Today’s Demon: Rick Wiles, Wait…

Andras, Grand Marquis in Hell, Dictionnaire Infernal.

Make that Today’s Demon: Andras, who may have found a happy home in Rick Wiles. A quick look at Andras:

Andras is a Great Marquis of Hell, having under his command thirty legions of demons. He sows discord among people. According to the Goetia, Andras was a Grand Marquis of Hell, appearing with a winged angel’s body and the head of an owl or raven, riding upon a strong black wolf and wielding a sharp and bright sword. He was also responsible for sowing discord, and commanded 30 infernal legions. He is the 63rd of the 72 spirits of Solomon. Andras was considered to be a highly dangerous demon, who could kill the conjuring magician and his assistants if precautions were not taken. The Dutch demonologist Johannes Wier, in his Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, says of Andras:

Andras is a great marquesse, and seemes in an angels shape with a head like a blacke night raven, riding upon a blacke and a verie strong woolfe, flourishing with a sharpe sword in his hand, he can kill the maister, the servant, and all assistants, he is author of discords, and ruleth thirtie legions.

Another demonologist, Collin de Plancy, also mentions Andras in his writings:

Grand Marquis of Hell. He appears to have the body of an angel and the head of a wood owl, and to be riding a black wolf and carrying in his hand a pointed saber. He teaches those whom he favors to kill their enemies, masters and servants. He stirs up trouble and dissension. He commands thirty legions.

Sowing discord. In favour of killing. Stirring up trouble and dissension. A perfect fit for Rick Wiles! Mr. Wiles is attempting to bring back the specter of oooOOOOooo Communism, among other things.

“The mass killings of peaceful Christian families in church on Sunday mornings are what America’s political left has given this nation,” Wiles said. “Since 1962, there has been a relentless ongoing war of hatred in the USA against God and Christianity. The religious war has been supported by America’s courts and judges, Hollywood, the entertainment industry, the news media, academia, and the Democratic Party. Fifty-five years later, we have church carpets soaked in blood. Oh, America, how much more of this religious war against God are you going to tolerate? Will you remain silent until your children are bleeding on the church floor too?”

Yet somehow, Mr. Wiles, you don’t mention the bombings of predominantly black churches. There’s no mention of Dylan Roof, or the insane level of racism in this country, which keeps elevating, embraced by more and more white men with severe cases of aggrieved entitlement. Lots of angry men out there, who are allowed to get away with being abusive as fuck for years on end, and you’re surprised by a very bad ending? This doesn’t have jack shit to do with christianity, which is what you mean by ‘religion’. If Mr. Kelley had thought his in-laws were at the local gas station, that would have ended up shot to pieces. You don’t mention the sheer insanity of guns in this country, Mr. Wiles. That’s a problem. A big, yuuuuge problem. Trying to get you fucking infernal christians out of public affairs has been a long fight, but angry white men with guns are not the result of not having mandatory, ostentatious public prayer in school or no commandments in court houses.

I have no love for religion, and I certainly have no love for loud mouthed shit stirrers like you, Mr. Wiles. Your message is never one of love. It’s never about kindness. It’s never about anything even remotely positive. It’s always a fucktonne of lies and moaning over how you lack the power to oppress the hell out of people these days. That’s a good thing.

“A dark, sinister entity controlled by Lucifer is behind these mass shootings,” he warned. “These events are not happening at random by mentally ill people. You may not realize it, but the USA is engulfed in a communist revolution. I’ve been warning about it since 2008, with the election of communist street organizer Barry Soetoro, alias Barack Hussein Obama, and I assure you he is behind all of this Resist Trump movement going on right now.”

:Near-fatal eyeroll: There are many reasons the amount of mass shootings are going up, but it has nothing to do with Lucifer, dark and sinister entities, communists, or President Obama. You’re really going to have to lose the communism angle, Mr. Wiles, it’s just too difficult to push that one when we’re Russia Junior. I’ve been resisting the Tiny Idiot King from day one and before. Haven’t had so much as a memo from President Obama. Gosh, you’d think he was bad at that leadership stuff. Wait, that’s Trump.

Wiles said that Christians must wake up and realize that this communist revolution is in the process of taking over the nation and will soon set out on a campaign to execute “tens of thousands of Christian leaders within months or years.”

