FBI says “extremists” motivated by Pizzagate, QAnon are threats | Hacker News Reader

FBI says “extremists” motivated by Pizzagate, QAnon are threats

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36 pointsroguecoder55 comments

Earlier discussion about same topic:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20589234 (108 points/95 comments)

As we consider how the tools we build are used, it is useful to be aware of the real-world consequences of frictionless information sharing. Made-up conspiracy theories inspiring violent action also, unfortunately, want to be free.

Not sure why you would bring up Epstein, an actual monster, in the context of PizzaGate which was clearly dangerous nonsense.

I don't subscribe to Pizzagate, but I suppose it's because the stories around both are _similar_ (international cabal of abusers), it's just that one was fake and a long term play to try to scare people out of voting for Hillary Clinton.

A month ago, you would have said "Not sure why you would bring up Epstein; he's old news and did his time years ago."

A year or so ago, you would have said "Not sure why you would bring up Epstein, he's old news and did his time years ago, and what's with these weird conspiracy theories about some harmless-looking club for people with too much money to play make-believe dress up at each other every so often? I had to google to even find that much."

The truth of the whole thing is beyond me. But the first derivative of this stuff is disturbing. It may only be a small amount so far, but it's significant enough stuff that that's a problem even so.

Do you feel Pizzagate is real?

I don't think anyone doubts Epstein's guilt at this point. The conspiracy angle is more about who else among the "world elite" joined him in his crimes and tried to cover them up.

Extremists motivated by true claims are also a threat.

I'm sure many of us did consider that, and realised that at th end of the day, it's better if more people have a medium to share their thoughts and improve the world than if only a small minority with money/power did, even if the former can potentially lead to some extremists/nutcases getting an audience.

I think this just goes to show how critical good editorial oversight is to free information sharing.

Or, to put it differently: You can put whatever you want on your website, but it's in Facebook and Google's best interests to avoid linking to it.

Call it what it is: White nationalistic terrorism, don't sugar coat it and call it "extremists".

They need to do the same with Antifa. Regardless of what side of the political spectrum you associate with, violence...is violence.

Then what about the military? The police?

They are both violent. But terrorism is not just violence. Terrorism doesn't have to be violent although most often is.

There certainly are quite a few efforts to deal with how police respond to situations.

Perhaps the poster meant political violence? A police shootout is very different from people beating each other in the street over political views.

So you're saying that Antifa is NOT a terrorist organization? The military and police are legal organizations who's part and parcel at times includes violence. I could pull any number of articles that refuse to label them (Antifa) as terrorist or even left wing radicals.

Q Anon seems to be more of a 'think tank' or even an idealism.

How exactly do you make the jump to 'white nationalist terrorism'? Because they seem to be against the left? Against corruption? Can you link anything that would tie the two together? If you legitimately can, I'd love to read and research it.

I'm not pro-antifa or Q anon, but your comment seems to be mental hopscotch with no legitimate foundation on facts.

The FBI did exactly this (at least as early as April 2016, under Obama), and continues to do so: https://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/01/antifa-charlottesv...

I’m not sure why people keep claiming the FBI doesn’t investigate Antifa. I guess it doesn’t fit in with the QAnon conspiracy theory.

I never said the FBI. I'm speaking to media in general. Most articles involving Antifa refuse to call them terrorist or even left winged radicals.

Again, I'm only seeing a snap judgement and a quick fired response made in haste while interjecting hyperbole.

There's a degree of "whataboutism" to your statement. The article is about conspiracy theory extremists, who haven't typically been included in the "terrorist" grouping. It seems like you're trying to drag something unrelated (antifa) into the discussion.

I was replying to user alexk307 in my response, who's comment was:

"Call it what it is: White nationalistic terrorism, don't sugar coat it and call it "extremists"."

My understanding is that QAnon does not march around and say "HERE WE ARE WE ARE QANON!" so to say they are 'white nationalistic terrorist' is an assumption. That type of language is very reminiscent of what Antifa spouts off, especially in the regards of "if you don't agree with me you are racist". There are far too many that have the spotlight of the media attention right now that follow this mindset.

It is possible to disagree with someone and NOT be a racist, a bigot, a xyzphobe...or even WHITE.

The majority of the media have lost the unbias and reporting of facts, and for everyone, this is a damn shame.

Data, give us the data. Let us decide. Don't cram an agenda down our throats. Regardless of what side of the isle you're on, weather you sit or stand to pee, or how close to the equator your were born.

I think that might be jumping the gun? That's a very popular meme but I'm not sure it's at all accurate -- I haven't heard a convincing case. Perhaps you could explain your thinking here?

Here's my take:

The FBI calls people involved with the earth liberation front "ecoterrorists". I don't think most people in the ELF would deny that their efforts are motivated by environmentalism, or oppose the "eco" label being applied to those efforts.

