Alex Marlow, editor-in-chief of Breitbart News, told radio listeners that if President Donald Trump is not reelected this November, the United States will essentially have a “Black Lives Matter administration” in office.
On Monday’s episode of “Brietbart News Tonight,” Marlow phrased his remark about Black Lives Matter in the form of a question to Breitbart News senior editor-at-large Joel Pollak, who joined him for an interview segment.
“A lot of the [Trump] agenda got implemented, a lot of it didn’t get implemented, but does any of that matter when faced with the prospect of a Black Lives Matter administration, which is basically what it seems like we’re going to get if we don’t get Trump?” Marlow asked Pollak.
Pollak responded by saying that he sensed Trump supporters were feeling confident that Americans were not going to choose presumed Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and that they viewed this year’s election as a “choice about the country itself.”
The Trump campaign and its allies in right-wing media have sought to portray Biden as a carrier for the political left’s radical elements, claiming he supports antifa and socialism. In the wake of civil unrest following the police killing of George Floyd, that effort has included linking Biden to the Black Lives Matter movement, which the right has long sought to portray as a radical organization.
Breitbart News served for years as a clearinghouse for racist material and gave rise to far-right figures such as Milo Yiannopoulos. The Southern Poverty Law Center published leaked emails that revealed that White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, who has a well-documented affinity for white nationalism, gave editorial directions to Breitbart News and used the outlet to attack his political enemies and promote his political agenda.
Acting Deputy Homeland Security Secretary Ken Cuccinelli is helping coordinate the federal law enforcement agents unleashing a wave of authoritarian violence against anti-racism protesters in Portland, Oregon, and has been justifying his department’s actions by citing pundits and personalities notorious for their connections to far-right movements.
Since the police killing of George Floyd, right-wing activists and politicians, including President Donald Trump who sent the federal agents, have tried to blame mass civil unrest on their favorite boogeyman: anti-fascist activists. The right-wing figures and outlets Cuccinelli has cited on his official Twitter account, @HomelandKen, have well-documented histories of stretching facts to portray anti-fascist activists as an imminent terrorist threat and to justify law enforcement’s use of force against protesters in cities led by Democrats. Those sources, which include Andy Ngo, Breitbart News, and reporters from The Daily Caller, have also sought to smear journalists reporting facts that contradict their hyperpartisan misinformation by claiming that those reporters are sympathetic to anti-fascists and therefore aligned with domestic radicals.
Among Cuccinelli’s favorite sources to justify actions against protesters is new media star Ngo, who BuzzFeed News reporter Joe Bernstein noted last year rose to fame by building “an incendiary political narrative out of a narrow selection of facts.” Bernstein wrote of Ngo, “He proceeds from a worldview and seeks to confirm it, without asking to what degree his coverage becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
Jewish Currents published a lengthy profile last year that examined Ngo’s relationships to far-right agitators, which had been exposed in a Portland Mercury investigation and may have led to Ngo’s departure from Quillette. Writer Hannah Gais highlighted instances where Ngo had minimized the radical elements of the subjects he portrayed as victims at the hands of anti-fascists “in favor of a straightforward victimization narrative.” Gais wrote, ”In other words, this is all a cynical and dangerous grift. In the service of this grift, brushing shoulders with the far right—or even embracing them—is fine, so long as plausible deniability is retained.”
Cuccinelli has cited Ngo’s content at least seven times on his official government Twitter account since mass protests began in late May following the police killing of Floyd, a number of which tried to scapegoat ant-fascist activists. In one tweet citing Ngo’s content, Cuccinelli tagged Michelle Malkin, who in the last year has rebranded herself as the “mommy” of the “groyper” white nationalist youth coalition, appeared on radio shows hosted by racist extremists, promoted anti-Semitic and racist literature, and headlined a white nationalist conference for interested attendees of the 2019 Conservative Political Action Conference.
(Screenshot / Twitter.com)
The acting DHS leader has also supported his claims by sharing links to Breitbart News, an outlet that spent much of the 2016 election promoting “alt-right” white nationalists into mainstream conservative discourse. Cuccinelli has also shared information from hyperpartisan sites including The Federalist and RedState (known for sharing revenge porn of an elected official), from pro-Trump mouthpieces like Sean Hannity and Buck Sexton, and from staffers at The Daily Caller.
Cuccinelli, who was the GOP nominee for governor in 2013, has a sordid history of expressing his own far-right beliefs. In 2015, Cuccinelli told radio host Steve Deace that the United States was being “invaded” by immigrants “one person at a time.” He used similar rhetoric to describe undocumented immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, writing in a 2014 Facebook post that the country was being “directly invaded” by those immigrants. For more than a decade, Cuccinelli has made clear his support for far-right causes and his loathing for immigrants through his rhetoric and proposed legislation, which included a bill to charge employees with “misconduct” for an “inability or refusal to speak English at the workplace” and disqualify them from receiving unemployment benefits. Last year, The Atlantic described Cuccinelli as “The New Stephen Miller,” referring to the far-right White House official at the forefront of the Trump administration’s draconian immigration policies.
White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, who has a clearly demonstrated affinity for white nationalism, accused Democrats in Washington, D.C., of supporting an agenda that would effectively institute “modern-day fascism.”
On Tuesday, Miller gave an interview to “Breitbart News Tonight” with host and Breitbart News Washington Political Editor Matt Boyle justifying the Trump administration’s deployment of federal officers to Portland, Oregon, and other cities as part of the Department of Justice’s “Operation Legend.” Miller went so far as to claim that President Donald Trump “saved the city of Portland,” which last night saw its 70th consecutive day of demonstrations against police violence.
Federal agents deployed to Portland have been filmed beating Black Lives Matter protesters, tear-gassing a group of mothers, fracturing a protester’s skull with an impact round, and yanking people off the street and into unmarked vehicles, detaining them without explanation. The Nation reports that the Department of Homeland Security instructed agents how to arrest journalists and legal observers and expose them to tear gas without being held legally liable for violating a restraining order against such tactics.
But it is Democrats in the nation’s capital, Miller said, that support fascism via so-called “cancel culture.”
“What the Democrats in Washington stand for right now is, in effect, a modern-day fascism that says, ‘If you don’t think what we think, if you don’t believe what we believe, if you don’t act, then you’re going to be written out of society,” Miller said. “That is fundamentally contrary to everything we stand for as an open, tolerant, pluralistic society.”
