Trump’s New Big LieThe Atlantic - Politics / by David A. Graham

 / Sep 14, 2024 at 12:42 AM

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“You are being lied to,” Elon Musk posted on X yesterday. He’d know, because he’s doing the lying.

Musk was retweeting a wildly false post insisting that violent crime is on the rise, by an X user whose avatar is an imperial stormtrooper from Star Wars (red flag!). The account’s previous brush with infamy came when Donald Trump posted a screenshot of the account suggesting that Swifties supported him; Taylor Swift cited that in endorsing Kamala Harris this week. Despite beginning with the words “FACT CHECK” in bold—another red flag—the post is actually a vivid example of a new big lie driven by Donald Trump and his allies, full of easily debunked nonsense.

The user’s fundamental claim is that despite what the FBI’s data and all other legitimate statistical sources show, crime—especially violent crime—is actually rising, as Trump claimed in this week’s debate. The former president tried to say that crime was up, and when moderator David Muir corrected him, Trump replied, “The FBI—they were defrauding statements. They didn’t include the worst cities. They didn’t include the cities with the worst crime. It was a fraud.” This is false. Violent crime is down. Trump is wrong, as is Musk.

[David A. Graham: Trump’s illusory answers to imaginary crime problems]

The X user makes a slightly, though only slightly, more sophisticated version of Trump’s argument. Or rather, he or she throws more claims at the wall in the hopes they’ll stick, but they shouldn’t. I’ll take some of the big claims in order. As the tweet reads:

Less than a year after taking office, Biden-Harris’s administration had the FBI dismantle the long-standing crime reporting system, replacing it in 2021 with a new, ‘woke’ system that is optional for state and local law enforcement agencies to use.

Here’s what’s real: Starting in 2021, the FBI’s national crime estimates were based on reports to a system called the National Incident-Based Reporting System, moving from the old Summary Reporting System. NIBRS itself is not new; it dates to 1988. The Biden administration had nothing to do with the switch. The decision to move to NIBRS was made in 2015, and it was implemented in January 2021, before Trump left office.

The old Summary Reporting System gathered only limited data on a limited number of crimes. The switch was intended to improve the quality of America’s crime data. But the data remain plagued with troubles. For one thing, national crime rates are not available until late the following year: 2023’s numbers are currently expected from the FBI some time later this month. And because the country has an estimated 18,000 law-enforcement agencies—from the 36,000 officers of the NYPD to local constabularies with a single officer—collecting good data from all of them is hard.

NIBRS has never solved all of those problems, but it does provide more detailed data than SRS, tracking more types of crimes, for example. The reason the FBI kept using SRS was that not enough agencies had switched to NIBRS. To fix that, the FBI announced that, starting with 2021 numbers, it would collect data only from agencies that reported via NIBRS, and would stop using the old system.

Crime experts widely agree that, as a result of that transition, the numbers for 2021 are dubious. In the past, typically a small percentage of agencies had failed to report stats to the FBI—something like 5 or 6 percent. In 2021, a third of U.S. agencies failed to report. It’s important to remember that the FBI crime estimates are just that: estimates. Because the FBI had worse data, it had to make more assumptions in 2021

But by 2022, the most recently available year of FBI data, that problem was largely solved, partly because more agencies had shifted over to NIBRS. The X post says, “As a result, at least 6,000 law enforcement agencies aren't providing data, meaning that 25% of the country’s crime data is not captured by the FBI.” That claim may be based on a July 2023 Marshall Project article saying that 6,000 agencies hadn’t submitted 2022 data. That was accurate at the time, but then the FBI decided to allow submissions via the old system, which meant that overall participation matched the historical average. I have no idea where the 25 percent number comes from, but all cities with more than 1 million people were included in the 2022 FBI data, while small towns and state police tend to have lower reporting rates. A greater number of crimes take place in larger cities, and no category of agency is at less than 77 percent, so that claim appears to be completely invented.

The rest of the post doesn’t stand up either. For example, it implies that liberal policies by prosecutors in New York City are falsely driving down crime rates in the data. But Charles Fain Lehman, a fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, notes that reported violent crime in New York has actually risen—hilariously, something that would presumably help the poster’s overall argument, if he or she weren’t so sloppy. Even so, the charge misses the point, because prosecutors don’t report these numbers—police departments do. These are statistics not about charges or convictions but about crime reports. Whatever the failings of progressive prosecutors, they don’t have anything to do with FBI crime estimates.

The X post also claims that NIBRS is “woke” and allows “agencies to record pronouns and gender identities, including transgender and nonbinary, as well as the sexual preferences of both criminals and victims.” As far as I can tell, this is invented out of whole cloth. The submission specifications include nothing like that.

“It’s not far-fetched to imagine that the Biden-Harris regime and the Democrats replaced the FBI’s universal crime data system with a new optional system to fabricate this massive decrease in ‘reported’ crime,” the post goes on.

But as we’ve seen, it’s not only far-fetched; all of the predicates are untrue. (The system has also always been voluntary.) The other problem is that although the FBI numbers are the acknowledged national standard, they’re not the only numbers available that show the same results. Many cities and states make their numbers publicly available online. Those numbers tell a consistent story: In most places, crime rose sharply in 2020 and has been receding ever since, though in general it’s still higher than in 2019. The Real-Time Crime Index, an invaluable new tool for tracking changes in crime made by the independent statistics firm AH Datalytics, shows the clear downward trend in violent crime and other offenses.

The X post is more or less totally false, but its goal is not to correct the record but to spread an atmosphere of fear and paranoia—to suggest to voters that they are not safe, and that the best way to guarantee their safety from the “American carnage” Trump has described is to vote him into office and abridge certain people’s rights. Trump has always seized on crime fears and lied about incidence of crime, but he’s working especially hard at it now. In addition to the inconvenience of his own 34 felony convictions, Trump has the problem that crime spiked in his last year in office and has been dropping since. Rather than change the subject, Trump wants to change perceptions of reality.

Crime data are not as reliable, or as timely, as would be ideal. Some crimes—especially those such as domestic violence and child abuse, whose victims feel shame—are thought to be drastically underreported. People who distrust police may also hesitate to report crimes. Given these difficulties, researchers tend to look carefully at the murder rate, because it is thought to be the most reliable statistic, as murders are almost always reported, and nearly impossible to hide. Today, murder statistics also point to a general downturn in crime. And that gets at the real lesson: No crime data should be taken in isolation. It’s essential to look at as many metrics as possible, understand their limitations, and emphasize trends over absolute numbers.

