Facebook fails to stop Spanish language anti-abortion disinformation, study says

A group examined nine profiles reaching more than 2.79 million people peddling inaccurate information without consequence

The report comes as the US supreme court is expected to overturn the landmark Roe v Wade ruling. Photograph: Dado Ruvić/Reuters


Dani Anguiano in Los Angeles

THE GUARDIAN

Wed 18 May 2022

Anti-abortion Facebook pages with millions of followers are spreading disinformation about abortion to Spanish speakers with little to no intervention from the social media platform, according to a new report from Naral Pro-Choice America.


‘Think Before You Link’: app launched to help social media users detect fake profiles

The abortion rights group examined nine Facebook pages that reach more than 2.79 million people for the first-of-its-kind report, part of its efforts to show how disinformation is disseminated by opponents of abortion. Researchers found that several of the pages “repeatedly spread medically inaccurate information about abortion without any action from Facebook”, highlighting what experts have described as a crisis of Spanish-language misinformation that’s slipping through the cracks.

The report comes as reproductive rights are in peril in the US with the supreme court expected to overturn the landmark Roe v Wade ruling, which guaranteed the right to abortion in the US.

“It has never been more critical for people to have access to medically accurate information about abortion – no matter the language they speak. What’s clear here is that anti-choice extremists are capitalizing on social media companies’ failure to moderate Spanish-language disinformation,” Mini Timmaraju, the Naral Pro-Choice America president, said in a statement.

Research from the group found that articles in Spanish focused on US abortion policy that received the most engagement on social media “overwhelmingly lean anti-choice” and come from outlets with religious affiliations.

Many of the Spanish-language Facebook pages examined by Naral researchers spread disinformation about the safety of abortion, claiming that it leads to increased risk of breast cancer, anxiety, infertility, depression and suicide. Some posts have been viewed thousands of times without intervention from Facebook.

The content spreads the same disinformation about abortion as English-language anti-abortion groups, which also push medically inaccurate information about abortion and demonizes abortion providers, the report says.

Catholicism plays a key role in much of the Spanish-language content, which suggests that support for abortion care conflicts with religious identity. The Spanish-speaking anti-abortion movement relies on stereotypes, said Gabriela Rico, the lead researcher for the report, such as that Latinx people widely oppose abortion and are all Catholic.

“This is not only a false, racist assumption, but a way for the anti-choice movement to erase the majority of Latinx people who support reproductive freedom – often because of, not in spite of, their faith,” Rico, a Naral research manger, said.

A recent Navigator Research poll found that 65% of Hispanic Americans support Congress passing a law to guarantee the right to an abortion in the US.

The spread of abortion disinformation is part of Facebook’s broader failure to moderate Spanish-language content, experts say. A study last year found that only 30% of misinformation in Spanish is flagged with warning labels, compared to 70% in English. Lawmakers have called on the company to do more to address what they deemed a “disinformation crisis”. In a response to lawmakers, Facebook focused on the resources the company has put into limiting misinformation, stating that it has “35,000 people working on these challenges”.

Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Naral’s findings.

Multiple social media platforms have failed to stop disinformation about abortion in Spanish and English, but Facebook’s moderation decisions have been “particularly problematic”, the report said.

The failure to remove abortion disinformation has “direct implications for the 72% of Latinx people in the United States who use its platform”, the report states.

“Latinx communities are targeted with anti-choice disinformation constantly – I have seen this not only in my work on this report, but in my own family and community,” Rico said. “Spanish-speaking people deserve to receive accurate information about reproductive freedom, not to be lied to and used as pawns in a political game.”

With Roe in doubt, some fear tech surveillance of pregnancy



PHILADELPHIA (AP) — When Chandler Jones realized she was pregnant during her junior year of college, she turned to a trusted source for information and advice.

Her cellphone.

“I couldn’t imagine before the internet, trying to navigate this,” said Jones, 26, who graduated Tuesday from the University of Baltimore School of Law. “I didn’t know if hospitals did abortions. I knew Planned Parenthood did abortions, but there were none near me. So I kind of just Googled.”

But with each search, Jones was being surreptitiously followed — by the phone apps and browsers that track us as we click away, capturing even our most sensitive health data.

Online searches. Period apps. Fitness trackers. Advice helplines. GPS. The often obscure companies collecting our health history and geolocation data may know more about us than we know ourselves.

For now, the information is mostly used to sell us things, like baby products targeted to pregnant women. But in a post-Roe world — if the Supreme Court upends the 1973 decision that legalized abortion, as a draft opinion suggests it may in the coming weeks — the data would become more valuable, and women more vulnerable.


Privacy experts fear that pregnancies could be surveilled and the data shared with police or sold to vigilantes.

“The value of these tools for law enforcement is for how they really get to peek into the soul,” said Cynthia Conti-Cook, a lawyer and technology fellow at the Ford Foundation. “It gives (them) the mental chatter inside our heads.”

___

HIPAA, HOTLINES, HEALTH HISTORIES

The digital trail only becomes clearer when we leave home, as location apps, security cameras, license plate readers and facial recognition software track our movements. The development of these tech tools has raced far ahead of the laws and regulations that might govern them.

And it's not just women who should be concerned. The same tactics used to surveil pregnancies can be used by life insurance companies to set premiums, banks to approve loans and employers to weigh hiring decisions, experts said.

Or it could — and sometimes does — send women who experience miscarriages cheery ads on their would-be child’s birthday.

It's all possible because HIPAA, the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, protects medical files at your doctor’s office but not the information that third-party apps and tech companies collect about you. Nor does HIPAA cover the health histories collected by non-medical “crisis pregnancy centers, ” which are run by anti-abortion groups. That means the information can be shared with, or sold to, almost anyone.

Jones contacted one such facility early in her Google search, before figuring out they did not offer abortions.

“The dangers of unfettered access to Americans’ personal data have never been more clear. Researching birth control online, updating a period-tracking app or bringing a phone to the doctor’s office could be used to track and prosecute women across the U.S.,” Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said last week.

For myriad reasons, both political and philosophical, data privacy laws in the U.S. have lagged far behind those adopted in Europe in 2018.

