Papers, please
On Friday, I posted about a crowdsourced effort by the Trump State Department to identify and deport noncitizens for thought crimes. Basically, anyone posting snarky comments about Charlie Kirk’s death would be considered a supporter of terrorism, justifyiing deportation (to God knows where).
The Guardian reported:
Expanding such social media vetting to encompass commentary on an event such as Kirk’s death would be a significant expansion of the administration’s efforts to restrict dissenting views and opinions, particularly of “foreigners” in the US.
Online sleuths worked to identify Jan. 6 rioters wanted for what they did, for committing crimes. The right is working to out ideological opponents for what they said.
That isn’t the only effort on the right to create an informant network. This effort means to get people fired (CNN):
Prominent far-right influencer Laura Loomer, a US senator, and a site called “Expose Charlie’s Murderers” have all drawn attention to people who have posted messages about Kirk’s Wednesday assassination.
[…]
The Charlie’s Murderers site, whose domain was registered anonymously and which says it is not a doxxing site, claims it has “received nearly 30,000 submissions,” according to a message on the site’s front page on midday Saturday. Currently, there are a few dozen submissions published on the site. “This website will soon be converted into a searchable database of all 30,000 submissions, filterable by general location and job industry. This is a permanent and continuously-updating archive of Radical activists calling for violence.”
The site opened an X account on Friday.
Loomer posted on X on Wednesday, hours after the fatal shooting, that “I will be spending my night making everyone I find online who celebrates his death Famous, so prepare to have your whole future professional aspirations ruined if you are sick enough to celebrate his death.” CNN was unable to reach Loomer for comment.
On X, one account has begun a running “Trophy Case” — a “mega-thread of all of the people Twitter gets fired, updated live as the news comes in,” with dozens of entries of people it claims have lost their jobs.
Very fine people.
“It is absolutely fair to call it a coordinated harassment campaign,” said Laura Edelson, assistant professor at Northeastern University and director of the Cybersecurity for Democracy Project. “That’s absolutely why it exists, to coordinate and target the harassment toward the selected individuals.”
CNN notes that this is nothing new. Kirk’s Turning Point USA keeps a “Professor Watchlist”:
And the site’s name already implies that the people whose information it shares are responsible for Kirk’s murder, paving the way for harassment, Hank Teran, CEO at open-source threat intelligence platform Open Measures, told CNN. The website also echoes back to Kirk-founded conservative group Turning Point’s “Professor Watchlist,” whose purpose was to unmask what it called “radical professors,” but often led to harassment and violent threats directed toward people named on that list.
Altogether, “it could be reasonable to conclude that there’s some intent to incite harassment,” Teran said.
Ya think?
Donald Trump is a Russophile or at least a Putinophile. His followers are looking to recreate the United States in the image of the former Soviet state that gave us Vladimir Putin, the former KGB agent. You’ll be required to register your place of residence with the local police soon enough.
Update: Will Bunch takes on the right’s selective defense of the 1st Amendment in the wake of comments like those mentioned above after Kirk’s death:
Some seemed to celebrate his death — terrible, but also not illegal — but others face sanctions for daring to speak the truth: that Kirk’s love for free speech was mainly for those who agreed with him and that he frequently used his First Amendment rights to spew hate speech toward Black people, the LGBTQ community, immigrants, and liberals.
But it’s Trump pet psychopath, Stephen Miller, who’s really itching to amp up his jihad against all persons and organizations left of himself:
In a Fox News segment discussing what the conservative network branded “the left’s dangerous rhetoric,” top White House aide Stephen Miller proclaimed this weekend, in a presumed shot at those still criticizing Kirk’s extremist views after his death, that “the power of law enforcement under President Trump’s leadership will be used to find you, will be used to take away your money, take away your power and if you have broken the law, take away your freedom.”
With extreme prejudice, if at all possible. Why is this man in the West Wing and not a psych ward?
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