Are there that fucking many of you ‘great leaders’ here in uStates? Gad, that’s depressing. Well, y’know, I rather think if no one has gone to the trouble of shutting you all up by decapitation by now, that won’t be happening. I haven’t seen guillotines going up in public squares. Seems absolutely nothing keeps you nasty assholes from endlessly blathering.

“If you think I am melodramatic,” Wiles said, “you don’t know history.”

I’m no historian, but I’ll wager I know history more than you do, Mr. Wiles. I read. A lot. I’m quite familiar with christian history, and that’s a history of hate, fear, war-mongering, blood lust, the endless lust for power, torture, oppression, genocide, theft, and death, death, death. It’s an extremely ugly history, replete with exempla of evils and immorality. If I were christian, I certainly wouldn’t be proud of it. If I thought all those demons were real, Mr. Wiles, I’d say you have an Andras on your back.

Via RWW, there’s video.

“Two will be taken, three will be shaken.”

Self-styled “prophet” Mark Taylor has a shiny, new prediction – dead and shaken former presidents.

Taylor said that when he saw all five former presidents gathered at an event to raise money for hurricane relief, he received a word from the Lord that “two will be taken, three will be shaken.”

Sounds like pills and a martini.

“They were doing this Hurricane Harvey relief effort,” Taylor said. “They were trying to raise money for Hurricane Harvey, but we all know that is a bunch of lies. These guys could care less about people, it’s about their agenda. They disguised it as a relief effort for Hurricane Harvey victims and they go in there and they trash Donald Trump.”

Oh no, they didn’t trash Donny, the Tiny Tyrant doesn’t need help in that department. These former presidents were appalled and dismayed by the compleat lack of action on the part of the Tiny Tyrant, so they did something, while also providing a nice example of how a president should act. They did raise money for Hurricane relief, that’s all easily verifiable from trustworthy sources.

“The Bible says, ‘Do not touch my anointed, but especially my prophets,’” he continued. “These guys have now touched God’s anointed, Donald Trump. They used it as a platform to go in there and attack.”

Now, now, they didn’t touch one hair on Donny’s head (who would want to?) and they didn’t attack. They didn’t even mention Donny. That their effort put Donny in a bad light, well, that’s on Donny, no one else. It’s not the fault of the former presidents that the Tiny Tyrant is a fucking idiot who doesn’t know how to handle the least thing, let alone a crisis.

Taylor said that God told him that because of their supposed attack on Trump, “the covenant that these five presidents have had with that entity called Baal—because Baal is the strongman over America—is going to be broken. And then He said, ‘Two of these ex-presidents will be taken and and three will be shaken.’”

Crispy Fried Christ, you’re still on about Ba’al. I’ve already covered just how bloody wrong you are on that one, Mr. Taylor. Predicting the death of two former presidents is a very cheap shot, Mr. Taylor. Isn’t Bush the Elder in his 90s now? He’s been in hospital recently, too. Carter is fairly old, too. At any rate, with the exception of Pres. Obama, most of the former presidents are of an age where dying isn’t exactly uncommon. Mostly, I think your prediction points to you being a shitty conman who couldn’t make ‘prophet’ under any circumstance.

“God is just going to take these guys home, period. He is going to remove them and it will be a sign for certain things,” said Taylor. “The other three will be shaken and I believe that two of them will run the risk of going to prison and the third one will also be shaken due to having to testify or legal issues or whatever the case may be. Now, I don’t know if all three of those will go to prison, but I believe there is a very good possibility that two out of the three could face jail time because of what they have done.”

Aaaaand your “prophesying” just gets worse. Even cold reading cons can do much better than this pile of vagueness and wishful thinking. Everyone is going to die at some point. There are people being shaken because of having to testify and legal issues – y’know, all the lying, nasty assholes who colluded with Russia to get the Tiny Tyrant elected. You have the wrong group, Mr. Taylor. You need to look closer to your political home, rather than attempting to point a minatory finger at former presidents who did a spot of good works. As one very creative person in Hawaii put on their sign: MAGA: Many Are Getting Arrested.

RWW has the story.

