Stormy Daniels Is the Hero America Needs. By The Rude Pundit

5/12/2024

May 12

Stormy Daniels Is the Hero America Needs

In her testimony and especially in her cross-examination, writer/director/actor Stormy Daniels became the hero that America needs right now. She was on the stand for the prosecution of Donald Trump, a rapist who is also a former president, for falsifying business records to hide the hush money he paid to Daniels for a sexual encounter in 2006. Over the course of two days, first under questioning from Manhattan prosecutor Susan Hoffinger and then under dickish cross-examination from Trump attorney Susan Necheles, Daniels put a human face on what could be a somewhat dry financial crimes case and, in a much larger sense, responded to the complete bullshit of the Trump side with cutting common sense and two feet squarely in reality. 

Like in this exchange with Necheles, where Necheles was trying to say that everything Daniels was doing was just for money:

Q: That motivates you a lot in life, making more money; right?

A: Well, it is the United [States] -- that's what we do here. (Shrugs)

Can't argue with that. And it also is one of those answers that points to how completely idiotic the questions are. Let's not even get into the fact that Necheles's client monetizes everything from a cancer charity to the Bible and sells mugs with his mug shot on them. (Get it? Hilarious.)

In another exchange, Daniels schools Necheles in modern capitalism (and, as I've argued, Daniels is a more successful business person than Trump). Trying to show how much Daniels has monetized her hatred of Trump and her mainstream celebrity because she has been so vociferous in her condemnation of him, Necheles brought up some products that praise Daniels, like a prayer candle.

Q: That's one of the items you sell in your store, something called "Stormy, Saint of Indictments candle"; right? 

A: Yes. That was made from a store in New Orleans.

Q: You're saying that's not you bragging about how you are the Saint of a person who got President Trump indicted?

A:  No. I'm not bragging. I think it's funny that a store made those for me to sell, so I put those on my site.

Q: And you're making $40 on each of those, right?

A: No. I'm actually making about $7.

Yeah, that's how shit works in the real world. You don't make the amount that you're selling something for. That's basic online retailing, Etsy-level shit. Necheles was lying or ignorant, not Daniels.

Daniels honest answers made a mockery of Necheles questions. The lawyer really thought she was going to have a Perry Mason moment of catching Daniels in a lie, openly calling Daniels a liar to bait her in to cracking. But the things Necheles keeps quoting were not said under oath. Who gives a fuck if Daniels didn't tell In Touch magazine the whole truth? Necheles's client is an extravagant liar but refuses to go under oath and face real consequences for lying. Instead, Daniels fucked up Necheles time and again. Look at this exchange where Necheles tried to get Daniels to say everything she's doing is just acting, like Daniels does in the mostly adult films she's in. 

Q: So, you have a lot of experience in making phony stories about sex appear to be real, right?

A: Wow. I'm a -- (Laughter.) That's not how I would put it. The sex in the films, it's very much real. Just like what happened to me in that room [with Trump].

Q: All right. But you're making fictionalized stories about sex; you write those stories?

A: No. The sex is real. The character names might be different, but the sex is very real. That's why it's pornography and that's a B movie...

Q: And you have a lot of experience in memorizing these fictional stories and repeating them; right?

A: I have of experience in repeating stories and of memorizing stories? I do a lot of that, but not just about sex, I'm pretty sure we all can do that.

Q: And you have bragged about how good you are about writing porn movies and writing really good stories and writing really good dialogue; right?

A: Yes.

Q: And now you have a story you have been telling about having sex with President Trump; right?

A: And if that story was untrue, I would have written it to be a lot better. (Laughter.)

Daniels kept on schooling Necheles. When Necheles said Daniels worked in sex clubs, Daniels retorted, "I don't work in sex clubs. I work in strip clubs. So that's a big difference." And she's right. Trust me. It's a huge difference, as anyone who ever inappropriately touched a stripper in a lap dance room has learned. 

Necheles wanted to shame Daniels and her profession. Like a cop asking a rape victim why she wore a mini-skirt to a bar, Trump's lawyer had a fucking nauseating exchange with Daniels, showing a basic misunderstanding of porn, of sex, and of seeing Donald fucking Trump in his underwear. 

Q: So you say you came out of the bathroom and he was on the bed in his T-shirt and boxer shorts; right?

A: Yes.

Q: And, according to you, when you saw him sitting on the bed, you became faint, the room started to spin and the blood left your hands and feet, yes?

A: Yes. It was shock. Surprise.

Q: So just so I can be clear on what you are saying, you've acted and had sex in over 200 porn movies; right?

A: 150-ish, yes.

Q: And there are naked men and naked women having sex, including yourself in those movies; right?

A: Yes.

Q: And, but according to you, seeing a man sitting on a bed, in a T-shirt and boxer shorts, was so upsetting that you got light headed, blood left your hands and feet, and you almost fainted; right?

A: Yes. When you are not expecting a man twice your age to be in their underwear -- I have seen my husband naked almost everyday -- if I came out of the bathroom and it was not my husband and it was Mr. Trump on the bed, I would probably have the same reaction.

The obscenity here isn't Daniels having sex in adult films. It's Necheles asserting that even when Daniels was off the clock, she shouldn't care if random dudes strip for her. That kind of sexist, assaultive shit should have been squashed like a bug by the judge. 

Daniels was a goddamn champ, time and again, correcting Necheles, needling her, and obviously getting under her skin while she was desperately trying to get under Daniels's. 

But the biggest fuckup by Necheles might have been a form that was shown to Daniels and the parties in court. It was a financial form related to Daniels being ordered to pay Trump's attorney fees for a failed defamation case a few years back. As the form was displayed on screens, Daniels whispered to the judge, "This has my address...That's got my address." Daniels was afraid of Trump seeing her address and knowing where she and her daughter live. It freaked her the fuck out. 

Even Judge Merchan saw it and commented to Necheles, "She turned to me, she looked very fearful, and she said, 'That's got my address'...She is very much afraid of this form." Later, when Necheles asked Daniels why she left out information about her daughter's identity on another form, Daniels responded, "I won't fill out information that endangers my family or my daughter, no matter what."

Of course Daniels was freaked out. She had just described to Hoffinger how, in 2011, a man came up to her and her infant daughter in a parking lot in Las Vegas and threatened her, telling her to stop talking about the sexual encounter with Trump. Daniels has implied that Trump was somehow behind it, and even if he wasn't, well, Trump sure likes to make it seem like he's capable of that kind of blatant thuggery. Why wouldn't she be afraid?

That's why Daniels is a goddamned hero. It's not just because she handed Trump's attorney her ass in court. It's also and especially because she is overcoming fear and derision and threats to sit there and take this. It's because Trump dangled the promise of mainstream legitimacy in the skeeviest, most elitist way, promising her that she'd "get out of the trailer park" by sticking with him and being on his bullshit TV show, using power and money to coerce her into accepting having sex with him, and then Trump never came through, and now she's willing to risk herself to make sure everything is taken away from him. 

And I'd love it if in at least some small way, Daniels wants to shove Trump onto the shit heap of history because he promised her dinner in 2006 and he never fucking delivered. 

