…one way or another…I’ve largely managed to avoid the bulk of this stuff…but there was a fair bit of coverage of the mismatched bedfellows involved in a purportedly (& for a great many people actually) pro-palestine march in london yesterday…& a significant chunk of it was composed of far-right types…though…as ever…the numbers are a guessing game

The Metropolitan Police said around 300,000 people had converged on the capital from all parts of the country, while organisers of the pro-Palestinian event put the number closer to 800,000 and claimed it was one of the biggest marches in British history.

…now…it’s a fair bet the organisers might be inclined to overstate it…but it’s a dead lock that the met lowballed the hell out of that number…way back in the day when one of those marches was against invading iraq post 9/11 I & some friends joined a crowd at parliament square & by the time we had moved all the way to the end of the thing in (if memory serves) hyde park…the other friends who’d been by the river at the starting point of the thing still hadn’t been allowed to start moving due to crowd control…not the sort of crowd control that’s malicious…just because there were too many people…which is to say the streets were packed to capacity for the best part of 2.5 miles for the whole time…we weren’t at the front, either…so that solid queue of people pretty much existed when we started & was maintained for the better part of an hour it took us to walk a route that would usually take more like a half-hour…& stayed that way for at least the next hour or more it took for the other friends to be allowed to start marching…& another while they made their way to join us…according to the met…that only took 750,000 people…pretty sure even google maps & the back of a napkin can tell you they pulled that number out of their ass…so…that 800,000…actually pretty plausible…but…some of those fellow travellers would be a far cry from a side you’d want to be on

[…] far-right counter-protesters had clashed with police near the Cenotaph in Whitehall, ahead of an Armistice Day service. Scuffles broke out as police attempted to stop a crowd of far-right activists, Islamophobes and football supporters carrying St George’s flags marching along the Embankment towards Whitehall shortly after 10am.

The group, which had been chanting “England til I die” pushed through the police barrier, with some shouting “let’s have them” as officers hit out with batons. Further clashes took place in Chinatown with counter-protesters chanting: “You’re not English any more” towards officers. The Met said officers had “faced aggression from counter-protesters who are in the area in significant numbers”.

Tommy Robinson, founder and former leader of the far-right English Defence League, was seen among the crowds protesters.

There were further clashes into the evening, including a crowd of roughly 150 rightwing protesters in Parliament Square. According to the BBC, an offensive chant about Allah was chanted and a Palestinian flag was ripped up.
[…]
With Downing Street coming under pressure from Tory MPs from across the party to remove Braverman, Sunak last night condemned the “violent, wholly unacceptable” scenes. He said both the far right and “Hamas sympathisers” had been responsible.
[…]
The police said they had carried out more than 100 arrests, the vast majority of which involved the far-right counter-protesters.

While the pro-Palestinian demonstration was peaceful, many of those present chanted “from the river to the sea”, the saying identified by many as indicating support for the elimination of the state of Israel.

Police also said they were investigating at least five allegations of hate crimes including antisemitic and racist chants and placards displayed on the march.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/11/hundreds-of-thousands-rally-for-gaza-in-london-as-police-arrest-far-right-protesters

…in a dismal sort of a way it makes a sort of sense…they don’t want to pass up a god-given opportunity to get out there & put their many years of practiced anti-semitism to public use…& the fact they hate palestinians pretty much just as much is no great impediment…but…that’s not to say it’s entirely natural

Police say faked audio purporting to capture the Mayor of London calling for Armistice Day to be re-scheduled for a pro-Palestinian march “does not constitute a criminal offence”.

Sadiq Khan’s office said false material was being “circulated and amplified by a far-right group”.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-67389609

…they couldn’t figure out how it’s that kind of an offence…but…it’s definitely several kinds of offensive…& the hell of it is…this co-opting cowardice…it’s all over the shop…the talking shops in particular

In the speech in support of the ceasefire resolution, the Democratic Florida state representative Angie Nixon said: “We are at 10,000 dead Palestinians. How many will be enough?”

“All of them,” Michelle Salzman called in reply.

Nixon acknowledged the interruption and said: “One of my colleagues just said, ‘All of them.’ Wow.”

The Florida state house later voted 104-2 to reject Nixon’s resolution.

Salzman’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/nov/10/florida-republican-michelle-salzman-palestine

…but…like that audio deepfake of sadiq khan…there’s some fucked up astroturfing pushing to dial up the friction

There are several big, ostensibly pro-Palestinian accounts out there who are just conspiracy theorists and antisemites.

A lot of people might not be familiar with their track records though and unknowingly repost their content.

