Last week, Drexel University placed political science professor George Ciccariello-Maher on involuntary leave and barred him from campus, citing a “growing number of threats” directed at him over his personal political views. (As of yesterday, he was allowed to resume teaching his undergraduate courses — but only by “synchronous online instruction.” In other words, via video.) Ciccariello-Maher’s suspension was the culmination of months of outrage over his tweets, beginning with a tweet that first drew anger from white nationalists before the mainstream media picked it up — with, apparently, help from @TEN_GOP, the “Unofficial Twitter of Tennessee Republicans,” which, it turns out, was actually operated by the Russia-based and Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency.
Russia-linked Twitter account Made 'white genocide' tweet go viral
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In other words, Drexel University launched an investigation into a professor’s off-campus speech, then suspended him, after a Russian “troll farm” helped send his tweet viral.
‘White Genocide’
At first, the tweet didn’t get much attention.
“All I Want for Christmas is White Genocide,” tweeted from Ciccariello-Maher’s personal Twitter account (“My views, not those of Drexel U,” reads the bio.) on Christmas Eve, seemed unlikely to get more than a laugh from his followers.
To most of the tweet’s eventual audience, happily divorced from the terminology deployed by white nationalists, “white genocide” would sound like a call for the systematic murder of white people. But Cicciariello-Maher was, in fact, mocking “white genocide,” referencing a theory espoused by white nationalists. The phrase, as The Atlantic described it, is “a watchword among white supremacists for immigration and fertility trends that could lead to whites losing their majority status in U.S. and European populations in the coming decades.” (One early critic of Ciccariello-Maher’s tweet described it as “the genocide of the white race by immigration and other measures… .”)
Ciccariello-Maher explained his use of the term on December 27, saying that “‘white genocide’ is an idea invented by white supremacists and used to denounce everything from interracial relationships to multicultural policies… . It is a figment of the racist imagination, it should be mocked, and I’m glad to have mocked it.”
Going viral
By mid-Christmas Day, attention to Ciccariello-Maher’s tweet picked up.
A search of tweets mentioning “@ciccmaher” shows how the tweet went viral — beginning with a retort by author Lauren Southern that garnered 182 retweets. A Breitbart freelancer picked up the story early in the afternoon, with a tweet gathering just north of 200 retweets. Jason Kessler, one of the organizers of the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, told the Breitbart author that he was making it part of his “agenda” to “clean out these campus scum from the bottom up.” In a now-deleted blog post, Kessler called on his readership to contact Drexel administrators and demand “intellectual diversity on college campuses so that sociopathic Marxists aren’t given free reign to indoctrinate our youth.”
Putin is doing white genocide in Ukraine and nobody cares.
But one side of this Christmas Day skirmish soon got a boost from some Tennesseans. Or did it?
At 4:59 p.m., Twitter account @TEN_GOP shared a screenshot of Ciccariello-Maher’s tweet to its 61,949 followers, ultimately garnering 2,100 retweets — about ten times the retweets that Breitbart’s tweet had gathered:
From there, the tweet took off, gathering steam in more mainstream outlets. @TEN_GOP’s tweet even found its way into a USA Today explainer on the kerfuffle.
Before midnight, Drexel would respond to the Twitter firestorm with a Yuletide tweetstorm of its own, including a statement declaring Ciccariello-Maher’s tweet “deeply disturbing,” but adding that Drexel “recognizes the right of its faculty to freely express their thoughts and opinions in public debate.” But in the months that have followed, Drexel’s steps in private continue to depart from its public declarations of support for academic freedom and freedom of expression.
Indeed, in this weird case, there are many things that are not what they claim to be.
@TEN_GOP, was not, as it claimed to be, the organic anger of Republicans from Tennessee. Rather, @TEN_GOP was the product of the Internet Research Agency, a Russia-based “troll farm” not heretofore known to employ many Americans hailing from the Volunteer State. Instead, it was, as described by The New York Times in 2015, “employing hundreds of Russians to post pro-Kremlin propaganda online under fake identities, including on Twitter.” According to a report first made by Russia-based RBC, citing documents and both current and former employees of the agency, @TEN_GOP was one such fake account. Reporters with the Daily Beast — Betsy Woodruff, Ben Collins, Spencer Ackerman, and Kevin Poulsen — confirmed @TEN_GOP’s Internet Research Agency origin, citing a source familiar with the account and evidence purporting to show that the account was linked to a Russian cell phone number.
FIRE has no special insight as to the ultimate purpose of @TEN_GOP and similar accounts, or why it would draw attention to Ciccariello-Maher’s tweet. Although alleged Russian efforts to shape the 2016 U.S. presidential election dominate the news, the “White Genocide” tweet occurred well after the election, and other efforts ascribed to the agency include encouragements of black activists opposed to police brutality. But if @TEN_GOP was in fact a product of the Russian “troll farm,” it represents a foreign effort to shape American discourse — an effort that involved stoking the anger of white nationalists and people who didn’t understand the context of mocking “white genocide” theories.