Until this month, anyone could buy a weekly trove of data on clients at more than 600 Planned Parenthood sites around the country for as little as $160, according to a recent Vice investigation that led one data broker to remove family planning centers from the customer “pattern” data it sells. The files included approximate patient addresses (down to the census block, derived from where their cellphones “sleep” at night), income brackets, time spent at the clinic, and the top places people stopped before and after their visits.

While the data did not identify patients by name, experts say that can often be pieced together, or de-anonymized, with a little sleuthing.

In Arkansas, a new law will require women seeking an abortion to first call a state hotline and hear about abortion alternatives. The hotline, set to debut next year, will cost the state nearly $5 million a year to operate. Critics fear it will be another way to track pregnant women, either by name or through an identifier number. Other states are considering similar legislation.

The widespread surveillance capabilities alarm privacy experts who fear what’s to come if Roe v. Wade is overturned. The Supreme Court is expected to issue its opinion by early July.

“A lot of people, where abortion is criminalized — because they have nowhere to go — are going to go online, and every step that they take (could) ... be surveilled,” Conti-Cook said.

___

PUNISH WOMEN, DOCTORS OR FRIENDS?

Women of color like Jones, along with poor women and immigrants, could face the most dire consequences if Roe falls since they typically have less power and money to cover their tracks. They also tend to have more abortions, proportionally, perhaps because they have less access to health care, birth control and, in conservative states, schools with good sex education programs.

The leaked draft suggests the Supreme Court could be ready to let states ban or severely restrict abortion through civil or criminal penalties. More than half are poised to do so. Abortion foes have largely promised not to punish women themselves, but instead target their providers or people who help them access services.

“The penalties are for the doctor, not for the woman,” Republican state Rep. Jim Olsen of Oklahoma said last month of a new law that makes performing an abortion a felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

But abortion advocates say that remains to be seen.

“When abortion is criminalized, pregnancy outcomes are investigated,” said Tara Murtha, the communications director at the Women’s Law Project in Philadelphia, who recently co-authored a report on digital surveillance in the abortion sphere.

She wonders where the scrutiny would end. Prosecutors have already taken aim at women who use drugs during pregnancy, an issue Justice Clarence Thomas raised during the Supreme Court arguments in the case in December.

“Any adverse pregnancy outcome can turn the person who was pregnant into a suspect," Murtha said.

___

STATE LIMITS, TECH STEPS, PERSONAL TIPS

A few states are starting to push back, setting limits on tech tools as the fight over consumer privacy intensifies.

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, through a legal settlement, stopped a Boston-based ad company from steering anti-abortion smartphone ads to women inside clinics there that offer abortion services, deeming it harassment. The firm had even proposed using the same “geofencing” tactics to send anti-abortion messages to high school students.

In Michigan, voters amended the state Constitution to prohibit police from searching someone's data without a warrant. And in California, home to Silicon Valley, voters passed a sweeping digital privacy law that lets people see their data profiles and ask to have them deleted. The law took effect in 2020.

The concerns are mounting, and have forced Apple, Google and other tech giants to begin taking steps to rein in the sale of consumer data. That includes Apple’s launch last year of its App Tracking Transparency feature, which lets iPhone and iPad users block apps from tracking them.

Abortion rights activists, meanwhile, suggest women in conservative states leave their cellphones, smartwatches and other wearable devices at home when they seek reproductive health care, or at least turn off the location services. They should also closely examine the privacy policies of menstrual trackers and other health apps they use.

“There are things that people can do that can help mitigate their risk. Most people will not do them because they don’t know about it or it’s inconvenient,” said Nathan Freed Wessler, a deputy director with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “There are very, very few people who have the savvy to do everything.”

Digital privacy was the last thing on Jones’s mind when she found herself pregnant. She was in crisis. She and her partner had ambitious career goals. After several days of searching, she found an appointment for an abortion in nearby Delaware. Fortunately, he had a car.

“When I was going through this, it was just survival mode,” said Jones, who took part in a march Saturday in downtown Baltimore to support abortion rights.

Besides, she said, she's grown up in the Internet age, a world in which "all of my information is being sold constantly.”

But news of the leaked Supreme Court draft sparked discussions at her law school this month about privacy, including digital privacy in the era of Big Data.

“Literally, because I have my cell phone in my pocket, if I go to a CVS, they know I went to a CVS,” the soon-to-be lawyer said. “I think the privacy right is such a deeper issue in America (and one) that is being violated all the time.”

___

This story corrects the title of U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, who is a senator, not representative.

___

Follow Maryclaire Dale on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Maryclairedale

Maryclaire Dale, The Associated Press

Republican Senate candidates promote ‘replacement’ theory

By STEVE PEOPLES

FILE - Republican Senate candidate JD Vance speaks at a rally at the Delaware County Fairgrounds, April 23, 2022, in Delaware, Ohio. Former President Donald Trump's late-stage endorsement of JD Vance in Ohio's GOP Senate primary catapulted the “Hillbilly Elegy” author to victory in last week's election, reinforcing the deep loyalty the former president holds among the most loyal Republican voters.

 (AP Photo/Joe Maiorana, File)


NEW YORK (AP) — Several mainstream Republican Senate candidates are drawing on the “great replacement” conspiracy theory once confined to the far-right fringes of U.S. politics to court voters this campaign season, promoting the baseless notion that there is a plot to diminish the influence of white people in America.

In some cases, the comments have gone largely overlooked given the hard-line immigration rhetoric that has become commonplace among conservatives during the Trump era. But a weekend mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, that may have been inspired by the racist theory is drawing new attention to the GOP’s growing embrace of white nationalist creed.

Three weeks ago in Arizona, Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters accused Democrats of trying to flood the nation with millions of immigrants “to change the demographics of our country.” A few days later in Missouri, Senate hopeful Eric Schmitt, the state attorney general, said Democrats were “fundamentally trying to change this country through illegal immigration.” And in Ohio, Republican Senate nominee JD Vance accused Democrats of trying to “transform the electorate.”

Warning of an immigrant “invasion,” Vance told Fox News Channel that Democrats “have decided that they can’t win reelection in 2022 unless they bring a large number of new voters to replace the voters that are already here.”

Some of the Republican campaigns denied that their statements amounted to replacement theory, but among the experts, there is little question.

