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The other day, I tweeted out my tin-foil-hat theory that the recent BTC runup was partly due to alt-right interests, expecting the events on the 6th to go very

The other day, I tweeted out my tin-foil-hat theory that the recent BTC runup was partly due to alt-right interests, expecting the events on the 6th to go very differently. This kind of makes me wonder even harder.

kristopolous 6y ago
I spend time on gab and parler (I'm not a believer, I'm just curious). It really looks like it's people who genuinely feel Joe Biden will be the end of america. They think the stock market will crash and dollars will be useless as Biden ushers in some kind of communism. From the volume of comments on the posts, there's quite many of them. This run will probably last as long as their finances allow. I don't think it'll end on January 20th. The delusions have held this long, it's probably going to continue. It's terrible. Not only have these conspiracy theories led to isolation and a destruction of their social networks but soon it'll also lead to their financial ruin as bitcoin will inevitably crash once again (I'm holding tens of thousands in crypto. I know it's a day at the casino. My fear is about those that don't. The current flurry of nonsecuritized uninsured bank looking companies that have surfaced in this crypto bubble isn't helping one bit. Stable coins are fine, but give the depositors some security)
- redisman 6y ago
  Sometimes you just gotta wonder about some people. The most pro status-quo candidate in a generation is planning to take us to the dark ages?
  - adnzzzzZ 6y ago
    If you believe the status-quo is taking you to the dark ages then it's not very crazy. And for the more rural portion of America that seems to be the case.
    - redisman 6y ago
      Fair but they don’t seem to actually want pragmatic/realpolitik solutions. Did Trump deliver something that revitalized these communities? Anything? Was he promising anything for 2020? Seems like he just made them feel “represented” in a completely shallow and meaningless way. Meanwhile in your random town in WV things keep sliding towards extinction
  - coldtea 6y ago
    Well, "business as usual" has led working class (and middle class) america to wage stagnation, increasingly worse jobs, de-industrialization, decline of small towns, meth/heroin rise, and such, plus wars mainly using poor rural people as fodder, and other such niceties. Plus coastal elites (including non-elites who still identify as hollier-than the plebs in the fly-over country) sneering at them. The glorious march of the stock market, or the glorious technological future, only meant being worse of (job prospects, housing costs, healthcare costs, education costs, etc.) for them. Even openly calling out a 40% who voted another candidate "deplorables". So from this European's standapoint, it makes sense for these people to consider more of the status quo to mean "return to the dark ages".
    - x1ph0z 6y ago
      The best part, some degree of socialism would help these people... yet they're opposed to it because it would help `other` people.
    - ordinaryradical 6y ago
      Kind of a good take, but these points actually makes their attitude even stranger: they are not afraid of neoliberalism, which is the defacto economic position of both the left and the right, but of "communism." Biden is a "communist," or "godless," or "anti-American." What do these statements actually mean? You can argue that their feelings of economic greivance make sense--but their voting habits are a rejection of policies like universal healthcare (which would benefit the vast majority of them) because "socialism." They eagerly voted in those who planned to dismantle the ACA and loudly said they would do so in 2016 ("repeal and replace"), then when the Republicans attempted to leave them high and dry, everyone, including Trump, panicked and backed out. What's going on here? This attempt to make them sound reasonable in their fear glosses over the obvious contradictions in how they vote and where they think their problems lie. What will four more years of Republican tax cuts coupled with absurd austerity politics get them? Biden is worse than this because...?
      - rayiner 6y ago
        > Biden is a "communist," or "godless," or "anti-American." What do these statements actually mean? They didn't attack Biden as being those things. They attacked Biden for being old, not entirely there, and weak barrier against the radical elements of the Democratic Party. For example Karen Bass, who was on Biden's VP shortlist, had a bunch of communist ties: https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/karen-bass-vice-president-kamala-harris/ https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/karen-bass-vice-presiden... > First reported were her ill-chosen words upon the death of Fidel Castro in 2016, she opined, that “the passing of the Comandante en Jefe is a great loss to the people of Cuba.” Ouch! But politically survivable. > Far more damaging was news that that Bass first visited the island while, in college, at age 19, in 1973 with the Venceremos Brigade, a group popular with leftwing student radicals and social progressives that organized and ferried Americans to Cuba to cut sugar cane and build homes—in defiance of the U.S. Embargo and policy. She would take eight trips with the Brigade during the 1970s alone As to "anti-American" many on the left embraced taking the name of founding fathers off of school buildings. My magnet high school in Virginia is named after Thomas Jefferson and there has been an effort to rename it. Even Abraham Lincoln has been indicted (if not yet convicted): https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/12/20/fact-check-san-franciscos-abraham-lincoln-hs-name-change-isnt-final/3940580001 https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/12/20/fac.... Taking Thomas Jefferson's name off a school building is a declaration of war to conservatives. They believe that civilization is a product of history and tradition and practice, not abstract principles. The idea you can "keep the good things Jefferson believed" while ditching the historical figure himself is something that makes no sense to them. It'd be like taking Jesus out of the Bible. > You can argue that their feelings of economic greivance make sense--but their voting habits are a rejection of policies like universal healthcare (which would benefit the vast majority of them) because "socialism." Trump voters already have healthcare. They're disproportionately likely to be folks who bear greater burdens under the ACA--like small business owners. Or the majority of people who are happy with their private health insurance. More generally, the Republican Party is a coalition of social conservatives (some of whom are quite economically liberal) and economic conservatives. Voting Democrat wouldn't make any sense for them, especially because, as you observe, the Democratic Party is staunchly neo-liberal as well. I recall listening to interviews with Trump voters around Scranton (where Joe Biden was born). Folks were talking about how they were multi-generational Democratic voters, but were disillusioned by Democrats' support for NAFTA, etc. If Democrats chose to prioritize social liberalism and economic neo-liberalism it makes totally sense for those folks to vote Republican.