Q: And you are saying that this was a big deal that you didn't get dinner; right?

A: I was invited. It was dinnertime. I was running hungry, yeah. We talked about ordering food or going down to get food, we never got to eat. It was dinnertime, and we never ate.

Q: And you made a big point of that on numerous interviews; right?

A: Yeah, I went to go to dinner and I didn't get dinner

Fuck, yeah, Stormy Daniels. You deserved dinner and so much more. America owes you big time. 

DONALD TRUMP IS CHARLIE MANSON. By Steve M

Judd Legum asks whether Donald Trump is committing a crime by directing surrogates to make statements he's preventing from making himnself:

In recent days, several high-profile Republican political figures have traveled to the Manhattan Criminal Court, where Donald Trump is on trial. Outside the courthouse, they addressed the media and attacked key witnesses, the jury, and even the judge's daughter.

The comments by Trump's Republican allies are nearly identical to attacks that Trump has made previously in interviews and social media posts. But Judge Juan Merchan has ruled that, in so doing, Trump violated the gag order he imposed to preserve the integrity of the trial....

Merchan's order prohibits Trump from "directing others to make public statements about known or reasonably foreseeable witnesses." The order also prohibits Trump from directing others to attack the jury, the court staff, or family members.

... Attorney Jeff Jacobovitz, in an appearance on MSNBC, suggested that Merchan may hold a hearing over whether Trump has violated the gag order by directing his surrogates to make these attacks on his behalf. Jacobovitz noted that "if Trump is feeding information" to his allies, it would violate the gag order.

I assume Merchan won't hold a hearing, will hold a hearing but conclude that he can't prove that Trump orchestrated the obviously orchestrated statements, or will conclude that Trump did orchestrate the statements -- and will respond by fining Trump again, with yet another really strong warning that he won't let Trump get away with this and really might throw him in jail next time. Rinse and repeat.

But here's the aspect of all this that I find most bizarre:

The red tie brigade

On Monday, Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH), Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY), and Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) addressed the media in front of the courthouse. On Tuesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum (R), Congressman Byron Donalds (R-FL), former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy (R), and Congressman Cory Mills (R-FL) did the same. Tuesday's group, in an apparent show of solidarity, wore Trump's signature blue suit and red tie.

Does that remind you of anything? If you're a Boomer, it might remind you of this:

Many of the cultists even carved an “X” into their foreheads after the first day of testimony when [Charles] Manson arrived in court sporting the same. Later, when a guilty verdict was decided and the trial went to penalty phase, Manson shaved his head, proclaiming, “I am the Devil, and the Devil always has a bald head.” Some of his devotees followed suit and could be seen crouched outside in bald-headed solidarity on the days leading up to his April 19, 1971 death sentencing.

I understand that President Biden might want to remain silent about the Trump trial because he doesn't want to be seen as interfering -- but if I were a prominent Democrat who wasn't part of the Executive Branch, I'd tell reporters. "Look at these guys in their red ties. They're like the Manson girls."

Maybe it's offensive to say "Manson girls," the way everyone did at the time of the trial. Some were underage, but many weren't. Also, as Vox's Constance Grady noted a few years ago, the term "Manson girls" was shorthand for "crazed sex-mad hippie chicks who murdered for Charlie." The reality is that most had troubled lives, and sexual assault and other forms of abuse and degradation, by Manson and others, were commonplace in Manson's world.

That's what makes the behavior of the "Trump boys" worse. They're not lost runaways. They aren't being held in check by a cult leader who's using abuse and other tactics to control their minds. They're just careerist lickspittles prostrating themselves before the boss, hoping for a place on the ticket or some other form of career advancement.

But as long as they're out there, I'm wondering why Democrats or liberal activists aren't there too, giving their spin on the trial, in provocative and mediagenic ways. Trump has turned the perimeter of the courthouse into a theater where he's putting on a show and only his followers have any lines. He's still much smarter about the media than the vast majority of Democrats. It's time for Democrats to catch up.

Analysis | Biden Has Not Turned His Back on Israel. But Netanyahu Has. By David Rothkopf

The Netanyahu government has, almost from the very beginning of the Gaza war, pitted itself not just against Hamas but against the U.S. president. Pushing Biden to breaking point may trigger irreparable damage to the already deeply-strained U.S.- Israel relationship

Read time: 7 minutes

Right now, Israel's most effective leader is an 81-year-old Irish Catholic from Delaware.

At a time when the elected government in Jerusalem seems committed to demonstrating its incompetence in new ways almost every day, only Joe Biden has remained committed to the security and the future of the State of Israel.

He has done so despite significant opposition in the United States. He has done what he thought was in Israel's best interests whether Israel's elected officials embraced or condemned him. He has made mistakes, sometimes very significant ones. But the judgment displayed by him and his team has always stood in stark contrast to the recklessness of the Israeli prime minister and his top advisors.

Perhaps that is why the Netanyahu government has, almost from the very beginning of the current war with Gaza, pitted itself not just against Hamas but against Biden. The president has revealed time and again their defects by showing his much clearer understanding of what should be done to advance Israel's long-term interests.

He does so because those interests remain so intertwined with the interests of the country Biden was elected to lead, the United States. And he does so because, as the current crisis has revealed, Biden is, down to his marrow, a true and committed friend of Israel.

In the wake of the horrors of October 7, Biden instantly expressed his ironclad commitment to Israel. It has been heartfelt and unwavering ever since. But from the war's outset, Biden and his team have also, time and again, offered through their advice and actions an instructive counterpoint to the approaches of the Netanyahu government—a leadership roadmap that the extremist clique that is making decisions on behalf of the Israeli state has regularly ignored.

Biden and his administration have reached out to the victims of October 7, especially hostage families, with a sincere compassion and sense of urgency about their concerns that has been so lacking with Netanyahu that demonstrations in the streets of Israel regularly underscore the point.

From the very beginning of the war, even before Biden's visit in the wake of the terrorist attacks, Biden advisors like Secretary of State Antony Blinken, have urged that Israel conduct the war with great care to avoid civilian casualties and to provide humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza. Netanyahu's government clearly and repeatedly ignored the advice. They waged a war without a plan, a war of revenge with the unachievable goal of eradicating Hamas.

The result is that today, seven months later, Israel is no safer than it was when the war began and because of the blood on its hands due to the slaughter of innocents in Gaza, Israel's standing in the world is lower than it has ever been. And we have not yet begun to see how the inhumanity of the Netanyahu government's approach will produce a new generation of enemies of Israel.

Months ago, President Biden, Vice President Harris and the rest of the U.S. team urged a focus on "the day after" the war. They recognized that without a clear idea about how to rebuild Gaza, to put in place effective Palestinian leadership and develop a roadmap toward a two-state solution, there would never be an enduring end to this conflict. Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir, Smotrich and their associates scoffed and, to this day reject this despite it being the only reasonable path forward.

Instead, we're left with Netanyahu, in an embarrassing interview with D-level U.S. media personality Dr. Phil, suggesting that Arab states – with whom he had not consulted – could come in and clean up his mess, an idea that was instantly rejected by one of those for being as unfounded as it was absurd.

