Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left Podcast. This is a sample of this

this week's bonus episode. The full version is only available to our members.

These episodes are comprised of the whole production crew getting together for a roundtable discussion on topics we find interesting.

So here's a few minutes for free,

so you can know what all the fuss is about.

The New Republic wrote a big picture piece and says,

Vance's admission shouldn't shock you.

They've done this for years.

We have been talking about the origins, the underpinnings of what Vance has been talking about.

There's also the point that he's lying and knows it. He knows that the accusations against Haitians in Springfield are not true, but he is making the point anyway.

So this article digs into the history of the right wing doing this. It says for years right wing

internet influencers self-described trolls have deliberately aimed to use

shit posting to get the mainstream media to cover their favorite topics.

So does that ring a bell? I don't have J.D. Vance's quote in front of me.

But is it that he said to Danabash? Like, I'm going to tell stories to get the media to pay attention?

If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people

then that's what I'm going to do.

Right, so that is exactly how right wing self-described trolls use shit postain to get the media to cover what they want. It is exactly the same.

So the article explains that details of how this works came out in the 2023 trial of a right-wing influencer Douglas Mackie.

In 2016, Mackie used his popular Twitter persona to induce Hillary Clinton supporters to text their vote rather than cast a legal vote in person.

And so he was charged with a crime for that and then as part of the proceedings talked about his tactics and why they do what they do.

So this is this person describing their tact or I think it's one of his friends describing the tactics. It says, I want our message to move

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