Lazy Caturday Reads

Black Cat Halloween, by Iva Wilcox

Good Afternoon!!

I’m moving slowly today, because I have what I think is just a cold. I don’t have a fever, but I’m still feel pretty sick. So I’ll get right to the news.

The top story yesterday and today is the violent attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Pelosi, who is second in the like of succession to the presidency, was the target of the attack, but she was not home at the time. The attempted assassination overshadowed what would have been the top story–Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter. Dakinikat wrote about both stories yesterday.

Here’s the latest news and commentary on the attack on Paul Pelosi:

The Los Angeles Times: Accused Pelosi attacker David DePape spread QAnon, other far-right, bigoted conspiracies.

In the months before police accused him of attacking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Friday morning, David DePape had been drifting further into the world of far-right conspiracies, antisemitism and hate, according to a Times review of his online accounts.

In a personal blog that DePape maintained, posts include such topics as “Manipulation of History,” “Holohoax” and “It’s OK to be white.” He mentioned 4chan, a favorite message board of the far right. He posted videos about conspiracies involving COVID-19 vaccines and the war in Ukraine being a ploy for Jewish people to buy land.

DePape’s screeds included posts about QAnon, an unfounded theory that former President Trump is at war with a cabal of Satan-worshipping elites who run a child sex ring and control the world. In an Aug. 23 entry titled “Q,” DePape wrote: “Either Q is Trump himself or Q is the deepstate moles within Trumps inner circle.”

DePape’s daughter, Inti Gonzalez, told The Times that her father wrote the blog. She said that she and her mother were reeling from the news that DePape had been arrested in connection with the attack on Paul Pelosi.

“I’m a little shocked,” she said, “but not really that shocked, in all honesty.”

Authorities have not revealed a motive for the attack at the Pelosi home in San Francisco early Friday. But law enforcement sources said the assailant shouted, “Where is Nancy? Where is Nancy?” before confronting Paul Pelosi, and San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott called the attack “intentional.” [….]

DePape followed a number of conservative creators online, including Tim Pool, Glenn Beck, DailyWire+ and the Epoch Times. He also followed an account on YouTube called Black Pilled and reposted several of its videos on his blog. “Blackpilling” is internet slang for coming to believe supposedly unacceptable facts about society, and the reposted videos include accusations such as the FBI covering up child rape.

Read more at the LA Times link.

There are more details about DePape’s on-line activities in this story at Vice News: Man Accused of Attacking Nancy Pelosi’s Husband Left Trail of Far-Right Hate.

The man who allegedly broke into Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco home and bludgeoned her husband Paul with a hammer appeared to ascribe to a grab bag of far-right conspiracy theories online, including Holocaust denial, election fraud, and Pizzagate.

VICE News identified several blogs under the name David DePape that contained rambling screeds against minorities, politicians, and women….

VICE News found two online blogs under DePape’s name: “The Loving God” and “Frenly Frens.” One of them, which was updated the night before the attack and frequently over the last months, features a wide range of topics, including “pedogate, “great reset,” “voter fraud,” “da jewbs,” and “Covid.” Many of the tags referred to women, including one directly about Amber Heard—the target of many misogynistic attacks stemming from her lawsuit with Johnny Depp.

Recent headlines on “Frenly Frens” include “It’s OK to be White,” “Faking of Adolf Hitler for History,” and “Q.” The posts go on long diatribes against women, Jewish people, and Black people. One recent post referred to the Holocaust as a “hoax.” The writings also touch on popular far-right culture war topics, like “drag queen story hours,” “cultural marxism,” and child “grooming.”

Yet another post references frequent visits and posts to the /pol/ board of 4chan, an infamous board for racism and bigotry.

Searches on each blog turned up no posts with “Pelosi” within them.

VICE News took numerous steps to verify that the blogs belonged to DePape. Public records indicate that there’s only one person named David DePape in the state of California. An SFgate article from 2013 about a Bay Area woman named Gypsy Taub, who was planning a naked wedding, identified “David Depape” as the best man and a “hemp jewelry maker.” The article also reported the two lived together.

There’s much more at the link if you can stomach it. It’s all very familiar and it’s obvious that this man was influenced by Trump and his followers. Of course Republicans are taking no responsibility for spreading the Trumpist lies that DePape bought into or for spending years attacking Nancy Pelosi.

The Washington Post: Attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband follows years of GOP demonizing her.

In 2010, Republicans launched a “Fire Pelosi” project — complete with a bus tour, a #FIREPELOSI hashtag and images of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) engulfed in Hades-style flames — devoted to retaking the House and demoting Pelosi from her perch as speaker.

Eleven years later, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) joked that if he becomes the next leader of the House, “it will be hard not to hit” Pelosi with the speaker’s gavel.

And this year, Pelosi — who Republicans have long demonized as the face of progressive policies and who was a target of rioters during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol — emerged as the top member of Congress maligned in political ads, with Republicans spending nearly $40 million on ads that mention Pelosi in the final stretch of the campaign, according to AdImpact, which tracks television and digital ad spending.

The years of vilification culminated Friday when Pelosi’s husband, Paul, was attacked with a hammer during an early-morning break-in at the couple’s home in San Francisco by a man searching for the speaker and shouting “Where is Nancy? Where is Nancy?” according to someone briefed on the assault.

Many of the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021 also chanted “Where’s Nancy?”

Bloomberg: Musk’s Twitter Roils With Hate Speech as Trolls Test New Limits.

In the wake of Elon Musk buying Twitter Inc., a tide of slurs and racist memes swelled on the platform, sparking concern that the site is entering an era of hateful speech.

Twitter has long wrestled with how to enforce content policies fairly on its platform in order to appease the advertisers, users and powerful world leaders that use its service. But as Musk, a self-styled “free speech absolutist,” took over ownership of the company, some conservative officials, partisan extremists and conspiracy peddlers saw reason to celebrate the change.

“It seems like this is a group of people who think the rules magically changed as soon as he signed on the dotted line,” said Katie Harbath, the chief executive officer and founder of Anchor Change and former public policy director at Facebook.

Dr. Rebekah Tromble, director of the Institute for Data, Democracy, and Politics at George Washington University, said as soon as Musk took control of Twitter, online trolls began encouraging each other to push the boundaries on Twitter.

“Unfortunately, this spike in hateful language is entirely predictable,” said Tromble, who has studied Twitter for years. “For most of these trolls, it’s a game. But for others, including certain political influencers, saying hateful, outlandish things helps them increase their audience and make money. And they see this as a golden opportunity to gain even more attention.”

The flood of speech underlines the difficulty Musk faces in fulfilling his promise to restore people’s ability to speak freely while managing the palatability of the platform for advertisers, to whom he pledged in a letter Thursday that Twitter would not spiral into a “free-for-all hellscape” under his leadership. Musk has repeatedly opposed Twitter’s enforcement strategies, such as banning some high-profile accounts permanently.

Musk tweeted that Twitter will form a content-moderation council that includes “widely diverse viewpoints.”

The Washington Post: Twitter workers await their fate as Musk deputies evaluate their work.