- technofiend 6y ago
  That's truly sad. These echochambers are really the worst place for these people to spend their time backstroking through a cesspool of whatabouts and conspiracy theories. I look forward to a peaceful transition of power and hopefully these folks find other things to worry about like why cats haven't yet pushed everything off the flat edge of our Earth.
  - jelliclesfarm 6y ago
    My city council meetings feels like echo chambers for people to spend their time backstrokinh through a cesspool of whatsbouts and conspiracy theories too. And we elected the people on the podium. So there’s that..
- gambiting 6y ago
  Tbf I think there was also a lot of people who genuinely and truly believed that Obama, as in - a black president - would be literally the end of America. I have no idea what those people think now, but I'm also not terribly keen to find out.
  - breckenedge 6y ago
    Oh they’re still around making movies and hosting talk radio stations. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1558865/?ref_=fn_al_tt_7 https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1558865/?ref_=fn_al_tt_7
  - kristopolous 6y ago
    I haven't seen enough direct evidence to attribute that. It's very plausible but I don't want to lump independent groups together. In the same way that many leftist groups really don't like each other and it's probably wrong to lump them together.
    - gambiting 6y ago
      But attribute what? I'm just saying that plenty of people believe this. No attribution whatsoever.
      - kristopolous 6y ago
        Oh sorry, I thought you postulated the birthers and qanon believers were the same people. Totally plausible but I haven't seen direct evidence. (I also haven't, say, done any analysis of historical tweets from qanon believers for the evidence) It's ultimately unimportant as they're both part of the same overarching bullshit movement, but something sounding logical doesn't constitute valid evidence.
        jki275 6y ago
        You realize the birther movement was started by the Clinton camp when she was running against Obama, right?
- anigbrowl 6y ago
  It really looks like it's people who genuinely feel Joe Biden will be the end of america. To look at it another way, they really expect the end of American and Joe Biden and/or Kamala Harris are just the right wing villains of the moment. You could pick anyone else from the field of Democratic politicians and they would equally be treated as the harbinger of the apocalypse. The underlying anxiety of the alt-right (though not every single individual therein) is that 2020 was the first year when white people became a minority of the youngest (u18) demographic cohort. As most far-right adherents in the US build their politics around racial identity this is regarded by them as the onset of demographic winter, historical decline, fall of empire et.c etc.
  - kls 6y ago
    I think you are off base on this, I think there is a small contingent of the far right that are white identity adherents. The rest get labeled in with them, because they have not been vocal in their distancing themselves from that contingent, thus groups like the Proud Boys get lumped in with the white supremacist's and white identity adherents. While the Proud Boy's are a radical alt-right group, white identify is not their binding fabric. The embracing of masculinity is, they have member from all races and explicitly call out that they are not a white nationalist organization. The alt-right is a coalition, of the fringe just like the far-left. Most tolerate each other under enemy-of-my-enemy mentality.
    - anigbrowl 6y ago
      The Proud boys do have members from all races, but not very many of them; and the vision of masculinity they present is extremely narrow rather than inclusive. There's significant internal tension within the group between the 'optical' approach espoused by its nominal president Enrique Tarrio and a more explicitly racist/neo-nazi one proposed by his informal rival, Kyle Chapman. I think the white identity thing is more widespread on the far right than you appreciate; even neo-nazis have examples of ethnic diversity that they like to bring out (eg photographs of black soldiers in wehrmacht uniform socializing with caucasians) but these are employed mainly as an aid to entryism in breaking down reflexive hostility to national socialism, rather than because neo-Nazis are actually trying to build an ethnically diverse movement.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  > It really looks like it's people who genuinely feel Joe Biden will be the end of america. People really seemed to honestly feel that way about Obama... then Obama again. I expect people will feel that way about whatever Democrat eventually gets elected next too.
agumonkey 6y ago
As in disrupting us and thus USD ?
- parliament32 6y ago
  I think the US has been disrupting the USD just fine on their own. 22% of all USD were "printed" just last year: https://www.somagnews.com/9-trillion-story-22-of-us-dollars-printed-in-2020/ https://www.somagnews.com/9-trillion-story-22-of-us-dollars-...
  - agumonkey 6y ago
    I know that, I read curious if the alt right potentially thought they'd benefit from sabotaging it even more and leverage crypto as a hedge.
gwbas1c 6y ago
Take a look at the book "The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism," https://www.amazon.com/Politics-Bitcoin-Right-Wing-Extremism-Forerunners/dp/1517901804 https://www.amazon.com/Politics-Bitcoin-Right-Wing-Extremism... David Columbia, the author, provides evidence of right-wing associations with cryptocurrency.
joejerryronnie 6y ago
I believe it’s the same group of people artificially (but maybe not deliberately) inflating both BTC and Tesla
- parliament32 6y ago
  How can you consider a crypto (or other commodity) to be "artificially" inflated? It's not backed by anything; it's worth precisely what people are willing to pay for it, with no strings attached.
  - jpsalm 6y ago
    Well, if people are paying for it with Tether and it turns out Tether is backed by loans or other cryptocurrencies then it would be by definition artificially inflated.
- mschuster91 6y ago
  BTC maybe, Tesla not - people are desperate for an investment opportunity. Europe has had negative interests (!) on savings accounts for many months... that, combined with physical gambling venues closed, normal gambling restricted and trading apps such as Trade Republic (the German equivalent to Robinhood) led to many people trying their luck on the stock market. Additionally, Tesla has the advantage that many European countries are phasing out ICE vehicles and Tesla is the solid tech lead, plus the hype machine that Elon Musk has created... it's not surprising to me that Tesla is a very much sought-after stock. And unlike Wirecard or P&R Containers, Tesla has actual cars on the road with government records certifying that number.
Triv888 6y ago
So is Theter trying to overthrow the Government?