— Eyes on the Right (@EyesOnTheRight) November 9, 2023

Hinkle, once a young supporter of the leftwing Democrat Bernie Sanders, has been banned from YouTube and Instagram for spreading disinformation, but thrives on X where his 7 October denial post has 5.1m views. The influencer cited the Israeli newspaper Haaretz as his source, although below the post sits a denial from the title.

The newspaper, in a message with 2.5m views, half of the original tweet, said: “The post seen in this photo contains blatant lies about the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7. It has absolutely no basis in Haaretz’s reporting, then or since.”
[…]
Early in the conflict, on 13 October, the Israeli state’s official account on X tweeted a video of a child being taken to hospital alongside another image of the lifeless infant wrapped in a cloth. “Hamas accidentally posted a video of a doll (yes a doll) suggesting that it was a part of casualties caused by an IDF attack,” the now-deleted post, which was viewed at least 1.2m times, said.

The post was prompted by similar claims made by Israeli activists online, and other official accounts. Israeli embassies in France and Austria quickly followed suit, with the latter describing it as “Pallywood fake news” and the posting was widely shared. But the story, when checked, turned out to be untrue: the original film and the still image were of a four-year-old boy, Omar Bilal al-Banna, killed in Gaza City.

Journalists contacted the photographer and film-maker Momen El Halabi, who reported that a child had been killed – and that the body was not a doll – a story also confirmed by family members. Other images from El Halabi and another photographer on the scene show two men, relatives of the dead boy, carefully holding the swaddled body in such a way it could not be a doll.
[…]
Adam Hadley, the founder of Tech against Terrorism, argued the situation was exacerbated – and likely to endure – because of the intensity of the conflict. “This is as much an information war, as it is a war on the ground, but perhaps more pronounced than a conflict like Ukraine, because of the polarisation we are witnessing,” he said.

Others, such as Eliot Higgins, the founder of the investigative journalism website Bellingcat, blamed cutbacks in content moderation at X and the introduction of the paid-for blue-tick system, which allows posters to get preferential treatment from the social network’s algorithm. “I certainly think the changes Elon Musk [X’s owner] has made have made the environment ripe for the spread of disinformation,” Higgins said.

Hadley also focuses on Telegram, from where many graphic Hamas and pro-Hamas videos emerge, which is generally lightly self-regulated. Last month, Pavel Durov, Telegram’s CEO, said he would not ban Hamas’s own channel, but then partially retreated. From the beginning of this month, users who download Telegram via Apple or Google are no longer able to see Hamas or its military wing’s channel.

Higgins said he believed state actors were having only a limited impact, arguing instead that the online environment encouraged cynical behaviour. “The situation is being driven largely by individuals and grifters with their own agendas, partly because anybody on X can now have a verified account. So much of the time people are making no real attempt to find the truth; they just want to make points to bash other people over the head with.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/11/israel-hamas-fake-news-thrives-on-poorly-regulated-online-platforms

…lot of those agendas around

According to a new report by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair), the Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization received a total of 1,283 requests for help and reports of bias between 7 October and 4 November.

Cair, which has called the spike “unprecedented”, revealed that the recent increase in Islamophobia and anti-Arab sentiment across the US mark a 216% increase over the previous year. In an average 29-day period in 2022, Cair received only 406 complaints.
[…]
Meanwhile, Jewish communities say they are also facing record-high levels of antisemitism after Israel launched war on Hamas after Hamas’s 7 October attack.

On 25 October, the Anti-Defamation League reported a nearly 400% increase in antisemitic incidents reported year over year. From 7 to 23 October, the ADL recorded a total of 312 antisemitic incidents, 190 of which were directly linked to the violence in Israel and Gaza.

During the same time last year, the ADL received preliminary reports of 64 incidents, including four that were Israel-related, the advocacy group reported.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/nov/10/us-islamophobia-antisemitism-hate-speech-israel-hamas-war-gaza

…while others like to throw money at the thing

The pro-Israel lobby in the US is airing attack ads and beginning to back primary opponents to challenge Congress members who are not voting for or supporting Israel’s war on Gaza.

Over the last 10 days, groups that support Israel have launched ads in at least seven districts targeting those who have been particularly vocal in calling attention to the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, opposing Israeli military aid or criticizing Israel’s government.

The groups will probably pump tens of millions of dollars into primaries this cycle to back its candidates. While most of the targets are members of the “Squad” of progressive Democrats, one of them is a libertarian Republican who opposes foreign spending. “I don’t think [the pro-Israel] lobby can beat me, and they definitely can’t beat me with this topic,” said the Republican Kentucky congressman Thomas Massie, referring to his recent vote against military aid for Israel.

