Good luck with your assertions about Trump. Simply posting an article that may have a single line supporting Trump said does not make for "pro-Trump". Nor does responding to statements with humorous sarcasm make the statement "pro-Trump" --- but for some reason you enjoy going through hundreds of posts to cut/paste a single sentence from a post in an absurd attempt to create an illusion of "pro-Trump" in the past. Let this be a heads-up that other people can do this with your posts.
Let this be a lesson for you that throwing your hat in with folks like Here4money just means that once they finish trying to cancel and come after everything and everyone they don't agree with, they will begin to manufacture reasons to go after their own (you, in this case).
Of course these payouts to 22 right wing orgs and personalities from a foreign bitcoin account has nothing to do with funding last week's insurrection. Merely a coincidence, nothing to see here. Large bitcoin payments to right-wing activists a month before Capitol riot linked to foreign account https://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-la...riot-linked-to-foreign-account-181954668.html On Dec. 8, someone made a simultaneous transfer of 28.15 bitcoins — worth more than $500,000 at the time — to 22 different virtual wallets, most of them belonging to prominent right-wing organizations and personalities. Now cryptocurrency researchers believe they have identified who made the transfer, and suspect it was intended to bolster those far-right causes. U.S. law enforcement is investigating whether the donations were linked to the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol. While the motivation is difficult to prove, the transfer came just a month before the violent riot in the Capitol, which took place after President Trump invited supporters to “walk down Pennsylvania Avenue” and “take back our country.” Right-wing figures and websites, including VDARE, the Daily Stormer and Nick Fuentes, received generous donations from a bitcoin account linked to a French cryptocurrency exchange, according to research done by software company Chainalysis, which maintains a repository of information about public cryptocurrency exchanges and whose tools aid in government, law enforcement and private sector investigations. Chainalysis investigated the donations after Yahoo News shared the data points about the transaction. According to one source familiar with the matter, the suspicious Dec. 8 transaction, along with a number of other pieces of intelligence, has prompted law enforcement and intelligence agencies in recent days to actively investigate the sources of funding for the individuals who participated in the Capitol insurrection, as well as their networks. The government is hoping to prevent future attacks but also to uncover potential foreign involvement in or support of right-wing activities, the source said. During a press conference on Tuesday on the investigation into the Capitol riot, acting U.S. Attorney Michael Sherwin said the “scope and scale of this investigation in these cases are really unprecedented.” At this time, Sherwin added, prosecutors are treating the matter as a “significant counterterrorism or counterintelligence investigation” involving deeper dives into “money, travel records, disposition, movement, communication records.” One of the ways extremist groups have made money in recent years is online through cryptocurrency and crowdfunding. Bitcoin, which was anonymously released online in 2009 as open-source software, exists only virtually. It does not utilize a central bank or administrator to disburse funds, nor does any government control or distribute it. While bitcoin has fluctuated in value in recent years, and continues to do so, it gained mainstream popularity around 2017, the same year prominent alt-right figure Richard Spencer tweeted, “Bitcoin is the currency of the alt right.” A 2017 Washington Post investigation explored how far-right groups turned even more aggressively toward bitcoin following the deadly August 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va. The story cited research by the nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center that identified a large bitcoin donation to Andrew Anglin, the editor of the Daily Stormer, a prominent neo-Nazi website that accepts bitcoin donations. At the time, the donation was worth around $60,000. A “newfound expertise in online messaging and recruitment, coupled with the fact that modern extremist groups are generally young and digitally savvy, means that these organizations and individuals have fundamentally altered the way that extremists raise money,” wrote Alex Newhouse, a data analyst at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, in a 2019 report that explored the links between white supremacists and digital currency. Some prominent right-wing groups or sites display their bitcoin wallets prominently, the report noted. “The lack of regulation over Bitcoin has driven its adoption by white supremacists,” it said. While