It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Sanctioned Russian Cargo Ships Delivering Military Equipment to West Africa
IN XCHANGE FOR CRIMINAL GOLD
Russia acquired the vessel in 2021 and is using it to transport military equipment and material to the Arctic 2 LNG operation ( Nikos Palamaris Instagram: - Uploaded photos: 6384 Captured vessels: 3293 photo in 2020 - courtesy of Vlesse Finder)
Data put together by the BBC and multiple intelligence monitors on the Internet shows at least one and possibly two Russian cargo ships delivering military equipment to West Africa. The equipment appears to be part of an effort to reinforce the government of Mali in its fight against separatists in the north of the country.
Mali is one of several West African nations that are receiving support or trying to improve their relations with Russia. The mercenary Wagner Group was operating in West Africa and specifically in Mali in the ongoing civil war after France withdrew forces from the country in 2022. Russia’s operations in Mali are reported to have been transferred to the Africa Corps, which is controlled by Russia’s Defense Ministry.
Recent reports from Mali have cited large gains by the separatists in the north of the country. They have reportedly taken large land areas, pushing back government troops. The ruling junta in Mali now appears to be getting additional aid from Russia in the fight.
Trackers spotted trucks, armored personnel carriers, and light infantry vehicles being loaded on the Russian general cargo ship Mikhail Britnev (IMO: 9081370). Built in 1995, the vessel is 12,700 dwt. The United States has sanctioned the ship, linking it to the deliveries for the Arctic-2 LNG operations.
Analyzing tracking data, BBC reports the vessel departed the Russian port of Baltiysk on June 18. BBC reports the ship was escorted through the English Channel by a Russian warship and then went dark. It was next detected on July 9 as it was entering the port of Lome in Togo. Mali is landlocked, and shipments would have to be transported overland.
Analysts report the ship remained in Lome long enough to unload military equipment. According to its AIS transmissions, it departed Togo on July 13. Its AIS signal reports its next port as Arkhangelsk, although the vessel again went dark.
Mali TV reports the BBC writes showed images of military vehicles. It reports they were driven through Togo and across Burkina Faso to reach Mali.
BBC, in its analysis, says this is the latest in a series of Russian vessels tracked into West Africa. It reports that a bulk carrier named Sabetta (IMO: 9347061) was tracked to Conakry, Guinea, in February. Observers reported the ship was also carrying military vehicles. BBC says at least one Russian tanker was also believed to have been sent to West Africa.
Days after the Mikhail Britnev was observed leaving Togo, online analysts identified another Russian cargo ship, Baltic Leader (IMO 9220639), also sailing along the West Africa coast. Speculation was that it was also transporting military equipment to support the efforts in the region.
Experts speculate that the shipments are a demonstration of a Russian effort to strengthen support for the junta in Mali. Russia also appears to be taking further efforts to increase its influence over the region.
Top photo in 2020 by Nikos Palamaris - courtesy of Vessel Finder
Friday, July 31, 2026
AI chatbots citing Russian propaganda sourced from EU-sanctioned outlet
AI chatbots are citing Russia propaganda from EU-sanctioned outlets, researchers say, raising questions about how hybrid warfare is expanding to influence large language models (LLMs).
Mainstream large language models (LLMs) such as Google Gemini have reportedly cited pro-Russian propaganda from an EU-sanctioned outlet when generating responses, including claims that Ukraine is using the bodies of dead soldiers in meat products.
There are also signs that foreign actors engaged in hybrid information warfare activities, such as Russia, could make use of the growing industry of GEO (generative engine optimisation), which aims to influence the information received by LLMs, according to a new reportpublished by researchers from UK-based cross-party think tank Demos, shared exclusively with Euronews's fact-checking team, The Cube.
Researchers selected 50 propaganda narratives from ten articles published by the Foundation to Battle Injustice or "r-FBI". Founded in 2021, the organisation presents itself as an NGO that works to expose discrimination, censorship and investigate cases of persecution.
But in fact, it's a fake human rights organisation founded in 2021 by the deceased former leader of the Russian paramilitary Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin. The organisation is sanctioned by both the US and EU.
The claims researchers selected were "lurid", according to Carl Miller, co-founder of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media (CASM), a research unit established by the Demos think tank.
"They are not claims that belong in any sort of mainstream discourse," Miller said. "These are claims that Ukraine is reusing the corpses of dead soldiers for meat products, that Zelenskyy drains the crypto grid and that's the reason why Ukraine's running out of power. We found LLMs treat them as being legitimate parts of a debate."
