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Nevilledog
Nevilledog's Journal
Nevilledog's Journal
October 27, 2024
The fake whistleblower videos started popping up last fall, the work of a small but prolific Russian group that researchers call Storm-1516.
Much remains unknown about Storm-1516 — one prong of Russia’s propaganda operation — but it has produced some of the country’s most far-reaching and influential disinformation.
The Storm-1516 campaigns rely on faked primary sources — audio, video, photos, documents — presented as evidence of the claims’ veracity. They are then laundered through international news sources and influencers to reach their ultimate target: a mainstream Western audience.
At least 50 false narratives have been launched this way since last fall, according to a count NBC News assembled with researchers. The narratives aim to diminish Western support for military aid in Ukraine following Russia’s invasion, a contentious issue in Congress. The videos also back the re-election of Donald Trump, who has pledged to halt military aid to Ukraine, while painting the former president as a victim of a “deep state.” And they attack Vice President Kamala Harris.
*snip*
The Pipeline: How Russian propaganda reaches and influences the U.S.
https://www.nbcnews.com/specials/russian-disinformation-2024-election-storm-1516/index.htmlThe fake whistleblower videos started popping up last fall, the work of a small but prolific Russian group that researchers call Storm-1516.
Much remains unknown about Storm-1516 — one prong of Russia’s propaganda operation — but it has produced some of the country’s most far-reaching and influential disinformation.
The Storm-1516 campaigns rely on faked primary sources — audio, video, photos, documents — presented as evidence of the claims’ veracity. They are then laundered through international news sources and influencers to reach their ultimate target: a mainstream Western audience.
At least 50 false narratives have been launched this way since last fall, according to a count NBC News assembled with researchers. The narratives aim to diminish Western support for military aid in Ukraine following Russia’s invasion, a contentious issue in Congress. The videos also back the re-election of Donald Trump, who has pledged to halt military aid to Ukraine, while painting the former president as a victim of a “deep state.” And they attack Vice President Kamala Harris.
*snip*
October 23, 2024
Max Flugrath🗳️
@MaxFlugrath
·
Follow
📢When Dr. Carol Anderson talks, we listen.
A study found that in Georiga communities that are 90% Black, the wait time to vote was 10x as long as communities that are 90% white.
9:42 AM · Oct 23, 2024
GA: Voting in majority Black communities takes 10x longer
https://twitter.com/maxflugrath/status/1849129200957206991Max Flugrath🗳️
@MaxFlugrath
·
Follow
📢When Dr. Carol Anderson talks, we listen.
A study found that in Georiga communities that are 90% Black, the wait time to vote was 10x as long as communities that are 90% white.
9:42 AM · Oct 23, 2024
October 22, 2024
The Ghosts of John Tanton
Climate change and anti-immigrant hate are colliding, foretelling a volatile future.
by Abrahm Lustgarten
Patrick Crusius worried that Texas — hot and dry and facing climate calamity — was being overrun by immigrants. For his entire life he’d watched as Allen, Texas, the upper-middle-class Dallas suburb where he grew up, more than doubled in size, with quick-built mansions and car-choked freeways. Crusius, 21 years old, with wavy dark brown hair, sparse stubble collecting on his round chin, was awkward and introverted. He spent eight hours a day on his computer. He learned to hate the influence of megacorporations and the culture of consuming cheap goods that he thought they fostered, and he detested the waste and pollution that came with it. He brooded over the dwindling supplies of clean water and that too many people were competing for too little of it. But more than anything he had come to hate Hispanic migrants, who had turned his overwhelmingly white town into a nearly-half ethnic one. He wanted to keep them out. “#BuildTheWall is the best way that @POTUS has worked to secure our country so far!” he tweeted in 2017. In a world of constraints and an environment under stress, why should he have to share with them?