[David A. Graham: America’s peace wave]

But not all the statistics measure the same thing. Trump and his campaign yesterday cited the National Crime Victimization Survey to insist that crime really is up sharply. But as AH Datalytics’ Jeff Asher, the best guide to understanding crime statistics, has written, NCVS is less reliable than the FBI crime trends because it doesn’t include murder (homicide victims seldom respond to surveys), doesn’t specify the year crimes occurred (it asks about the past six months), and is subject to the same problems that have bedeviled other public-opinion polls in recent years. But, Asher contends, the trends in the two sources usually align anyway: “Both measures tell us that the nation’s violent crime rate in 2022 was substantially lower than it was in the 1990s, largely in line [with] where it was over most of the last 15 years, and likely slightly higher than where it stood in 2019.” The numbers for 2023, released yesterday, show a decline from the previous year. It’s also nonsensical for Trump to claim that the FBI is producing fraudulent numbers but then cite Justice Department figures as the gospel truth.

Mark Twain joked that there are lies, damned lies, and statistics. But some statistics are actually pretty reliable, which is why cynics turn to lies instead.

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The Joy of Watching Kamala Harris Beat Down an Old Man. By The Rude Pundit

Sep 12, 2024 at 2:57 AM

It's not hyperbolic to say that Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, beat the shit out of former president (no, really, he was once president. Of the whole United States) and current GOP nominee Donald Trump at last night's debate. She didn't just get the best of him, throwing down genuine facts and insulting observations in equal measure. She beat him down in a way that he probably hasn't been beaten down since his hideous father likely pounded him. She degraded his record, reduced his presence, and obliterated his talking points. She was, to this incredibly biased observer, near perfect in her execution of the execution of Trump's ego. Harris fucked him up good. 

And, goddamn, we needed it. We needed to see someone say exactly who he is with clarity and energy, someone willing to go there, to all those weird and dangerous alleyways where his brain resides, and someone willing to call the Devil "the Devil" to his stupid, evil face. The dichotomy was stark. She's smart; he's dumb. She's poised; he's belligerent. She gives a damn; he couldn't fucking care less. She's lively; he's a fucking lump.

On that last point, Trump barely physically moved the entire debate. It was weird, like he was a mannequin. He looked at Harris very few times. The biggest motions he made were to lean into the mic for emphasis on some moronic point or other or to contort the mushy flesh of his face into a shit-eating grin. Gravity has not been kind to Trump. Always a frowner, his jowls are now pulled earthward by time and weight into a bullfrog-like permanent scowl awaiting a chance to bellow.

Meanwhile, Harris, at her lectern, danced around him with the physical lightness and fierce confidence of a boxer who knows exactly when and where to punch. She baited him constantly, and he fell into every single trap. And when he fell, she hogtied him again and again, like a rodeo cowboy who lassoed a steer. Unlike that steer, which might learn to not leave the pen after a few hog-tyings, Trump would rush out crazily every time, only to end up with his hooves in the air. 

On substance, it was laughable to watch Harris, an accomplished, experienced woman who worked her ass off to get where she is, go up against a convicted felon and rapist whose TV celebrity and blatant racism inspired the worst fucking people in the country to vote for him. You were literally seeing a prosecutor take on a game show host and it went exactly like you'd think that would go.

Every time Trump lied, she tore him a new asshole. When he said, "Every legal scholar, every Democrat, every Republican, liberal, conservative, they all wanted this issue to be brought back to the states where the people could vote," she ripped into him about the suffering that the end of guaranteed abortion rights has brought to women in places where it's banned. When he refused to answer whether or not he'd support Ukraine in its war with Russia, she gutted him by saying that he would let Russia have Ukraine and "Putin would be sitting in Kiev with his eyes on the rest of Europe, starting with Poland. And why don’t you tell the 800,000 Polish Americans right here in Pennsylvania how quickly you would give up for the sake of favor" and talked about how world leaders think he's a fucking joke, an easily flattered bitch boy. By the end, she had torn so many new assholes in him that he'll be shitting out of his arms, legs, and chest for months.

And when Trump would say something completely divorced from reality, Harris would smile as if she thought it was time to give Gramps his pudding cup, shut off Fox "news," and tuck him in. He couldn't deal with her constant emasculation of him. You could see his brain, which is always ready to overheat from the slightest usage, short circuit when she brought up how people leave his rallies because they're bored or when she pointed out all the people who worked with him who fucking despise him now. Once that happened, he couldn't get control again. 

By the way, bragging that you fire people you just hired a few months or a year before isn't the own he thinks it is. It just says that you suck at management. 

But the most disturbing part of the debate was how Trump brings every fucking issue back to his warped view of immigration. Harris nailed it early on when she said, "I’ll tell you something, he’s going to talk about immigration a lot tonight, even when it’s not the subject that is being raised."And she was right. Jobs? "We have millions of people pouring into our country from prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums, and they’re coming in and they’re taking jobs that are occupied right now by African-Americans and Hispanics and unions." His rallies? "What they have done to our country by allowing these millions and millions of people to come into our country and look at what’s happening to the towns all over the United States." January 6? "I ask what about all the people that are pouring into our country and killing people that she allowed to pour in?" Trump was flailing and always returned to this well. It's like watching the world's stupidest gorilla fall out of a tree again and again and instead of giving up, he shits in his hand and rubs his face with it, thinking it shows how strong he is when all it does is make him have a face full of shit.

The other thing that's clear is the only source of information for Trump is right-wing media because it is constantly fawning over him.  At one point, he cited "Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Jesse, all of these people" for debunking something. The whole "Haitians eat pets" thing came from click-seeking bullshitters on the right and no one who isn't terminally online would understand a single fucking thing about that (trust me - I've had more than a few people ask, "What the fuck?"). When he was fact-checked on that by moderator David Muir, Trump said one of the most pathetic things I've ever heard a grown up say, let alone someone running for president: "But the people on television are saying their dog was eaten by the people that went there." I'd go into hiding from embarrassment, but I'm capable of feeling shame. 

There were too many idiotic things that Trump said to mention. When he said about Putin, "He’s got nuclear weapons. They don’t ever talk about that. He’s got nuclear weapons. Nobody ever thinks about that," I thought, "Yeah, they do, motherfucker. If he didn't have nukes, NATO would have bombed him into submission." When he said that Democrats wouldn't vote "to change" the Affordable Care Act, I thought, "No, motherfucker. The bill wasn't to change anything. It was to get rid of it and then hope your replacement plan might go beyond the concept stage at some point."

