Hoax That Fooled Armed Protesters Was Created By a Socialist Troll on Food Stamps (stripes.com) 281
Remember that anonymous online hoaxster who urged hundreds of armed protesters to counter a non-existent flag-burning event at America's historic Civil War battefield at Gettysburg?
An investigation by the Washington Post reveals that the hoaxster had in fact been a "lifelong Democrat" before instead registering in 2015 with the Socialist Party — and that he now collects food stamps: Adam Rahuba, a former concert promoter, works part-time as a food-delivery driver and a DJ. [Alternate URL here] At 38, he spent most of the past year staying on a friend's couch in a small town north of Pittsburgh. A Washington Post investigation found that Rahuba is also the anonymous figure behind a number of social media hoaxes — the most recent played out in Gettysburg on Independence Day — that have riled far-right extremists in recent years and repeatedly duped partisan media outlets...
These false claims circulated widely on social media and on Internet message boards. They were often amplified by right-wing commentators and covered as real news by media outlets such as Breitbart News and the Gateway Pundit... They have led to highly combustible situations — attracting heavily armed militia members and far-right activists eager to protect values they think are under siege — as well as large mobilizations of police... His July 4 hoax, a purported burning of the American flag, was billed as an antifa event. Hundreds of counterprotesters, including skinheads, flocked to Gettysburg National Military Park to confront the nonexistent flag burners.
A Post examination of Rahuba's activities provides a rare inside look at the work of a homegrown troll who uses social media to stoke partisan division. It shows that in an era of heightened sensitivity about disinformation campaigns carried out by foreign nations, bad-faith actors with far fewer resources can also manipulate public discourse and affect events in the real world.... Post reporters located Rahuba last week at a friend's apartment in Harmony Township, Pa., where he acknowledged in an interview that he was behind 13 aliases and social media accounts that promoted hoaxes as far back as 2013.... A self-described democratic socialist and supporter of former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, Rahuba said he antagonizes far-right extremists mostly for his own amusement...
"The message here was that any idiot on the Internet can get a bunch of people to show up at a Union cemetery with a bunch of Confederate flags and Nazi tattoos on their necks that just make them look foolish," he said.
The Post also reports that to deal with his July 4th hoax, "A local middle school was transformed into a makeshift command center to help coordinate the 16 federal and local law enforcement agencies monitoring the event. The state provided 100 Pennsylvania State troopers to assist, including mounted officers and a helicopter, according to Gettysburg city manager Charles Gable....
"That weekend, Rahuba said, he went camping with his girlfriend."
An investigation by the Washington Post reveals that the hoaxster had in fact been a "lifelong Democrat" before instead registering in 2015 with the Socialist Party — and that he now collects food stamps: Adam Rahuba, a former concert promoter, works part-time as a food-delivery driver and a DJ. [Alternate URL here] At 38, he spent most of the past year staying on a friend's couch in a small town north of Pittsburgh. A Washington Post investigation found that Rahuba is also the anonymous figure behind a number of social media hoaxes — the most recent played out in Gettysburg on Independence Day — that have riled far-right extremists in recent years and repeatedly duped partisan media outlets...
These false claims circulated widely on social media and on Internet message boards. They were often amplified by right-wing commentators and covered as real news by media outlets such as Breitbart News and the Gateway Pundit... They have led to highly combustible situations — attracting heavily armed militia members and far-right activists eager to protect values they think are under siege — as well as large mobilizations of police... His July 4 hoax, a purported burning of the American flag, was billed as an antifa event. Hundreds of counterprotesters, including skinheads, flocked to Gettysburg National Military Park to confront the nonexistent flag burners.
A Post examination of Rahuba's activities provides a rare inside look at the work of a homegrown troll who uses social media to stoke partisan division. It shows that in an era of heightened sensitivity about disinformation campaigns carried out by foreign nations, bad-faith actors with far fewer resources can also manipulate public discourse and affect events in the real world.... Post reporters located Rahuba last week at a friend's apartment in Harmony Township, Pa., where he acknowledged in an interview that he was behind 13 aliases and social media accounts that promoted hoaxes as far back as 2013.... A self-described democratic socialist and supporter of former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, Rahuba said he antagonizes far-right extremists mostly for his own amusement...
"The message here was that any idiot on the Internet can get a bunch of people to show up at a Union cemetery with a bunch of Confederate flags and Nazi tattoos on their necks that just make them look foolish," he said.