Most recently, the U.S. has pushed for a cease-fire, during which proper thought could be given for reassessment and a day-after plan, in large part because the current Israeli government has no such plan. More controversially, Biden has made it clear that having been ignored for months, the U.S. would no longer support Israeli actions that were likely to produce high civilian casualties.

The withholding of a shipment of offensive weapons that could cause such casualties and Biden's statement that the U.S. could and would withhold further such shipments if Netanyahu proceeded with a major operation in Rafah, was a clear message to the Israeli 'leadership' that the U.S. now saw them and their 'plans' as one of the great imminent threats to both U.S. and Israeli interests in the region.

On cue, Israel's far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir tweeted that Hamas loves Biden. Netanyahu howled. Surrogates claimed that the U.S. action would reduce leverage with Hamas.

But the U.S. has been in the middle of the negotiations for a cease-fire and hostage release. They knew the degree to which it was the Israelis and not just Hamas who were resisting coming to a deal. They heard Netanyahu's promise to go ahead with operations in Rafah whether there was a cease-fire or not. (Which of course, was itself a major disincentive to Hamas to enter into any peace deal.)

Biden's decision to use the concrete leverage of withholding arms shipments gives the U.S. was, if anything, long overdue. Ben-Gvir's idiotic accusation, in the wake of the degree to which the U.S. has supported Israel – and the degree to which Netanyahu actively helped direct funding to Hamas – was indefensible.

Among the mistakes the Biden administration has made with regard to this conflict, if anything they have been too supportive of the Netanyahu administration, too muted in their criticisms or efforts to stop the egregious abuses of the Israeli leadership. As a result, the accusations of Netanyahu allies in the Republican Party also rang hollow, especially given that they had spent the past six months blocking aid to Israel and that their party leader, Donald Trump, had backed the Netanyahu effort to prop up Hamas with funding via Qatar.

No, Biden was not the one who had turned his back on Israel. That was Netanyahu. He was the man who created the conditions for October 7. He was the one who had ignored sound guidance from Biden throughout this conflict. He and his team are the ones who have nothing but carnage to show for seven months of war. He and his team are the ones not acting in the interest of Israel but rather of themselves.

Now, Netanyahu's war cabinet has responded to the Biden promise to withhold further arms if Rafah operations are expanded by gradually expanding Rafah operations. The military benefit of such expansion is unclear. But the political objective is obvious. In Rafah, on the orders of Netanyahu, the IDF is now conducting Operation Find Biden's Red Line. They want to see just how far they can push the U.S. president before the flow of all offensive weapons is cut off.

Like everything else they are doing, it is foolish, unstrategic and of no benefit to Israel. If they succeed in finding and crossing the red line, who benefits? Certainly not Israel. U.S. arms flows are important – as Israeli government complaints about cutting them off clearly demonstrate.

But worse, pushing the relationship with Israel's best friend in the world, Joe Biden, to the breaking point is likely to produce lasting and perhaps irreparable damage to the already deeply strained U.S.- Israel relationship.

An expanded operation in Rafah can only produce bad outcomes – for the U.S.-Israel relationship, for Israel's standing in the world, for the prospects for regional peace, and in human terms for the civilians of Gaza and for Israeli hostages held by Hamas.

That is why Israel's most dependable and wise leader, Joe Biden, has taken a clear stand against it. It is also probably why the incompetent mob around Netanyahu is for it.

The strength of Biden's most recent statements should cause them to reconsider. They may think he is doing what they do and responding to political pressure or self-interest in the upcoming U.S. election. Quite the contrary. He has entered territory unfamiliar to them: Real leadership where the only consideration is what is in the best interest of the country he leads and the ally he so values.

Whether they know it or not, Israel's government has reached the FAFO stage of the Netanyahu-Biden relationship. It's not a good place for Israel's current batch of elected officials to be. But, if understood for the principles behind it, this could be a turning point that should trigger the wholehearted support of people of Israel, America's real ally in all this.

David Rothkopf is a former senior U.S. government official and the author of ten books on foreign policy and politics. He is also a podcast host and CEO of The DSR Podcast Network. Twitter: @djrothkopf

Opinion: Netanyahu and his extremist allies are endangering Israel’s long-term security. By Richard J. Davis

Editor’s Note: Richard J. Davis was the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Carter administration and former assistant Watergate special prosecutor. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion at CNN.

CNN  — 

President Joe Biden appropriately spoke out forcefully about the need to combat the surge in antisemitism in the US, the importance of supporting Israel’s security and not forgetting the brutality of the October 7 terrorist attack by Hamas during his speech at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s annual Days of Remembrance ceremony at the Capitol on Tuesday.

“My commitment to the safety of the Jewish people, the security of Israel, and its right to exist as an independent Jewish state is ironclad. Even when we disagree,” he said.

But if we are to fight against antisemitism, promote the long-term security of Israel and remember the horrors of the October 7 Hamas attack we must also recognize and speak out against a dangerous failure of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government.

That failure is his inability to understand one of the basic requirements to establish long-term security for any society: those living there need to believe they have a stake in that society and can enjoy its benefits. If they do, they will want it to be as safe and secure as possible. If, however, many believe that they have no stake in a society and that they have no real hope of sharing in its success, then turning to violence to create a place in which they believe they can meaningfully participate is far more likely.

If Netanyahu understood this principle, his government would not include dangerous extremists and would not pursue policies involving the significant expansion of West Bank settlements and the recognition of illegal settlements which deny Palestinians hope for a better future. We also would not have to deal with the reality that efforts to support the long-term security of Israel, combat the scourge of antisemitism and address Gaza protests on campuses both in the US and abroad have been made more difficult by the extremism of the Netanyahu government.

Netanyahu, an outspoken critic of the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords, has spent his years as prime minister promoting the expansion of settlements within the West Bank and making it clear that Palestinians have no hope of anything like their own state.

According to the New York Times, he even went so far as to voice no objection to various Arab countries providing aid to Hamas as part of demonstrating that Israel had no realistic negotiating partner. But he reached a new low when in 2022 he brought into his government the most extreme anti-Palestinian participants in Israeli politics. Their inclusion sent the clear message to Palestinians that there is no hope of a better future for them in any Israeli-controlled-land.

Netanyahu invited Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir to join his government. The former was appointed finance minister and was given responsibility for West Bank settlements. He has, however, suggested during a debate on an immigration bill it was a mistake in 1948 not to expel all Arabs from Israel; has asserted that “there is no such thing as a Palestinian people;” favors all of the West Bank being incorporated into Israel; and says he supports the voluntary moving of Palestinians out of Gaza.

Ben Gvir, who has been given a national security portfolio, is arguably even worse. He has been convicted of inciting racism against Arabs and was an alleged member of a terrorist group; has idolized the killing of Palestinians; publicly threatened then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin before his assassination in 1995; and claimed that his right to travel in the West Bank was more important than the Palestinians’ right to travel. And, just late last month he reportedly questioned the Israeli Defense Forces why they were taking so many Palestinian prisoners instead of killing them (which would be a violation of international law).