The "extremists" described here would probably not say that they were motivated by "white nationalism" or a desire to ethnic cleanse non-white people. No doubt there are some of those out there, but certainly you couldn't describe the pizza gate attacker in that way, nor would they self-describe that way.

I think the vague "extremist" label might be about as good as you could do, seeing as how unrelated some of these things are. You might be able to call it "right-wing extremism" but then you're making things partisan, and it's understandable that the FBI wouldn't want to do that.

That dude "self-investigate" Comet Pingpong based on Pizzagate rumors, and ended up shooting hole(s) in the roof, didn't he? Then there's Anthony Comello killing Franceso Cali a few months ago, with Qanon things scrawled on his hands in court.

The violence is already manifesting.

How is believing there’s a cabal of child abusers and child trafficking high in our government and society white nationalist? I think PizzaGate is nonsense but it definitely sounds more like extremism than terrorism and that’s not “sugarcoating” things. Extremism can lead to terrorism but conflating the two is how you get political prisoners.

Their sugar-coated terminology has me less worried than the fact that (according to the article) they’ve fired everyone that didn’t voluntarily leave the team responsible for investigating these groups.

It should be noted (and it is in the article) that this is an internal memo sent from a field office about threats surrounding some topic(s).

In other discussions I've seen a lot of folks go on about freedom of speech and other issues, there's no proposal to limit speech in this memo, or even launch an investigation purely based on someone(s) believing a conspiracy theory.

Are there any credible analysis who is behind qanon? It seems pretty clear that it's a disinformation project, or something along those lines to get power and control a subset of people, from some actor, but who is it attributed to? I know with APT's in infosec after a while we can attribute the various groups to regimes because of the timing of actions and interests they protect, is there any similar analysis of Q?

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/how-three-conspiracy-...

Most conspiracy theorists are just mentally ill. Take flat earthers. Most of them suffer from extreme distrust and paranoia and tend to believe only foremost anyone who tells them they’re being lied to.

Saying that mentally ill people who believe in evil government conspiracies could be dangerous isn’t that unreasonable. Maybe specific individuals in the movement are passive, but what about those that they ignite?

I disagree that most conspiracy theorists are mentally ill, except maybe in some extremely loose definition of the term, where mere illogic is equated with mental illness.

I like this quote from Michael Shermer: "Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons." Smart people frequently get involved in conspiracy theories through a combination of confirmation bias and the spinning-wheels-in-the-sand effect where they become more entrenched in their beliefs by being forced to defend them.

Being illogical is not necessarily mental illness. Sometimes, it's just pig-headed stubbornness.

https://michaelshermer.com/2002/09/smart-people-believe-weir...

Calling it mental illness is just making normal human behavior a pathology. Almost everybody believes in a widespread conspiracy of some kind, every tribe has their boogeyman. So if there’s any mental illness involved it’s not the belief itself, it’s the willingness to isolate oneself socially and other social factors. But with the internet even the wackiest conspiracies such as flat-earth don’t lead to social isolation.

You seem to be asserting that believing a conspiracy theory does not make you mentally ill. That’s true, but not what I’m saying. I’m saying conspiracy theorists are overwhelming just mentally ill to begin with. There was a great piece a while ago about a journalist who interviewed people at flat earther conventions. They pretty much all cited significant emotional trauma or betrayal of trust.

I appreciate your clarification, but the assertion that "conspiracy theorists are overwhelming[ly] just mentally ill to begin with" is exactly what I'm refuting.

I suppose part of it is a matter of definition, since there is a spectrum of belief in unproven "conspiracy theories". Is a "conspiracy theorist" one who believes in a conspiracy theory, or one who creates conspiracy theories? Is someone who believes that there may have been a conspiracy associated with the JFK assassination a "conspiracy theorist"? They're certainly not on the same level as someone who willfully defies all evidence and logic to continue to assert that the Earth is flat. There's a spectrum of the amount of deviance from logic and evidence as well of a spectrum of the strength of one's belief in these "theories".

I think that a large number of people subscribe to some sort of unproven "conspiracy theory" and that it is incorrect to assert that this population is overwhelmingly mentally ill.

If you use people who go to a flat earth convention as your basis for a representative sample of the mental health of conspiracy theorists, I think you're going to get a very skewed result. You're skewing very high on the spectrum of deviance from evidence and logic, as well as very high on the spectrum of strength of belief.

I would probably agree with your assertion if my definition of what constituted a "conspiracy theorist" met a minimum criteria of a certain threshold value on those two spectrums, but I think that the term "conspiracy theorist" is very nuanced and therefore problematic and even dangerous, especially when we start throwing around phrases like "conspiracy theorists are overwhelming[ly] just mentally ill to begin with". Here's an interesting article on the topic of "conspiracy theory" as a dangerous misnomer:

http://theconversation.com/in-defence-of-conspiracy-theories...

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