Race Realists posted:

The best (and probably only best thing considering its damon lindelof) thing about the new watchmen show is how its introducing people to americas hosed history and triggering the more shittier parts of the rorschach fanbase


https://twitter.com/dancow/status/1186120197503107072?s=19

im not looking at the replies

quote:

September 6, 2016

U.S. media outlets are eagerly broadcasting the supposedly redemptive story of Jesse Morton, a Pennsylvania-born former “Al Qaeda recruiter” turned FBI informant and counter-terror expert, transformed into a force for good thanks in part to his run-ins with federal agents. The 37-year-old Morton’s story is capturing attention because he was recently hired as a fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, which functions as a feeder school and think tank for the federal war on terror and domestic surveillance apparatus. In his new position, Morton will, as New York Times reporter Rukmini Callimachi put it, “research the very ideology he once spread.” Lorenzo Vidino, the director of the GW program, boasts that this is the first time a former jihadist will take an academic post in the United States.

In addition to the Times article, titled, “Once a Qaeda Recruiter, Now a Voice Against Jihad,” Morton was featured in an interview on PBS news hour and covered by publications from CNN to the Washington Post. Each of these stories is remarkably similar, echoing Morton’s narrative of being “rehumanized” by an FBI agent and reformed by reading western philosophers and writers like John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Reporters overwhelmingly take Morton’s story of “de-radicalization” at face value, failing to raise the most basic questions about the federal agents he lauds.

It is easy to understand why the FBI would be thrilled with the positive media coverage its informant program has received, thanks to Morton. The program has been subjected to lawsuits and accusations of gross human rights violations, including mistreatment of the people it coerces into cooperation. It is also worth questioning whether Morton's story, as it is being told by major media outlets, is entirely true.

A closer look at Morton’s story raises serious questions about his past and the way it has been exploited. Two expert researchers who interviewed Morton before his conviction describe him as a provocateur who had little influence and no operational role in Al Qaeda. With the help of self-styled national security reporters, Morton may be exaggerating his past to advance his career ambitions, while providing the FBI with desperately needed public relations help.

...

Those unwilling to become informants face retaliation and threats. In the lawsuit Tanvir v. Holder, four Muslim plaintiffs charged that the FBI put them or kept them on the secretive federal no-fly list in retaliation for their refusal to inform on their communities.

“Individuals have recounted how the FBI threatened them with baseless terrorism charges or deportation to gain their cooperation, or have brought charges against them in retaliation for their refusal to work as an informant,” explains the Center for Constitutional Rights, noting that it is difficult to calculate the exact extent of this coercion.

Under this massive program, informants play a critical role in entrapping those individuals targeted. Human Rights Watch concluded in a 2014 study that “nearly 50 percent of the federal counterterrorism convictions since September 11, 2001, resulted from informant-based cases. Almost 30 percent were sting operations in which the informant played an active role in the underlying plot.” The organization notes that discriminatory investigations often target “particularly vulnerable individuals (including people with intellectual and mental disabilities and the indigent), in which the government—often acting through informants—is actively involved in developing the plot, persuading and sometimes pressuring the target to participate, and providing the resources to carry it out.”

This critical background has been omitted from the media narrative of Morton, who has instead emerged as a poster boy for an FBI informant program that supposedly helped him better his life and correct the wrongs of his past.

But as Aaronson put it, “There are 15,000 informants, and most of them are not working for the FBI because they want to turn their lives around. They have been coerced. The coverage of Jesse Morton’s case has been poor for not providing that context. The narrative has been overly simplistic and doesn’t acknowledge that the FBI is not a social welfare agency looking to set people on a good path. It is law enforcement and it will use and abuse people.”

quote:

January 25, 2017

Jesse Morton made national headlines when he was accused in federal court of using his Revolution Muslim website to encourage attacks against the creators of “South Park” and others he said were enemies of Islam.

After he was convicted, the Virginia man became an FBI informant. Once released from prison, he joined a D.C.-area think tank focused on studying extremism, saying he hoped to “make amends” through his work.

But Morton, now 38, again faces legal troubles after being arrested and accused of bringing cocaine to meet a prostitute. He is due in court next week and could return to prison.

Morton is no longer working as a research fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, a spokesman confirmed.

Morton was once deemed by federal prosecutors as dangerous to “the very freedoms on which our society is based.” But even before leaving prison, he has said in an interview, he began working undercover on counterterrorism operations. He was released in 2015 after serving less than a third of his 11½ -year prison sentence and hired by GWU the following year.

...

In an interview last fall with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Morton said that after his plea and while in prison, he began doing work for federal agents. According to court documents and a defense attorney involved, after his release Morton was paid by the FBI to help build a case against a supporter of the Islamic State.

quote:

October 19, 2019

Jeff Schoep was once America’s leading neo-Nazi, propagating anti-Semitism and building an army to wage “racist violence” in his role as leader of the National Socialist Movement.

