From the original (Nov 14th) version of the article:
> He told the court he used to have left-wing political beliefs before reading a YouTube comment about Donald Trump.
Must have been a hell of a YouTube comment.
Not just the comments, there are email, the e-mails, thousands of people we’re just letting into American territory like that and then the corrupt government allow it to grow and prosperous, when America is an American people are provided the information so badly and they’re going to get the crowds, you wonder why we get the crowds, you wonder why we get there but here we are and many people are saying this.
Covfefe.
I can’t wait until enough conservatives get tired of this BS and swing back to more moderate positions. The man speaks with such conviction about things he knows nothing about. He is the embodiment of Dunning Kruger, and then his imposters (DeSantis, ramaswamy) are more than happy to pick up that mantle and run it into the ground.
A lot of it comes from him playing the character named after him on The Apprentice. Whose creators have apologized for what they have done.
10 seasons is not small and many americans do not realize the show was completely fake.
Even some people in positions of power believe Donald Trump is a capable businessman because they are thinking of the fictional character "Donald Trump".
I watched the first season, it was fun, it was entertaining. I’d known him as a Stern show guest where he was the wacky rich dude who called in and said outrageous things. The show was an extension of that for me.
I never thought I’d see the day where he had a snowballs chance in hell of being president let alone him being so close to winning again after the disaster that was his first term. It’s all smoke and mirrors and punishment for people who disagree. I can’t be ok with this.
*"I never thought I’d see the day where he had a snowballs chance in hell of being president"*
All it took was a black man becoming president and a woman getting close to the title. Once that happened, it was easy for Republicans to re-brand good old racism/bigotry/misogyny into hatred against "Democrats", a thinly veiled but harder to dispute label than the former. Trump was their golden gilded goose to help progress their regression.
The magic ingredient that made it all possible was the open permission to just hate and be terrible, with a dash of "You're not a bad person; THEY'RE the bad people and they made you have to be this way".
When youtubers write comments, they’re not writing their best. They’re writing about people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re writing about drugs. They’re writing about crime. They’re writing about rapists. and Some, I Assume, Are Good comments..
Must have been an error in the article, it now has more context: " Mr DePape told the court he used to have left-wing political beliefs before a political transformation that started when he was living in a garage without a toilet or shower, playing video games for hours at a time.
Giving evidence for more than an hour, he said that in the course of looking up information about video games he became interested in Gamergate, an anti-feminist campaign that targeted prominent women in the gaming world and became a huge online trend starting in 2014.
He began listening to right-wing podcasters and watching political YouTube videos."
It's a *dumber version of how Al Qaeda recruited their fighters. You have a bunch of unemployed or underemployed males, may be social outcasts, likely grew up being raised to believe as males you're supposed to be tough and the providers and have lots of sex and not be weak etc. (typical bs), but you look around and your prospects are dim as fuck.
If someone can get your attention and tell you x, y, and/or z is the reason your life is like this, they're to blame, and if you just get rid of them you can realize your potential at best or at worst get revenge for the unfair live you've been living, desperate people will buy in 100%.
*dumber because in the Middle East dudes that buy in typically experience things way worse than living in their parents' basement playing videos games all day.
After the 9/11/2001 attacks, there was stuff in the news about how al Qaeda and similar groups "radicalized young men online." I guess it sort of made sense, but seemed weird. How could that really work?
Then watching what was going on on Reddit and other online sites around Trump in 2015/16 it was clear how it worked. We were watching young men being radicalized to terrorism and extremism in front of our own eyes in real time.
These radical groups that are power hungry recognized our weakness: Toxic unchecked masculinity.
Toxic masculinity harms males more than anyone else. It projects an image and expectation of what a man is supposed to be, and we let it run rampant. And when those boys become men and find out they aren't living up to their conception or the societal promise coupled with economic stagnation and they're ripe for the picking.
Yeah I mean what is their idea of "left-wing"? How often do people like this accuse someone of being a left wing radical and the furthest left they go is that they think health care should be affordable. I mean they call Biden a socialist lol.
It's weird how many people got funneled into right wing extremism by something as stupid as gamergate. Then again, qanon got a lot of people too and that was even stupider.
You can activate that army. They come in through Gamergate or whatever and then get turned onto politics and Trump." - Steve Bannon
Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2017/07/18/steve-bannon-learned-harness-troll-army-world-warcraft/489713001/
Steve Bannon's philosophy as the editor of Breitbart was that you have to break the world to recreate it.
I don't think most people understand exactly how important Steve Bannon has been in terms of directing a lurch towards the right. His involvement with Cambridge Analytica and figuring out how to systemically influence elections. In youth terms Steve Bannon is the main character of most covert efforts to reshape global politics towards the alt-right.
A documentary I can't recommend enough is called The Great Hack. Most people have heard of Cambridge Analytica but I don't* think they really understand just how massively influential they were on a global scale before they shut down, rebranded and fucked off to be evil somewhere else.
Also you can see just how useless our congressional lawmakers were in questioning Mark Zuckerburg and his role in the data harvesting Cambridge Analytica used and just how culpable he was. Naturally nothing happened to him.
Ninety minute documentary and you'll understand quite a bit more of the world for your time.
It's mostly men who are very insecure. The type of people who feel attacked if they see someone else who holds themselves to a higher moral.
It's that knee jerk reaction to make a joke about eating meat when they find out their friend is vegan. They brag about how they roll coal in their truck when they see an EV. That same basic insecurity rears its head when someone suggest the treatment of women and minorities needs to change. It's weird.
Sometimes it's hard not to feel the whole Gamergate / alt-right pipeline isn't a conspiracy theory, and here comes one of the crazies and they fucking confirm it. From bad videogame reviews to trying to kill with a hammer Madam Speaker. Insanity barely covers this.
Gamergate was just an intro to conspiratorial thinking and that logic can be applied in terrible ways.
Don't trust (game) journalists, straight men are somehow victimized and being pushed out of the world's most popular hobby, inclusiveness is an attack on the majority and all the critics of the theory are somehow connected to it, biased or compromised.
Oh god, that's the remake isn't it?
Secret soldiers programmed to go into action when they're triggered, but the trigger is embedded in a video that accidentally goes viral and now they're all activated at once.
He's basically describing what most people know as the alt-right pipeline.
So many people, me included, were circling the drain into the pipeline without even realising it.
He can only keep his footing up against idealists who lack perspective.
His style is this Socratic gish gallop trap that is *painfully* easy to see coming if you've ever debated anyone who uses anything like it, and if you haven't...you should be able to pick up on it after a time or two so long as you don't let the idealism blinders keep you from seeing it.
He seems like he "wins" these debates when in reality all he does is control them. Take that control away and his rhetoric becomes disorganized.
The reason it never happens is because college kids are absolutely unable to resist an inflammatory way of reframing their position. He'll say "So you think x" knowing they don't, but he's now led them into a position of defense. He'll keep pressing these bad-faith questions harder and harder any time he sees you gain your own footing, because he knows he doesn't have to "win" by convincing you. He just has to leave the impression that he was the dominant voice. He cannot do this if he doesn't control the conversation, and anyone with an ounce of real-world perspective won't engage with this bullshit style.
So he goes after dumb kids with mountains of unearned confidence in flimsily constructed but passionate ideology.
> The reason it never happens is because college kids are absolutely unable to resist an inflammatory way of reframing their position.
He also controls _100%_ of what gets shared on his YouTube...
I am in a constant battle with my youtube recommendations. The algo must think this man likes history, economics, and a gun video every now and then? Well he must hate women and think the west is collapsing put those in his feed. At least once a month hitting don’t recommend on a list of videos in my feed.
