Tag: harassment
Right-Wing Media Spurred Racist Death Threats Against Election Workers

Right-Wing Media Spurred Racist Death Threats Against Election Workers

Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, a former Georgia election worker, testified today about the harassment and threats she received after she was targeted in a right-wing media-driven conspiracy theory about Democrats stealing the 2020 presidential election in the state. Moss spoke to the January 6 congressional committee today about the racist threats against her which followed the widespread coverage.

Moss said she wanted to work in election administration because her grandmother emphasized that voting was not always a right that Black people had in the United States. Due to the threats and harassment she received, she's been forced to leave her job.

Moss also detailed a break-in at her grandmother’s house in which people “knocked on her door” and “just started pushing their way through, claiming that they were coming in to make a citizen’s arrest.” The committee also played footage from the testimony that her mother and fellow election worker, Ruby Freeman, gave prior to the hearing, in which she described how her life had been turned upside down by right-wing conspiracy theories.

Moss and Freeman were targeted following the release of footage that the Trump campaign claimed provided evidence of voter fraud. The footage provoked a false conspiracy theory that the Georgia poll workers unloaded ballots from a concealed suitcase in order to sway the election results. The conspiracy theory has been repeatedly debunked. By the beginning of January, Freeman had evacuated her home after the FBI concluded she was no longer safe in the days preceding January 6.

Moss and Freeman have sued The Gateway Pundit and One America News Network for their coverage of the footage that spurred the false conspiracy theory. OAN was later dismissed from the suit. Fox News and other right-wing outlets repeatedly covered the footage of Moss and Freeman, though the network never explicitly named the two workers.

  • On the December 3, 2020, edition of The Five, co-host Jesse Watters played the video and asked Fox News “straight news” host Martha MacCallum whether then-Attorney General Bill Barr would look into the footage.
  • Fox host Tucker Carlson also aired the footage on his December 3, 2020, show and called it “pretty unbelievable” that the video showed “poll workers pulling ballots out of suitcases.”
  • During Sean Hannity’s hour on the same night, the Fox host also aired the footage and singled out Moss by spot shadowing her and saying, “Look at her right there.” A Trump campaign representative, Jacki Pick, repeatedly referred to Moss as “the lady with the blonde braids.”
  • On the December 7, 2020, edition of his show, Hannity again played the footage and claimed Moss and other election workers pulled out suitcases “apparently filled with thousands and thousands of ballots, which were then counted by the workers that were allowed to remain in the room that pulled them out of the suitcases they conveniently had there, without partisan observers, without the media.”
  • Right-wing news site The Federalist also published an article on December 7, 2020, attempting to refute verified debunkings of the conspiracy theory. It claimed “Big Tech” did not even come “close” to debunking the election fraud theories.
  • At the end of December 2020, Fox began airing advertisements paid for by the Trump campaign that included the footage and repeated the debunked claims that the containers shown in the video were filled with somehow fraudulent Democratic ballots.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene confronting Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the House floor on April 21, 2021.

New Video Emerges Of ‘Deeply Unwell’ Greene Harassing AOC And Staff

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

On Wednesday, two Washington Post reporters witnessed Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Karens) chasing and "aggressively confronting" Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, calling her a "terrorist sympathizer." It was another in a growing catalog of incidents of Greene harassing and bullying AOC.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has suggested the House Ethics Committee should open an investigation into Greene's actions as there is increasing evidence that Greene seems singularly obsessed with Ocasio-Cortez, repeatedly publicly challenging her to a debate over the Green New Deal, where she no doubt intends to bully rather than debate facts.

CNN reporters Em Steck and Andrew Kaczynski haveuncovered a since-deleted video showing the now congresswoman visiting the U.S. Capitol in 2019, before she was elected to Congress.

Conservative Troll Chuck C. Johnson Essentially Banned From Twitter

Conservative Troll Chuck C. Johnson Essentially Banned From Twitter

A prominent conservative blogger/provocateur known for trolling has been suspended by Twitter. Chuck C. Johnson, who runs the website Got News, is a guy even right wingers feel gives right wingers a bad name. He has long been a malicious user, often tweeting hateful accusations and working to uncover people he felt were not telling the truth.

That has included such prominent politicians as President Barack Obama, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ).  He also released private information of two New York Times reporters (a practice known as “doxxing”), and has espoused violence against everyone from Baltimore mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake to Charles Johnson (no relation), the political blogger and owner of the website Little Green Footballs, who has been the target of stalking by Chuck C. Johnson.

Prompting the ban was a May 24 tweet where he urged people to “Go to gotnews.com/donate if you want to give money to taking out @deray,” referring to DeRay Mckesson, a civil rights activist involved with protests in Baltimore and Ferguson.

Although he’s been suspended several times before, he’s always been reinstated. Despite that precedent, Twitter sent Johnson an email Monday morning, notifying him that his account “will not be restored.”

It’s not just @chuckcjohnson that has been suspended. It’s all the accounts he made afterwards, in short succession — @citizentrolling, @freechucknow — even the account for his site, @gotnewsdotcom. He is essentially banned from the website as of this writing, although Twitter told Mashableit does not respond to inquiries on individual accounts. Both his personal website and Got News are also unavailable.

