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President Donald Trump has so far refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power. If he loses the election and declines to leave office, that would be unprecedented in American Democracy. Still, this seems to be the route that Trump is taking.

Trump is obviously priming the country to both discredit the elections results and to resign themselves to the inevitability of Trumps rule. When asked if he would commit to a peaceful transition of power on September 23, his response was simply, There wont be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation. Even Mike Pence, often thought of as the sane arm of the Trump-Pence ticket, refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power during the Vice-Presidential Debate.

During the first Presidential Debate, Trump, quite horrifyingly, said, Im urging my supporters to go into the polls and watch very carefully, because thats what has to happen. I am urging them to do it. He went on to add the qualifier, If I see tens of thousands of ballots being manipulated, I cant go along with that It means you have a fraudulent election.

In effect, he is urging his supporters to engage in near vigilante-style monitoring of the elections. And who will their justice which, more accurately, is just another rendition of voter suppression and intimidation come down on? Minorities, women and anyone who appears to be voting Democrat. But secondly, Trump set himself up to discredit any election in which he cries, Vote manipulation!

Cries of voter fraud and miscounts before there is any evidence that either has happened are insidious. According to the FBI, there is no evidence of any coordinated fraud schemes related to voting by mail this year. Of course, we know at this point that facts dont stop the Trump Administration. Trump and Pence talk about massive voter fraud as if it is a well-established fact, especially in terms of mail-in votes. In reality, an analysis of mail-in ballots found a possible rate of voter fraud of only 0.0025%.

Still, the chaos and novelty of the pandemic have played into Trumps fearmongering hands, and he continues to raise unfounded concerns. These people arent equipped to handle it, number one. Number two, they cheat. They cheat, he went on. He is, in effect, preparing his party and supporters to strictly scrutinize a potential loss. All Trump has to do to throw a wrench in our democracy is make false claims about voter fraud (which, historically, he has done many times before), and that will likely be sufficient for his administration and party to, at best, launch a long, meandering investigation aimed at bringing the democratic process to a grinding halt. Or, at worst, his party may see the fraudulent loss of its leader as a cause to take up arms.

One could read all this rhetoric as Trump and Pence being confident in a legitimate victory, but that seems unlikely: recent polls indicate that they are trailing the Biden-Harris campaign by up to 16 points. At the end of September, FiveThirtyEight gave Trump a 21% chance of winning the Electoral College. Undoubtedly, Trump and his campaign see these dismal numbers and know they may have to take extreme measures to win. Clearly, three key aspects of that strategy have been discouraging the vote, discrediting the election and generating fear and speculation about the consequences of what would happen if Trump loses.

Through this strategy of avoidance and dodging, Trump and Pence have been able to sew the seeds of discontent about next months election without ever explicitly saying they will not accept the result. These dog whistles and buried meanings are used to prime the country to accept unacceptable things and to mobilize the most radicalized members of the party to come to Trumps defense in the event of a loss.

And if people truly believe Trumps insinuation that any loss he faces is illegitimate, the results could be catastrophic. Keith Mines, a national security expert, says there is a 60% chance of a second American civil war over the next 10 to 15 years. It is not hard to imagine how the refusal of a sitting president to peacefully leave office could catalyze that.

And even if the results werent as drastic as a civil war, the implications of Trump refusing to leave office are still weighty and horrifying. Trust in our democracy, already at an all-time low, would plummet. Citizen political engagement would bottom out. Political divides would increase to levels beyond the monumental ones that already exist. Ultimately, whether fighting would occur or not, Trumps refusal to leave would make us all reconsider what we believe and cherish about our country, regardless of political ideology.

Americans shouldnt be in this position in the first place, but, given the dire straits we would be in should Trump refuse to leave, it falls on us to mitigate the situation. The first step we must take is voting. The 2016 election showed us that the polls arent always right, and we cannot grow complacent because of seemingly high margins. In short, the larger victory on Election Day, the harder the result becomes to deny.

