Elon Musk is a stochastic terrorist

KRIS GOLDSMITH

Per CNN:

Twitter’s former head of trust and safety has fled his home due to an escalation in threats resulting from Elon Musk’s campaign of criticism against him, a person familiar with the matter told CNN on Monday.

Yoel Roth, who resigned from the social media company in November, has in recent weeks faced a storm of attacks and threats of violence following the release of the so-called “Twitter Files” — internal Twitter communications that new owner Musk has released through journalists including Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss.

Roth’s position involved him working on sensitive issues including the suspension of then-President Donald Trump’s account in 2021. On Monday, Weiss posted a series of screenshots purported to show internal Twitter documents where Roth and others discussed whether to ban Trump’s account, with some employees questioning if the former president’s tweets violated the platform’s policies.

While Musk had initially been publicly supportive of Roth, that soon changed after he left the company.

Roth has since been the subject of criticism and threats following the release of the Twitter Files. However, things took a dark turn over the weekend when Musk appeared to endorse a tweet that baselessly accused Roth of being sympathetic to pedophilia — a common trope used by conspiracy theorists to attack people online.

A person familiar with Roth’s situation told CNN threats made against the former Twitter employee escalated exponentially after Musk engaged in the pedophilia conspiracy theory. 

This is the second time Musk has falsely accused someone of pedophilia. It's insane he didn't lose the first case. Clearly he has no qualms about using false accusations to smear people. He needs to be sued into bankruptcy.

The American far-right loves stochastic terrorism. And by far-right I am very much including the Intellectual Dark Web. 

Elon Musk is clearly a member in good standing of that crowd of ghouls. 

It's curious, that the far-right and the Intellectual Dark Web pretend to hate pedophilia when, as I have documented, they love blatant pro-pedophilia Camille Paglia.

Although for the last four years, this blog has focused on criticizing the race pseudoscience promoted by the Intellectual Dark Web, which has been aided and abetted by mainstream "celebrity intellectuals" like Steven Pinker, I have also ended up writing about the various stochastic terrorism projects connected to members of the Intellectual Dark Web.

• Maybe one of the earliest examples of social media-delivered stochastic terrorism was Gamergate, in 2014, with its connection to three members of the Intellectual Dark Web: named members Christina Hoff Sommers and Milos Yiannopoulus, and Cathy Young. The guy who attacked Paul Pelosi was a fan of Gamergate.

• Pizzagate in 2016 promoted by Mike Cernovich, a named member of the Intellectual Dark Web.

• The entire career of former Quillette staff member Andy Ngo, who lent his free speech grift to the Trump campaign, which hoped to use ANTIFA-panic as an excuse to declare martial law.

Oh how the Intellectual Dark Web loved Andy Ngo. Sommers calls for backup from members and fans of the IDW in this tweet.

• The career of James Lindsay, a beloved "intellectual" of the Intellectual Dark Web and influencer of the guy who attacked Paul Pelosi. Bari Weiss was a big fan of "Conceptual James."

I recently wrote about Libs of TikTok, the account created by self-proclaimed stochastic terrorist Chaya Raichik. LOTT is funded by Seth Dillon. LOTT is defended by Bari Weiss. 

Is there any stochastic terrorist who Bari Weiss DOES NOT LOVE?

Libs of TikTok goes far beyond expressing political opinions about transgender issues. That would certainly be allowed under Twitter’s policies, which exist to curb harassment, violence, and hate speech, not opinions. In fact, Libs of TikTok has repeatedly highlighted specific individuals, events, and institutions with inflammatory language, often falsely suggesting they are guilty of heinous acts against young children. The account’s spotlight has repeatedly resulted in harassment and violent threats toward the individuals involved, in a process typically referred to as stochastic terrorism. Those targeted include doctors and hospitals that provide gender-affirming care for youth, teachers and schools with inclusive policies, and all-ages or youth-focused drag events.

"The Twitter Files" is Musk selectively releasing email exchanges in the hopes it will make old Twitter look bad. Musk has asked right-wingers Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger and Bari Weiss to help him.

When her access was granted, Bari Weiss tried to show that Libs of TikTok was treated unfairly. As Kevin Drum writes:

...Bari Weiss, a writer whose primary motivation in life seems to be her deep resentment of liberals, is the author of Part 2, and she provides the names of three political actors who were de-amplified:¹ 

• Charlie Kirk
• Dan Bongino
• Chaya Raichik (Libs of TikTok)

And that's it. Weiss doesn't explain why she picked these three to highlight. She doesn't say why these three were de-amplified. Nor does she say if she also knows of any liberals who were de-amplified. And even though Musk has given her access to anything she wants to see, she provides no statistics about how many people were de-amplified; the reasons they were de-amplified; how long they were de-amplified; or anything else. She just provides three hand-picked names and that's the end of it.

Charlie Kirk is another named member of the Intellectual Dark Web.

Apparently Weiss failed to show Libs of TikTok was discriminated against, and in fact revealed it was given special consideration. 

The American far-right tries to discredit the concept of "stochastic terrorism" - at least as applied to its members, as seen recently in a piece by Koch employee and all-around soulless political operative Christopher Rufo a friend of James Lindsay and member of the IDW-loaded FAIRforall board of advisers. Bari Weiss and Michael Shellenberger are, of course, also advisors of that organization.

