The folks who embrace batshit crazy beliefs, have batshit crazy beliefs regarding Putin and Ukraine. Well yes, paint me totally unsurprised. The Wingnuts are basically fragmented into multiple claims …
- Those that believe that there is no invasion at all and that it is all simply a false flag operation
- Those that do accept it is happening, but that Putin is doing this as part of a secret war against the “Deep State”
- Those that claim that it is linked to President Joe Biden and his son Hunter’s infamous laptop.
- Those that believe that it is really all about attacking secret U.S. biolabs located in Ukraine
- etc…
Regardless of this vast diversity of evidence-free claims, they all agree on one thing – they all love and adore Putin.
David Gilbert at Vice News revealed within a March 3, 2022 article where a great deal of the QAnon disinformation comes from …
According to data collected by Argentino between January and November 2021, one website stood out as the most shared link in the nascent QAnon ecosystem: Russia Today.
The Kremlin-backed TV station is a key part of Russia’s never-ending disinformation war against the West, boosting conspiracy theories and, crucially, undermining trust in the mainstream U.S. media.
“Russian state media and some of their amplifiers increased their presence on Telegram last year in light of growth on Telegram due to mass de-platforming,” Argentino told VICE News. “The audience for their anti-government and anti-Western propaganda are prime targets with little interference from other sources and fact-checkers as they are not present there.”
Yes indeed, this cult of gullible fools are simply Putin’s puppets. We are in the era of a new kind of warfare. Disinformation and social media have been successfully weaponised, and utilised to disrupt democratic norms. Beyond the Ukrainian area, a war is being waged to conquer minds and manipulate vast numbers of people.
If you are curious to see a detailed analysis of a recent example, then here is a breakdown of the #IStandWithPutin hashtag.
Now repeat after me – “I Will Not Be A Useful Idiot”.
Moving on, below you will find my usual selection of some truly bizarre claims that have popped up during the last 7 days. Each is laced with my snarky commentary. With my usual hat tip to my main source, Right Wing Watch, let’s dive in.
Enjoy.
COVID-19
We can add pastor Wade Burleson to the never-ending list of GOP congressional candidates who compare vaccine mandates to Nazi Germany: “I know enough about history to know that after WWII, we hung Nazi doctors who took Jews and injected shots in them without their permission.”
- His premise is based upon the assumption that the vaccine kills. One small and rather inconvenient detail – it is the people who reject the vaccine that are most susceptible to dying.
- If he truly wishes to find people striving really heard to kill as many as possible, he need look no further than a mirror.
Ben Carson says that the dangers of COVID-19 are fading because God is “getting rid of it for us.”
- The folks that developed the vaccine, along with all the health care workers that distributed it, will be delighted to learn that Ben thinks they are Gods.
Jan 6
Colby Hall @ Mediaite: Bill Barr Tells Lester Holt that Trump ‘Was Responsible’ for Jan 6th Capitol Attack.
- Bill Barr is going to be truly “devastated” when he learns that he is no longer on the 45’s Christmas Card list
- Oh wait, perhaps “relieved” is a better word.
- One quote that is fun is this one. Barr told Trump, “The reason you are where you are is because you wheeled out a clown show of lawyers.”
Ukraine
Jeff Jansen claims that Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in order to “destroy the bio labs and confront many other crimes against humanity such as child sex trafficking which hundreds of thousands of children have been rescued already.”
- Jeff, is best advised to not lick Putin’s arse so vigorously. He just might get some nasty STI
Michele Bachmann asserts that the conflict between Russia and Ukraine is nothing but a “distraction” by the Biden administration while it carries out “the destruction of the United States”: “I truly think this Biden administration is evil. I think the people who are calling the shots are evil.”
- I have a suspicion that those in Ukraine don’t find being bombed and slaughtered to be a “distraction”
- I’d also really love to understand how she thinks the Biden Administration managed to arrange for Putin to invade.
- It is the folks like Bachmann who use a horrendous war to deploy cheap political shots that are truly evil.
Why are so many Trump-loving right-wing Christians siding with Russia? We’ll let Delora O’Brien explain: “If Pelosi and all these people are for Ukraine, duh, you go opposite. That’s just common sense.”
- For these folks “Common Sense” is such a rare commodity that an actual discovery of it amongst them would be akin to discovering one of them has a super-power.
- So far, no such discovery has been made.
Wayne Allyn Root thinks he knows why Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine: “Putin knows the center of Biden’s corruption was in Ukraine. Biden and his family intimidated, extorted and assaulted Ukraine. A little birdie tells me this is the big bonus for Putin after he invades and conquers Ukraine. He will capture and torture everyone involved in shady deals with Biden in order to unearth the secrets of Biden’s filthy corruption.”
- Wayne can be seen here jumping up and down at the back of the QAnon crowd pleading, “Me, me, me, pick me, I also want to be Putin’s Puppet“
Scott Lively believes “it was the choice by Ukraine’s leadership to embrace the LGBT agenda and reject the family values of its Christian and Orthodox Jewish heritage that caused God to withdraw His hand of protection from the nation.”
- Er … no.
- God’s really do not go around “protecting nations”.
- For those unfamiliar with him, Scott runs an anti-gay group. Whenever anything happens, literally anything, a bit of bad weather perhaps, then he will claim it was caused by the Gay community. If you google him, you will discover that he is a rather vile human being.
The False Profit$
Rick Scarborough declares that “what we see unfolding in the Ukraine may be the beginning of the final chapter of humanity. This is a time when every child of God should fall on their faces and cry out to a holy God, and repent for our willful rebellion of His laws and ways.”