“If that agenda ever gained power, if they could actually put law behind that thought process, we would be living in a true nightmare,” Miller said.
Boyle replied, “No wonder why you are a senior adviser to President Trump.”
In a series of investigative reports last year, The Southern Poverty Law Center revealed emails sent from Miller to then-Breitbart News editor Katie McHugh that made clear Miller’s obsession with far-right thought and white nationalist hate. In one excerpt from the series, Miller was seen giving editorial directions to Breitbart News, using his influence to have the site attack his perceived political opponents and to launder his agenda to a mainstream conservative audience.
Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow told Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida that he was “the congressman most associated with the president’s worldview.”
Gaetz joined Marlow Tuesday on SiriusXM’s “Breitbart News Daily” to discuss his forthcoming book, “Firebrand,” and news topics of the day. Early in the interview, Marlow noted that President Donald Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., has expressed an affinity for Gaetz, which Marlow seemed to share.
“I think [Donald Trump Jr.] describes you as the voice of MAGA in the House. I think that’s pretty accurate. I think you’re the congressman most associated with the president’s worldview, which of course this audience shares by and large,” Marlow said. “This is a pretty remarkable thing for you because you’re a young guy.”
Gaetz went on to speak about his political evolution, recounting being “disgusted” when he got to Washington at the way money was exchanged for political favors, likening it to “the oldest profession.” Gaetz said he saw a “patriotic” and “sincere” desire to change that system in Trump and urged Republicans to utilize and preserve the radical change in politics brought forth by the Trump era.
“We need less fortitude and more attitude,” Gaetz said. “We need to embrace the value of energetic populism and we need to use it to the fullest extent.”
Gaetz disparaged what he called the “invade everywhere, invite everyone” faction of the Republican Party and its influence on the Republican establishment, claiming that such Republicans were willing to fight for everything besides Trump’s immigration agenda—something that Gaetz said is “central to the identity of our movement.”
“If Donald Trump is just an aberration, then we could still lose the country,” he said. “He has to be the start of a political alignment, realignment, that has sustainability.”
It happened just two weeks before Christmas in 2018.
Candace Owens—a conservative firebrand and pro-Trump activist—introduced Parler to the MAGA grassroots movement with a tweet that began, “Wow. Everyone just found out about the new Twitter. Just want to say that I WAS THE FIRST CONSERVATIVE TO JOIN … Feels like a long-overdue social media rebellion.”
The “new Twitter” to which Owens referred is Parler, marketed as a free speech alternative to Twitter. The new social-media platform quickly attracted a handful of well-known right-wing politicians such as Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, as well as far-right activists banished from mainstream social media, including Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes and right-wing gadfly Milo Yiannopoulos. By mid-2019, Parler had acquired just over 100,000 users and earned a reputation as an insular gathering space for vocal Trump supporters, featuring such trending hashtags as #IslamExposed, #IllegalImmigrants, and #BuildThatWall.
While Parler was still smaller than its fellow alternative platforms like Gab at the time, the network has since grown at an exponential pace, especially during the 2020 presidential cycle. Owen’s tweet alone yielded a reported 40,000 new followers to the burgeoning social media network, which caused server malfunctions at Parler. What started as a tool for media outlets to redirect revenue from mainstream social networks has since become one of the most influential platforms for far-right voices on the internet.
Origins & Mercer-Family Funding
Founded in August 2018 by John Matze and Jared Thomson, Parler bills itself as “unbiased social media focused on real user experiences and engagement” while touting “free expression without violence and no censorship.” The company is based in Henderson, Nevada, and has been described as an alternative to mainstream social media networks such as Twitter and Facebook.
Matze, a self-proclaimed libertarian who serves as the company’s chief executive officer, revealed that one of Parler’s early investors was Republican donor Rebekah Mercer, the daughter of American hedge fund manager Robert Mercer. Matze confirmed Mercer’s involvement after Wall Street Journal first reported on the story. Mercer has a long history of funding organizations that support right-wing political causes in the United States (such as Breitbart News) and was a significant donor to entities supporting President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Mercer also helped white supremacist Steve Bannon get a senior role in Trump’s campaign.
“John and I started Parler to provide a neutral platform for free speech, as our founders intended, and also to create a social media environment that would protect data privacy,” Rebekah Mercer wrote on Parler last week. “The ever increasing tyranny and hubris of our tech overlords demands that someone lead the fight against data mining, and for the protection of free speech online. That someone is Parler, a beacon to all who value their liberty, free speech, and personal privacy.”
Parler — a French word for “to speak” — has marketed itself as a free speech utopia, an entity set up as the solution to unsubstantiated claims by conservatives and other members of the right that they are being censored on Facebook and Twitter by the overlords of Big Tech. While there is no evidence of widespread anti-conservative censorship on mainstream social media, Parler’s usership has continued to grow in 2020, exacerbated by the fallout of the 2020 presidential election and ensuing baseless conspiracy theories about widespread voter fraud, which have been increasingly labeled as such by Twitter and Facebook.
On Wednesday, Matze told viewers of Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson that Parler’s users are “liberated from restrictions” and compared the platform to a “community town square.”
“Well, when you go out in public, people say crazy things all the time,” Matze said. “Everybody has opinions and some of them might not be the norm, right? It’s not against the law to have those opinions. It’s not against the law to express yourself, you know. And if you like one political candidate or another or you believe or don’t believe in climate change or whatever it might be, you know, you shouldn’t be taken offline because of it.”
In the two weeks following Election Day, Parler has more than doubled its user base to more than 10 million registered users, topping other alternative social media platforms like BitChute, MeWe, and Gab. However, the network has also attracted a wide range of far-right extremists, including members of the Proud Boys, QAnon adherents, militia members and anti-government extremists from the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters organizations, dangerous conspiracy-mongers such as Alex Jones, and even loyalists to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, who was responsible for the 2018 murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
A Far-Right Echo Chamber
On Nov. 17, Ivanka Trump became the latest high-profile conservative to join Parler. The daughter of the defeated president announced the news on Twitter, inviting her 10 million-plus followers to follow her on the network.
Ivanka Trump appears to be the third Trump family member to be verified on Parler. Her brother, Eric Trump, joined on May 27, and his wife Lara joined that same month. Their half-sister Tiffany also joined Parler earlier this year. However, neither the president, nor his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., appear to have verified Parler accounts yet.