That’s not to say that Americans might not have picked up on this tweet in similar fashion (as did Breitbart News), or ultimately managed a similar cascade of results. And, obviously, an argument does not automatically lose its validity simply because it comes from Moscow rather than Memphis. But it does indicate that a foreign government not only understands the divisive power of efforts to silence dissenting voices on campus (and therefore may continue to promote such efforts) but has also demonstrated a concrete ability to negatively affect free expression and academic freedom in the United States.
Although Drexel has publicly told faculty members that they enjoy freedom of expression, its actions behind closed doors and in the months since have not reflected that commitment.
Bump
Who cares? This faggot needs a chainsaw through his cunt.
Bump
I unironically like Russia.
wrong board retard. We like anti white cucks being exposed. Try neofag. OH WAIT.
WHY ARE FAGS/SHILLS LIKE YOU POSTING WHOLE ARTICLES
ARE YOU RETARDED OR DO YOU JUST WANT TO SLIDE?
DON'T FORGET TO SAGE/REPORT
>Ciccariello-Maher explained his use of the term on December 27, saying that “‘white genocide’ is an idea invented by white supremacists and used to denounce everything from interracial relationships to multicultural policies… . It is a figment of the racist imagination, it should be mocked, and I’m glad to have mocked it.”
well, he's right genocide is:
the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation.
the symptoms Sup Forums likes to whine about aren't because brown people are killing whites. whites are simply cucking themselves out of existence by not reproducing as much as brown people are. how is it in any way brown people's fault that whites aren't reproducing with one another??
>Ciccariello-Maher
what a convenient combo. you can use the hispanic name to pick up girls and jewish one at the university where you teach anarchism and marxism
Russians are just trying to do the world a favor and get the US involved in identity politics as much as possible in order to destabilize it, on both the minorities side and the whites side. Any foreign power hostile to US influence would do the same. Like Iran, and pic related.
'member Lev Davidovich Bronstein?
What is it with Jews trying to change their names to something more goyish?
>Reporters with the Daily Beast — Betsy Woodruff, Ben Collins, Spencer Ackerman, and Kevin Poulsen — confirmed @TEN_GOP’s Internet Research Agency origin, citing a source familiar with the account and evidence purporting to show that the account was linked to a Russian cell phone number.
So, a nothing burger?
And that extreme rationalizing Re:
>"white genocide doesn't mean 'white GENOCIDE'"
>And that extreme rationalizing Re:
>>"white genocide doesn't mean 'white GENOCIDE'"
you obviously don't know what genocide means
>Decolonization
>Let's have third worlders colonize the west
Next they'll claim the russians made him tweet it using KGB mind control.
I don't understand what TEN_GOP did wrong to deserve banning. Is it really against TOS to lie or mislead on Twitter? Leftists do that 24/7. Are all Russians banned from Twitter?
...
slavs aren't human, much less white.
Nuland's father changed his surname from Nudelman.
So, the truth is invalid because Russia exposed it?
Let me just get this right.
A retweet is enough to derail lefties.
Sad,sad, sad fucks. Learn to accept responsibility you deranged fucking losers.
Nice source faggot I guess cuz Russia said otherwise, then white genocide is a good thing
Genocide includes imposing conditions on groups that negatively affect their reproductive rate and mass immigration into their land as per the UN.
No, you don't know what it means. It's not only killing people, but destruction of whole ethnic/racial/religious group by any means.
>oy vey how dare you alert the masses to white genocide!!
>Ciccariello
>hispanic
A retweet holy shit is there no end to Russia's devilishly underhand methods.
The Commie Left only hates Russia because their fake news outlets told them that Russia was responsible for the loss of their Queen, Hillary.
When is the last time the Commiecrats hated Russia? The pre Bolshevik era?
everything that gets posted on pol is written off as russians , its the only narrative they have to play .
are you demanding a private company to justify its own private, company policies that you agree to when you use its services? what are you, a commie??
>it's Russia's fault for pointing out our genocidal leftists
kek
Good thing we have Russian trolls to help identify and expose the anti-white bigots in the U.S..
>Good thing we have Russian trolls to help identify and expose the anti-white bigots in the U.S..
It wasn't a Russian account, faggot. A neocon NGO started saying a ton of Trump supporters on Twitter were Russians.
I honestly think those who hate Trump the most deserve him the most. People get governments they deserve. And it seems it worked out that way in the US. Anti establishment got their candidate, and the SJWs are finally raked over the coals.
I really don't care, as long as the anti-white faggots are exposed for what they are in this nation.
Ten GOP isnt russian. It is just behind a russian vpn like most of us used during the election because democrats are fucking tyrannical. But lets still play dumb and blame russia because liberals will believe anything.
Good. Maybe Russia wants an ally to defeat the global capitalist usery scam
>Russians keep exposing the terrible shit we do.
>They must be stopped!
I want proof that account and the originals that were banned before it were Russian.