Every Monday on Global Comment, we share the slow, thoughtful, considerate words that our brains – and souls – need but that it’s easy to miss in our busy world. We distil the best of the web and recommend just three links every week that you absolutely must see.
No fluff, no fuss, just three exceptional reads.
Here are this week’s recommendations:
‘Absolutely Bonkers’: Inside Infowars’ Money Machine (Megan Squire, Michael Edison Hayden / SPLC)
Alex Jones filed for bankruptcy on Dec. 2, 2022, following an order to pay the victims of the Sandy Hook mass murder. His filing showed between $1 million and $10 million in assets and between $1 billion and $10 billion in debt. Pundits have speculated that Infowars’ profits are drying up.
“We’re talking about such outsized numbers that even if he’s able to bob and weave some, I just don’t see how he winds up anything but basically broke now for the rest of his life,” former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman said in October , following the verdict from the Sandy Hook lawsuit.
Drucker, the former Infowars employee, told Hatewatch that Jones’ staff are “dropping off like flies” now, abandoning the extremist, due in part to the toxic perception of the brand.
The Website That Wants You to Kill Yourself—and Won’t Die (Ali Breland / Mother Jones)
Kiwi Farms harvests anguish. It thrives on pain and revels in death. Users of the innocuously named forum prey on the vulnerable and marginalized—people who are transgender, neurodivergent, disabled, financially struggling—with persistent and twisted harassment campaigns. Despite its penchant for destroying lives, Kiwi Farms has been mostly overlooked by the media for much of the site’s existence. That is partly because of who it attacks, but also because reporters are wary of becoming targets themselves. The users call their victims “lolcows” because their pain can be milked for laughs. The group made its purpose clear on its Twitter page before it was taken down: “Gossip and exploitation of mentally handicapped for amusement purposes.”
Kiwi Farms users deploy slightly different tactics for various victims, but the rough beats are the same. First, the group assembles extensive dossiers. Then they use the information (some true, some contorted, some fabricated) to torment their targets.
The gassing of school girls in Iran (Omid Djalili)
@omid.djalili the gassing of school girls in Iran by the IRI is a disturbing turn of events. This is a systematic, industrial-scale targeting of women as revenge for #WomanLifeFreedom movement. And while governments around the world continue to do nothing the regime shows how little it cares about the sanctity of human life. Do please share. The western news media are buying the regime lies that this is not chemical warfare but suggesting it could be a “mass sociogenic illness”, a psychosomatic reaction brought on my mental illness. انتقام سیستماتیک با سلاح شیمیایی از دختران و زنان در مدارس و دبیرستان ها برای جریان #زن_زندگی_آزادی این درحالی داره اتفاق میوفته که دولت های خارجی نشون میدن چقدر جان انسان ها براشون کم ارزش هستش. لطفا به اشتراک بذارید. رسانه های خارجی دروغ های رژیم رو باور میکنند و میگن یه بیماری همه گیر هستش که به صورت روانی داره اتفاق میوفته در بین دانش آموزان مدارس دخترانه. #مهسا_امینی #انقلاب_ایران #خیزش_سراسری #حمله_شیمیایی #Mahsa_Amini #IranRevolution #OpIran #womanlifefreedom ♬ original sound – Omid Djalili
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Image: Nadine Marfurt