Crusius bought a semiautomatic rifle online and 1,000 rounds of hollow-point 7.62 x 39 mm ammunition. On Aug. 3, 2019, he got into his gray Honda Civic and drove nearly 10 hours toward El Paso, Texas. Entering the city, he turned into the Cielo Vista Walmart Supercenter parking lot. By some accounts, he wanted a snack, but after briefly going into the store filled with Hispanic shoppers, he returned to his car, posted a vitriolic 2,400-word manifesto to the extremist social media site 8chan and got the gun. He shot 45 people, ultimately killing 23, eight of them Mexican citizens. “This attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas,” Crusius wrote. “I am simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion.”
In his manifesto, which he titled “The Inconvenient Truth” — a seeming nod to Al Gore’s documentary about the climate crisis — he wrote that “water sheds around the country, especially in agricultural areas, are being depleted.” Americans would never change their habits of consumption, he asserted, but new immigrants would only consume more, rising to this country’s standard of living and expanding the net environmental burden on the world. “Urban sprawl creates inefficient cities which unnecessarily destroys millions of acres of land,” he continued. “If we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can become more sustainable.”
I arrived at the Cielo Vista Walmart three weeks later to find flowers and pictures and memorials adorning a quarter-mile chain-link fence erected around the store’s perimeter and a city still in shock. I had been investigating climate change as a new driver of both large-scale migration around the world and of potential conflict. Traveling through the mountains of Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico, I heard accounts of migrants suffering shortages of food and climate-driven despair that had forced them to move. Worldwide, the number of displaced people has been climbing alongside what appears to be the rising severity of disasters, and research suggests that by later this century as much as one-third of civilization — billions of people — could be facing the kind of heat and drought that had prohibited most human settlement for thousands of years. If humankind’s uncharted venture into the hottest and most unpredictably chaotic environment in history was to be marked by a new era of global migration, how would never-ending pressure on the U.S. border weigh on the politics and divisions of this country?
*snip*
The Ghosts of John Tanton (Pro Publica)
https://www.propublica.org/article/john-tanton-far-right-extremism-environmentalism-climate-changeThe Ghosts of John Tanton
Climate change and anti-immigrant hate are colliding, foretelling a volatile future.
by Abrahm Lustgarten
Patrick Crusius worried that Texas — hot and dry and facing climate calamity — was being overrun by immigrants. For his entire life he’d watched as Allen, Texas, the upper-middle-class Dallas suburb where he grew up, more than doubled in size, with quick-built mansions and car-choked freeways. Crusius, 21 years old, with wavy dark brown hair, sparse stubble collecting on his round chin, was awkward and introverted. He spent eight hours a day on his computer. He learned to hate the influence of megacorporations and the culture of consuming cheap goods that he thought they fostered, and he detested the waste and pollution that came with it. He brooded over the dwindling supplies of clean water and that too many people were competing for too little of it. But more than anything he had come to hate Hispanic migrants, who had turned his overwhelmingly white town into a nearly-half ethnic one. He wanted to keep them out. “#BuildTheWall is the best way that @POTUS has worked to secure our country so far!” he tweeted in 2017. In a world of constraints and an environment under stress, why should he have to share with them?
Crusius bought a semiautomatic rifle online and 1,000 rounds of hollow-point 7.62 x 39 mm ammunition. On Aug. 3, 2019, he got into his gray Honda Civic and drove nearly 10 hours toward El Paso, Texas. Entering the city, he turned into the Cielo Vista Walmart Supercenter parking lot. By some accounts, he wanted a snack, but after briefly going into the store filled with Hispanic shoppers, he returned to his car, posted a vitriolic 2,400-word manifesto to the extremist social media site 8chan and got the gun. He shot 45 people, ultimately killing 23, eight of them Mexican citizens. “This attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas,” Crusius wrote. “I am simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion.”
In his manifesto, which he titled “The Inconvenient Truth” — a seeming nod to Al Gore’s documentary about the climate crisis — he wrote that “water sheds around the country, especially in agricultural areas, are being depleted.” Americans would never change their habits of consumption, he asserted, but new immigrants would only consume more, rising to this country’s standard of living and expanding the net environmental burden on the world. “Urban sprawl creates inefficient cities which unnecessarily destroys millions of acres of land,” he continued. “If we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can become more sustainable.”