To conduct their research, researchers tested five mainstream LLMs — operated by xAI, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, and Mistral AI — and drafted prompts in three languages (English, German and French) based on propaganda narratives featured in R-FBI articles.
How LLMs amplified Russian propaganda
Researchers found that all five LLMs cited the r-FBI as a favourable source.
A total of 16.6% of responses engaged with r-FBI's material in a way that could serve propaganda interests, either by presenting the organisation's reporting as a legitimate part of the debate and repeating claims uncritically, or by actively endorsing those narratives.
Meanwhile, 30.9% of responses addressed the underlying topic mentioned in the prompt, but failed to surface the sanctioned-source context at all, thereby leaving users unaware that the response used a designated influence asset as a source.
A further 52% of answers rejected or debunked false claims in some way.
When researchers questioned OpenAI's GPT 4.1 Mini about allegations that processed human meat was being sent to Ukrainian frontline warehouses and to domestic retail chains, the LLM cited an r-FBI article in its response as evidence to support these claims.
When questioned about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's cryptomining ventures — a recurrent claim pushed by pro-Kremlin actors — French AI company Mistral's Mistral Small 3.2 LLM supported these claims, again citing an alleged months-long investigation by r-FBI.
In its response, Mistral Small 3.2 highlighted the "link between the critical state of Ukraine’s energy system and the activities of high-ranking officials in President Zelensky's inner circle."
The battle for generative engine optimisation
As more and more individuals turn to chatbots over traditional search engines or news outlets, a rapidly growing industry has emerged, which aims to influence how AI models gather their sources.
This practice is also known as generative engine optimisation. Based on the foundations of search engine optimisation (SEO) — a field developed to influence results on traditional search platforms — GEO works to influence the results generated by AI platforms.
"New information is being created specifically for LLMs, but in this case, it's new content that's being offered for brands and marketing, or the editing of content that is already online using user forums like Reddit, Quora and Wikipedia," Hannah Perry, director of Demos Digital, the think tank’s digital policy hub, told us.
For researchers, there is a real risk that actors conducting hybrid foreign interference operations could hone in on these tactics and exploit a regulatory grey zone.
"Our research is not saying that GEO companies are carrying out information warfare on behalf of states," Miller said. "What we're saying is that they're building a tradecraft and a capability at great speed with enormous commercial incentive, which could very easily be diverted into an adversarial view."
"In this particular case, the AI mistakenly believes that the Foundation to Battle Injustice is a legitimate human rights NGO," she added. "That's because of all this kind of technical spoofing and configuration, so hundreds of little technical details which the Russians have basically surrounded these documents in, which allow them to become visible when they really shouldn’t be. That is information warfare."
The Cube contacted the LLM tech companies cited in the research, but did not receive a response at the time of publication from xAI and Google, which respectively develop Grok 4.20 and Gemini 2.5 Flash.
A spokesperson for Mistral, founded by Frenchman Arthur Mensch and widely recognised as Europe's leading generative AI company, told us that it takes the fight against disinformation extremely seriously and that it ensures continuous investment in advanced detection and prevention capabilities.
Mistral also distinguished the raw models handled in Demos' study and Vibe Work. Mistral said that while raw models allow users freedom over prompts and settings, Vibe Work operates with a ready-to-use agent which has built-in reasoning and context scanning.
OpenAI told us that the study used a model which has now been retired and was only available through its API (used by developers) rather than the publicly available ChatGPT. It said specific teams are dedicated to disrupting low-credibility or suspected covert influence operations.
A source familiar with Anthropic — the US company which created the Claude AI chatbot — said sophisticated enforcement systems are in place to mitigate the spread of misinformation.
They said that a threat intelligence team works to detect and disrupt foreign influence operations to mitigate the spread of disinformation, adding that their LLM was programmed to present a wide range of perspectives, especially when a source may present a specific viewpoint or agenda.
Tuesday, July 28, 2026
Data Centers Divide Democrats in Michigan Primary
Senate candidates offer conflicting visions over the role of A.I. and corporate power
Abdul El-Sayed, left, and Rep. Haley Stevens, right, are vying for the Democratic party nomination for Michigan’s open Senate seat. (Jose Juarez, AP Photo; Tom Williams, CQ Roll Call via AP Photo)
The projects have sparked renewed civic engagement in rural areas and small towns—stories that inspire David and Goliath comparisons. Residents ignite with fury upon finding out their local elected officials have made deals in the dark to bring data centers to town. They come out in force to city council meetings, zoning hearings, and protests in an effort to confront the power of major utility companies and multinational tech corporations with billions of dollars at their disposal.
