Bellingcat Founder On Elon Musk Defending Mass Shooting ‘Psyop’ Conspiracy Theory: ‘An Idiot Who Consumes Garbage Media’
AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File
Twitter owner Elon Musk sparked a fresh round of condemnation this week when CNBC’s David Faber pushed the eccentric billionaire on some of his more controversial tweets of late.
At one point during the interview, Musk defended casting doubt on reports that a recent mass shooter had links to white supremacy and accused the investigative journalism website Bellingcat of running a “psyop.” Elliot Higgins, the founder of Bellingcat, hit back at Musk early Wednesday morning and denounced Musk as “an idiot who consumes garbage media.”
Faber’s sit down with Musk was largely a friendly, business-oriented affair, but he seemed to stump the Tesla founder when he pressed him on his recent tweet comparing Jewish billionaire George Soros to an X-Men villain, declaring that Soros “hates humanity.”
“Ok, but why share it? Why share it?” asked Faber, referencing critics denouncing the tweet and its subtext as anti-Semitic.
“Why share it when people who buy Teslas may not agree with you? Advertisers on Twitter may not agree with you?” Faber pushed as Musk looked puzzled.
“Freedom of speech. I’m allowed to say what I want,” Musk shot back, repeating his mantra for why he bought Twitter in the first place.
Faber then pivoted to Musk’s recent tweets regarding a deadly mass shooting in Texas perpetrated by a man who authorities concluded had “neo-Nazi ideation” and multiple Nazi tattoos on his body.
“Ok, but, I mean, when you link to somebody who’s talking about the guy who killed children in a mall in Allen, Texas, and you say something like it might be a bad psyop, I’m not quite sure what you meant,” Faber added.
Musk paused and replied, “In that particular case, there was a… somehow… that’s… not that the… obviously the people were killed, but it was, I think, incorrectly ascribed to be a white supremacist action and the evidence for that was some obscure Russian website that no one has ever heard of, that had no followers, and the company that found this is Bellingcat. And do you know what Bellingcat does? Psyops.”
“I’m saying that I thought ascribing it to white supremacy was bullshit and that the information for that came from an obscure Russian website and was somehow magically found by Bellingcat, which is a company that does psyops,” he continued.
Higgins, who founded Bellingcat in July 2014, looked back at Musk’s Twitter activity to trace the origins of the claim that Bellingcat “does psyops.” Higgins tweeted an image of Musk interacting with Canadian writer Aaron Mate making the claim and added, “So when this first became public I was obviously appalled, as it doesn’t represent Bellingcat accurately, so I asked for the basis of this claim. I was told a third party organisation who put together this report based it on a Sputnik article and a claim by a Russian journalist.”
Higgins then tore into Musk in a lengthy thread, writing:
If @elonmusk thinks Bellingcat is a psy-op than its a reflection of the absolute garbage he consumes from the likes of Aaron Mate. As a “tech guy” I’m sure he’s familiar with the phrase “Garbage in, garbage out”. That’s how his brain works.
And to be clear, I don’t think Musk knows he’s lying, or that he’s a Russian op, I just think he’s an idiot who consumes garbage media and incorrectly assumes that makes him smart and well-informed, just like thousands of other idiots on this website.
Many of whom have blue ticks and think Bellingcat is the CIA.
Higgins concluded by noting that the “obscure website no-one has heard of” where the Allen, Texas shooter posted his far-right screeds actually has 45 million unique daily users.
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