While the outgoing president has yet to create a personal account on Parler, the website has enjoyed several waves of conservative sign-ups over the past year. On June 24, 2020, the Trump reelection campaign announced that they were looking for alternative social media networks after Twitter and Facebook heavily moderated and restricted some of their posts and advertising campaigns for including Nazi symbolism. One of the alternatives generating buzz was Parler, prompting Republicans—including Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley—to join the network.
Twitter is flagging my question: Your government sent 1.1 million dead people stimulus checks. Wonder how many of these folks also voted absentee?
So, now it is unacceptable to pose questions?
Follow me on @parler_app and prepare for the day twitter silences debate.
Around the same time, Parler also garnered an international far-right following, which included far-right British media personality Katie Hopkins and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and his son Flavio, who brought the platform a wave of sign-ups from Brazil.
In many cases, Parler has reaped benefits from the mainstream social media networks crackdown on violent extremist groups, white supremacists, neo-Nazi groups, conspiracy theories, and disinformation campaigns. The network is home to hundreds of thousands of accounts held by Saudi Arabian users, the vast majority of whom are loyalists of Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. Parler first experienced this influx of accounts from the Middle Eastern kingdom in June 2019, following claims that Twitter had purged inauthentic accounts and bots spreading Saudi propaganda and disinformation. Parler welcomed the users from Saudi Arabia and described the migration as part of “the nationalist movement of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”
Parler was also ready to accept the stream of far-right users banned from YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter over the past few months. Since then, thousands of QAnon adherents, Proud Boys, and militia movements have migrated to Parler.
Tito Ortiz, a former UFC champion turned QAnon adherent who was recently elected to the Huntington Beach city council, was one of the recent sign-ups to Parler. In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, he has used that account to spread misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic, voter fraud, and QAnon. He even placed the WWG1WGA slogan—an abbreviation of the QAnon battle cry “where we go one, we go all”—in his Parler bio.
Fellow MMA fighter Tara LaRosa—a pioneer of the sport who now spends her time in street fights alongside the Proud Boys—also migrated to Parler, where she posted about her experience at the “Million MAGA March” last week while flashing the OK hand gesture, a designated hate symbol used to denote white power.
Parler has even attracted Gina Carano, an actress on Disney’s “The Mandalorian” who has been criticized for her conspiracy-ridden tweets about COVID-19, mandatory masks, QAnon, and election fraud. She started her Parler account after the hashtag #FireGinaCarano was trending on Twitter.
The network has managed to build its audience by imposing few restrictions on what can be posted on the network. Parler’s community guidelines bar “content posted by or on behalf of terrorist organizations, child pornography, and copyright violations.” The network has also taken a hard line against spamming, but makes no mention of limiting false information, propaganda, conspiracy theories, and extremist ideologies. This, in turn, will create a far-right echo chamber that some experts believe will help strengthen their controversial ideologies.
“I share a lot of concerns that have already been voiced about how many people are migrating to online spaces in terms of how this could intensify the filter bubbles they already live in,” said Dr. Cynthia Miller-Idriss, Director of Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL) at American University and award-winning author of six books, including “Hate in the Homeland: The New Global Far Right.” “Gab and Parler are more likely to be echo chambers or filter bubbles that increase the likelihood of people encountering ideas that only reinforce their existing beliefs, rather than introduce new ones.”
An Ideological Dichotomy
“I’m going to Parler and mewe, I’m done with these tech companies censoring my opinion,” Christopher Brown, a disillusioned user, wrote on Twitter.
Brown is not alone. His concerns about censorship have been shared by thousands of Twitter and Facebook users, many of whom are currently transitioning to Parler. While the social network alternative has managed to attract these disgruntled users and convince them to make the switch, it remains to be seen whether Parler will be able to keep them.
While Parler is being billed by conservatives as a free speech utopia, the network has some concerning business practices. According to the Terms of Service, Parler requires a telephone number in order for a user to sign up to the network. You are also required to “notify Parler when you cease to own or control that number.” Some Parler services require you to “supply a social security number and/or tax identification number.” Parler also requires a picture or scan of your driver’s license in order for users to employ its direct-messaging function.
According to the terms of service, Parler may “remove any content and terminate your access to the Services at any time and for any reason to the extent Parler reasonably believes (a) you have violated these Terms or Parler’s Community Guidelines, (b) you create risk or possible legal exposure for Parler, or (c) you are otherwise engaging in unlawful conduct.” It also added that Parler may modify the terms of service “without notice to you.”
Given the arbitrary community guidelines and terms, it is possible that some users may question Parler’s commitment to privacy and free speech.
“I would expect that some of the people who migrated over will get disillusioned with the platform, either because it has more restrictions than they anticipated or because they find they don’t like the echo chamber nature of it,” said Dr. Miller-Idriss. “It will be important to follow over the coming months and see how it develops.”
According to Oren Segal, the vice-president of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center of Extremism, Parler’s standing as a bastion of free speech will largely depend on how the terms of service will be enforced. “[Parler] can talk about banning pornography or obscenity … but if it’s not enforced, then maybe it does become this utopia of free speech for those who want to find a place to say things as extremist as they want to be.”
Questionable terms of service aside, Parler continues to be one of the most popular apps on the U.S. Apple app store, topping the list of free apps over the past couple of weeks. While it may not necessarily be as popular in international markets (it ranks 72nd in the Canadian app store as of the time of writing), its dominance in the U.S. means that Parler’s leadership might be pressured to loosen its terms of services (or their enforcement) in order to appease the platform’s newly developed audience and further its growth.
“Would it be a surprise that, if this is the No. 1 most downloaded app, they would try to continue to leverage this momentum by loosening up their enforcement?” Segal asked. “This is not unique to Parler.”
Indeed, Parler is not the first platform to brand itself as an alternative to mainstream social networks like Twitter and Facebook. However, while Gab, MeWe, and Telegram all had a loyal base of users at one point or another, none of them were granted the legitimacy bestowed on Parler. While Gab became a platform vacuum for extremists and white supremacists, Parler received support and endorsements from prominent mainstream conservative voices like Fox News host Sean Hannity.
According to radio host Dan Bongino, who purchased an ownership stake in Parler back in June, part of Parler’s success among big-name conservatives is “rage and anger” at having their “speech crushed.”
”People always want free speech,” Bongino told The Washington Examiner. “Always. And if you’re going to suppress free speech for conservatives, then you’re going to give me another business opportunity.”