This growing opposition has forced Michigan’s elected officials to reconsider the wisdom of the state’s 2024 decision to hand out tax breaks to data center constructors.
Abdul El-Sayed, an epidemiologist and former Wayne County public health official running in the August 4 Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, tells Barn Raiser that the corporations building data centers aren’t straightforward about their development plans.
“There’s been so little transparency on the part of the corporations themselves and the part of the utilities,” he says. “It has raised the hackles of folks who’ve learned not to trust a lot of these bigger corporations when they tell them everything’s going to be okay.”
El-Sayed is locked in a fierce contest that has accentuated divides within the Democratic Party. El-Sayed, whose parents immigrated from Egypt, has pledged not to accept corporate PAC money, has called for eliminating arms sales to Israel and supports universal health care and abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Haley Stevens (D-Mich.-11) is a vocal supporter of Israel who has accepted money from corporate PACs, outside groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and has the support of party leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, a third challenger in the race, suspended her campaign July 5.
An April Emerson College poll shows data centers could be among the deciding issues in the election. Emerson’s poll of 519 likely Michigan primary voters found that a majority, or 55%, opposed data centers being built in or near their community, versus 27% who supported them. Opposition to data centers was much higher among likely Democratic primary voters, with 63% opposed versus 45% among likely Republican primary voters.
A demonstrator at an April rally in Traverse City, Michigan, holds a sign emblematic of the growing data center resistance. (Miles MacClure)
Dark money spending and support for Israel remains another flashpoint in the campaign, gaining national attention. The Associated Pressreported AIPAC and its affiliated groups have spent close to $30 million backing Stevens, which is their largest investment ever in a single race.
In January, El-Sayed released a terms of engagement proposal for data centers, which includes a guarantee for local jobs, a freeze on consumer electricity rate hikes and community benefit agreements. In recent weeks, he has shown support for a system of federal oversight and public ownership of AI companies, a proposal first advanced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has endorsed El-Sayed.
Stevens has not laid out any similar positions. At a Democratic primary debate in July, Stevens connected data center construction with job creation, saying it will put Michigan “on the forefront of innovation and manufacturing,” but she has also called for protecting Michiganders from data center costs.
In an email statement to Barn Raiser, Stevens wrote, “when it comes to data centers and AI infrastructure, my top priority is making sure costs don’t go up for Michigan families and that we are protecting good-paying union jobs. We cannot allow utility companies like DTE to pass new costs onto consumers while these projects move forward.”
Stevens did not answer Barn Raiser’s question regarding Michigan residents’ concern about AI potentially resulting in less jobs.
“ Part of the problem with our politics is too often corporations are buying and selling politicians in the first place. In the case of DTE, our local utility, they’ve given to 93% of state legislators,” says El-Sayed, referencing McMorrow, who eventually dropped out. DTE was McMorrow’s top donor in her 2022 state Senate reelection campaign. El-Sayed’s current opponent, Stevens, has received money from DTE since her first U.S. House reelection campaign in 2020.
McMorrow was among the 38 state senators to vote for a Senate bill that exempted hyperscale data centers from sales and use taxes on their equipment. The bill was signed into law by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) in 2025.
In hindsight, El-Sayed says a more extensive review process should have occurred before state legislators approved laws to entice data center development in the state.
“I think we should have spent a bit more time to hold the particular utilities accountable ahead of laying out the red carpet, as our state has done,” he says.
Data centers have split support amongst unions and their endorsements. The United Auto Workers (UAW), which has over 400,000 members nationwide, endorsed El-Sayed in June. In an April press conference with Bernie Sanders and other labor leaders, UAW president Shawn Fain compared AI to NAFTA because of the risks it poses to workers and communities. “The same greedy corporate power brokers today want us to believe that killing millions of jobs in the name of AI will be a good thing, and the working class knows better,” he said. Several of the building trades unions, on the other hand, view data centers as a catalyst for job creation, with many, including Plumbers Local 98 and Pipefitters, Steamfitters, Refrigeration & Air Conditioning Service Local Union 636, having endorsed Stevens.
Michigan’s chapter of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest federation of labor unions, has not made an endorsement in the Senate race. In June, the AFL-CIO released a policy agenda for the next five years. It included demands that data centers and AI infrastructure be “built by and run on union labor,” while requiring that “data centers pay their fair share of costs and taxes” and that working-class families and communities “are protected and included every step of the way, including regulations over water and power use.”