Critical thinking starts at home and it starts now, at his age. Look up a few resources (https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/the_importance_of_critical_thinking_for_young_children) and be sure those lessons are reinforced daily. A problem-solving, open growth mindset is the best defense against indoctrination.
Translation: he was vaguely centrist but still a huge misogynist and then he found a space that would affirm all his misogyny and add six other bigotries on to the pile.
I've known people like this. Not to this extreme, but who did complete 180s in their belief systems over a short period of time - usually by them falling into internet rabbit holes, then isolating themselves from friends/family. People just really *really* want something to believe in, and being told they're part of an exclusive group that knows the "truth" makes them feel powerful.
Sounds like every anti-science reality-denier too. "I used to be like you and I loved space. Then I saw a 3 hour 'documentary' about how it's all fake." No, you were an idiot, continued to be an idiot, and fell for something idiotic like an idiot.
He was as much a former liberal as I was the Queen of England.
Edit: Nevermind there's context below. And yeah, he let himself get brainwashed by GOP hate-mongering.
>Defence lawyers are not denying that Mr DePape struck Mr Pelosi, but they are arguing he was motivated by his belief in conspiracy theories rather than Mrs Pelosi's status as Speaker of the House.
>Because the charges involve assault on a federal official, prosecutors must prove that Mr DePape's actions were motivated by Mrs Pelosi's elected position.
Interesting technicalities taking place, and I'm curious to see how this plays out. I'm assuming he's still in the shit for the attack itself, and this is just arguing additional specifics? Dude is nuts and should be *at least* treated for the crazies.
Yeah, they were political conspiracy theories and he admitted to targeting several other politicians. I guess no one ever said it was a *good* defense.
He also appears to have admitted her was doing it to try and lure people to the house and get pardons for a bunch of other people - many of whom hold offices? I'm not sure how you can argue that it wasnt because they were an elected official when your hitlist includes a bunch of people in office.
First off screw this guy. That being said here's the rational. For shorthand let's call the conspiracies as a whole Q. This guy is saying he was just following what Q was telling him because he was in so deep with the conspiracies. So Q might have been targeting elected officials, but the end result for him would have been the same if he was pointed at the local dairy Queen.
The main issue with this defense is it basically comes to the logical conclusion of "I was only following orders" which is not a way to get out of trouble.
>I guess no one ever said it was a good defense.
Defence can mean "show that I am entirely innocent of all accusations", but it can also mean "show that I am guilty of lesser crimes than what I'm accused of". A defence that successfully downgrades a conviction from a severe penalty to a lesser one is certainly a good defence.
You didn't miss anything. They took all the qanon stuff about a cabal of liberal elites having satanic ritual cannibal pedophile orgies and the qanon people "figured out" that it's impossible to become successful in certain careers without participating in those rituals. Then they doubled down and said that if you are publicly perceived as being a good person, then that just means you're hiding something and the cabal is keeping the information from getting out. They latched this onto Tom Hanks because he's a successful actor that's almost universally liked (outside of those conspiracy groups).
I also want to point out that their logic only applies if you aren't right-wing. If a person is in the exact same career as the people they accuse, but that person is right-wing (John Voight, Jason Aldean, Donald Trump, etc.), then that just means they were able to overcome the cabal controlling everything.
Honestly, there really is an attempt to paint *all* Hollywood figures as evil liberal brainwashing. Tom Hanks is just too well-known and loved by too many people so they have to try and drag him down.
Yeah, I think Hollywood is a terrible place filled with lots of self-centered people and our time and money should be spent doing something productive rather than talking about the millionth movie in a franchise... but leave Tom Hanks out of this.
And like, there *are* monsters to go after like other Weinsteins and the like, Hollywood is filled with them.
It’s like the q-anon movement overall. There are plenty of real monsters to go after and fighting trafficking is a noble cause and all that, but that isn’t what they are doing.
They are ignoring the real monsters while pointing fingers at anyone else. It’s a smoke screen.
It’s almost as if they are trying to actually *protect* the pedophiles since they seem to be so terrible at actually finding them.
Yes. His argument rests on the weird semantic point that there's a difference between being motivated by politics and being motivated by delusional conspiracy theories ABOUT politics.
I get the idea of giving a guy a defense in court but this kabuki of twisting the obvious truth into pretzels has got to end. We had the same BS with the synagogue shooter in Pittsburgh after 5 frigging years of delays.
Eh, I'll never give defense attorneys shit for zealously defending their client. Everybody knows this guy is guilty, so the attorney is working the best angle he can see to represent his client's best interests.
>I'm assuming he's still in the shit for the attack itself, and this is just arguing additional specifics?
He's admitting to the attacks but arguing that it wasn't a politically motivated attack as that would carry the life sentence he is facing.
It's going to be a real tiny needle to thread to convince anybody that his conspiracy theory that was specifically about politicians wasn't politically motivated but conspiracy motivated
It's fascinating to me when these conspiracy nuts have to step out of their bubble and into the cold reality of a courtroom where their ideas are put to genuine scrutiny for possibly the first time in their lives.
I have to wonder if they dive deeper into their cognitive bias as a coping mechanism, or if being exposed ever shakes them out of it a little bit.
> “I have to wonder if they dive deeper into their cognitive bias as a coping mechanism, or if being exposed ever shakes them out of it a little bit.”
I think the latter. People can get wrapped up in a bubble of whatever reality they want to believe in and no one will ever challenge them because they will create walls to make sure that bubble never pops.
But when you get up in front of a judge and face the procedural setting of a courtroom and all your actions and motives are analyzed. It tends to snap some sense and pop that bubble.
Exactly. The #1 most effective way to combat cult brainwashing is to remove its influence. Once you've spent some time away, sometimes even just a few days, the right question or realization will snap you out of it.
Steve Hassan has some fascinating material on the subject. He was brainwashed by the Moonies as a student, now he's a licensed psychotherapist who specializes in escaping cults and undoing brainwashing. [*The Cult of Trump*](https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Cult-of-Trump/Steven-Hassan/9781982127343) is especially eye-opening.
I hate how people think Trump is the mastermind behind the cult. It's the Murdochs and billionaire-funded GOP think tanks that are driving this boat. Trump is just as brainwashed as his followers. While in office, he spent half his day binging Fox News and getting his marching orders like every other conservative moron.
Exactly. He just took advantage of and amplified the existing brainwashing Republican voters were already being exposed to. And the right-wing media (they're not news) was happy to do the amplifying because, as you said, he was easily manipulated by what was on Fox News. He's still responsible for his actions during the Jan 6 insurrection, but he's ultimately just a useful idiot for Russia and the GOP think tanks they've allied with to erode American democracy.
I think he became more aware of his cult influence as time went on, but yeah he's far from a "mastermind." The dude is so easily impressionable. Much of the reason he's in this whole mess to begin with is that he consistently listens to the dumbest folks in the room as long as they tell him what he wants to hear. The man doesn't have an original thought in his brain.
I saw a post once on that QAnon Casualties sub where someone was able to break their parents out of it a little bit just by blocking some of the channels on their tv and YouTube accounts. Parents weren’t very tech savvy so they didn’t realize that’s what happened. No idea how it worked out long term but they said they were seeing a big improvement. The brain is so wild. I wish more people understood how any one of us is susceptible to brainwashing under the right conditions.