Facepalms Abound.

Oh, all the Religious Reich is getting het up, over this, that, and everything. One hissy fit after another. I’ve chosen two for now, Bryan Fischer and Jim Bakker. Bryan Fischer is one nasty piece of work, a tremendously poisonous and hate filled person. Virginia Delegate Bob Marshall attracted Fischer and those like him, as Marshall was running against Danica Roem, a transgender woman. [Danica Roem won, YES!] Marshall took the time on election day to call into Fischer’s program.

“I’m asking your listeners to pray the prayer that King David did when his son Absalom was in rebellion,” Marshall said. “He prayed that his counselor would not give solid advice. We need to, one, proceed first with prayer, then thought, then action. You can’t be a sideline Christian and think you’re going to keep your rights in a society that’s becoming ever more secular every day.”

Aww, guess the prayin’ didn’t work. How, exactly, does a person who happens to be transgender interfere with your rights? How, exactly, does that interfere with you being a christian of any flavour? I can’t stand you self-righteous, hateful assholes with your hypocritical piety, but I’m not going around announcing my rights are being taken away because you exist. Anymore, I find myself thinking that the monastic system is ripe for a big comeback – let us fund monasteries, a monastery for everyone! You can have family monasteries, monasteries for men, for women, for all the different flavours of fanaticism christianity. Then we would see if you’d put your money where your mouth is, and you would all retire from this evil world and concentrate on the next life, which is what is supposed to matter more to christians. I’d be happy to help fund monasteries, if it would get you immoral idiots where you belong, on your knees and out of the way. No more television. No more internet. No more newspapers. No more politics. Nope, just concentrating on how well you’ll do in the next life. (You’ll have to pardon me, I’m doing a great deal of monastic reading right now.)

I’d be willing to bet not one of you, not a single one, would take up a monastic life. You’re addicted to your wealth and you crave power so much, it consumes you. The mere fact that other people exist does not infringe on your rights in any way. If you feel that other people existing does infringe on your rights as a person, then really, a monastery is where you need to be, because you are not capable of being a good member of society.

The full mess is at RWW.

On to Jim Bakker, who is throwing yet another fit:

“Trump is not crazy,” Bakker bellowed. “They want him to be crazy because they want to impeach him. There is nothing they can impeach him over because this thing with the collusion with Russia they can’t prove, but they want to say this man is crazy. They’re trying to get doctors to say the president is crazy.”

No, Trump isn’t crazy. He is a malignant narcissist, which is not a good thing. As for the collusion with Russia, well that is being proved, Jim, every day. More and more proof is just piling up. There are a lot of people concerned about the Tiny Tyrant’s mental state, beyond his being a fucking moron, many of those concerned are those who make up his staff, and work with him every day. The Tiny Tyrant is bad enough, we don’t need a repeat of Reagan’s Alzheimer years.

“I’ll tell you what,” he continued. “If they go through with that, there will be a riot in the United States of America and you’re going to find little old ladies rioting, you’re going to find the church people out rioting because they’re not going to take it any more. This is stupid and insanity what is going on in our country right now.”

Really? Who cares? Just so I have this right, protesting, if done by anyone interested in social justice, is wrong and immoral, but rioting is wonderful and moral if done by christians. Just be sure to conduct your riot on the sidewalks, because blocking the streets is really, really wrong and terrible. Oh right, unless it’s done by christians. Are you going to set fire to your churches? That might be entertaining. I do agree there’s much stupid going on these days, most of it is sitting like a lump in the white house, and the rest of it are all the sitting lumps of his base, including you, Mr. Bakker.

RWW has video of the tantrum.

That Explains A Lot…

Nicole Wallace re-visited Trumpholes one year after the election, and this is part of what she heard:

“We always see the Harrison Fords that play the president who is tough, punches the bad guy in the face. Now we have one of those people and he is going to get things done and I think it is good,” Lock explained.

That explains a lot. These fucking idiots think government is a movie. They also seem to think that the Tiny Tyrant is a real life movie hero. When, exactly, has Donny gone around ferreting out the bad guys and punching them? Talk about being seriously out of touch with reality.

Raw Story has the full article.

Who Knew There Are So Many Countries!?!