Harris has faced so many smarter, sharper, quicker opponents. It was a joy to see her treat him like the skeevy corner masturbator that he is. 

And, yeah, I know, I know, I fucking know that this debate didn't change many minds. One thing I hear often about what I write is that I'm preaching to the choir. And my response is always the same: "The choir deserves to be preached to. That's why they go to church all the time." If I were to expand on the metaphor, I'd say that there is always a chance that a few sinners will come into the church and get religion. That's not the only reason to preach, but it sure as hell is nice when it happens. 

Harris's evisceration of Trump and the entire empty charade of MAGA ideology might sway a few people in the narrow swath of voters who are still persuadable. But the real accomplishment was in pumping up the rest of us, we the choir, and gettin us geared up to get out there and work to make this presidency happen and end the tyranny of Trump's drain on our national spirit. She showed us how to handle it: with the sword of muted rage and a dagger of a smile. 

Kamala Harris Is the First Post-Trump Candidate. By Charlie Warzel

Read time: 5 minutes

Kamala Harris’s Secret Weapon

She recognizes Trump for what he is.

September 11, 2024, 11:08 AM ET

The definitive image from last night’s debate is a very specific split-screen view of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. In the left frame, Trump is mid-monologue, lips pursed and gesticulating. Harris occupies the right box, clearly watching her opponent. She’s leaning back ever so slightly, her hand on her chin. On her face is something halfway between a grimace and an incredulous smile—a facial expression that many Harris supporters likely recognize as a universal, exasperated response to a Trump rant.

It was a good look. While Trump seethed, Harris seemed amused. She offered righteous indignation while attacking Trump’s position on abortion, his love for authoritarian strongmen, and his bald-faced lies about immigrant crime. She effectively baited Trump numerous times—most memorably about crowd sizes at his rallies. All of this was rhetorically significant on its own, and yet, somehow, Harris seemed most withering and effective in the moments when Trump was speaking—the moments when she was able to look across the stage and act almost as an audience barometer for Trump’s answers. Crucially, Harris didn’t come off as furious or offended as she listened to Trump’s lies. Instead, she looked at ABC’s cameras the way you might look at your spouse in the presence of an overserved relative who doesn’t realize he’s making a scene at Thanksgiving dinner.

David Frum: How Harris roped a dope

“I have traveled the world as vice president of the United States, and world leaders are laughing at Donald Trump,” Harris said at one point. “I have talked with military leaders, some of whom worked with you, and they say you’re a disgrace.” In another moment, she referenced his repeated election denial and suggested that perhaps Trump was confused and lacked the temperament to hold the presidency. “The American people deserve better,” she said.

What Harris’s body language and forceful rhetoric have in common is that they diminish Trump, and do so in a manner that succeeds where other Trump opponents have failed. Harris is the first candidate in a primary or general election to embody what feels like a “post-Trump” ethos. In other words, she’s the first person to run against the former president who does not treat him as the center of the U.S. political solar system. Rather than cave to his gravitational, attentional pull, Harris offers a different version of Trump: He’s not the sun; he’s the guy who has overstayed his welcome at a party.

In particular, Harris succeeds where her predecessor failed. Joe Biden’s early campaign quite accurately positioned Trump as a grave threat to democracy and the political order. But doing so made the election exclusively about Trump and backed Democrats into a corner where their messaging and identity were focused on what they opposed, rather than what they stood for. Although Biden is no longer the nominee, his well-delivered speech at the Democratic National Convention embodied this grim ethos: Even while making the case for his successful presidency, the speech was firmly situated in the context of the existential threat of Trumpism. This, to some degree, is the strategy that every one of Trump’s opponents has adopted, and for good reason: Trump is a lying, ranting, twice-impeached convicted felon who has repeatedly refused to accept the results of the 2020 election. He has promised that a second presidential term would be a “bloody story,” referring to mass deportations. There is every reason to take Trump’s reelection bid with the utmost seriousness.

Harris was able to reckon with the darker elements of a Trump presidency while also seizing on the fundamental absurdity of Trump as a candidate—usually with her expressions and body language. Instead of getting baited into Trump tangents—childishly arguing over golf prowess, for example, as Biden did—she treated his digressions as unserious or unworthy. Harris’s facial expressions last night made for easy memes and screenshots, but they’re also of a piece with Democrats’ most salient line of attack—that Republicans are “weird” and enmeshed in an extremely online far-right universe of alternative facts. The weird critique has stuck for Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, precisely because it is dismissive of Republican talking points. Instead of pearl-clutching, it presents the MAGA arm of the party as lost and out of touch. Harris’s incredulous split-screen looks during last night’s debate were, essentially, the visual embodiment of that critique. Her constant baiting throughout the night—calling Trump a disgrace and needling him about the size of his rallies—successfully lured Trump into long tangents that are legible only to those steeped in an extended universe of right-wing viral grievance.

For instance: Harris’s comment about crowd size sent Trump on an 89-second rant about migrants stealing and eating pets in Springfield, Ohio—a reference to a debunked, racist meme spread by the MAGA faithful online and across conservative cable-news channels. As Trump delivered his deranged monologue, Harris laughed on the other side of the screen. When Trump finished, one of ABC’s moderators, David Muir, noted that there had been no “credible reports” of immigrants harming pets in Springfield. Caught flat-footed, Trump offered a feeble rebuttal: “I’ve seen people on television!”

Read: The worst cat memes you’ve ever seen

It’s unclear just how much presidential debates matter, even in close elections, though some evidence suggests that they don’t change many voters’ minds. Regardless, Harris’s performance managed to cast Trump as a dusty old artifact—a massive paradigm shift, as Trump has so thoroughly saturated our collective attention that he can feel like an immovable object. Trumpism’s shock-and-awe approach—the trolling, dog whistling, and constant memes and tweets—has been absurd and threatening since the real-estate mogul rode down his golden escalator in 2015. But it has also often felt ascendant—the early stages of a cynical, frequently cruel, often internet-powered faux-populist political project. What Harris’s campaign and debate style propose, however, is a different view of Trump, not as the central figure in American politics but as a vestigial element of a movement that’s so curdled by grievance and enmeshed in an alternate reality that it is becoming not just culturally irrelevant, but something far worse: pitiable.

About the Author

Charlie Warzel is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of its newsletter Galaxy Brain, about technology, media, and big ideas. He can be reached via email.