The Post also reports that to deal with his July 4th hoax, "A local middle school was transformed into a makeshift command center to help coordinate the 16 federal and local law enforcement agencies monitoring the event. The state provided 100 Pennsylvania State troopers to assist, including mounted officers and a helicopter, according to Gettysburg city manager Charles Gable....
"That weekend, Rahuba said, he went camping with his girlfriend."
The real hoax here... (Score:4, Funny)
...is that he has a girlfriend.
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...is that he has a girlfriend.
Ok, ok, so it's not "news _of_ nerds" but still . . .
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troll who uses social media to stoke partisan divi (Score:5, Funny)
Re: troll who uses social media to stoke partisan (Score:2)
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It's not ignorant to oppose fascism
It is ignorant to oppose fascism when there is no fascism.
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It is ignorant to riot, and burn the very shops that allow people to put food on their plates. It's ignorant to make the elitist claim that any other opinion is "anti-intellectual", you're not smart, you just live in an information bubble of buddies. Maybe if you knew anything about actual Nazism, you'd understand how far off you really are, and how insulting it is to the Holocaust for you idiots to make a claim on the word. Go read a book you fucking moron.
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antifa if their definition of fascism wasn't "anything I don't like
Please elaborate.
An investigation by the Washington Post? (Score:2)
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If you read the article, you would know that people who knew him approached WAPO after they wrote an article surmising that a single person was behind multiple posts
Either that or staged (Score:2)
If I were a journalist and had a buddy on food stamps who could do this sort of thing, I'd stage the stunt for the internet viewership points. Thanks to Google Page Rank and social media, it's a clickbait world... worse even than "fake news"
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Get with the times, that googling something is already investigative journalism these days.
The alternative is cribbing from a twitter feed.
The real message... (Score:2)
Any idiot can tell a bunch of people what they want to hear. A lot of people wanted to say it and do it but didn't want to be the first. Once someone did, all those that wanted to hear it made it bigger and gave it life of its own.
Re:The real message... (Score:5, Insightful)
It wasn't actually that many people. You would think there are millions of alt-righters when in reality their numbers are grossly inflated. A few well-placed bullets would probably end most of the alt-right "movement". Antifa's numbers are much greater, and they do a better job of concealing their affiliations.
The heyday of groups like the KKK are long over, and the Neo Nazi freaks who are trying to replace them are few and far between. They are still a possible public shooter threat (as are members of other groups and lone wolves), but they don't swing elections.
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Heh well. The only thing worse than a Nazi is a Communist. Or is it the other way around? Hard to say. You really think Antifa wants to knock out one of their most useful foils? Also, Antifa's ranks are bloated with people that were recruited on college campuses. Many of them haven't yet got a criminal record, and might like to keep in that way - which is why they go to so much trouble hiding themselves at rallies/counterprotests where they show up to raise hell. Alt-righters collectively don't seem to
slashdotters are shocked .... (Score:2)
Collecting food stamps? (Score:3)
Do they come in "limited series", like other stamps? Are ones from the 1960's worth more than face value?
Got to hand it to him though... (Score:2)
The real message here: (Score:5, Insightful)
As I Democrat, I have this to say: (Score:2)
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how many 10s of thousands of dollars for overtime and a helicopter. Seems like a costly joke that taxpayers had to pay for
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And which side of this event were they there to deal with?
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The press?
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You think this couldn't happen just as easily to any group with a passionate issue? How about, we post that we're auctioning off illegal immigrant children? Or, we're going to have a cross burning? It's just as moronic.
Harvesting Con's tears! (Score:4, Insightful)
Lotta butt hurt out there about how gullible conservatives got played by feeding their insecurities. Grow up and get a sense of humor already.
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This kid was no better than an idiot who pulls a fire alarm because he likes to see people run around thinking there's a fire. Yeah, people are gullible for thinkiing there's a fire when someone falsely yells FIRE. This mental midget also wasted a lot of government money when law enforcement was mobilized to deal with this non-existent threat. That sort of thing is a crime at least in the US. Do you think that's funny or clever?
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With the difference that the fire alarm is actually supposed to warn you about a real threat. If anything, this was like someone yelling the boogeyman is on the loose in a nursery.
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It works because they are primed to believe these lies. It's alternative facts and conspiracy theories all the way down.
