Joy Reid, hacking, and the goddamned BernieBros

Not too many hours ago, I suggested that the Ronny Jackson controversy was a set-up, and that he would confront his accusers during hearings. Looks like I had it wrong. Trump has vowed revenge on Jon Tester of Montana, who took point on compiling the charges against Jackson.

Was it a good idea to let Tester lead the charge? He's a Democrat running for re-election in a red state. He had strong approval ratings as of last November, but things change; a March poll him had trailing against a generic Republican.

Let's turn to the main topic of this post, Joy Reid. I'm more convinced than ever that Joy Reid is innocent and that she truly was hacked.

You want evidence? I'll give you six pieces of evidence:

1. No comment. Those old allegedly "homophobic" posts had no comments, even though Reid's writings (even then)  usually attracted large responses. This fact is damning. It's more than a tell -- it's a yell.

As I can tell you from personal experience, a "politically incorrect" post from a liberal writer is much more likely to stir up an argument -- yet in this instance, such remarks aroused no interest whatseover. If Reid had said anything truly anti-Semitic or anti-gay, she would have been flooded with messages -- especially in 2006/7, a time before so much of the action moved over to Twitter and Facebook.

Added note: They just created a fake Reid tweet from 2011. How do we know that it's fake? Because all of the comments were posted within the past couple of days. No comments from the time period. 

2. Memory hole. No-one can recall reading those old posts in real time. 2006/7 was not very long ago. Example:

I used to read Joy’s blog back in the day. I do not recall any sort of homophobic or anti-semitic content similar to what she’s accused of writing. The writing doesn’t even sound like her.

Joan Walsh:

Our editors monitored "The Reid Report" to see if she posted anything we wanted; sometimes we'd nudge her to cross-post, and she did. Obviously, none of us ever saw the kinds of homophobic posts she's now accused of. If we had, we'd have stopped publishing her. Interestingly, no one has come forward and said that they read any of this garbage in real time: "Oh hey, that Joy Reid was a real nightmare, can't believe she got published."

3. Joy Reid called in the FBI. She's smart -- smart enough to know better than to call in the Bureau under false pretenses. The Bureau can determine the truth of such a situation very rapidly.

4. Cambridge Analytica. C-Anal has used similar tactics to smear figures in other countries, as detailed in the preceding post.

5. The Bernie Factor. The viciousness of the BernieBro response has all the earmarks of a coordinated cyber campaign. Remember: Other leaders of the Bernie brigade include the vile H.A. Goodman (a Trump supporter posing as a progressive), Cassandra Fairbanks (ditto; friend to Roger Stone) and Randy Credico (ditto -- and ditto.)

Never trust the BernieBros. If the BernieBros say "the sky is blue," you may fairly presume that the sky has turned some other color.

You'll want to read this eye-opening piece in Medium: "The lynching of Joy Ann Reid by the Bernie left." (The offensive imagery reproduced in this post originated with Bernie supporters. They often trade these memes.)

For almost a year now, a very vocal segment of Bernie Sanders supporters have harassed and stalked black activists, journalists and contributors on Twitter and other social media sites. Behind this campaign was the fact that a lot of black voters didn’t vote for Bernie, which was met with incredible anger by a part of the Bernie left.

Instead of analyzing why POC were critical of Bernie, or why Bernie refused to campaign among POC, they started to harass and intimidate black Twitter users.

The list of victims to this aggressive crowd of Bernie supporters is long by now: Joy Ann Reid, Donna Brazile, Jehmu Greene, Neera Tanden, Kamala Harris, Maxine Waters, Yamiche Alcindor, Zerlina Maxwell, and less known Twitter users: Angry Black Lady (Imani Gandy), T_FisherKing, Mr Dane/ Mr Weeks, Sir James, Ange_Amene, Bravenak and many, many more.

The harassment of POC and LGTB activists by Bernie Sanders supporters has been documented on Medium in this blogpost:

“When GamerGate became BernieGate”, by Investigator:

https://medium.com/@investigator_21314/when-gamergate-became-berniegate-5ca0053f5caa

I strongly urge you to hit that last link.

They are a tight group of fanatic Bernie supporters, they identify usually as members of the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America), they all proudly proclaim to have voted for Jill Stein and they have (unfortunately) a large group of Bernie followers who copy their behavior and who add to the harassment.

They also proudly produce, tweet and retweet purely racist pictures of among others Kamala Harris, Joy Ann Reid and other prominent POC.