A conflict built on centuries of myth-making

A conflict built on centuries of myth-making. 

‘Forever wars’ do not exist but bringing peace to the Holy Land is complicated by so much of its history being wilfully misunderstood. 

Jerusalem is at the heart of Israeli and Palestinian national identities but many moderates in both camps believe a compromise solution is impossible. 

Simon Sebag Montefiore

Friday September 06 2024, 5.00pm BST, The Times

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There was a moment during the last significant negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, in May 2008, that is relevant today. Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian minister of negotiations, told the Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni: “It’s no secret we’re offering you the biggest Yerushalayim in history. But we must talk about the concept of al-Quds. We’ve taken your interests and concerns into account … ”

Three years later these conversations were leaked to the media as the Palestine Papers. There was an outcry by Palestinians against Erekat, who was accused of treason. He resigned, suffering a heart attack. His treason was using the word Yerushalayim, the Hebrew for Jerusalem, alongside al-Quds, Arabic for Jerusalem. Yet he was no traitor but a brave, noble peacemaker — and an inspiration to this writer: there can be no Yerushalayim without al-Quds, no Israel without Palestine, no Palestine without Israel. One Holy City, one Holy Land — but ultimately, two nations, two republics.

In our world crisis of today, amid the blood-brimmed heartbreak of war and slaughter, that dream may seem naive yet there is little choice. Nonetheless, for it to happen titanic changes must take place in both nations. Essential is a respect for the history of the other side. History really matters in the Middle East; myths are as important as the real history but even as a historian, I think there is way too much attention paid to history in the Middle East. What should matter is how people want to live now; their right to live in peace, in their own country.

It is our reverence for the semi-sacred legitimacy granted by history that gives it lethal propulsive power. People live for it, quote it, die for it. History itself is never history: it changes, shapeshifts; it haunts us for ever. That is why it matters; why we have to fight for a balanced history, as much as such a thing is possible. History cannot be undone nor invented to suit modern emotions or ideologies.

As the Erekat story illustrates, it is impossible to make peace without acknowledging the history of the other. During the Camp David negotiations in 2000, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) leader Yasser Arafat shocked President Clinton and the Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak by insisting there had never been a Jewish temple in Jerusalem, a lie widely repeated by Palestinian leaders. On the other side, there are plenty of Israeli nationalists who insist the Palestinian nation is itself an invention.

That is why I originally wrote a history of the Holy City/Holy Land that would encompass all peoples, all religions, all empires, from the dawn of history to the 20th century, where my narrative climaxed with the creation of Israel in 1948 and the 1967 war. There are many histories of the conflict, most of them wildly biased, some pro-Israel, most anti-Israel. This, I hope, was a balanced chronicle of both peoples, glorying in and respecting their narratives, though history of this tournament of scorpions remains a huge challenge.

When it came out in 2011, it still seemed negotiations would be revived. Instead, for ten years dominated by the Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel thrived in the presumption that no peace process was necessary while the Palestinians were split into two warring factions: the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas, which seemed content to terrorise Gaza with its Islamist tyranny, funded by Qatari and Iranian cash, bountiful western aid — and Israeli complaisance.

This week protesters in Tel Aviv called for a ceasefire and a deal to return Israeli hostages held by Hamas

This week protesters in Tel Aviv called for a ceasefire and a deal to return Israeli hostages held by Hamas

SAEED QAQ/GETTY

On October 7 Hamas’s diabolical slaughter was so alien to the sophisticated, tolerant mainstream of Arab culture and history that I was reminded not of sporadic Arab violence against Jews during the Ottoman centuries or British rule but of the fanatical religious hatred and frenzied evil of the Crusader massacre of Muslims and Jews in Jerusalem on July 15, 1099. That is no coincidence: nothing about Hamas is truly rooted in Arab history. Its Islamism is a new ideology, that of the Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928, and its eliminationist racism derives from 20th-century European racism and fascism. Yet since October 7, history has become a sparkwheel of hatred and ignorance on the internet. Social media has its charms yet is simultaneously a cesspit and dumpster fire of lies and loathing, a reliquary of falsehoods, prejudices, conspiracies. So often the history is not merely untrue but a brazen calumny — and when lies are corrected and the actual history asserted, the latest phrase, emblazoned on student banners astonishing in its arrogance and ignorance, is: “I aint reading all that!”

That was when I decided to update and revise my book to show how the Jewish and Arab histories of the Holy Land are ancient and intertwined. Both were indigenous, both ruled their own kingdoms, both conquered and colonised others too. Both peoples were conquered and colonised themselves by Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans and, after the eclipse of the Arab empire, by Christian Crusaders, then Islamic Mamluks and Ottomans. After the Romans crushed the last Judean prince, Simon bar Kochba in AD135, there were always Jews living in the Holy Land but no state until 1948; Palestinian Arabs always lived there as subjects of the empires of others, except for the short 18th-century rule of Sheikh Zahir al-Umar.

One of the tragedies of the modern conflict is the bleak binary of two nationalisms locked in a death-grip, justified by the simplistic outrages of eliminationist anti-Israel terrorists and western activists, and anti-Palestinian Israeli religious nationalists. Neither reflect the history of the region. Jerusalem today is the heart of Palestinian and Israeli national identities yet the history of the Holy Land is a multi-ethnic, multisect chronicle of indigenous peoples, Arab and Jewish, alike descended from Canaanites in the ancient Levant as well as outsiders, settlers, colonists and pilgrims who have included Arabs, Jews, Turks, Armenians and Greeks. This reflects its geostrategic position as bridge between Europe, Asia and Africa; its coastal road marched by so many armies, the pivot of the east Mediterranean, the meeting place, gallery and arcade, casbah, souk and bazaar of many peoples.

There are 5.3 million Palestinians outside Israel itself, three million in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, 2.3 million in Gaza. There are nine million Israelis, including two million Israeli Arab citizens and seven million Jewish Israelis. Both peoples have grown inexorably since 1948. One thing is certain: Israel should not and cannot rule five million Palestinians indefinitely without dangerous degradation of its state and society, as we are witnessing.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the two communities can live together. Israeli Jews and many Israeli Arabs coexist; many of the latter, proud Israelis, heroically rushed to aid their Jewish co-citizens on October 7 and gave their lives. This was understood by earlier leaders: Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion both negotiated with Arab leaders of Syria and Jordan, the Hashemite brothers Faisal and Abdullah, both kings, who discussed between 1918 and 1949 various ways to encompass Jewish entities and communities within regional Arab federations, believing Jews and Arabs could thrive together. Palestinian nationalists in the 1920s and 1930s also saw regional solutions, proposing Palestine be part of Syrian, Egyptian or Jordanian kingdoms. A single-state “solution” now seems impossible without bloody strife if not slaughter. The vision of two nations, two republics, with all its flaws, remains plausible if incredibly difficult. Two nations, two republics. Words matter. I prefer to use this new, plain coinage to the weary slogan of the “two-state solution”, tainted by the failed peace processes, for the simple reason that the word solution implies a finality that I now believe is unrealistic. Some frankness is obligatory here. October 7 may have placed the Palestinian plight back at the centre of the global agenda but its gleeful sadism, rapine, butchery and bloodthirst, its hostage-taking, its pure evil, have probably put it back by decades for many Israelis.