Secondly, we must combat misinformation; the dissemination of which is a crucial tenet of Trump-Pences campaign strategy. (During the first Presidential Debate, for example, Wired reports that Trump told 11 lies about voting in eight minutes.) Democratic nominees and debate moderators, for their part, need to do a better job of calling out Republican lies during debates. But, as long as they fail to do so, We The People have to spread valid, supported news and discredit voices from the alt-right that try to prepare the nation to reject the results of a democratic election.

Trump and Pence dont want us to accept a fair election. Their campaign strategy relies on the American people questioning the very foundation of American Democracy: voting. Democratic politicians, media outlets, and American citizens must, therefore, come together to nip this nefarious strategy in the bud. If we dont, the outcome will be detrimental.

Sam Smith is a rising senior studying geography at Ohio University. Please note that the views and opinions of the columnists do not reflect those of The Post. Want to talk more about it? Let Sam know by tweeting him @sambobsmith_.

The rest is here:
Uncle Sam: Trump is setting the stage to discredit the election - The Post

Over the summer months I taught a special edition of the Mini MBA in Brand Management for The Marketing Academy. Aside from co-branding kudos and the army of senior scholars that the Academy delivered into my virtual classroom, the other big benefit was the cadre of guest speakers that founder Sherilyn Shackell arranged for the course.

Of all of those special guest stars, my favourites were Claire Spaargaren and Jorge Alagon from Kantar. They were there to talk to the class about brand tracking, because Kantar is now the global operator of the BrandZ measurement system. The duo were open to any other questions about brand strength and, given the scale, scope and history of the BrandZ database, it was too tempting not to ask a question.

Looking across all that new global brand data, I asked, which brand is really smashing it in perceptual terms now and likely to smash it commercially down the track?

TikTok, Jorge shot back without even a pause. Facebook should be worried.

TikTok crashes into BrandZs top 100 as the highest new entry

The hype that is bubbling up around younger consumers and digital marketers appears to be justified. According to TikTok for Business, the companys marketing arm, some 17 million UK consumers now spend 66 minutes a day on the app, with the average user opening TikTok 13 times every 24 hours.

These are astonishing numbers. And while personally Id rather dunk my head in a bucket of cold piss for an hour, I am well aware of the remarkable hold the new platform already has on a significant slice of surprisingly mature friends.

There were many surprises in the breaking news of a foiled attempt by alt-right conspirators to abduct and possibly execute the current governor of the US state of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer. But the one that grabbed me first was the sight of one of the terrorists Brandon Caserta extolling his numb-nut ideology not via Facebook or an obscure Reddit page, but using a 25-second TikTok video.

The digital duopoly of Google and Facebook should be worried. Both platforms currently reach significantly larger audiences than their new nemesis. But there is a new game in town.

The 66-minutes-a-day claim might be a bit of a stretch. But, even if a fair bit of sales fertiliser has been applied to the audience metrics being compiled behind TikToks newly completed garden wall, the signs now all point to something we have not seen in a long time. A new, global, independent social media platform is rising. A disruptor to those that once disrupted.

The digital duopoly of Google and Facebook should be worried. Both platforms currently reach significantly larger audiences than their new nemesis. But with Ofcom estimating that Google averages 43 minutes of user time per day (across all its platforms) and Facebook averaging just 36 minutes, TikToks hour-plus claim should set off the digital alarm bells. Factor in the new platforms spectacular growth trajectory and the message is even more stark: there is a new game in town.

Weve lived through a decade of conference bullshit about reducing the duopolys grip on the digital advertising dollar through new hard-hitting government policies or worthy (very temporary) advertiser bans. Both Google and Facebook have pretended to listen and learn but have actually just charged on regardless, with barely a blip in the respective EBITDAs. There was never any real potential to derail these two spectacular companies. If anything, the threat of sanction helped both platforms appear to be challenged when nothing could have been further from the truth.

