Elon Musk used Bari Weiss and Matt Taibbi to destabilize America
Musk is setting the stage for disinformation to wreck the 2024 election
by Justin Rosario
It’s been a week and a half since former journalist Matt Taibbi dropped the first #TwitterFiles dump and it has continued to be one of the worst manufactured outrages I’ve ever seen. It’s not quite “Obama’s Tan Suit,” but it’s not far off, either. It’s the equivalent of walking into someone’s home, pointing at the couch and screaming that they have a couch.
On the one hand, it’s been a lot of fun watching #TwitterFiles fizzle, particularly the part where Glenn Greenwald has been drowning in tears of frustration as real media almost completely ignores the entire project. Poor Glenn, he really wanted the Hunter Biden story to catch on this time after his abject failure in 2020 to get Trump reelected.
On the other hand, getting the press to bite would have been a happy bonus but it was never the goal. The real point of this exercise in propaganda has always been to justify unleashing disinformation and to provide grist for the coming Republican sham investigations. In that, #TwitterFiles is doing exactly what it was designed to do.
Tempest in a tiny, damp, shredded teabag
I imagine almost no one who is not on Twitter or trapped inside the right-wing media bubble has any idea what #TwitterFiles is about. Ben has an excellent primer on the first dump here. Just as an aside, “dump” is the official Banter phrase for each #TwitterFiles release because each one is a bigger pile of horseshit than the last.
We’re going to do a quick recap so you’re up to speed:
#TwitterFiles 12/2 - The original dump. Former journalist Matt Taibbi went first with a much-hyped shocking inside look at how Twitter censored The Greatest Scandal Of The 21st Century™, i.e. Hunter Biden’s dick pics, errrrr… “laptop”. Hilariously, Taibbi stated unequivocally that no government coercion of any kind took place while still claiming the whole thing was an assault on the Fist Amendment.
MAGAland momentarily flew into a pearl-clutching frenzy. The left started laughing and hasn’t stopped since. As of this writing, #TF1 has been retweeted 132,100 times. That’s going to be important shortly.
#TwitterFiles Side Quest 12/6 - When the original dump did not set the world ablaze outside of easily triggered MAGAland, Taibbi revealed that a dark and secret enemy had been working against his valiant Crusade For The Truth: Jim Baker. Baker, a former lawyer for the FBI, had been hired by Twitter a couple of years ago and was doing his job reviewing the files being released to limit Twitter’s legal exposure. You know, what he was hired to do. Taibbi exposed his nefarious work and Elon Musk promptly fired him. A glorious victory over…good legal practices?
#TwitterFiles2 12/8 - Dump Number 2 (redundant, I know). Never journalist Bari Weiss, who apparently does not know how to take a screenshot, took a shallow dive into how Twitter would limit the reach of accounts that repeatedly violated Twitter’s hate speech and disinformation policies. Again, to the great amusement/annoyance of normal people, Weiss went right ahead and proved the exact opposite point. While a lot of right-wing accounts were limited for egregious hate speech, great effort was taken to give a pass to some of the worst offenders to avoid the appearance of bias. Let’s be clear: Allowing one side to flagrantly violate the rules is, in and of itself, bias.
Weiss proved that our suspicions have been correct all along. The left was held to a much higher moral standard than the right. And then there was this, one of the greatest self-owns I have ever seen:
It’s a scandal. Unless Elon Musk does it.
As of this writing, #TW2 has been retweeted 88,400 times. A function of time? I think not. The sequel rarely generates as much interest as the original.
#TwitterFiles3 12/9 , #TwitterFiles4 12/10, & #TwitterFiles5 12/12 - Dumps Number 3, 4, and 5. The crap starts to flow more quickly, possibly because no one is paying attention? Former journalist Matt Taibbi once again takes up the baton of freedom along with climate-change denier Michael Shellenberger. Never journalist Bari Weiss gets the last word. Together, they make the case, I kid you not, that the banning of Donald Trump after he incited the deadly January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol was some kind of plot against…Trump.
The main thrust of these last three dumps is that banning Trump was a blow to democracy and free speech. The mustache-twirling part is that Twitter did not have a specific policy in place already so they discussed under what aegis to ban Trump.
I’m going to repeat that so you understand how bonkers insane this is: Twitter did not have a specific policy already in place for presidents who incite deadly insurrections and try to overthrow the government. This total lack of foresight on their part meant they had to discuss how they would explain banning Trump after he tried to violently murder his own Vice President and seize control of the United States. In the eyes of Taibbi, Weiss, and Shellenberger, this process was deeply suspicious and possibly some kind of plot against American democracy. No, seriously.
In order to reach this conclusion, one must, naturally, completely erase Trump’s attempted autocoup from your mind. An easy feat when one’s mind is wiped clean on a daily basis by Tucker Carlson and an utter hatred for the Democratic Party. #TF3 was retweeted 60,400 times. #TF4 was retweeted 37,900 times. #TF5, the Big Finale, stands at 36,400 as of this writing. The law of diminishing returns is in full effect.
What should be clear by now is that this is all garbage and nobody cares. What might have been a huge scandal turned out to be a company doing its due diligence. Even MAGA Twitter hardly cared by the time #TF5 plopped on the floor. There’s hardly even anyone bothering to make fun of Bari Weiss’ dingleberry because three dumps in a row lamenting the tragic persecution of Donald Trump gets boring.
None of that matters, though. This orchestrated propaganda effort (Fox News coincidentally had guests lined up to discuss the drops just an hour later) has accomplished its two main goals and we will see how starting in January.
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Hunter Biden! Hunter Biden!
After narrowly winning control of the House, Republicans are ready to tackle inflation, spiraling rent, school shootings, and numerous other ills plaguing America.
Just kidding.