I arrived at the Cielo Vista Walmart three weeks later to find flowers and pictures and memorials adorning a quarter-mile chain-link fence erected around the store’s perimeter and a city still in shock. I had been investigating climate change as a new driver of both large-scale migration around the world and of potential conflict. Traveling through the mountains of Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico, I heard accounts of migrants suffering shortages of food and climate-driven despair that had forced them to move. Worldwide, the number of displaced people has been climbing alongside what appears to be the rising severity of disasters, and research suggests that by later this century as much as one-third of civilization — billions of people — could be facing the kind of heat and drought that had prohibited most human settlement for thousands of years. If humankind’s uncharted venture into the hottest and most unpredictably chaotic environment in history was to be marked by a new era of global migration, how would never-ending pressure on the U.S. border weigh on the politics and divisions of this country?
*snip*
October 22, 2024
Harnessing the power of the election denial movement is a key component of conservatives’ 2024 strategy. Far-right activists and politicians, including former President Donald Trump and his enablers, are working to convince Americans that U.S. elections are riddled with fraud and error, exploiting the same lies that underpinned the effort to overturn the 2020 results to set the stage for post-election chaos and potential challenges.
American Oversight has been tracking and investigating the anti-democracy movement as it seeks to foster doubt in democratic elections. Below, we outline how activists and partisan opportunists are using a variety of tactics to achieve these ends, from voter roll challenges, frivolous litigation, spurious fraud investigations, and voter intimidation to advancing partisan election rules, enabling certification delays, pushing for flawed hand counts, and stoking unfounded fears about illegal voting by non-citizens.
Several of these tactics have their roots in the last election, when Trump and his allies used a version of this playbook to challenge the 2020 results. In the lead-up to Election Day that year, Trump stoked fears about the increased use of mail-in voting amid the Covid-19 pandemic. State leaders used their power to boost fears about nonexistent widespread fraud by creating election integrity task forces. After President Joe Biden was declared the winner, Trump’s team launched a string of failed legal challenges, and supporters in seven states submitted fake electoral certificates falsely claiming Trump won in those states, culminating in a violent attempt to stop the certification of Biden’s victory on Jan. 6, 2021.
While the attempt to overturn a free and fair election failed, the anti-democracy movement has been fine-tuning this scheme for 2024. The Republican National Committee has taken a lead, making fear-mongering about fraud a central part of its platform by investing “massive resources” in its newly created “election integrity division” and filing dozens of lawsuits in multiple states. The RNC’s transparent effort to undermine faith in U.S. elections is buoyed by a vast network of election deniers, including government officials, lawyers, business owners, activists, conspiracy theorists, and right-wing media personalities.
*snip*
The 2024 Anti-Democracy Playbook (American Oversight)
https://americanoversight.org/resource/the-2024-anti-democracy-playbook/Harnessing the power of the election denial movement is a key component of conservatives’ 2024 strategy. Far-right activists and politicians, including former President Donald Trump and his enablers, are working to convince Americans that U.S. elections are riddled with fraud and error, exploiting the same lies that underpinned the effort to overturn the 2020 results to set the stage for post-election chaos and potential challenges.
American Oversight has been tracking and investigating the anti-democracy movement as it seeks to foster doubt in democratic elections. Below, we outline how activists and partisan opportunists are using a variety of tactics to achieve these ends, from voter roll challenges, frivolous litigation, spurious fraud investigations, and voter intimidation to advancing partisan election rules, enabling certification delays, pushing for flawed hand counts, and stoking unfounded fears about illegal voting by non-citizens.
Several of these tactics have their roots in the last election, when Trump and his allies used a version of this playbook to challenge the 2020 results. In the lead-up to Election Day that year, Trump stoked fears about the increased use of mail-in voting amid the Covid-19 pandemic. State leaders used their power to boost fears about nonexistent widespread fraud by creating election integrity task forces. After President Joe Biden was declared the winner, Trump’s team launched a string of failed legal challenges, and supporters in seven states submitted fake electoral certificates falsely claiming Trump won in those states, culminating in a violent attempt to stop the certification of Biden’s victory on Jan. 6, 2021.
