25 year old man murdered in Georgia for jogging while black

English said he did not know the identity of the person in the Feb. 23 video (that was Ahmad just before he got followed, blocked 3 times, and shot), and that person didn’t resemble any person captured in previous security video.

 

Of course, I don't want to hang out with any of them.

 

Again, she's an amateur journalist -- a cop on medical retirement doing something else with her life. She makes an effort to be neutral. Admittedly, I didn't think much about the headline, which is bad. Generally written be editors instead of journalists to maximize the clicks (though maybe it's the journalist in LET's model). And unfortunately, as far as 90% of readers get out of an article anyway.

The sentence that says "police sources" say it is only one line of inquiry. It is possible she did some firsthand reporting and talked to someone in that police department. It's unfortunate she wasn't more explicit about her source, and maybe it doesn't exist.

There may be quite a few thread titles to be revisited if divisiveness is the criterion.

Agree with @dachuda it's a slur and I wish posters would stop using it. Racist? Only white people can be rednecks. Saying it isn't racist is like saying wetbacks only refers to illegal immigrants and not all hispanics so its not racist. Anyway, in the name of civility, can we please not use it?

 

Background on some of the talking points we see regurgitated here...

Conspiracy theorists, far-right extremists around the world seize on the pandemic

The coronavirus is providing a global rallying cry for conspiracy theorists and far-right extremists on both sides of the Atlantic.

People seizing on the pandemic range from white supremacists and anti-vaxxers in the U.S. to fascist and anti-refugee groups across Europe, according to a POLITICO review of thousands social media posts and interviews with misinformation experts tracking their online activities. They also include far-right populists on both continents who had previously tried to coordinate their efforts after the 2016 American presidential election.

Not all online groups peddling messages on the pandemic have links to the far right, but those extremists have become especially vocal in using the outbreak to push their political agenda at a time of deepening public uncertainty and economic trauma. They are piggybacking on social media to promote coronavirus-related themes drawn from multiple sources — among them, Russian and Chinese disinformation campaigns, the Trump administration’s musings about the coronavirus’ origins and anti-Muslim themes from India’s nationalist ruling party.

“Honestly, it’s a dream come true for any and every hate group, snake oil salesman and everything in between,” said Tijana Cvjetićanin, a fact-checker in the Balkans who has watched ultranationalist groups promoting hate-filled messages on social media about the coronavirus, often against Jewish communities.

***

From 4chan to Facebook
As the world economy craters and the coronavirus’ global death toll ticks past 280,000 people, extremist messages are finding fertile ground on fringe online platforms like 4chan, Telegram and a gamer hangout called Discord. From there, such harmful content can make its way to mainstream sites like Facebook and Google-owned YouTube — each boasting roughly 2 billion users apiece — despite the companies’ attempts to weed out violent or dangerous content.

Facebook said last week that one collection of fake accounts and pages it removed in April — tied to two anti-immigrant websites in the U.S. — had drawn more than 200,000 followers with messages including the hashtag “#ChinaVirus” and a false claim that the coronavirus mainly kills white people. Twitter announced Monday that it would begin more aggressively labeling tweets that contain misleading or harmful coronavirus information.

But plenty of other fake coronavirus content continues to thrive online. That includes a slickly produced online video, called “Plandemic,” that garnered millions of views across YouTube, Twitter and Facebook over the weekend by promoting bogus medical cures and other conspiracy theories tied to the coronavirus. The video remains in wide circulation.

One coronavirus-related term, “Coronachan,” has also exploded on social media, first emerging in January and drawing more than 120,000 shares on Twitter in one week in late April, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a London-based think tank that tracks extremist groups. (The term is a play on the name of 4chan, a message board that is a favorite gathering spot for the global far right.) In Germany, Telegram groups where influential extremists and far-right activists attack vulnerable groups have doubled their number of followers, to more than 100,000 participants since February, according to a review by POLITICO of those accounts.

The themes of far-right posts include long-standing grievances, including allegations that migrants spread disease, support for President Donald Trump’s proposed border wall, antagonism toward the EU or opposition to gun control. One online rumor, accusing Microsoft founder Bill Gates of creating the coronavirus, echoes centuries-old conspiracy theories and Anti-Semitic tropes about global elites pulling the world’s strings.

“These aren’t new lines they are spinning,” said Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate. “They will use anything they can, whether it’s coronavirus or something else, to bring people into their radical world.”

Public figures helping stoke the fires include French nationalist leader Marine Le Pen, whose Facebook account has more than 1.5 million followers, and Trump, who has defended his use of the term “Chinese virus” and pushed the theory that the disease may have come from a lab in China, despite pushback from his intelligence and defense agencies.

Extremist groups on the two continents have tried before to coordinate their messaging, with middling success.

After Trump’s surprise victory in 2016, far-right online communities sprouted up across the U.S. and Europe, at first using online platforms like Facebook and Google before shifting their focus to smaller, less-regulated networks to share conspiracy theories or organize protests.

Americans like Steve Bannon, Trump’s former White House chief strategist, also tried to export U.S.-style online tactics in hopes of uniting European right-wing groups like Italy’s Northern League party and Le Pen’s National Rally in France, though, as POLITICO reported last year, he struggled to win over movements on the Continent.