Republicans have flat out stated they will not be doing any kind of governing. Instead, they are going to investigate Hunter Biden. Just one problem with that, though; no one cares about Hunter Biden. The GOP wants to investigate him because they believe if they lie about President Joe Biden’s son loudly enough, they can use those lies to win the White House in 2024. It’s an exact repeat of the Bengahzi playbook: abuse House investigations as a political weapon to weaken a candidate.
But just digging into Hunter Biden risks alienating the base, because the MAGA cult demands new scandals. It also risks angering the general public who see the investigations as a political witch hunt. By dredging Hunter Biden’s laptop back into the news through #TwitterFiles, though, the GOP has (they hope) hit the refresh button. Now Joe Biden’s son is fair game again and no one can blame Republicans for investigating such an obvious threat to national security. Such is the GOP’s calculation, at least.
This will fuel two years of non-stop investigations into Hunter Biden’s dick pics, drug use, business deals, UberEats orders, and what he watches on Netflix. Republicans do not actually expect to find anything, they expect to create the appearance of finding something. That is precisely what Trump tried to extort Ukraine into doing. The appearance of criminality is all that is required. After that, the vast propaganda network of the right will spin dross into gold and the appearance will become reality within the Fox News bubble.
The fact that no one is arresting Hunter Biden or his father (because the manufactured appearance of criminality is not actually criminality) will be seen as proof of a corrupt system protecting itself. Also, pedophilia for added good measure. Republicans have already tossed this around with little success. I promise you, they will try again.
And now that Twitter will no longer censor this kind of disinformation, there will be so much more of it.
Freedom of Screech
Right before the election, I wrote that Musk crippled Twitter’s content moderation team for the explicit purpose of enabling Republican ratfucking after the election. I was off on the timeframe, though. I thought Musk and his GOP allies were aiming to unleash mass disinformation post-election to aid in the wave of lawsuits Republicans had promised to use to overturn results they did not like but, they ultimately failed to deliver.
It seems clear now that the target is 2024. Now that Musk has, as Bob Cesca puts it, released all the inmates from Blackgate prison, Twitter is increasingly becoming flooded with disinformation. Right now it’s about Covid. Later it will be whatever the GOP propaganda machine wants it to be. Hunter Biden. Nazis in Ukraine. AOC’s ten abortions. But in the run up to the 2024 election, it will be all about how Joe Biden is a criminal/dying/senile/dead and replaced by an actor.
This is the main purpose of #TwitterFiles. Twitter has an outsized influence on the media and, to a certain degree, the public discourse. By giving creating a permission structure under the disingenuous argument of “free speech” to spread lies with zero moderation, Musk and the Republican Party can poison the conversation with as much propaganda as they want. And it can be as extreme as they want, too. No boundaries because any level of censorship is an assault on democracy itself! I am not exaggerating:
I would be tempted to take Weiss, Taibbi, Musk, etc. seriously about their garment-rending if they were to ever once turn their umbrage upon Fox News. If any company exemplified in the history of the United States exemplified “the power of a handful of people” who “influence the public discourse and democracy” and severely abuse that power right out in the open, it would be Fox. But, as always, tyranny and oppression are only when the rules are applied to the right.
It’s important to note that the reason content moderation feels like a biased attack to the right is because it is, in fact, mostly used against them. Not because of the deep liberal bias of West Coast elitist yada yada but because in a system in which disinformation and hate speech are penalized, the side that employs them the most is penalized the most. It’s a very straightforward equation and who does that describe best? The left or the right?
Michael Harriot sums it up pretty well here:
It bears repeating: “Free speech” to Republicans means “I can say what I want with no consequences.” Any kind of repercussion for lying or spewing hate, even the mildest form of condemnation or restriction, is treated as full-fledged tyranny. At the same time, Musk has been throwing people off of Twitter for weeks for mocking him. Because “free speech” is only reserved for Musk and those who lavish him with praise. Criticism of Twitter’s owner is not welcome on Twitter.
If you were not already aware, Musk grew up in Apartheid South Africa where there were one set of rules for white people like him and an another set for everyone else. You can take the privileged rich white boy out of the authoritarian regime but you can’t take, eh, you get the idea. If you squint, you can start to see how this is going to play out on Twitter in the coming months.
Control the conversation, control the election
There will, in fact, be plenty of content moderation going into 2024, all of it designed to limit the reach of the left while leaving an open field for the right to sow as much discord and distrust as possible. There are rampant reports of people having their accounts tampered with so they are no longer following popular liberal/progressive voices. Timelines, including my own, are being flooded with right wing lunatics like Kyle Rittenhouse in order to both drive outrage engagement and spread right-wing toxicity.
Musk is already threatening to sue Twitter employees (the few who are left) who leak information to the press which strongly suggests that the exact kind of “nefarious” bias we were supposed to take away from the #TwitterFiles dumps is occurring right now. Every Republican accusation is a confession. Always. The idea appears to be to turn Twitter into a propaganda outlet for the GOP while still retaining its addictive hold on the press.
Put the severe rightward bending of Twitter with the ongoing Fox Newsification of CNN by Republican operate Chris Licht, and we find ourselves heading into the next election cycle with the majority of our major news sources controlled or influenced by the far right. This is how democracies are murdered by authoritarian regimes throughout the world.
If you think I’m being overly dramatic, consider that Monday night, Musk dissolved the Trust and Safety Council. Should he create a new one, I’d be willing to bet a blue check that it will be staffed by high profile right-wing names.
I don’t have a remedy for that situation other than be careful with where you receive your news from and be prepared to yell the truth louder than you ever have before. When propaganda fully replaces information, it’s a short step after that to fascism.
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Oh they weren't used. They are willing partners.
Do Matt and Bari feel used now? Or are they going to continue this charade, not wanting to look, you know, foolish?