After the October 7 terrorist attack, Netanyahu had an opportunity to remove Smotrich and Ben Gvir from their posts when the first offer from the opposition for a unity government involved their elimination from the cabinet. Seemingly focused on not disturbing his coalition and staying in power, Netanyahu refused. Consequently, his unity government today still gives a platform to these extremists. It also gives license to followers of these extremists to, as we have seen, attack Palestinians in the West Bank and even to attack a Jordanian aid convoy.

There is no doubt that a robust military response by Israel was justified. And there also is no doubt that Hamas’ embedding its fighters and military infrastructure within the civilian population has inevitably increased the dangers civilians face in Gaza. But as has been widely reported, the military tactics adopted by Netanyahu’s government have led to massive civilian casualties, including of international aid workers. Its approach to assistance to Gaza has led to a historic humanitarian crisis.

At the same time, Israel has continued with significant expansion of settlements on the West Bank. The message being sent is clear. As far as the Netanyahu administration is concerned, Palestinian lives do not matter, and there is no reason for them to expect a better future. As a result, however much Hamas is weakened, a new generation of terrorists is being created. And the brutality of the October 7 terrorist attack by Hamas and the plight of the hostages are being drowned out.

So what should those organizations and individuals who believe in Israel and the need to fight antisemitism, whether it be on college campuses or elsewhere, do? For their own efforts to be credible they must not avoid legitimate criticism of Israel. They must condemn the participation of Smotrich and Ben Gvir in the Israeli government. They need, as the United States government is doing, to tell Israel there can be no more excuses. Israel must do what is necessary to expand and simplify the process of sending humanitarian aid to Gaza. They also need to be clear that Israel must change its military tactics to dramatically reduce civilian deaths. And, as challenging as it would be, they need to openly call for the end to the expansion of settlements in the West Bank and for a path back towards a two-state solution.

Ignoring the extremism of the Netanyahu government and the horrible humanitarian disaster in Gaza only undermines the credibility of those seeking to defend Israel and fight antisemitism. Indeed, Netanyahu’s government and its actions risk adding fuel to the dangerous fire of antisemitism. And tragically, for all too many around the world, revulsion over what his government has become risks causing them to no longer support the legitimacy of Israel itself.

Want to Reduce the Cost of Housing? Build More of It - Bloomberg. By Matthew Yglesias

Read time: 4 minutes

Everyone agrees that the rent (or the mortgage) is too high, but the best ways to make it more affordable aren’t very popular.

May 5, 2024

When it comes to the current debate over housing affordability, I feel like my position has been clear and consistent: Twelve years ago, I wrote a book called The Rent Is Too Damn High. At the same time, I also have to admit that most Americans do not share my preferred solutions.

My basic argument can be summarized in three words: Build more housing. There are a lot of ways to make that easier — feel free to buy the book! — but increased supply doesn’t seem to be what voters have in mind when they think about ways to bring down housing costs.

Only 30% to 40% of voters believe that a greater supply of housing would moderate prices, according to research from academics who are broadly sympathetic to the YIMBY (Yes In My Backyard) movement. Their research also shows that this is not generalized skepticism of supply-and-demand dynamics. If you ask the same question about other commodities, people understand the linkage.

In their most recent paper, the researchers — Christopher Elmendorf, a law professor at the University of California at Davis, and the political scientists Clayton Nall of UC Santa Barbara and Stan Oklobdzija of Tulane — survey voters about what they think would work. The most popular options are rent control, government subsidies for down payments, property tax cuts and regulations to prevent Wall Street firms from buying housing.

Economically, this is basically all nonsense.

If you push subsidies into a supply-constrained market, prices will go up in response, and you’ll be left right where you started. If you impose rent control, it will help incumbent renters who never plan to move, but it only serves to exacerbate scarcity.

Meanwhile, YIMBY solutions such as changing zoning to allow for more construction are both less popular and viewed as less efficacious. Interestingly, and contrary to the “homevoter hypothesis” that supply restrictions represent a deliberate effort to inflate housing costs, the research finds that renters are more hostile to denser zoning than homeowners are.

So, are Americans doomed? Not necessarily. But the research is a potent reminder that lots of popular attention on a problem doesn’t always help solve it.

There is a healthy amount of elite awareness in the US that there are too many regulatory restrictions on housing supply — that was the view not only of Barack Obama’s economic policy team, but also Donald Trump’s and now Joe Biden’s. At the same time, bipartisan deals are usually popular regardless of the substance, and there is political upside to solving problems regardless of what people think about how you solved it.

Under the circumstances, the best path forward for supply-side reform is probably quiet bipartisanship — motivated state legislators and governors working together — rather than noisy partisan coalitions.

In Washington state, for example, a promising bill reducing minimum lot sizes passed the House with overwhelming bipartisan support and a Republican lead author in a blue state. The law, unfortunately, got bottled up in the Senate, but these kind of intra-elite issues are solvable in principle. In New York, in contrast, Governor Kathy Hochul’s splashy 2023 housing reform effort failed in a way that may be unfixable. She’s the Democratic governor of a blue state, so she tried to build a partisan coalition that paired upzoning with other progressive housing reforms. Republicans attacked the package, the politics got dicey, and vulnerable Democrats started to bail. The package not only failed, but unlike the version in Washington state, the whole approach may be irredeemable. There simply isn’t enough public support for upzoning to be done on a party-line basis.

There is, however, one potential exception.

The research indicates that there is a lot of support for zoning reforms designed to facilitate “affordable housing for middle-income households.” The policy landscape is littered with so-called “inclusionary zoning” policies that aim to accomplish this. Unfortunately, as a new report from the UC Berkeley Terner Center for Housing shows, these policies mostly serve as regulations that further constrain the overall supply of housing.

This is a potentially fixable problem of policy design. Inclusionary zoning customarily requires a share of units to be rented out so cheaply as to be uneconomical to build. It then also requires that only certain households be eligible for the units, which both limits the number of people who can benefit and requires incredible amounts of paperwork.

One could imagine policies that fit the same high-level description while being dramatically simpler. What if any unit that’s cheaper than the average new unit in the area counted as “affordable,” and the project were then given an express lane to permitting, exemption from parking requirements, and authorization to build taller? Conventional “affordable” housing policies use metrics like 80% of area median income to define eligibility. But in other contexts it’s acknowledged that a family earning a good bit more than that is still middle class. Biden’s tax policy proposals define anyone who earns less than $400,000 — over four times the median household income — as middle class. Housing policy could be equally elastic.

Granted, these kind of limitations are not really good economics. It’s pretty clearly established that even the most upscale new developments improve overall affordability. But the important thing is to maximize supply given the constraints of politics and public opinion. As long as we take a reasonably flexible view of affordability, Americans can have a lot more new affordable housing.

The liberal international order is slowly coming apart. The Economist

Read time: 5 minutes

At first glance, the world economy looks reassuringly resilient. America has boomed even as its trade war with China has escalated. Germany has withstood the loss of Russian gas supplies without suffering an economic disaster. War in the Middle East has brought no oil shock. Missile-firing Houthi rebels have barely touched the global flow of goods. As a share of global GDP, trade has bounced back from the pandemic and is forecast to grow healthily this year.