While the attempt to overturn a free and fair election failed, the anti-democracy movement has been fine-tuning this scheme for 2024. The Republican National Committee has taken a lead, making fear-mongering about fraud a central part of its platform by investing “massive resources” in its newly created “election integrity division” and filing dozens of lawsuits in multiple states. The RNC’s transparent effort to undermine faith in U.S. elections is buoyed by a vast network of election deniers, including government officials, lawyers, business owners, activists, conspiracy theorists, and right-wing media personalities.
*snip*
October 18, 2024
Earlier this month, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services, a case alleging that a state juvenile corrections agency discriminated against one of its employees based on her sexual orientation. But the facts of this case are not like the facts of most employment discrimination lawsuits: Marlean Ames, the petitioner, is straight. She claims that her employer discriminated against her by giving the promotion she sought to an ostensibly less qualified gay woman, and then by demoting her and replacing her with an ostensibly less qualified gay man, too.
In recent decades, the conservative legal movement has worked diligently to reframe laws and policies intended to protect minority groups from discrimination as insidious tools of just-as-evil discrimination against majority groups—an All Lives Matter-style attack aimed at hollowing out the accomplishments of the Civil Rights Movement. The justices’ interest in a case like Ames is thus unsurprising: In the wake of the Court’s 2023 decision banning affirmative action at colleges and universities, conservative activists smell blood in the water now, and are flooding courtrooms with challenges to minority scholarship programs, corporate diversity initiatives, academic hiring practices, and the like.
Perhaps the loudest voice in this movement is longtime Trump advisor Stephen Miller, whose organization has filed dozens of “reverse discrimination” lawsuits on behalf of people who did not get a job and concluded that the woke agenda must be to blame. “America First Legal is leading the charge against racism targeting white straight men in America,” he proclaims here, displaying all the charisma of a wet ham.
Ames, however, is not represented in this case by America First Legal. Nor is she represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, or Students For Fair Admissions, or Jonathan Mitchell, or any of the Court’s other reactionary frequent fliers. Instead, representing her interests before the highest court in the land, for free, is the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic at the University of Virginia School of Law, and Xiao Wang, the liberal professor who leads the clinic. If the justices indeed use Ames to push the law in the direction Stephen Miller would prefer, he will have students and faculty at one of the nation’s most prestigious law schools to thank for their generous assistance.
*snip*
Why Is a Law School Supreme Court Clinic Taking a Straight Rights Case?
https://ballsandstrikes.org/legal-culture/ames-v-ohio-supreme-court-law-school-clinic/Earlier this month, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services, a case alleging that a state juvenile corrections agency discriminated against one of its employees based on her sexual orientation. But the facts of this case are not like the facts of most employment discrimination lawsuits: Marlean Ames, the petitioner, is straight. She claims that her employer discriminated against her by giving the promotion she sought to an ostensibly less qualified gay woman, and then by demoting her and replacing her with an ostensibly less qualified gay man, too.
In recent decades, the conservative legal movement has worked diligently to reframe laws and policies intended to protect minority groups from discrimination as insidious tools of just-as-evil discrimination against majority groups—an All Lives Matter-style attack aimed at hollowing out the accomplishments of the Civil Rights Movement. The justices’ interest in a case like Ames is thus unsurprising: In the wake of the Court’s 2023 decision banning affirmative action at colleges and universities, conservative activists smell blood in the water now, and are flooding courtrooms with challenges to minority scholarship programs, corporate diversity initiatives, academic hiring practices, and the like.
Perhaps the loudest voice in this movement is longtime Trump advisor Stephen Miller, whose organization has filed dozens of “reverse discrimination” lawsuits on behalf of people who did not get a job and concluded that the woke agenda must be to blame. “America First Legal is leading the charge against racism targeting white straight men in America,” he proclaims here, displaying all the charisma of a wet ham.