The ferocious Israeli-Hamas war in Gaza, with its unbearable civilian cost, may have discredited peaceful existence with Israel for many Palestinians. Yet there is no other way except endless killing and suffering. Not everyone would embrace this compromise. Some Palestinians hope for Israel’s downfall and the expulsion if not slaughter of its Jews, because the Holy Land is God-given Arab Islamic territory. This is the view of Hamas and its many supporters. There have always been Israelis who believe in the subjugation and expulsion of Palestinians because every inch is God-given Jewish Promised Land. Such Israeli extremists now disgrace the disastrous present government and menace the very existence of Israel almost as grievously as its external enemies. Other decent people in both nations believe two republics will never be feasible in terms of security or trust. But these views have waxed and waned over the decades and will continue to do so, depending on circumstance. The essential compromise settlement, the vision of two nations, two republics, may never win over everyone but it should and could win over enough people in both nations to work. It is not a “solution” that totally ends conflict. It is a pragmatic arrangement of compromise.

History and geography offer some perspective. Looking back over the mere century since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the Israel–Palestine conflict is both exceptional and utterly typical of the region. Many of the nation-states created between 1930 and 1948 are unstable to the point of disintegration: Syria, Yemen, Libya and Sudan, mired in civil war and ethnic strife, cursed by tyranny. Lebanon, a warning against one-state solutions, survived spasms of civil war only to be captured by Hezbollah.

More than a quarter of the 400 million people of the Arab world live in states dominated by parastate militias. The most successful states are the wealthy absolutist monarchies, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and a flawed democracy, Israel.

The tragedies of the region are made worse by the clumsy interference of outsiders driven by the international obsession in — and superior righteousness inspired by — Jerusalem and the Holy Land.

Ever since the Roman campaigns scattered the Jews, the Holy Land has had a significance far beyond its location, thanks to an extraordinary concentration of events: Constantine’s conversion, the universality of the Bible across Europe (and later America), the Christianisation of the Arab world, the mystical significance of Jerusalem in the Jewish, Christian and then Islamic revelations, the Arab and Islamic imperial conquests, Crusades and Saladin’s reconquest. The 19th-century Christian re-focus on the Holy Land, the Balfour Declaration, League of Nations mandate and UN partition confirmed this unique sacred-cultural status even in an era of secular institutions and international law. The centrality of Jerusalem and the Holy Land in wider western culture, added to that of Aqsa and al-Quds in Islamic and Palestinian culture, is a super-multiplier that magnifies and distorts both exponentially.

It is ironic that the western fixation is based on a sense of familiarity, if not moral ownership, that originates in European crusades as well as imperialism and orientalism, deeply, often unconsciously, buried in the western soul. The Holy Land acts like a strange carnival mirror in which we see a version of ourselves, past and present, serving as a proxy passion play for local struggles in distant places and a contorting lens through which we see others more dramatically, crudely and righteously, which wondrously grants instant superiority without any jeopardy for ourselves: the Jerusalem Effect. The romanticisation of Hamas, a murderous religious sect that abhors every tenet of liberal democracy, led by Yahya Sinwar, a man who made his name torturing men to death by hand because they were homosexuals, is the classic example of this — a mistake rarely made by people born and bred in the Middle East. The fetish is based too on the history of the Jewish people, half of whom now live in Israel, and reflects their exceptional place and role in western history — now expressed in new strains of antisemitism retooled for an age of formal “anti-racism” that inverts recent Jewish history and uses it against Jews — and the safety of Israelis.

The various peace plans to end the conflict, encouraged by the Saudis and Americans, deliver huge and real gains for each player

The various peace plans to end the conflict, encouraged by the Saudis and Americans, deliver huge and real gains for each player

DAWOUD ABO ALKAS/GETTY

At a time when the academy is committed to a critique of the historical morality of western states, the role of European empires in that history has intensified this entitlement to judge. This volcano of moral hysteria is ignited not only by fashionable ideologies, cultural wars, historical illiteracy and ancient bigotries but also by the maddening algorithmic whirlpool of social media. All harvest new hatreds to feed into a conflict not short of old ones.

Peace-making is about psychology as well as power: “The psychological barrier is 70 per cent of the problem,” said President Sadat of Egypt as he bravely flew into Jerusalem, “the substance is just 30.” But it is not only one side that must reassess their worldview. For Palestinian extremists, the long-held dream of destroying Israel and the urge to murder Israelis, the thrall to killing cults, martyrdom fetishes and maximalist exclusivity of a pure “Arab Palestine”, only ensure slaughter, interminable impoverishment and moral desolation. For Israeli extremists, the urge to deny Palestinians rights, safety, respect and statehood, the thrall to cults of messianic chiliasm, Jewish supremacy and maximalist expansion, mean slaughter, international isolation, moral desolation and a steep slope towards the degradation of the Jewish republic.

The Jewish extremists who besmirch Netanyahu’s disgraceful ministry and seek to inflame Jerusalem and the West Bank should never again be allowed near an Israeli cabinet. Both sides must change; both must reject the extremists in their ranks. And not only within their ranks. Israel’s golden opportunities and gravest threats — of Saudi conciliation and Iranian menace — are linked to the Palestinian question but also profoundly based on wider geopolitical conflicts. This is both a local ethnic conflict and a theatre in a wider tournament between America and the open societies with their Sunni Arab allies — Saudi, the UAE and Egypt — and Iran with its senior ally, Russia, and its parastate vassals — Assadist Syria, Hezbollah, Houthis and Hamas, all enemies of every value we in the liberal democracies hold dear.

