and Facebook: FEC loopholes mean Correct the Record can openly coordinate with Clinton’s campaign”

Also from Feb 2016, Free Beacon, “Experts: David Brock Pushing Campaign Finance Boundaries: Dem operative remains on payroll of pro-Clinton super PAC despite coordinating with campaign”:

“Correct the Record says it has found a loophole in coordination laws. The group maintains that the online-only nature of its work—as opposed to broadcast communications or other paid media—allows it to legally coordinate with the campaign. Experts say Brock’s roles at the two groups show how he has used sophisticated legal maneuvers to circumvent campaign finance restrictions designed to prevent corruption and the influence of high-dollar donors on the political process.

“In short, it looks like Brock is running a shadow campaign,” said Robert Maguire, a researcher and reporter with the Center for Responsive Politics.

He pointed to Brock’s involvement with other groups that are explicitly or in effect boosting her political efforts, a network that he called “the Brocktopus.”
http://freebeacon.com/politics/experts- ... oundaries/

See also: “If You Really Want To Get Rid Of “Fake News,” Start With David Brock” (Nov 28 2016)

and: “FEC Complaint Accuses Clinton Campaign of Illegally Coordinating With David Brock Super PAC,” October, 2016

Returning to the Web of Slime:

In an archived thread, a former Correct the Record employee sheds some light on how it all works, stating that 5 - 6 million was being spent on pro-Hillary Internet posters. Employees are given reddit accounts with 5k+ karma, semi-active twitter accounts and the tools to maximize the time they spend posting on the Internet. It is a tremendous amount of resources to spend in order to target people who like telling jokes designed to get a rise out of people.

The annoyance experienced by 4chan lurkers and posters moved them to interact with these political influences in a few important ways.

[The assumption is that this was an unintended “backfire” consequence; maybe, maybe not. But either way, what you have is a heavily funded internet-op of professional campaign-trolling for Hillary that leads to a growing up-swell of anti-Clinton sentiments within 4chan and on the Net in general.]

SOCIAL MEDIA BACKLASH
First, the war declared by David Brock, upon 4chan, was found to be occurring all over the Internet. Twitter. Facebook. Tumblr. Reddit. Anything that had enough people to make posting worth Correct the Record's time. The resulting exposure brought people out of the woodwork to actively respond to disinformation tactics, fake news on mainstream media, and censorship on these social media outlets, whose CEOs were found to be complicit with Correct the Record.

INVESTIGATIVE BACKLASH
Second, a variety of leaks were ongoing that exposed a number of scandals that were being ignored by the mainstream media. Being the most useful tool available to debunk what the news was saying, millions of people began pouring over Wikileaks, Offshore Leaks, DC Leaks, Guccifer Leaks and they began to uncover a web of corruption that stretched across the whole world.

Numerous scandals were exposed:

• The Uranium One Scandal
• TARP Fund Scandal
• DNC Paid Agent Provocateurs
• Weapons to ISIS Scandal
• Election Fraud Scandal
• [& Pizzagate]

POLITICAL SUPPORT FOR DONALD TRUMP
Third, the amplification of Pro Trump memes, infographs, and anti-Hillary memes became more than the paid DNC Internet machine could cope with. The joke was transformed into a serious movement against censorship and political corruption, pointing out the absurdity of the tactics that the DNC was using to generate support for Hillary.

Calling people and green frog memes racist, homophobic, and bigoted was a microcosm of the tactics that created the anti-PC backlash where everyday people were sick of "victim status" being used as a shield from which to stand behind while attacking common sense and as an excuse for abandoning common courtesy.

It is so easy for the media to create hurt feelings in people that hurt feelings become justification for abandoning civil discourse and the ability to embrace evidence-based solutions in many important facets of public policy. This is why the First Amendment was specifically described by the Founding Fathers as the "right to offend."

https://sites.google.com/view/webofslime/article

How did the Brockopus operate? From a 2012 Daily Caller article, “Inside Media Matters: Sources, memos reveal erratic behavior, close coordination with White House and news organizations”:

“The entire progressive blogosphere picked up our stuff,” says a Media Matters source, “from Daily Kos to Salon. Greg Sargent [of the Washington Post] will write anything you give him. He was the go-to guy to leak stuff.”
....

Reporters who weren’t cooperative might feel the sting of a Media Matters campaign against them. “If you hit a reporter, say a beat reporter at a regional newspaper,” a Media Matters source said, “all of a sudden they’d get a thousand hostile emails. Sometimes they’d melt down. It had a real effect on reporters who weren’t used to that kind of scrutiny.”


A group with the ability to shape news coverage is of incalculable value to the politicians it supports, so it’s no surprise that Media Matters has been in regular contact with political operatives in the Obama administration. According to visitor logs, on June 16, 2010, Brock and then-Media Matters president Eric Burns traveled to the White House for a meeting with Valerie Jarrett, arguably the president’s closest adviser. Recently departed Obama communications director Anita Dunn returned to the White House for the meeting as well.
....

