What's Trump's think tank? Try internet message boards
By Astead W. Herndon GLOBE STAFF AUGUST 29, 2017
WASHINGTON — ?President Trump bewildered security experts in February when he stated without evidence that Sweden’s refugee policies made the country less safe.
“What has he been smoking? Questions abound,” Carl Bildt, the former prime minister of Sweden responded in a tweet.
Yet in the corners of some pro-Trump Internet websites, the president’s statement was not bizarre in the slightest. For months, outside of the eye of mainstream political observers and in unpoliced forums such as private Listserv’s for supporters, anonymous Internet message boards, and social media communities on Facebook and Twitter, the president’s most loyal fans had been obsessed with claims that Sweden was being overrun with migrant crime.
It did not matter that the truth was more complex or that Sweden’s higher rate of reported rapes predates any influx in refugees. The narrative had already taken hold, beginning on Internet message boards before migrating to popular pro-Trump social media account, and, eventually, to the president.
Understanding the ecosystem of non-mainstream, pro-Trump media is critical to a fuller understanding of the Trump presidency itself. This alternative media, nicknamed the “alt-media,’’ can often be a sign post for where Trump is going, a predictor for a seemingly unpredictable president. No matter how true, misleading, or based in derogatory stereotypes its claims are, the information touted by the alt-media’s most prominent members has consistently bubbled up from anonymous Internet forums to the president’s speeches, policies, and tweets.
Some of the most vocal megaphones are well known, including Infowars’ Alex Jones, former Trump campaign adviser Roger Stone Jr., and Donald Trump Jr., who has consistently praised alt-media members and shared their work. But there are other important figures, too, such as Mike Cernovich, a pro-Trump filmmaker and anti-feminist writer with more than 300,000 Twitter followers, Chuck C. Johnson, a Massachusetts native and founder of GOTnews.com, who has been banned from Twitter for harassing women and nonwhites, and Jack Posobiec, a former naval officer and pro-Trump social media star who helped popularize the since-debunked conspiracy that members of the Democratic Party were running a child sex ring.
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