Now, as the coronavirus gives the far right a new impetus to find audiences, many European activists are wielding the same U.S.-style tactics they have spent years learning to emulate, including the creation of online “meme banks” of photos designed to spread widely. That leaves them less in need of outside help, according to researchers tracking their movements.

“Europe’s far-right no longer needs additional resources from its transatlantic supporters,” said Chloe Colliver, who heads the digital research unit at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.

Blaming minorities
It does not take much digging through the online platforms to find far-right messages on the health crisis.

In Italy, extremist news outlets have flooded social media with reports blaming that country’s devastating coronavirus outbreak on migrants, including an online attack that singled out a Pakistani employee at a Chinese restaurant in a northern Italian town.

In France, activists called for sending non-white populations back to their “home” countries, while Le Pen, the far-right leader, alleged on Facebook that mosques had have “taken advantage of the confinement orders” by blaring “the muezzin's call to Islamic prayer” on loudspeakers.

Tommy Robinson, the British anti-immigration activist, has promoted the “#GermJihad” hashtag and reposted online messages from members of India’s ruling nationalist BJP party to his more than 36,000 followers on Telegram, according to the Center for Countering Digital Hate’s review of his posts.

Others, on sites like Facebook and Reddit, have alleged that the Chinese created the coronavirus as a bioweapon to attack the U.S. economy, and will reap the windfall if they are not stopped. “China will become even more brazen and take down western economies with more filth in the future,” one Reddit user wrote.

Those claims go much further than the recent speculation by Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that the coronavirus originated in a government lab in Wuhan, China. (The president said this month that he thinks the Chinese “made a horrible mistake and they didn’t want to admit it.”)

While some online far-right users have jumped on Trump’s messages, others had already been promoting anti-China rhetoric before senior U.S. politicians began railing on Beijing, according to a review of social media posts from early February.

read the rest at the link...

 

...and Karl Malone, self-described.

 

I disagree that only whites can be rednecks. Whether or not we talk about the origin of a sunburned neck, attitudes towards work, life, music, food, etc, it doesn't have to be only for whites.

 

How many mexicans call themselves wetbacks?

I think on of the reasons it's not considered racist is because rednecks call themselves rednecks. A lot of them take pride and own it.

 

Is people calling themselves "rednecks" taking ownership of the term like "queer" ?

 

I use to go to the Redneck Games. They absolutely take a lot of pride in it.

 

lol I don't think those people know what pride is.... esp the people wearing rebel flags and claiming to be proud Americans. I imagine they all died of cholera after the mud dive.

 

Unless you love playing devil's advocate for ***** and giggles they hold many similar viewpoints as you such as carrying water for Trump constantly.

 

I'm willing to go against the grain sometimes, and even defend our president on some things, but I'm not Trump's Bobby Boucher. I have repeatedly criticized him. Do you want the truth? I am a democrat... but the democrats are so far left that I want the party to change. I was left out when it went far left and I've been stuck without anyone to vote for for some time. I will gladly not support the DNC and laugh at their efforts until they get a grip and swing back to the middle. I have not voted Republican... the last time I did vote it was for Ron Paul because I'm not voting for assholes. I have a strict don't vote for ******* policy... so that means I won't vote for Trump. But it doesn't mean I don't laugh at the Democrats of today and their pathetic attempt to run socialist candidates and b**** and moan about **** that won't get them elected.

So you can say I'm not really a democrat by current day's standard, and you're probably right if you go by your definition, but I've not gone to the GOP. They are a useful, blunt tool to fix the DNC at the moment. If the DNC succeeds, the moderate dems will continue to not have a place in the party. I've long fought for liberal values, and during the Bush era the Dems were highly representative of my views. Now they have gone crazy. I can't vote for either of these jokes of a party, so I guess I am maybe not a democrat today, and I should say I was... but if I had to choose I would say I am a democrat who is sitting these elections out. Or independent since I am not of a party or active in supporting one. It's hard to wear such a title when it just means different things to everyone.

 

Is this the go to copy pasta of every right wing person on the internet? "Excuse me sir, I'm a classical liberal who voted for Obama twice but the left has gone crazy #walkaway".

It's funny because I've served with people in the Marine Corps where I knew them for years who obviously lie and talk about how they voted for Obama but they found out he was a communist Kenyian. Like who are you trying to fool?

 

I didn't vote for Obama because of work reasons, and I'll leave it at that... Ethics.... I didn't vote at all... But I was happy the first time he got elected. The second time, I saw he was just more of the same BS. Trump is part of that too. He just caters differently. None of these people have our interests in mind.

 

If all your jokes are of one grammatical structure... you might be a terrible comedian.

 

Yet the rednecks ate that stuff up and made him a millionaire 100 times over.

 

He obviously can’t debate on his position so he resorts to changing the subject and trolling. He tried it yesterday claiming that Ahmaud was trying to steal the shot gun. He obviously just wants to troll since he has nothing intelligent to say to defend his contrarian position.

 

I wonder if he judges his intelligence purely on being a contrarian troll online? Is this his outlet to feel special and not average? Probably.