Last spring, some at Media Matters headquarters and in other parts of the progressive world were caught off guard by an interview Brock gave to Ben Smith at Politico, in which he promised to wage “guerrilla warfare and sabotage” against Fox News. “It was insane,” says a coworker. “David was totally manic at the time. We were all shocked.”

Friends say Brock, who has publicly admitted drug use in the past, was working obsessively and staying out late with compatriots. “They’d close [local bars] and party till six in the morning,” said one. A number of people in Brock’s orbit believe he was regularly using illegal drugs, including cocaine. “It’s not like he was trying to keep it a secret,” says a female friend of Brock’s. [Did Brock’s party crowd include Alefantis?]

Then there’s The Stream's “Astroturf ‘Outrage Machine’ of Paid Trolls Floods Social Media to Counteract Negative News About Hillary Clinton,” Oct 2016:

Libby Watson of The Sunlight Foundation observed that the astroturf effort goes far beyond merely defending Clinton, to targeting and intimidating those who criticize her. She told The Daily Beast, “This seems to be going after essentially random individuals online.”

Brian Donahue, chief executive of the consulting firm Craft Media/Digital, explained the troll operation to The Los Angeles Times, “It is meant to appear to be coming organically from people and their social media networks in a groundswell of activism, when in fact it is highly paid and highly tactical.” He went on, “That is what the Clinton campaign has always been about. It runs the risk of being exactly what their opponents accuse them of being: a campaign that appears to be populist but is a smokescreen that is paid and brought to you by lifetime political operatives and high-level consultants.”
..
The moderators of the Sanders subreddit /r/SandersForPresident wrote that the “Bernie Bro” concept was created by fake accounts in order to “establish a narrative that Bernie’s supporters are all racist, sexist young males who harass people online.” David Fredrick, co-founder and moderator of the subreddit, told The Atlantic when Sanders was still in the race, “If anyone criticizes a Sanders supporter online now there’s doubt over whether it’s a genuine exchange or if it’s something that Correct the Record is behind.”
https://stream.org/astroturf-outrage-ma ... y-clinton/

OK got all that?

Notice the last bit about establishing a narrative about “racist, sexist young males who harass people online”?

That takes us neatly into:


The “Alt-Right”

For a warm-up, check out Front Page Mag’s “SOME OBSERVATIONS FROM THE MAN WHO CREATED ALT-RIGHT: An intellectual movement that Democrats want to use to smear Breitbart and Trump,” from Oct 2016.

Then there’s this, from “Clinton's Internet Supporters, Allegedly Using Pornography, Shut Down Bernie Sanders' Largest Facebook Groups in Coordinated Attack,” April 2016:

The Clinton Machine Has Used Anonymous Trolls at Least as Far Back as 2007

The anonymous fake accounts come are nothing new for Clinton. In 2007, paid campaign staffers and volunteers on her campaign were caught creating anonymous accounts to artificially inflate her support. The influential Blue Hampshire blog discovered the ruse, when several anonymous accounts were all created in succession on the site from the same Clinton campaign IP address, which then bolstered pro-Clinton diaries.

According to US Uncut, there were even allegations of child porn being circulated and posted by the Clinton trolls:

Erica Libenow, a Sanders supporter and member of one of the pro-Bernie groups, said, “We had what looked like a kiddie porn posted in one of our groups today. I reported that one. Seriously made me want to vomit.”

A Facebook post by “Casey Champagne”, whose secondary name on his profile was listed as “Casey Max Charbonneau” (pictured below with Hillary Clinton) and whose Facebook likes included Correct The Record and Barrier Breakers 2016 (Brock’s recently launched online operation), confirmed that Clinton trolls were behind the attack when he bragged in the Facebook group “Bros 4 Hillary” that he managed to get one of the groups banned for “containing credible threat of violence.”

Brock’s Trolls for Hillary spreading child porn as part of a hate campaign against Bernie Sanders, huh. As already mentioned, the Brocktopus spread its tentacles into 4chan, sticking its proverbial dick into the figurative hornet’s nest. What happened then is not so easy to find documentation on (without going into the lair).

Here’s a hint from Know Your Meme:

“Thank You For #CorrectingTheRecord” Copypasta
Users on 4chan’s /pol/[12] (politics) board and Reddit’s /r/the_donald[13] subreddit often mock comments defending Clinton with variations of the copypasta message “Thanks for #CorrectingTheRecord! $.02 has been deposited in your account.”

So 4chan were wise to Brock, but was Brock wise to 4chan? How much of the Trump-Kek-Alt_Right emergence was a backfire, & how much was part of the plan? Did Brock Inc help seed the Pepe meme with the prior intention of “converting” it into a Fascist Hate Symbol, using the Internet Hate Machine to do it?

