🤔 Y'all pretend to be worried about "disinformation" in journalism and social media...
But you just accept a Washington Post report describing a violent, racist, traitor leaking government secrets (about an ongoing war!) to a chatroom full of racist kids and young men he's radicalizing, as a "charismatic gun enthusiast?" Y'all are deeply unserious people.
You don't care about disinformation at all, as long as the disinfo is in the usual US direction: downplaying racism that hurts Black folk.
@queenofnewyork @sophieschmieg @mekkaokereke
It sounds to me like they are the sort of mutual propaganda reinforcement bubble from which terrorists emerge in a few years (or perhaps from which the more extreme members are recruited into the next stage of radicalization), but have not actually done or formed plans to do any terrorism.
Mostly *at this stage* they sound like nasty bigoted and extremely stupid edge lords, made dangerous on account of the US's gun obsession.
@queenofnewyork @sophieschmieg @mekkaokereke
I think you're quite right - if they were brown skinned Muslims, they'd all be brought in as terrorists, which would be as much of an over reaction as the WaPo ridiculously characterizing them as "devout Christians who like guns" is an under reaction.
The accurate view of them, somewhere in the middle between those two extremes, is quite scary enough.
@queenofnewyork @sophieschmieg @mekkaokereke
I mean, by all means call folks like them terrorists as a shorthand for their propensity to spawn people who do actually go on to plan or commit terrorism, maybe after having moved on to more extreme groups some years earlier.
As long as we're not calling for them to all be rounded up on trumped up charges. Equality is supposed to mean everyone gets the decent treatment white people get, not everyone gets treated like shit the way minorities are.
@dragonfrog @queenofnewyork @sophieschmieg
Terrorism, maybe no. Illegal yes.
They shared and leaked classified information about an ongoing war. There are folks in federal prison and Gitmo for doing less.
@mekkaokereke @queenofnewyork @sophieschmieg
Way illegal, absolutely. A good point that their danger to the national interest on the global stage is from the crimes they committed.
At least, for those of them who are inside the US. I don't know how that works for those of them who are outside the US - if I, a Canadian living in Canada, were to come into possession of US classified information, what penalties would I risk if I mishandled it? No idea and not likely to come up in my life.
@mekkaokereke @queenofnewyork @sophieschmieg
Meanwhile their danger on an individual level to people in personal contact with them comes from their being presumably quite legally armed and obsessed with using those weapons on people in "self defence" even if not in actual terrorism.
mekka okereke 
Queen of Anxiety
Sophie Schmieg
dragonfrog