kristopolous 6y ago

I spend time on gab and parler (I'm not a believer, I'm just curious). It really looks like it's people who genuinely feel Joe Biden will be the end of america. They think the stock market will crash and dollars will be useless as Biden ushers in some kind of communism. From the volume of comments on the posts, there's quite many of them. This run will probably last as long as their finances allow. I don't think it'll end on January 20th. The delusions have held this long, it's probably going to continue. It's terrible. Not only have these conspiracy theories led to isolation and a destruction of their social networks but soon it'll also lead to their financial ruin as bitcoin will inevitably crash once again (I'm holding tens of thousands in crypto. I know it's a day at the casino. My fear is about those that don't. The current flurry of nonsecuritized uninsured bank looking companies that have surfaced in this crypto bubble isn't helping one bit. Stable coins are fine, but give the depositors some security)

redisman 6y ago
Sometimes you just gotta wonder about some people. The most pro status-quo candidate in a generation is planning to take us to the dark ages?
- adnzzzzZ 6y ago
  If you believe the status-quo is taking you to the dark ages then it's not very crazy. And for the more rural portion of America that seems to be the case.
  - redisman 6y ago
    Fair but they don’t seem to actually want pragmatic/realpolitik solutions. Did Trump deliver something that revitalized these communities? Anything? Was he promising anything for 2020? Seems like he just made them feel “represented” in a completely shallow and meaningless way. Meanwhile in your random town in WV things keep sliding towards extinction
- coldtea 6y ago
  Well, "business as usual" has led working class (and middle class) america to wage stagnation, increasingly worse jobs, de-industrialization, decline of small towns, meth/heroin rise, and such, plus wars mainly using poor rural people as fodder, and other such niceties. Plus coastal elites (including non-elites who still identify as hollier-than the plebs in the fly-over country) sneering at them. The glorious march of the stock market, or the glorious technological future, only meant being worse of (job prospects, housing costs, healthcare costs, education costs, etc.) for them. Even openly calling out a 40% who voted another candidate "deplorables". So from this European's standapoint, it makes sense for these people to consider more of the status quo to mean "return to the dark ages".
  - x1ph0z 6y ago
    The best part, some degree of socialism would help these people... yet they're opposed to it because it would help `other` people.
  - ordinaryradical 6y ago
    Kind of a good take, but these points actually makes their attitude even stranger: they are not afraid of neoliberalism, which is the defacto economic position of both the left and the right, but of "communism." Biden is a "communist," or "godless," or "anti-American." What do these statements actually mean? You can argue that their feelings of economic greivance make sense--but their voting habits are a rejection of policies like universal healthcare (which would benefit the vast majority of them) because "socialism." They eagerly voted in those who planned to dismantle the ACA and loudly said they would do so in 2016 ("repeal and replace"), then when the Republicans attempted to leave them high and dry, everyone, including Trump, panicked and backed out. What's going on here? This attempt to make them sound reasonable in their fear glosses over the obvious contradictions in how they vote and where they think their problems lie. What will four more years of Republican tax cuts coupled with absurd austerity politics get them? Biden is worse than this because...?
    - rayiner 6y ago
      > Biden is a "communist," or "godless," or "anti-American." What do these statements actually mean? They didn't attack Biden as being those things. They attacked Biden for being old, not entirely there, and weak barrier against the radical elements of the Democratic Party. For example Karen Bass, who was on Biden's VP shortlist, had a bunch of communist ties: https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/karen-bass-vice-president-kamala-harris/ https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/karen-bass-vice-presiden... > First reported were her ill-chosen words upon the death of Fidel Castro in 2016, she opined, that “the passing of the Comandante en Jefe is a great loss to the people of Cuba.” Ouch! But politically survivable. > Far more damaging was news that that Bass first visited the island while, in college, at age 19, in 1973 with the Venceremos Brigade, a group popular with leftwing student radicals and social progressives that organized and ferried Americans to Cuba to cut sugar cane and build homes—in defiance of the U.S. Embargo and policy. She would take eight trips with the Brigade during the 1970s alone As to "anti-American" many on the left embraced taking the name of founding fathers off of school buildings. My magnet high school in Virginia is named after Thomas Jefferson and there has been an effort to rename it. Even Abraham Lincoln has been indicted (if not yet convicted): https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/12/20/fact-check-san-franciscos-abraham-lincoln-hs-name-change-isnt-final/3940580001 https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/12/20/fac.... Taking Thomas Jefferson's name off a school building is a declaration of war to conservatives. They believe that civilization is a product of history and tradition and practice, not abstract principles. The idea you can "keep the good things Jefferson believed" while ditching the historical figure himself is something that makes no sense to them. It'd be like taking Jesus out