From International Business Times, Sept 2016, “How racist trolls turned Pepe the Frog into a symbol of hate”:

In late 2015, "alt-right" internet trolls launched a purposeful campaign to reclaim Pepe the Frog as a symbol of their ideology, according to the Daily Beast. Social media users mashed up Pepe with Nazi propaganda imagery — everything from a Hitler mustache to a swastika — to link the two symbols. The movement spawned on 4Chan and eventually moved to Twitter, where many white nationalist-Donald Trump supporters embraced the cartoon frog as proxy symbol for their candidate — Trump's trademark haircut now sits atop Pepe in many users' posts.

The craze came to a head last week when Donald Trump, Jr., the GOP nominee's son, shared a Photoshopped image of the movie poster for the action film "The Expendables" with the faces of Trump and many of his most prominent supporters pasted over the faces of the movie's stars. The image was re-titled "The Deplorables," a reference to Hillary Clinton's characterization of many of his apparently racist supporters as being in her "basket of deplorables." The new poster featured Trump standing beside none other than Pepe the Frog.

See also: “Pepe the Frog is Now a Racist Symbol”

And “People on 4Chan Appear to Be Having a Complete Meltdown over Twitter”

Then there’s this, an alleged “confidential memo” post at reddit (from 4chan) last month. Note the instruction to “create or disseminate strong anti-Semitic pepe memes in order to discredit the users as racist” (Under Anti-Trump Memes)



PDF: http://spartareport.com/wp-content/uplo ... n-Memo.pdf

FWIW, most folk at reddit are saying it's fake (they could be shills trying to discredit it, who knows?). There’s a reasonable explanation for why it might be fake here, but that comment only got one upvote.

Other typical comments:

So...this looks, at the very least, accurate, if not real. Yet there are a bunch of comments in here already calling it obviously fake without any supporting arguments or evidence.
https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/com ... o/d8v3mvb/

Has to be fake, but probably very close to the real ones in terms of intention. I'm sure they use far more politically correct language internally.
https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/com ... o/d8v2n84/

There’s also this alleged CTR ex-member “confession”:

Larger image here.

Whatever else it proves, the memo establishes that 4channers themselves believe, overall, that there’s an organized attempt by government, intelligence, and/or corporate bodies to “co-opt” their corner of the internet and redirect it toward memetic (and mimetic) engineering.

So then, anything that comes out of 4chan is doubly suspect, but also doubly relevant.



Pizzagate/Brock & Alefantis

Moving on to Pizzagate, we see many of the variables present:

• Hillary Clinton and team
• 4chan/reddit investigations into child trafficking & pedophilia
• Overlapping with:
• 4chan/reddit pro-Trump/anti-Hillary factions
• The rise of the “Alt-Right” and “Fake News”
• David Brock, George Soros, Bonner Group, & money laundering

Lots of different angles here, that may seem at first pass to be mutually exclusive; but could they be different layers of a single onion, visible depending on your level of briefing?

What would the whole onion look like?

Here’s one viewpoint:

#PizzaGate Post-Mortem: What if the attack on Alifantis were all created by reddit/The_Donald to destroy CTR aka Brock? (v/pizzagate)

4 days rapists4trump

We know the witch hunt began on 4chan, and we know there was a war on /reddit between "The Donald" (RNC) and Correct the Record (Brock) DNC

IMHO "The Donald" used 4chan gamer's to create the meme on comet-pizza, then "The Donald" on /Reddit fed it to "#PizzaGate"

Then there was the "FAKE" FBI anon that told everybody on 4chan to go after Clinton Foundation, and that wash-dc was full of pedo's (TRUE)

Comet-Pizza is a bar ran by open homo-sexuals, which is NORMAL in DC, hell Obama just put the rainbow on the whitehouse.

For RNC witch-hunters two men fucking each other in the ass has no shock value for memes, so they had to create something horrible, then along comes PEDOPHILIA, some 4chan people saw "PIZZA" in the podesta email, and we all know on 4chan what pizza means "CHILD PORN", which was free-flow there until most recent.

So RNC ( The Donald ) has their pedophiles from 4chan create a witch-hunt on Alifantis ( jimmy comet ), where's the Beef? There isn't any.

Who is the real pedophile in all this "The Donald"

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[–] sliversrufer 1 points (+1|-0) 3 days ago

It started off with the podesta email wikileaks. Pretty sure 4chan noticed the email and hankerchief code because 4chan has its share of pedophiles. The_Donald picked it up quickly because they wanted any dirt on Hilary during the election. One thing reddit did not create was the comet instagram page, which was super creepy. Tons of pedo vibe. Maybe its possible the gays in DC just joke about being pedophiles and aren't actually into it but thats offputting enough for people to investigate into it.
https://voat.co/v/pizzagate/1448106

So this links Pizzagate to Brock in a “fake” way, i.e., Pizzagate was cobbled together out of facts and factoids into a semi-phony narrative to fuck with Correct the Record, after Brock stuck his tentacle into the hornet’s nest of 4chan. Trouble with this reading is that David Brock IS connected to Pizzagate already, i.e., to James Alefantis and to money laundering and (possibly) child trafficking.