Send him a bill (Score:2)
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The conviction wasn't for burning a rainbow flag. He was jailed for stealing someone else's property and burning it. There were other aspects to his crimes. Had he purchased his own rainbow flag and burned it, it would have been completely his right to do so.
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Re:Send him a bill (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm amazed, but not really surprised that a bunch of people expect a massive, unorganized grass roots movement to be in perfect control of everyone who turns up, but did not expect the same of a large, centrally managed, taxpayer funded organisation with the legal right to use lethal force and immunity from their crimes.
Meanwhile anonymous federal agents in fatigues are violently assaulting peaceful protesters and kidnapping them into unmarked vans. People are recording scenes in America which would not look out of place in some third world despotic regime and you're spewing this shot on slashdot? Get your priorities straight man!
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Ok with it? Shit, I fucking demand it.
Equality under the law matters.
Not a win (Score:2)
"Socialist troll on food stamps teaches hundreds of conservatives that they are very much not alone and their side can indeed organize, in numbers, with weapons, if they want to." This isn't the le epic dunk EditorDavid thinks it is.
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Very few of those people follow the American conservative model. Guys like this send death threats to people like Ben Shapiro. They would lynch Walter Williams if they could (and Thomas Sowell, and Larry Elder, and others).
That being said, it's a shame that law enforcement hasn't found a reason to permanently imprison or kill these guys. There aren't that many of them, and wiping them out would remove a lot of "alt right" noise from the Internet. Can't they uh . . . you know, kneel on their necks or som
Food stamps? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is it significant that he's on food stamps? What pertinent information does that add to the story? Lots of people are on food stamps, so what? Irrelevant dog whistling.
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What pertinent information does ...
The same as the factoid that he joined "the Socialist Party": He's un-American and deserves to be named and shamed.
They haven't criticized him but it's clear the author isn't offering any niceties. By talking about the rabble-rouser, the antagonist's (AKA patriot's) demand to have more rights than the imagined flag-burning dissidents, is ignored.
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It shows that he's unhappy with the existing system, but doesn't mind sucking from it's tit.
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It shows that he's unhappy with the existing system, but doesn't mind sucking from it's tit.
Or maybe, crazy thought here, he does mind, but finds he has no choice? Whether you like the current system or not, we're all compelled to live within it.
Two suggestions, and two lessons learned (Score:4, Interesting)
This is like a GI Joe episode I saw when I was a kid. The free world's greatest warriors got all bothered because they got some cryptic messages from someone saying "The Viper is coming." They got all prepared for the worst and some harmless old man showed up and said, "I am dee viper, I come to vipe dee vindows." The lessons I learned: do your due diligence because knowing is half the battle, and don't hire randos with foreign accents when you're drunk and won't remember WTF you did later.
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You make it sound so easy. When someone is putting out a disinformation campaign, a "little investigating" isn't going to give you all the answers. And most certainly in a short time needed to get them before the phony event. And maybe they did do some, and knew that at least one side planned to be there...time to get boots on the ground organized...even if the other side doesn't show up, because you don't know what either side is gonna do.
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That wasn't GI Joe, it was Animaniacs.
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What where they actually there for anyway? Burning your own flag isn't illegal.
Obligatory (Score:2, Troll)
<Nelson>Ha ha!</Nelson>
It's so easy to push the buttons of people who already show disordered and/or magical thinking (Trump supporters). You can tell them any crazy ass story and they instantly go to DEFCON 1, lol.
For example, Comet Pizza or the Q-inspired kook in the Hoover Dam standoff or Glenn Beck's "FEMA camps" or "The Caravan is Comin' Fer Ya!" or "Death Panels Will Kill Grandma" or "Biden and Sanders want to abolish the suburbs".... the list just goes on and on.
So yeah: anything. You can
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Yeah, because there are no hot button issues on the other side, right? If you think any group with a passionate issue can't be trolled, you're just fooling yourself.
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I guess it would be useful to know an example of when a left-wing person was triggered by an obviously ludicrous conspiracy theory, grabbed his gun and went on scene?
It was a brilliant hoax. (Score:3)
Nicely done.
Wether the guy was a socialist out not make no difference.
And I'm not sure you know what socialist actually means. Which comes as no surprise of you're living in the US, which I assume you do. ... Just sayin'.
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Americans have been conditioned to distance themselves from anything socialist and anything union-like as if there is an electric fence around it. It's weird how Sanders calls himself a socialist while he is more a fifties era centrist.