Ames, however, is not represented in this case by America First Legal. Nor is she represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, or Students For Fair Admissions, or Jonathan Mitchell, or any of the Court’s other reactionary frequent fliers. Instead, representing her interests before the highest court in the land, for free, is the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic at the University of Virginia School of Law, and Xiao Wang, the liberal professor who leads the clinic. If the justices indeed use Ames to push the law in the direction Stephen Miller would prefer, he will have students and faculty at one of the nation’s most prestigious law schools to thank for their generous assistance.
*snip*
October 18, 2024
When speaking recently at an evangelical town hall led by Lance Wallnau, J.D. Vance explained that his goal of dramatically restricting U.S. immigration is grounded in the "Christian idea that you owe the strongest duty to your family." His comments and appearance with the man who has in the past described himself as a Christian nationalist engages a set of beliefs common in the Republican Party and among a slice of the electorate: that America was founded as a white “Christian nation” based on God’s law as expressed in the Christian Bible.
Indeed, at a meeting of conservative Christians in February, Trump appeared to gesture toward that idea, with his promise that, “With your help and God’s grace, the great revival of America begins on November 5th.”
Despite this rhetoric, the U.S. was not founded as a “Christian nation,” an idea the Trump campaign rhetoric supports. Historically, laws at the state and national level during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, meant to counter waves of Catholic and Jewish migration and to suppress Black suffrage, sought to wed Protestant Christianity and white supremacy to the state. Such attempts led to widespread suffering, poverty, and death, especially for racial and religious minorities targeted as "immoral" by Christian activists.
Today we remember the product of this Christian nationalist movement as Jim Crow, the brutal and repressive set of laws and practices that structured American life from the 1890s through the 1960s. The terrible suffering they created shows that—if America was indeed a “Christian nation”—there is nothing less desirable or great than making it one again.
*snip*
What Christian Nationalism Looked Like in Practice
https://time.com/7026778/christian-nationalism-jim-crow/When speaking recently at an evangelical town hall led by Lance Wallnau, J.D. Vance explained that his goal of dramatically restricting U.S. immigration is grounded in the "Christian idea that you owe the strongest duty to your family." His comments and appearance with the man who has in the past described himself as a Christian nationalist engages a set of beliefs common in the Republican Party and among a slice of the electorate: that America was founded as a white “Christian nation” based on God’s law as expressed in the Christian Bible.
Indeed, at a meeting of conservative Christians in February, Trump appeared to gesture toward that idea, with his promise that, “With your help and God’s grace, the great revival of America begins on November 5th.”
Despite this rhetoric, the U.S. was not founded as a “Christian nation,” an idea the Trump campaign rhetoric supports. Historically, laws at the state and national level during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, meant to counter waves of Catholic and Jewish migration and to suppress Black suffrage, sought to wed Protestant Christianity and white supremacy to the state. Such attempts led to widespread suffering, poverty, and death, especially for racial and religious minorities targeted as "immoral" by Christian activists.
Today we remember the product of this Christian nationalist movement as Jim Crow, the brutal and repressive set of laws and practices that structured American life from the 1890s through the 1960s. The terrible suffering they created shows that—if America was indeed a “Christian nation”—there is nothing less desirable or great than making it one again.
*snip*
October 15, 2024
Election analyst Simon Rosenberg recently noted that of the last 15 general election polls released for Pennsylvania, a state viewed by both sides as key to any electoral victory, 12 have right-wing or GOP affiliations.
Rosenberg warned,
This isn’t the first time the GOP has weaponized polling. In October 2022, right before the midterms, Republican-leaning polls flooded the zone, leading many in the media to predict a “red wave” that would swamp Democrats and turn control of the battleground states, the House, and the Senate over to the GOP.
But the red wave was a manufactured story, and it never crashed ashore. Instead, Democrats (and anti-extremist Republicans) won nearly across the board in the key swing states, gaining one seat in the Senate and only barely losing the House due to poor performance by Democrats in big blue states like New York and California.