From ZeroHedge, “[David Brocks] Money Laundering Scheme Exposed: 14 Pro-Clinton Super PACs & Non-Profits Implicated,” by Tyler Durden, Sept 2016:

This is serious.

• David Brock operates over a dozen pro-Clinton organizations from his office in Washington DC.
• Uncovered records expose a constant flow of money between his organizations.
• Brock’s unregistered Professional Solicitor, the Bonner Group, receives a 12.5% cut every time money is moved.

There’s a reason why David Brock chooses to house an unregistered Professional Solicitor in his office to raise money for his conglomerate of Super PACs and non-profits.
Professional Solicitors are required to disclose their active solicitation contracts. Brock wants his unregistered solicitor, the Bonner Group, to keep their client list hidden for a very specific reason.

David Brock is laundering money

David Brock has 7 non-profits, 3 Super PACs, one 527-committee, one LLC, one joint fundraising committee, and one unregistered solicitor crammed into his office in Washington DC.
Uncovered records expose a constant flow of money between these organizations.

The Bonner Group, his professional solicitor, works off a commission. Every time money gets passed around, Bonner receives a 12.5% cut.

See below for more on Bonner Group.

See also an interview with Andrew Kerr, “Pro-Clinton David Brock CAUGHT Laundering, Skimming Money” The Honest Media, Sept 2016:

If you are still not convinced, consider the $850,000 bribe Brock paid to his ex-lover who blackmailed him. He paid this exorbitant fee to keep his ex from going public with shocking secrets. As the bribe was paid, we do not know the secrets. However, it is safe to assume it had something to do with this massively corrupt, totally illegal money laundering scheme.

So how is the Bonner Group spending this skimmed money? I asked Kerr in our interview. He didn’t know. After three months of researching this topic incessantly, he came to the conclusion that nobody knows what the Bonner Group does aside from solicit donations. Before it had its business license revoked, it was listed as a company in Washington D.C. What does the Bonner Group build? Produce? Sell? Market? We don’t know.

Here’s a reddit link from a month ago mapping more sticky fingers and rapidly closed cookie jars:

Over the last week wikileaks has released Chains connecting Clinton, Podesta, Soros, SEIU, and The Bonner Group to a shadowy consulting group run by former defense contractors with top secret clearances which deleted their entire site in the middle of this year - Main Email ID: 33768

The “shadow consulting group” in question is The Waverley Group, and according to this post, “Everyone that works for the company is listed as having top secret security clearances and everyone appears to have extensive military backgrounds but is working for some vague business consulting that seems like a transparent front for arranging shady deals between defense contractors and the Clinton campaign and CGI and CF. There also seems to be a relationship between the people running that business and the local franchise of the restaurant "Eggspectation"
http://eggspectation.com/history/ which does business in Qatar, India, and Dubai, and has private business areas separate from the main dining area.”

So restaurants as fronts for money laundering tied into child trafficking may not be such an anomaly after all; maybe just business as usual?

Back to Comet Pizza, what you mostly hear now is that Alefantis is Brock’s ex-lover, but in fact Brock & Alefantis are probably still lovers, or at least were when the whole story started to break.

Post-Pizzagate, there’s evidence to suggest that Brock (or someone close to him) took steps to conceal any current affiliations with Brock. This blog post is dated 3rd Nov 2016:

Subject: James
Brock's boyfriend. Owns Comet.
If you look up David Brock's wikipedia page...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Brock
Partner(s): James Alefantis

I checked and there is nothing like that on wiki page now, reason being that it was changed on Nov 6, three days after that article ^^^

Until then it looked like this:



Changes were made by 20:26, 6 November 2016‎ 2601:14f:4502:b700:50a9:38af:d3d4:e4db (talk)‎ . . (46,536 bytes) (-37)‎ . . (fixed domestic partner) (undo) (Tags: Mobile edit, Mobile web edit) (See page history)

The Brock Alefantis intersection isn’t just about pleasure, either. From a Voat post already cited at the What's Happening? It? thread:

III. NCMEC Connection to Alefantis/Brock
A. James Alefantis/David Brock/the “DC Group” Connections to Jeff Koons

Remember how James Alefantis posted an “art” piece by Jeff Koons showing him having sex with what is purportedly his pornstar wife?
https://i.sli.mg/IFs0bU.pngPNG

It turns out that Jeff Koons is more to Alefantis than an artist he admires. To begin with, Koons is very involved with the DC/East Coast art scene.