Yet while Parler boasts some of the prominent and respected conservative voices on the internet, it has also attracted some of their most odious counterparts. Waves of extremists have migrated to the network in an attempt to find the sizeable audiences denied to them on mainstream networks.
From QAnon adherents and conspiracy peddlers to anti-government militias, neo-fascist groups and white supremacists, Parler has welcomed them all with open arms—refusing to distinguish between right-wing conservatism and far-right extremism—all in service of the elusive notion of free speech. While that may serve its current purpose of growing its business to rival mainstream competitors, it could also serve to alienate their more moderate voices such as establishment conservatives and Republicans.
“If this is being billed by its founders as a conservative alternative to existing social media and if big name users who are promoting it view it as an alternative to other social media, you would think that they more than anyone else would want to make sure that extremists are not proliferating on their platform,” Segal said.
As Parler continues to grow and attract some of the most controversial and dangerous voices on the internet, the company faces the delicate balancing act of matching user expectations regarding free speech absolutism, and creating a legitimate and sustainable network that obstructs extremism and the vile ideological cesspool propagated on message boards like 8kun. How Parler ultimately handles its current ambivalence will determine its future.
“The danger is that the Overton window of what is acceptable regarding misinformation, regarding hate speech, is further moved and that there is a further blurring between fact and fiction and between extremism and more mainstream,” Segal said. “In other words, between the right and the far-right. And I would think that the right would want to prevent [the expansion of] that gray area more than anyone.”
If you think about it, the pardon bestowed on former White House aide Stephen K. Bannon by former president Donald J. Trump seemed almost inevitable, despite the reported battle between staffers over the idea, and Trump’s reported indecision.
You’ll recall that Bannon fell out of favor with the Trumps with the publication of Michael Wolff’s book, “Fire and Fury,” in which the former White House chief strategist is quoted saying mean things about Trump’s daughter and son-in-law. Those quotes lost Bannon the public patronage of Robert and Rebekah Mercer, major funders of Bannon’s projects at Breitbart News during his tenure as the right-wing propaganda site’s CEO from 2012 to 2018, and his ironically named Government Accountability Institute, which produced the since-debunked book, “Clinton Cash,” smearing Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, with innuendo and some free-floating, fact-flouting dot-connecting.
Mainstream media picked up the book’s claims after The New York Times and the Washington Post cut deals for pre-publication access that led to news stories centered on the book’s attempt to link Clinton to a Russian energy company.
After Bannon fell from his patrons’ grace, it didn’t take long before he found himself a new sugar daddy in the form of Guo Wengui, the fugitive Chinese businessman who poses as a champion of Western values while his minions target actual Chinese dissidents and democracy activists for harassment. With the apparent patronage of Guo (aka Miles Kwok or Miles Guo), Bannon embarked on a propaganda campaign to tar Joe Biden, then the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, and his son Hunter as being in league with the Chinese Communist Party. Perhaps Bannon was rusty, or media had tired of his schtick, but this time, the ruse didn’t work.
That didn’t stop Bannon from trying to win his way back into the then-president’s ear, most recently with his role in the so-called Stop the Steal campaign, in which he acted as a wrangler of conspiracy theorists promulgating fictional narratives of an election ostensibly stolen by Democrats—Black Democrats, especially. Several Stop the Steal activists have long been in Bannon’s orbit.
Ali Alexander, the 2020-2021 Stop the Steal organizer, is a minor star in the constellation of malevolent characters who belong to Bannon World, and Bannon himself hosted a Facebook page titled “Stop the Steal,” whose name he quickly changed to “Own Your Vote” when pressure mounted on Facebook to purge disinformation and calls to violence. Although Facebook had purged other Stop the Steal pages and pages linked to Bannon, the former Cambridge Analytica executive proved he knew his way around Facebook; his nomenclature trick allowed “Own Your Vote” to escape scrutiny until very late in the day. (Bannon has been ordered to appear before the Federal Trade Commission under oath regarding his role in Cambridge Analytica’s misuse of Facebook data during Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, for which Bannon served as campaign CEO in its final months.)
On Jan. 5, the day before the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, according to Vice, Bannon posted this to his “Own Your Vote” page: “TAKE ACTION. THEY ARE TRYING TO STEAL THE ELECTION.” The “Own Your Vote” page was finally purged by Facebook after an organized tactical force was joined by a fired-up MAGA mob to breach the Capitol in an effort to stop the certification of Electoral College votes that unequivocally added up to Biden’s win. In a speech by Trump at the final Stop the Steal rally on Jan. 6, he gave the crowd marching orders to join what had been billed as the “Wild Protest” at the Capitol. Some of those involved in the breach reportedly intended to abduct key congressional leaders. The mob was rife with cries of “Hang Mike Pence!” because the vice president refused their demand that, in his ceremonial role as vice president presiding over the certification, he stop the democratic process. Trump was said to have been pleased by the breach as he watched it on TV—until it started to look bad on him. The Washington Post reported that Trump failed to act in the moment because he was having fun.
“[T]he president himself was busy enjoying the spectacle,” wrote the Post’s Ashley Parker, Josh Dawsey and Philip Rucker. “Trump watched with interest, buoyed to see that his supporters were fighting so hard on his behalf, one close adviser said.”
During campaign season and after the election, Bannon brought to his podcast a parade of fabulist pro-Trump attorneys and acolytes—including Lin Wood, Sidney Powell, and Rudy Giuliani—to drop specific-sounding details of the many means through which they claimed the 2020 presidential election had been stolen by Biden, whom they laughably painted as a communist. (You can bet they were laughing in Beijing.) Even after Bannon’s podcast, “War Room: Pandemic,” was kicked off such major platforms as YouTube and Twitter when he called for the decapitations of infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci and FBI Director Christopher Wray, adding that their heads should be mounted “on pikes” on the White House grounds, it continues to be carried by Apple Podcasts.
Another presence on Bannon’s podcast in the ramp-up to the insurrection, was Jack Posobiec, the dirty-trickster and host at One America News Network (a right-wing webcasting outfit) who worked with Alexander on the Stop the Steal effort, which brought at least six rallies to Washington, D.C. in the weeks between the election and the inauguration. Posobiec was also an enthusiastic pusher of the 2016 Pizzagate conspiracy theory that is at the root of today’s QAnon movement. (Alexander has been booted from Twitter but, as Right Wing Watch reported, Posobiec continues to use the platform to push disinformation.)