cryptocurrency has been used by extremist groups and criminals to raise funds while shielding their identities, bitcoin is pseudonymous rather than anonymous. Bitcoin wallet addresses are permanent, and the digital ledger of transactions, called the blockchain, is public and can’t be changed. That means if people identify their bitcoin wallet addresses, as many right-wing groups do to raise funds, transactions can be traced, which is what allowed Chainalysis to uncover information about the source of the large December donations. The source of the funding, according to research conducted by Chainanalysis, appears to be a computer programmer based in France who created an account in 2013 — and who maintained a personal blog, which was not updated between 2014 and Dec. 9, 2020, the day after the “donations.” Chainalysis researchers discovered a blog post from the bitcoin user that reads like an apparent suicide note, bequeathing his money to “certain causes and people” in light of what he describes as “the decline of Western civilization,” though the researchers were unable to confirm that the user was in fact dead. Chainalysis declined to publish the user’s name, citing privacy concerns due to the inability to conclusively confirm his death and out of concerns over ongoing law enforcement investigations. An email to the apparent French donor did not immediately receive a reply. Chainalysis investigators relied on openly available information, or public bitcoin transactions, to investigate and map out the large transaction. The original donor was registered on NameID, an internet service that allows bitcoin users to tie their online pseudonym or email address with their bitcoin profile — information the original donor included. Investigators tracked that email address to the blog, and to several cryptocurrency forum posts going back to 2013. According to their research, Fuentes, a popular right-wing commentator who was suspended from YouTube last winter for violating its policies on hate speech, received the largest chunk of funding on Dec. 8 — about $250,000 in bitcoin. The Daily Stormer and the anti-immigration website VDARE were among the other recipients. Yahoo News reached out to the recipients named in this article to confirm whether they had received the funding, what information they had about the donor and what they planned on doing with the funds. None returned a request for comment, although Fuentes tweeted an obscene gesture, naming several journalists, including this reporter, shortly after the inquiry was sent. While the Daily Stormer website openly requests cryptocurrency donations, it also includes a disclaimer that says it is “opposed to violence” and that “anyone suggesting or promoting violence in the comments section will be immediately banned.” While there’s no evidence that Fuentes directly participated in the Capitol riot, something he has so far denied, the financial resources of prominent right-wing actors are of growing interest to law enforcement. “I’d be stunned if both nation-state adversaries and terrorist organizations weren’t figuring out how to funnel money to these guys,” one former FBI official who reviewed the data for Yahoo News said. “Many of them use fundraising sites (often in Bitcoin) that are virtually unmonitored and unmonitorable. If they weren’t doing it, they’d be incompetent.” Additionally, much like conversations that took place on social media in the weeks leading up to the Capitol riot, the digital currency transactions are happening in plain sight. While cryptocurrency has the reputation of being anonymous and shadowy, that’s actually a common misconception, explained Maddie Kennedy, Chainalysis’s communications director. “With the right tools you can follow the money,” she said. “Cryptocurrency was designed to be transparent.” While there are methods that cryptocurrency users can deploy to obfuscate their identities — including using “privacy coins” such as Monero, which are difficult to trace, or using a “mixer” that allows various users to combine their bitcoins and mix them together to disguise their origin — there’s no indication the French programmer utilized those tools, Kennedy said. Though the donations are not a smoking gun or indicative of a crime, and it remains unclear to what extent the Capitol riot was coordinated in advance, the activity is nonetheless revealing, according to Kennedy. “These extremist groups are probably more well organized and well funded than what was previously believed,” she said. Chainalysis maintains a database of “domestic extremists” who have cryptocurrency accounts, and while the company has traced donations to right-wing groups over the years, the December deposit was “the single biggest month we’ve ever observed” directed toward these causes, the researchers wrote. “This is evidence to show they’re raising money,” Kennedy said. Additionally, the fact that the donor was outside the United States suggests “this has international scope,” she continued, a fact that “law enforcement should be paying attention to.”