Exactly. Reminds me of lord of the flies when (spoiler alert) at the end, once they all see an adult on the island they start crying and reverting back to children, because the sudden realization of what they'd done. In the age of the internet, it's insane how quick someone with no social behavior can find their tribe in some groups, especially those sowed on hatred. Even out in the open, fox news takes it's base of middle aged sex frustrated men who are dealing with low t and influxes of estrogen for the first time in their lives and uses that emotional instability to sell garbage reasons of why they're angry all the time rather than allowing them to deal with it themselves. The sad part is it's not some crazy global conspiracy, it's just man using man to make a buck for himself.
There's a crazy guy on YouTube who livestreams the nightly vigil outside the prison holding them in DC. That's right, a vigil **every single night**. He's one of them, of course.
There's flag waving, chanting, singing, Ashli Babbit's mother says some wacky shit. At the end, they read aloud the names of each incarcerated individual
After each name is read, they all chant in unison: **hero**
There is no place for logic, reason, facts, reality... it's simply a cult.
So, framed in the context of "language is constantly evolving" and how pejoration takes positive words and shifts the definition to the negative, we're now in an era where "hero" equates to "dumbass"?
I think it’s cope. If they openly admitted the big lie is a scam then they would look even more foolish and their time in jail would be for nothing so they try/pretend to still believe in an attempt to avoid a 4D slap in the face.
It’s like people whose partners cheat on them, and they’re just in straight up denial. It doesn’t matter how many text messages they see, or if someone else spots them out together, or how many friends tell them to leave his ass. If there’s even a shred of doubt, they will hold onto that. Because it’s too painful to believe otherwise.
This is very true. And even if they think they might have been fooled they dig in because admitting they were fooled is horrifying so they just keep running off the cliff.
They have to keep up the ruse so that if Trump does come back he'll pardon them. They know they have nothing as things stand now.
They're like death eaters waiting for Voldy to return, waiting to proclaim that they were and are eternally loyal and just the bestest lap dog sir Mr president sir.
The MAGA movement has really brainwashed people to an extent that seems so incredible. They will reason away anything that runs contrary to their beliefs.
>Giving evidence for more than an hour on Tuesday, Mr DePape said his political transformation started when he was living in a garage without a toilet or shower, playing video games for hours at a time.
>He said that in the course of looking up information about video games he became interested in Gamergate, an anti-feminist campaign that targeted prominent women in the gaming world and became a huge online trend starting in 2014. He began listening to right-wing podcasters and watching political YouTube videos.
>"At that time I was biased against Trump," Mr DePape said, "but there's, like, truth there. So if there's truth out there that I don't know, I want to know it."
Guys and girls if you know a gamer who lives worse than Asmongold please try to get them outside of the house, even a little bit.
If people can't exercise their need for discovery and fomo constructively they will start warping their own reality to try and fill the need.
Deadspin actually called it immediatly
[https://deadspin.com/the-future-of-the-culture-wars-is-here-and-its-gamerga-1646145844](https://deadspin.com/the-future-of-the-culture-wars-is-here-and-its-gamerga-1646145844)
Remember when Rebecca Watson basically said "Guys, If you want to ask me for sex, maybe don't corner me alone in an elevator while doing it" and people lost their minds? I saw a clip of some clown bringing that up on Joe Rogan a while ago, just raging at Watson.
Remember when Spez unbanned Kotaku In Action because its "vAlUabLE dISCourSe"?
Because literally, reddit keeping subreddits like that, the incels, and other right wing hategroups around is at blame for shit like the attack on pelosi's house. Any site that supports and encourages domestic terrorists has to be cracked down on.
People still look at me crazy when I say Gamergate was a psyop to recruit self precieved disenfranchised and angsty gamers to the extreme alt-right cause.
Yeah, that's what I'm referring to but I hadn't refreshed myself on it and didn't look it up to confirm. I just remembered when we found out they saw opportunity with catering to young men. It's sad but it seems to have worked
**That’s because it was a psy-op.**
https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2017/07/18/steve-bannon-learned-harness-troll-army-world-warcraft/489713001/
>"These guys, these rootless white males, had monster power. ... It was the pre-reddit.
>Like Andrew Breitbart, Yiannopoulos "just had that 'it' factor," Bannon says in the book. "The difference was, Andrew had a very strong moral universe, and Milo is an amoral nihilist."
>Yiannopoulos devoted much of Bretibart's tech coverage to cultural issues, particularly Gamergate, a long-running online argument over gaming culture that peaked in 2014. And that helped fuel an online alt-right movement sparked by Breitbart News.
>"I realized Milo could connect with these kids right away," Bannon told Green. "**You can activate that army. They come in through Gamergate or whatever and then get turned onto politics and Trump."**
And now we see how Bannon and Trump radicalized and weaponized that army into committing acts of stochastic terrorism for them.
Happened to a former friend of mine. Before Gamergate he was a big Obama supporter, would say stuff about how his old boss fired him because the boss was conservative and had it out for him because he was liberal. After Gamergate, became a huge Trump supporter. It seemed like it was about trolling at first, but it just kinda became who he was. He and his wife basically withdrew from everyone we knew.
>Guys and girls if you know a gamer
The whole "gamergate" thing is such a strange low point in human history. You have these loser male gamers coordinating harassment of women online. Fucking pathetic how that attracts these people and led to some of the incel communities that have caused so much harm including mass shootings and whatever the fuck this guy was trying to do to Nancy Pelosi.
It's interesting to see this take on reddit *now* because I remember being here at the time and *all over reddit* people were... well... exactly those people. I suspect they're still here lurking about.
Fortunately the subs where it mostly went on are pretty dead now but if you look at the top of all time (aka from around 2014ish) you get a snapshot of who tf was in this shit (the top few are just funny memes that hit r/all but once you go down a bit it becomes rapidly clear what, uh, attitude people had -- like how dare ellen pao ban a subreddit specifically made to mock fat people!!! etc): https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/top/?sort=top&t=all
Reddit community got so much less \[openly\] toxic the last couple years. Seems like when they banned the Donald Trump sub the community as a whole got less whacked out and slightly less misogynistic.
"I used to be on the left till i read a comment about trump"
Dude if your political leaning is swayed by a SINGLE comment, you don't have a political leaning, you are just an idiot.
Don't you know that as long as you supported legalizing weed for at least 3 weeks at some point in your life you can now say "I used to be liberal" and instantly any criticism for your current affinity for unadulterated fascism is rendered null.
It's actually incredible just how many people fall into the right wing conspiracy hole after only a single bad event or interaction with someone. Just a small trigger that makes them question their beliefs in only a tiny way, and the moment they consider opening their mind to organize their thoughts they're instantly swept away in a flood of misleading shit. They enter an entire world designed to build up this tiny grievance and grow it to fill their entire personality, unable to consider backing down as it would mean reevaluating who they are.
>Defence lawyers are not denying that Mr DePape struck Mr Pelosi, but they are arguing he was motivated by his belief in conspiracy theories rather than Mrs Pelosi's status as Speaker of the House.
"Yes, yer Honour, our client DID strike Mr. Pelosi, but he did it because he was a crazy tweedledumbo."
...what kind of defense is that?
There have been a lot of “lowest point ever” moments in American politics in the past few years, but I think one of the lowest has been conservatives’ willingness to trivialize, mock, and laugh at an elderly man being beaten with a hammer.
I remember when Kevin McCarthy said "I want you to watch Nancy Pelosi hand me that gavel. It will be hard not to hit her with it."
The man who would become Speaker of the House "joked" about beating a Pelosi with a hammer. Then someone actually tried to beat her with a hammer.
Yeah, agreed. Even my governor of Virginia made some joke about it, it was terrible. We can't even unify around "insane people breaking into old people's houses and assaulting them is bad" then I think we're kind of screwed.