In August, Bannon was arrested for wire fraud, a federal crime. He was captured off the coast of Connecticut, aboard Guo’s yacht. The former presidential strategist was charged with defrauding Trump supporters who donated to a fund run by Bannon that was ostensibly dedicated to building a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico. Federal prosecutors charged that Bannon and three co-defendants were using the donated money for their personal use; Bannon is said to have taken $1 million to support his high-flying lifestyle. True to form, We Build the Wall appears to have been a giant grift. Bannon was released on $5 million bail; the trial was scheduled for May.
This posed an unforeseen problem for Trump. What if prosecutors negotiated with Bannon for a lighter sentence in exchange for spilling whatever dirt he had on Trump? Bannon had already proven his lack of absolute loyalty in the “Fire and Fury” debacle, and he had kind of cooperated with the investigation of special counsel Robert Mueller into links between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russian operatives after the hack of Clinton campaign email accounts by the security services of the Russian Federation.
Yet, once unfettered by a pardon, could Bannon be trusted not to spill the goods? Quite a conundrum.
In the weeks before he won his clemency, Bannon and Trump spoke by phone multiple times, according to Bloomberg News. One can only imagine those conversations—Bannon regaling Trump with all he had done to try to keep Trump in power over the last two years, and Trump reminding Bannon of that time disrespected the family Trump, not to mention his cooperation with Mueller. Then there was that time he called The Trump Organization “a criminal enterprise.”
In the end, Trump bet on a Bannon at liberty. It remains to be seen just which of the two will ultimately win this round, if either of them does. Each is certain he is smarter than the other. Each revels in violence. Each specializes in busting things up—government institutions, international alliances, democracy, and the Republican Party. Something tells me this story ain’t over.
Last Friday, Donald Trump Jr. announced that he had joined Telegram, and called on others to follow suit.
“Big Tech Censorship is getting worse and if these Tyrants banned my father, the President of the United States, who won’t they ban?” Trump Jr. wrote on Twitter. “We need a place that I can connect to you guys that respects Free Speech. That’s why I joined Telegram.”
Now approaching 900,000 subscribers, Trump Jr.’s Telegram channel is among the most popular in conservative circles on the platform. His move to the popular messaging app is part of an ongoing exodus of conservatives and far-right activists from mainstream social media platforms. Some did so to make a statement about Big Tech’s power over online speech, while others were forced to make the move after being banished from platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.
Among those who joined Telegram this month were popular conservative voices like Ben Shapiro, Dan Bongino, and Candace Owens, as well as politicians with ties to QAnon such as Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, and Madison Cawthorn. Conservative media sources such as The Epoch Times, Breitbart, PragerU, The Daily Wire, Right Side Broadcasting Network, and The Blaze also have accounts on Telegram. The app is home to countless far-right extremists, many of whom have used their publicly accessible channels to incite violence, radicalize disenfranchised readers, and spread propaganda and disinformation with the intention of heightening political tension.
“Welcome newcomers to the darkest part of the web,” Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio wrote on his public channel as well as the official Proud Boys channel. “Most chats are not moderated. You can be banned for spamming and porn. Everything else is fair game.”
While Telegram has come under fire for harboring far-right extremists and ultra-nationalists, the app has also been hailed as an essential tool for democratic movements around the world. It is this ideological dichotomy—liberating yet problematic—that makes Telegram a unique, if not controversial digital entity.
A Tool for Resistance
Founded in August 2013 by brothers Nikolai and Pavel Durov—the pioneering duo who founded VK, the popular Russian social network that serves as an alternative to Facebook—Telegram Messenger is a cloud-based instant messaging application that also provides end-to-end encryption for video calling and Voice over Internet Protocol. Unlike its competitor WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, Telegram is a cloud-based messenger with seamless sync, which means a user can access their account from several devices at once.
The Durov brothers started Telegram as a research project with the intention of creating something “really secure and fun at the same time.” While attempting to launch the app, Pavel Durov—a staunch libertarian with a net worth of $3.4 billion—found himself on the wrong side of the Kremlin when he refused to block Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s VK page or hand over data on Ukrainian VK users. Faced with pressure from the Russian government, which he claimed forcibly took over VK, Durov sold his remaining shares in VK and fled Russia. After attempting to set up Telegram’s offices in Berlin and Singapore, Durov eventually settled on Dubai, where his team is currently based.
Pavel Durov at 2013 TechCrunch Conference (Credit: Wikicommons)
Despite Durov’s self-imposed exile, Telegram was an immediate success and has continued to rise steadily in popularity over the years. By October 2013, Telegram announced it had reached 100,000 daily active users. Six months later, the figure had risen to 15 million active users, and by December 2014, Telegram crossed 50 million active users, generating approximately 1 billion daily messages. As of January 2021, Telegram has more than 500 million monthly active users and is one of the 10 most downloaded apps in the world.
Telegram also allows users the ability to create public or private groups of up to 200,000 people and channels for broadcasting to an unlimited audience. It provides end-to-end encrypted “secret chats” between two online users, which proved useful to opposition movements and activists in various authoritarian countries, including China, Iran, Russia, Belarus, and Bahrain.
In July 2015, China blocked access to Telegram for providing a platform to Chinese human rights lawyers who criticized the Chinese government and the Communist Party of China. A state-run newspaper later made baseless claims that the lawyers were aided by “legal professionals” on Telegram, who “planned and organized” their activities. Several other countries followed suit, including Iran, which temporarily restricted Telegram during the anti-government demonstrations that took place in December 2017. An Iranian imam also declared Telegram as “haram,” Arabic for forbidden.
In April 2018, Telegram was banned in Russia after the organization refused to grant the Federal Security Service access to encryption keys needed to view user communications as required by the Yarovaya Law, counterterrorism legislation passed in 2016. This legislation requires internet companies operating in Russia to provide authorities with “information necessary for decoding” their users’ messages, in effect transforming the companies into participants in the government’s mass surveillance machine.
Telegram refused to comply with Russia’s demand to weaken the security of its service, which led to Moscow’s Tagansky District Court issuing a ruling to block access to the messaging app. At the time, Telegram had close to 10 million users in Russia and approximately 200 million worldwide.
However, by 2020, the Russian government had reversed course; in April, it began using Telegram to spread information regarding the coronavirus pandemic, and by June, the ban was lifted after Telegram agreed to “help with extremism investigations.”