But there was always a proper, significant threat to both Google and Facebook. A much older and more eternal foe was always hanging back there in the shadows. I speak, of course, of the real threat to any duopoly: new competition. As brands prosper and grow, they also get big and lazy. And beneath them a new generation of upstart challengers learn from their mistakes and successes and take aim at a new generation of consumers and their thirst for the next big thing.

Many of the people I have worked with in the world of digital platforms use the term vaporware to describe what they sell. It took a while to actually realise what they meant. They run companies bereft of any physical product or infrastructure requirements. They need a giant tech stack and away they go.

Visit the regional office of one of the big social media platforms and, if you apply the appropriate amount of truth serum (only about six pints this isnt sports marketing, after all) the team will admit that they are just a satellite sales function. All roads lead back to California, where the only physical assets actually reside. The rest is really just vapour, dressed up in expensive office design. The cumbersome trappings of 20th-century business like stores, warehouses, front line staff are simply not required. And gross margin, growth rates and potential scale are unburdened from the traditional gravitational forces of business.

Its a giant and costly pain in the ass to build the infrastructure and physical presence needed to do traditional business. To physically design a product and then merchandise and deliver it. But there is an upside to these old-fashioned trappings of corporate success. Once they have been built, they prove very effective barriers to entry. Coca-Cola isnt the best tasting cola. Everyone knows that. But good luck tying to displace it because the brand, ad budget and giant infrastructure stop any startup cola from doing anything about it.

Its a dance we have seen so many times before. You dangle the organic potential of a new medium and then gradually replace it with a very traditional model of advertising.

Vaporware is different. The advantages of being able to immediately scale up to a billion global users in a matter of months can be reversed just as quickly. And, because these companies sell social things imbued with cultural capital and emboldened by personal interaction with others, once the snow-melt of churn begins, it can quickly turn into an avalanche. As we learned from MySpace all those years ago, these businesses can scale up and down like nothing we have seen in commercial history.

The threat to Google and Facebook was always going to come from the market itself and new, fast-growing social platforms that could not be assimilated or acquired before they began to take minutes, then eyeballs and, finally, scale away from the big two. Despite the wide-eyed stare and manic water-sipping, Mark Zuckerberg was never afraid of Congress. He was afraid of another Mark Zuckerberg.

Well, hes here. And the name of this once only imagined threat is TikTok. Other than its growth and strange Chinese origins, the most potent thing about this new platform is the ease with which it will carry commercial messaging.

First Google and then Facebook spent several years clumsily trying to monetise the organic power of their respective platforms before they eventually cracked it. TikToks stream of ad-sized content and its much-touted algorithm make it an almost perfect medium for the kind of sub-30 second spots that so many brands now focus upon. A commercial message can be dropped into the feed, 100% viewable, long enough to have an effect, short enough to be endured, in full, before the next cat video kicks in. Its like someone built the perfect delivery mechanism for digital video advertising and then worked out how they could attract an audience.

That said, its fascinating watching this new player begin its commercial journey. By now you have almost certainly encountered TikToks marketing prompt: Dont Make Ads, Make TikToks. Its probably the most widely circulated new message of 2020. For all the excitement of the new platform, this hackneyed claim suggests its marketing will follow a familiar route that those with longer memories will recall from the early ad-wooing attempts of first Google and then Facebook.

Granted, the new Hashtag Challenges, in which TikTok encourages its users to create organic content to win prizes from sponsoring brands, are a neat, new user-generated trick. But like Zuckerberg telling us 12 years ago that advertising was dead because consumers were going to befriend brands on his new platform in more personal ways, TikTok will soon drop the launch premise that it is anything other than a medium for advertising. And it will get on with the serious business of adopting the standard TV model of the last half-century with a few superficial twists.

If you need proof that marketers should ignore TikToks instruction not to make ads anymore, one only has to look at oh, I dont know TikTok, and how it is marketing the brand. In a supreme act of post-modern marketing meta-strategy, the message Dont Make Ads, Make TikToks is being carried across pretty much every standard advertising media you can name.