Here on page 10 both Alefantis and Koons are mentioned as being involved in the DC art scene for example:

http://digital.modernluxury.com/publication/?i=9965&p=12

But none of these circumstantial bits of evidence are as important as the discovery that Correct the Record paid Jeff Koons $50,000 according to their SEC filing, seen here on page 9:
http://docquery.fec.gov/pdf/318/201607159020655318/201607159020655318.pdf#navpanes=0

Correct the Record is run by David Brock, who is in a relationship with James Alefantis. Here is a link confirming this and showing them caught up with another individual in some kind of blackmail love triangle:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/02 ... ement.html

Here is a photo of Brock on Alefantis' Instagram:
https://i.sli.mg/p58Eks.pngPNG

B. Jeff Koons Work Connections to the NCMEC

How is the connection to Koons Important? Koons is a board member of the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children (ICMEC). You can find an admission of that fact on his own web page: http://www.jeffkoons.com/biography-summary
http://archive.is/hfUS0

The ICMEC was founded in 1998 by none other than the NCMEC:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internati ... d_Children
http://archive.is/zI508

To those (probably not many at RI) who don’t see anything suspicious in an organization whose ostensible purpose is protecting children, I refer them to UK revelations around child care homes found trafficking children to pedophile networks, for which the citations are too numerous to list. (Start here, since it’s nice and mainstream)

So if the above connections are valid, and Brock & Alefantis are or stand to be implicated in child-trafficking-for-sexual abuse networks along with Silsby, Podesta, & the Clinton Foundation, what does all of this imply?

Not saying this is the whole onion, by any means. But it may be a major layer that hasn’t been properly factored in. At the very least it raises some burning questions. For example:

Was this information (including, though not restricted to, “Pizzagate”) being maneuvered to come out in the months leading up to the election?

If so, by who? Wikileaks? 4chan? Putin? CTR?

If Brock was a major orchestrator of the operation, then who’s Brock working for?

Did Invasion 4chan really backfire by paving the way for a Trump victory, or was that all part of the plan? Does that make Brock deep undercover & the whole "switching sides" thing just part of the ARG-scam?

Or was Brock blackmailed by the Clintons into switching sides due to his own involvement in child-trafficking, or whatever?

Was there a vested interest in preemptively tarring the information that we are currently trying to sort through, by infiltrating and “rebranding” the predicted (and/or prearranged) sources as much as possible?

Are we being led by the ideologically-forged rings in our noses away from the real manure pile?

To what extent has the meme of “Right-Wing/Nazi/Fake News Conspiracy Fiction dreamed up by Hate-Filled, Misogynist-Racist Kek-Worshipping Trump supporters” proven effective? For example, in derailing discussions around Pizzagate by forcing them to fit into a partisan, ideological framework that instantly recontextualizes all evidence and makes it violently divisive?

As we have seen right here at RI?

Have many questions. Welcome answers.

The racist/etc part of 4chan has existed since 4chan was a thing. Even more so after the /new/s board was made, then killed by m00t. After awhile Poole saw he needed a containment board, which made /pol/itically incorrect come into being. m00t killed off /pol/ a few times but inevitably brought it back.

It's the cultural libertarians, they're the ones that want to paper over racism/misogyny/etc, they're the newcomers. They are moderates who have not had enough time to go through the radicalization cycle, cooking time is about 1-2 years depending on media environment and individual factors. The Zimmerman trial is a good example of the kind of event that pulls people into /pol/'s gravity, after a few years in the board they've inevitable shifted to the far right from wherever they were before.

There are groups of Stalinist National Bolsheviks (NazBols), but they're nowhere near as effective at spreading their message or radicalizing people.

Kek is only one god that is worshiped on the board. Kali has been worshiped for nearly the whole life of /pol/, Black Sun has also become very popular over the last few years. Most don't actually take the Pepe = Kek seriously, it's just a mascot to them. Most of the cultural libertarian moderates are atheists, and the hardcore white nationalist nazi types tend to either be into orthodox Christianity, Catholicism, or Asatru. But they don't really believe, much less know the god(s) exist. They only care about religion as a method of social cohesion. Spiritual exploration is generally the last thing on their mind. The ones who take it seriously tend to be older members who have been on closer to half a decade or more.

My personal estimate, from polls I've seen and general discourse on 4chan would put national socialists at about 20-45% of the board population (they brigade polls/census). Monarchists, tech-comms, NazBols, left/right libertarians, an-coms, an-caps and civic-nationalists would make up the rest. The ratio of nazis may of gone down further over the last 6 months as even more people have diluted the 4chan /pol/ userbase due to publicity from many sources.

Also keep in mind Nazis are more effective than ever before at spreading their message. DailyStormer is at about half the rank Paul Watson's PrisonPlanet is (meaning more traffic for Anglin). He even has more traffic than Kristol's National Review (bonus: his audience average age isn't 65 like NatRev). It's extremely easy to find the thumbscrews of journalists, and even easier for nazis to find a jewish journalists thumbscrews to manipulate them. The fact is that the ADL/SPLC/Forward/Tablet/Hareetz/etc need to be relevant and having new nazis to face off against is a PR wet dream to them. It also means the nazis can milk it for maximum publicity. There's a whole lot of sensemaking that goes into the PR, but for nazis it doesn't really matter. You're already labeled the worst, most taboo group society has. There is no bad PR.