Five experts on hate speech who reviewed the Republican candidates’ comments confirmed that they promote the baseless racist theory, even though the Republicans don’t mention race directly.

“Comments like these demonstrate two essential features of great replacement conspiracy theory. They predict racial doomsday, saying that it is all part of an orchestrated master plan. It’s only the language that has been softened,” said American University professor Brian Hughes, associate director of the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab. “The basic story they tell is the same one we see in white supremacist chats across the internet: An enemy is orchestrating doom for white Americans by plotting to fill the country with nonwhites.”

Indeed, a mainstream interpretation of replacement theory in the U.S. baselessly suggests Democrats are encouraging immigration from Latin America so more like-minded potential voters replace “traditional” Americans, says Mark Pitcavage, senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism.

Such a message has become a central component of the modern-day conservative movement’s appeal to voters. Former President Donald Trump repeatedly warned of an immigrant invasion on the southern border, and he was slow to condemn white supremacy throughout his presidency.

Shortly after taking office, Trump shared a social media post from someone with the username WhiteGenocideTM.

Replacement theory is being investigated as a motivating factor in the Buffalo supermarket shooting, which killed 10 Black people and left three other people injured.

President Joe Biden condemned replacement theory directly — and those who spread it, although he did not name names — after meeting with victims’ families Tuesday in Buffalo.

“Hate, that through the media, and politics, the internet, has radicalized angry, alienated, lost and isolated individuals into falsely believing that they will be replaced — that’s the word, ‘replaced’ — by the others, by people who don’t look like them,” Biden charged.

“I call on all Americans to reject the lie,” the Democratic president continued. “And I condemn those who spread the lie for power, political gain and for profit.”

Rep. Liz Cheney, who was ousted from House Republican leadership for her outspoken criticism of Trump, blamed her own party on Monday for enabling “white nationalism, white supremacy and anti-Semitism.”

“History has taught us that what begins with words ends in far worse,” Cheney tweeted. GOP “leaders must renounce and reject these views and those who hold them.”

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell was asked three times Tuesday, in different ways, about replacement theory -- if leaders have to speak out about it or believe it themselves -- and declined to fully respond.

“Well, certainly the episode of this horrible episode in Buffalo is a result of a completely deranged young man who ought to suffer severe as possible penalty under the law,” he said.

Asked about Biden’s call to reject the lie, McConnell shifted responsibility more broadly: “Racism of any sort is abhorrent in America and ought to be stood up to everybody, both Republicans, Democrats, all Americans.”

In a poll released last week, The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that about 1 in 3 Americans believes an effort is underway to replace U.S.-born Americans with immigrants for electoral gain.

Fox News’ most popular personality, Tucker Carlson, has been one of the theory’s biggest proponents. A study of five years’ worth of Carlson’s show by The New York Times found 400 instances in which he talked about Democratic politicians and others seeking to force demographic change through immigration.

But so far, at least, less attention has been focused on Republican candidates preparing to face voters in the coming weeks and months who have, in some cases, promoted the theory again and again.

In interviews with conservative national television and radio over the last year, Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson has called replacement theory “the Democrat grand plan.”

“I’ve got to believe they want to change the makeup of the electorate,” he told a Minneapolis-area conservative radio host last month.

Johnson condemned the “horrific” Buffalo attack on social media, while campaign spokesperson Alexa Henning called it a “lie” that he supports replacement theory.

“The senator has spoken extensively on the inhumanity of the Biden administration’s open border policies, not some racist ‘theory,’” she said.

In Missouri, at least two Republicans vying for the Republican Senate nomination have made similar statements more recently.

While touring the U.S.-Mexico border last month, former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens said that immigrants crossing over illegally were “flooding into all of the 50 states, and that includes Missouri.”

“What’s also very clear is that Joe Biden’s policies are an assault on the entire idea of America,” Greitens said. “He’s wiping out the distinction between citizens and non-citizens, and he’s doing it on purpose.”

A week later, Schmitt, Greitens’ Republican rival, claimed that tens of millions of immigrants were crossing into the U.S. illegally because of Biden’s policies. He said Democrats were intentionally encouraging illegal immigration for their own benefit.

“They are fundamentally trying to change this country through their illegal immigration policy,” Schmitt told conservative commentator Glenn Beck.

On Tuesday, Schmitt criticized reporting that he had promoted replacement theory as “woke ‘journalism.’”

“I’ll never stop fighting for border security or calling out the Democrats’ radical agenda. We’ve got a country to save,” he tweeted.

Greitens ignored questions about replacement theory but called the mass shooting in Buffalo “truly horrific” in a written statement.

In Arizona, Masters has warned throughout his campaign of a Democratic plot to transform the U.S. electorate.

“Obviously, the Democrats, they hope to just change the demographics of our country,” Masters told the Patriot Edition podcast late last month. “They hope to import an entirely new electorate. Then they call you a racist and a bigot.”

In Ohio, Vance has already secured a place on the November ballot. He won Trump’s endorsement after embracing many of the former president’s hardline views, including those related to immigration.

Vance told Breitbart News last month that Democrats are trying to give 15 million immigrants in the country illegally the right to vote. “They are trying to transform the electorate of this country,” he said.

He made similar comments days later at a town hall in Portsmouth, Ohio.

Shortly after Biden was inaugurated, congressional Democrats proposed legislation that would include an eight-year pathway to citizenship for the estimated 11 million people living in the country illegally, but the proposal has stalled and has little chance of clearing Congress.

“Now of course,” Vance said, “you’re accused of being a racist to even point this out. We get to decide, the people get to decide how we do or do not transform the country.”

The Vance campaign declined to comment.

___

AP writers Lisa Mascaro in Washington and Thomas Beaumont in Des Moines, Iowa contributed.

Orbán and US right to bond at CPAC in Hungary over ‘Great Replacement’ ideology

American far right has long embraced Hungary’s prime minister, who speaks of Europe’s ‘suicidal’ immigration policies

Hungarian prime minister Victor Orbán complains about migrants to Europe from ‘other civilizations’,

 Photograph: Ian Langsdon/EPA


Flora Garamvolgyi and Julian Borger
Wed 18 May 2022

Hungary’s nationalist leader, Viktor Orbán, will be the star speaker at an extraordinary session of America’s Conservative Political Action Conference (Cpac) to be held in Hungary this week, in an effort to cement bonds between the radical right on both sides of the Atlantic under the banner of the “great replacement” ideology.