The message has moved across outdoor to digital video to search to sponsorship. The brand bought up the iconic home of British outdoor advertising, Piccadilly Circus, for fucks sake. Just like Google and Facebook before it, the hypocrisy of claiming the traditional model is dead while spending billions on that traditional model to read out the epitaph would be remarkable, were it not so well established.

Its a dance we have seen so many times before. You dangle the organic potential of a new medium and then gradually replace it with a very traditional model of advertising. By the time anyone realises that this new non-traditional approach to advertising is extremely traditional, the scale and size of the business make this realisation redundant.

You can bet right now there is a bright, young marketer somewhere pitching the fact that TikTok is completely different from the traditional media channels (which now include Google and Facebook) because of the user-generated content and the capability that offers brands the chance to engage in conversations with consumers in a more authentic way. Equally likely, a suddenly wearying 30-something looks out of the window and wonders why they feel so old.

If I sound cynical, its not because I doubt the emerging, enormous potential of TikTok. Its because the way to launch a new marketing channel seems to run in direct opposition to the manner in which it ultimately works. TikTok is advertising, not the antithesis of it. Its bold early organic promises will soon be replaced with the robotic delivery of programmatically placed commercial messaging, which aside from the differing hairstyles and HD images could just have as easily have popped up between Tiswas and a re-run of Rupert the Bear.

The only thing that does not change is the same old need for change and for those promoting it to do so by positioning against the existing status quo.

Read more here:
TikTok is nothing new to marketers, it's just another ad platform - Marketing Week

As Israels Covid-19 infections have soared, protests have swelled against the countrys prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. In August, tens of thousands tookto the streets outside the leaders residence in Jerusalem and this weekend, even after the introduction of tightened new pandemic restrictions, hundreds of demonstrations continued to be held across the country.

The protesters are calling on Netanyahu to resign over his governments failings on coronavirus, as well as the ongoing criminal case against him on charges of corruption. And with the governments coalition now cracking under the strain of the countrys internal divides, some analysts and politicians are asking how far the unrest could lead.

"We cannot be dragged into a civil war, warned labor and welfare minister, Itzik Shmuli, of Israels Labor Party onTwitteron Saturday, following a weekend of fraught demonstrations.

The prime minister and his allies have disparaged protesters as anarchists, leftists, traitors and disease spreaders set on toppling his right-wing government. Netanyahus son, Yair, who has a penchant for sharing alt-right conspiracy theories, tweeted over the weekend that, The evil globalists people who funded and organised riots in America, are doing the same thing in Israel!

But the protests have now become such a part of the furniture of Israeli politics, that restrictions on demonstrating were among last months sticking points when Israel went into its second national Covid-19 lockdown. Last week, Israels Knesset parliament approved further restrictions limiting protests to 20 people not further than 1 kilometre from their homes.

These are dark days for the State of Israel, said one anti-Netanyahu movement, known as the Black Flags, in astatementlast week.No country has legislated to limit the right to protest, for a simple reason: There is no public health logic behind it. There is only the logic of a criminal.

Groups involved in the protests pledged to continue in line with new, stricter Covid-19 restrictions. Indeed, over the weekend, under the banner "a kilometre it is, they took place across Israel. According to the Black Flags movement, 130,000 people protested.Yet the demonstrations were marred by a repressive police response and reports of violent attacks, supposedly by Netanyahu supporters.

In Tel Aviv, where officers punched protesters as they attempted to get through the demonstrators, there were 38 arrests and hundreds of fines handed out, according to a report in the Haaretz newspaper. Police claimed demonstrators violated the lockdown rules and disturbed the public order.

Police have also clashed with ultra-Orthodox communities in recent days. Eighteen were arrested in Jerusalem on Sunday, supposedly for violating Covid-19 restrictions.

