Extreme Right Twitter Campaign to Defend Kavanaugh, Why?
Twitter provides insights ito what people support and what they don’t. The extreme right is reported to be indifferent about sexual assault and the campaign is defending the Supreme Court Judge (now) Kavanaugh.
It would be interesting to know more about how endemic is right wing extremism in the legal system? It would be interesting to know who perceives themselves on the left? How does this move courts away from neutrality and justice which is blind to bias?
Extreme right begins Twitter campaign to defend Kavanaugh, undercut his accuser
In a completely unsurprising twist, the extreme right doesn’t care about accusations of sexual assault.
Beleaguered Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, reeling from accusations of sexual assault, has found an unsurprising ally in his push for the highest court in the land: the extreme right.
White supremacists, white nationalists, and members of the so-called “alt-lite” have rushed to defend Kavanaugh’s candidacy, which has been battered by accusations that Kavanaugh attempted to rape Christine Blasey Ford.
Rather than waiting to hear out Ford’s accusations, though, the overwhelming sentiment among far-right accounts tracked by ThinkProgress is that the allegations as little more than fabrication and Ford is a tool for Democrats to prevent Kavanaugh’s ascension.
As illustrated by ThinkProgress’ Extreme Right Dashboard, which tracks approximately 2,000 extreme right Twitter accounts, discussions around Kavanaugh and Ford have soared over the past few days.
Likewise, the second most popular hashtag in general among the extreme right networks is #kavanaugh — which landed just behind #maga. Other hashtags in the top 10 include #confirmkavanaugh and #dearprofessorford.
The topics of the tweets in these extreme right networks — which span far-right conspiracy theorists like Laura Loomer and Mike Cernovich to outright white supremacists — vary, but are almost entirely centered on undercutting Ford’s accusations and bolstering Kavanaugh’s chances of getting through to the Supreme Court.
Cernovich, meanwhile, has pushed the notion that Democrats are little more than hypocrites — especially in light of the fact that Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) remains in office, despite accusations of domestic abuse.
InfoWars conspiracy theorist Paul Joseph Watson, once a proponent of the notion that chemtrails were a government plot, has settled on a more traditional track. To Watson, Ford is simply a Democratic sympathizer, saying that her accusations “look increasingly like a desperate political ploy.”
While Kavanaugh — and Ford’s accusations against him — remains a dominant theme in extreme right Twitter circles, these accounts have also tried to push other links to sources outside Twitter that also undercut Ford’s accusations.
Whelan has since deleted and apologized for the thread. But the Gateway Pundit post, which was updated with his apology, remains up — and remains the most popular link among the extreme right on Twitter.