Legacy media should be pushing back hard against this narrative, having been bamboozled by it before. Instead, headline after headline is repeating the “vibe” generated by crap, partisan polling: “Trump is on the move, the race is narrowing.”
*snip*
Jay Kuo: Weaponized Polling Is More Dangerous Than Ever
https://thinkbigpicture.substack.com/p/2024-trump-red-wave-pollsElection analyst Simon Rosenberg recently noted that of the last 15 general election polls released for Pennsylvania, a state viewed by both sides as key to any electoral victory, 12 have right-wing or GOP affiliations.
Rosenberg warned,
“Their campaign to game the polling averages and make it appear like Trump is winning—when he isn't—escalated in [the] last few days.”
This isn’t the first time the GOP has weaponized polling. In October 2022, right before the midterms, Republican-leaning polls flooded the zone, leading many in the media to predict a “red wave” that would swamp Democrats and turn control of the battleground states, the House, and the Senate over to the GOP.
But the red wave was a manufactured story, and it never crashed ashore. Instead, Democrats (and anti-extremist Republicans) won nearly across the board in the key swing states, gaining one seat in the Senate and only barely losing the House due to poor performance by Democrats in big blue states like New York and California.
Legacy media should be pushing back hard against this narrative, having been bamboozled by it before. Instead, headline after headline is repeating the “vibe” generated by crap, partisan polling: “Trump is on the move, the race is narrowing.”
*snip*
October 3, 2024
At least 202 people are dead across six states following Hurricane Helene, and no place was hit harder than North Carolina, where I’m from. Western North Carolina’s tumbling landscapes, remote communities, and already swollen rivers made the region especially primed for disaster, and now disaster has arrived. “This is one of the most catastrophic events that our state has ever seen,” the state’s transportation secretary said Tuesday.
And at least 40 people around Asheville, the area’s largest city, died in the storm. Residents in hard-to-reach places desperately need food and water and medical supplies. It’s a tragedy in real time.
Some lies should be left to wither and die. Others demand a response.
You would think the partisan hacks would give it a rest while people are dead, dying, or missing. But folks out here were only spared the election gimmicks for about 100 hours. On Monday, former President Donald Trump, who’s slipping behind his Democratic opponent Kamala Harris in swing states like North Carolina, began lying about the recovery efforts, at least the ones led by Democrats, falsely characterizing them as nonexistent.
“At a time like this, when a crisis hits, when our fellow citizens cry out in need … We are not talking about politics,” Trump said Monday, surveying the damage from Valdosta, Georgia.
Then he immediately made it about politics, claiming falsely that Biden was “sleeping” and couldn’t be reached by leaders in hard-hit areas, and that government officials were “going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas.” He claimed Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, couldn’t get Biden on the phone, but that was directly contradicted by Kemp just hours before. That didn’t stopTrump and his MAGA surrogates in the Republican Party and right-wing media from repeating and amplifying those falsehoods and others.
*snip*
North Carolinians need help. Trump is feeding them lies.
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/hurricane-helene-storm-trump-biden-harris-rcna173639At least 202 people are dead across six states following Hurricane Helene, and no place was hit harder than North Carolina, where I’m from. Western North Carolina’s tumbling landscapes, remote communities, and already swollen rivers made the region especially primed for disaster, and now disaster has arrived. “This is one of the most catastrophic events that our state has ever seen,” the state’s transportation secretary said Tuesday.
And at least 40 people around Asheville, the area’s largest city, died in the storm. Residents in hard-to-reach places desperately need food and water and medical supplies. It’s a tragedy in real time.
Some lies should be left to wither and die. Others demand a response.
You would think the partisan hacks would give it a rest while people are dead, dying, or missing. But folks out here were only spared the election gimmicks for about 100 hours. On Monday, former President Donald Trump, who’s slipping behind his Democratic opponent Kamala Harris in swing states like North Carolina, began lying about the recovery efforts, at least the ones led by Democrats, falsely characterizing them as nonexistent.