In a speech on Monday, Orbán made explicit reference to the ideology, which claims there is a liberal plot to dilute the white populations of the US and European countries through immigration. Increasingly widespread among US Republicans, the creed was cited by the killer who opened fire on Saturday in a supermarket in a predominantly black area of Buffalo, New York.



What is ‘great replacement’ theory and how did its racist lies spread in the US?


Speaking in Buffalo on Tuesday, Joe Biden called it a “perverse ideology” and “a lie”.

“I call on all Americans to reject the lie. I condemn those who spread the lie for power, political gain and for profit,” Biden said. “We’ve now seen too many times the deadly and destructive violence this ideology unleashes.”

Orbán argued this week that the western world was “committing suicide” through immigration.

“I see the great European population exchange as a suicidal attempt to replace the lack of European, Christian children with adults from other civilizations – migrants,” Orbán declared in a speech to mark the start of his fourth term in office. Echoing another popular theme on the American right, he argued that another form of cultural suicide was “gender madness”, a reference to the spread of LGBTQ+ rights in the west.

The prime minister’s choice of vocabulary was not accidental, Hungarian political analysts said, but was rather designed to underline the common ties between his Fidesz party, his self-described “illiberal” form of government, and the American visitors arriving in Budapest for the first ever Cpac meeting in Europe.

“I think it is logical that he was signaling to US conservatives because of the upcoming Cpac,” said Zoltán Lakner, a political analyst, and editor-in-chief of the Jelen news outlet. “He is trying to define himself as a global political actor, and at this point, he has kind of achieved that goal.”

​​One of the speakers of the event, Balazs Orbán, the prime minister’s political director, told the Guardian that “there are political forces in every country that see the world the same way” as Hungary does, but he said the US right wing have showed exceptional encouragement.

“American conservatives are very supportive of us because they can see that we have huge domestic support and because they see Hungary as a conservative safe space,” Balazs Orbán said.

Alongside prominent Fidesz figures will be an array of other European hard-right leaders, including the former head of the UK Independence party, Nigel Farage, Herbert Kickl, head of Austrian Freedom party, and Santiago Abascal, president of Spain’s Vox party.

The US contingent will include several Republican members of Congress, Donald Trump’s former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and the chairman of the American Conservative Union, Matt Schlapp. Most influential of all, the Fox News talkshow host, Tucker Carlson, will be attending.

Carlson has arguably done more than anyone to popularise the “great replacement theory” in the US, promoting it in 400 of his shows, according to an analysis by the New York Times.


How Tucker Carlson and the far right embraced Hungary’s authoritarian leader

Carlson has developed particular ties with Orbán, originally through his father, Richard, whose political consultancy, Policy Impact Strategic Communications, is a registered lobbyist for the Hungarian leader. Last year, Carlson broadcast a week’s episodes of his show from Hungary, with a soft interview with Orbán himself, putting both the prime minister and his government in a positive light, and glossing over EU complaints that Orbán has curbed independent media and judicial autonomy, enriched his associates from the public purse and reshaped election laws to his benefit.

Earlier this year, Carlson produced another pro-Orbán programme called Hungary vs. Soros: The Fight for Civilization, highlighting another ideological bond: the portrayal of George Soros, a Hungarian-born billionaire and philanthropist, as a malign Jewish financier pulling the strings on immigration and other liberal policies.

“At this point, [American conservatives] are studying the Hungarian model and are looking at Hungary as a place where conservative policies can achieve their goals,” Boris Kálnoky, head of Mathias Corvinus Collegium (which was granted about $1.7bn by Orbán last year), told the Guardian. “Orbán is someone who attracts attention. And these visits by Tucker Carlson, who has a huge influence in this community, certainly put the spotlight on Hungary.”

Richard Kraemer, a American Republican and analyst at the European Values Centre for Security Policy (EVCSP) in Prague, said he was concerned about the security implications of CPAC’s decision to hold its conference in Budapest which, after diplomatic expulsions in the rest of Europe following the Ukraine invasion, is widely seen as the most important outpost for Russian intelligence on the continent.


Hungary: where editors tell reporters to disregard facts before their eyes

“If you walk into this environment, you’re looking at – by at least one count –about a thousand security agency-related Russians that are in Hungary right now. And to put that in perspective, they have 170 diplomats in Washington,” said Kraemer, who co-authored a new EVCSP report this week that describes Orbán’s Hungary as “a Russia and China proxy weakening Europe”.

“The are all these kinds of avenues whereby they’re able to put agents of influence in there and in front of Americans, who are basically low-hanging fruit that have decided to get even closer to the ground by showing up in Budapest,” Kraemer added. “What’s particularly disconcerting to me about this is that CPAC has basically decided that the cultural wars being fought right now by American conservatives are more important than America’s national security.”

How 4chan’s toxic culture helped radicalize Buffalo shooting suspect

Payton Gendron’s 180-page manifesto borrowed straight from the site’s politics boards, echoing anti-Semite and racist myths

Members of the Buffalo police department work at the scene of a shooting at a Tops supermarket. Photograph: Brendan McDermid/Reuters


Justin Ling
Wed 18 May 2022

Just weeks after 4chan motivated a quadruple shooting in Washington DC, the racist and conspiracy-oriented online message board probably inspired the killings of 10 at a grocery store in a predominantly Black neighborhood of Buffalo over the weekend.

A 180-page manifesto, allegedly released by the accused along with a video of the attack, is rife with pseudo-scientific racism, antisemitic conspiracy theories and a call for others to mimic his violence. The screed is mostly plagiarized from other extremists and from the far-right 4chan.

The 18-year-old white man charged with carrying out the massacre – before turning himself over to police at the scene – wrote that “extreme boredom” drove him to 4chan in March 2020.


‘Cheering section’ for violence: the attacks that show 4chan is still a threat

Payton Gendron first fell into logging on the message board daily when coronavirus-related lockdowns kept many in New York state indoors, according to the timeline in the manifesto. His family told the New York Post that isolation and paranoia inflicted by the pandemic made him snap – possibly a preview of Gendron’s legal defense.