In the last week alone, Johnson has tweeted about social justice warriors, a favorite target of conservatives, specifically saying nasty things about Emma Sulkowicz, a Columbia University student known for carrying a mattress around campus as a symbol of the university’s response to her charges of rape against another student. Sulkowicz graduated last week.

Last year, Johnson made waves by inserting himself into the Rolling Stone/UVA fiasco by allegedly naming the student at the center of the story — “Jackie” was a pseudonym used to protect the girl who said she was the victim of a horrendous rape — and posted pictures of women that turned out to be false.

He frequently targets those at the intersection of politics, culture, activism, and social concerns. “I’m interested in taboos. I don’t believe in publishing conventional material because that’s not where my comparative advantage is,” he told Ryan Holiday of the New York Observer. Holiday wrote a book that Johnson has cited as influential, and he uses some of the same controversial tactics that Holiday has espoused, but for reasons Holiday finds distasteful.

The way Johnson operates, he claims, is his way of uncovering the “lies” that underpin modern media.

“I take risks that other people won’t take because I think the story requires it,” he told the late journalist David Carr in an interview late last year. Carr wrote, “He has a knack for staking an outrageous, attacking position on a prominent news event, then pounding away until he is noticed.”

Despite his website, Twitter is the platform that Johnson has taken to most readily.

“I like to use Twitter because that’s where the self-appointed cognoscenti create public opinion, i.e. the media or the political class…I mess with Twitter because that’s where the people who need to be messed with are,” he told Holiday.

Many Twitter users — and indeed, outlets — have called him out, saying that he violates terms of service, which he clearly does. David Holmes at PandoDailypoints out that Johnson’s defense — that Twitter “has a problem with controversial thoughts and [so] has opted for censorship,” that he “was speaking metaphorically,” and that his tweet is “a call to support ‘investigative journalism'”– is not only self-serving but “profoundly leftwing [italics added].”

The letter suggests that…the company has a responsibility to the public interest that transcends its God-given freedom to do business as it sees fit, and that transcends the wider interests of shareholders and advertisers… It’s also the most populist and anti-corporate thing he’s ever written.

As Caitlin Dewey explains at The Washington Post, “the First Amendment defines the relationship between you, as a citizen, and the government. It does not define the relationship between, say, you and a private corporation, or you and the university you attend, or you and your neighborhood association.” Radical free speech, the kind where people can say anything to anyone, consequences be damned, is increasingly becoming regulated online, she writes, as people are becoming less tolerant of hate speech.

Twitter has been under pressure to tamp down instances of hate speech, harassment and abuse, as the platform has been struggling to retain users and grow.

Last month, the site updated its policy so that users could be suspended for general threats. Previously, threats had to be “direct” and “specific” — which allowed trolls to be as vague and harmful as possible. Dick Costolo, Twitter’s CEO, said in a leaked memo obtained by The Verge, “We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we’ve sucked at it for years. It’s no secret and the rest of the world talks about it every day.” He vowed to make major changes: “We’re going to start kicking these people off right and left and making sure that when they issue their ridiculous attacks, nobody hears them.” Since then, it has banned revenge porn and improved features for reporting threats to law enforcement.

While it remains to be seen what Johnson will do next — besides try to sue — Twitter’s move is heartening to the many advocates for online civility and those, like activist Mckesson and Little Green Footballs‘ Charles Johnson, who have been targets of his threats.

Photo: Chuck C. Johnson has been effectively banned by Twitter for hate speech, after he threatened a civil rights activist. This is the first major example of a high-profile user being suspended by the platform.  (The Wayback Machine/Twitter)

Significant Rise In Capitol Hill Harassment And Discrimination Claims

The lack of progress on Capitol Hill often leaves Americans wondering what exactly their elected representatives are doing all day. It seems that an increasing number of our politicians spend their time harassing (and discriminating against) Congressional staff. According to a study released on Thursday, harassment and discrimination claims on Capitol Hill have doubled in the past five years. Even more troubling, taxpayers are footing the bill to settle these disputes. As Politico reports:

A new report…says 168 claims were made in fiscal 2010 alleging discrimination and harassment – compared to 87 claims reported in fiscal 2006. Fifty-seven of the claims made last year were based on race, while 41 claims involved age, 34 involved gender and 28 involved disabilities, according to the report from the congressional Office of Compliance.

The harassment and discrimination claims stem from 105 cases filed with the Office of Compliance last year, meaning one person could make more than one claim. The vast majority of cases involve the large workforce under Architect of the Capitol and Capitol Police, with about a fifth of the cases coming from House and Senate offices.

While the total number of complaints has risen, the payouts in settlements fluctuate year to year.

In fiscal 2010, taxpayers paid $246,271 to settle nine matters brought to the OOC over the years. That’s a big drop from the previous year, where $831,360 was spent to settle 13 claims. The cash awards settled matters of discrimination and harassment, as well as retaliation claims and disputes over contracts and pay. Since fiscal 1997, taxpayers have footed the bill for more than $13.2 million in cases resolved by the OOC.

Claims of retaliation and intimidation have also grown in the congressional workplace – from 46 claims in fiscal 2006 to 69 in fiscal 2010.