Then on Aug. 9, 2020, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets across Belarus to protest the reelection of longtime Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko—often referred to as Europe’s “last dictator”—who has ruled the country since 1994. Lukashenko claimed to have won a landslide victory with more than 80 percent of the vote, which ignited mass protests with demonstrators declaring the election rigged and calling on Lukashenko to resign.
Protest against Lukashenko winning on president elections (Hairem / Shutterstock.com)
As the protests morphed into a national movement, Telegram emerged as an essential tool for opposition activists, many of whom relied on the app to counter government propaganda, rally protesters, and broadcast news. Lukashenko’s government was aware of Telegram’s pivotal role during its 2020 election cycle and attempted to intimidate Telegram channel administrators by arresting some and placing others on the State Security Committee’s list of “persons involved in terrorist activities.”
The Belarusian government even went so far as to start their own state-run Telegram channel, which was used to post propaganda videos of Lukashenko brandishing rifles and commanding his security forces. By hosting their propaganda on Telegram, the Belarusian government acknowledged the messaging app’s influence as a potential news source and media platform.
“How can you stop these Telegram channels? Can you block them? No,” Lukashenko told reporters in September 2020. “Nobody can.”
Telegram remains an essential app for countries with limited access to privacy or freedom of expression and has continued to gain popularity around the world. It saw yet another surge in popularity in January 2021, adding 75 million new users as part of the fallout of WhatsApp’s disastrous privacy change and a crackdown by other platforms following the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection. As a result, Telegram is currently the most downloaded app in the Google Play Store.
However, the popular messaging app has also gained favor among far-right extremists, many of whom migrated to the app as part of a digital exodus from mainstream social media.
The Digital Migration
“Tell all of your normie friends to get their asses onto Telegram,” wrote Proud Boys: Uncensored, a channel linked to the far-right, neo-fascist Proud Boys. “And exchange phone numbers with your tribe, if you haven’t already.”
The post was part of a common theme among far-right groups following the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, which saw a mob of Trump supporters storm the U.S. Capitol in a bid to halt Congress’s certification of electoral votes and to overturn the 2020 presidential election result. Insurrectionists broke into congressional offices, including that of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, while others attempted to break into the House chamber while members of Congress were still inside.
In the aftermath of the shocking attack on U.S. democracy, Twitter permanently suspended more than 70,000 accounts associated with the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory. The company also banned Donald Trump’s personal Twitter account after the former president incited his followers to march on the Capitol. Other social media platforms like Facebook cracked down on violent rhetoric and election misinformation, while Amazon removed Parler, an alternative social media platform popular among the far-right, from its cloud hosting service, rendering it homeless on the internet.
Trump supporters storm U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 6 (Photo: Adele Stan)
Aware that their social media platforms of choice were no longer viable options, far-right activists and extremists turned to alternatives such as Gab, whose digital infrastructure struggled to keep up with the onslaught of user sign-ups, and Telegram, which promised sparse content moderation, end-to-end encryption, secret chats, and stable tools for mass communication. Telegram was particularly popular due to its stability and its ability to host public channels with unlimited subscribers, making it an ideal tool for broadcasting information with minimal regulation.
Prominent QAnon channels, white supremacist groups, and Proud Boy channels saw their followings grow exponentially in the aftermath of the Capitol insurrection. Some QAnon channels doubled their followings in 24 hours, while new ones emerged with thousands of new followers overnight.
Of the 26 far-right Telegram channels that Right Wing Watch monitored prior to the insurrection, 25 of them saw significant gains to their subscriber count. QAnon channels grew by an approximate 1,250,000 followers combined, including new channels for QAnon celebrities Sidney Powell and Lin Wood, which accounted for approximately 1 million followers.
The various Proud Boys channels collectively gained more than 100,000 new followers, including the official Proud Boys channel, which grew to nearly 37,000 subscribers.
“Hail Durov, the only CEO who respects his users,” wrote the Proud Boys: Uncensored channel, which is reportedly operated by the leader of the New Hampshire chapter of the Proud Boys, Todd M. Clark.
The Proud Boys gauging subscribers’ interest in “total war (Credit: Proud Boys Uncensored Telegram channel)
As far-right activists and extremists completed their digital migration to Telegram, there was a noticeable increase in disturbing rhetoric as some channels celebrated the Capitol insurrection, while others stoked ethnic and racial tension. The Proud Boys were among the groups inciting more violence after Jan. 6, claiming that “the difference between a patriot and a rebel depends on who wins the war.” The channel also encouraged its followers to target politicians. It posted a clip of Sen. Lindsey Graham being harassed by an angry mob of Trump supporters at the airport with the caption, “They’re no longer safe in public … Never let these system agents know a moment of peace.”
Shortly thereafter, the “Proud Boys: Uncensored” channel polled its followers on whether or not they wanted “total war.” More than 10,500 people voted in the poll, 75 percent of whom voted “yes.”
Robert Rundo, the founder of the infamous U.S.-based neo-Nazi fight club known as the Rise Above Movement and a white nationalist propaganda outfit known as the International Conservative Community, told his followers to “take a stand” and “Make your ancestors proud.” Other European-based neo-Nazi fight clubs reveled in the chaos caused by the Capitol insurrection and encouraged their American counterparts to not back down. A neo-Nazi soccer hooligan group posted a picture of a man holding a Confederate flag while wandering the Capitol halls, along with the caption, “we put the white back in the White House.”
The NSC 131 white nationalist hate group—founded by a former member of a neo-Nazi terror group known as The Base—posted photos of stolen Capitol police gear while bragging about their role in storming the Capitol.
Among the more concerning channels were those operated by accelerationist groups. The Great Reset, which has since been taken down by Telegram, informed its followers that they were “watching a coup d’état in real time” and that those “whose who don’t capitalize on this lose big time.” The channel also encouraged its followers to “break free of the Jewish chains” and to “strike the iron while it’s hot.” “You’ll never have this opportunity again,” read one post. “Now or never.”
Another channel called on its followers to attack politicians in their homes, which they should then “loot and burn to the ground.”
“[Politicians] have families too. Make the statement loud and clear that WE ARE EVERYWHERE,” read the accelerationist post. “The only way to kill these snakes is to slit their throats while their heads are turned.”
Several groups also began posting guides for building armor, weapons, and for packaging and vacuum-sealing meals for long-term storage. Others posted ambush tactics and advice for launching a citizen uprising against the U.S. government.