But I'll end this post on a high note:

Elon Musk HUMILIATED When Crowd Turns On Him And Dave Chappelle

and:

Musk, the CEO of Twitter and Tesla, joined Chappelle onstage Sunday night at the Chase Center in San Francisco, where Chris Rock was also headlining. 

“It was more boos than I’d ever heard,” an attendee, Jason, said in a direct message. “Sustained jeering.” 

Two audience members said they booed Musk because of the widespread firings and layoffs at Twitter. A third person said he booed Musk because of his political agenda — before the midterm elections, Musk urged followers to vote for Republicans. The three people shared screenshots of their tickets to the show with NBC News and spoke on the condition that only their first names be used to protect their privacy and to avoid backlash from Musk’s fans.

Both cheers and boos can be heard in videos of the event, which were viewed millions of times on social media Monday. Later on Twitter, Musk attributed the mixed reception to his recent embrace of conservative politics.

“Technically, it was 90% cheers & 10% boos (except during quiet periods), but, still, that’s a lot of boos, which is a first for me in real life (frequent on Twitter),” Musk tweeted. 

He added, “It’s almost as if I’ve offended SF’s unhinged leftists … but nahhh.”

All three audience members said that Musk’s tweet was inaccurate and that the booing drowned out the cheering.

The incident and the audience members’ explanations represent a shifting tide for Musk, who has reached a new level of notoriety since he took over Twitter while vocally supporting conservative causes.

Elon Musk's roadmap to Twitter ruin

Rachel Maddow reports on Elon Musk:

What was Elon Musk's strategy for Twitter

Musk’s purchase of Twitter, the 3,000-word anonymous article said, would amount to a “declaration of war against the Globalist American Empire.” The sender of the texts was offering Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO, a playbook for the takeover and transformation of Twitter. As the anniversary of Musk's purchase approaches, the identity of the sender remains unknown.

The three texts were sent on April 4, 2022. In the nearly 18 months since then, many of the decisions Musk made after he bought Twitter appear to have closely followed that road map, up to and including his ongoing attacks against the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit organization founded by Jewish Americans to counter discrimination. 

The text messages described a series of actions Musk should take after he gained full control of the social media platform: “Step 1: Blame the platform for its users; Step 2: Coordinated pressure campaign; Step 3: Exodus of the Bluechecks; Step 4: Deplatforming.”

Recently Musk was seen promoting Libs of TikTok's attacks on the ADL. Because both Musk and LOTT are stochastic terrorists.

This attempted fascist takeover must end with Elon Musk going to jail

 The fascist take-over is blatant and in the United States, unprecedented. Elon Musk is breaking the law and must go to jail for it along with his barely-legal helpers.

• Elon Musk has your Social Security number. It’s as scary as it sounds. 

• Elon Musk will decide the fate of Social Security and Medicare. Time to panic 

• Retirees sue to block Musk, DOGE access to personal information of millions of Americans 

• The Treasury's payment system is one of Elon Musk's targets. Here's what it does, from Social Security to tax refunds 

• The US Treasury Claimed DOGE Technologist Didn’t Have ‘Write Access’ When He Actually Did

 

Krugman:

Imagine that you’re a federal contractor who has made campaign donations to Democrats; suddenly the government stops paying what it owes you and brushes off inquiries by saying that they’re working on the problem. Or you’re a federal employee who, according to somebody in your office who has a personal grievance, has expressed sympathy for DEI; somehow your regularly scheduled salary payments stop being deposited into your bank account. Or even imagine that you’re a retiree who canvassed for Kamala Harris, and for some reason your checks from Social Security stop coming. 

 

Don’t say they wouldn’t do such things. We’ve seen these people in action, and of course they would if they could. 

 

For the moment they probably can’t. The federal payments system is immensely complex, and like most government infrastructure has been financially squeezed for decades. So it’s cobbled together, much of it running on old hardware and even older software, kept functioning thanks to old hands and institutional memory. The 20-somethings Musk is deploying to take over, locking out those old hands and pushing aside the people who know how the system works, almost surely don’t understand enough to politicize payments right away. 

 

As Nathan Tankus, the go-to expert on these matters, says,

I 100% believe that the primary barrier to Elon Musk gaining control of the Treasury payments system is COBOL. 

 

For readers mystified by the reference, COBOL is a very old programming language that was once pervasive in the business world but in which hardly anyone under 60 knows how to program — yet is still widely used in government. (During Covid, the state of New Jersey put out a frantic call for people who knew COBOL to implement expanded unemployment benefits.)
But this observation raises another concern. What if the Musk people — Muskovites? — try to muck with systems they don’t understand, believing that they’re super smart and can master everything with the help of a little AI? It’s not hard to imagine the whole federal payments system — including, by the way, servicing of federal debt — crashing.
So much damage — to U.S. credibility, to the Constitution and the rule of law, and possibly even to the very functioning of the government. And Trump only took power 2 weeks ago.

This is what happens when you allow a stochastic terrorist to run your government.

Elon Musk Jet Tracker ✈ ✈ ✈ ✈ ✈ ✈ ✈

But we all knew that in addition to being a stochastic terrorist, Elon Musk is a lying hypocrite:

Twitter on Wednesday suspended more than 25 accounts that track the planes of government agencies, billionaires and high-profile individuals — including one that followed the movements of the social media company’s owner, Elon Musk, who has said he was committed to “free speech.”