So yes there are actual nazis (ThirdPosition, etc) involved in 4chan and it is part of the organic cultural fabric of the imageboard.

My understanding of CTR's operation was that they were there to derail threads, fuck up morale and distract digging efforts. But the people there were already plenty racist.

Oh and the general rule still applies, when it comes to ephemeral message boards, any journalist who covers it always gets it wrong. This includes Breitbart. They need the board to be something, a cardboard cutout for a narrative, not provide a factual description of the culture.



p.s. they're the Bavarian type of nazis, not the Prussian kind.

Thanks guruilla, lots of info there!

I doubt Pizzagate was constructed or orchestrated by r/the_donald. For one, as one of your links points out, the most dodgy-looking stuff comes from Podesta's emails and the Comet Pizza Instagram, not from anywhere else. I was on reddit a lot (including on r/the_donald) a lot during the week before the vote and it was incredibly feverish, fast-moving. Posters were searching all sorts of incriminating code words in the emails and any find at all got upvoted, got a hashtag and was spread on Twitter.

There's a lot of confirmation bias happening here, which you see come through in the more outlandish claims, like that the Podestas had something to do with Madeleine McCann's disappearance, or that James Alefantis is a reference to 'j'aime les enfants' (where did that start, by the way?). A lot of it is to some degree that, but based on some extremely weird, worrying data points in the emails and in the Podestas' story.

It's probably true that pro-Clinton posters, some of them paid, tried to seed racist Pepes as some sort of discrediting thing and that that blew up.

.

General Patton's version sounds a lot more credible. Can't say as I haven't frequented those precincts.

Altogether plausible that the Ratfuckers for Clinton tried what is suggested in the OP, but to give them credit for Alt-Right online is denial of a different and very real Rat's Nest that they did not invent. Maybe Brock even is a secret agent for his old cause, as guruilla speculates, but that wouldn't have done little more than to contribute to something that would have happened anyway.

There's no comparison to the DNC primaries because "Bernie Bros." was an easy campaign to initiate and run within that niche, with Clinton troops online guaranteed to play along instantly. It was a different corner of the modern media universe, and much more a monoculture. Alt-Right online may be a smaller niche in personnel, but unfortunately it's a real outbreak from real idiots just like many you may know in real life.

You can sort this Brock Plot along with a lot of other narratives that seek to monocausally attribute some real-life street protest (anti-Trump marches in New York) or meme surge like Alt-Right, or action of a whole set of long-existing demographics (the Trump vote itself) to a single mastermind campaign. In this version, Brock replaces Putin as Trump puppetmaster. Unfortunately, Trump's support is a real, genuinely American outgrowth.

You want to find one element without which it would not have happened, a necessary-if-not-sufficient condition, look to the outrageous conduct, in the year prior to any primary vote, of CNN-CBS-MS/NBC-ABC-Etc. They made his latest tweet or call to Morning Joe or rally of the day into 1/2 of the election story by air time, already in 2015. Their last month's penance of discovering he is a bad man, in the longer context, largely served to firm up his base by confirming their "liberal media" belief.

And yet the election was entirely Clinton's to lose. How that happened is incredible. If Brock or someone else on the inside of the Clinton machine was responsible, then for the ad-buy strategy that just talked about Trump the bad man, nothing programmatic. Or for the media-talk strategy that just talked about "Russia," nothing programmatic. Utterly disastrous, incomprehensible choices, and yet so fucking in line with what the Clinton machine was always about. Then the Dead Hand of 1787 waved, and voila: minority wins.

.

Wow! That's a lot to digest. But I think that's the point. Most people don't have the time to wrap their heads around all of this information.

There is no doubt in my mind that David Brock is a central figure in this clusterfuck, much more important than Alefantis, who appears to be the not so innocent "scapegoat".

I also think the purpose of the "armed gunman" incident was not only to support the fake news narrative, but to give them an excuse to close down the ave and "clean up" whatever it is that needs cleaning up, and/or to prepare or set up for whatever's coming next.

It's Buzzfeed, take it as you will, but maybe some clues in here:

How The Bizarre Conspiracy Theory Behind “Pizzagate” Was Spread

Subreddits are a different story and I'm more or less unfamiliar with them, beyond a few points. Chans always (rightfully) mock subreddits for being vanilla. If memory serves the donald has had free speech/banning issues (that a chan would never tolerate) and the moderator staff had to be reshuffled several times over. Subreddits are the DnD kid in highschool, Chans were/are the kid that stuffs him in a locker before firing up a heroin/meth speedball and wrecking his dad's truck into a tree going 90 miles an hour. This is less true for 4chan now that it's core userbase has been so diluted.