[See also: How Israels second lockdown is widening the religious-secular divide]

Politicians including defence minister Benny Gantz, head of the Blue and White Party, who is meant to function as Israels alternate prime minister under his rotation coalition deal with Netanyahus Likud Party, defended the anti-Netanyhu demonstrators. The attack on protesters this evening and in recent days is unacceptable, Gantz tweetedon Saturday. The demonstrations taking place according to the guidelines are a legitimate and necessary thing in a democracy. I call on the police to lay their hands on the attackers and bring them to justice.

Some analysts are now asking whether the continued fracturing in Israeli society pro-Netanyahu vsanti-Netanyahu, religious and secular could indeed lead to civil war. The assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 is no distant memory.Could Netanyahus continuing attempts to curb the protests, alongside Israels lack of control on coronavirus, do this long-time political survivor some serious political damage?

Last week, Blue and Whites Asaf Zamir quit as tourism minister over his lack of faith in Netanyahu. "The coronavirus crisis is at best a secondary priority for the prime minister," he said. "The personal and legal considerations are what interests Netanyahu, and this has been clear from every step he has taken."

This sentiment is shared across the party. Five months after Blue and White took a political risk and formed a national unity government with Netanyahus Likud, the coalition is increasingly strainingunder the weightof bad faith politics. Netanyahu went ahead with the recent normalisation deal with UAEwithout consulting his coalition partners, for instance.

Miki Haimovich, another member of Blue and White, told Israels Kann 11 channelon Sundaythat a growing group within the party is considering dismantling the partnership with Likud, or even the option of dissolving. She said We must not give up on positions of power, but we must take steps to replace Netanyahu.

Gantz last week signalled that he is willing to drop his compromising ways, by announcing Blue and White will move to appoint a permanent state attorney, a position not properly filled since December, without consulting with Likud.Gantz also ended a Facebook post on the state attorneyannouncement with a nod to Netanyahu: "If anyone disagrees, they can set a date for elections".

The polls offer Netanyahu cold comfort. Sixty-five per cent of Israelis are dissatisfied with how he has handled the crisis, according to a Channel 12 News poll published yesterday. Likud would only get 26 Knesset seats, down from the 36 it currently has, if an election took place tomorrow. Meanwhile the right-wing Yamina party, led by Netanyahus former ally Naftali Bennet, was predicted to win an uncomfortably close 23 seats. The party is currently in opposition, and has five seats in the Knesset. Blue and White are only predicted to win seven seats, according to the poll.

A deadline for passing the state budget looms in December. In August, after a bitter political impasse, the Knesset approved an extension to the deadline, avoiding yet another early election. The current national unity government was only formed after Israel ran three repeat elections in the space of a year. If the deadline is missed again, the country could see itself at the same crisis point.

This time, with his poor record on Covid-19 and an economic crisis alongside his corruption charges, Netanyahu may find securing a coalition deal a serious challenge. The even greater concern, however, is whethercountrys divisions are nearing a point of no return.

Read the original here:
How anti-Netanyahu unrest is pushing Israel's coalition to the brink - New Statesman

On Tuesday, Facebook announced it would start cracking down on QAnon, removing any group, page or Instagram account associated with the now wide-spread conspiracy theory.

If youre blissfully unaware, QAnon is an unfounded right-wing conspiracy theory that alleges Donald Trump is fighting a war against a sect of high-powered, Satan-worshipping pedophiles who eat children, also known as the deep state. But recently, it has extended into other conspiracy theories such as pushing suspicions about COVID-19 and advocating against expert medical advice, like wearing face coverings. The fringe theory that originated on sites like 4chan and Reddit has now gone mainstream, with popular social platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube becoming misinformation hotspots.

The ban from Facebook is a drastic move for the company, which has let the dangerous, far-right conspiracy spread rapidly on its platform for three years. But while Facebook battles its own QAnon issue, Instagram (also owned by the Zuckerberg conglomerate) has been plagued by the disinformation bug as well.

Since the start of the pandemic, Instagram influencers have been casually casting doubt on the efficiency of wearing masks, sharing unproven theories about COVID-19 (like how its a human-made bioweapon created by the Chinese government or Bill Gates), and telling their followers to wake up and #SaveTheChildren.