Doing the Russian's work (Score:2)
If he thinks his antics are in any way useful, he's wrong. He is essentially stoking the polarisation the Russians want to see. An angry, divided nation that is blinded by fake news is exactly what they want.
Public shaming of the poor and the misfortune (Score:2)
I doubt the Washington Post will get a Pulitzer price for this one. It's no more than an act of public shaming by the press for publicity.
Every homeless person has got a sad story to tell and there are two ways of telling it. It can either inspire love or hate.
Just be sure which side you want to find yourself on when you read it.
Re:Feels on brand (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree the guy is an imbecile
And yet, he is smart enough to fool hundreds of conservatards into making fools of themselves in public
Winning!
Re:Feels on brand (Score:5, Insightful)
>>You don't have to be smart if you're just outright lying to someone in order to fool them.
Perfect description of the trump presidency, thank you
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Most politicians these days. Trump is just the most brazen.
I disagree...there are good, decent politicians out there, it's just that they're far and few between.
Not everyone is on the take or in the game; some people genuinely believe in what they they're doing.
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some people genuinely believe in what they they're doing.
Politicians who passionately believe they have all the solutions are the greatest danger.
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Re:Feels on brand (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Feels on brand (Score:4, Informative)
Apparently his career with the family business went under when he divorced the boss's daughter
Re:The real story. (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody on the left believed it. Nobody on the left is burning flags. The statues that have been destroyed are of confederate soldiers; traitors. The majority of the statues weren't put up until the 40s and 50s when the racists were fighting to keep white and black people segregated and to keep Jim Crow laws from being repealed.
Funny how the confederacy, which fought to keep slavery in place, suddenly became valued history right when black people were being given the same rights as white people.
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But they do fall for "socialism works". Not kidding.
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I take it you didn't know that Colonel Hans Christian Heg was an abolitionist. That was just one of the non-confederate statues that was toppled. Christopher Columbus wasn't a confederate either. Maybe you should double check stuff before you pop off.
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I take it you didn't know that Colonel Hans Christian Heg was an abolitionist. That was just one of the non-confederate statues that was toppled. Christopher Columbus wasn't a confederate either. Maybe you should double check stuff before you pop off.
Or the Virgin Mary or Jesus, but the twats defaced and beheaded those. It's turned into some kind of reflexive action that whenever they see a monument of anything they urinate on it, spray paint it, topple it, or otherwise deface it. Some idiots last week wanted to tear down the Alamo in San Antonio for some reason that eludes me.
Re:The real story. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Ahh... protected group.. so what you are saying is some flags are more equal than others I guess?
Re: The real story. (Score:2)
These are NOT remotely the same thing. The US flag represents & enshrines the _very_ freedom of burning it! The burning of the flag is a protest of the corruption that is eroding that freedom. So to fight the burning is to champion that erosion or atleast ignore it.
Even if you were to reduce the complex topic to an act of hatred for the US; you should stay within the spirit of this nation and peacefully protest it, not try to ban or intimidate or subjugate it.
Additionally, the burning of the US flag i
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At the end the Civil War it was decided by the Union that the country should be united and people not considered traitors. Why are you disrespecing those people in the Union army?
And this is precisely why the United States still struggles with racism to this day. The Union should have hanged all of the Confederate generals and occupied the traitor states for a generation. Instead, we have symbols of hate and treachery littered across the country.
"Its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government
Re: The real story. (Score:2)
At the end the Civil War it was decided by the Union that the country should be united and people not considered traitors. Why are you disrespecing those people in the Union army?
I think you misunderstood what was done there. This was a forgiveness of a crime; not a blessing of it. It was and STILL is not ok to stand up against the US (not the govt but in the original sense, the people).
The US forgave the south because they were family and wanted to amend the relationship as quickly as possible. This doesn't start till forgiveness.
The statues and confederate flag came afterward. But rest assured, they represent the greatest enemy in the history of the US; far greater than any terror
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Rose City Antifa is one of the more notorious cells and it has everything you say Antifa doesn't have. Either you're not paying attention or you're trying to pull a fast one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://rosecityantifa.org/ [rosecityantifa.org]
https://www.washingtontimes.co... [washingtontimes.com]
https://thepostmillennial.com/... [thepostmillennial.com]
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Unless Antifa leadership wants to step forward and deny it
Antifa is not "tea party". It's not headed by a bunch of billionaires, it's simply a distributed movement that aims to frustrate right-wingers. There is no leadership or a chain of command.