no made up assertions needed, the record's there for all to see. I'm no revisionist, but I can see why ex-trumpers would want to scrub the record
Local newspapers turn on Lauren Boebert as 68 state politicians demand investigation into Capitol riot role Lauren Boebert is under fire for sharing details about the location of the House speaker during the Capitol riots https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...ol-riots-lauren-boebert-twitter-b1787684.html
Well now for the good news... Stripped of online megaphones and watching their backs, far-right extremists plan to steer clear of Inauguration Day protests https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...-away-armed-protests-inauguration/4159536001/ Authorities are arresting more and more people involved in last week’s siege of the U.S. Capitol. Online gathering spaces for the far-right have been shuttered or are sputtering under a flood of new users. And thousands of National Guard troops have been brought in to protect the nation's capital. In the midst of it all, leaders of far-right, extremist factions are telling their followers to stay away from protests planned across the country this weekend and on Inauguration Day. “We’re going to take a chill pill,” Enrique Tarrio, chairman of the far-right street gang the Proud Boys, said in an interview. “I feel like this part of the battle is over.” Other prominent figures on the far-right, who helped bring huge crowds to the capital on Jan. 6, echoed his message to stay away. “Of course this should go without saying but steer clear of the Capital on January 20th,” podcaster and far-right provocateur Nicholas Fuentes wrote on Twitter. “They are deploying 25,000 soldiers for the inauguration and the state of emergency will still be in effect. I’m not going and I won’t be returning to DC for a long, long time!” Experts on far-right extremism agree that, unlike the days before the Jan. 6 insurrection, the online ecosystem used by President Donald Trump’s most outspoken supporters has been muted, with few signs that large crowds will gather in Washington or state capitals for protests planned Sunday and Wednesday, Inauguration Day. But, they cautioned, that doesn’t mean there’s no chance of violence. Federal authorities believe the aggressive pursuit of suspects in the Capitol assault and the early show of force to secure the Inauguration may have prompted some extremists to reconsider returning to Washington to engage in violence, an official familiar with the investigation said Thursday. The official, who is not authorized to comment publicly, said some suspects who had planned to return have retained lawyers and turned themselves in rather than risk joining demonstrations in Washington and elsewhere. The official cautioned, however, that the threat level remains high because many extremists are not part of organized groups, such as the Proud Boys, with designated leaders. The FBI warned earlier this week that protests are planned in all 50 states, and experts worry that state capitols could prove softer targets for domestic terrorists, armed paramilitary groups, or simply large crowds of angry Trump supporters. “Nothing’s going to happen in D.C., but I worry about state capitals,” said Daryl Johnson, a security consultant and former senior analyst for domestic terrorism at the Department of Homeland Security. “They should be beefing up security.” Clamping down on insurrectionists As of Thursday morning, dozens of people who participated in last week's riot have been arrested. The FBI is pursuing more than 200 suspects in connection with the attack, FBI Director Christopher Wray said Thursday. Security in Washington, D.C., was ramped up immediately after the insurrection. It has reached extraordinary levels, with thousands of National Guard troops pledged to protect federal buildings and public spaces. The message to prospective protesters is clear: Unapproved mass gatherings and violence will not be tolerated. And it appears to be resonating among the far-right. “Even before Jan. 6, I always said it was stupid to rally in D.C.,” Tarrio said. “You can’t open carry (a firearm) in D.C., so the whole idea of a ‘Million Militia March’ was stupid from the beginning.” He referred to a rallying cry that briefly flared up in the days after the insurrection, when people on far-right social media posted about holding a “Million Militia March,” or “#MMM,” this Sunday. The attack on the Capitol, coupled with digital intelligence, has also exposed many agitators to law enforcement, said Jonathan Wackrow, chief operating officer of consulting and advisory firm Teneo Risk and a former Secret Service agent. “There’s no longer a surprise,” Wackrow said. “Not only do we know what their intent is, we also know who the players are.” A movement scattered online In the days leading up to the