Wellness influencers, in particular, are the influencer super-spreaders of far-out QAnon conspiracies. Take the case of Christian mom blogger Rose Henges, a holistic wellness advocate and anti-vaxxer with 126,000 followers, who in between posting aesthetically pleasing photos of her family, home and hemp products, pushes the QAnon conspiracy theory that Donald Trump was divinely appointed to stop child sex trafficking and the deep state.

According to Buzzfeed News back in March, Henges spread another baseless QAnon claim that the US Navy Hospital Ship Comfort, which was docked in New York City to help with the onslaught of COVID cases, was actually being used to covertly rescue children of sex slavery.

Henges, like many influencers peddling QAnon conspiracy theories, often posts colorful, decorative or feed-matching text posts urging followers to speak up about human trafficking with the hashtag #SaveTheChildren a legitimate fund-raising campaign for the Save the Children charity that has unfortunately been hijacked by QAnon. The plight of human trafficking is now being used to recruit members and shift conversations towards false claims about a cable of liberal elites running a huge undercover sex-trafficking ring.

View this post on Instagram

HUMAN TRAFFICKING IS THE REAL PANDEMIC. It is an injustice that affects millions of people every year on every continent and at all socioeconomic levels. Human trafficking is a highly-organized and lucrative business, generating 150 billion USD per year. Out of all the atrocities in this world, the slavery, sexual exploitation, tortue and satanic ritual abuse of children has got to be at the very top. The latest global estimate according to the International Labor Organization (the United Nations agency that deals with global labor issues), calculates that nearly 21 million people are victims of human trafficking worldwide. Why are the social justice warriors no where to be heard on this issue? They are too posting black squares, being indoctrinated by liberal poison and being lap-dogs for George Soros. All while the real horrors of modern-day-slavery are ignored. Childrens lives matter, and its high time the good citizens of this earth come to terms with the horrors of what is really going on, and confront it head on: CHILDREN AND INFANTS ARE BEING BOUGHT AND SOLD FOR SEX. How can you help? 1. Through prayer. Ask God for his heart on this matter, and ask for direction in partnering with his heart and with his plan to end the scourge of child sex trafficking. 2. By raising awareness. Social media is the avenue that will reach the most people. (Please, we dont need any more anonymous accounts. People need to see REAL PEOPLE who care.) 3. By donating to trusted organizations that are actively on the ground fighting for change, rescuing children (and adults) in slavery, and bringing predators to justice. (Ive tagged a few orgs on the post) Post a pink square with the hashtag #savethechildren (feel free to screenshot and use this one, caption is free game as well) #savethechildren

A post shared by (@roseuncharted) on Jul 13, 2020 at 8:10pm PDT

Other wellness influencers, as Mother Jones noted back in April, are using their medical credentials though unrelated to epidemiology to validate the coronavirus conspiracy theories they share on Instagram.

At the beginning of the pandemic, holistic psychiatrist Kelly Brogan, MD, posted misleading headlines about the effectiveness of masks and supposed dangers of social distancing from her husband Sayer Jis pseudoscientific anti-vaxx website to her verified Instagram account, along with conspiracy theories like Bill Gatess supposed involvement with the virus.

Months later, Brogan is still encouraging her 118k followers to take off their masks.

QAnons infiltration into the wellness space, though, isnt all that surprising. As Travis View, co-host of the QAnon Anonymous podcast told Mother Jones, Wellness bloggers are generally anti-establishment and anti-mainstream narrative and distrustful of authority, which lines up with QAnons populist message.

However, other wellness influencers arent idly standing by while an alt-right conspiracy hijacks their sacred space.

Last month, yoga teacher and activist Seane Corn, along with other leaders in the wellness community, penned a statement standing against QAnon with the hope of warning others in the wellness space of the groups manipulative messaging.

QAnon is taking advantage of our conscious community with videos and social media steeped with bizarre theories, mind control and misinformation dont be fooled by these messages! the statement read.