 

Jack Sweeney, a 20-year-old college student and flight tracking enthusiast, said he woke up on Wednesday to find that his automated Twitter account, @ElonJet, had been suspended. In recent months, the account amassed more than 500,000 followers by using public flight information and data to post the whereabouts of Mr. Musk’s private plane. Twitter later reinstated the @ElonJet account before suspending it again. 

 

Mr. Musk had been aware of @ElonJet for months. After buying Twitter for $44 billion in October, he said that he would allow the account to remain on the platform. “My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk,” Mr. Musk tweeted last month. 

 

Mr. Sweeney’s personal Twitter account was also suspended on Wednesday, along with the other accounts that he runs that track the planes of tech billionaires such as Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. Mr. Sweeney shared a message that he had received from Twitter, which said his account had been suspended for violating rules “against platform manipulations and spam.”

However, this blog is hosted by Blogger, which is owned by Google, not Elon Musk. So enjoy

🛫 ELON MUSK'S JET TRACKER 🛬

UPDATE: 

ELON MUSK'S JET IS ON 

MASTODON NOW

Elon Musk is a huge, obvious Nazi

According to German-language SPIEGEL

(translated via Google Translate)

Four weeks before the federal election, tech billionaire Elon Musk once again got involved in the German election campaign on a big stage and campaigned for the AfD. At the party's official election campaign launch in Halle (Saale), the Trump advisor and Tesla boss was connected live from the USA at the beginning of party leader Alice Weidel's speech.

Musk reaffirmed his support for the AfD party with a video message. "It is very important that people in Germany are proud to be German," Musk said via livestream. "German culture" goes back "thousands of years." Even the Roman emperor Julius Caesar was "impressed" by the fighting spirit of the Germanic tribes, Musk continued.

This Nazi scumbag needs to be deported right back to South Africa.

Of course Musk is a fan of neo-Nazi Emil Kirkegaard and Kirkegaard is a fan of Musk. Because they are part of the same racist and neo-Nazi network.

And of course we all saw Musk give a Nazi salute twice.

Elon Musk doubles-down on his neo-Nazi support

In case anybody had any doubts about how extremely racist and fascist the American shadow president is, Elon Musk's latest editorial in support of "Alternative für Deutschland" (AfD)  should make it crystal clear.

As the excellent report from Hope not Hate noted, there is a connection between the extremely racist Emil Kirkegaard and the AfD. One of the "senior figures" of Kirkegaard's racism umbrella organization Human Diversity Foundation, Erik Ahrens (German original), is the social media advisor of the AfD.

So it's extremely bizarre that Musk claims to be opposed to racism.

But what's really happening here is that Musk has decided to redefine racism as prejudice only against those eligible for an H1-B visa, which is how technology corporations recruit non-Americans to work in American companies.

There is currently a growing rift in Trump-world between the hardcore MAGAs who oppose all immigration, and Musk, who only opposes immigration from those he figures he can't profit from. 

Surprise, surprise: Tesla Emerges Among Top Employers Of H-1B Visa Holders.

Trump agrees with Musk. Is this really what the dummies who voted for Trump wanted?

Racist ("hereditarian") and oligarch boot-licker Claire Lehmann is obviously team Musk (source.)

Here she portrays Musk as Santa's helper via his Starlink.

Elon Musk has always been a promoter of race pseudoscience and now he owns America

It was inevitable that X would become a vector of race pseudoscience.

Some people like to imagine that Musk was radicalized by the existing racist content on Twitter/X. But Musk and his PayPal pal Peter Thiel have been racists for a long time - probably their entire lives considering that Musk comes from South Africa and Thiel comes from hyper-Christian German immigrants who became "fanatical Republicans" and, like Musk, grew up in South Africa during apartheid.

But they even brought their racist beliefs into the workplace, as discussed in "Contrarian" the book about Thiel by Max Chafkin. Thiel was a founder of the now-defunct Clarium Capital, and Musk was an investor (my emphasis):

Clarium employees read, played chess, and debated (sample topic: If you were going to design a country from scratch, what would it look like?) Everyone spent a lot of time talking politics, though it was important that those politics always be of the right-wing variety. An employee told me that it was common to hear talk about climate change denial and to see web browsers open to VDARE, the far-right website with a long record of publishing white nationalist writing. There were liberals at Clarium, but they understood that it was best to keep those views quiet. 

VDARE, which also seems to be defunct now - hooray - is about the most racist organization this side of American Renaissance. VDARE was infamous recently for buying a castle in West Virginia.

But is VDARE really necessary for white supremacists now? 

After all, Elon Musk, stochastic terrorist, white supremacist, anti-Semite, misogynist and best buddy of fascist Trump, possessor of many US government contracts and beneficiary of billions in US government subsidies, and all around horrible human being, now owns America.

Elon Musk: STILL a stochastic terrorist

This isn't the first time Musk has lied his way to putting another person's life in danger.

Elon Musk is a menace to the United States and should be sent back to South Africa.

And Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Joe Rogan should be sued into bankruptcy. They too are stochastic terrorists, using their platforms and their mobs of idiot fanboys to threaten the lives of scientists.

MONSTERS!

From The Washington Post:

A vaccine scientist says anti-vaccine activists “stalked” him at his home Sunday after Joe Rogan and others, including Twitter owner Elon Musk, challenged the scientist to debate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine proponent and Democratic presidential candidate, over vaccine misinformation.

