It's long been a truism in hard right-wing circles that the harder you hit the better. This has produced a culture in which they believe they can say anything they want with impunity. What are you gonna do? Sue 'em?
Actually yes. Over the past year or so a whole bunch of right wing actors have been successfully sued for making shit up:
- Rudy Giuliani lost $148 million in a defamation case over his claims that a pair of Georgia poll workers had rigged the 2020 election in the state.
- Donald Trump lost two defamation suits worth $88 million for lying about his sexual assault of E. Jean Carroll.
- Fox News paid a $787 million settlement for claiming on air that Dominion voting machines had been rigged to steal the 2020 election.
- National Review was hit with a $1 million award for saying that climate scientist Michael Mann had engaged in fraudulent research.
- Pillow king Mike Lindell was ordered to pay $5 million to a cyber forensics expert who entered the "Prove Mike Wrong Challenge." The challenge was to show that Lindell was wrong about his frequent claims of election fraud, and indeed, it turned out he was wrong.
- Alex Jones was ordered to pay $1.5 billion after spreading conspiracy theories that the Sandy Hook shootings were a hoax.
- Project Veritas settled a lawsuit on undisclosed terms for accusing a Pennsylvania postmaster of voter fraud.
- Kari Lake admitted she defamed Maricopa County election official Stephen Richer when she said he stuffed thousands of fake ballots into counting machines. Damages have yet to be determined.
Does this mean that the era of just spewing out any old thing you want is over? Maybe—though I'm not sure I've noticed any decline yet. But at least conservative nutcases have been put on notice.
UPDATE: Project Veritas and Kari Lake have been added to this list.
This only works for as long as people agree to follow what the courts say. I don't think that's as safe as you do.
Yup. I don't see any of this making a whit of difference in any of their lives. Wake me up when one of them is incarcerated for not paying.
Yet Trump Republicans continue to demand changes to the law that would make it easier to sue for defamation. Sometimes I think they're incapable of rational thought.
Nah remember Florida? Somebody i
R Introduced a bill to make it easier to sue for it and right wing media freaked out because they know they are lying assholes and the left would take them to the cleaners in court.
The real era of right wing terrorism starts in about 10 months.
That is optimism.
After the elections they have no reason to avoid terrorism, and there will be large scale terrorism from election day (unless Trump is defeated by a very large margin).
Until the elections it is more open. It loses them votes, but Trump needs it to keep out of jail, and some of them don't think about elections.
How many of those fines have actually been paid so far?
Came here to ask the same. My guess is zero. My guess is it will still be zero five years from now, regardless of who wins in November. Our courts exist primarily to ensure that rich people are never held to account. (Yelling at clouds, I know.)
I think the Fox one paid. It was a settlement.
Local (VERY expensive!) pilot folk to board and steer giant ships safely through tricky spots are not enough. For many kinds of reasons, software fails, steering mechanisms fail, engines lose power, people get drunk, etc. Maybe we need tug boats to be on station at bridges at other critical structures, waiting to push and steer ships past the danger zones?
i had assumed we HAD tug boats on station for that.
Multiple Tugs that escort each ship through such important straights. Powerful. Drone? Electric? Improve tug-to-ship connection systems. Also, better bridge support defense barriers. Maybe active mechanisms. Drone fenders?. Put some more brain into it.
Or something.
The video clearly shows the container ship repeatedly losing power ... all its lights go out ... as it approaches the bridge, at what looks to be a pretty high speed. (Unless the video is speeded up.)
One commenter over at TPM noted that often, ships maneuvering through crowded areas would have crews ready to quickly drop anchor, should something like that occur. But can an overloaded container ship be stopped by anchors?
I think.the film was a time lapse, so yes it was speeded up. The ship was going 8 knots, a typical speed when sailing in a channel. On the open ocean they cruise at about 20 knots. Dropping the anchors won’t immediately stop a ship going this speed, the anchors just skip across the bottom. Even tugs are limited in what they can do with a 250,000 ton quarter mile long ship going 8 knots. Maintenance is an issue, the ships are registered in obscure countries, operated by a different company with a crew from yet another company.
For this particular one, Singapore isn't exactly an "obscure country" and I wasn't able to easily find anything that would suggest that it's a lax registration environment.
I don't think where a ship is registered correlates with how they are maintained.
I guess that's my point. Something is wrong when a 1000 foot long 100,000 ton ship suddenly looses power and plows into a bridge.