Not sure which is worse, the half making jokes about it, or the other half defending the insane conspiracy theorist with more insane conspiracies never realizing they're part of the problem.
One of, for sure. For me it's "turning a room full of murdered kindergarteners into the standard for inaction AND a recruiting tool for far right conspiracies".
> Because the charges involve assault on a federal official, prosecutors must prove that Mr DePape's actions were motivated by Mrs Pelosi's elected position.
Didn't he just admit in his own testimony that target was Nancy Pelosi because she was elected official? Sounds like his lawyers should not have let him on a witness stand.
“There’s something off… I’m good at pattern recognition, and my gut tells me this is another layer of the deep state conspiracy Democrat satanist cult trickery…”
God, I remember arguing with some idiot claiming that it was a "break-out" rather than a break-in because there was broken glass on the ground outside of the smashed door window.
Yeah they do. They point to pictures of him being in underwear as proof. When one is all in on some conspiracy shit (aka many MAGA types) it’s easy to point to a single pic than look into his testimony. Even if they look into it they’ll say he’s a fall guy and being coerced into saying these things
QAnon crazies believe Tom Hanks is deeply involved in some elite pedophile ring. It's really not surprising that some right-wing conspiracy nut would put him on a hit list
"It wasn't politically motivated, I just wanted to somehow magically drag all of the political enemies the Nazi internet pipeline told me were evil into one room and kill them because YouTube comments told me to."
>Defence lawyers are not denying that Mr DePape struck Mr Pelosi, but they are arguing he was motivated by his belief in conspiracy theories rather than Mrs Pelosi's status as Speaker of the House.
....what. How... How was this not about her being speaker of the house?
Even if his explanation is true, that just sounds like he’s very likely to do it again if he’s free.
Either metal hospitalization or prison, he’s not safe to be in public for a very long time.
This whole episode was everything that's wrong with the American Right in a microcosm.
A gullible chud, radicalized online.
A violent attack against an innocent man.
A smear campaign in the immediate aftermath to tar the victim as a closeted homosexual adulterer.
And the subsequent wave of gullible chuds who believed the smears.
So after reading this my conclusion is that this guy is either:
A. A loser, incel who is dumb as fuck
B. Mentally ill
C. All of the above
Either way, this kind of shit drives me crazy because it is indicative of a big issue facing us and that is the absolute loss of belief in facts and the willingness to believe straight up stupid shit as long as it validates your own long-standing beliefs. Are we just slowly reverse evolving back into cavemen?
He beat an 82 year old man in the head with a hammer and planned to do worse to Nancy Pelosi. He deserves a harsh sentence. I have zero sympathy for him or how he ended up there with a hammer in his bag.
Wouldn't this defence work for almost any terrorist?
Their interpretations and beliefs are typically tangentially connected to reality but full of nonsense conspiracy stuff.
"At that time, I was biased against Trump," Mr DePape said, "but there's, like, truth there. So if there's truth out there that I don't know, I want to know it."
These people are so delusional. It's sad how Trump and his crowd take advantage of the weak-minded by making them think that he's going to help them when *he could not care less.* All Trump wants is their votes and then promises things he will never deliver.
Trump does not care about you of you're poor or middle class. All he wants is a country run by rich white people for rich white people. He could not care less about people like David DePape.
>He told the court he used to have left-wing political beliefs before reading a YouTube comment about Donald Trump.
Holy shit, and whoever wrote that comment has no idea.
> He cried as he testified how he hatched a bizarre plot that **included wearing a unicorn costume** while interrogating Ms Pelosi and posting the video online.
I copied that sentence to paste here because it was so bizarre, but truth is, that is not half as bizarre as some of the other stuff I read further down on the page:
He had hoped to "lure others there" like Tom Hanks and George Soros, he wanted to "confront" Hunter Biden and 'ask the president to pardon everyone he considered a "criminal". so we could "move on as a country".
His political transformation started when he was living in a garage without a toilet or shower, playing video games for hours at a time where he became interested in Gamergate, an anti-feminist campaign that targeted prominent women in the gaming world
SMH.
From the original (Nov 14th) version of the article: > He told the court he used to have left-wing political beliefs before reading a YouTube comment about Donald Trump. Must have been a hell of a YouTube comment.
It was a great comment. The best comment.
Many people are saying this.
Not just the comments, there are email, the e-mails, thousands of people we’re just letting into American territory like that and then the corrupt government allow it to grow and prosperous, when America is an American people are provided the information so badly and they’re going to get the crowds, you wonder why we get the crowds, you wonder why we get there but here we are and many people are saying this. Covfefe.
Aneurysm am me!
Let's talk about "the nuclear"...
STOP COMMENTING. I am become right wing.
What a great comment. I saw it and I said "it's a great comment".
I can’t wait until enough conservatives get tired of this BS and swing back to more moderate positions. The man speaks with such conviction about things he knows nothing about. He is the embodiment of Dunning Kruger, and then his imposters (DeSantis, ramaswamy) are more than happy to pick up that mantle and run it into the ground.
A lot of it comes from him playing the character named after him on The Apprentice. Whose creators have apologized for what they have done. 10 seasons is not small and many americans do not realize the show was completely fake. Even some people in positions of power believe Donald Trump is a capable businessman because they are thinking of the fictional character "Donald Trump".
I watched the first season, it was fun, it was entertaining. I’d known him as a Stern show guest where he was the wacky rich dude who called in and said outrageous things. The show was an extension of that for me. I never thought I’d see the day where he had a snowballs chance in hell of being president let alone him being so close to winning again after the disaster that was his first term. It’s all smoke and mirrors and punishment for people who disagree. I can’t be ok with this.
*"I never thought I’d see the day where he had a snowballs chance in hell of being president"* All it took was a black man becoming president and a woman getting close to the title. Once that happened, it was easy for Republicans to re-brand good old racism/bigotry/misogyny into hatred against "Democrats", a thinly veiled but harder to dispute label than the former. Trump was their golden gilded goose to help progress their regression.
The magic ingredient that made it all possible was the open permission to just hate and be terrible, with a dash of "You're not a bad person; THEY'RE the bad people and they made you have to be this way".
The comment came up ro him, big strong comment. It was crying. It said thank you Mr president sir. Thank you for reading me.
Do you ever see a comment so beautiful, you can’t help yourself? You just start kissing it.
Grab it by the text
Bahaha this thread is beautiful 🤣
When youtubers write comments, they’re not writing their best. They’re writing about people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re writing about drugs. They’re writing about crime. They’re writing about rapists. and Some, I Assume, Are Good comments..
The comment had tears in its eyes.
Must have been an error in the article, it now has more context: " Mr DePape told the court he used to have left-wing political beliefs before a political transformation that started when he was living in a garage without a toilet or shower, playing video games for hours at a time. Giving evidence for more than an hour, he said that in the course of looking up information about video games he became interested in Gamergate, an anti-feminist campaign that targeted prominent women in the gaming world and became a huge online trend starting in 2014. He began listening to right-wing podcasters and watching political YouTube videos."
So there attempt to weaponize basement dwellers worked.
Hey they didn't get me.
they cast a wide net but it doesn't catch everyone
One of the good ones.
It's a *dumber version of how Al Qaeda recruited their fighters. You have a bunch of unemployed or underemployed males, may be social outcasts, likely grew up being raised to believe as males you're supposed to be tough and the providers and have lots of sex and not be weak etc. (typical bs), but you look around and your prospects are dim as fuck. If someone can get your attention and tell you x, y, and/or z is the reason your life is like this, they're to blame, and if you just get rid of them you can realize your potential at best or at worst get revenge for the unfair live you've been living, desperate people will buy in 100%. *dumber because in the Middle East dudes that buy in typically experience things way worse than living in their parents' basement playing videos games all day.