©  DonkeyHotey.

Oh, the Tiny Tyrant hath opened his big mouth again. Get ready for a big ol’ wave of cringing embarrassment:

Addressing how he first became acquainted with Japanese Prime Minister Abe — who Trump referred to by his first name, Shinzo — Trump made the off-hand comment, appearing to go off-script from his prepared remarks.

“So my relationship with Shinzo got off to quite a rocky start because I never ran for office, and here I am,” Trump remarked. “But I never ran, so I wasn’t very experienced. And after I had won, everybody was calling me from all over the world. I never knew we had so many countries.”

Wow, he found out there’s more to the world than Amerikka. I’m sure we’re all so proud. There’s video, if you want it.

There’s Always A Loophole.

BCD means – Bad Conduct Discharge.

Most people are aware of the Sutherland Springs, Texas shooting. The man who did the shooting, Devin Kelley, had been discharged from the USAF for domestic violence against his wife and child. After the court martial and a brief amount of prison time (1 year), Kelley was given a bad conduct discharge, which allowed for him to still own and purchase guns. A dishonorable discharge would have barred him from owning or purchasing guns.

Domestic violence and guns are deeply intertwined in America. The reason that at least one sensible restriction against gun ownership cannot be enacted, domestic violence conviction – no guns, is because it would strip too many cops of the right to carry a gun. The gun madness in this country is deep, and I don’t know how in the hell we can stop it, let alone change it. Especially when we have the Idiot King saying that more guns are needed, yes, more, more! The fucking idiot also went on to tar all people with mental illness, saying the shooter was deeply mentally ill. He wasn’t, he was angry.  The Tiny Tyrant is tweeting this utter crap from Japan, a country with very strict gun control, and guess what? Hardly any gun deaths at all:

In 2014 there were just six gun deaths in Japan, while there were 33,599 in the United States.

I’ll just let that sit there.

Via Raw Story, one, two.

In the meantime, a Fox Idiot said church is the ideal place to be shot dead:

Fox News host Ainsley Earhardt asserted on Monday that the dozens of people killed at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas had gone to the right place to be shot because they were close to Jesus at the time of their death.

Sunday Facepalm.

Synonyms for rough language: obloquy, scurrility, vulgarity, revilement, abuse, invective, ribaldry, abusive language, reviling, scurrilousness.

Oh, there’s no end to the defenders of the Great Vulgarian™. This time around, it’s Mary Colbert, who makes the case for the Tiny Tyrant’s rough language.

Colbert said that Christians who oppose Trump because of his use of “rough language” must also “have a problem with Jesus because he spoke to the Pharisees and Sadducees and said, ‘You vipers, you snakes.’ He referred to Herod as a fox and then there is the account of the woman he called a dog. So if you want to find offense, you’ll find offense in anything.”

Oh look, someone in the bible isn’t consistent, what a shocker. Yes, Jesus was often an asshole, and easily irritated, to say the least. That shouldn’t make being an asshole an admirable thing. From Mark 7:

7:25 For a certain woman, whose young daughter had an unclean spirit, heard of him, and came and fell at his feet:
7:26 The woman was a Greek, a Syrophenician by nation; and she besought him that he would cast forth the devil out of her daughter.
7:27 But Jesus said unto her, Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it unto the dogs.
7:28 And she answered and said unto him, Yes, Lord: yet the dogs under the table eat of the children’s crumbs.
7:29 And he said unto her, For this saying go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy daughter.

That’s right shitty behaviour, but it’s also not “grab them by the pussy”, and it certainly doesn’t justify Trump in any way.

Colbert said that Trump “is a man of his word, he says what he means and he means what he says.

No. Just no. Trump is not a “man of his word” at all, in any fashion. He spews shit, turns right around and denies spewing shit, spews different shit, lather, rinse repeat. Trump is also quite well known for going back on his word when it comes to things like paying employees or his bills. Trump doesn’t mean what he says, he doesn’t have the slightest idea of what he means, he just brays, and if he thinks at all about what he said, it’s after he’s vomited words all over the place. As for “means what he says”, is that like the whole healthcare and wall business? Because he didn’t get very far with that nonsense, did he?