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Keep telling yourself that...
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Re: Pffft That's nothing, the real hoax (Score:2)
Wonder if you can make masks out of tinfoil.
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It might be helpful if you would tell people what UN Agenda 21, 30, and 50 are? Preferably not from a known conspiracy site?
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a "pandemic" that only kills sick people.
I'm just gonna let the stupidity in that comment sit there without any statement of my own.
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You keep telling yourself that. And please spread the message until everyone in the US is convinced.
In the meantime, the rest of the world leaves the pandemic behind that still has you tightly in its clutches even after 4 months, reopens their economy and the US will finally become as irrelevant as they should have become ages ago.
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Can you name a contemporary political movement that is not based on its followers being gullible and swayed by rumors?
Working throughout Europe for 70+ years (Score:5, Insightful)
Also funny how it's only the far right who fall for this sort of thing.
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Re:Working throughout Europe for 70+ years (Score:5, Interesting)
I’m an American living in Europe. I recognize that there are huge differences depending on the country, so maybe you’re Italian or Greek or such - but here in Denmark, and also where I previously lived in Switzerland, I find the social programs to be hugely superior to the US. The economy is also doing quite well in both places (despite radically different approaches to taxation, I might add).
I don’t find people living on the streets in either country except by choice, e.g. people who refuse the social help they are offered. Compare that to even my native Midwest (I’m from the Milwaukee / Chicago area) and, well, there’s no comparison.
Re:Working throughout Europe for 70+ years (Score:4, Informative)
Denmark and Switzerland are among the richest and most progressive countries in Europe (only Norway and Luxemburg are doing better than either). They are not typical of conditions in the EU. They are also small countries with very different demographics from either the US or the rest of the EU.
Re:Working throughout Europe for 70+ years (Score:4)
Denmark and Switzerland are among the richest and most progressive countries in Europe (only Norway and Luxemburg are doing better than either). They are not typical of conditions in the EU. They are also small countries with very different demographics from either the US or the rest of the EU.
This guy is full of s**t. Germany, France, the UK aren't pits of poverty and despair either and while Spain/Italy have their problems they aren't exactly Europe's Mississippi and Alabama either (that's Poland/Hungary) while Greece is kind of Europe's Florida but with less business acumen.
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I'm sure you never been to the inner cities of Germany, France, Belgium and the UK. Europe has much more defined poverty than the US does. How many beggars do you see in your average US city? Only a problem in really large cities, in EU, you have beggars in every small and large city.
You can work in the EU and remain dirt poor, which in the US is almost impossible. If you make $40k, you can live but not afford anything including a car, transportation and healthcare in the EU. I've been there, done that.
Firstly weren't talking about all of Europe, we were talking about Germany, France, UK, Spain, Italy and the Scandinavians. Secondly, I wasn't aware of the fact that the US has no homeless people anymore so congratulations on that. Furthermore, several US based researchers have found in the past that a stunning number of US workers live paycheck to paycheck and can't afford a $500 emergency. Pollster Nielsen for example found that one in four families making $150,000 a year or more are living paycheck-to-pa
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Well, to be fair, neither are Greece or Romania. There is a very noticeable north-south difference within the EU when it comes to prosperity and progressiveness.
Comparing pretty much any country in the EU with the US is difficult because of the vastly different history and demographics.
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and our track record in being able to make money in tech is pretty terrible.
Maybe you should actually look into Europe. The track record is fine unless "making money" you mean VCs pouring money into unicorns, CEOs having completely wildly different pay than common people, and companies getting market valuations that are sky high despite never making profit. Europe is doing fine in tech, arguably the outcomes are better for people than what goes on with the abusive garbage that comes out of silicon valley.
Re:Working throughout Europe for 70+ years (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to get antifa to protest a bible studies group meeting or remembrance ceremony for fallen soldiers if you just said "they're nazis! get em!".
The Antifa would do their research first. We know this because they haven't been involved in a bunch of shit where there was no purpose to them being there, despite constant trolling by those who oppose them.
Re: Like they always like to say (Score:2)
You donâ(TM)t often hear of armed socialists showing up for a hoax protest, tho...
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He sure is more entertaining than the orange troll, he's getting kinda boring and repetitive.
And that bloke sure is cheaper too.