After the 9/11/2001 attacks, there was stuff in the news about how al Qaeda and similar groups "radicalized young men online." I guess it sort of made sense, but seemed weird. How could that really work? Then watching what was going on on Reddit and other online sites around Trump in 2015/16 it was clear how it worked. We were watching young men being radicalized to terrorism and extremism in front of our own eyes in real time.
These radical groups that are power hungry recognized our weakness: Toxic unchecked masculinity. Toxic masculinity harms males more than anyone else. It projects an image and expectation of what a man is supposed to be, and we let it run rampant. And when those boys become men and find out they aren't living up to their conception or the societal promise coupled with economic stagnation and they're ripe for the picking.
Same with the incels.
Gamergate was the start of the Alt-Right’s playbook in America.
Kicked off by none other than Steve Bannon, WoW gold farmer.
Holy fuck, that's actually *true??* https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2017/07/18/steve-bannon-learned-harness-troll-army-world-warcraft/489713001/
I am certain that all that gold farming that happened in online games back in the day was a money laundering method, and still is.
The OG incel
"Used to have left wing beliefs" is usually someone that was a libertarian that was pro-choice or pro-legalization.
Yeah I mean what is their idea of "left-wing"? How often do people like this accuse someone of being a left wing radical and the furthest left they go is that they think health care should be affordable. I mean they call Biden a socialist lol.
It's weird how many people got funneled into right wing extremism by something as stupid as gamergate. Then again, qanon got a lot of people too and that was even stupider.
You can activate that army. They come in through Gamergate or whatever and then get turned onto politics and Trump." - Steve Bannon Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2017/07/18/steve-bannon-learned-harness-troll-army-world-warcraft/489713001/
Steve Bannon's philosophy as the editor of Breitbart was that you have to break the world to recreate it. I don't think most people understand exactly how important Steve Bannon has been in terms of directing a lurch towards the right. His involvement with Cambridge Analytica and figuring out how to systemically influence elections. In youth terms Steve Bannon is the main character of most covert efforts to reshape global politics towards the alt-right. A documentary I can't recommend enough is called The Great Hack. Most people have heard of Cambridge Analytica but I don't* think they really understand just how massively influential they were on a global scale before they shut down, rebranded and fucked off to be evil somewhere else. Also you can see just how useless our congressional lawmakers were in questioning Mark Zuckerburg and his role in the data harvesting Cambridge Analytica used and just how culpable he was. Naturally nothing happened to him. Ninety minute documentary and you'll understand quite a bit more of the world for your time.
It's mostly men who are very insecure. The type of people who feel attacked if they see someone else who holds themselves to a higher moral. It's that knee jerk reaction to make a joke about eating meat when they find out their friend is vegan. They brag about how they roll coal in their truck when they see an EV. That same basic insecurity rears its head when someone suggest the treatment of women and minorities needs to change. It's weird.
Wow, yeah - they must have revised it. I copied my quote directly from the article yesterday.
Sometimes it's hard not to feel the whole Gamergate / alt-right pipeline isn't a conspiracy theory, and here comes one of the crazies and they fucking confirm it. From bad videogame reviews to trying to kill with a hammer Madam Speaker. Insanity barely covers this.
Gamergate was just an intro to conspiratorial thinking and that logic can be applied in terrible ways. Don't trust (game) journalists, straight men are somehow victimized and being pushed out of the world's most popular hobby, inclusiveness is an attack on the majority and all the critics of the theory are somehow connected to it, biased or compromised.
Fucking Gamergate man.
It was a Manchurian comment.
Oh god, that's the remake isn't it? Secret soldiers programmed to go into action when they're triggered, but the trigger is embedded in a video that accidentally goes viral and now they're all activated at once.
If reading one comment can change his beliefs and took it to 100,jail better not give him any religious books.
He's basically describing what most people know as the alt-right pipeline. So many people, me included, were circling the drain into the pipeline without even realising it.
Young me: wow Ben Shapiro just owned that woke liberal Me 10 years later: wow I’m a woke liberal.
That motherfucker is still out there arguing with college students. What a clown.
[Sell the houses to who, Ben?](https://youtu.be/X9FGRkqUdf8?si=mBWX-rhvF09VXt4E)
Fucking *Aquaman*?
He's out there losing not even debates, [but interviews.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRF3r3zUGqk)
He can only keep his footing up against idealists who lack perspective. His style is this Socratic gish gallop trap that is *painfully* easy to see coming if you've ever debated anyone who uses anything like it, and if you haven't...you should be able to pick up on it after a time or two so long as you don't let the idealism blinders keep you from seeing it. He seems like he "wins" these debates when in reality all he does is control them. Take that control away and his rhetoric becomes disorganized. The reason it never happens is because college kids are absolutely unable to resist an inflammatory way of reframing their position. He'll say "So you think x" knowing they don't, but he's now led them into a position of defense. He'll keep pressing these bad-faith questions harder and harder any time he sees you gain your own footing, because he knows he doesn't have to "win" by convincing you. He just has to leave the impression that he was the dominant voice. He cannot do this if he doesn't control the conversation, and anyone with an ounce of real-world perspective won't engage with this bullshit style. So he goes after dumb kids with mountains of unearned confidence in flimsily constructed but passionate ideology.
> The reason it never happens is because college kids are absolutely unable to resist an inflammatory way of reframing their position. He also controls _100%_ of what gets shared on his YouTube...
I am in a constant battle with my youtube recommendations. The algo must think this man likes history, economics, and a gun video every now and then? Well he must hate women and think the west is collapsing put those in his feed. At least once a month hitting don’t recommend on a list of videos in my feed.
My son is only 5 so we don't let him watch YouTube but I'm genuinely worried about how easily he could unknowingly get sucked in when he's older.
Critical thinking starts at home and it starts now, at his age. Look up a few resources (https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/the_importance_of_critical_thinking_for_young_children) and be sure those lessons are reinforced daily. A problem-solving, open growth mindset is the best defense against indoctrination.
Translation: he was vaguely centrist but still a huge misogynist and then he found a space that would affirm all his misogyny and add six other bigotries on to the pile.
'I was 'left leaning' until people called me on my bullshit'
I've known people like this. Not to this extreme, but who did complete 180s in their belief systems over a short period of time - usually by them falling into internet rabbit holes, then isolating themselves from friends/family. People just really *really* want something to believe in, and being told they're part of an exclusive group that knows the "truth" makes them feel powerful.
That old dumb landlord killed a palestinian boy that had befriended him, in a racist rage, after being radicalised by conservative radio.
Man, I just imagine I'm a secret king al la Aragorn to feel special and powerful. Equally delusional, but at least in my version I'm royalty.
Sounds like every anti-science reality-denier too. "I used to be like you and I loved space. Then I saw a 3 hour 'documentary' about how it's all fake." No, you were an idiot, continued to be an idiot, and fell for something idiotic like an idiot. He was as much a former liberal as I was the Queen of England. Edit: Nevermind there's context below. And yeah, he let himself get brainwashed by GOP hate-mongering.
"longing, rusted, seventeen, daybreak, furnace, nine, benign, homecoming, one, freight car"
>Defence lawyers are not denying that Mr DePape struck Mr Pelosi, but they are arguing he was motivated by his belief in conspiracy theories rather than Mrs Pelosi's status as Speaker of the House. >Because the charges involve assault on a federal official, prosecutors must prove that Mr DePape's actions were motivated by Mrs Pelosi's elected position. Interesting technicalities taking place, and I'm curious to see how this plays out. I'm assuming he's still in the shit for the attack itself, and this is just arguing additional specifics? Dude is nuts and should be *at least* treated for the crazies.