Peter Hotez, a Houston-based scientist and pediatrician in global health, vaccinology and neglected tropical disease control, spent much of the pandemic debunking misinformation spread online about covid-19 and the vaccines targeting the coronavirus. He was also part of a Nobel Prize-nominated team of scientists who created an affordable, easy-to-make coronavirus vaccine.

Hotez criticized Rogan over the weekend as “awful” for hosting Kennedy, one of the country’s leading anti-vaccine advocates who has peddled false claims linking vaccines to autism, on Rogan’s wildly popular podcast last week. In response, Rogan publicly challenged the vaccine scientist to debate Kennedy, in a tweet Saturday that’s now been viewed more than 50 million times. Rogan said he’d give $100,000 to the charity of Hotez’s choice “if you’re willing to debate him on my show with no time limit.” Then, billionaires claimed they’d give more money and vaccine skeptics piled on. Among them was Musk, who tweeted that Hotez was “afraid of a public debate, because he knows he’s wrong.”

If you are still on Twitter you are enabling that asshole Elon Musk - GET OFF TWITTER NOW!

Rebecca Watson has an excellent response to those monsters.

I learned from Watson that idiot Michael Shermer was part of the idiot mob.

Elon Musk supports the German neo-Nazi party AfD

Pinkerite first wrote about Alternative für Deutschland ("Alternative for Germany") known as AfD a year ago in connection with racist kook Emil Kirkegaard. And now it seems the American government is being run by a supporter of AfD, Elon Musk.

According to the Financial Times:

Elon Musk has waded into Germany’s election campaign by backing the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, marking the latest intervention by the US billionaire entrepreneur into politics around the world. Musk, a close adviser to Donald Trump, on Friday retweeted a video by a German rightwing activist, adding: “Only the AfD can save Germany.” Alice Weidel, the AfD’s leader, responded: “Yes! You are perfectly right.” The AfD, classified as a suspected extremist organisation by Germany’s domestic intelligence, is poised for big electoral gains in elections scheduled on February 23. The vote, triggered by the collapse of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition last month, comes as Europe’s biggest economy comes under heavy strain.

Alternative for Germany is pure neo-Nazi. 

According to the epic article Race Science, Inc. by Hope not Hate that I talked about back in October, Emil Kirkegaard has a connection to AfD via his Human Diversity Foundation (which publishes the Aporia Substack):

The third senior figure of HDF (Human Diversity Foundation) is Erik Ahrens, a social media advisor in Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), the far-right German party. He is an advocate of white nationalism, and appeared at the AfD’s Potsdam conference in November 2023, at which party leaders discussed deporting German citizens of foreign descent.

The German media recently wrote about Ahrens (translated via Google translate into English):

He is one of the brains behind the AfD's TikTok success: Erik Ahrens trains the far-right party's cadres in how to use social media. And: He made the leading candidate for the European elections, Maximilian Krah (47), known in the internet world. Ahrens was also behind his video "Real men are right-wing", which has been viewed millions of times.

Is this what the morons who voted for Trump really wanted? Musk of course is now running the United States.

In any case I had to update my Emil Kirkegaard's Race Pseudoscience and Nazi Network diagram, adding fascist oligarch and current co-president of the United States, Elon Musk.

Does Jerry Coyne read his own blog?

Well after almost four years of this Pinkerite blog, you'd think I would have learned to never take members of the Quillette/IDW industrial complex at their word. 

When Jerry Coyne claimed on his blog ("Why Evolution is True") on October 21 that he'd never heard of Peter Thiel, the Trump-funding, Quillette-funding anti-democracy sociopathic keynote speaker for the CPAC for racists (aka the Stanford Academic Freedom conference) I should have immediately run a search on his blog, instead of just accepting his claim.

So it finally occurred to me to run the search, and of course Peter Thiel is mentioned several times on Coyne's blog prior to October 21 of this year.

The most recent instance of Peter Thiel showing up on Coyne's blog was just two months before he claimed he never heard of him. Coyne is quoting a right-winger on Bari Weiss's Substack:

Hillbilly Elegy author J.D. Vance managed to win his primary in Ohio with just 32 percent of the vote but rarely goes a week without some sort of gaffe, such as suggesting that women should stay in violent marriages. He now finds himself mired in a surprisingly tight general election against undistinguished Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan, whose main strategy is calling Vance, who’s worked for billionaire Peter Thiel, a plutocratic carpetbagger and repeating the word China over and over again to Rust Belt audiences. Then there’s another Thiel-backed political virgin, Arizona’s Blake Masters, who just this week flipped his position on abortion from being “100% pro-life” and supporting a federal personhood law to suggesting he’s only against late-term and partial-birth abortion. These aren’t even rookie mistakes.

I get that sometimes Coyne has other people write his blog posts. But does he ever bother to read them? Is he not capable of retaining information from them? I mean a billionaire is a pretty unusual type of person. You'd think that would be memorable enough.

So in May of this year, Coyne again mentions Thiel, in his post Elon Musk's list of must-read books. 

Now Coyne doesn't say why anybody should care what an asshole like Elon Musk reads. Musk had already threatened to buy Twitter a month before this post (Coyne was in favor of it) but Coyne only mentions that Musk is famous in the must-read books post. 