Well, what character does that imitate? Who is that? God. God says what He means and He means what He says, so I believe that God saw in the character of Donald Trump a fighter.”

:chokes on tea: Jehovah is one of the most awful, evil, psychopathic characters ever invented. The Tiny Tyrant is an awful, evil, amoral narcissist. Yeah, okay, it’s a good fit, but that doesn’t make it right. Trump is not ‘god’, and he’s not emperor, and he’s not specially chosen.

“The church has had its butt kicked for the last 100 years,” Colbert said, adding that God chose a brawler like Trump because He knew that America could not survive with a “mamsy-wamsy, love and peace kind of a president.”

The ‘church’ needs its collective arse kicked a whole lot more. Seems to me that uStates could really do with a mamsy-wamsy, love and peace kind of a president. A real president, one who knows how to do the job, and doesn’t think pursuing peace, inclusivity, and justice is stupid. I’d be good with that. I’d certainly be happier with that than a madman always eyeballing nukes.

The full story and video is at RWW.

“It’s Okay To Be White.”

(Screenshot/4Chan.org).

All us lefties are going to start foaming at the mouth, wilt, and just give up in the face of It’s Okay To Be White. Odd, but I don’t feel a swoon coming one, and my monocle is unpopped.

In right-wing internet message boards, users are encouraging one another to print and hang posters that state simply “It’s OK to be white” with the goal of exposing what they claim is anti-white racism in liberal communities and on college campuses.

Creators of the signs were first inspired by a news report that police were investigating fliers hung at Boston College that depicted Uncle Sam and the text, “I want you to love who you are” and “Don’t apologize for being white.” Reporters noted that the signs were posted near the planned location of an anti-racism rally on campus.

Earlier this week, 4chan users called on one another to hang fliers in their own communities with a more succinct spin on the Boston signs, making the statement “It’s Okay To Be White” in large easy-to-read font with no other context. One post detailing the plan explained the goal was to make liberals go “completely berserk” and ruin their credibility, marking a “massive victory for the right in the culture war.” [The linked post actually says media will go berserk.]

The campaign also urges participants to use adhesives that are non-permanent in order to avoid violating any laws and to conceal the signs’ connections to “racists or the alt-right.” One campaign graphic reads: “The simplicity is the point. It’s working.”

Right-wing YouTube creators have also taken notice, including Infowars editor-in-chief Paul Joseph Watson and white nationalist Paul Ramsey. Alt-right video bloggers James Allsup and Nick Fuentes even launched their own spin-off of the signs that read “Make your ancestors proud. Never feel guilty for who you are,” and solicited donations to produce and distribute their posters.

Oooh, be proud of your ancestors! Okay, I am. Funny how my pride amounts to “you stupid Indians, shut up! Pipelines are good!” and the like. That’s the problem with white pride, it excludes everyone else. Of course, exclusion is what white colonial pride is all about: “white people masters, everyone else, lay down to be trodden on.” This little campaign is hardly different from all the other shite supremacy, so it’s not a shock, it’s not even a surprise. White people being suuuuuper assholes simply has zero shock value.

There’s more to the story, RWW has it.

Vaccinations Are…Population Control!!1!1

The Inner Rodney Howard-Browne, aka Belphegor.

Rodney Howard-Browne, that Master of Conspiratorial Idiocy, has actually dialed down the rhetoric a bit for this latest round of “look what shit I can make people swallow!”

“The dogs want war,” Howard-Browne said. “Our American men and women are being used as cannon fodder for the globalist agenda. We’re not in Afghanistan because we’re killing terrorists. The ISIS bases are in 49 states in America that the CIA brings them and trains them here and then ships them out to the areas of the world where they want there to be conflict. They are all trained here. Osama bin Laden worked for the CIA, so does Anderson Cooper. Work that one out.”

Pretty sure most dogs don’t want war at all. Attention, playtime, food, bones to chew, a nice place to sleep, that’s dogs all over. If you want to talk people, well, it’s people like the Tiny Tyrant who are slavering for yet more war. Donny and his puppet Pence can’t talk about those wonderful nukes enough. They are the morons who think you can settle all things with more war, and hey, why have a military if you aren’t going to use it?