violent rally, far-right personalities had a welcoming platform to urge followers to show up: the short-lived social media site Parler. Parler gained millions of new users after the presidential election, many of them Trump supporters disgruntled with efforts to kick conspiracy theorists and extremists off Facebook and Twitter. An easy-to-use platform, Parler was perfect for groups advertising their intention to descend on Washington to intercede in Congress’ certification of the Electoral College votes – the final, formal step required before Joe Biden could be sworn in as president. The Proud Boys, promoters of the QAnon conspiracy theory, far-right agitator Alex Jones and others used Parler to post fliers for the rally and urge supporters to attend. Parler was taken offline on Sunday, hobbling far-right extremists' ability to reach their followers. In recent days, Twitter removed over 70,000 accounts associated with QAnon. Other sites, such as the streaming platform DLive, removed far-right activists. Fuentes, who had raised money on DLive, was one of them. “You sort of limit their ability to cast a broad message,” said Brian Gerber, co-director of Arizona State University’s Center for Management and Homeland Security. “That creates some difficulties in tracking them but it also limits their scope of activities as well.” Without Parler, extremists struggle to reach followers online Extremists and far-right Trump supporters have been scattered across the internet to less user-friendly forums. On the encrypted messenger service Telegram, a channel initially called “Parler Lifeboat” gained almost 16,000 new subscribers within 24 hours. But Trump supporters familiar with Facebook, Twitter and Parler found themselves floundering on Telegram. It operates less like a discussion board and more like a group chat, with a firehose of comments that new users can find overwhelming. Incoming Telegram users found themselves face-to-face with neo-Nazis and white supremacists who have long used the platform. They tried to spread anti-Semitic and racist propaganda to the influx of Trump supporters. The “Lifeboat” group has become a confusing mess of conservatives arguing with hardcore white supremacists as they struggle to post and access content on the platform. Going dark:Banned from Facebook and Twitter, pro-Trump extremists hatch Inauguration Day violence in dark reaches of the web Compounding the chaos, potential far-right protesters now lack the guiding light of their movement: tweets from Trump. Since Trump was banned from Twitter on Friday, he has been forced to send text messages to his followers and post statements on the official White House website. The president has urged calm from his supporters while acknowledging for the first time that Biden will become president next week. Deplatforming him certainly makes it more difficult for his supporters to rally around some message that he’s giving them,” Gerber said. Violence still possible While massive, violent protests are unlikely in the nation’s capital, lone terrorists or small groups still could try to make a mark on the Inauguration. Wray said Thursday that federal authorities remain "concerned about the potential for violence" during the Inauguration, adding that armed protesters might seek "close proximity" to government buildings and officials. He warned that violence could be aimed at state capitals. Wray urged those considering traveling to Washington, D.C., and state capitals in order to engage in violent protests to "stay home" or risk criminal charges. Johnson, the security expert, is worried about bombs being driven into Washington or even snipers targeting Biden supporters at the Inauguration itself. Wackrow, the former Secret Service official, said the massive efforts to secure Washington shouldn't create a false sense of security. The amount of publicly accessible, online activity by extremists is a fraction of what’s happening in the dark corners of the internet, he said. “One single person with the right means, opportunity and intent can significantly change history,” he said. “But that will give the extremists the win that they need.” One faction of the far-right mob who stormed the Capitol last week has, in a strange twist, been heartened by the heavy military presence in Washington. Followers of the disproven QAnon conspiracy theory believe a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles is plotting against Trump, who will eventually destroy them in a military action termed “The Storm.” They have taken solace in the buildup of troops, said Travis View, a researcher and podcaster who has studied QAnon. “These people are overjoyed by the large numbers of military troops,” View said. “They think they’re there to prevent Joe Biden from taking over the presidency, so they’re saying, ‘Enjoy the show, get the popcorn ready.'”