Gendron faces first-degree murder charges, which the justice department says they may prosecute as hate crimes. Most of those slain were Black, including Aaron Salter, a security guard who tried to stop the shooting; local activist Katherine Massey; and substitute teacher Pearl Young.

The manifesto contains hundreds of racist and antisemitic memes borrowed straight from 4chan’s politics boards and spells out the philosophy behind the attacks: the racist myth that Democrats favor open immigration policies and high birthrates for Black people to “replace” Republican voters and seize control of America.


Buffalo shooting: what we know about the victims so far

That so-called rreat replacement myth, sometimes more bluntly termed “white genocide theory,” has found particularly fertile ground in places like 4chan.

“We have seen (the great replacement myth) playing a greater role in mobilizing individuals to violence because it has a somewhat unique ability to foster a sense of emergency,” said Amarnath Amarasingam, assistant professor in the school of religion at Queen’s University and author of an upcoming book on the radicalizing power of conspiracy theories.

The manifesto details the baseless racism that underpins the philosophy, including the idea that Jewish people secretly control the world, and that the genetic differences between the races make them incompatible. One particular image, sourced from 4chan, claims to show “the truth about race” – compiling a handful of debunked, misunderstood, or cherrypicked studies to assert the claim that certain races are inferior to whites. The manifesto even seeks to back up its claims with the long-abandoned pseudoscience of phrenology, which studies the sizes and shapes of craniums.

While these claims have no basis in modern biology or sociology, they are established doctrine on 4chan, where even conversations on a board devoted to cooking frequently veer into racist slurs and junk race science. The popularity of these ideas on 4chan has bubbled up into the mainstream.

The great replacement myth has been endorsed, in various forms, by vlogger Nick Fuentes and neo-Nazi organization Patriot Front and by more establishment figures like Fox News host Tucker Carlson and Senate hopeful JD Vance.

In Discord chat logs believed to be written by Gendron, he writes, “I only really turned racist when 4chan started giving me facts.” Early in 2022 he explained that only 4chan – including the board dedicated to Nazi ideology – gave him the real news he sought. “White genocide is real when you look at data, but is not talked about on popular media outlets,” he wrote. He confessed to browsing 4chan daily and that he “barely interacts with regular people”.

4chan is also notorious for praising and deifying other mass shooters and white supremacist terrorists. Gendron’s alleged manifesto has ample evidence of their influence on him.


Civil rights lawyer Crump: investigate Buffalo shooting as domestic terrorism

The document borrows heavily from another manifesto written in 2019 by Brenton Tarrant, who killed 51 at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. Tarrant was also a frequent user of 4chan and its sister board, 8chan, according to a government report. Tarrant’s own manifesto, which was uploaded to 8chan before the attack, in turn plagiarized significantly from Anders Brevik, who murdered 77 in Norway in 2011 in an anti-immigrant spree.

Brevik himself copy-and-pasted most of his manifesto directly from other anti-Islam sources, illustrating “the broader ideas behind the great replacement conspiracy theory have been around for some time within various far-right movements”, Amarasingam said.

Besides Buffalo, both 4chan and 8chan have become politically significant forces in the US. Both boards helped form and foster QAnon, the far-right myth that Donald Trump is combating a cult of elite leftist pedophiles. The boards played a central role in constructing the lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump, which inspired the deadly Capitol riot on 6 January 2021.

Then, last month, 23-year-old Raymond Spencer recorded himself shooting and wounding four people at random. He uploaded the footage to 4chan and continued posting right up until he committed suicide, as police closed in on him. A racist meme, popular on 4chan, was posted on the wall of the apartment Spencer used as a sniper’s nest.

Gendron and Spencer’s cases vividly show how 4chan’s toxic culture can radicalize young men, according to Amarasingam.

“You can hear it all over the Buffalo shooter’s manifesto – a deep sense of urgency that there is an imminent collapse of white people and white culture,” the professor said. “Combine all this with the furious nihilism, racism, and angst of 4chan and it all becomes deeply worrying.”

Learn lessons of Rwandan genocide and act now to stop Ethiopian war, UN urged


African groups urge UN to press for humanitarian access and peacekeeping force to be deployed in Tigray amid atrocities

Ethiopian refugees who fled fighting in Tigray at a camp in Sudan. A report last month accused forces from Amhara of ethnic cleansing against Tigrayans. 

Photograph: Ashraf Shazly/AFP/Getty

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About this content

A reporter for the Guardian
Wed 18 May 2022 07.30 BST

African civil society groups have accused the United Nations of inaction over atrocities in Ethiopia, warning in a letter that it had not learned the lessons of the 1994 Rwanda genocide and that the “situation risks repeating itself in Ethiopia today”.

Tens of thousands of people are thought to have been killed and millions more displaced since war broke out between Ethiopia’s federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the ruling party of the country’s northern region, in November 2020.

All of the parties in the war have been accused of crimes including arbitrary killings, mass rape and torture, while ethnic Tigrayans across the country have been subject to mass arrests amid a spike in hate speech, which has seen the prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, refer to the Tigrayan rebels as “weeds” and “cancer”.

In the letter to the UN secretary general, António Guterres, 12 African civil society groups including the Kampala-based Atrocities Watch Africa, the Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa and Nigeria’s Centre for Democracy and Development called on him to “provide leadership in ending the ongoing war in Ethiopia”.

“Twenty-eight years ago, the security council similarly failed to recognise the warning signs of genocide in Rwanda or act to stop it,” the signatories said, adding: “We are concerned that the situation is repeating itself in Ethiopia today. We call on you to learn the lessons from Rwanda and act now.”

In November 2021, the UN security council issued a statement expressing concern over the fighting, but it has yet to take any concrete steps towards resolving the conflict.

Last month, a report by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch accused forces from the Amhara region of waging a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Tigrayans “with the acquiescence and possible participation of Ethiopian federal forces”.

Dismas Nkunda, head of Atrocities Watch Africa, said: “With reports of ethnic cleansing coming out of western Tigray, there is real reason for concern that some of these crimes reach the level of genocide, and it’s essential that the United Nations grasp the seriousness of the current situation and respond accordingly.”