“At a time like this, when a crisis hits, when our fellow citizens cry out in need … We are not talking about politics,” Trump said Monday, surveying the damage from Valdosta, Georgia.
Then he immediately made it about politics, claiming falsely that Biden was “sleeping” and couldn’t be reached by leaders in hard-hit areas, and that government officials were “going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas.” He claimed Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, couldn’t get Biden on the phone, but that was directly contradicted by Kemp just hours before. That didn’t stopTrump and his MAGA surrogates in the Republican Party and right-wing media from repeating and amplifying those falsehoods and others.
*snip*
October 2, 2024
Last Saturday, vice presidential candidate JD Vance appeared at an event in Monroeville, Pennsylvania, hosted by Lance Wallnau, a self-proclaimed “apostle,” which means he’s a leader in a rapidly growing religious movement called the New Apostolic Reformation. NAR is a loose network of evangelical Christians, who believe that they are called to take over all aspects of society, including the government. They also believe that God speaks directly to certain Christians, whom they call prophets, often in dreams.
Lance Wallnau, a former businessman who hails from Texas, has been an influential leader in NAR circles for some time. He popularized one of its most popular concepts, the idea that there are seven “mountains” that Christians must conquer: family, religion, education, media, arts and entertainment, business, and government. That last one has become a centerpiece of his mission. He has said he believes that the political left is possessed by demons, that there is “witchcraft” controlling the presidential election, and that Vice President Kamala Harris is a Jezebel—a reference to a prostitute in the Bible. As he put it in a recent broadcast, “When you’ve got somebody operating in manipulation, intimidation, and domination—especially when it’s in a female role trying to emasculate a man who is standing up for truth—you’re dealing with the Jezebel spirit.”
But for Wallnau, politics are more than just material for fire-and-brimstone sermons, because he has an ambitious plan for the 2024 presidential election. It’s called Project 19, a reference to the 19 counties in swing states that could determine the outcome.
Fred Clarkson, a researcher with the religious extremism watchdog group Political Research Associates, has reported that Wallnau sometimes says swing states aren’t fully red because people aren’t praying hard enough. Wallnau said earlier this year, “If we don’t have apostles and prophets in the territory, then demons control the territory and the minds of people are under the influence of devils.” As my colleague David Corn wrote this week, Wallnau has been promoting Project 19 on what he has called the Courage Tour—a multi-stop traveling road show through swing states to energize evangelical voters and encourage voter registration. The Pennsylvania event last weekend that featured JD Vance took place after visits to Arizona, Michigan, and Georgia.
*snip*
Evangelicals Have a Plan to Flip 19 Key Counties
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/10/evangelicals-have-a-plan-to-flip-19-key-counties/Last Saturday, vice presidential candidate JD Vance appeared at an event in Monroeville, Pennsylvania, hosted by Lance Wallnau, a self-proclaimed “apostle,” which means he’s a leader in a rapidly growing religious movement called the New Apostolic Reformation. NAR is a loose network of evangelical Christians, who believe that they are called to take over all aspects of society, including the government. They also believe that God speaks directly to certain Christians, whom they call prophets, often in dreams.
Lance Wallnau, a former businessman who hails from Texas, has been an influential leader in NAR circles for some time. He popularized one of its most popular concepts, the idea that there are seven “mountains” that Christians must conquer: family, religion, education, media, arts and entertainment, business, and government. That last one has become a centerpiece of his mission. He has said he believes that the political left is possessed by demons, that there is “witchcraft” controlling the presidential election, and that Vice President Kamala Harris is a Jezebel—a reference to a prostitute in the Bible. As he put it in a recent broadcast, “When you’ve got somebody operating in manipulation, intimidation, and domination—especially when it’s in a female role trying to emasculate a man who is standing up for truth—you’re dealing with the Jezebel spirit.”
But for Wallnau, politics are more than just material for fire-and-brimstone sermons, because he has an ambitious plan for the 2024 presidential election. It’s called Project 19, a reference to the 19 counties in swing states that could determine the outcome.