A guide to surviving “total government collapse” (Credit: Telegram)
“Do not meet up with internet friends for this,” one publicly accessible channel wrote. “Gather your local trusted militia and do what you must to save this country and our people from their hellish claws that clamp down on the souls of us all. God willing we see a bright future, and God willing we are the ones to make it happen.”
“Stay Strong, Stay Armed, and Stay in Prayer.”
A Double-Edged Sword
Over the years, Telegram has proven to be a pivotal tool for opposition movements and citizen uprisings in places like Hong Kong, Belarus, and Russia, among others. Telegram channels drove citizen engagement, self-organization, and gave voice to citizens who have long been suppressed by the state. In many ways, Telegram became a form of digital resistance, allowing masses to successfully oppose governments and their mass surveillance technology.
However, Telegram’s commitment to freedom of speech and internet privacy is a double-edged sword due to its popularity among jihadists and other extremists. ISIS members used Telegram to plan the 2015 Paris attacks, the 2016 Christmas market attack in Berlin, and the St. Petersburg attack that killed 15 people in April 2017. And while Telegram has since cracked down on ISIS-controlled channels—it shut down approximately 80 channels in the wake of the Paris attacks and has since removed hundreds more—its regulatory action is considered lax in comparison to that of mainstream social media platforms such as Twitter.
Faced with mounting international pressure to resolve its terrorism problem, Telegram worked with Europol in 2019 to expand its terrorist content detection efforts, which resulted in the removal of 43,000 terrorist-related bots and channels. Telegram’s coordinated crackdown on terrorism has since hampered ISIS’ propaganda network and may have a long-lasting effect on the terror group’s digital footprint.
The popular messaging app took a similar approach in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection. Telegram founder Pavel Durov announced that his company has taken action against hundreds of accounts that were calling for violence.
“In early January, the Telegram moderation team started to receive an increased number of reports about US-related public activity on our platform,” Durov wrote. “The team acted decisively by clamping down on US channels that advocated violence. Thanks to these efforts, last week our moderators blocked and shut down hundreds of public calls for violence that could’ve otherwise reached tens of thousands of subscribers. The team continues to process reports from users in addition to proactively removing content that directly incites violence.”
A post on The Great Reset Telegram channel calling for violence. The channel was later banned by Telegram. (Credit: The Great Reset Telegram channel)
Among the channels that Right Wing Watch can confirm were banned by Telegram include accelerationist channels such as The Great Reset and Accelerationist Revival as well as fascist and neo-Nazi outposts such as Eco-Fascist Central, Union 88 Gas Co, Hatelab, and The Gray Hour. The company also banned a neo-Nazi channel dedicated to sharing audiobooks of banned extremist material such as Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” as well as the manifestos of mass shooters like the Christchurch shooter. All the aforementioned channels were home to a cesspool of extremists inciting violence, race wars, and political chaos.
Yet despite Telegram’s recent action, there are still countless extremist channels publicly accessible on the messaging app. Hundreds of white supremacist, neo-Nazi, and anti-Semitic channels continue to flourish. Dozens of QAnon channels are operating with thousands of new subscribers, while the Proud Boys continue to communicate with their audience despite their well-documented calls for violence.
The continued existence of far-right extremism on Telegram reflects the company’s lackluster efforts in curtailing extremist content. While Telegram has long presented itself as a bastion of free speech, others have argued that the company’s blind commitment to that ideal inevitably made it vulnerable to zealotry.
“[Telegram’s] technology is agnostic,” said Oren Segal, the vice-president of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center of Extremism. “It is about the use of that technology. The same tools or features on Telegram that enable positive interactions for some are also the tools that enable extremism to thrive.”
There is also a concern that far-right activists will use Telegram to radicalize disillusioned QAnon adherents who have lost faith in their movement following President Joe Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20. One post from the Proud Boys: Uncensored Telegram channel called on their subscribers to “be gentle to our fellow travelers, telegram anon. It is up to you and I to lead them to the logical and truthful conclusion of their journey. Don’t chase them off with anger or sarcasm. Right now they are looking for real answers. You were probably them once upon a time.”
A man holds a QAnon sign at The Great Awakening Rally in Washington, D.C., on September 11, 2019. (Photo: Jared Holt)
Given that Telegram remains a safe haven for a wide range of far-right activists, a Washington-based non profit group called “Coalition for a Safer Web” sued Apple, demanding the companies remove Telegram from its App Store. Marc Ginsberg, a former U.S. ambassador, later sued Alphabet Inc. in an attempt to press the company to remove Telegram from its Google Play Store. While Telegram’s removal could arguably be seen as a victory for dictators around the world, the threat of capitalistic pressure might be the only way to affect change in Telegram’s policies.
“It is not unreasonable for people to demand or expect that incitement to violence will be curtailed; that hate speech would be curtailed,” Segal explained. “This is not about differences of opinion. This is not about silencing conservative or liberal voices. This is about taking a position against the type of content that drives so many of these extremist and violent actions we’ve seen on the ground. This is as low-hanging fruit as it gets.”
Joining host Alex Marlow on the “Breitbart News Daily” radio program Tuesday, conspiracy theorist and far-right activist Mike Cernovich criticized so-called cancel culture, encouraging conservatives who suffered the indignity of having journalists report what they said on Twitter to cancel liberals in turn. More generally, he encouraged pretty much everybody else on the right to join in the lib-cancelling fun.
The hue and cry over this purported canceling has grown ever louder since a number of high-profile hard-right personalities saw their Twitter and Facebook accounts terminated in the wake of the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol building.
Cernovich claims to be a victim of cancel culture—the phrase used by conservatives to slam what they see as liberals’ propensity for encouraging criticism and boycotts of anyone who expresses ideas that liberals find repugnant. Cernovich, for his part, was broadly criticized for boorish behavior, including the hounding of women online in the misogynist harassment campaign known as Gamergate, boosting the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory, encouraging sexual assault, and making racist comments. He once claimed, “Rape via an alpha male is different from other forms of rape,” and said about 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, “He got got before he was able to rape anyone.”
Nevertheless, Marlow brought Cernovich on to discuss the cancel issue, claiming it’s only a matter of time conservatives are thrown in jail.