Look deeper, though, and you see fragility. For years the order that has governed the global economy since the second world war has been eroded. Today it is close to collapse. A worrying number of triggers could set off a descent into anarchy, where might is right and war is once again the resort of great powers. Even if it never comes to conflict, the effect on the economy of a breakdown in norms could be fast and brutal.

As we report, the disintegration of the old order is visible everywhere. Sanctions are used four times as much as they were during the 1990s; America has recently imposed “secondary” penalties on entities that support Russia’s armies. A subsidy war is under way, as countries seek to copy China’s and America’s vast state backing for green manufacturing. Although the dollar remains dominant and emerging economies are more resilient, global capital flows are starting to fragment, as our special report explains.

The institutions that safeguarded the old system are either already defunct or fast losing credibility. The World Trade Organisation turns 30 next year, but will have spent more than five years in stasis, owing to American neglect. The IMF is gripped by an identity crisis, caught between a green agenda and ensuring financial stability. The un security council is paralysed. And, as we report, supranational courts like the International Court of Justice are increasingly weaponised by warring parties. Last month American politicians including Mitch McConnell, the leader of Republicans in the Senate, threatened the International Criminal Court with sanctions if it issues arrest warrants for the leaders of Israel, which also stands accused of genocide by South Africa at the International Court of Justice.

So far fragmentation and decay have imposed a stealth tax on the global economy: perceptible, but only if you know where to look. Unfortunately, history shows that deeper, more chaotic collapses are possible—and can strike suddenly once the decline sets in. The first world war killed off a golden age of globalisation that many at the time assumed would last for ever. In the early 1930s, following the onset of the Depression and the Smoot-Hawley tariffs, America’s imports collapsed by 40% in just two years. In August 1971 Richard Nixon unexpectedly suspended the convertibility of dollars into gold; only 19 months later, the Bretton Woods system of fixed-exchange rates fell apart.

Today a similar rupture feels all too imaginable. The return of Donald Trump to the White House, with his zero-sum worldview, would continue the erosion of institutions and norms. The fear of a second wave of cheap Chinese imports could accelerate it. Outright war between America and China over Taiwan, or between the West and Russia, could cause an almighty collapse.

In many of these scenarios, the loss will be more profound than many people think. It is fashionable to criticise untrammelled globalisation as the cause of inequality, the global financial crisis and neglect of the climate. But the achievements of the 1990s and 2000s—the high point of liberal capitalism—are unmatched in history. Hundreds of millions escaped poverty in China as it integrated into the global economy. The infant-mortality rate worldwide is less than half what it was in 1990. The percentage of the global population killed by state-based conflicts hit a post-war low of 0.0002% in 2005; in 1972 it was nearly 40 times as high. The latest research shows that the era of the “Washington consensus”, which today’s leaders hope to replace, was one in which poor countries began to enjoy catch-up growth, closing the gap with the rich world.

The decline of the system threatens to slow that progress, or even throw it into reverse. Once broken, it is unlikely to be replaced by new rules. Instead, world affairs will descend into their natural state of anarchy that favours banditry and violence. Without trust and an institutional framework for co-operation, it will become harder for countries to deal with the 21st century’s challenges, from containing an arms race in artificial intelligence to collaborating in space. Problems will be tackled by clubs of like-minded countries. That can work, but will more often involve coercion and resentment, as with Europe’s carbon border-tariffs or China’s feud with the IMF. When co-operation gives way to strong-arming, countries have less reason to keep the peace.

In the eyes of the Chinese Communist Party, Vladimir Putin or other cynics, a system in which might is right would be nothing new. They see the liberal order not as an enactment of lofty ideals but an exercise of raw American power—power that is now in relative decline.

Gradually, then suddenly

It is true that the system established after the second world war achieved a marriage between America’s internationalist principles and its strategic interests. Yet the liberal order also brought vast benefits to the rest of the world. Many of the world’s poor are already suffering from the inability of the IMF to resolve the sovereign-debt crisis that followed the covid-19 pandemic. Middle-income countries such as India and Indonesia hoping to trade their way to riches are exploiting opportunities created by the old order’s fragmentation, but will ultimately rely on the global economy staying integrated and predictable. And the prosperity of much of the developed world, especially small, open economies such as Britain and South Korea, depends utterly on trade. Buttressed by strong growth in America, it may seem as if the world economy can survive everything that is thrown at it. It can’t. ■

Opinion | Why Did a Group of U.S. Journalism Professors Attack the New York Times' Story on Hamas Sexual Violence? By Laurel Leff

It was highly unusual for 59 journalism and communications professors to collectively challenge the reporting in a single news story. That of all Gaza war stories, only the NYT's investigation of Hamas rapes raised their ire – to the extent they contended it endangered journalists and may have helped precipitate 'genocide' – raises questions about their motivation

Laurel Leff is a professor in the School of Journalism and Associate Director of Jewish Studies at Northeastern University in Boston. She is the author of "Buried by The Times: The Holocaust and America's Most Important Newspaper" and "Well Worth Saving: American Universities' Life-and-Death Decisions on Hiring Scholars from Nazi Europe".

May 8, 2024 5:30 pm IDT

Journalism and communication professors at several major U.S. universities took an unusual step recently, challenging the reporting in a single news story—The New York Times front-page investigative piece describing the sexual violence committed on October 7.

Fifty-nine professors (though they were not all tenured or journalism professors as The Washington Post incorrectly stated) wrote a letter to the Times publisher objecting to the article, "`Screams Without Words': How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7."

In almost 30 years as a journalism professor, I can't recall another time my colleagues found an article so flawed that they needed to band together to demand action. Sahan Mufti, a University of Richmond journalism professor who helped draft the letter, told me that he and his colleagues understood their response was "not typical" but felt the circumstances demanded it. They asked The Times to commission outside experts to "conduct a thorough and full independent review."

Of the thousands of stories that have been published about the Gaza War—let alone the universe of all recent news stories—what made "`Screams Without Words'" worthy of the professoriate's equivalent of the nuclear option? It's hard to say, even after reading the professors' letter and the supporting critique in The Intercept, a left-leaning U.S. news site.

The Intercept's meandering February article, which the professors allude to but don't assess, dwells upon an interview that one of the Times' three authors, Anat Schwartz, gave to Israel's channel 12. Schwartz stresses there how hard the story was to get.

Too hard is The Intercept's conclusion; Schwartz and The Times started with "a predetermined narrative"—presumably that systematic sexual violence had occurred—and then kept searching for proof even when it wasn't forthcoming. The Intercept skates past an obvious alternative—that reporting on sexual assaults, particularly those that took place in the midst of murder and mayhem, is exceedingly difficult, and that Schwartz's exhaustive approach reflected persistence rather than preconceptions.