But clearly Coyne felt it was important to share. But somehow he doesn't remember that one of the books Musk loves was written by sociopath democracy-hating, racist CPAC keynote speaker Peter Thiel:

3.) Zero to One by Peter Thiel with Blake Master. It’s about how to build a business; I haven’t read it.

But back in 2016, so before Coyne was as far down the road of senescence as he is now, he published an entire post about Peter Thiel's efforts to use his wealth to punish anybody who criticizes him, because you know, he loves free speech so much: Open thread: Press freedom, free speech, Gawker and public humiliation. 

Now it was written by someone name Grania Spingles but still, doesn't Coyne read and remember what gets published on his own platform?

I 💗 Some More News

I recently discovered Some More News, hosted by Cody Johnston and it's taken me too long to do it - these guys have discussed many of the members of the Intellectual Dark Web and its most powerful funders and supporters:

Peter Thiel And His Dorky Little Goons

A Brief Look at Jordan Peterson

The Talented Mr. Musk Part 1: Free Speech

The Talented Mr. Musk, Part 2: The Elon Files

Elon Musk is Not Your Friend

Musk's War on Journalism, Unions, and Safety & MORE (This is from 4 years ago!)

Elon Musk "Versus" Twitter

Perhaps Ben Shapiro Shouldn't Be Taken Seriously By Anyone About Anything

Candace Owens, Congress, and How They Helped Each Other Lie

What and Why is "Cancel Culture"? - mentions Andy Ngo, Bill Maher and Bari Weiss

Cancel Culture Isn't a Thing, You Snowflakes

The GOP Sure Hates Queer People - mentions Libs of TikTok

Why is Critical Race Theory?

And How To Pretend Systemic Racism Doesn't Exist 

So I became a Patreon supporter of their project.

Time to get Elon Musk OUT of the US government!

 It's time to rein in the plutocrat mofos!

Ronan Farrow in the New Yorker:

The government’s plan to move the auto industry toward electric cars requires increasing access to charging stations along America’s highways. But this rests on the actions of another Musk enterprise, Tesla. The automaker has seeded so much of the country with its proprietary charging stations that the Biden Administration relaxed an early push for a universal charging standard disliked by Musk. His stations are eligible for billions of dollars in subsidies, so long as Tesla makes them compatible with the other charging standard.

Although I still think Peter Thiel is probably even more of a threat to American democracy because he is much sneakier than Musk.

More of the evils of Musk here on Pinkerite.

How is Libs of TikTok Chaya Raichik able to live her best life as a terrorist?

The rightwing in the United States is currently trying to achieve power through slandering and demonizing LGBTQ people.

One of the most prominent voices of hatred is an individual named Chaya Raichik, who runs a Twitter account called "Libs of TikTok." At one time Raichik referred to herself in her Twitter account as a "stochastic terrorist."

She may be evil, but at least Raichik is self-aware. 

For a deeper dive into stochastic terrorism, check out Scientific American's How Stochastic Terrorism Uses Disgust to Incite Violence.

The Anti-Defamation League describes Libs of TikTok:

Libs of TikTok is a popular anti-LGBTQ+ twitter account operated by former real estate agent Chaya Raichik. The account, which has over 1.3 million followers as of August 2022, attempts to generate outrage and stoke anti-LGBTQ+ hostility by reposting selected out-of-context social media content created by LGBTQ+ people and liberals. The individuals, events and organizations targeted by the account are frequent targets of harassment, threats and violence.

Today Slate writes:

Barely 24 hours after a gunman killed five people and injured 19 others at a gay bar in Colorado Springs, Elon Musk's new Twitter responded to the massacre by reinstating the account of James Lindsay, the right-wing activist responsible for popularizing the anti-LGBTQ slur "OK groomer," which over the last 10 months has been used to imply that demands for LGBTQ rights or representation are tantamount to child molestation. In August, Lindsay was banned from Twitter for using a variation on the term, which under Twitter's old regime was prohibited as a form of hateful conduct. But by Monday night, not only was Lindsay back, but "OK groomer" was trending on the platform under its new ownership. 

This is "stochastic terrorism" in action. James Lindsay was kicked off Twitter for being a neo-Nazi, and the would-be assassin of Nancy Pelosi was strongly influenced by Lindsay. Of course idiot Elon Musk would bring him back:

Elon Musk’s Anti-Trans Twitter Regime

Not content with reactivating accounts that spewed anti-trans content, Musk’s Twitter has now banned a group that organizes to protect people at LGBTQ events from far-right violence.

The Slate article continues:

Since last spring, the prominent right-wing Twitter account Libs of TikTok has been a major player in driving anti-LGBTQ animosity, with an ongoing series of posts highlighting LGBTQ events around the country, often including dates, locations and names and pictures of people involved. Last June, it became clear that such posts were being used as a roadmap for harassment or violent confrontations, including a particularly hateful protest outside a Dallas gay bar that was holding an all-ages drag brunch to celebrate Pride Month, which resulted in patrons and their children being chased back to their cars and far-right protesters calling for all attendees to be shot.

The LA Blade writes:

Libs of TikTok has been suspended several times on multiple platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Raichik had previously been suspended from Twitter for accusing LGBTQ people of “grooming” children, which Twitter confirmed violates its policies against hateful conduct after facing pressure from Media Matters and others. Her Twitter account was also suspended after she targeted multiple hospitals for providing gender-affirming care, leading to violent threats against patients and providers and forcing at least one hospital to request support from law enforcement. (On September 5, Raichik baselessly claimed that a bomb threat against Boston Children’s Hospital “was probably a left-wing person trying to get me suspended.”)