Of course Afghanistan is fucking sham, the whole damn thing is, most people are well aware of that one, Rodney. 49 states? Oh, guess that awful island of evil isn’t included anymore, what with the issuing of birth certificates and stuff. Bin Laden is dead, and when he was alive, it could not be said that he had any regard for uStates. Pretty sure he wouldn’t want to be stuck in a secret CIA den somewhere. Damn, that Anderson Cooper must be one busy person! I can’t imagine how he fits all that into his schedule. Really, since you’re pushing the idea that the CIA does everyone’s thinking for them (there’s an insult and a half), I’d think everyone ought to be giving you a healthy side-eye, Rodney. “Hey, what better way to get people to not believe we’re behind everything – hey, Rodney, get on that right away!” Ooooh, conspiracy. It’s really easy, cooking this shit up, but it can’t be healthy, being so obsessed with it.

Howard-Browne claimed that vaccines are really just an eugenicist effort to impose population control on the world by sterilizing people and giving them diseases, vowing that he’ll “go Old Testament” if anyone ever tries to forcibly vaccinate him.

If vaccines sterilised people, we wouldn’t have the current massive population. If vaccines sterilised people, I would not have had such a difficult time when I started seeking sterilisation.

“There was talk about five years ago, they were going to stop people by the side of the road and give them forced vaccinations,” he said. “Let them try. I have a couple of injections for them and it’s going to be the size of a .45, I can promise you right now. Somebody said, ‘But you’re a Christian.’ Yeah, I am, but I’ll go Old Testament for a half an hour, it’s not a problem.”

:Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha: :hahahahahee: :Thud: No, there was never talk of vaccination stops, let alone forced ones. Going by your age, Rodney, you were duly vaccinated as a child, like I was. Yep, you’re 56, I’m 59, so that was all taken care of long days ago. You should be grateful, polio is nasty. Yes, yes, you’re a christian alright, declaring your intent to murder over a vapourous fantasy.

RWW has the story, and two videos.

One Low Bar.

“Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace.” (Oscar Wilde). When it comes to christians, you’re hard pressed to find that line, it’s tiny, barely visible, and waaaaaay down there.

Charisma magazine’s Steve Strang appeared on Jim Bakker’s program today to promote his forthcoming book, “God And Donald Trump.”

My bleary eye, early this morning, read that as “God Ate Donald Trump.” Now there’s a reason to wish gods existed.

“Lori and I are on the advisory council,” Bakker said. “We don’t talk about that a whole lot, but he has so many of us … He has so many pastors and preachers on his advisory boards, his spiritual advisory boards, that they all can’t come to meet at one time.”

Yes, he does, because he knew you idiots would support him, so he gave you all a meaningless position. I truly hope you all aren’t that bloody dense.

Strang said that he couldn’t say for sure whether Trump is a Christian because that question is “between him and God, it’s not for all of us to judge him,” but did note that while there were things in Trump’s life “that we don’t approve of, you don’t hear those things in the last 10 years and his language has improved.”

It’s not for you to judge? Since when? All of you mega-assholes do nothing but judge people, always finding them wanting, or evil, or demon-possessed, and wailing for that psychogod of yours to rain down some sort of punishment. As that never works, you try to figure out how to oppress and punish people yourselves.

So…Trump hasn’t mouthed off about grabbing women by the pussy for a while (that anyone knows about), and his language has improved (Really? The man can barely form a sentence), and that’s enough for you! I’m not even sure one can consider that to be a low bar, more like no bar at all. “Gosh, the noted vulgarian hasn’t been quite so pungent with his vulgarities lately, so he’s great!” A person does not need to cuss in order to let loose with vile, poisonous words. Sugar-coated poison is still poison.

Strang also pointed to the firing of Scaramucci in the wake of a vulgar rant he unloaded on a New Yorker reporter as further evidence of Trump’s deepening faith, asserting that Scaramucci’s termination was a sign that Trump “didn’t want his key people talking like that in public.”

Oh FFS, and you expect people to believe that? Ah, well I suppose all the christians who listen to you idiots will swallow that one whole, too. The line is drawn, at being prudish over salty language. This is now the mark of deepening faith. The desperation coming off you folks is palpable, it’s difficult to see just how much lower you will go, but I expect we’ll all be entertained watching that tiny line dwindle into nothingness.