We are aware that QAnon originated on the dark web of hate and white supremacy, and have repackaged their message to appeal to spiritual communities. Dont be fooled. The true intent of QAnon is to spread misinformation, blame, conflict, and sow racial division in our country.

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The above message is a joint statement written in collaboration with various leaders in the wellness community. No one person is to be solely credited. Please share widely and freely if it speaks to you. I do not support QAnon and their underlying message of hate, fear and division. They are an alt-right movement of conspiracy theorists working to spread misinformation, confusion and paranoia. They are deliberately and strategically targeting the wellness communities appealing to peoples interest in alternative health practices and mistrust of the government. Please dont tell me to do the research. I have. Please dont tell me that I dont care about the eradication of child human trafficking. Of course I do. I have spent much of my career speaking about this publicly. Sex trafficking is not a new phenomenon. There are many global organizations that have been doing this work for countless years who reject QAnons manipulative messaging. Please dont tell me COVID is a hoax. Not when almost 200,000 people in the US have died. Please dont tell me Donald Trump is a light worker. Not when his words, actions and policies stoke fear, hated and injustice. Please dont tell me about the great awakening or a paradigm shift. That comes from within. I understand that some of you may unfollow me. Im okay with that. My self-worth is not determined by follows or likes, but by integrity and truth. That is why I am sharing this message with you. I must. I care deeply about the yoga and wellness communities and dont want to see anyone exploited or manipulated by an organization that has its roots in white supremacy culture. Too many folks, including many of my dear colleagues, have bought into their divisive and outrageous messaging for me not to speak out. Please be aware of QAnons ill informed, sensational and exploitative posts on your feed and educate yourself about QAnons history before you share these posts with others. If you want to learn more about the concerning marriage thats happening between alt-right conspiracist and the wellness world then check out the podcast Conspirituality on Spotify for more insight. #revolutionofthesoul #unite2stopq

A post shared by Seane Corn (@seanecorn) on Sep 13, 2020 at 2:17pm PDT

Regrettably, wellness influencers havent been the only ones spreading QAnon conspiracies.

In May, fitness and nutrition influencer Sarah Bowmar shared the controversial Plandemic documentary to her 1.2 million followers. As you may recall, the documentary that made unfounded claims about COVID-19 and vaccines was widely shared across social media platforms, where uploads of the 26-minute video topped 8 million views.

New York Times style reporter Taylor Lorenz shared screenshots of Bowmars Instagram stories, where the influencer told her followers to WAKE THE HELL UP and that they were being censored by the government and controlled and manipulated by living in fear.

Lorenz also called out model and influencer Jenny Watwood for encouraging her 225,000 followers to watch the conspiracy video as well, nonchalantly interspersed between Watwoods booty pictures.

Theres also beauty and fashion influencer Jalynn Schroeder, whose rainbow-themed Instagram looks to be your typical glossy influencer moodboard. Look a bit closer, though, and Schroeders bio welcomes open minds, her feed boasts a few #SaveTheChildren hashtags, and if you scroll down to the Maya Angelou quote We are only as blind as we want to be, written in an eye-catching orange and teal font youll learn how Schroeders eyes were opened to the QAnon cause in a 14-minute video.

Even Bowmar and Watwoods respective pages appear to be standard fare at first glance. But subtly sprinkled between posts about creatine powder, family photos and ass shots are dangerous, divisive and baseless conspiracy theories becoming normalized.

While Facebooks latest QAnon policy is a step in the right direction in fighting misinformation that runs rampant across Facebook and Instagram, the policy will not prohibit individuals from posting about QAnon content on their personal accounts, meaning those pastel-colored human-trafficking hashtags are likely here to stay for the time being.

Of course, whether QAnon is entirely wiped from our screens makes no difference to its believers, who have claimed being banned from these platforms only further legitimizes their case.