“This is one of these things where people don’t take sufficiently seriously—where the slippery slope goes,” Marlow said. “It’s not just going to be people don’t advertise on conservative outlets or maybe you lose your Twitter platform, soon it could be you lose your bank account. And who knows as we get this super state where the government and tech elite all seem to agree on everything that—who knows when it’s going to turn into what it’s turning into in China, where you cannot use public transportation because you’ve got the wrong politics. Don’t think it’ll stop at that. They want us not, just as you say, not just canceled from Twitter, they want us canceled from everything. I mean they’d put us in jail if they could.”
Cernovich agreed, before turning his focus to the supposed cancelation of the Conservative Political Action Conference held this past weekend in Orlando, Florida. The conference, which was once viewed as a bastion of conservative and libertarian thought, has become a gathering for Trump worship.
“CPAC, they always felt, you know, in a way I don’t feel bad for them at all, because they always felt they were haughty, above it all … ‘that person is too dangerous, that person maybe tweeted something bad 10 years ago,’” Cernovich said. “Good luck getting a hotel chain next year.”
The problem, Cernovich claimed, is that Christians are too nice and moral to fight back.
“I’ll be careful how I word this because I’m pro-Christian, but fundamentally Christian —Christianity can make, if you’re to make me critique, Christianity is too passive,” Cernovich claimed. “Where I remember the first time I got blasted by the media—like, I didn’t even write that tweet but whatever—so then I said, ‘Fine, I’ll look at your tweets, you want to play like this?’ And then I started getting people ‘canceled.’ Conservatives attacked me! I thought, what’re you doing? You people live in fear every time you’re going to tweet, why don’t you just find their tweets? … Why don’t you do more of this? ‘No, we don’t do that. We don’t cancel people.’”
While conservatives may rail against so-called cancel culture, Cernovich encouraged conservatives to espouse it for their own causes. “The only way to fight back against cancel culture is you have to cancel them,” he said.
“I’m going to create a caricature of them based on two or three tweets I saw of you. That’s who you are forever, that’s what we’re going to bring up for the rest of your life,” he continued.
”We need a thousand people on the phones, we need a thousand people saying this is a hate group.”
“But conservatives, because of that Christian morality, don’t really want to do that. And if you don’t do it … if you’re lucky, you’re banned from social media,” he said. “But look at the trends from the protests … lives are being ruined now.”
The conversation moved to the events of Jan. 6.
“I disavow political violence just like you do, Mike,” Marlow said. “But it wasn’t everyone there. A lot of people were just protesting, a lot of people were just exercising their First Amendment, a lot of people were obviously let into the Capitol, a lot of people who were there weren’t violent. And those people don’t count, those people get canceled too, just by being present in the same city as the handful of violent people too.”
Cernovich agreed, pointing to the “MAGA grandmas” who have been arrested on trespassing charges after joining the storming of the Capitol. “Feds are indicting MAGA grandmas, holding them, in some cases, incommunicado,” he claimed. “Feds are coming for you, headhunting.”
Cernovich wasn’t the only conservative to call for the cancelation of others; over the weekend, Rep. Matt Gaetz took to the CPAC stage to attempt to call for the cancellation of his Republican colleague, Rep. Liz Cheney, who had voted her conscience to impeach then-President Donald Trump.
At a press conference in Wichita Thursday, far-right anti-immigration hardliner Kris Kobach announced his campaign for attorney general of Kansas.
Kobach rose to political prominence as the Kansas secretary of state, a position in which he gained notoriety for pushing restrictive immigration policies and voting policies under the guise of preventing “voter fraud.”
A Trump administration favorite in the 2020 Republican primary for U.S. Senate, Kobach nonetheless lost the nomination contest. Still, all was not lost for Kobach; his Senate run had excited white nationalists, who saw him as a champion of extreme anti-immigration policies. “Having someone like him as a senator, that would be extremely powerful,” co-host of the racist podcast “Fash the Nation” James Allsup said in January of that year.
Kobach also lost a 2018 bid for governor to Democrat Laura Kelly in the deep red state, despite earning himself a Trump endorsement. In spite of such high-profile losses, Kobach is running for public office yet again, aiming for a political comeback.
And his hardline views on immigration appear to remain center stage. “If the Biden administration tries to relocate illegal aliens to Kansas in violation of the standards of federal law, they’ll have to get through me first,” Kobach said at the event announcing his candidacy. In a April 21 op-ed at the hard-right Breitbart website, Kobach took issue with the Biden administration’s decision to stop using the term “illegal alien” in favor of “undocumented migrant.” To Kobach, such humanizing language was “Owellian.”
“What the Biden administration is doing is mind-numbing,” Kobach opined. ”Indeed, it’s Orwellian. They have also evidently decided that ‘rioters’ are to be called ‘peaceful protesters.’ What’s next?”
Kobach has a long history of espousing extreme anti-immigrant views and played a key role in drafting Arizona’s notorious SB-1070 law, which, as Vice News reported, “allowed police officers to pull over undocumented immigrants—or anyone of whom they had a ‘reasonable suspicion’ of being undocumented—to check if they had their papers, and detain, or even deport, them if they didn’t.” Prior to becoming Kansas secretary of state, Kobach joined the Immigration Reform Law Institute, a legal affiliate of FAIR, the anti-immigration group designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
A leader in the effort to restrict voting rights under the guise of eliminating voter fraud, Kobach is known to fearmonger about the possibility of undocumented immigrants illegally swaying elections. In 2017, Kobach was named vice chair of Trump’s disgraced “Commission on Election Integrity,” which folded in 2018 after it found no evidence of widespread voter fraud.
From 2013 to 2017, Kobach hosted a weekly radio program in Kansas City, where he trafficked conspiracy theories about President Obama and immigrants, suggesting that it was possible that a Hispanic majority in the U.S. could conduct an “ethnic cleansing.” And in an apparent attempt to stoke white fear of Black people, Kobach declared on-air that it would not be a “huge jump” to predict that the Obama administration could call an end to the prosecutions of African Americans for any crime.
In announcing his run, Kobach also promised to defend state laws restricting women from getting abortions, as well as the Second Amendment and law enforcement officers, which he claimed were facing attacks from the left that had reached a “fever pitch.”
The Associated Press reported that Kobach appointed Laura Tawater as campaign treasurer late Wednesday night. The western GOP Kansas activist has been criticized for attending the so-called Stop the Steal rally held prior to the Capitol insurrection. Though Tawater told the AP she did not go to the Capitol, she took to Facebook the following day and said that she would miss “so many freedom-loving Patriots.”