Construction workers may be the only local residents who stand to benefit from the data center boom. A Citizens Research Council of Michigan report on data centers found that the economic benefits of data centers largely occur during the construction phase and concluded that the projects aren’t long-term drivers of economic development. In June, Bloombergreported that data centers account for 2.3% of all construction spending in the United States.
In a July debate, El-Sayed and Stevens clashed over their approaches to AI and data centers. El-Sayed reiterated his community engagement plan and added, “I think we have to be serious about the fact that these pose real dangers,” he said. “And the people who are pushing them are the richest, most powerful corporate CEOs in the history of our economy.”
Stevens did not speak directly to citizens’ concerns about AI but pledged to entice data centers to pay for utilities and rate increases. “I also want to secure Michigan being on the forefront of innovation,” she said in a statement to Barn Raiser.
Michigan state Rep. Dylan Wegela (D-Garden City) voted against the tax breaks for data centers when the Michigan House of Representatives voted on the bill in 2023. Wegela had concerns about the environmental impact of data centers from the beginning, he says, but hadn’t anticipated the magnitude of the pushback against using hyperscale facilities to drive AI developments.
“I think there are a lot of concerns with that industry right now and concerns about what the technology, unregulated as it is now, might do to working-class people,” Wegela says. “And I think that is one of the many reasons this is becoming so controversial now.”
For Wegela, data centers are an issue that unites people across party lines. “In areas that these data centers are coming to, you have these coalitions of people on the left and the right coming out to fight together against data centers,” he says. “That’s working class versus Big Tech.”
That coalition of residents was on display on a sunny Saturday morning in Traverse City, Michigan. About 40 protesters showed up to oppose data center construction across Michigan, one of several anti-data center protests that took place across the state on April 11. At the Traverse City protest, attendees brought signs decrying data centers and signs in support of Lake Michigan’s freshwater supply. Speakers voiced their opposition to AI in schools and expressed skepticism about the number of local jobs that data centers would generate.
Ryan Wagner, the Kalkaska County GOP party chair, speaks at an anti-data center rally in April in Traverse City, Michigan. (Miles MacClure)
Ryan Wagner, the Kalkaska County GOP party chair, appeared alongside Mitch Distin, who helped organize the protest and is running as a Democrat for state representative in Michigan’s 104th district.
Wagner voiced his discontent with the Make America Great Again movement after continuous campaign promises broken by the Trump administration, like financial gain for working-class Americans, and he found common ground with Democrats seeking to maintain natural resources and oppose AI companies. “I feed my kids off this land. I don’t want Big Tech to poison it,” Wagner told the crowd.
In November, a company called Rocklocker—a subsidiary of oil and gas company Reefworks—proposed building a data center in rural Kalkaska County, just east of Traverse City, on 1,440 acres of land owned by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. But community backlash was fierce. At meetings to discuss the proposal, residents didn’t buy the economic benefits claimed by Rocklocker and they were wary of the environmental impact.
“The scientific literature is abundantly clear that none of the benefits are distributed or trickle down to local communities, they’re the ones who ultimately pay the price for data centers,” Distin told the protestors. “The only people who are benefiting from this are big tech CEOs and the legislators.”
If a data center is abandoned by a company, it’s unclear who will be responsible to pick up the pieces. “What happens if the company goes bankrupt?” says Wegela. “You’ve seen factories across the state for the automotive industry and cities have been on the hook for cleaning those up or maintaining those. And I just think these are things that aren’t being talked about enough.”
“Democrats should be leading the opposition to unchecked data center growth,” says Michelle Deatrick, chair of the DNC Climate Council. “That’s not because we oppose technology, it’s because we believe growth needs to serve the public interest, it needs to serve the people, and that’s in both the short and the long term.”
One tactic used by local organizers has been to implement moratoriums. For instance, residents in Livingston County, north of Detroit, successfully pushed Howell Township to approve a six-month moratorium on data center projects, including the $1 billion, 1,077-acre data center proposed backed by Meta, which owns Facebook.
Michigan State Representative Jennifer Wortz, a Republican in the 35th District, introduced a bill in February that would place a moratorium on data center construction across the state until April 2027.