Notably, Raichik previously pledged to redouble her attacks on hospitals providing trans people with health care after she was suspended from Twitter in August. 

So, what does the Intellectual Dark Web have to say about this raging right-wing homophobia? A few members of the Quillette/IDW industrial complex are LGBTQ.

• In July of this year, Bari Weiss's girlfriend Nellie Bowles was gleefully promoting Libs of TikTok on Bari Weiss's Substack:

Another week and another funny investigative report from Libs of TikTok, this time about a Portland lesbian bar, Doc Marie’s, that closed a week after opening...

• Cathy Young tried a "both sides" claiming that reporting on Libs of TikTok was just as bad as Libs of TikTok. But then, I think Cathy Young was a pioneer in stochastic terrorism, thanks to her enthusiastic cheerleading for Gamergate.

• Enthusiastic transphobe and one-time Quillette editor Colin Wright recommends Libs of TikTok.

• Dave Rubin retweeted Seth Dillon in March.

• Michael Shermer is a big fan of Libs of TikTok

How is Chaya Raichik able to live her best life as a stochastic terrorist? 

She is funded by Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon.

Seth Michael Dillon, CEO of The Babylon Bee "satire" website, said he has a "deal" with Chaya Raichik, owner of a Twitter account who claims gay and transgender people “groom” children to accept sexual abuse from adults.

When Libs of TikTok was suspended from Twitter, Seth Dillon tweeted: 

“BREAKING: Twitter has once again hit Libs of TikTok with a 7-day suspension for ‘hateful conduct.’ No specific tweets were flagged. We’ve since fired off another letter to Twitter (attached). They’re on notice that we will sue them if they permanently suspend us,” Dillon tweeted.

That's ironic because I think that Seth Dillon will eventually be sued - for funding terrorism. 

Both Dillon and Libs of TikTok have Substacks, because of course they do. Substack has no standards and I suspect it is financially supported by right-wing plutocrats.

Meanwhile advertisers are leaving Twitter.

More from Media Matters.

There should be some legal and financial consequences for spreading stochastic terrorism. For Chaya Raichik, Seth Dillon and Elon Musk.

O my prophetic soul

So a couple of weeks ago, when Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter was still only a strong possibility, I speculated that once Musk took over, people like professional transphobe, Quillette contributing editor Colin Wright would be free to say hateful things without occasionally being called out for it. 

So yesterday Elon Musk retweeted a graphic created by... Colin Wright. 

Clearly Musk is a friend of the right-wing IDW Quillette ideology.

Twitter is now part of the Intellectual Dark Web

Can there be any doubt that Musk has joined the network of right-wing plutocrats who support the Intellectual Dark Web?

On Friday, a more unexpected sighting came in the form of Weiss, the conservative newsletter writer who was previously a New York Times opinion columnist. Weiss was in the San Francisco office that evening, speaking and "laughing with" Musk, two employees said.

By Saturday, Musk said Weiss would take part in releasing what he's dubbed "the Twitter files," so far consisting mainly of correspondence between Twitter employees and executives discussing their decision in 2020 to block access to a New York Post article detailing material on Hunter Biden's stolen laptop. Now, Weiss has been given access to Twitter's employee systems, added to its Slack, and given a company laptop, two people familiar with her presence said.

The level of access to Twitter systems given to Weiss is typically given only to employees, one of the people familiar said, though it doesn't seem she is actually working at the company. Matt Taibbi, the other newsletter writer through whom Musk has released the Twitter files, didn't seem to receive this degree of access, the person added.

 

Buh-bye trolly Elon Musk

So it looks like the whole Elon Musk takeover of Twitter is no more. Hoorah.

Elon Musk is a trollish, toxic individual and appears to be an ally of the Intellectual Dark Web with all its race pseudoscience promotion and transphobia. 

Quillette of course was a big booster for a Musk-controlled Twitter.

So it was a great relief to discover the deal has fallen apart.

This Week in Google provides an interesting discussion of the situation.

Meet techno-fascist Marc Andreessen

Techno-fascist Marc Andreessen and his Substack stooge Razib Khan
Like Thiel and Musk, Andreessen can easily afford thousands
of courtiers like Khan, ready to say whatever their liege desires 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have ignored Marc Andreessen on this blog for far too long. 

Mostly because the connections between Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and the Intellectual Dark Web and race pseudoscience have been much more obvious for much longer. 

Thiel especially, has been a player in right-wing politics since he was in college. And it has been credibly claimed he "secretly" funded the admittedly hereditarian, racist rag Quillette. 

Steven Pinker is a big fan of Quillette, even writing for Quillette, which completes the third component of the race pseudoscience - Intellectual Dark Web - Steven Pinker Dark Triad.

So I've made a big deal about possible connections between Peter Thiel and Substack while ignoring the indisputable connection between Andreessen and Substack. 

And now, here from last week is Andreessen promoting a tweet by racist Razib Khan, whose career has been promoted by Steven Pinker for decades.

And like Peter Thiel, the indisputable fascist, Andreessen has a friendly relationship with infamous white supremacist Richard Hanania.