At one point, The Intercept states that Schwartz contacted hospitals, rape crisis centers, trauma recovery facilities and sexual assault hotlines. She wasn't "able to get a single confirmation from any of them," The Intercept writes, implying that rape, at least on a large scale, might not have occurred. But another explanation, and the more likely one, is that no one went to a hospital, walked into a rape crisis center, or called a hotline because almost everyone who had been sexually assaulted was dead.

Those who witnessed sexual violence also had reasons to initially stay quiet or to provide hazy accounts. The Times, which just won the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting for its coverage of October 7 and the war in Gaza, quoted ten named sources (one with only a first, and another with only a last, name) who said they had witnessed sexual assaults, often while hiding in fear for their own lives, or had seen the aftermath in the form of mutilated bodies. The Intercept questions the credibility of many of these sources when it finally, 27 paragraphs in, gets to what should have been the centerpiece of its investigation.

The Times made at least one serious mistake. In a March update, The Times said it had related an unnamed source's statement that he had seen the partially clothed bodies of two murdered girls in Kibbutz Be'eri. Video showed those victims were clothed. The Times said it updated, rather than corrected, the story, because the source may have seen naked bodies elsewhere.

The ten named sources didn't back down, however, even when The Times reinterviewed some of them. Questions about some sources remain just that, questions. Given the story's subject and the circumstances, The Intercept's expectation of completely consistent stories and its demand for solid forensic evidence seem unrealistic. Israeli police admittedly and unfortunately did not use rape kits at the scene but that's largely because fighting was ongoing and there was pressure to retrieve, identify and bury bodies quickly.

Tellingly, the journalism and communication professors' letter didn't mention any of this, except the March update—a sign their concern is not primarily problematic sources. "The most troubling questions," the letter states, relate to The Times' use of Schwartz and another freelancer, Adam Sella. Aside from ill-advised "likes" on three tweets, however, there is no apparent evidence that the freelancers were biased.

Moreover, this is an odd context in which to raise concerns over freelancers. To cover the war in Gaza, The Times and other major news organizations understandably rely on Palestinian freelancers, many of whom acknowledge they aren't neutral, a fact neither the letter nor The Intercept article mentions.

The letter signers also are "alarmed" that Times investigative reporter Jeffrey Gettleman, a Pulitzer Prize winner, said during a panel discussion at Columbia University that he preferred not using the word "evidence" to describe details in the sexual violence story because it was too legalistic My colleagues apparently conclude that Gettleman was copping to writing a story unsupported by "evidence," when he seems merely to be saying he doesn't like the word.

What truly seems to bother the letter signers is not the story's reporting, as much as its impact, the difference they believe its publication made in the ongoing war. "In the minds of many people," they write (a dodge I would not let my students get away with), the story's appearance in December "fueled the fire at a pivotal moment when there might have been an opportunity to contain it before … the situation devolved into the `plausible' realm of genocide." The language is murky but the letter seems to be saying that but for The Times story the Israelis would have reversed course or the International Court of Justice would have come down harder on them.

In addition, the letter contends that The Times' continuing failure to run a correction "endangers journalists, including American reporters working in conflict zones as well as Palestinian journalists."

Along with raw speculation, missing logic, and over-the-top belief in a single New York Times story's ability to inflame the Israelis or dissuade the international community from taking tougher action, another issue hovers: Just what do these professors think The Times published that was so wrong and so potent that it helped precipitate "genocide"?

The letter writers never actually say. They cite two previous examples of Times investigations of its own reporting. Both times it was clear the newspaper had misled its readers; the inquiries were about how and why. In the lead up to the Iraq war, The Times told readers that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction when he didn't. In the scandal involving reporter Jayson Blair, The Times said Blair was places he wasn't, seeing things he didn't, and quoting people he didn't talk to.

So what did The Times get wrong in "`Screams Without Words'?" That it said sexual violence took place when it didn't? The letter signers can't possibly mean that especially after the United Nations reported "reasonable grounds to believe" that it had.

That the sexual violence that took place wasn't as significant or as systematic as The Times claimed? Perhaps, but that seems to be more of a judgment call than the kind of cataclysmic institutional failure at The Times that led to either the Iraq coverage or the Jayson Blair scandal. Moreover, could overemphasizing the systematic nature of the violence, rather than recounting the sheer brutality, have had the impact the professors claim and use to justify their call for an investigation?

I'm all for criticizing news organizations, including The Times (in fact I wrote an entire book doing just that), and I would encourage professors and news outlets to continue examining "`Screams Without Words'.'' As the letter points out, the absence of public editors to respond to complaints at The Times (and elsewhere) has left a serious accountability gap.

But not every consequential story deserves an independent investigation. In this case, the gist of the story has held up; no clear evidence of journalistic wrongdoing has emerged, and The Times has exhibited some willingness to respond to criticisms. The professors calling for an investigation therefore seem more interested in joining an ongoing propaganda war, than in righting a journalistic wrong. That's no place for a journalism professor to be.

Should American universities call the cops on protesting students? By The Economist

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Flashbangs to CLEAR occupied buildings, helmet-wearing police officers and handcuffed students: the scenes at Columbia and other American universities seem like a throwback to a rougher age. More than 1,500 students have been arrested around the country so far, and the number will probably rise in the coming weeks. For college presidents this is nightmarish. Members of Congress are trying to get them fired for indulging antisemitism; donors threaten to withdraw funding; they are supposed to be guardians of free speech and are also expected to create an environment that fosters learning and inquiry. Some outside agitators are showing up, hoping for a fight. The students, both pro-Palestinian protesters and those offended by the protests, are paying customers. And members of the faculty all think they could do a better job than the hapless administrators.

As a practical question, dealing with these protests is hard. As an intellectual question, the sort debated on college campuses, it really is not. And yet clever people are tying themselves in knots over the rights and wrongs of what is going on. To the right are politicians who have spent years denouncing elite universities for being full of snowflakes who cannot bear exposure to different opinions, and are now trying to stretch the definition of antisemitism to silence views they disagree with, preferably with the help of the National Guard. To the left are students, faculty and administrators who have embraced the idea that objectionable speech is the same as violence, and are now arguing that it is fine for people to wave banners that call for actual violence (for example, “Globalise the intifada!”).

Given that, it is helpful to stand back and think about the principles at stake. The first is the need to protect free speech. The First Amendment is a good starting-point. Though the legal obligations of public and private universities differ, all colleges should adopt a broad definition of speech and police it neutrally. They should protect the rights of students to raise their hands in class and call Israel an apartheid state, or even to express support for Hamas, because airing bad ideas is an important part of free inquiry.

But the First Amendment is not an instruction manual for creating a culture of learning. Letting protesters yell about globalising the intifada, intimidating Jewish students trying to get to class, is not consistent with that aim. Nor is there a free-speech right to occupy parts of a university. Freedom of assembly is also part of the First Amendment, but that does not mean protesters have a right to assemble anywhere, if doing so prevents other people from using public spaces. And damaging property is as much of a crime on campus as it is off it.