Towns, counties, cities and states across the country are deciding how to respond. An analysis from The Information, an online news source, found more than 300 bans or moratoriums across the United States. (Datacenterbans.com has an interactive map and updates a tracker on data center policy around the country.) On July 14, New York enacted the nation’s first statewide one-year moratorium on data center construction following an executive order signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul (D). Maine nearly became the first state to do so in April, when the state legislature passed a moratorium, but Gov. Janet Mills (D) vetoed the bill.
As communities sour on data center projects, they’re also turning away from AI. A Quinnipiac University poll from March 2026 found that 81% of millennials were concerned about AI. The poll also found that 55% of Americans believe AI will do more harm than good, up from 44% in April 2025.
“ I don’t know if everybody in the public space has connected that the data center and the AI fight is one and the same,” says Wegela.
In the workplace, AI is meeting resistance. Futurismreported that some workers are intentionally sabotaging their employer’s AI deployments. Fears over the direction of AI are also turning violent. In April, a Houston man traveled to San Francisco and hurled a Molotov cocktail at OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s house.
“The fear and anxiety about AI is justified,” Altman wrote on his blog in the wake of the attack. “We are in the process of witnessing the largest change to society in a long time, and perhaps ever.”
Kyle Blomquist, an architect running for Congress in Michigan’s rural 1st congressional district, says the data center tax breaks handed out by Michigan should be repealed. “I’m surprised by the fact that our state has decided to incentivize the location of data centers in the state through these various different tax abatement programs and cuts,” says Blomquist.
When Michigan first legalized medical marijuana, local governments had to set ordinances about marijuana store zoning before any business was allowed to set up shop. Blomquist says he would have liked to see a similar process play out with data centers.
Instead, the Wild West of data center growth has exposed a need for towns and counties to update their zoning ordinances. Many of the towns where data centers have been proposed have never had such large developments set up shop before.
“ I would’ve liked more caution with the data centers, more along those lines where you give the communities the opportunity to set their own conditions as to whether or not they want them located there at all,” says Blomquist. “Instead, it’s kind of a free-for-all.”
This article was originally published by Barn Raiser; please consider supporting the original publication, and read the original version at the link above.
Michigan's Haley Stevens’s Palantir Consultant Scandal Draws Attention to Her Record on ICE Democratic Senate candidate Haley Stevens’s campaign has also been marked by $30 million in support from AIPAC.
Rep. Haley Stevens speaks during a House Democrats' news conference in the Capitol on Thursday, February 6, 2025.Bill Clark / CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images).
Up until this week, House representative and Democratic Senate candidate Haley Stevens’s campaign shared a mutual consultant with far right tech surveillance company Palantir, new reporting reveals, bringing renewed attention to Stevens’s record on ICE as she faces a contentious race against Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan.
Drop Site News’s Ryan Grim reportedon Thursday that the consultant, Caitlin Legacki, was consulting for Stevens’s communications outfit while also “secretly” consulting for Palantir. Legacki was “one of Stevens’ key spokespeople,” as local outlet Michigan Advance wrote.
After Grim reached out to the campaign for comment on Legacki’s dual appointment, they terminated her and said that Stevens was “unaware” of her work for the tech giant. Legacki is also a senior fellow at conservative Democrat-aligned think tank Third Way, Grim reports.
The campaign also replied with a statement touting Stevens’s record on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Palantir has been central to ICE and the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) mass deportation efforts. Among other collaborations, ICE granted Palantir a $30 million contract last year to build out a surveillance program to track the movements of immigrants.
“Haley believes ICE is out of control, putting Michiganders in danger, and needs an immediate overhaul. That’s why she’s voted against giving them another cent without serious reforms, including prosecuting any ICE agents who commit crimes and abuse their power, forcing ICE agents to wear proper ID and prohibiting them from wearing masks to conceal their identities, and taking away their $75 billion slush fund,” the campaign said.
However, Stevens has previously come under fire for her record on ICE. In February, Stevens visited a Michigan ICE jail where an immigrant who was being detained, Nenko Gantchev, died. After the visit, she praised the facility for employing women — a comment that was mocked online.
“Of note, there is female leadership here, and there are women who walked with us today and explained, on the intake process, how important it is to treat people with humanity,” Stevens said, Michigan Advance reported at the time. “And that obviously really stuck out to me, because some of the things that we are witnessing before our eyes, in our neighborhoods, in our streets, is really a lack of humanity.”
Stevens has also been criticized for being one of 75 Democrats who voted for a resolution that expresses “gratitude to law enforcement officers, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel,” after an attack at a mall in Boulder, Colorado last year.