Andreessen is a libertarian megalomaniac, which has been public knowledge for at least the last decade, but recently that's been made more obvious by his famously unhinged rant, which the Washington Post called "a self-serving cry for help." And:

The venture capitalist’s grievances are many, as are his out-there pronouncements. Universal basic income “would turn people into zoo animals to be farmed by the state.” Global population “easily” could grow to 50 billion (from about 8 billion today)— “and then far beyond that as we ultimately settle other planets.” And he has a Fox News-ish fear of a grab-bag of hobgoblins: “the ivory tower, the know-it-all credentialed expert worldview, indulging in abstract theories, luxury beliefs, social engineering, disconnected from the real world, delusional, unelected, and unaccountable — playing God with everyone else’s lives, with total insulation from the consequences.”

Vice points out the connection between Andreessen's beliefs and fascist beliefs:

Andreessen also calls out Filippo Tommaso Marinetti as one of his patron saints. Marinetti is not only the author of the technology- and destruction-worshipping Futurist Manifesto from 1909, but also one of the architects of Italian fascism. Marinetti co-authored the Fascist Manifesto in 1919 and founded a futurist political party that merged with Mussolini's fascists. Other futurist thinkers and artists exist. To call Marinetti in particular a "saint" is a choice. 

You can't be more obviously in love with fascism than that - to call a Mussolini-era fascist a "saint." To those of you unfamiliar with history, Mussolini was an ally of Hitler.

So should we really be surprised that Substack, a platform that Andreessen has heavily invested in, is not only platforming Nazis and profiting from Nazis, but unashamedly promoting Nazis?

A software developer on Github compared Andreessen to Karl Marx and Ted Kazinsky (the "Unabomber") - 

In the vein of Ted Kazinsky, Karl Marx, and others before him, Marc Andreessen has proudly penned a manifesto, The Techno-Optimist Manifesto . Or more properly, “a rant.”

I chose the word “rant” with care. He’s ranting against something, but it’s a terrible essay riddled with citations from racist writers (whom he admires), straw men, false dilemmas, and reads like a high school sophomore barely squeaked out a passing grade in a macroeconomics course.

Lucas Roper in Gizmodo, in an article entitled Marc Andreessen Is Wrong About Everything writes:

Here’s the bottom line: The techno-optimist tribe gives off the distinct impression of people who have been so ridiculously rich for so long that they’ve just completely lost the plot about how the real world works. To be fair, this is an apt description of most of Silicon Valley. These days, if you’re not vampirically using your teenage son’s blood to regenerate your own aging body, or torturing monkeys to death in the hopes of creating the Matrix, or trying to get a belligerent reality TV star elected president, you’re just not winning. The tech industry is fueled by people with bad ideas, and Jezos, Andreessen, and company are just some among many. What makes this crowd somewhat different (and a little more dangerous) is that they’re now writing Unabomber-style manifestos that give some pretense of intellectual legitimacy to their terrible ideas. They’re then using that legitimacy to push for a totally unregulated tech industry that stands to “disrupt” (i.e., potentially destabilize) large parts of society.

This makes it all the more ironic that Andreessen names as one of his so-called “enemies” those who are “disconnected from the real world, delusional, unelected, and unaccountable – playing God with everyone else’s lives, with total insulation from the consequences.” Frankly, there’s no better description of the “techno-optimist” crowd—a gaggle of out-of-touch tech bros who think their wealth gives them license to chart a future nobody else wants.

It should be obvious to all by now that the United States - and the world - has a deadly-serious billionaire techno-fascist problem.

Now I want to take a moment to mention the epic post about Substack shenanigans by Allan Stromfeldt Christensen of the curiously named "Filmers to Farmers" website. This is the first time I've seen someone else discuss some of the issues about Substack that I have raised in the past couple of years. I will have more to say about this epic post soon, but for now I just want to quote this bit:

Because yes, the notion of Substack's "hands-off ... moderation stance" ostensibly being part of a 10-15 year Andreessen-aligned covert plan can be a bit too conspiratorial to swallow, but it nonetheless turns out that there's nothing covert at all about Substack's extremist machinations, and it's getting harder and harder to not admit that Substack is increasingly turning into something rather similar to what Musk has transformed his Twitter/X platform into.

As I said back in July:

With all the racists it is platforming (Hanania, Kirkegaard, Bo Winegard, Razib Khan, Indian Bronson - undoubtedly many more, those are just off the top of my head) and now promoting, it sure looks like Substack is going the way of Twitter - and if it's less obvious than with Twitter, that's probably because Peter Thiel is stealthier than Elon Musk.

Of course I should have said Marc Andreessen - but don't count Thiel out yet - he does indeed like to do things secretly.

FAIR grifter update - even further right than ever - can it be possible???

Nothing gives Warren more credibility than the fact
that misogynist rightwing tax-evading
plutocrat Elon Musk hates her.

The FAIR board of advisors is leaning so far right now, it's a wonder it hasn't fallen over entirely.

Back in July I did a tally of the board and its political leanings. Very far right.

So who's out now and who is in?

Well the only one who appears to be gone is Christopher Rufo. I guess his main assignment of trying to prevent discussions of race in American classrooms under the umbrella of CRT is taking up all his time.

But Rufo is verrrrry far right. A Trump supporter, a Koch employee, and is or was "a research fellow at the Discovery Institute, a Christian think tank known for its opposition to the theory of evolution and advocacy for intelligent design to be taught in public schools."