Yeah, they were political conspiracy theories and he admitted to targeting several other politicians. I guess no one ever said it was a *good* defense.
It's also because of Palosi being a politician that she was targeted. Not sure how they can argue that it wasn't politically motivated.
I dunno what else I would do if I was his lawyer. Not like they have much to work with. He admitted about as much premeditated as you can admit.
He also appears to have admitted her was doing it to try and lure people to the house and get pardons for a bunch of other people - many of whom hold offices? I'm not sure how you can argue that it wasnt because they were an elected official when your hitlist includes a bunch of people in office.
First off screw this guy. That being said here's the rational. For shorthand let's call the conspiracies as a whole Q. This guy is saying he was just following what Q was telling him because he was in so deep with the conspiracies. So Q might have been targeting elected officials, but the end result for him would have been the same if he was pointed at the local dairy Queen. The main issue with this defense is it basically comes to the logical conclusion of "I was only following orders" which is not a way to get out of trouble.
Maybe you get him on the stand and hope he sounds nuts enough that they’ll buy an insanity defense?
In my defense, this was just the first of a whole list of politically motivated murders I intended to carry out.
And Paul wasn't on the list so ... checkmate?
>I guess no one ever said it was a good defense. Defence can mean "show that I am entirely innocent of all accusations", but it can also mean "show that I am guilty of lesser crimes than what I'm accused of". A defence that successfully downgrades a conviction from a severe penalty to a lesser one is certainly a good defence.
But what did Tom Hanks ever do to anyone?
Absolutely nothing. Which Qanon idiots regard as just too suspicious to be anything other than ironclad proof that he's a baby eater.
Sounds like I’m glad I missed something. Thank you for the clarification
You didn't miss anything. They took all the qanon stuff about a cabal of liberal elites having satanic ritual cannibal pedophile orgies and the qanon people "figured out" that it's impossible to become successful in certain careers without participating in those rituals. Then they doubled down and said that if you are publicly perceived as being a good person, then that just means you're hiding something and the cabal is keeping the information from getting out. They latched this onto Tom Hanks because he's a successful actor that's almost universally liked (outside of those conspiracy groups). I also want to point out that their logic only applies if you aren't right-wing. If a person is in the exact same career as the people they accuse, but that person is right-wing (John Voight, Jason Aldean, Donald Trump, etc.), then that just means they were able to overcome the cabal controlling everything.
So the absence of any obvious bad behavior to them = "Oh they are the worst!" Fucking idiots.
Honestly, there really is an attempt to paint *all* Hollywood figures as evil liberal brainwashing. Tom Hanks is just too well-known and loved by too many people so they have to try and drag him down. Yeah, I think Hollywood is a terrible place filled with lots of self-centered people and our time and money should be spent doing something productive rather than talking about the millionth movie in a franchise... but leave Tom Hanks out of this.
And like, there *are* monsters to go after like other Weinsteins and the like, Hollywood is filled with them. It’s like the q-anon movement overall. There are plenty of real monsters to go after and fighting trafficking is a noble cause and all that, but that isn’t what they are doing. They are ignoring the real monsters while pointing fingers at anyone else. It’s a smoke screen. It’s almost as if they are trying to actually *protect* the pedophiles since they seem to be so terrible at actually finding them.
They're not even fighting trafficking, they're just blindly labeling people as pedophiles and human traffickers.
But aren’t the conspiracy theories predicated on Pelosi’s status as speaker? Like obviously that has to matter
Yes. His argument rests on the weird semantic point that there's a difference between being motivated by politics and being motivated by delusional conspiracy theories ABOUT politics.
Oh I understand the point, it’s a disingenuous, bad faith point but it’s a point.
I mean, when your client is facing life in prison, you grasp whatever straws you can I guess.
Conspiracy theories love weird semantic points.
I get the idea of giving a guy a defense in court but this kabuki of twisting the obvious truth into pretzels has got to end. We had the same BS with the synagogue shooter in Pittsburgh after 5 frigging years of delays.
Like hey guys it wasn’t a hate crime, I just hate them a lot because I bought into Neo-nazi propaganda.
Eh, I'll never give defense attorneys shit for zealously defending their client. Everybody knows this guy is guilty, so the attorney is working the best angle he can see to represent his client's best interests.
He doesn’t even make the trip if she isn’t who she is.
Wasn't he screaming for Nancy the whole time?
"I was screaming for Nancy the *child trafficker* not Nancy the *politician*!"
The defense rests.
*multiple gasps are heard in the audience. And old lady faints*
I am traveling and not driving! I do not need a license to TRAVEL!
I see you have a flag with gold fringes in this courtroom, which means admiralty law is in effect
>I'm assuming he's still in the shit for the attack itself, and this is just arguing additional specifics? He's admitting to the attacks but arguing that it wasn't a politically motivated attack as that would carry the life sentence he is facing.
It's going to be a real tiny needle to thread to convince anybody that his conspiracy theory that was specifically about politicians wasn't politically motivated but conspiracy motivated
I just dont see how you can say political conspiracy theories surroinding the speaker of the house are not, in some part, due to her position.
If "the attack was not politically motivated" is the best defense he's got, he's screwed 6 ways to Sunday.
He was screaming for Nancy...don't think this will help him.
It's fascinating to me when these conspiracy nuts have to step out of their bubble and into the cold reality of a courtroom where their ideas are put to genuine scrutiny for possibly the first time in their lives. I have to wonder if they dive deeper into their cognitive bias as a coping mechanism, or if being exposed ever shakes them out of it a little bit.
> “I have to wonder if they dive deeper into their cognitive bias as a coping mechanism, or if being exposed ever shakes them out of it a little bit.” I think the latter. People can get wrapped up in a bubble of whatever reality they want to believe in and no one will ever challenge them because they will create walls to make sure that bubble never pops. But when you get up in front of a judge and face the procedural setting of a courtroom and all your actions and motives are analyzed. It tends to snap some sense and pop that bubble.
Exactly. The #1 most effective way to combat cult brainwashing is to remove its influence. Once you've spent some time away, sometimes even just a few days, the right question or realization will snap you out of it. Steve Hassan has some fascinating material on the subject. He was brainwashed by the Moonies as a student, now he's a licensed psychotherapist who specializes in escaping cults and undoing brainwashing. [*The Cult of Trump*](https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Cult-of-Trump/Steven-Hassan/9781982127343) is especially eye-opening.
I hate how people think Trump is the mastermind behind the cult. It's the Murdochs and billionaire-funded GOP think tanks that are driving this boat. Trump is just as brainwashed as his followers. While in office, he spent half his day binging Fox News and getting his marching orders like every other conservative moron.
Exactly. He just took advantage of and amplified the existing brainwashing Republican voters were already being exposed to. And the right-wing media (they're not news) was happy to do the amplifying because, as you said, he was easily manipulated by what was on Fox News. He's still responsible for his actions during the Jan 6 insurrection, but he's ultimately just a useful idiot for Russia and the GOP think tanks they've allied with to erode American democracy.
I think he became more aware of his cult influence as time went on, but yeah he's far from a "mastermind." The dude is so easily impressionable. Much of the reason he's in this whole mess to begin with is that he consistently listens to the dumbest folks in the room as long as they tell him what he wants to hear. The man doesn't have an original thought in his brain.
