Ballroom Blitz

The man in the back said "everyone attack"

In this issue:

• The Deadites are coming; fetch my chainsaw hand

• Do we need a new thing?

• Weird dystopia as counter-narrative

The Deadites are coming; fetch my chainsaw hand

It’s hard to keep track of the existential crises looming over Twitter at this point. EU regulators, infrastructure collapse, data breach, the FTC, and so on, and so on.

While we wait for the hammer to fall, there’s work to do, however. Musk has announced a “general amnesty” for previously suspended accounts. It’s not enough that he’s throwing Twitter to the existing wolves, he wants to zombify yesterday’s racists, harassers, incels and conspiracists as well.

I am fully supportive of those ringing alarm bells, but since you’ve probably already seen enough of that, let’s look at some interesting questions that have been drowned out in the din.

First off, what does “bringing them back” mean exactly? It’s unclear how much data Twitter preserves when an account is suspended. Some Big Tech companies have a no-retention policy, favored by their corporate lawyers. I guess Twitter doesn’t? Musk has suggested that all returning accounts will be “manually reviewed” before being restored, if you can believe anything he says. When these accounts come back, what comes with them? Handles, presumably. Profile information? Followers? All their old tweets? Direct messages? Will the direct messages be part of the manual review? Did anyone sign up for that?

Second, how many of these users even want to come back? QAnon adherents, for instance, may be happier in the echo chamber of Truth Social where they can bask in the warm regard of their demigod demagogue. Active white nationalists may have created new accounts, although some from the fringes will surely welcome the opportunity to hurl the n-word at the audience they can’t reach on Telegram.

Third, what are the practical steps? Will Musk just throw a switch and turn them all back on? Will Twitter email the suspended users and require them to actively opt in?

Fourth, exactly who will be coming back? Given Musk’s proclivities, presumably Nazis and other white supremacists. I would guess QAnon. What about Russian disinfo? COVID misinfo? What about ISIS? What about ISIS-adjacent accounts? I just threw together some lists: 5,000-ish suspended alt-right accounts, 25,000-ish QAnon, 9,000-ish COVID deniers, 3,000-ish Russian influence-related, and 900-ish ISIS accounts. Obviously this is a drop in the bucket of what could be out there, and I’ll probably aim to supplement these lists, time-permitting. But this is enough to give a window into who, if any, are returning. I should be able to report some findings to y’all, informally here as it happens, and in an academic paper next year.

Do we need a new thing?

I put out a question on Twitter to deafening silence, so maybe I should drop it, but for the professional extremism trackers in the audience, do we need a new thing? Mastodon’s OK, but it’s a bit sensitive, and may or may not be suitable for those of us dragging through the worst of the web and the world. Is there any interest in having a Slack or Discord where a curated group could share news links, extremist posts from around the web, and analysis/discussion? I am willing to do some exploratory work on setting something up if there are enough interested participants. While this might take on a life of its own, for now think of it as a way to get some work done while we wait for the next Twitter to slouch towards Bethlehem. If you’re interested, leave a comment on this post, or reach out to me at any of my usual haunts or by email.

Cruso as Counter-Narrative to Ford

Last week I told you about the weirdest fucking dystopian writer in history, Solomon Cruso, a Jewish writer who authored a dystopian trilogy about the Jewish race being wiped out by the white race, which is then wiped out by a world war instigated by Russian-Jewish-Chinese-Swedish-Tartar mastermind named Chang Kochubey. Later installments in the series put whitey on the moon, but never mind that now.

Cruso’s books are wildly misguided, and his intentions were pretty murky, but one of Kochubey’s speeches, in which he presages the genocide against the Jews, might contain a clue:

…the Jews of the twentieth century, especially the wealthy Jews of the United States … have become too selfish, abandoning the ideals of their forefathers. The wealthy American Jews are drunk with financial success and are blind to the growing anti-Jewish feeling in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Central and South America, and the rest of the world. … Now, taking into consideration the very actual existing fact, that anti-Semitism has made very big strides in America and elsewhere since the infamous groundless accusations against the Jews, by a certain American automobile manufacturer; and taking into consideration the fact that the anti-Semitic seeds of that automobile manufacturer have taken root … consequently, we are of the opinion, that the Jews all over the world are sitting on volcanoes, whose eruption is a question of time, but is bound to come with such terrific force, that it will surpass in ferociousness the horrors of the crusades, the Spanish Inquisition and the cruelties of Bogdan Khmelnitzky, Petlura, Denikin, Kolczak and other black devils.

Emphasis added by me.

Despite the profound confusion on display in his framing, Cruso’s concern about an unprecedented eruption of anti-Semitism was well-founded, and his diagnosis of the cause had some merit. The “certain American automobile manufacturer” was a real-world figure, Henry Ford, who had done much to spread the “infamous accusations” contained in The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, the most influential and destructive conspiracy theory in history.[i]

A pioneer in the realm of industrial manufacturing, Henry Ford was isolated by his great wealth and success, which initially cast him as a role model and an “industrial statesman” whose opinions on all matters were much sought after.[ii]

Once he started expressing those opinions, however, things took a bad turn, exposing him (in the words of lawyers in one lawsuit) as being “ignorant of most matters unrelated to automobiles.” Immersing himself in extreme right-wing views, he bought his local newspaper, The Dearborn Independent and forged it into a weapon against the sinister people he believed were controlling world events—the Jews.

Supervised by the magnate directly, the Independent manufactured and distributed anti-Semitic conspiracy theories as efficiently as the assembly lines Ford had championed in the automotive industry.

Ford’s aggressive publication of these libels won him the admiration of a young Adolf Hitler. [iii] Many of these conspiracies, such as an accusation that the U.S. Federal Reserve was a Jewish plot against America, continue to hold sway among extremists today, but nothing published by the Independent was as pernicious and durable as The Protocols.  

Cruso’s decision to use dystopian fiction to (let’s say) counter-program the Protocols is particularly interesting given the dystopian fiction origins of Protocols. More on that in our next biweekly installment.   

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[i] The following section is adapted in part from: Berger, J.M. "Extremist Construction of Identity: How Escalating Demands for Legitimacy Shape and Define In-Group and Out-Group Dynamics." ICCT, 2017.

[ii] Ribuffo, Leo P. "Henry Ford and" The International Jew"." American Jewish History 69.4 (1980): 437.

[iii] Ribuffo, Leo P. "Henry Ford and" The International Jew"." American Jewish History 69.4 (1980): 437.