But now he claims to be renouncing his racist past to help wean far-right extremists away from white supremacy using the blueprint developed by his mentor, a former al Qaeda recruiter.

They launch next month with an anti-fascist magazine that uses all the techniques that Jesse Morton once used to convert young Americans into jihadists, first attracting recruits with propaganda before sucking them into a network of online activists who radicalized them to fight at home or abroad.

Schoep, 45, said a former neo-Nazi and a former jihadist may seem like odd bedfellows, but they shared a common experience.

“What Jesse did with the jihadists is that he had a magazine as a propagandist that reached people interested in extremism, and now he is countering it with the same template but for good purposes,” he said.

Morton was sentenced to 11½ years in prison in 2012 for conspiring to solicit murder. His Revolution Muslim website, which he ran while a student in New York, became a focal point for American-born extremists who were groomed for militant groups. His magazine was the template for al Qaeda’s English language publication, Inspire.

Slugnoid posted:

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/10/22/us/california-mother-warning-white-supremacists-soh/index.html

lmao, cali wine mom makes her chud kids sit down with her and 'decode' memes after she finds her tween kid on pol

Slugnoid posted:

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/10/22/us/california-mother-warning-white-supremacists-soh/index.html

lmao, cali wine mom makes her chud kids sit down with her and 'decode' memes after she finds her tween kid on pol

Slugnoid posted:

Yeah don't get me wrong I like it, but the mental image of mom sitting down with her kids chatting about kekistan makes my head spin

Slugnoid posted:

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/10/22/us/california-mother-warning-white-supremacists-soh/index.html

lmao, cali wine mom makes her chud kids sit down with her and 'decode' memes after she finds her tween kid on pol

Dixie Cretin Seaman posted:

nothing would be funnier than an army of moms brigading 4chan with patronizingly wholesome messages to their wayward sons that they know better than to make those Hitler jokes, your great grandpa fought in WW2 for goodness sake! And by the way you'll never meet a nice girl if you spend all day online looking at bawdy cartoons. My coworker has a lovely daughter about your age who's also shy, and they are Japanese, I think. Would you let us to set you up on a date?

Dixie Cretin Seaman posted:

nothing would be funnier than an army of moms brigading 4chan with patronizingly wholesome messages to their wayward sons that they know better than to make those Hitler jokes, your great grandpa fought in WW2 for goodness sake! And by the way you'll never meet a nice girl if you spend all day online looking at bawdy cartoons. My coworker has a lovely daughter about your age who's also shy, and they are Japanese, I think. Would you let us to set you up on a date?

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

https://twitter.com/ByFisted/status/1186714815504506883?s=20

Farm Frenzy posted:

i cant wait until i walk in on my future child looking at hitler memes and smile warmly adn start talking about ancient fyad, thereby ruining hitler memes for them forever

Farm Frenzy posted:

i cant wait until i walk in on my future child looking at hitler memes and smile warmly adn start talking about ancient fyad, thereby ruining hitler memes for them forever

Jose posted:

https://twitter.com/JewishWorker/status/1186980433961127936?s=20

Azathoth posted:

Ahahahaha, couldn't happen to a nicer shitbag.

Dixie Cretin Seaman posted:

https://mobile.twitter.com/jaredlholt/status/1187037851415961600
it’s petty criminals all the way down

Tubgoat posted:

Good to know. Now who wants to primary Betty McCollum?

Azathoth posted:

Be the change you want to see in the world.

Also, in case folks weren't aware, Omar got her start in the MN House by primarying her Rep, who had been in office since the 70s. Said Rep came in third in that primary and has been nursing a grudge ever since. She was most recently seen "just asking questions" about the Islamophobic conspiracy theory that Omar married her brother.

Dixie Cretin Seaman posted:

https://mobile.twitter.com/jaredlholt/status/1187037851415961600
it’s petty criminals all the way down

Jose posted:

https://twitter.com/JewishWorker/status/1186980433961127936?s=20

Tubgoat posted:

I am literally the worst salesman, strangers reflexively oppose my recommendations based on them coming from me, even if it was something they actively desired prior to my input.
This is why I'm not campaigning for Bernie this very moment (telling every friend and family member to, though). You wanna do it, Az? I'll do any logistical or office work you want and if it's not snowing, I'll even drive!

StashAugustine posted:

Elect more shoplifters imo

Tubgoat posted:

Good to know. Now who wants to primary Betty McCollum?

Zeroisanumber posted:

McCollum is basically mini-Klobuchar and will hold that seat short of anything but the apocalypse.

Farm Frenzy posted:

i cant wait until i walk in on my future child looking at hitler memes and smile warmly adn start talking about ancient fyad, thereby ruining hitler memes for them forever

Flavius Aetass posted: