My former experience as a Guerrilla Marketer and Grey-Hat SEO Operative has served my online fight against propaganda and online active measures pretty well. It’s made it easy to recognize a planted story when I see one, and I am able to figure out (and show) exactly how such things were orchestrated.
Today, while investigating certain patterns in anti-Tulsi Twitter accounts, I noticed a blog piece that people started passing around in March of 2016, meant to demonstrate how the people of Hawaii have long doubted Tulsi’s commitment to progressive values.
Archive Link: Tulsi Gabbard Tamayo – Stealth Candidate in Hawaii?
This blog piece, dated 2010, not only spoke of Tulsi’s alleged cult connections and conservativism, but as well mentioned that her challenger, “obviously cannot trot out the guru or the cult or even the record of Tulsi’s parents in her own campaign.”
The site’s disclaimer is super interesting:
All of ShadowProof’s content dated prior to 01 AUG 2015 and published under the “Community” tag, as this one is, originated from a different, now defunct website: Firedoglake.com
But… the article in question doesn’t even show up in the web archive for the time period that it was supposed to have been published.
Archive: Firedoglake.com, 17 Oct 2010 WayBack
The reason why Tulsi’s opponent wasn’t talking about the “Butler Cult” or her family’s conservative history back in 2010, was because none of that was even an issue or anything anyone was actually concerned about. The article in question was likely backdated and planted, to stir up controversy today.
One of the things that the article mentions is the “Stop Promoting Homosexuality” thing… something I’ve already shown (on Twitter) to be a totally fake, planted story:
1/ The anti-Tulsi propaganda crew are currently OUTRAGED over Tulsi's claims that she not only didn't know that her father's anti-gay org promoted "conversation therapy", but that she also didn't even know what conversion therapy was back then.
— Naomi Allen 🐝 (@girlyGRRRL) June 13, 2019
And I’ll keep trotting out this story until I’m blue in the face:
A certain group of HI LGTB activists would have us believe that Tulsi's "homophobia" is so ingrained, that none should believe that her ME experience changed her heart. But her father reveals, she has *always* been conflicted about his anti-gay position. https://t.co/ZWbJ3EsF9b
— Naomi Allen 🐝 (@girlyGRRRL) June 15, 2019
Mahalo, Aloha!
Naomi Allen is a political science researcher and this is her personal blog. You can follow her on Twitter