of the Bible. > You can argue that their feelings of economic greivance make sense--but their voting habits are a rejection of policies like universal healthcare (which would benefit the vast majority of them) because "socialism." Trump voters already have healthcare. They're disproportionately likely to be folks who bear greater burdens under the ACA--like small business owners. Or the majority of people who are happy with their private health insurance. More generally, the Republican Party is a coalition of social conservatives (some of whom are quite economically liberal) and economic conservatives. Voting Democrat wouldn't make any sense for them, especially because, as you observe, the Democratic Party is staunchly neo-liberal as well. I recall listening to interviews with Trump voters around Scranton (where Joe Biden was born). Folks were talking about how they were multi-generational Democratic voters, but were disillusioned by Democrats' support for NAFTA, etc. If Democrats chose to prioritize social liberalism and economic neo-liberalism it makes totally sense for those folks to vote Republican.
technofiend 6y ago
That's truly sad. These echochambers are really the worst place for these people to spend their time backstroking through a cesspool of whatabouts and conspiracy theories. I look forward to a peaceful transition of power and hopefully these folks find other things to worry about like why cats haven't yet pushed everything off the flat edge of our Earth.
- jelliclesfarm 6y ago
  My city council meetings feels like echo chambers for people to spend their time backstrokinh through a cesspool of whatsbouts and conspiracy theories too. And we elected the people on the podium. So there’s that..
gambiting 6y ago
Tbf I think there was also a lot of people who genuinely and truly believed that Obama, as in - a black president - would be literally the end of America. I have no idea what those people think now, but I'm also not terribly keen to find out.
- breckenedge 6y ago
  Oh they’re still around making movies and hosting talk radio stations. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1558865/?ref_=fn_al_tt_7 https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1558865/?ref_=fn_al_tt_7
- kristopolous 6y ago
  I haven't seen enough direct evidence to attribute that. It's very plausible but I don't want to lump independent groups together. In the same way that many leftist groups really don't like each other and it's probably wrong to lump them together.
  - gambiting 6y ago
    But attribute what? I'm just saying that plenty of people believe this. No attribution whatsoever.
    - kristopolous 6y ago
      Oh sorry, I thought you postulated the birthers and qanon believers were the same people. Totally plausible but I haven't seen direct evidence. (I also haven't, say, done any analysis of historical tweets from qanon believers for the evidence) It's ultimately unimportant as they're both part of the same overarching bullshit movement, but something sounding logical doesn't constitute valid evidence.
      - jki275 6y ago
        You realize the birther movement was started by the Clinton camp when she was running against Obama, right?
anigbrowl 6y ago
It really looks like it's people who genuinely feel Joe Biden will be the end of america. To look at it another way, they really expect the end of American and Joe Biden and/or Kamala Harris are just the right wing villains of the moment. You could pick anyone else from the field of Democratic politicians and they would equally be treated as the harbinger of the apocalypse. The underlying anxiety of the alt-right (though not every single individual therein) is that 2020 was the first year when white people became a minority of the youngest (u18) demographic cohort. As most far-right adherents in the US build their politics around racial identity this is regarded by them as the onset of demographic winter, historical decline, fall of empire et.c etc.
- kls 6y ago
  I think you are off base on this, I think there is a small contingent of the far right that are white identity adherents. The rest get labeled in with them, because they have not been vocal in their distancing themselves from that contingent, thus groups like the Proud Boys get lumped in with the white supremacist's and white identity adherents. While the Proud Boy's are a radical alt-right group, white identify is not their binding fabric. The embracing of masculinity is, they have member from all races and explicitly call out that they are not a white nationalist organization. The alt-right is a coalition, of the fringe just like the far-left. Most tolerate each other under enemy-of-my-enemy mentality.
  - anigbrowl 6y ago
    The Proud boys do have members from all races, but not very many of them; and the vision of masculinity they present is extremely narrow rather than inclusive. There's significant internal tension within the group between the 'optical' approach espoused by its nominal president Enrique Tarrio and a more explicitly racist/neo-nazi one proposed by his informal rival, Kyle Chapman. I think the white identity thing is more widespread on the far right than you appreciate; even neo-nazis have examples of ethnic diversity that they like to bring out (eg photographs of black soldiers in wehrmacht uniform socializing with caucasians) but these are employed mainly as an aid to entryism in breaking down reflexive hostility to national socialism, rather than because neo-Nazis are actually trying to build an ethnically diverse movement.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
> It really looks like it's people who genuinely feel Joe Biden will be the end of america. People really seemed to honestly feel that way about Obama... then Obama again. I expect people will feel that way about whatever Democrat eventually gets elected next too.