- The “final chapter” has been declared to be “any day now” by religious folks for the last 2,000 years. The one thing they all have in common is that they are now, and forever more, wrong.
Pat Robertson came out of retirement to claim that Putin “is being compelled by God” to invade Ukraine in preparation for a massive End Times invasion of Israel.
- Pat has a very long and well-established track record for making predictions that fail.
- Back in 1982 he was “predicting” that this – “I guarantee you by the fall of 1982 there is going to be a judgment on the world.” … here we are 40 years later, and he is recycling it all.
- For 2012 his prophecy was that Mitt Romney and would win and then go on to serve for two terms.
- Least you wonder, yes he also guaranteed a Trump win in 2020.
- He literally never gets anything right, ever.
- What I can safely predict is that it is indeed the end-of-days … for Pat. He is 91.
Self-Appointed prophet Johnny Enlow says that Russian President Vladimir Putin “is a key chess player of God” and admits that he prefers Russia’s government over America’s: “It’s much more dangerous to be a citizen in this country under who we have in our government.”
- Nah, sorry Johnny, Putin is playing Monopoly, it is the Ukrainians who are playing Chess.
Bianca Gracia declared that God had told her the seat in the senate was hers and that anybody who did not vote for here would have to answer to God.
- The voters didn’t get the word that God had assigned her a seat. They are now “going to have to deal with it with the Lord.”
- FYI … here is how things played out …
Kat Kerr claims that God was sitting beside her on Election Day 2020 and told her the Democrats were “going to cheat and steal the election.”
- This latest claim of hers directly contradicts literally every election “prophesy” she delivered for the previous four years.
Self-appointed “prophet” Johnny Enlow was merging QAnon conspiracy theories with his love of Russia, claiming that Putin is fighting “Luciferian pedophiles” who Enlow claimed had been using Ukraine to carry out the Illuminati’s plans to use 5G and vaccines to create a race of transhumanist semi-robots.
- He wins this week’s “Most number of crazy conspiracies in one sentence” prize.
- I’m triple vaxxed and sometimes get 5G on my phone. I’m getting tired of waiting for my transhumanist upgrade to kick in, who do I complain to about this?
- The Star Trek episode writers need to hire this guy.
Truly Bizarre
Josephine Harvey @ HuffPost: Rep. Lauren Boebert Says Canada And U.S. ‘Need To Be Liberated’ Like Ukraine.
- Indeed yes, we must “liberate” both the US and Canada from the tyrany and oppression of demorcacy and freedom and bring them into the nurturing bossom of a dictorship where the befuddled masses can relish the delights of censorship, poverty, ignorance, and chaos … just like the Russians in Ukraine.
- And yes, this is the same elected representitive who tweeted on Jan 6 that “Today is 1776.”
- There really are consequences when you elect nutters.
I wrote about this earlier in the week. For completeness, here it is again. Pema Levy @ Mother Jones: RNC Accuses Biden’s SCOTUS Nominee of…Being a Democrat!
- A “Democrat”, the horror of it, it chills all my bones to the very marrow that she might indeed be guilty of being a rational human being with compassion and not a complete lunatic.
- Apparently she donated to Obama’s presidential campaign – and even worked for his campaign as a poll monitor … (shudders … oh the horror)
- When they went digging for dirt this is literally all they could find.
- No wait, I’m wrong, there is more. They also accuse her of being married to somebody who (gasp) made a donation to Hillary in 2016. (Cue chat of “lock her up”).
Stew Peters spoke at AFPAC, where he declared that Dr. Anthony Fauci should be “hanging by the end of a noose somewhere,” which prompted the AFPAC crowd to gleefully chant, “String him up! String him up!”
- Good luck finding a doctor the next time you need one Stew.
Hemant Mehta @ Only Sky: Dr. Ben Carson: Accepting church/state separation is a form of “schizophrenia.”
- It’s been a while since he popped up and yet here is his second mention this week. It is worth understanding that Carson is a seventh day adventist. I can only wonder if he might indeed suddenly discover a liking for Church/state separation if a church that considers seventh day adventists to be heretics was in government.
- Ben initially found fame long before his presidential run for declaring that the pyramids of Giza were created by the biblical figure Joseph to store grain. That is basically a miracle claim because the Joseph story is set five centuries after the pyramids were built. Time travel I guess. When asked about that 1998 claim in 2015, without a hint of any embarrassment, he stood by it as “truth”.
Media Matters: On YouTube, Steven Crowder uses Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Supreme Court nomination to revive the Pizzagate conspiracy theory.
- Honestly, I should be surprised, but I not. We live in a world where we have people who believe it is flat and that Covid and the Ukrainian invasion are hoaxes, so give that, then this is perhaps not such a huge leap to make.
People Who think they matter, but don’t
Ali Alexander insists that “racist jokes are funny.”
- The humour here is that he really thinks he is sharp, witty, and relevant.
Josh Bernstein has one simple goal: “That’s what I’m all about: pissing people off.”
- Sorry Josh, we are laughing at you.
Vincent James said that Fuentes “reminds me a lot of Vladimir Putin.”
- The funny bit here is that he actually thinks that is a compliment.
Oops
Zachary Petrizzo @ The Daily Beast: Much-Hyped D.C. Trucker Rally Turns Out to Be a Complete Joke.
To illustrate that point, Zachary went along and took a few pictures of the vast crowd that turned up.
Here they are, (almost all media) …