At the moment, many banners of the Palestinian cause are waved by activists who benefit from the freedoms of democracies yet belong in the camp of democracy’s intolerant, authoritarian enemies. A Palestinian republic will only happen when the Palestinian movement separates itself from these eliminationists. States can make peace with past enemies who accept their existence but there is no point in making peace with those who wish to kill you, now and tomorrow. Yet amid the hellscape of today’s slaughter, rage and grief, the killing of civilians, the red mist of war and the looming danger of wider regional conflict, out of the darkness of this nightmare for both peoples, the dawn must come.

The cruellest tragedies can sometimes shake established views and lead to new visions and acts of courage ­— as they did for Sadat and Begin after 1973 and for Rabin and Arafat in 1993 after the Intifada. Whenever the fighting dies down, it is essential for Israel and Palestinians to resume negotiations. “That’s why,” commented Barak, citing the total lack of public confidence in Netanyahu and his “messianic crazies”, “we need a sensible and capable government” — and a fresh mindset.

Few states in history have made concessions out of pure philanthropy. Entities negotiate about interests. October 7 and its wider sequels exposed vulnerabilities in Israel’s position. The short-term solutions may be military but the long-term ones are political. Similarly, October 7 proved Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other terrorists can punish Israel with military raids and urban warfare in Gaza and make the West Bank ungovernable but neither threatens Israel’s existence and are achievable only at an unbearable cost in Palestinian lives. The various peace plans, encouraged by the Saudis and Americans, deliver huge and real gains for each player. That is why — however difficult it may be, however fortified the positions of Israeli and Palestinian maximalists — there is an opportunity, tortuous and tangled. Ghouls, killers and pyromaniacs maraud on both sides. It will be up to the brave, the moderate and the heroic to find that path.

Conflicts are often called “forever wars” but none are eternal. They all end in victory, defeat, compromise or exhaustion. For two nations to live beside each other without violence, love is not necessary, nor in this case likely; nor, for many, is forgiveness or amity — though many Israelis and Palestinians are already building friendships. None of this is necessary, only recognition, acceptance and peace. It is possible. It is essential. And it is inevitable. One day.

The revised and updated Jerusalem: a History of the Middle East by Simon Sebag Montefiore is out now

MY UNPOPULAR OPINION ABOUT TRUMP'S RHETORIC: IT'S NOT GIBBERISH, IT'S BULLSHIT

MY UNPOPULAR OPINION ABOUT TRUMP'S RHETORIC: IT'S NOT GIBBERISH, IT'S BULLSHIT

No More Mister Nice Blog / by Steve M. / Sep 7, 2024 at 12:09 AM

Yesterday, after his speech to the Economic Club of New York, Donald Trump responded to questions, including this one:

If you win in November, can you commit to prioritizing legislation to make child care affordable, and if so, what specific piece of legislation will you advance?

Here's his response:

A transcript of his long, meandering answer:

Well, I would do that, and we're sitting down, and I was, somebody, we had Senator Marco Rubio, and my daughter Ivanka was so, uh, impactful on that issue. It's a very important issue. But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I'm talking about, that, because, look, child care is child care is. Couldn't, you know, there's something, you have to have it – in this country you have to have it.

But when you talk about those numbers compared to the kind of numbers that I'm talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they're not used to — but they'll get used to it very quickly – and it's not gonna stop them from doing business with us, but they'll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country. Uh, those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we're talking about, including child care, that it's going to take care.

We're gonna have - I, I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time, coupled with, uh, the reductions that I told you about on waste and fraud and all of the other things that are going on in our country, because I have to stay with child care. I want to stay with child care, but those numbers are small relative to the kind of economic numbers that I'm talking about, including growth, but growth also headed up by what the plan is that I just, uh, that I just told you about.

We're gonna be taking in trillions of dollars, and as much as child care, uh, is talked about as being expensive, it's, relatively speaking, not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers we'll be taking in. We're going to make this into an incredible country that can afford to take care of its people, and then we'll worry about the rest of the world. Let's help other people, but we're going to take care of our country first. This is about America first. It's about Make America Great Again, we have to do it because right now we're a failing nation, so we'll take care of it. Thank you. Very good question. Thank you.

I'm supposed to believe that this is incoherent word salad, and is further evidence that Trump is in an advanced state of dementia. However I think what he said makes sense -- in a way. Brendan Nyhan sums up my take on this:

For the record, he's trying to say the cost of child care will be taken care of by his tariff and economic growth, but he can't say one thing about child care because he *doesn't know anything about it* and he's blustering through like a student who didn't do the reading.

Right. Trump knows nothing about the cost of child care or specific proposals to fund it, so he talks around that and says that his magic tariffs will generate massive amounts of revenue -- presumably with zero inflation! -- as will economic growth and the same crackdowns on "waste and fraud and all of the other things that are going on in our country" that every Republican has promised since at least the late twentieth century, and as a result we'll be able to toss huge amounts of child care money at families with young children and still have plenty left over for everything else we need to do. Oh, and we'll stop running deficits!

This isn't dementia. This is lying. It's actually the same sort of lying Republicans have done for decades, except that they've said that their tax cuts won't result in revenue-reducing shortfalls and he says that tariffs will make all of our economic problems go away, including revenue shortfalls, without creating any new problems of their own. Being a dishonest used car salesman who'll promise you anything to make the sale is, in part, how Trump got here. He wins or comes close in general elections because, after a decade of The Apprentice, many people who aren't superfans hear him and say, Well, he's a brilliant businessman, so I trust him when he says he can do this.

I understand why Kamala Harris's campaign and other Trump critics want to portray this as the product of a brain that no longer works the way its owner wants it to work. I hope that message hurts Trump at the polls. But Trump's brain is still working more or less as intended. He's a lifelong bullshit artist and he's still reasonably good at bullshitting. (At the end of his answer, the audience gives him a round of applause, even though his listeners are people who know his numbers can't possibly add up.)

And now here's a riff from the speech itself that's being mocked:

But this also makes sense -- at least if you consume massive amounts of right-wing media. It's not about the school shooting. Here's a transcript:

Colorado. Aurora. Has anyone been there? I think you'd better stay away for a little while. They had AK-47s. The ultimate guns. AK-47s. They can blow lots of people away real fast. And the sheriff didn't want to touch 'em. Nobody wants to touch 'em. "Sheriff, there's eighteen Venezuelans attacking my building. Would you please come over and straighten out this situa--?" He's got a deputy. You know what they say? "Ah, well, no thanks. Let's call in the military." They're taking over, and I said this four years [clip cuts off]

Like your right-wing uncle whose rants every Thanksgiving are incomprehensible unless you watch six hours of Fox News a day, Trump is assuming that everyone in his audience is familiar with a story that's been heavily pushed by the New York Post, Fox, and other right-wing outlets.