A group of Super Pacs and dark money non-profits – most notably groups such as Aipac and Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) – tied to Israeli interests last cycle contributed about $43m to US campaigns, according to Open Secrets, a campaign finance watchdog.

Among its targets is the Michigan congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, the House’s only Palestinian American, who co-sponsored a resolution urging Joe Biden to call for a ceasefire. She and other progressive Democrats later opposed a bipartisan resolution expressing support for Israel that failed to mention Palestinian victims, and have not supported US military funding for Israel.

In response, the DMFI has launched a six-figure ad campaign in Tlaib’s district that opens with ominous music and an image of a narrator rattling off a list of grievances.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/nov/11/israel-ads-attack-rashida-tlaib-us-politicians

…so…yeah…humanity is really showing its whole ass on this one, folks…& this “information war” shit may seem like the purview of the excessively online…but it reaches a lot further…& it is serious in ways that the shitposting aspects of the thing belie…so…have a care out there, I guess…or the support you wind up providing might go to a less worthy cause than you had in mind

How two-faced Xi Jinping is exploiting war in Gaza to beget China’s new order [Guardian]

…not that there aren’t equally awful things going down in other places

UN warns violence against civilians in Sudan ‘verging on pure evil’ [Guardian]

…but…gaza…that one seems to be the test bed for things nobody’s tried to push quite as far before

Israeli officials have said that a group of freelance Palestinian photographers who transmitted images of the October 7 Hamas raid to international media should be treated as terrorists, claiming that they had prior knowledge of the attack.

Israel calls for Palestinian photographers of Hamas raid to be treated as terrorists {Financial Times]

…not for nothing…but I read a fair amount of stuff that made it clear a lot of people who didn’t take part were aware of what was going to go down on jan 6th significantly in advance…& if some of those people had gone on down to the capitol to take pictures…well…they probably wasted their time given that the insurrectionists live streamed that shit & all…but…I somehow doubt israeli officials were in a hurry to call them domestic terrorists…particularly the ones with an employment history as freelance photojournalists…so…yeah…there’s that…but there’s also the part where I heard an “israeli official” claiming that the lack of a constant stream of images of dead & wounded hamas fighters coming out of gaza made it clear hamas had total control over every image that makes it out into the world & in fact is somehow running the narrative to its own benefit…& therefore said official shouldn’t be expected to answer, much less defend, the whole bombardment of a civilian population that’s been trapped in a place they seem less inclined to try to empty than lay waste to…&…well…then there was this part

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/09/netanyahu-rejected-ceasefire-for-hostages-deal-in-gaza-sources-say

…so…the song remains the same…& nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong…well…except for the other kind of right, I guess

https://www.emptywheel.net/2023/11/09/donald-trumps-doj-shut-down-a-burisma-corruption-investigation-opened-while-joe-biden-was-vp/

…hmmm…you don’t say?

https://www.emptywheel.net/2023/11/04/james-comer-finally-finds-evidence-supporting-impeachment-of-donald-trump/

…so….yeah…about that project 2025 shite

https://www.project2025.org/about/advisory-board/

…sure is a long list of logos throwing their hats into that ring of the circus…but basically its deal is to try to pre-empt the sort of embarrassing ineptitude displayed by the DJ chump “transition” by prepping a slate of people to be able to go full plug & play on hot-swapping a smooth-brained & shallow replacement for that deep state they aim to purge on day #1…so…they’re offering training

The Presidential Administration Academy covers topics ranging from how to identify appointee positions for which you qualify to navigating the necessary background and security clearance processes to recognizing and addressing the dangers of the administrative state. Potential appointees will learn the intricacies of the federal budget process, how to work with the media, managing congressional and stakeholder relations, the federal procurement process, and dozens of other topics that provide the knowledge and skills you’ll need to be an effective presidential appointee.
[…]
Currently, the Presidential Administration Academy is a fully online program where participants can take courses on-demand. As the presidential election approaches, additional online courses will be added and in-person training sessions will be available. Intense instruction tailored for high-level positions will be in-person.

…yeah…about that…maybe you’re thinking “I dunno, a bunch of webinars might manage a crash course in how that shit works even if “navigating the necessary background and security clearance processes” realistically doesn’t seem like webinar stuff”…but…here’s the thing…much as I love y’all…I ain’t signing up to find out what that shit actually consists of…so I’m just guessing off this blurb of theirs…but

The majority of classes run 30 to 90 minutes. Since the program is largely offered online and on-demand, you can self-pace and cover the material at your convenience over time. Onsite, in-person programs will be intensive learning and run one to two days.

https://www.project2025.org/training/presidential-administration-academy/

…one to two days…of 30-90min sessions…you could maybe prep a witness for a cross-examination on that kind of timetable…but adequately training a transition-sized slate of executive appointees?