The UN human rights council has appointed a team to investigate abuses committed during the conflict, although the government has vowed not to cooperate.

Tigray has been largely cut off from the rest of Ethiopia since the fighting began, with transport and communications links cut. About 90% of the region’s 5.75 million population are in need of aid, and the region’s health bureau estimates that at least 1,900 children under the age of five died of starvation in the past year.


Tigray has been the scene of ‘ethnic cleansing’, say human rights groups

In March, the government unilaterally declared a “humanitarian truce” to allow supplies to reach the region, but only a handful of aid trucks have arrived since then.

The letter urges the UN security council to press for “immediate and unimpeded humanitarian access [to Tigray]” and “impose an arms embargo on all parties to the conflict”.

The signatories also call for deployment of an international peacekeeping force led by the African Union, which has its headquarters in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.

“Such action will be vital to assisting the Ethiopian men, women and children who have been suffering both direct hostilities, associated human rights violations and obstructed humanitarian aid,” they said.

‘It’s a bribe’: the coastal areas that could become the UK’s nuclear dump

A skull overlooks Mablethorpe beach, and a throwback to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament protests of the 1980s. Photograph: John Robertson/The Guardian

Promises of jobs and investment are doing little to convince a remote Lincolnshire community to agree to hosting the country’s nuclear waste

Sandra Laville

Tue 17 May 2022

On the unspoilt Lincolnshire coast, where dog walkers enjoy the five miles of golden sandy beach and families take holidays in the caravan parks beyond the dunes, the efforts of British politicians to persuade the public nuclear energy is green, safe and clean do not seem to be gaining traction.

A skull glowers down from the sand dunes on to Mablethorpe Beach, a portent of death and destruction, and a throwback to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament protests of the 1980s.

It is here, in a 24-hectare (60-acre) disused gas terminal bordering the beach, that Boris Johnson’s big bet on nuclear energy is being tested. Experts on nuclear waste have said that until the UK builds a large underground nuclear waste dump or geological deposit facility (GDF) to safely store the 700,000 cubic metres of radioactive waste from the country’s 20th-century nuclear programme, no new nuclear plants should be created.

It is a problem that has dogged the development of nuclear energy not only in the UK, but across Europe and in the US: how to safely and permanently store the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle. The solution of a GDF was put forward nearly 50 years ago, but the UK is no nearer to putting spades into the ground, and the cost of decommissioning and disposing of the country’s radioactive waste has risen to £131bn.

The disused gas terminal that would become the onshore part of the GDF. 

Photograph: John Robertson/The Guardian

When the prime minister recently promised eight new nuclear plants in as many years, the problem of the highly radioactive waste they would add to the stockpile was not mentioned.

It is, however, something very much at the forefrontof the minds of those living in the remote Lincolnshire village of Theddlethorpe and the neighbouring town of Mablethorpe.

Residents learned the seaside resort could become home to a vast nuclear dump – not from officials, but when a local BBC news programme broke the story, revealing talks had been taking place for two years.

The gas terminal site is under consideration for the onshore facility and the dump would be dug six miles off Mablethorpe Beach, between 200 and 1,000 metres below the sea. It would be made up of subterranean tunnels and vaults, with natural and artificial barriers to minimise the escape of radioactivity, according to documents from Radioactive Waste Management, now part of the Nuclear Waste Services (NWS).

Inside, the waste from the past 50 years of nuclear programmes, most of which is temporarily stored at Sellafield in Cumbria, would be deposited and sealed off for ever. The dump would also have room for another 73,000 cubic metres of waste from a new nuclear programme of up to 16GW.

An anti-nuclear garden decoration outside a house in Theddlethorpe. 

Photograph: John Robertson/The Guardian

The revelations sparked a grassroots protest which appears to have spread quickly among the retired population, many of whom moved to the area for its coastal beauty. Anti-nuclear signs dominate country lanes, skeletons have been erected on the beach and outside homes, and a series of public meetings have been held over the past eight months by a group called Guardians of the East Coast.

“I was totally shocked when we found out,” says Sara Bright, who lives in Mablethorpe. “This area was just not somewhere we ever thought they would put a nuclear dump. This is a tourist area, we have this beautiful beach, there is investment in tourism here. We rely on that tourism income and the idea that they could consider putting a nuclear dump here is just shocking to me.”

It is responses such as these that have repeatedly seen off attempts to build an underground dump for nuclear waste in the UK.

One nine years ago in Cumbria was rejected after an impassioned campaign by environmentalists and local people. This time, however, the approach has been different, NWS says. The government agency privately acknowledges that attempts in the past to find a site for the dump have been shrouded in secrecy.
This area was just not somewhere we ever thought they would put a nuclear dump. This is a tourist areaSara Bright, from Mablethorpe

Any location for a GDF has to be based on science, the geology of the area and the technical requirements of a mammoth engineering project. Crucially, though, the community that will host it must also be supportive. This time, NWS invited communities to put their area forward.

Four areas have identified themselves as willing to consider hosting the facility – Allerdale, Mid Copeland and South Copeland in Cumbria, and Theddlethorpe.

NWS promises the community that hosts the dump will benefit from great economic development opportunities including jobs and investment in roads and railways. In Cumbria, where a million-pound pot has been made available for local projects, a trickle of the promised stream of money has begun flowing: £47,801 on a BMX pump track at Seascale, £9,576 for the Beckermet reading and recreation rooms and £8,122 for an electronic scoreboard at Seascale cricket club.

In Lincolnshire a community partnership is in the process of being set up.

Jon Collins, a former leader of Nottingham city council and the independent chair of a working party set up in Theddlethorpe to decide on the GDF, has been holding meetings to provide information and answer questions from local people for several months. “If this was just a process of someone trying to sell an idea to the community I would not have been interested in taking part,” he says. “What I think is really interesting in public opinion terms is that sense of this is a big infrastructure project and it has got local implications; we need to work with the community and we are asking the community to make a judgment on this at the end of the process and if people don’t want it then it doesn’t happen.

“We talk to people about safety, about why the area is being considered and what kind of timescale we are talking about,” he says. “Most people are reasonably open minded, some people are pretty much not in favour and some are concerned about the potential impact locally.”