If you believe these sources, you think the entire city of Aurora, Colorado, has been taken over by a Venezuelan criminal gang. But other news sources tells a different story. Here's AP:

Police in the Denver suburb of Aurora say a Venezuela street gang with a small presence in the city has not taken over a rundown apartment complex — yet the allegation continues to gain steam among conservatives and was amplified by former President Donald Trump in a Wednesday Fox News town hall where he said Venezuelans were “taking over the whole town.”

The unsubstantiated allegation gained momentum following last month’s dissemination of video from a resident in the complex that showed armed men knocking on an apartment door, intensifying fears the Tren de Aragua gang was in control of the six-building complex.

However, city officials indicate the buildings, along with two other apartment complexes, were run down because of neglect by the property manager, CBZ Management.

The news site Denverite tells us this:

There are a handful of apartment buildings in Aurora owned by CBZ Management, a company based in Brooklyn, New York. For years, residents of several of those buildings have complained about rats, mice and insects, concerns over crime and poor treatment by management.

All that predates the arrival of tens of thousands of Venezuelan immigrants in the Denver area.

For the past two years, Aurora has been working to get the property owners into compliance with the law, said Jessica Prosser, Aurora’s director of housing and community services, at a press conference in August.

Many newly arrived Venezuelans and other Spanish-speaking immigrants were placed into those apartments by nonprofits....

We know there have been recent assaults and shootings at and near some of the properties. Aurora Police arrested a man on suspicion of attempted homicide and say he is connected to Tren de Aragua.

Police also said the allegations of rent theft have surfaced at several CBZ Management properties....

We also know there is a video of men with guns entering one of the apartments at The Edge at Lowry. Aurora Police have not confirmed the identity of those men.

At that same apartment complex, Denverite reporters saw multiple mice and bedbugs; mold growing in a bathtub; a stove that hasn’t worked for two months; a sink that won’t drain; and a broken fan.

However, the entire city of Aurora has not been taken over by the gang, as the Colorado Republican Party claimed in a fundraising email. Police have been at The Edge at Lowry speaking with residents, and the Aurora police chief says that no gang is running the apartment complex. Residents said the same at a Tuesday press conference at the building.

The video is disturbing.

But it's clear that CBZ Management, the Brooklyn-based company that runs this building, is extraordinarily neglectful. The Republican mayor of Aurora called the company "out-of-state slumlords." Online comments about the company, in both Colorado and Brooklyn, are universally negative (click to enlarge):

We can have a conversation about immigrant gangs in America. That's fine. But this is a complicated story. And it's definitely not a story of a gang takeover of an entire city, as Denverite notes:

Walk through Aurora, and it’s clear: The gang has not taken over the city, even as some gang members have committed a handful of crimes. Blocks away from The Edge at Lowry, neighbors shop in local stores, mow their lawns, ride their e-bikes and carry on life as usual.

Trump's rhetotic is dishonest, hyperbolic, and inflammatory -- but that's bog-standard for Republicans in 2024. He's not losing his marbles. He's just telling phony stories.

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There Are No Holocaust "Revisionists"

Two recent headlines in the New York Times referred to a "Holocaust Revisionist":

Vance Declines to Denounce Carlson After Interview With Holocaust Revisionist

No, no, no, no, no. The so-called "revisionist" in question is Darryl Cooper, who in fact is a flat-out H0locaust denier. As the Times explains several paragraphs into the article:

Mr. Cooper, who has a podcast and newsletter called “Martyr Made,” proceeded to make a variety of false claims about the Holocaust and World War II, including that millions of people in concentration camps “ended up dead” merely because the Nazis did not have enough resources to care for them, rather than as a result of the intentional genocide that it was.

The White House got it right, which wasn't difficult:

“Giving a microphone to a Holocaust denier who spreads Nazi propaganda is a disgusting and sadistic insult to all Americans, to the memory of the over six million Jews who were genocidally murdered by Adolf Hitler, to the service of the millions of Americans who fought to defeat Nazism and to every subsequent victim of antisemitism.”

Holocaust deniers routinely call themselves "revisionists" to give their "moral rot" (as the White House put it) a veneer of respectability. One of their main organizations, for example, is called the Institute for Historical Review.

But the truth is that they are antisemitic deniers with no intellectual legitimacy, as Deborah Lipstadt proved in London almost 30 years ago.

There is no excuse for the Times to use the term "Holocaust revisionist" in 2024. I realize that the reporters don't write the headlines, but the editor who wrote this one should be reassigned.

Posted by Steve Lubet on September 6, 2024 at 02:41 PM | Permalink

No wonder Russia finds its useful idiots among the extremely online. By Charlie Warzel

TECHNOLOGY

YouTubers Are Almost Too Easy to Dupe

No wonder Russia finds its useful idiots among the extremely online.

By Charlie Warzel

Illustration of a hand coming out of the YouTube logo holding money

Illustration by Ben Kothe / The Atlantic. Source: Getty.

SEPTEMBER 6, 2024, 5:20 PM ET

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Perhaps the most accurate cliché is that if a deal appears too good to be true, then it probably is.

To wit: If a “private investor” of unknown origin approaches you through an intermediary, offering you $400,000 a month to make “four weekly videos” for a politically partisan website and YouTube page, you may want to attempt to follow the money to make certain you’re not being paid by a foreign government as a propagandist. And if you do attempt a bit of due diligence and ask after the identity of your private investor, you might want to double-check that he or she is a real person. For example, if your intermediary sends you a hastily Photoshopped résumé featuring a stock photo of a well-coiffed man looking wistfully out the window of a private jet, it is possible that the “accomplished finance professional” who is “deeply engaged in business and philanthropy, leveraging skills and resources to drive positive impact” may, in fact, be a fake man with a fake name.

Now, I am not a lawyer, and this is not a legal perspective. But I do have many years of professional work experience in media and access to subscription-tier flowchart software to offer some advice:

A humorous flow chart 

You may be thinking that such data visualization is unnecessary—that of course a YouTuber wouldn’t blindly accept $4.8 million a year and a $100,000 signing bonus to make 208 video units of political propaganda for a little-known benefactor. I, too, was of this opinion until I read Wednesday’s unsealed indictment of Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, two employees of RT, a Russian state-controlled media outlet, who, according to the Department of Justice, allegedly “deployed nearly $10 million to publish RT-curated content … through a Tennessee-based online content creation company.”