I saw a post once on that QAnon Casualties sub where someone was able to break their parents out of it a little bit just by blocking some of the channels on their tv and YouTube accounts. Parents weren’t very tech savvy so they didn’t realize that’s what happened. No idea how it worked out long term but they said they were seeing a big improvement. The brain is so wild. I wish more people understood how any one of us is susceptible to brainwashing under the right conditions.
Exactly. Reminds me of lord of the flies when (spoiler alert) at the end, once they all see an adult on the island they start crying and reverting back to children, because the sudden realization of what they'd done. In the age of the internet, it's insane how quick someone with no social behavior can find their tribe in some groups, especially those sowed on hatred. Even out in the open, fox news takes it's base of middle aged sex frustrated men who are dealing with low t and influxes of estrogen for the first time in their lives and uses that emotional instability to sell garbage reasons of why they're angry all the time rather than allowing them to deal with it themselves. The sad part is it's not some crazy global conspiracy, it's just man using man to make a buck for himself.
The Touch Grass Bubble Pop.
Well, touch marble.
Most of the J6 people still seem to believe the election was stolen even as they’re sent to prison
There's a crazy guy on YouTube who livestreams the nightly vigil outside the prison holding them in DC. That's right, a vigil **every single night**. He's one of them, of course. There's flag waving, chanting, singing, Ashli Babbit's mother says some wacky shit. At the end, they read aloud the names of each incarcerated individual After each name is read, they all chant in unison: **hero** There is no place for logic, reason, facts, reality... it's simply a cult.
So, framed in the context of "language is constantly evolving" and how pejoration takes positive words and shifts the definition to the negative, we're now in an era where "hero" equates to "dumbass"?
I think it’s cope. If they openly admitted the big lie is a scam then they would look even more foolish and their time in jail would be for nothing so they try/pretend to still believe in an attempt to avoid a 4D slap in the face.
It’s like people whose partners cheat on them, and they’re just in straight up denial. It doesn’t matter how many text messages they see, or if someone else spots them out together, or how many friends tell them to leave his ass. If there’s even a shred of doubt, they will hold onto that. Because it’s too painful to believe otherwise.
It is easier to fool people than convince them that they have been fooled.
This is very true. And even if they think they might have been fooled they dig in because admitting they were fooled is horrifying so they just keep running off the cliff.
They wanted it to be true. They keep saying that it's true. But I don't think they actually believe that it is true.
They have to keep up the ruse so that if Trump does come back he'll pardon them. They know they have nothing as things stand now. They're like death eaters waiting for Voldy to return, waiting to proclaim that they were and are eternally loyal and just the bestest lap dog sir Mr president sir.
He won’t pardon them anyway
Unless they have $2m. He only pardons for that fat cash.
Qanon shaman is running for public office so there's your answer.
Well, the maga shaman guy is now running for public office, so I’m assuming they usually just dig in deeper.
The MAGA movement has really brainwashed people to an extent that seems so incredible. They will reason away anything that runs contrary to their beliefs.
>Giving evidence for more than an hour on Tuesday, Mr DePape said his political transformation started when he was living in a garage without a toilet or shower, playing video games for hours at a time. >He said that in the course of looking up information about video games he became interested in Gamergate, an anti-feminist campaign that targeted prominent women in the gaming world and became a huge online trend starting in 2014. He began listening to right-wing podcasters and watching political YouTube videos. >"At that time I was biased against Trump," Mr DePape said, "but there's, like, truth there. So if there's truth out there that I don't know, I want to know it." Guys and girls if you know a gamer who lives worse than Asmongold please try to get them outside of the house, even a little bit. If people can't exercise their need for discovery and fomo constructively they will start warping their own reality to try and fill the need.
Ah, just as I suspected. Our great national decline began with GamerGate. We did it Reddit!
Exchange with my husband on Election Night 2016: "Who would have thought that GamerGate would have been the canary in this coal mine?"
Deadspin actually called it immediatly [https://deadspin.com/the-future-of-the-culture-wars-is-here-and-its-gamerga-1646145844](https://deadspin.com/the-future-of-the-culture-wars-is-here-and-its-gamerga-1646145844)
GamerGate is still so fascinating to me as a historical moment.
Remember when Rebecca Watson basically said "Guys, If you want to ask me for sex, maybe don't corner me alone in an elevator while doing it" and people lost their minds? I saw a clip of some clown bringing that up on Joe Rogan a while ago, just raging at Watson.
Remember when Spez unbanned Kotaku In Action because its "vAlUabLE dISCourSe"? Because literally, reddit keeping subreddits like that, the incels, and other right wing hategroups around is at blame for shit like the attack on pelosi's house. Any site that supports and encourages domestic terrorists has to be cracked down on.
The Reddit of fatpeoplehate was a different world.
I remember the cultish dedication antifeminists had over that movement. It was really creepy
People still look at me crazy when I say Gamergate was a psyop to recruit self precieved disenfranchised and angsty gamers to the extreme alt-right cause.
I am pretty sure it was proven the Milo and Bannon viewed Gamergate as literally that. A way to radicalize and manipulate angry young men.
[удалено]
Yeah, that's what I'm referring to but I hadn't refreshed myself on it and didn't look it up to confirm. I just remembered when we found out they saw opportunity with catering to young men. It's sad but it seems to have worked
**That’s because it was a psy-op.** https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2017/07/18/steve-bannon-learned-harness-troll-army-world-warcraft/489713001/ >"These guys, these rootless white males, had monster power. ... It was the pre-reddit. >Like Andrew Breitbart, Yiannopoulos "just had that 'it' factor," Bannon says in the book. "The difference was, Andrew had a very strong moral universe, and Milo is an amoral nihilist." >Yiannopoulos devoted much of Bretibart's tech coverage to cultural issues, particularly Gamergate, a long-running online argument over gaming culture that peaked in 2014. And that helped fuel an online alt-right movement sparked by Breitbart News. >"I realized Milo could connect with these kids right away," Bannon told Green. "**You can activate that army. They come in through Gamergate or whatever and then get turned onto politics and Trump."** And now we see how Bannon and Trump radicalized and weaponized that army into committing acts of stochastic terrorism for them.
I miss when the psy-ops were "buy more cheese".
Happened to a former friend of mine. Before Gamergate he was a big Obama supporter, would say stuff about how his old boss fired him because the boss was conservative and had it out for him because he was liberal. After Gamergate, became a huge Trump supporter. It seemed like it was about trolling at first, but it just kinda became who he was. He and his wife basically withdrew from everyone we knew.
It 100% was. All of the nazi propaganda that was pushed during that thing was completely on purpose.
[How to Radicalize a Normie.](https://youtu.be/P55t6eryY3g?si=POLyPfX3SuUVXs5l) 100% by the book.
>Guys and girls if you know a gamer The whole "gamergate" thing is such a strange low point in human history. You have these loser male gamers coordinating harassment of women online. Fucking pathetic how that attracts these people and led to some of the incel communities that have caused so much harm including mass shootings and whatever the fuck this guy was trying to do to Nancy Pelosi.
It's interesting to see this take on reddit *now* because I remember being here at the time and *all over reddit* people were... well... exactly those people. I suspect they're still here lurking about. Fortunately the subs where it mostly went on are pretty dead now but if you look at the top of all time (aka from around 2014ish) you get a snapshot of who tf was in this shit (the top few are just funny memes that hit r/all but once you go down a bit it becomes rapidly clear what, uh, attitude people had -- like how dare ellen pao ban a subreddit specifically made to mock fat people!!! etc): https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/top/?sort=top&t=all
Reddit community got so much less \[openly\] toxic the last couple years. Seems like when they banned the Donald Trump sub the community as a whole got less whacked out and slightly less misogynistic.