"Don't forget, you're here forever"

this Carmen Katz?


Carmen Katz commented on an article.
Yesterday at 10:09am ·
And we the legally armed citizen militias will eagerly and gleefully meet these thugs at the prison gates and mow them down. Pardoning violent, evil filth and barbaric black human GARBAGE like this would only be a revenge tactic from the most bitter, irrelevant, unqualified and illegitimate President this nation has ever seen.

Carmen Katz commented on an article.
December 2 at 4:02pm ·
Hillary has one year at the very most to live. She is only doing this to placate her disappointed pay for play donors, and the millions of fragile, sore - loser infants who can't accept loss of any kind.

Carmen Katz commented on an article.
November 13 at 2:46pm ·
Seems like you weak, liberal PUSSIES on the west coast can use some real patriotic Americans to come help you take out the trash that you have allowed to infest your state. The Missouri Militia would love to come kill those who you are allowing to assassinate your law enforcement officers.


Carmen Katz
November 12 at 8:39pm ·
Change.org
·
As unbelievable as it seems, there are violent fascist, thugs who are rioting to overturn a legal and valid election. Please sign this petition to show that Mr. Trump has much more support than crooked and lying Hillary Clinton.


Carmen Katz commented on an article.
November 14 at 6:59pm ·
She has that 'in your face' lesbian set/smirk to her mouth and eyes.


Carmen Katz commented on a link.
November 15 at 1:53pm ·
More like year of the bull DYKE! Megyn Kelly is a psychotic, raging narcissist along the order of Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. She must really have something on Ailes and the Murdoch's in order to not have been fired yet. She has single handedly destroyed FOX.


Carmen Katz commented on an article.
November 16 at 1:18am ·
Schubert and Broaddus indicate that both Pelosi and Harry Reid 'lost it' mentally around the time that Obama's 2nd term began. She (Pelosi) is shielded, propped up, coached and kept separated from reporters. Reid is a bigger problem because he refuses to ' go quietly into that good night' and is getting more and more outspoken AND physically violent with detractors and opponents. Pelosi goes off on irrational rambles without any filter.


Carmen Katz commented on an article.
November 16 at 8:45am ·
No one thought she would live this long. The woman is clearly no longer 'with it' mentally, but this is par for the course with Democrats. After all, they nominated and promoted a raging, psychotic, paranoid delusional sociopath for president.


Carmen Katz commented on an article.
November 21 at 6:47pm ·
On a similar note, I go trolling for lefty wingnuts with my 'trumpsticker' SUV. I carry large tire buddy and a taser for good measure. Anyone approaches in a threatening manner . . . They will go down hard and be nursing a concussion for days.


Carmen Katz commented on an article.
November 22 at 1:23pm ·
There is NO reason every single Jew in America shouldn't have voted for Trump! Both Obama and the Clintons have made it clear many times that they loathe and despise the Jews and Israel. Any Jew not voting for Trump is another enemy to the survival of Jews and Israel. There is no hypocrite greater than a Jew who voted for Obama or the Clintons.


Carmen Katz commented on an article.
November 22 at 3:57pm ·
Face it. Thanksgiving was essentially a Christian celebration for safe passage to the new world where freedom of RELIGION, namely, Christian denominations, could be worshipped without persecution. If those at your table who are arguing that Hillary should have won and who are putting down Trump and Trump supporters, remind them that no Christian could possibly support liberal agendas or candidate. Case closed. You CANNOT co-opt this sacred CHRISTIAN celebration with your ungodly, immoral filth and arguments!

barracuda » Mon Dec 05, 2016 12:34 pm wrote:It's Buzzfeed, take it as you will, but maybe some clues in here:

How The Bizarre Conspiracy Theory Behind “Pizzagate” Was Spread

Screen Shot 2016-12-05 at 9.33.08 AM.png

.

Of the many stories now going about the shooting incident in DC, I'll pick the one from a news platform that seems appropriate for "Pizzagate" - although perhaps People is a bit too highbrow for the general vibe? But Hustler has not been covering it behind its paywall, according to a search. Which is an indicator, since normally they're all over legit sex abuse scandals, it's bread-and-butter to them.


Man Opens Fire in D.C. Restaurant While Looking Into Fake News Story About Hillary Clinton: Cops
http://people.com/crime/man-opens-fire- ... y-clinton/

No worries, you can already guess what the pizza toppings have to say about this: Crisis actors! Every last one of'em!

.

More to read before commenting, guruilla, but wanted to share this story:

Man Motivated by ‘Pizzagate’ Conspiracy Theory Arrested in Washington Gunfire

By ERIC LIPTON DEC. 5, 2016


Police vehicles outside Comet Ping Pong after a man with a gun entered the restaurant in Washington on Sunday. Credit Jim Lo Scalzo/European Pressphoto Agency

WASHINGTON — A man fired a rifle on Sunday inside a Washington pizza restaurant that has been subjected to harassment based on false stories tying it to child abuse, the police said. No one was hurt, and the man was arrested.