Although the indictment does not mention the company by name, details in the document, including the website description—“a network of heterodox commentators that focus on Western political and cultural issues”—match the description of Tenet Media, a company founded in 2022 by the right-wing Canadian YouTuber Lauren Chen and her husband, Liam Donovan. The indictment alleges that the company’s founders were aware that their benefactors were Russian (less clear is whether they understood their affiliations with RT) and that the pair accepted the money and hired numerous high-profile MAGA influencers to create political videos for the site, without disclosing to the influencers or their audience where the funding was coming from. (Chen has declined to comment on the case.)

Among the popular pro-Trump influencers embroiled in this state-media-funded fiasco are Dave Rubin, Benny Johnson, and Tim Pool, all of whom had contracts with Tenet Media. The indictment alleges that the online personalities were unaware of Russian involvement in Tenet’s operation. Johnson, Rubin, and Pool all issued public statements on Wednesday alleging that they had been deceived by Tenet and that they are “victims” of a foreign-influence operation. Yesterday, YouTube removed the implicated channels from its site, and Tenet Media reportedly went out of business.

The indictment’s revelations are notable as further evidence of Russia’s repeated attempts to sow division in the American electorate in a contentious presidential-election cycle, as my colleague Tom Nichols wrote yesterday. It describes an evolution in the tactics of Russian information warfare, one where, instead of creating fake accounts or elaborate networks of bots and paid trolls, state actors are merely tapping into an existing community of already popular shock jocks who may not ask questions about where the money is coming from. But perhaps more important, the indictment offers a clear look at the state of the far-right media ecosystem as a patchwork of content mercenaries—a conglomeration of creators so motivated by greed and online engagement that they are a natural fit to become Russian media’s useful idiots. Who needs a troll farm when you can rent trolls with their own built-in audiences?

“It’s striking that the content that many of those at the top of the MAGA media game are pushing to voters is so closely aligned with the objectives of Russian state media that RT hardly had to intervene at all,” Jared Holt, a senior research analyst who studies the far right at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue think tank, told me. “It was astonishingly easy.”

The indictment, which reads less like a John le Carré novel and more like a Coen-brothers screenplay, suggests that the influencers were keen to accept their exorbitant contracts. According to the document, only one unnamed influencer had any reservations about their benefactor, a supposed businessman named “Eduard Grigoriann.” As the indictment notes, even though there was no evidence of his existence, even on Google Search, the influencer appeared mostly satisfied by the fake résumé from one of Grigoriann’s representatives that a Tenet founder shared—with one concern. It wasn’t the vague, LinkedIn-style lorem-ipsum language, nor was it the embedded photo of a private jet. No: The influencer was troubled by a mention in the résumé that Grigoriann had a focus on “advocating for social justice causes.” Nevertheless, he signed the lucrative deal.

Make no mistake: Even though the details are absurd, this was a Russian propaganda attack on Americans. What’s less clear is whether their output was worth the investment. Tenet published about 2,000 YouTube videos, which gained more than 16 million views—roughly 8,000 views per video. Afanasyeva, according to the indictment, appeared frustrated with the influencers, who seemed more interested in promoting their own brands than sharing Tenet’s raw content on X and other platforms. “I know this is not an obligation, but we are falling behind with numbers,” Afanasyeva wrote to one of the company’s founders.

That some of MAGA world’s biggest influencers should find themselves connected to a Russian disinformation operation makes perfect sense. Their incessant posts and rants, attacking Democrats and fearmongering about migrants, transgender Americans, and “wokeness” run amok, track with a brand of divisive rhetoric that foreign governments wish to inject into the bloodstream of American media. “This idea that Americans are deeply divided, that things are getting worse, that you can’t trust the government—the things that seek to destabilize American society—are a natural fit because of the content,” Holt told me.

One does not just become a useful idiot for Russian state media only by being greedy. Should the allegations be proved true, the incident will serve as a cautionary tale of what happens when you chase and optimize for engagement at every available opportunity. Pool and Rubin, for example, made their names as disaffected liberals who came to the realization that their peers had evolved away from rational liberalism toward dangerous leftist ideological values. This notion, that lifelong moderate liberals have no choice these days but to support right-wing causes, is a common trope among far-right activists (see: Elon Musk). To defect to the right is a proven lucrative path and, just as important, a way to find a highly engaged audience who’s ready to leap to your defense online. Johnson, an alum of BuzzFeed, Independent Journal Review, The Daily Caller, and Blaze Media, is also an inveterate poster and engagement optimizer whose apparent quest for audience has led him deeper down the pro-Trump rabbit hole. (As a point of disclosure: Johnson and I overlapped at BuzzFeed News, before he was fired for plagiarism.) His online biography proudly declares that, “with +5 billion views and +7 million followers across his social media platforms, he is a veteran when it comes to viral content!”

This type of engagement-based worldview—the constant optimizing for maximum attention, regardless of substance—is inherently corrupting, a fact that the Kremlin appears to understand. According to a recent FBI affidavit, a Kremlin-linked propaganda organization has allegedly identified 2,800 digital influencers globally as possible candidates to promote pro-Russian messages. But the downsides of chasing audiences and platform incentives are not limited to information operations, either. Tim Gionet, another BuzzFeed alum, went to jail for his role in storming the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and streaming it live for likes and follows. One of my former colleagues once described Gionet to The New York Times as having politics “guided by platform metrics … You always think that evil is going to come from movie villain evil, and then you’re like—oh no, evil can just start with bad jokes and nihilistic behavior that is fueled by positive reinforcement on various platforms.”

This same reinforcement mechanism is what leads Pool, Rubin, Johnson, and Tenet’s other influencers to appear unrepentant about their involvement and seemingly uninterested in any introspection about how they ended up unwittingly doing the bidding of a hostile foreign power. Instead, the group has chosen to dutifully follow the far-right-influencer playbook, which suggests that one should never apologize, and spin any accusations of wrongdoing as an opportunity to cast themselves as the victims. For those as fully captured by their audience as Pool, Rubin, and Johnson, it’s a good strategy. Their audiences, primed by past rebuttals and victim narratives, are primed to see these influencers as embattled truth tellers. Thus what would seem like awful news (being accused by the federal government of being Russia’s useful idiot) is merely another avenue for engagement.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Charlie Warzel is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of its newsletter Galaxy Brain, about technology, media, and big ideas. He can be reached via email.

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