RWW has the story, and video.

AppSame: Fakery.

Sarah Wasko / Media Matters.

Something else I had never heard of at all, and I don’t spend much time on Twitter, certainly not enough to be aware of AppSame, which has an influential twitter account (1.1 million followers). Of course, this leads to the same old question: why is Twitter ignoring this? They certainly have a way of turning their heads to obviously fake bullshit and abuse when it’s convenient for them.

Despite what its wildly misleading name might suggest, AppSame is not an application. Based on the biographical details its social media accounts provide, AppSame is “a conservative political marketing firm helping America back to its greatness.” While publicly available information does not clarify what exactly, if anything, this firm does to help MAGA, its impressive Twitter presence (1.1 million followers as of this writing) invites some questions — about its tactics, its actual impact, its role in the spread of fake news purveyor-generated misinformation into influential right-wing Twitter networks, and whether its influence could become a case study in the way Twitter enables unknown entities to have a disproportionate impact in politics.

Both its massive following and its clout among right-wing Twitter hubs like #TCOT (an acronym that stands for “top conservatives on Twitter”) earned AppSame the top spot in Brandwatch’s 10 most influential Republicans on Twitter rankings in 2016. AppSame’s Twitter behavior is practically indistinguishable from that of hard-core supporters of President Donald Trump: The account frequently retweets the president and his family (once earning a magnanimous mention from Trump) as well as memes featuring right-wing narratives, churning out more than a hundred tweets or retweets per day. But despite its impressive following, AppSame’s original tweets barely register any viral attention, which might be evidence of a heavy fake account presence among its followers. A Twitter audit report confirmed as much in 2015, finding that 45 percent of @AppSame’s followers are suspected fake accounts.

@AppSame’s social media habits also include disseminating fake news and conspiracy theories into right-wing Twitter networks. On Twitter, @AppSame has shared links to fake news purveyors like TruthFeed and True Pundit, and its tweets have on occasion been featured in items written by fake news purveyors. Inmultipletweets, AppSame either suggested or explicitly claimed that Hillary Clinton was responsible for the murder of Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich.

Cristina López & Natalie Martinez at Media Matters have the full investigative story.

Trick or Tweet!

© C. Ford.

Oh, the right wing. So very gullible. You can make up anything, and they will swallow it whole so quickly, you wouldn’t have time to blink. There is such a twitchy desperation to believe anything negative about their self-defined enemies, they lie in wait, ready to pounce, on anything.

An anonymous but popular comedian on Twitter who tweets under the username “Krang T Nelson”—an homage to a cartoon character in “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”—was suspended from Twitter after posting a satirical status mocking conservative fearmongering around a series of demonstrations organized by Refuse Fascism, a group separate from Antifa, scheduled for November 4. The user tweeted:

Screengrab.

Twitter suspended the Krang T Nelson account after the post was reported by conservatives who believed the tweet was serious. Fellow Twitter comedian Tom Bloke then copied and pasted the since-removed tweet to his own profile to show solidarity. It didn’t take long for the worst right-wing pundits to seize the opportunity to embarrass themselves.

The Gateway Pundit’s White House reporter Lucian Wintrich reported on the satirical tweet reposted by Bloke as if it was a serious threat of “anti-white racism” against “white parents” and “small business owners.”  Wintrich also identified Bloke as “one of the leaders of the domestic terrorist group ANTIFA,” which is a lie.

The Gateway Pundit went on and on about Antifa, not caring one whit that they were taken in. They have a graphic comparing Nazis to Antifa, and note:

Primarily comprised of white, pale-skinned, stick-thin men, and obese pimple-ridden women, Antifa hide behind masks to both disguise their grotesque appearances and to feel “united” with the others in their group.

Not only gullible, ignorant, and mis-informed, but so very juvenile, too.

Pro-Trump sycophant radio host Bill Mitchell shared the Gateway Pundit article with his followers:

Screengrab.

Ian Miles Cheong got in on the re-tweet panic, too, and defended his panic when he was informed he was panicking over nothing at all. You can read about the whole mess at RWW, and they also provide a link to the new account of Krang.