The man, Edgar M. Welch, 28, of Salisbury, N.C., told the police that he had come to the restaurant, Comet Ping Pong, in northwest Washington, to “self-investigate” what is being called Pizzagate, an online conspiracy theory asserting, with no evidence, that the restaurant is somehow tied to a child abuse ring. He entered the restaurant shortly before 3 p.m. with a rifle and fired it at least once inside, the police said.

The gunfire sharply escalated what had already been a tense period for the restaurant, its employees and the quiet neighborhood since the fake stories began spreading. Dozens of threats against employees had been made via email and social media.

People inside the restaurant fled, and the police locked down the area, ordering patrons of a nearby bookstore and cafe called Politics and Prose to remain locked inside. Officers with rifles and protective gear surrounded the restaurant and apprehended Mr. Welch. Two additional firearms were found, one on Mr. Welch and the other in his vehicle, the police said.

The police closed down a normally busy Connecticut Avenue, which runs in front of the restaurant, for several hours Sunday as they searched the area for other potential threats.

In a statement, Comet Ping Pong’s owner, James Alefantis, condemned the people who had been spreading the bogus stories about child abuse.

“What happened today demonstrates that promoting false and reckless conspiracy theories comes with consequences,” he said. “I hope that those involved in fanning these flames will take a moment to contemplate what happened here today and stop promoting these falsehoods right away.”

Bradley Graham, co-owner of Politics and Prose, said the incident was a worrisome event during an uneasy time for the neighborhood. “This is one of the things we feared,” Mr. Graham said as the police surrounded his bookstore with rifles and weapons drawn. “That this could go from a social media attack to something much more dangerous and physical.”

Mr. Graham said he and others had been disappointed that the local law enforcement authorities had not previously responded more aggressively to try to stop the harassment related to the fake claims, particularly after one supporter of the Pizzagate theory shot a live video from within the restaurant during a busy dinner shift.

The misinformation campaign about Comet began when the email account of John D. Podesta, an aide to Hillary Clinton, was hacked and his emails were published by WikiLeaks during the presidential campaign. Days before the election, users on the online message board 4chan noticed that one of Mr. Podesta’s leaked emails contained communications with James Alefantis, Comet’s owner, discussing a fund-raiser for Mrs. Clinton.

Sabrina Ousmaal, owner of a French restaurant called Terasol, which is across the street from Comet, said that other businesses in the area had also been targeted by threats and that the response from the authorities so far had been insufficient.

“The F.B.I. and the police were notified repeatedly of these death threats and calls, emails, online posts,” she wrote in an email Sunday, after the rifle blast. “Nothing was done. I am appalled and horrified. Do people need to die for something to be done?”

------------

Cecilia Kang contributed reporting

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/us/pizzagate-comet-ping-pong-edgar-maddison-welch.html

gurilla wrote:

Those are the specifics; the general “thesis” (or question) is something like: to what degree has our ability to engage in meaningful conversation around political and social reality been sabotaged by Brock’s relentless spin campaign, and the larger, more ancient tradition of mass-obfuscation which it upholds and exemplifies? And how can we see the results of that here at RI?

I don't think its a good idea to make RI a part of this "research project".
Whose to determine who has been duped, is more dupable, sabotaged, saboteur?
Who wants RI linked to such shenanigans?
Reminds me of such gems as "So when did you stop beating your wife?", "Have you ever heard voices in your head?"
Sounds like the makings of a shit storm cloud buster.

it's a damned shame this has gone as long as it has.

brekin » Mon Dec 05, 2016 3:00 pm wrote:gurilla wrote:

Those are the specifics; the general “thesis” (or question) is something like: to what degree has our ability to engage in meaningful conversation around political and social reality been sabotaged by Brock’s relentless spin campaign, and the larger, more ancient tradition of mass-obfuscation which it upholds and exemplifies? And how can we see the results of that here at RI?

I don't think its a good idea to make RI a part of this "research project".
Whose to determine who has been duped, is more dupable, sabotaged, saboteur?
Who wants RI linked to such shenanigans?
Reminds me of such gems as "So when did you stop beating your wife?", "Have you ever heard voices in your head?"
Sounds like the makings of a shit storm cloud buster.

I agree and I am just relieved that there wasn't a mass murder connected to this ...it's all I have been able to think about since the shooting..it makes me sick that RI is in anyway promoting this shit

innocent lives were in grave danger because of this

it's always fun and games till people get killed

I always say, if you don't want to get shot at work, maybe you shouldn't work somewhere with human meat on the menu.

who said there was human meat on the menu?

what about the innocent people that were just eating there....did they know there was human meat on the menu?

was it listed as a topping?