Fred Clarkson, a researcher with the religious extremism watchdog group Political Research Associates, has reported that Wallnau sometimes says swing states aren’t fully red because people aren’t praying hard enough. Wallnau said earlier this year, “If we don’t have apostles and prophets in the territory, then demons control the territory and the minds of people are under the influence of devils.” As my colleague David Corn wrote this week, Wallnau has been promoting Project 19 on what he has called the Courage Tour—a multi-stop traveling road show through swing states to energize evangelical voters and encourage voter registration. The Pennsylvania event last weekend that featured JD Vance took place after visits to Arizona, Michigan, and Georgia.
*snip*
September 30, 2024
On Sunday, Elon Musk posted a lengthy diatribe about Democrats being the real “threat to democracy.”
In his tweet, Musk claimed that Democrats are flying “asylum seekers” to swing states (this is not happening), fast-tracking them for citizenship (asylum seekers are not fast-tracked), and ensuring said noncitizens can vote (noncitizens cannot vote). (In the tweet, Musk also lists Ohio as an example of a swing state; it is not.)
In short: Almost every claim in Musk’s rant is factually incorrect.
As we previously stated, Republicans’ “Big Lie” this time has been that Democrats are stealing the election by pushing noncitizens to the ballot box. Trump backed the claim in the presidential debate earlier this month when asked about whether he acknowledges that he lost in 2020. “A lot of these illegal immigrants coming in, they’re trying to get them to vote,” the former president said. “And that’s why they’re allowing them to come into our country.”
But, as my colleague Isabela Dias reported, this is not accurate. There are not masses of noncitizens registered to vote. In fact, as she wrote, “a study by the Brennan Center for Justice found that in the 2016 election, election officials in 42 jurisdictions overseeing the tabulation of 23.5 million votes only referred about 30 cases of ‘suspected noncitizen voting’ for investigation or prosecution—or 0.0001 percent of votes.”
Musk’s logic, though, goes beyond the idea of noncitizens voting. He claims 1 in 20 “illegals” will become citizens per year, resulting in two million new legal voters for Democrats in four years. “America then becomes a one-party state and Democracy is over,” the billionaire wrote. “The only ‘elections’ will be the Democratic Party primaries.”
*snip*
Let's Break Down All the Lies in Elon Musk's False Tweet About Noncitizens Voting
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/09/elon-musk-noncitizen-voting-tweet-lies-disinformation/On Sunday, Elon Musk posted a lengthy diatribe about Democrats being the real “threat to democracy.”
In his tweet, Musk claimed that Democrats are flying “asylum seekers” to swing states (this is not happening), fast-tracking them for citizenship (asylum seekers are not fast-tracked), and ensuring said noncitizens can vote (noncitizens cannot vote). (In the tweet, Musk also lists Ohio as an example of a swing state; it is not.)
In short: Almost every claim in Musk’s rant is factually incorrect.
As we previously stated, Republicans’ “Big Lie” this time has been that Democrats are stealing the election by pushing noncitizens to the ballot box. Trump backed the claim in the presidential debate earlier this month when asked about whether he acknowledges that he lost in 2020. “A lot of these illegal immigrants coming in, they’re trying to get them to vote,” the former president said. “And that’s why they’re allowing them to come into our country.”
But, as my colleague Isabela Dias reported, this is not accurate. There are not masses of noncitizens registered to vote. In fact, as she wrote, “a study by the Brennan Center for Justice found that in the 2016 election, election officials in 42 jurisdictions overseeing the tabulation of 23.5 million votes only referred about 30 cases of ‘suspected noncitizen voting’ for investigation or prosecution—or 0.0001 percent of votes.”
Musk’s logic, though, goes beyond the idea of noncitizens voting. He claims 1 in 20 “illegals” will become citizens per year, resulting in two million new legal voters for Democrats in four years. “America then becomes a one-party state and Democracy is over,” the billionaire wrote. “The only ‘elections’ will be the Democratic Party primaries.”
*snip*
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