Follow this link:
QAnon Has Gotten to the Instagram Influencers - InsideHook

Guys in Hawaiian shirts make my teeth itch even on a good day, unless theyre playing a ukulele. Better, when those shirts arent covered in Glocks. These days, I am paying much more attention to the sartorial choices of people picking fights, especially when theyre local. And Im not alone.

Sunday afternoon, a group of Black Lives Matter protesters in Savannah drew the attention of Fredrick James, 34, of greater Decatur. He rolled up to the protest as they were closing down an intersection in an act of civil disobedience. James was captured on video throwing what people learned later was a smoke bomb into the middle of the crowd laying in the street.

When people started pelting the truck with whatever was handy, he got out with a gun in his hand.

Weve seen this play before.

Their Boogaloo Boy uniform of choice, oddly enough, is the Hawaiian shirt. Its absurd. So much is absurd today. This is the one James was wearing.

James caught an aggravated assault charge. He has been denied bond. Police in Savannah arent offering much more than what is on their initial incident report.

Both I and the collective commentariat have their antennae raised high out of fear that the election will bring political violence. The chatter seems to be getting louder, and the incidents more frequent. But a few things about this strike me as particularly odd.

What was James doing in Savannah at all when he lives in a house in south DeKalb?

I can speculate: he wasnt just in Savannah on a lark. Did he go there deliberately looking for a Black Lives Matter protest to intimidate with armed violence?

James, it seems, probably should never have been legally allowed to have a weapon in the first place. His possession of a weapon at all if it even turns out to have been legally so speaks to the failures of the system.

You see, he changed his name in 2010. He used to be named Fred David Hendricks, according to the publication record of the Gwinnett Daily Post. The birthdays line up.

As a young man in Gwinnett, Fred Hendricks got into a lot of trouble. He has multiple convictions for weapons violations. The last conviction, for carrying a concealed weapon on school property in 2010, should have been a felony conviction. Prosecutors accepted a plea deal to reckless conduct.

A few hours after the attack, footage taken from a nearby building made its way to far right websites and Facebook groups, which seem to have been built recently with the intent of promoting this violence.

The Savannah Freedom Exchange described this as a male pick-up truck driver decided to toss harmless green smoke, common in emergency kits, into the middle of the cluster of concrete-lying individuals, and the guy with a gun as [i]n perfectly legal defensive posture, the owner of the vehicle warned the individuals to get away. They failed, so he exited the vehicle and drew his conceal-carry weapon.

This Facebook group didnt exist before April of this year. It is a propaganda page for the alt-right.

And the response to this act of violence is well, what we might expect at this point. Line after line calling for social justice protesters to be murdered in the street.

I should have something uplifting to say about how we will all come together after this is over, to repudiate the hatred in our midst. But I cannot help but notice how all of this is affecting me. Ive been just that much more ready to bite someones head off in a conversation about this stuff. Ignoring what is happening is what got us to this point; exposure to it slowly makes it easier to adopt the stridency of others. A willingness to fight wins attention, more than a desire to build bridges does.

Even now, I am giving air to the fire.

Four years ago, after I watched a clueless upper-middle class white woman from Candler Park pantomime at voter outreach with some black kids on the street, I wrote We have a country run by high-achievers who are both risk averse and hold the public in contempt. The result is an economy serving their interests well one that rewards extraordinary achievement while ignoring everyone else.

We have the politics we do because we are a people with very strong views who cant figure out how to talk to one another anymore, despite the most robust communications tools known to humanity. The politics we have reinforce strong views and bury moderating influences.

My great fear isnt that Joe Biden wont win. Hes probably going to win. Its that he will win and will be inadequate to the task. What conventional political biography prepares an American leader for a country ready to tear itself apart at the seams? For all my desire to see the grifters and incompetents of the Trump Administration replaced with wide-eyed workaholic 20-something Princeton graduates, I fear that too few of them will understand how to keep 500 Kyle Rittenhouses from tracking blood across Americas pavements.

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George on Georgia - Hawaiian shirts and blood on the carpet - Decaturish.com