…I’mma go ahead & call bullshit on that one, methinks…which is not to underplay the agenda these fools are looking to forcefeed the federal government…which is…well…you know how that part works…or rather…conspicuously doesn’t anytime you give them an opening…& besides…plenty of people will tell you about that shit

…here’s one from july

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/27/project-2025-dismantle-us-climate-policy-next-republican-president

…& another from just the other day

The fact that there is a more than remote chance of the twice impeached, quadruply indicted former US president returning to the Oval Office is ringing alarm bells. “I think it would be the end of our country as we know it,” Hillary Clinton, who lost to Trump in 2016, said on the ABC talkshow The View this week. “And I don’t say that lightly.”

The former secretary of state noted that history shows how leaders can get legitimately elected and then terminate elections, the opposition and a free press. “Hitler was duly elected,” Clinton added. “All of a sudden somebody with those tendencies, dictatorial, authoritarian tendencies, would be like, ‘OK we’re gonna shut this down, we’re gonna throw these people in jail.’ And they didn’t usually telegraph that. Trump is telling us what he intends to do.”

Trump, notorious for eschewing the politician’s dog whistle in favour of a megaphone, has been characteristically transparent about his intentions in a second term. He set the tone in March when, addressing the Conservative Political Action Conference, he framed the 2024 election as “the final battle” for America and told supporters: “I am your retribution.”

Trump has promised to pardon January 6 insurrectionists in a second term. The Axios website has reported on his plan to dismantle the “deep state” by purging potentially thousands of civil servants and appointing ideological loyalists. A recent New York Times newspaper article told how his team wants to fill the White House and government agencies with aggressive rightwing lawyers who would not challenge the expansion of presidential power.

And the Washington Post reported that Trump is discussing how to use the justice department to investigate or prosecute perceived enemies including his former chief of staff John Kelly, former attorney general William Barr and former joint chiefs of staff chairman Gen Mark Milley. The paper added that he is also considering invoking the Insurrection Act on his first day in office, which would allow him to use the military domestically to crush protests and dissent.

Allan Lichtman, a history professor at American University in Washington, said: “It would be a disaster for America. He’s already made it very clear that his second term is going to be a revenge term. He’s going to use the power of government to persecute and prosecute his enemies and to cement his own power, or at least the power of his allies and cronies.

“He’s already shown he has no respect for the law or for the traditions of American democracy and so a second Trump term would be very frightening. The overwhelming consensus of scientists is that we are getting close to the point of no return on climate change and four years of Trump would be a disaster for the planet. He wants to drill and dig and burn.”

Trump has escaped cross-examination of his policy agenda by skipping all three Republican primary debates so far. But he has given plenty of clues in campaign rallies and online announcements that his second term would make the first look almost modest and moderate by comparison.
[…]
Michael Steele, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, warned: “The fact that Donald Trump in polling is beating Joe Biden in five out of the six battleground states is mind-numbingly painful to believe because it says to me that you value the country and its constitution far less than you value your own self-gratification. I get it; times are not equally good for everybody at the same time; people are going through stuff, absolutely.

“But I’m not going to sit back and say that the guy who tried to overthrow the government, who botched the most consequential pandemic in modern times, resulting in the death of over a million Americans, who plays footsies with our enemies in Russia and China, is going to be the answer to high inflation which, by the way, is half of what it was a year ago. I’m not buying what folks out there are trying to sell with thinking that it will be better with Donald Trump.”

Steele added: “He represents a clear and present danger. He is a threat and I take him at his word. When a candidate says, ‘I am your retribution’ to his base, that’s not good for the rest of us. People need to get their heads out of their behinds when it comes to what that threat is.”

‘A revenge term’: what would another four years of Trump look like? [Guardian]

…though…not everyone thinks that the coverage of that angle is up to snuff

I have been critical of NYT’s serial effort — now joined by WaPo — to predict retribution in a second Trump term, without doing any recent reporting on how that represents a continuation of Trump’s first term, not anything new. Rather than assign three reporters (including reporters who played key roles enabling past retribution efforts) to treat this as a hypothetical future endeavor, why not assign one to report on newly disclosed details of how Bill Barr ordered Scott Brady to dig up more evidence against Joe Biden’s son?

The attention on the WaPo, especially, has sucked up attention that might otherwise be focused on an excerpt from Jonathan Karl’s new book. It’s about the same thing — retribution. But not about past retribution, nor future retribution, but the way that Trump is leveraging cultural cues about retribution, starting with the launch of his campaign from Waco, TX on the thirty year anniversary of the raid (connotations that were evident in advance).