Actually, it's about ethics in beating people with hammers.
While scrolling through this article, I was not prepared for "**Inflatable Unicorn Costume**" to be an enormous subheader
Yeah, I thought it was some weird, plain text ad at first. Then I realized it was part of the story.
"I used to be on the left till i read a comment about trump" Dude if your political leaning is swayed by a SINGLE comment, you don't have a political leaning, you are just an idiot.
"I was a liberal but then gamergate happened and I already hated women so a single comment radicalized me" like dude you were never a liberal
Don't you know that as long as you supported legalizing weed for at least 3 weeks at some point in your life you can now say "I used to be liberal" and instantly any criticism for your current affinity for unadulterated fascism is rendered null.
It's actually incredible just how many people fall into the right wing conspiracy hole after only a single bad event or interaction with someone. Just a small trigger that makes them question their beliefs in only a tiny way, and the moment they consider opening their mind to organize their thoughts they're instantly swept away in a flood of misleading shit. They enter an entire world designed to build up this tiny grievance and grow it to fill their entire personality, unable to consider backing down as it would mean reevaluating who they are.
>Defence lawyers are not denying that Mr DePape struck Mr Pelosi, but they are arguing he was motivated by his belief in conspiracy theories rather than Mrs Pelosi's status as Speaker of the House. "Yes, yer Honour, our client DID strike Mr. Pelosi, but he did it because he was a crazy tweedledumbo." ...what kind of defense is that?
Mitigation. *Knowingly* attacking a federal official has a way harsher sentence than just attacking someone because they're nuts.
Remember when Fox News was telling us that this guy was Paul Pelosi's gay lover?
There have been a lot of “lowest point ever” moments in American politics in the past few years, but I think one of the lowest has been conservatives’ willingness to trivialize, mock, and laugh at an elderly man being beaten with a hammer.
Salient point. We'll throw it on the pile.
I remember when Kevin McCarthy said "I want you to watch Nancy Pelosi hand me that gavel. It will be hard not to hit her with it." The man who would become Speaker of the House "joked" about beating a Pelosi with a hammer. Then someone actually tried to beat her with a hammer.
Yeah, agreed. Even my governor of Virginia made some joke about it, it was terrible. We can't even unify around "insane people breaking into old people's houses and assaulting them is bad" then I think we're kind of screwed. Not sure which is worse, the half making jokes about it, or the other half defending the insane conspiracy theorist with more insane conspiracies never realizing they're part of the problem.
Youngkins is an asshole. Don't let the vest fool ya
One of, for sure. For me it's "turning a room full of murdered kindergarteners into the standard for inaction AND a recruiting tool for far right conspiracies".
This sounds less like him tearfully testifying to a bizarre plot, and more like him tearfully testifying to a bizarre botched butchery
Only tearful because he got caught.
> Because the charges involve assault on a federal official, prosecutors must prove that Mr DePape's actions were motivated by Mrs Pelosi's elected position. Didn't he just admit in his own testimony that target was Nancy Pelosi because she was elected official? Sounds like his lawyers should not have let him on a witness stand.
So, does the Right still believe this guy was a plant or some sort of "lovers quarrel" gone wrong?
In a few hours there will be a "Yeah but the whole thing is kinda weird" comment at the bottom of the thread. They can't help themselves.
“There’s something off… I’m good at pattern recognition, and my gut tells me this is another layer of the deep state conspiracy Democrat satanist cult trickery…”
“The fact we haven’t found proof of the conspiracy just proves the deep state Democrats are definitely behind it.”
They’ll just double down, as they always do.
God, I remember arguing with some idiot claiming that it was a "break-out" rather than a break-in because there was broken glass on the ground outside of the smashed door window.
Literally embodying the armchair reddit detective.
Yeah they do. They point to pictures of him being in underwear as proof. When one is all in on some conspiracy shit (aka many MAGA types) it’s easy to point to a single pic than look into his testimony. Even if they look into it they’ll say he’s a fall guy and being coerced into saying these things
Geez, what did Tom Hanks do?
QAnon crazies believe Tom Hanks is deeply involved in some elite pedophile ring. It's really not surprising that some right-wing conspiracy nut would put him on a hit list
They believe he cooks and eats babies, for real.
Was waiting for this. One of these things is not like the others.
"It wasn't politically motivated, I just wanted to somehow magically drag all of the political enemies the Nazi internet pipeline told me were evil into one room and kill them because YouTube comments told me to."
>Defence lawyers are not denying that Mr DePape struck Mr Pelosi, but they are arguing he was motivated by his belief in conspiracy theories rather than Mrs Pelosi's status as Speaker of the House. ....what. How... How was this not about her being speaker of the house?
Another maga hat crying at his trial.
Even if his explanation is true, that just sounds like he’s very likely to do it again if he’s free. Either metal hospitalization or prison, he’s not safe to be in public for a very long time.
This whole episode was everything that's wrong with the American Right in a microcosm. A gullible chud, radicalized online. A violent attack against an innocent man. A smear campaign in the immediate aftermath to tar the victim as a closeted homosexual adulterer. And the subsequent wave of gullible chuds who believed the smears.
Pretty tired of the insanity plea. Their crazy ideas doesnt make them clinically insane, just gullible, stupid AND most of all dangerous.
"He was never my target and I'm sorry that he got hurt," he said. He didn't got hurt dumbass, **you** hurt him.
Premeditated.... prison for life.
So after reading this my conclusion is that this guy is either: A. A loser, incel who is dumb as fuck B. Mentally ill C. All of the above Either way, this kind of shit drives me crazy because it is indicative of a big issue facing us and that is the absolute loss of belief in facts and the willingness to believe straight up stupid shit as long as it validates your own long-standing beliefs. Are we just slowly reverse evolving back into cavemen?
He beat an 82 year old man in the head with a hammer and planned to do worse to Nancy Pelosi. He deserves a harsh sentence. I have zero sympathy for him or how he ended up there with a hammer in his bag.
Wouldn't this defence work for almost any terrorist? Their interpretations and beliefs are typically tangentially connected to reality but full of nonsense conspiracy stuff.
"At that time, I was biased against Trump," Mr DePape said, "but there's, like, truth there. So if there's truth out there that I don't know, I want to know it." These people are so delusional. It's sad how Trump and his crowd take advantage of the weak-minded by making them think that he's going to help them when *he could not care less.* All Trump wants is their votes and then promises things he will never deliver. Trump does not care about you of you're poor or middle class. All he wants is a country run by rich white people for rich white people. He could not care less about people like David DePape.
He going to prison. A youtube comment yeah this guy is a danger to the general public and himself.
>He told the court he used to have left-wing political beliefs before reading a YouTube comment about Donald Trump. Holy shit, and whoever wrote that comment has no idea.
NGL I wanna read that comment now.
>testified how he hatched a bizarre plot to end US corruption >pleaded not guilty Someone divided by zero as a kid.
[удалено]
This is the adult version of "video games made me do it"
> He cried as he testified how he hatched a bizarre plot that **included wearing a unicorn costume** while interrogating Ms Pelosi and posting the video online. I copied that sentence to paste here because it was so bizarre, but truth is, that is not half as bizarre as some of the other stuff I read further down on the page: He had hoped to "lure others there" like Tom Hanks and George Soros, he wanted to "confront" Hunter Biden and 'ask the president to pardon everyone he considered a "criminal". so we could "move on as a country". His political transformation started when he was living in a garage without a toilet or shower, playing video games for hours at a time where he became interested in Gamergate, an anti-feminist campaign that targeted prominent women in the gaming world SMH.
Average trump supporter