agumonkey 6y ago

As in disrupting us and thus USD ?

parliament32 6y ago
I think the US has been disrupting the USD just fine on their own. 22% of all USD were "printed" just last year: https://www.somagnews.com/9-trillion-story-22-of-us-dollars-printed-in-2020/ https://www.somagnews.com/9-trillion-story-22-of-us-dollars-...
- agumonkey 6y ago
  I know that, I read curious if the alt right potentially thought they'd benefit from sabotaging it even more and leverage crypto as a hedge.

gwbas1c 6y ago

Take a look at the book "The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism," https://www.amazon.com/Politics-Bitcoin-Right-Wing-Extremism-Forerunners/dp/1517901804 https://www.amazon.com/Politics-Bitcoin-Right-Wing-Extremism... David Columbia, the author, provides evidence of right-wing associations with cryptocurrency.

joejerryronnie 6y ago

I believe it’s the same group of people artificially (but maybe not deliberately) inflating both BTC and Tesla

parliament32 6y ago
How can you consider a crypto (or other commodity) to be "artificially" inflated? It's not backed by anything; it's worth precisely what people are willing to pay for it, with no strings attached.
- jpsalm 6y ago
  Well, if people are paying for it with Tether and it turns out Tether is backed by loans or other cryptocurrencies then it would be by definition artificially inflated.
mschuster91 6y ago
BTC maybe, Tesla not - people are desperate for an investment opportunity. Europe has had negative interests (!) on savings accounts for many months... that, combined with physical gambling venues closed, normal gambling restricted and trading apps such as Trade Republic (the German equivalent to Robinhood) led to many people trying their luck on the stock market. Additionally, Tesla has the advantage that many European countries are phasing out ICE vehicles and Tesla is the solid tech lead, plus the hype machine that Elon Musk has created... it's not surprising to me that Tesla is a very much sought-after stock. And unlike Wirecard or P&R Containers, Tesla has actual cars on the road with government records certifying that number.

Triv888 6y ago

So is Theter trying to overthrow the Government?