QAnon, Patrick Ryan, Transcendental Meditation, Cult Intervention, The Base, White Supremacist Terror Groups, Australia
Anchorage Daily News: A QAnon con: The viral Wayfair sex trafficking lie hurt real kids
The Body International: An Interview With Cult News 101 Founder Patrick Ryan
Foreign Policy: America Is Losing the Ball on White Supremacist Terror Groups
Anchorage Daily News: A QAnon con: The viral Wayfair sex trafficking lie hurt real kids
"In May, Samara had stuffed a box of Frosted Flakes into her sparkly backpack, slipped out the door and ran away. She had just needed a break from it all, you know?
It was terrifying for her parents, Samara understood that now. The search parties, the police alerts, the missing posters.
They found her after two days, and ever since, everything in Samara's life was about "rebuilding trust" and "taking responsibility." All she wanted was for her parents to see that she was fine, and they didn't need to be so worried.
On this afternoon in July, she felt perfectly safe.
She scrolled to the next Instagram post, and the next, and the next, until her phone rang. Her dad's name was on the screen.
"Something's going on," Kevin Duplessis told his daughter.
Within the last 20 minutes, more than a dozen people had called him, frantic about whether Samara was OK. Apparently, thousands of people on the Internet were talking about the same thing.
Samara's name and face were going viral, along with the names and faces of half a dozen other children.
One tweet circulating her picture showed a screenshot of an old local news article that said Samara Duplessis was missing. The article was never updated when Samara was found safe.
Beside it was a screenshot of a pillow for sale on Wayfair, the online furniture superstore. It was called the "Duplessis" pillow. Its price: $9,999.
The person behind the post was seemingly arguing that because the pillow was marked at a ridiculous price, and because its name matched the last name of a child who appeared to be missing, Wayfair was involved in something sinister.
There were thousands of tweets making similar accusations about cabinets Wayfair was selling. The claims were on Facebook, too. And on Reddit, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Within 72 hours, the company was trending, with an estimated 1.2 million tweets about Wayfair and trafficking.
In the days to come, every aspect of these claims would be found to be false.
Human trafficking investigators at the Department of Homeland Security, who had to pause active investigations to sort out what was happening with Wayfair, would find no evidence to support any of the allegations. Wayfair's staff, bombarded with threats, would realize how the pricing anomalies were happening. Anti-trafficking organizations, inundated with callers, would beg the public to stop sharing bogus stories that made their work harder.
But with limited immediate intervention from social media companies, the Wayfair conspiracy theory would become one of the fastest-spreading disinformation campaigns on the Internet, ensnaring concerned mothers, TikToking teenagers, racial justice advocates and people all along the political spectrum.
They didn't realize they were amplifying a QAnon propaganda artist trying to convince the masses that President Donald Trump was saving the country from a ring of satanic pedophiles.
And they didn't know how dangerous child sex trafficking myths were about to become. That actual victims would be blocked from getting help. That women fearing traffickers would be driven to violence. And that the real children whose pictures were used in this ploy would have their lives upended.
One of those children was trying to make sense of what her dad was saying."
The Body International: An Interview With Cult News 101 Founder Patrick Ryan
"Patrick Ryan then got a dose of reality when his family became concerned, not for him, but for his sister who just so happened to also be in a cult. I get the sense from Ryan that the cult his sister was in looked more like a nefarious organization from an outsider's perspective than TM, so he didn't feel threatened by the information he and his family were getting to help her. Still, all cults share common DNA and have similar characteristics when broken down. Ryan started to realize TM might involve coercive control and at a certain point realized his suspicions were well-founded. Now a dissatisfied customer, Ryan thought about the levitation course he'd spent over $1,400 dollars on. He could see that students were getting robbed by a billionaire and tried to recoup the money. The time he put in, of course, he'd never get back."
Foreign Policy: America Is Losing the Ball on White Supremacist Terror Groups
Other countries are taking the lead in cracking down on U.S.-based groups.
"In late November, Australia became the latest country to list the Base, a U.S.-based neo-Nazi group, as a terrorist organization. Australia's move is indicative of militant white supremacist groups' growing global reach. In turn, Canberra's move highlights the need for Washington, which has only designated a single such group as a terrorist organization, to wield that power more aggressively.
Designating white supremacist groups as terrorist entities, as Australia has done, will be a key step to fighting the threats they pose. Designations allow governments to curb the groups' operational capabilities by making it illegal to give them money or any other material support. Designations have been a primary means of combatting terrorism in the past two decades as Washington focuses on stopping the flow of terrorist financing.
Australian Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews said the Base posed a "credible" threat to the country, and it was "known by security agencies to be planning and preparing terrorist attacks," fulfilling the criteria for the group's listing as a terrorist organization under the Australian Criminal Code Act. Earlier this year, media reports revealed the Base had plotted to expand into Australia and had targeted six Australian men—including a teenager—for recruitment, with the goal of starting a cell in the country. Mike Burgess, head of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, cautioned that Australians as young as age 16 were being radicalized to support a race war, a dynamic that could potentially provide the Base with fertile territory for its expansion plans.
The Base was established in 2018 by Rinaldo Nazzaro, a U.S. citizen living in Russia. Although the group has not carried out any attacks, its explicit goals make the dangers associated with the group clear enough. The Base's ideology is accelerationist: The group aims to commit violent acts to foment a civil war, overthrow the current system, and ultimately establish a white ethno-state. Nazzaro, who goes by the pseudonym Norman Spear, has defended the use of terrorism to achieve the Base's goals. In a June 2018 post on Gab, the social network associated with a far-right user base, he wrote "it's only terrorism if we lose—If we win, we get statues of us put up in parks." The group's ideology is also overtly antisemitic; Nazzaro tweeted in 2018 that his goal was to "prepare for the armed struggle against 'Z0G,' [sic]" using the acronym for "Zionist Occupied Government," a term often employed by white supremacists that reflects the belief that Jews secretly control the U.S. government. Nazzaro went on to state his mission was to free 'our people from Z0G oppression.'"
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