“Congresswoman Stevens said she’ll stand up to ICE, all while she took talking points and advice from a compromised corporate apologist now revealed to be a key advisor in Trump’s deportation machine,” said a spokesperson for El-Sayed’s campaign, Roxie Richner, in a statement. “Perhaps it’s why Stevens voted to thank and fund ICE. Abdul has been clear and consistent on his stance since 2018: Abolish ICE.”
Stevens — who was first elected to Congress by primarying incumbent Rep. Andy Levin with the help of AIPAC, in 2022 — is locked in a fierce race against former public health official and progressive candidate El-Sayed.
AIPAC has poured nearly $30 million into backing Stevens in the race, making it the pro-Israel PAC’s largest-ever investment into a single race, and amounting to nearly double the Democratic National Committee’s entire war chest for 2028 so far, Grim pointed out this week.
Riot police about to provoke a riot on the streets of Seattle. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.
I have seen the police at their best and at their worst. The worst was when two New York cops tried to frame me for disorderly conduct after they overheard me accusing them of taking bribes. The one guy punched me after piling me into a police car and pushing me into the 9th precinct, where, in the 1960s, Blacks got beaten up a lot. That afternoon, he came to my cell. Unlike the crazy person he was when he arrested me, he was polite. He said if I pleaded guilty, I would only have to spend a weekend at the notorious Rikers Island. Unlike Blacks who couldn’t afford bail, I had resources. I got a lawyer who saw to it that I wouldn’t spend one day in jail, nor did I pay a fine. As I started for home from the court, where the Blacks and browns in the courtroom encouraged my testimony–they knew the deal–I noticed that smirks on the faces of the two cops who arrested me had disappeared.
Now that my neighborhood has been gentrified, I’m seeing the police at their best. When this was a ninety-five percent Black neighborhood with regular shootouts between drug dealers, you’d call the police, and they’d maybe come the next day if at all. It took my daughter and me years to get a crack house condemned, because the absentee landlord had more power than we did, something that eastern columnists who write about neighborhoods like mine from the lunch tables at the Four Seasons or the fellows at the Manhattan Institute should experience.
Recently, I accidentally set off my home alarm. Unlike the old days, the police arrived within ten minutes. Something else was different; they were polite. One of them said, “We’re only concerned about your safety.”
But whatever ill feelings I might have about the police based upon racial profiling and other insults, or the thousands of racist insults that they post, would I want them massacred? Absolutely not.
Black Panther cartoonist Emory Douglass, whose artful illustrations were published by Rizzoli, became famous for depicting the police as pigs. Would he want them massacred? I doubt it.
No, it took the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, to popularize a film in which an army of policemen is mowed down by a self-appointed vigilante, the movie’s hero. He’s played by Armie Hammer. The film is directed by Uwe Boll.
Because I am writing a play about Tech Lords entitled “King Ludd,” I watched these 90 minutes of dreck as part of my research. “Citizen Vigilante” opens with a Nordic-looking white woman who even wears the blonde pigtails worn by Wagner’s Rhine maidens, having her throat slit by a dark-skinned assailant. This and threats by Blacks and Immigrants against other white women prompt the blue-eyed vigilante to go on a rampage of murder against Black men and immigrants.
In one scene, because a member of a Muslim family is involved in a gang rape of a white woman, the entire family is slaughtered.
But the most violent scene in the movie occurs when the vigilante sets an ambush for the police and mows them down. Is the vigilante brought to justice at the end of the movie? No, the movie ends with the vigilante delivering an editorial about woke left-wingers. Maybe they will get the vigilante treatment in the sequel.
I’m not surprised that Musk would endorse the murder of Blacks and immigrants. He recently posted 480 racist tweets, and the mother of one of his children, Ashley St. Clair, says he is an advocate of Eugenics. The only Black writer who supports Eugenics is John McWhorter, who says what racists at the Times say in private.
Eugenics, the idea that white people are smarter than the rest of us, has influenced the president’s thinking. That’s why he’s always attributing low IQs to Blacks. But the president, Elon, Peter Thiel, who says that democracy and freedom are incompatible, is benefiting from taxes paid by us intellectually backward. Musk benefits from a kind of Gilded Age form of socialism. Each time one of his rockets fails, we, the retards, pick up the tab. He said he’d reach Mars this year. He’s behind schedule.
There’s a nest of Tech lords who dwell in San Francisco who’ve made the city unaffordable for middle-class dwellers. Next time they experience an emergency, will they call on the police or the local vigilantes?
Ishmael Reed’s novel. The Terrible Fives will be published in November.