Protests should, wherever possible, be resolved through negotiation. Yet that requires a set of clear demands on the part of students. Some of their demands about divestment are impractical; others, such as the creation of a Palestinian state, may be consistent with government policy but are hardly within the gift of a college president; some are nonsensical. If negotiation doesn’t work, and laws and rules are broken, calling in the police is a last resort and may backfire. But universities are within their rights to do so. What those who decry the deployment of cops at Columbia and elsewhere miss is that the point of civil disobedience is sometimes to get arrested, in the hope that an unreasonable use of force draws attention to the cause and wins sympathy.

Thankfully, students have so far not attacked the police, and the officers have been relatively restrained. This is not 1968, when police shot 28 students and killed three at Orangeburg, South Carolina. The protests will fizzle in a few weeks, after graduation. But it will not be the end: protesters and the police may meet for a second round at the Democratic convention in Chicago in August. That could get a lot nastier. ■

How disinformation works—and how to counter it. The Economist

Read time: 5 minutes

Did you know that the wildfires which ravaged Hawaii last summer were started by a secret “weather weapon” being tested by America’s armed forces, and that American ngos were spreading dengue fever in Africa? That Olena Zelenska, Ukraine’s first lady, went on a $1.1m shopping spree on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue? Or that Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, has been endorsed in a new song by Mahendra Kapoor, an Indian singer who died in 2008?

These stories are, of course, all bogus. They are examples of disinformation: falsehoods that are intended to deceive. Such tall tales are being spread around the world by increasingly sophisticated campaigns. Whizzy artificial-intelligence (AI) tools and intricate networks of social-media accounts are being used to make and share eerily convincing photos, video and audio, confusing fact with fiction. In a year when half the world is holding elections, this is fuelling fears that technology will make disinformation impossible to fight, fatally undermining democracy. How worried should you be?

Disinformation has existed for as long as there have been two sides to an argument. Rameses II did not win the battle of Kadesh in 1274bc. It was, at best, a draw; but you would never guess that from the monuments the pharaoh built in honour of his triumph. Julius Caesar’s account of the Gallic wars is as much political propaganda as historical narrative. The age of print was no better. During the English civil war of the 1640s, press controls collapsed, prompting much concern about “scurrilous and fictitious pamphlets”.

The internet has made the problem much worse. False information can be distributed at low cost on social media; AI also makes it cheap to produce. Much about disinformation is murky. But in a special Science & technology section, we trace the complex ways in which it is seeded and spread via networks of social-media accounts and websites. Russia’s campaign against Ms Zelenska, for instance, began as a video on YouTube, before passing through African fake-news websites and being boosted by other sites and social-media accounts. The result is a deceptive veneer of plausibility.

Spreader accounts build a following by posting about football or the British royal family, gaining trust before mixing in disinformation. Much of the research on disinformation tends to focus on a specific topic on a particular platform in a single language. But it turns out that most campaigns work in similar ways. The techniques used by Chinese disinformation operations to bad-mouth South Korean firms in the Middle East, for instance, look remarkably like those used in Russian-led efforts to spread untruths around Europe.

The goal of many operations is not necessarily to make you support one political party over another. Sometimes the aim is simply to pollute the public sphere, or sow distrust in media, governments, and the very idea that truth is knowable. Hence the Chinese fables about weather weapons in Hawaii, or Russia’s bid to conceal its role in shooting down a Malaysian airliner by promoting several competing narratives.

All this prompts concerns that technology, by making disinformation unbeatable, will threaten democracy itself. But there are ways to minimise and manage the problem.

Encouragingly, technology is as much a force for good as it is for evil. Although AI makes the production of disinformation much cheaper, it can also help with tracking and detection. Even as campaigns become more sophisticated, with each spreader account varying its language just enough to be plausible, AI models can detect narratives that seem similar. Other tools can spot dodgy videos by identifying faked audio, or by looking for signs of real heartbeats, as revealed by subtle variations in the skin colour of people’s foreheads.

Better co-ordination can help, too. In some ways the situation is analogous to climate science in the 1980s, when meteorologists, oceanographers and earth scientists could tell something was happening, but could each see only part of the picture. Only when they were brought together did the full extent of climate change become clear. Similarly, academic researchers, ngos, tech firms, media outlets and government agencies cannot tackle the problem of disinformation on their own. With co-ordination, they can share information and spot patterns, enabling tech firms to label, muzzle or remove deceptive content. For instance, Facebook’s parent, Meta, shut down a disinformation operation in Ukraine in late 2023 after receiving a tip-off from Google.

But deeper understanding also requires better access to data. In today’s world of algorithmic feeds, only tech companies can tell who is reading what. Under American law these firms are not obliged to share data with researchers. But Europe’s new Digital Services Act mandates data-sharing, and could be a template for other countries. Companies worried about sharing secret information could let researchers send in programs to be run, rather than sending out data for analysis.

Such co-ordination will be easier to pull off in some places than others. Taiwan, for instance, is considered the gold standard for dealing with disinformation campaigns. It helps that the country is small, trust in the government is high and the threat from a hostile foreign power is clear. Other countries have fewer resources and weaker trust in institutions. In America, alas, polarised politics means that co-ordinated attempts to combat disinformation have been depicted as evidence of a vast left-wing conspiracy to silence right-wing voices online.

One person’s fact...

The dangers of disinformation need to be taken seriously and studied closely. But bear in mind that they are still uncertain. So far there is little evidence that disinformation alone can sway the outcome of an election. For centuries there have been people who have peddled false information, and people who have wanted to believe them. Yet societies have usually found ways to cope. Disinformation may be taking on a new, more sophisticated shape today. But it has not yet revealed itself as an unprecedented and unassailable threat. ■

 

What life is like down the conspiracy rabbit hole. Brent Lee

What life is like down the conspiracy rabbit hole. Brent Lee

Read time: 5 minutes

Brent Lee spent 15 years “down the rabbit hole”. He was a conspiracy theorist who believed the world was controlled by shadowy forces, that there was a “one world government” plotting to create an obedient, somnambulist blob of “enslaved” people. Lee was a “truther” and he had to wake everyone up.

In 2018 he managed to pull himself out of the conspiracy community and now helps other people get out too. In the last week, he has been watching closely as many alt-right, anti-establishment influencers and new-wave conspiracy theorists leap to the defence of Russell Brand, the comedian turned conspiracy theorist, as he is embroiled in sex assault allegations. He denies any wrongdoing.

Lee, 44, said: “You see different groups all coming together over the same thing, because in their world, if they’re coming for one of us they’re coming for all of us. They see this as a fight, a war against. They need to take down the establishment. This is saving humanity.”

Brent Lee managed to pull himself out of the conspiracy community

Brent Lee managed to pull himself out of the conspiracy community

This wider network of self-proclaimed “outsiders”defends, and amplifies, itself. Bound by their belief in libertarianism and free speech, it is an online mash-up of the neo-right, neo-left, spiritual gurus, old-school conspiracy theorists and the manosphere. They appear on one another’s podcasts and online chat shows and defend one another when one of them becomes a “victim” of a public “assassination”.

Lee continued: “The conspiracy influencers, like Russell Brand, would say: ‘I’m a truth teller, I’m just anti-establishment and telling you what’s really going on’. They believe they’re activists. But they’re just spreading conspiracy theories.”