Will the FAIR gang be able to not only make up for Rufo's extremism, but add enough members of right-wing alignment to allow the FAIR board of advisors to tilt even further starboard?

You can count on the FAIR gang. 

The newly added members are Jonathan Kay, Batya Ungar-Sargon, Tim Urban and John R. Wood, Jr.

Jonathan Kay of course is the right-wing editor of the race pseudoscience rag Quillette. So Quillette connection. Check.

Batya Ungar-Sargon: "Newsweek opinion editor: Fauci represents 'extremely arrogant and highly politicized elite." Wrote an anti-woke book. Complete rightwing establishment media asshole. Check.

Tim Urban worships Elon Musk. Elon Musk was seen on Twitter recently, combining plutocrat disdain for paying taxes with misogyny. So economically conservative. Check.

John R. Wood, Jr. - Republican who loves Trump. Check.

Watch him at CPAC asking God to bless Trump. It will make your skin crawl.

So these four, while individually not as horrible as Christopher Rufo, are each pretty horrible in their own special way and that more than makes up for the loss of Rufo.

Revelations from Undark's article on Emil Kirkegaard ~ Pinkerite gets a shout-out!

Emil Kirkegaard has no comments so far about
the Undark article - maybe because he's
too busy collaborating with Razib Khan on Twitter
--------------------------------------------------------

The piece is called In Genetics, a Tense Coexistence of Mainstream and Fringe Views by Ashley Smart.

The Pinkerite shout-out section starts by mentioning one of the plaintiffs suing Rational Wiki, Russell T. Warne:

Warne, who also spoke at the (2024 ISIR) conference and live posted on X during the proceedings, shared and then deleted a post announcing Kirkegaard’s talk. (Warne told Undark an ISIR board member asked him to delete the post.) According to an image capture shared by the blog Pinkerite, Kirkegaard gave his affiliation as The Arthur Jensen Institute — an organization that, if it exists, does not appear to have an institutional website.

They neglect to mention that I also provide an archive of the Russell T. Warne tweet that originally displayed the image. 

I'm glad to see my site has been of use to a journalist, since that is the raison d'être for Pinkerite, as I discuss here.

This was new to me: James J. Lee, a board member of the International Society for Intelligence Research, given a half-million dollars by the ISIR's support organization Institute of Mental Chronometry, was a protege of Steven Pinker. 

One of Kirkegaard’s earliest speaking appearance at ISIR, according to conference programs, came in 2017 in Montreal, where he presented a poster that examined relationships between cognitive ability and genetic ancestry among self-identified African Americans and Hispanic Americans.

Also in Montreal that year was an assistant professor of psychology from the University of Minnesota, James Lee. A protege of Harvard professor Steven Pinker, Lee had become a key player in the development of GWAS, which were breaking new ground in the study of the genetics of intelligence.

Warne is mentioned elsewhere in the article:

Studies with larger, more genetically diverse databases will yield polygenic scores that apply more generally across different racial groups, noted Warne in a 2021 article that suggested that Asian and White Americans, on average, are genetically predisposed to have higher IQs than Hispanic and Black Americans.

Oh Russell T. Warne, you gigantic racist with your IQ testing service.

The article implicates J. D. Vance in the racism. And Musk, but of course Musk is already known as a racist and neo-Nazi.

In November, on the heels of President Donald Trump’s reelection, Kirkegaard shared a blog post that featured an image of a red baseball cap emblazoned, in Trumpian fashion, with the words “Make Science Great Again.” In it, he petitioned the incoming administration to “remove all pro-affirmative action laws and regulations.” He boasted that then Vice-President-elect J.D. Vance follows — and tech-entrepreneur-turned-Trump-adviser Elon Musk interacts with — the anonymous X account @cremieuxrecueil, which has frequently shared posts asserting that Black Americans, as a group, are less intelligent than their White counterparts and occasionally spun that into arguments against diversity and affirmative action. Reporting from The Guardian links the account to a graduate student named Jordan Lasker, who has previously spoken at ISIR and frequently collaborated with Kirkegaard. (Lasker did not respond to an email from Undark asking for confirmation that he runs the account.)

I was pleased to see ISIR getting so much attention for its association with racists and neo-Nazis, but I don't think the article gives enough of a sense of how extreme Emil Kirkegaard is, and doesn't mention Human Diversity Foundation by name, only mentioning the Hope not Hate article about Kirkegaard with a link.

So far I haven't seen Kirkegaard mentioning the article on his Twitter account, probably he won't since per the article: Kirkegaard did not respond to multiple email requests for an interview for this story.

But speaking of Kirkegaard, another one of his colleagues/employees has filed a lawsuit against Rational Wiki, Jonatan Pallesen. 

More and more it looks like a a huge coordinated SLAPP scheme.

Bye bye Birdie

All my Twitter accounts are gone, now that Musk brought Trump back.

I am on Mastodon now at https://mastodon.lol/@Pinkerite

An ongoing web journal of the saga is here at Twitter is Going Great!

There should be no doubt about Musk's far-right politics since he is apparently a fan of the terrorist account LibsofTikTok, created by a monster who used the account to threaten hospitals, funded by feckless soulless troll Seth Dillon, CEO of the Babylon Bee.

Elon Musk is on the side of the monsters.