Given the excerpt, I’m not entirely sure whether Karl thinks Trump is doing this out of a sense of weakness, or because he knows the cultural connotations retribution invokes will elicit a certain kind of response from his followers.
[…]
To the extent that Trump’s campaign logic is retribution, then, the spate of stories — both the NYT one and the WaPo one featuring Trump-whisperers — simply reinforce Trump’s campaign message while downplaying the way Trump has always engaged in retribution, often backed by threats of violence.
[…]
The reason I think Karl’s descriptive piece is more useful than the predictive pieces (aside from the way the predictive pieces totally whitewash Trump’s past unprecedented focus on retribution) is because he identifies the puzzle at the core of Trump’s success running on retribution: What’s in it for his mob? Why does this focus on retribution work?
[…]
The answer this question is both obvious, and urgent.

It’s obvious, because Trump really is keying into something that isn’t entirely about extremism. And/or Trump is in many cases the gateway drug to radical extremism, something that has shown up over and over in January 6 cases. People respond to something in Trump and then, because Trump’s networks include large numbers of right wing extremists, their ideology gains traction where they might otherwise not. And then the cultural coding of retribution starts to resonate.
[…]
I’m asking for a focus on the continuity of retribution in Trump’s power — past, present, and future — along with some soul-searching about the media’s cooperation in that retribution dynamic.

Of particular note: the media’s coverage of Trump’s legal woes has only helped him create this dynamic.

Take the coverage of Trump’s testimony in his fraud trial yesterday. The NYT was one of the rare outlets that got into something substantive — that Trump did have a role in the valuations that Judge Engoron has already ruled to be fraudulent — in a headline; and it reported on that substance after six paragraphs describing Trump’s stunts. Most of the rest, however, reported nothing but conflict, virtually all of it staged or baited by Trump. Trump succeeded in entirely flooding out any reporting on his fraud — something that goes to the core of his ability to govern, something that goes to his success at fooling supporters and lazy journalists — by distracting everyone with spectacle, a strategy Rolling Stone reported he would adopt a month ago. Rather than reporting on all the evidence — even presented yesterday, amid the circus stunts — that Trump is actually the guy sticking it to the little guys, not the one vindicating them, most outlets just printed one after another of Trump’s taunts.

And in the process, just like any other staged wrestling match, spectators pick one or another side and root loudly, brainlessly. Even for those rooting for law and order, that’s unhealthy, because it invites hero worship and a false belief that prosecutions are easy and quick. It encourages people to outsource defense of democracy to prosecutors rather than do the hard work of organizing themselves. It invites people to engage in mockery rather than rational assessment of the legal case.

But for those who’ve been convinced by unrelentless propaganda about the Russian investigation — which showed that five top Trump aides lied to cover up Trump’s ties with Russian, for those who bought into Trump’s sustained attack on the legitimacy of democratic elections, for those who’ve been bombarded by non-stop coverage of Hunter Biden’s dick pics, the side they’ll pick is obvious. Adopt Trump’s conflict staging, and you will only ever heighten existing partisan divides.

Trump doesn’t care if a bunch of self-satisfied people mock him as a clown. Indeed, that’s what he wants. Because every time they do so publicly, it reaffirms that he’s the guy on the side of average people, fighting the pencil-headed assholes who frown at the little guy. Plus, if you mock something as serious as a lifetime of defrauding financial institutions as a circus, rather than explain how it allowed Trump to get something he hadn’t earned, it tells everyone that Trump’s adjudged fraud isn’t really serious. In your actions, you confirm the argument he is making.

And all the while, it prevents anyone from talking about how Trump has disavowed all the January 6ers who are facing the consequences of following Trump, claiming he has no role in their crimes. It prevents anyone from talking about why leaving nuclear documents in your bathroom requires spooks to shut down collection programs, leading directly to diminished US influence as war breaks out overseas. It prevents anyone from talking about how all of Trump’s brand has been built off lies claiming he, his net worth, his gaudy penthouse are much larger than they are.

Regular life may be screwing over the little guy (or, under Biden, regular life might have delivered financial gains and a resurgence of organized labor strength that never gets covered). But that’s a different thing than saying that “they” are coming for the little guy.

Yet Trump continues to convince people differently, in large part because the media plays along with Trump’s staged circus.

https://www.emptywheel.net/2023/11/07/why-trumps-retribution-promises-manage-to-persuade-his-mob/

…so…I don’t rightly know what the answer is to how to play the any which way you lose game…but…I’m not a fan of getting played…&…I know who deserves to lose…so where possible…I vote we don’t give the bastards the satisfaction?