Ruth Gathercole, Brian Swift and Ken Smith of Guardians of the East Coast. 

Photograph: John Robertson/The Guardian

An initial assessment has concluded that the Lincolnshire site has the potential to host a GDF. Acknowledging the natural beauty of the area, NWS promises it will contribute to protecting conservation areas around the site and incorporate flood mitigation measures.

The agency has also attempted to placate those who complain the dump will kill tourism in the area. “There may be an opportunity to create a GDF/scientific centre of excellence, which itself could generate significant visitor traffic and even become a tourism point of interest,” the assessment says.

For the Mablethorpe councillor and Labour leader on East Lindsey district council, Tony Howard, NWS’s promises on behalf of government are nothing more than a bribe. “Suddenly they want us to have a nuclear dump and they are promising us railways, roads, local jobs. It’s just 30 pieces of silver, a bribe, the idea that everyone is going to go from selling burgers in the summer to becoming nuclear experts and working on this site is ridiculous. There will be specialists brought in to do the work.”

The idea that everyone is going to go from selling burgers to becoming nuclear experts and working on this site is ridiculous

Tony Howard, Labour councillor

He questions the very idea that nuclear energy is green, clean and safe at all. “We know very well in this area the dangers of nuclear, every year we host children from Chernobyl who come to the seaside for a holiday. We are fully aware that if things go wrong at a site like this, they stay wrong permanently and that does not sit well with trying to promote the town as a place with a superb beach which is wonderful for families. It jars.

“We should be investing in solar, wind, desalination. This site would be perfect for that. Nuclear is a folly.”

Ken Smith of Guardians of the East Coast is worried that the process of reaching a decision could take up to 15 years. “In that time tourist investment will drain away. Why would you want to invest in a caravan park if you think a nuclear dump is going to be built next to it? This whole process should stop right now.”

As the tourist season in Mablethorpe begins, NWS appears to be spreading its bets, seeking other areas to come forward.

Its director for community engagement and siting, Simon Hughes, says: “The UK search for a suitable site is about engaging in dialogue with communities and building an understanding of what hosting a GDF might mean for them, so that we can all make an informed decision.

“The previous process was very rigid and demanded decisions were made at set points and before all the information was available. The new process allows communities to engage in a much more flexible way, allowing questions to be answered without commitment. Communities also have the option to withdraw from the process at any time and will have to give explicit consent before construction can commence. If the local community doesn’t want it, it won’t happen.

“With over 60 years of legacy waste currently stored temporarily in surface sites around the country, developing a GDF is about delivering a safe, secure and environmentally sound long-term solution that protects current and future generations, ensuring it works for the host community and the country as a whole.”

Shut down fossil fuel production sites early to avoid climate chaos, says study

Exclusive: Nearly half existing facilities will need to close prematurely to limit heating to 1.5C, scientists say

The researchers calculated that 40% of developed fossil fuels must stay in the ground to have a 50-50 chance of global temperature rise stopping at 1.5C. 

Photograph: Eremeychuk Leonid/Alamy

Damian Carrington 

Environment editor

THE GUARDIAN
Tue 17 May 2022 07.00 BST

Nearly half of existing fossil fuel production sites need to be shut down early if global heating is to be limited to 1.5C, the internationally agreed goal for avoiding climate catastrophe, according to a new scientific study.

The assessment goes beyond the call by the International Energy Agency in 2021 to stop all new fossil fuel development to avoid the worst impacts of global heating, a statement seen as radical at the time.

The new research reaches its starker conclusion by not assuming that new technologies will be able to suck huge amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere to compensate for the burning of coal, oil and gas. Experts said relying on such technologies was a risky gamble.
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The Guardian revealed last week that 195 oil and gas “carbon bombs” are planned by the industry. This means projects that would each produce at least 1bn tonnes of CO2. Together, these carbon bombs alone would drive global heating beyond the 1.5C limit. But the dozen biggest oil companies are on track to spend $103m (£81m) a day until 2030 on climate-busting schemes.

Greg Muttitt, at the International Institute for Sustainable Development, was one of the leaders of the new research and said: “Halting new extraction projects is a necessary step, but still not enough to stay within our rapidly dwindling carbon budget. Some existing fossil fuel licences and production will need to be revoked and phased out early. Governments need to start tackling head-on how to do this in a fair and equitable way, which will require overcoming opposition from fossil fuel interests.”

Kelly Trout, at Oil Change International, the other lead author of the work, said: “Our study reinforces that building new fossil fuel infrastructure is not a viable response to Russia’s war on Ukraine. The world has already tapped too much oil and gas.” The researchers said governments should accelerate the introduction of renewable energy and efficiency measures instead.


Revealed: the ‘carbon bombs’ set to trigger catastrophic climate breakdown

The new study, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, analysed a database of more than 25,000 oil and gas fields and developed a new dataset of coal mines. The researchers found that fields and mines that have already been developed would lead to 936bn tonnes of CO2 when fully exploited and burned. That is 25 years of global emissions at today’s rate – the world’s scientists agree emissions must fall by half by 2030.

The researchers calculated that 40% of developed fossil fuels must stay in the ground to have a 50-50 chance of global temperature rise stopping at 1.5C. Half the emissions would come from coal, a third from oil and a fifth from gas. The researchers found that almost 90% of developed reserves are located in just 20 countries, led by China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the US, followed by Iran, India, Indonesia, Australia and Canada.

The research only considered projects where companies had made final investment decisions, that means committed to spending billions on building rigs and pipelines to extract the fossil fuels. A 2021 study, led by Daniel Welsby at University College London, assessed all known reserves and found 90% of coal and 60% of oil and gas must remain unexploited.

Welsby said: “The new study is a valuable contribution to our understanding of what fossil fuels are highly likely to be produced and the volume which needs to remain in the ground if global warming is to be limited.” But he noted the study did not fully account for methane, a potent greenhouse gas, or the oil and gas used for petrochemicals.

The study did not estimate how much CO2 could be removed from the atmosphere by technology in future. “These technologies are unproven at scale,” said Muttitt. “There’s a lot of talk about them, but we believe it would be a mistake to predicate achieving climate goals on these being delivered at a very large scale. We just don’t know whether it will be possible in terms of financing or governance.”