In the past few days, an online army has been fighting Brand’s – and their own – ideological battle. Andrew Tate, the controversial influencer who is awaiting trial in Romania charged with rape and human trafficking, tweeted: “Welcome to the club.” Tommy Robinson, the far-right activist, blamed “the Matrix”, as did the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Laurence Fox, Elon Musk and Nigel Farage blamed nameless, powerful forces, as did the pundit Katie Hopkins.

Jacob Davey, who researches disinformation at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue in London, said that social networks had merged distinct groups into something more amorphous. “Ultimately these figures gain a sense of identity by seeing themselves as outsiders and challengers to the status quo, which seems more powerful than traditional left-right divides,” he said. “That means we often have strange bedfellows.”

It is certainly a web. The alt-media pundit Patrick Bet-David (7.37 million total followers on a variety of platforms) interviewed Andrew Tate (9.5 million); offered the conspiracy theorist Tucker Carlson (10.4 million) a show on his “network”; interviewed Alex Jones (350,000); and then went on Brand’s podcast. Brand (19.3 million) supported Carlson when he was fired from Fox and went on Joe Rogan’s podcast (27.4 million), who in turn interviewed Alex Jones, who interviewed Elon Musk (157 million), who then came out in support of Brand.

Alex Jones during his trial in Connecticut last year

Alex Jones during his trial in Connecticut last year

TYLER SIZEMORE/HEARST CONNECTICUT MEDIA/REUTERS

“Disenfranchisement seems to be the key to their unity,” said Joe Ondrak, head of UK investigations at Logically, a misinformation-tracking company. Their ideology, he said, was also based in the conspiracy narrative “the Great Reset”.

This theory was based on a white paper published by the World Economic Forum after the pandemic, said Ondrak, and “seen by them as a way that the ‘deep state’ was trying to control people in order to achieve the New World Order. It’s the big apocalypse that’s coming. The outcome of this would be the end of human freedoms as we know it, worse than we can ever imagine.”

Brand has produced more than 20 online videos about the Great Reset, beginning around 2021, with many racking up between one and three million views. He also started posting videos about whether the US planned the Russian coup, Covid lockdowns being exercises in social control, US “biolabs” in Ukraine, and interviews with figures including Robert F Kennedy Jr, who peddles conspiracy theories about his father’s assassination.

In July, he held his Community festival in Hay-on-Wye, Powys, an annual three-day event costing £250 a ticket. Followers who earnestly referred to him as “the messiah” and “the oracle” gathered to participate in guided meditations and intimacy sessions, and listen to talks intended to help them “stay awake” to how the media, government, pharmaceutical and food industries want to control them. Among retired white collar workers, yoga instructors and middle-class families, were loyal followers of Brand’s Rumble account.

The night before the sex claims were published, Brand decided to deny the allegations against him with a video on social media, rather than through his lawyers.

“I’m aware that you guys have been saying in the comments for a while, ‘watch out Russell, they’re coming for you, you’re getting too close to the truth, Russell Brand did not kill himself’,” he said. “It’s been clear to me, or at least it feels to me, like there’s a serious and concerted agenda to control these kind of spaces, and these kind of voices, and I mean my voice along with your voice.”

On the bookshelf behind him was The Fourth Turning, a manifesto which argues that the US is nearing a crisis, a looming apocalypse, plunging the nation into disaster. It is a favourite of Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former political strategist.

Brent Lee said that Brand’s term for his followers – “my awakening wonders” – is a “conspiracy dog whistle”. “He is saying we’re the ones that are truly awake, and he is the man out there fighting for us, spreading the truth.”

Being “awake”, he said, had its roots in Q-Anon, the conspiracy theory that believes it must fight against Satan-worshipping paedophiles in government, business and the media. Lee said: “To them, ‘waking up’ is about seeing that everything is controlled.” Brand’s reference to not killing himself is a shorthand used by conspiracy influencers to suggest they are under threat and their death might be covered up. Tate often says the same thing.

Lee himself moved away from conspiracy theories after the Brexit referendum and Trump’s election made him realise that people had power, that votes were real and “this one world government, new world order, doesn’t exist”. His journey out, however, has been “difficult” and “isolating”, repairing relationships as well as deeply researching all of the topics he had previously misinterpreted. Today he has a podcast helping to pull other people out of the rabbit hole, called Some Dare Call It Conspiracy.

“Conspiracy theorists want to save people, we must remember that,” he said. “And when things become heated, as they are now, it feels like you’re making headway, that you might actually get the message out, wake the world up to the control being asserted by the powers. Conspiracism is defined by their unity so they have to protect each other. It is a leaderless cult.”

I’m a scholar of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. By Dov Waxman

I’m a scholar of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a longtime advocate for peace and for Palestinian rights. I have publicly opposed Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, and its blockade and now destruction of Gaza. I support the rights of students and faculty to peacefully protest against Israel, including by establishing protest encampments, such as the one on my campus at UCLA. I do not want these protest camps to be removed by the police, whose propensity for unnecessary and excessive use of force is well-established.

As a Jew, I do not personally feel threatened or unsafe because of the protest encampment at UCLA. I know some of the students taking part and believe they are well-intentioned. Many, probably most, of the protesters are simply horrified by the mass killing and near-famine in Gaza and want it to end. So do I. But I cannot join this protest because it is not just a protest against the war in Gaza. Among the demands of the protest organizers is the demand to “sever all UC-wide connections to Israeli universities, including study abroad programs, fellowships, seminars, and research collaborations, and UCLA’s Nazarian Center.” Needless to say, I oppose the demand to boycott the Nazarian Center, which I direct. The Center is devoted to the academic study of Israel and has no ties to the Israeli government. I also oppose boycotting Israeli academic institutions and academic boycotts in general. But it isn’t only the demands of the protest organizers that I have a problem with. One of the organizations behind the protest, Students for Justice in Palestine, has expressed support for Hamas and has even celebrated the massacre of Israelis on October 7. Being in solidarity with Palestinians does not necessitate supporting Hamas. On the contrary, Hamas oppresses Palestinians and has no concern for the lives of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. They have openly stated that they are willing to sacrifice countless Palestinian lives—“martyrs”—for their cause, which is the ultimate eradication of Israel. They have spent billions building a vast underground network to protect themselves and their weaponry, but they haven’t built a single bomb shelter for Gazan civilians or sheltered them in their tunnels. They are prolonging the devastating war in Gaza, and the humanitarian crisis there, in order to maintain their power and authoritarian rule in Gaza. I know that many people in the pro-Palestinian movement don’t support Hamas and don’t praise the October 7 massacre, but groups like SJP lead the movement on many college campuses, exploiting the sympathy that many students rightly feel for the suffering of Palestinians. Students and faculty demonstrating in support of Palestinians shouldn’t ignore the fact that the organizers of these demonstrations are, in many cases, ideologically committed to eradicating Israel and expelling Israeli Jews, supportive of violence against Israeli civilians, and willing to ignore or even justify Hamas’ strategy of sacrificing Palestinian civilians for their political ends.