See the lovely message to your left? In 2017, Bernie supporters posted that flier all over Temple University in Philadelphia.

The Bernie Sanders movement is explicitly racist -- through and through. Nothing Sanders can say will change that basic fact; he cannot distance himself from his own movement. You judge a tree by its fruits. As the afore-linked article demonstrates, the racism of the Bernie movement can not be dismissed as the work of an easily-dismissed fringe. The rot goes right to the top -- to Bernie Sanders himself.

There are those who think that Sanders has already sewn up the Democratic nomination. If so, I will not vote for the Democrat, not even if Trump starts wearing an "I love to rape children" t-shirt.

Glenn Greenwald, Breitbart, and any Bernie supporter possible are now cooperating.

Let’s be clear: if Joy Reid loses her job, she loses it because of the deep hatred of the Bernie crowd for any POC who speaks out against Sanders.

She will lose her job (and POC will lose an important voice in the media) because racism and targeted harassment campaigns are normal to the Bernie crowd.

6. Technical support. Cybersecurity expert Jonathan Nichols has offered technical arguments in Reid's favor.

The expert, Jonathan Nichols, said Wednesday that time stamps indicated the posts were written at a time Reid was on the radio and would not have had time to write them. He said they are inconsistent with the way that she wrote and triggered no reaction from the blog’s comments section, which he believes would have surely happened if they had been legitimate posts.

Meanwhile, the company Internet Archives, whose Wayback Machine collects copies of Internet postings, said that after being contacted by Reid’s lawyers, it had investigated and found no evidence that any of its versions of Reid’s original posts had been altered. Nichols said that this doesn’t contradict Reid’s story, since they believe it was the original blog posts — not the Wayback Machine versions — that were hacked.

The Wayback Machine had found evidence that the posts with the homophobic language had been erased due to an automated process that can be installed to wipe out the specific archives. Nichols said the posts — potentially very embarrassing for a personality for a network with commentary that leans left — had been erased at Reid’s behest.

Nichols said that Reid’s blog posts were altered in an attempt to smear and embarrass her.

Nichols said he has collected “a preponderance of evidence” to indicate that someone with a grudge against Reid planted the material to embarrass her. But he said he would not identify the person because his research isn’t done. “I’m not going to throw someone under the bus unless I’m certain,” he said.

Rumor has it that an "IT" guy affiliated with Reid's site has links to the Alt Right. I can't confirm that claim. However, it seems very possible that someone affiliated with the old site might have segued in Bernie-ism. At this point, there is no real difference between the Alt Right and the BernieBros: They are both racist movements, and both are working with the Russians to destroy democracy.

A few hours ago, HuffPo offers several arguments against the idea that Reid was hacked. None of them hold up.

Why would someone hack Joy Reid’s blog repeatedly for years, at a time when she had a much lower profile?

She was big enough to have an enemy in 2006/7/8. How do I know? Because I had enemies in that time period. (As some of you know, my email was hacked.) Even back then, when this humble blog was more popular, I never had the readership that Joy Reid had. If I was considered worthy of a hack, Reid was even worthier.

Frankly, I scoff at the notion that the Internet Archive is un-hackable.

Why didn’t Reid notice that someone else was posting content under her name on her own blog?

A hacker could change my old posts and I would not know.

Are the bigoted statements really such a departure from the statements Reid has already owned up to?

I don't think that what she said about Charlie Crist was so bad. Reid has proven her basic honesty. One thing we know for sure: If you own up to any shortcoming or failing, the right will find some way to use that admission against you. That's what they do. And they cackle as they do it.

Are the screenshots fake, or was the blog was hacked?

HuffPo accuses Nichols of being "unclear" -- an accusation that would hold more weight if HuffPo's grammar were less confusing. At no point does the Huffington Post offer a technical argument explaining why any of the archival sites should be considered inviolate.

I believe that hackers specializing in political work have found ways to compromise those archives. In 1984, the archives are Target Numero Uno. As Orwell said: He who controls the past controls the future.

Why would hackers manipulate the archives? Think about it. Imagine the fun a dirty trickster can have during the elections of 2018 and 2020, if said trickster can change the historical record. Future October Surprises may include revelations along these lines: "Candidate X wrote 'Kill all Jews' back in 2005! Says so right there in the Wayback Machine. It has to be true!"

What's happening to Reid right now falls under the category "proof of concept." The next target will be someone of greater importance -- probably someone who stands between Bernie Sanders and the Democratic nomination.