Maeve O’Connor, at the Carbon Tracker thinktank, the author of a new report, said: “Oil and gas companies are gambling on emissions [reducing] technologies that pose a huge risk to both investors and the climate. Most of these technologies are still at an early stage of development, with few large projects working at anything like the scale required by company goals, while solutions that involve tree planting require huge areas of land.”

Research published in 2019 found that the world already had more fossil fuel power stations than needed and that some may need to be retired early. The new analysis found fossil fuel production sites also need to be closed, but how to do that is yet to be determined.

“This is an absolutely key question,” said Muttitt. “One of the biggest barriers will be the legal infrastructure that oil and gas companies and some coal companies have constructed to defend their investments and their profitability, through treaties like the energy charter treaty [ECT].” The ECT allows companies to sue governments over lost profits. There is some discussion, he said, that European Union nations could withdraw from the treaty en masse.

A small number of governments, including Denmark, Costa Rica, France, Ireland and California, have committed to stop issuing new fossil fuel licences. If more join, that could be a gamechanger, said Muttitt.

Dan Jørgensen, the Danish climate and energy minister, said: “The Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance provides a way for governments to act together to begin a managed phase-out of oil and gas production to avoid dangerous levels of climate change.”

The Guardian view on the Marcos family’s return: bad news for the Philippines

Editorial

The late dictator’s son didn’t have to rig the polls as his father did. But his electoral victory is still bad news for democracy

Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr at a campaign rally prior to his election as the new president of the Philippines. 

Photograph: Eloisa Lopez/Reuters

Tue 17 May 2022 

Thirty-six years after the people of the Philippines swept the Marcos family from power in a peaceful popular uprising, they have returned it to the presidency via the ballot box. Last week’s electoral landslide for Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr, son of the late dictator, was a shocking and frightening moment for those who survived the violence of his father’s regime and witnessed the plunder of as much as $10bn from the country. The incoming president claimed more than double the votes of his closest opponent, Leni Robredo, a human rights lawyer and the incumbent vice-president.

Disinformation (extensive, heavily organised and lucrative for those behind it) has played a crucial role. Across social media, the true history of Ferdinand Marcos Sr’s rule – of torture, executions, debt and economic crisis – has been erased by the lie of a “golden age” of stability and prosperity. At the same time, its members were “celebritised”, with TikTok videos presenting them as an aspirational, influencer-style figures while Mr Marcos Jr sidestepped major debates and tough interviews. Simultaneously came relentless and often misogynistic attacks on Ms Robredo

It is not just that the population is highly technologically literate but often less media literate. There are deeper issues. The People Power revolution of 1986 was unfinished. The political elites remained in place; influential families hold up to 90% of elected positions. Most of the money amassed by Mr Marcos Sr was never recovered, and schools failed to teach the new generations the full story of his rule. The political advance was not matched by social and economic progress; the political dynasties and big conglomerates have ensured that the Philippines remains one of the most unequal societies in Asia.

The outgoing president, Rodrigo Duterte, has also contributed. His brutal and erratic authoritarianism – notably a “war on drugs” which has killed thousands, including children – proved popular. He has strengthened the police and army, creating a culture of impunity, while undermining democratic institutions including independent media. He allowed the late dictator to be buried in a cemetery for war heroes, helping to rehabilitate his image. Critically, his daughter Sara Duterte decided not to stand for president, running (successfully) as Mr Marcos Jr’s vice-president.

The Philippines must contend with the aftermath of the pandemic: almost a quarter of the nation now live below the poverty line. The country is balancing uneasily between the US and China, with repercussions for the wider region. Mr Marcos Jr has nothing to offer, though some insist that he will not be as ruthless as his father. He has already painted himself as a victim of the press.

Other countries should also take heed. As one leading expert on disinformation notes, this success reflects problems seen in many advanced democracies, not just in the global south; Facebook’s public policy director for global elections previously described the Philippines as “patient zero”. Reiterating the truth is not enough. Reaching out to excluded communities and crafting compelling narratives is essential. Ms Robredo’s campaign created real passion at the grassroots, but the efforts came too late. The Marcos family’s return to the top is a triumph of determination and has been a long time in the making. In that respect alone, their opponents – and progressives elsewhere – could learn something from them.

What unites conservatives in the US and the UK?

Terrible solutions to the cost of living crisis

Get a better job! Work until you’re 73! From Rachel Maclean to Laura Ingraham, rightwingers love to offer out-of-touch solutions

Wide of the mark … (from left) Lee Anderson, Rachel Maclean and Laura Ingraham. 

Composite: UK Parliament/PA; Chris McAndrew; Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Wed 18 May 2022 

Energy bills have gone through the roof, but that hasn’t curtailed the British government’s enthusiasm for gaslighting. Rather than take any responsibility for the cost of living crisis (or, God forbid, try to solve it), Tory politicians seem to be in competition to see who can dole out the most patronising advice.

The latest example of Conservative condescension comes via Rachel Maclean, the safeguarding minister. Maclean told Sky news on Monday that anyone struggling with the cost of living crisis should consider working more hours or think about getting a better-paying job. Thanks, Rachel! Never considered that myself. Now that you mention it, though, I don’t know why everyone doesn’t just become a CEO or an investment banker. It is brilliant ideas such as this that get you a salary of £104,000 in 2020/21 and allow you to claim £218,000 in expenses on top of it, as Maclean did last year.


Maclean isn’t the only Tory MP offering helpful life hacks. Lee Anderson claimed last week that food poverty isn’t actually a problem – the problem is the silly poor people: “They can’t cook a meal from scratch. They cannot budget.” Anderson also claimed that you can make a nice, nutritious meal for 30p. Uh, maybe 30 years ago.

Conservatives across the Atlantic, I should note, are equally condescending and out of touch. One classic came from Fox News’s Laura Ingraham. Earlier this year, she argued passionately against the forgiveness of student loan debt by saying her mum worked as a waitress until she was 73 to help pay off college loans. “Loan forgiveness [is] just another insult to those who play by the rules,” she said. Sound like pretty terrible rules to me.

Still, rule-abiders take note: inflation is nothing to worry about as long as you work more hours, get a better-paid job, cook 30p recipes and get your mother to waitress until she is well into her 70s.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist