Reddit & Information Warfare: An Introduction

Reddit is a social media website which refers to itself as “the front page of the internet.” It is organized in terms of subreddits, which are smaller forums created and run by users of the website. Today, more people get their news from Reddit than CNN. There is a lot at stake when it comes to Reddit, especially with respect to internet culture. Memes often begin as a Reddit post, then find their way elsewhere. A lot of Facebook content appears first on Reddit. 

Recently, more and more evidence has emerged that there is something very wrong going on with Reddit. While the concept is brilliant, the corporation and its administration are corrupt. In early 2012, a hacker named Jeremy Hammond leaked (through Wikileaks) the emails of the private intelligence firm Stratfor, and his cache included emails showing that the Chairman of Reddit (Alexis Ohanian) had met with the CEO of Stratfor (George Friedman), and sought to work with Stratfor as a consultant.[1] Hammond is currently in jail, having been served a ten-year long sentence for having hacked and leaked these emails.

While the significance of this has been ignored by large corporate media outlets, several investigative journalists have taken an interest in what the Stratfor leaks reveal. One such investigative journalist is Barrett Brown, whose crowd-sourced platform “Project PM” began to use these leaked e-mails to understand and report on the shadowy world of private intelligence contracting.[2]

 

                        Project PM Logo

Barrett Brown was arrested by the FBI less than seven months after the Stratfor files were leaked, and was initially given over a century’s worth of charges. This was eventually dropped, in January 2015, to 63 months in federal prison, which he is currently serving.

In January 2013, another investigative journalist named Michael Hastings tweeted that he was beginning to work on a story about Barrett Brown, telling his interlocutors to “get ready for your mind to be blown.”[3] On June 17, 2013, Hastings sent an email to some of his colleagues, warning that federal authorities were interviewing his friends and family and that he needed to go “off the rada[r]” for a bit.[4] Early the next morning, he asked Jordanna Thigpen, his neighbor, if he could borrow her car, as he believed someone had been tampering with his. She declined, as her car was having mechanical problems.[5]

Less than three hours later, Hastings died when his automobile, traveling at speeds of over one hundred miles an hour, smashed into a tree and caught on fire.[4] Former U.S. counter-terror official Richard Clarke described the crash as “consistent with a car cyber attack.”[6] Dr. Kathleen Fisher, while serving as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Program Manager for High Assurance Systems, had previously given a presentation on car-hacking in which she noted that breaking, acceleration, and in many newer cars steering are all controlled by software.[7] Scarcely one month after Michael Hastings' death, DARPA engineers publicly demonstrated their ability to carry out this kind of hack.[8]

Michael Hastings had previously written a story on former General Stanley McChrystal which led to McChrystal being fired; at the time McChrystal had been the top general in charge of U.S. forces in Afghanistan.[9] More recently, Hastings had written a very critical article on former CIA Director David Petraeus, in which he describes Petraeus’ entire philosophy as being rooted in “hiding the truth, on deception, [and] on building a false image,” made possible through his “affair with the media” [10]. Earlier, Hastings had reported on the Pentagon’s efforts to design “sock puppet” software for social media outlets, assisting military personnel in creating fake online personas to spread propaganda[3]; this effort was first spearheaded by David Petraeus while he was serving as the head of U.S. Central Command, under a program called “Operation Earnest Voice,” which was developed and deployed in Iraq as a psychological warfare weapon against opponents of the U.S. occupation[11].

Many of the emails leaked by Jeremy Hammond and reported on by Project PM concern this kind of “persona management software.”[3] This way of approaching and engaging social media was mirrored in an earlier article penned by Adrian Vermule and Cass Sunstein in 2008; Sunstein went on to serve as the administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs for the next four years. In their article, titled “conspiracy theories,” Sunstein and Vermule had advocated the United States Government should adopt precisely this kind of program as a response to the prevalence of “conspiracy theories,” stating that their main focus involves “conspiracy theories relating to terrorism, especially theories that arise from and post-date the 9/11 attacks.”

Sunstein and Vermule describe these theories as existing “virulently” within foreign countries, especially Muslim countries, and describe conspiracy theorizing as being “undoubtedly virulent in the Muslim world.” They go on to quote Phillip Zelikow, the executive director of the 9/11 commission, who characterized these “conspiracy theories” as bacteria, stating that “our worry is when things become infectious.” More recently, John A. Banas & Gregory Miller conducted a study titled: “Inducing Resistance to Conspiracy Theory Propaganda: Testing Inoculation and Metainoculation Strategies,” further illustrating how the problem of responding to "conspiracy theories" is frequently conceived of in medical terms.

As someone who browsed Reddit from time to time, when I began to learn about these things I eventually discovered a subreddit known as /r/conspiracy. While there, people would often talk about “shills,” a catch-all term for those who are paid to engage in the kind of activity discussed above. In 2013, Reddit’s blog reported that the Eglin Air Force Base in Florida is it’s “most addicted city,” with over 100,000 visits per day.[12]

On Reddit, there are numerous subreddits which exist to mock those who are wary of shills and are thus likely to be deemed “conspiracy theorists.” The most commonly known subreddit which serves this purpose is /r/conspiratard.

The name of one of /r/conspiratard’s moderators, /u/COINTELPROAgent, is a reference to the FBI’s counterintelligence program, officially inaugurated under the reign of J. Edgar Hoover, by far the longest serving director of the FBI.

One of COINTELPRO’s primary targets during the 1950s and 1960s was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.[13] The FBI began systematically bugging King’s home and his hotel rooms, [13] and a March 1968 memo stated that the program’s goal was to “prevent the coalition of militant black nationalist groups” to “prevent the RISE OF A ‘MESSIAH’ who could unify… the militant black nationalist movement.”[14] Martin Luther King Jr. was identified as a possible candidate. On December 8, 1999, twelve jurors reached a unanimous verdict that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s subsequent assassination was the result of a conspiracy. [15]

This example alone shows how deeply entangled the label "conspiratard" is with the history of institutional racism in the United States. The activity of /r/conspiratard's mods further illustrates how this history intersects with sanism, especially in the context of 9/11:

In Herkimer's subsequent use of the epithet "rabid conspiracy theorists," it is not hard to see how the sentiment expressed in the above comment regarding “the idiotic fantasies of the truthers” held by “uneducated, delusional idiots” is an expression of the pathological conception of “conspiracy theorizing” suggested by Phillip Zelikow, Cass Sunstein, and Adrian Vermule, specifically in relation to “the Muslim World” and the 9/11 commission report:

When asked about the names of user handles like /u/cointelproagent, and other seemingly transparent references like this, the moderators of /r/conspiratard usually claim that it’s just a joke, a way of making fun of “conspiracy theorists.” After all, /r/conspiratard is “just satire.” What else do the moderators of /r/conspiratard find funny?         

One joke the mods of /r/conspiratard like to make revolves around Rachel Corrie, a Jewish anti-apartheid activist who was killed and run over twice by an Israeli military bulldozer, when she was attempting to prevent the destruction of a Palestinian home.[16] The subreddit /r/RachelCorrie was dubbed “The Pancake Queen” by /u/Einstimer, the subreddit’s creator and top moderator, as well as one of /r/conspiratard’s mods:

 

A number of other subreddits moderated by /r/conspiratard expand upon this joke, such as /r/WorldOfPancakes, whose moderators include /u/COINTELPROAgent and /u/jcm267, the top mod of /r/conspiratard:

 

and /r/groundmeat, whose moderators include the top two mods of /r/conspiratard (/u/jcm267 and /u/Herkimer), as well as /u/mossadi, a reference to Mossad, Israel’s national intelligence agency:

 

Leaving aside the question of Mossad’s relationship with Reddit for now, a close relationship between Zionism and shill humor can be found in many subreddits, such as /r/ZionistScum:

which is moderated by /u/BipolarBear0, a moderator of /r/justshillthings, with the flair “#1 shill”:

As a moderator of /r/subredditoftheday, /u/BipolarBear0 wrote the following expose for /r/conspiratard:

In this post we find the claim that “9/11 was an inside job” closely entangled with opposition to Zionism, Monsanto, and the Bush’s regime’s relationship with oil, as well as a number of other subjects, arranged in a way so as to caricature and satirize “conspiracy theorists” as people who believe that Jewish people are reptilian aliens, even as the moderators of /r/conspiratard operate a number of subreddits mocking a Jewish woman who was killed by the IDF.

In early November 2014, someone posted to the subreddit /r/todayilearned an article discussing Monsanto’s “gift” to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, which consisted of 475 tons of seeds doused with highly toxic fungicides such as thiram.[17]

In this thread, a number of accounts came to Monsanto’s defense, including /u/Scuderia,  a moderator of pro-Monsanto subreddits such as /r/GMOMyths and /r/GMOcirclejerk, and /u/JF_Queeny, a moderator of /r/GMOmyths and /r/MarchAgainstMonsanto. One of these accounts, /u/Soul_Shot, made a total of fifty-fifty posts defending Monsanto in this thread, and was formerly a moderator of /r/MarchAgainstMonsanto as well.

/r/MarchAgainstMonsanto was created in response to a planned protest movement of the same name. /r/GMOmyths is a pro-Monsanto subreddit which describes itself as a subreddit where “anyone can point out how uninformed the average interweb denizen is about biotechnology, farming, Monsanto, or other basic science facts,” warning users that “no matter what you actually know, accusations will be made that you work for an agribusiness giant.” Earlier this year, a Monsanto employee revealed the existence of a “discredit bureau” of Monsanto’s with the task of “discrediting” and “debunking” scientists who criticize Monsanto’s GMOs.[19]

r/GMOmyths was also featured in /r/subredditoftheday by /u/BipolarBear0, in which he described Reddit’s non-GMO trend as tending to be “a fair bit more militant and a lot more insane. There are those on this very website who believe not only that GM foods are bad for you, but that they’re literally poison.” He notes that “we were asked” (by whom?) “to feature this on May 24^th in commemoration of March Against Monsanto,” and described /r/GMOMyths as “the /r/conspiratard of GMOs.”

In its sidebar, /r/GMOMyths lists /r/FrackingMyths as “coming soon,” a part of the “Myths Network” which includes similarly-themed subreddits. Recall how /u/BipolarBear0 had previously satirized the “conspiracy theorists” association of Monsanto with the geopolitics of oil – what underlies this connection?

We began this foray into Reddit’s corruption with a discussion of the Stratfor leaks, which included an email exchange involving the chairman of Reddit, Alexis Ohanian, discussing a meeting with George Friedman, the CEO of Stratfor, concerning consultation opportunities. Stratfor, as it so happens, has provided the energy industry with intel on anti-fracking activists[18], and when David Petraeus left his job with the CIA, he became the director of the Global Institute of the private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, which holds over $1 billion in oil and gas industry assets, calls itself a “mini oil and gas company,” and has made substantial investments in fracking technology[20][21].

One email exchange which was released through WikiLeaks shows that not only did Stratfor collaborate with Goldman Sachs to monetize insider intelligence through the creation of a strategic investment fund called StratCap, in 2011 Goldman Sachs’ Shea Morenz invested “substantially” more than $4 million and joined Stratfor’s board of directors.[22]

Goldman Sachs and Monsanto enjoy a particularly close relationship, in part through an “environmental” nonprofit known as the Nature Conservancy, whose leadership council members include notorious polluters such as Exxon Mobil, General Motors, and PG&E.[23] Henry Paulson, while serving as the CEO of Goldman Sachs from 1999-2006, also served as the Board Chair of the Nature Conservancy, from 2001-2006, before leaving both stations to become George W. Bush’s Secretary of the Treasury.[24][25] Mark Tercek, who led Goldman Sachs’ Environmental Strategy Group under Hank Paulson, is now the Nature Conservancy’s President and CEO.[26] Monsanto also sits on The Nature Conservancy’s leadership council, and has repeatedly given them millions of dollars a year in donations.[27]

The Nature Conservancy is working closely with Dow Chemical, which manufactured Agent Orange along with Monsanto in the 1960s.[20] Stratfor has worked for Dow Chemical as well, when it monitored the online activities of activists who were seeking redress for the 1984 Dow Chemical/Union Carbine gas disaster in Bhopal India, which led to thousands of deaths, more than half a million injuries, and lasting environmental damage.[26]

This kind of extreme violence is not an aberration when it comes to the corporate practices of Monsanto and its collaborators. After the World Bank forced India to globalize its seed economy in the late 1990s, the introduction of GMO’s led to the replacement of naturally renewing seeds to seeds the expire after a single use and require expensive pesticides to grow, dramatically driving up the cost of crop production. This drove vast numbers of Indian farmers into poverty and debt, and has resulted in over 200,000 suicides in the last ten years alone. [28]

 

While these instances of violence may seem disparate and disjointed, the discourses surrounding "conspiracy theory" and "shills" on Reddit make it clear that one of the things which is particularly threatening about "conspiracy theories" to corporations like Monsanto and propagandists like Cass Sunstein is their holistic nature.

 And so we return again to Reddit, the self-proclaimed front-page of the internet. If Reddit is indeed as prominent as it claims to be - and everything we have discussed so far suggests that we should take this possibility very seriously - then we are not far at all from the World War III of Marshall McLuhan's imagination, an information war in which the line between military and civillian participation is becoming increasingly blurred. [29]

CITATIONS

[1] http://rt.com/usa/stratfor-reddit-ohanian-intelligence-work-029/

[2] http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/barrett-brown-and-jeremy-hammond-may-be-in-prison-but-their-work-continues

[3] http://whowhatwhy.org/2013/08/07/connections-between-michael-hastings-edward-snowden-and-barrett-brown-the-war-with-the-security-state/

[4] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/22/michael-hastings-email_n_3484118.html

[5] http://www.newser.com/story/172961/hastings-thought-his-car-was-being-tampered-with.html

[6] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/24/michael-hastings-car-hacked_n_3492339.html

[7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OfcgJ-pl7Q

[8] http://news.boldride.com/2013/07/how-darpa-can-hack-your-car/33055/

[9] http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-runaway-general-20100622

[10] http://www.buzzfeed.com/mhastings/the-sins-of-general-david-petraeus#.erYnozBy8

[11] http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks

[12] http://www.redditblog.com/2013/05/get-ready-for-global-reddit-meetup-day.html

[13] Weiner, Enemies (2012), p. 200, 235, 236

[14] http://herb.ashp.cuny.edu/items/show/814

[15] http://www.thekingcenter.org/assassination-conspiracy-trial

[16] http://livefromoccupiedpalestine.blogspot.com/2013/03/remembering-life-and-activism-of-rachel.html

[17] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ronnie-cummins/monsantos-poison-pills-fo_b_587340.html

[18] http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/elist/eListRead/stratfor_provided_energy_industry_with_intel_on_environmental_groups/

[19] http://naturalsociety.com/monsanto-employee-admits-an-entire-department-exists-to-discredit-scientists/

[20] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-horn/emails-nd-ethics-law-pote_b_5486796.html

[21] http://marcellusdrilling.com/2012/03/chesapeake-kkr-form-partnership-to-invest-in-royalties/

[22] http://freakoutnation.com/2012/02/motherload-of-stratfor-emails-displays-goldman-sacksstratfor-monetized-insider-intelligence/

[23] http://www.mindfully.org/Heritage/2003/Nature-Conservancy-Drilling5jun03.htm

[24] http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/12/VY36.html

[25] https://web.archive.org/web/20080229031907/http://www.nature.org/pressroom/press/press2464.html

[26] http://fortune.com/2013/04/30/a-different-kind-of-environmental-radical/

[27] http://thegoodhuman.com/2012/06/28/monsanto-on-nature-conservancy-leadership-council/

[28] http://www.naturalnews.com/030913_Monsanto_suicides.html#

[29] http://www.hackerart.org/corsi/fm03/esercitazioni/lazazzara/home.htm