new

John Zerzan #crackpot gizmodo.com

Anarcho-primitivists are the ultimate Luddites — ideologues who favor complete technological relinquishment and a return to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. We spoke to a leading proponent to learn more about this idea and why he believes civilization was our worst mistake.

Philosopher John Zerzan wants you to get rid of all your technology — your car, your mobile phone, your computer, your appliances — the whole lot. In his perfect world, you'd be stripped off all your technological creature comforts, reduced to a lifestyle that harkens back to when our hunter-gatherer ancestors romped around the African plains.

Ben Garrison #quack #wingnut #conspiracy gizmodo.com

Ben Garrison, a right-wing cartoonist known for his opposition to vaccines and his extremely flattering drawings of former President Donald Trump, told Gizmodo late Sunday that he contracted covid-19 and has been sick for about two weeks. But allegedly getting covid hasn’t changed Garrison’s mind about modern medical science.

[…]

“Yes, it’s definitely Covid and we’ve had all the symptoms. My wife and (I) went out with a couple to a restaurant and the next day all four of us were sick. One of us went to see a doctor and was told she had Covid, and that was the clincher,” Garrison told Gizmodo via email. (Garrison has been banned from Twitter for supporting the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6.)

“We’re taking Ivermectin and various vitamins including a lot of Zinc,” Garrison continued, explaining what he’s doing to treat the disease. The cartoonist also notes he’s taking beet root juice. None of this has been proven to treat or prevent covid-19, with monoclonal antibodies and vaccines being the only real ways to fight this pandemic, which is still raging in many parts of the world.

[…]

Garrison told Gizmodo that he and his wife are not feeling well and that he’s completely lost his sense of taste and smell. Garrison seems to believe that he and his wife are struggling to overcome the disease because they’re in their mid-60s.

“Both Tina and I feel slightly better after two weeks, but it has been rough. I lost my taste and smell as well as desire to eat any kind of food. I lost 15 pounds as a result. Young people tend to bounce back more quickly, but we’re in our mid-60s,” Garrison wrote.

When Gizmodo asked Garrison whether he’d been vaccinated against covid-19, he repeated many of the same conspiracy theories that appear in his cartoons.

“We will never take their foul spike protein-producing jabs, which are neither safe nor effective. They’re not real vaccines. They’re gene therapy,” Garrison wrote in an email to Gizmodo.

[…]

Garrison says he’d never visit a hospital to treat his covid-19.

[…]

“I would never go to a hospital with Covid. Robert David Steele did it a few weeks ago and they killed him. The hospitals get extra money for Covid death reports, which is necessary to keep fear ramped up,” Garrison claimed in an email to Gizmodo.

Brenton Tarrant #racist #psycho #wingnut gizmodo.com

The white supremacist accused of killing 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, currently has no access to internet, TV, newspapers, and radio. Yet he’s still able to get his hateful ideology out into the world, all thanks to extremists on 4Chan and lax rules about letter writing in New Zealand prisons.

Brenton Tarrant, the 28-year-old Australian national who allegedly broadcast his mass murder on Facebook Live earlier this year, wrote a six-page letter that was published to 4Chan’s /pol/ message board yesterday. The letter, dated July 4, 2019, was addressed to someone in Russia named Alan, and referred to a “great conflict on the horizon” as well as “a great amount of bloodshed” that he predicted for the future. Tarrant has pleaded not guilty to 51 counts of murder, 40 counts of attempted murder, and one count of terrorism.

[...]

In the letter, which appears to be a response to a letter first sent by “Alan,” Tarrant praises Russia, saying he last visited the country in 2015 and encourages Alan to find his Facebook photos from St. Petersburg and Moscow. Tarrant notes that Facebook has taken down his account but claims there are still archived versions floating around the internet.

Tarrant also goes into his political views, citing Plato’s The Republic, Richard Dawkins’s “idea of cultural evolution by memetics,” and Carl G. Jung’s “views on inherited racial conscious [sic].” He also cites Oswald Mosley, a British fascist who founded the Blackshirts in England during the 1930s and supported Adolf Hitler. Mosley is an incredibly popular figure on the far right, especially in the U.S. and Australia.

“I cannot go into any great detail about regrets or feeling as the guards will confiscate my letter if I do (to use as evidence),” Tarrant writes. “But I can tell you I have no concern about myself and I only worry for Europe’s future.”

“Europe’s future,” is likely a reference to immigration by anyone who isn’t white. Tarrant’s manifesto, which is now banned from distribution in New Zealand, explicitly referred to immigration, made numerous references to internet culture, and called President Donald Trump a, “symbol of renewed white identity.”

[...]

Tarrant’s letter ends by referring to a “duty to your people,” which presumably is a reference to white people.

Joshua Witt #racist gizmodo.com

Remember that guy on Facebook a couple of weeks ago who said he got stabbed by some stranger because he had a “neo-Nazi” haircut? You’re never going to believe this, but the story was total bullshit. He accidentally stabbed himself. And blamed it on a non-existent black guy.

Joshua Witt, a 26-year-old from Colorado, posted some photos to Facebook on August 16th, claiming that he had been stabbed for his “neo-Nazi haircut.” Cutting your hair extremely short on the sides and leaving some length on top has become known as the cool cut for kids on the alt-right.

“Soooooooo apparently I look like a neo-Nazi and got stabbed for it,” Witt claimed in a now-deleted post. “Luckily I put my hands up to stop it so he only stabbed my hand... please keep in mind there was no conversation between me and this dude I was literally just getting out of my car.”

Witt’s bloody Facebook post quickly went viral and everyone from Inside Edition to Fox News to the Alex Jones Show was outraged over this over-the-top story. But, as we mentioned, it’s bullshit.

Witt’s story was first debunked by Buzzfeed who contacted the police in Sheridan, Colorado for the full story. Gizmodo reached out to the Sheridan Police Department as well, who confirmed that Witt actually stabbed himself. And on top of that, he originally told police that his attacker was a “black male” in his mid-20s.

Police checked surveillance footage near the Steak n’ Shake where he was allegedly attacked and couldn’t find anybody running from the scene like Witt had claimed. What did they really find on the tapes? Footage of Witt buying a knife at a nearby store minutes before he was allegedly “attacked.”

“On August 24, 2017 Sheridan Police, re-interviewed Mr. Witt where he was confronted with all the information listed above,” Sheridan Police Chief Mark Campbell told Gizmodo in a statement.

“Mr. Witt subsequently admitted to accidentally cutting himself with the knife while parked in his car in front of the sporting goods store and admitted making up the story about being attacked,” Chief Campbell continued.