The Baltimore Bridge'
Back in the day we had taken the sailboat to a race at Owl Harbor. Sadly Delta winds were blowing too strong so we just had lunch and headed home. We had to cross the lift bridge at Rio Vista. When we got to the bridge the lift was up and a tug pulling a barge was coming down river. We were on the low level part of the bridge about 10 cars away from the lift structure. The wind was blowing strongly across the river. I had an OH! SH*T!!! moment thinking what if the barge hits the bridge. The tug was hauling A$$!!! My plan was to run back to land if that happened. Fate was with us as the tug and barge made it.
It might take a completed downward spiral to destitution before these people stop, however.
I think the lesson for these cases is don't attack a specific person. Giuliani's trouble is because he named two individuals who could sue. Fox's trouble was they named a specific company that could sue. If you keep your allegations vague, there appears to be no downside.
Yes, the dear leader has shown them the way "People are saying that such and such is a so and so".....or "It's my opinion that....". These are nearly impossible statement to prosecute for defamation.
Totally agree. "Wokeness" can't sue Fox, though it would if it could. Caused Boeing's problems etc
Nah, Boeing's problem was that the McDonnell-Douglas yahoos that took them over were the very opposite of "woke" - they were skinflint bean counters totally focused on the sacred stock price and cutting expenses to the bone - and beyond.
Alex Jones still hasn't paid up and is still on the air...
Pillow scammer guy still seems to be running around.
The era of random right-wing authoritarianism will be over in November when Democrats win all three branches of government with large majorities and MAGA Republicans recognize it's long past time to grow up.
Terrorism is not authoritarianism. Terrorism is authoritarianism's child.
Subprime Court Justices are not elected. That said they read the law and count votes. Ref: They elected the Weed.
Assertive, unequivocal headline:
Equivocating, contradicting text:
…
(Something's happening, and you don't know what it is. Do you, Mr Jones?)
It's meant to inspire discussion, dissention, commentary, crosstalk. I know you're not new here.
Right. It is clickbait.
On the other hand Elon Musk has repeatedly defamed people and been sued over it and then found not liable. His latest target seems to be birth control, so we'll see how much misinformation he can spread without being held liable by the manufacturers.
Sorry Kevin but your reasoning is extremely naive here. The My Pillow Guy case had nothing to do with defamation. It was a case were Lindell set up a contest and an award with specific terms of reference and then he tried to weasel out of it so it shouldn't even be on the list.
The remaining cases only went to court because of how specific they were (as someone else mentioned), because they were repeated over and over by the defamator, and because of the high profile of the defamator/defamed there were enough high profile, competent, and deep pocketed lawyers willing to push through the all the legal hoops on behalf of the victims.
Most instances of right wingers just saying whatever the hell they want regardless of facts, or truth will never see the inside of a courtroom.
Other than perhaps the National Review, these are more Trump-world grifters than right wingers. Fox spews BS on a regular basis but only got busted when trying Trump's con.
Agreed with most people above. Kevin has no imagination on this, possibly because he still professes to have conservative friends who undoubtedly are more decent and mature than the amoral middle schoolers who make up the rest of the GOP. But it's not hard to see that
(1) most of the people in the examples Kevin gave haven't actually paid a dime yet,
(2) as long as they haven't actually paid up, the incentive still exists among rich, famous or powerful people to commit right-wing terrorism and hope that Trump pardons you and/or your lawyers can overwhelm the judicial system with filings, appeals and whatnot,
(3) as long as the US doesn't stop foreigners or other rich people from bailing you out, you can rely on a worldwide network of rich people and countries to sow chaos by funding your terrorism if you run out of money yourself, and
(4) you can just reframe your attacks as "some people are saying Nancy Pelosi is a pedophile" or whatever so that you avoid legal liability - it's notoriously hard to be charged with defamation if all you're doing is quoting someone else, even a made up person in your head - and I'm sure if you search hard enough you can find someone somewhere in the entire world who has said "Nancy Pelosi is a pedophile" (even if you have to pay them yourself to say it).
The terrorism will just keep getting worse until our country collapses or we find a way to make punishments for it stick.
KD, as a liberal, do you realllllly have no issue with these 'defamation' lawsuits? They seem to trample upon "free speech."
Yes, yes, the latter is not unlimited but.. this is getting out of hand.
Do you really have no issue with a man who denies a sexual assault? It is not proven that he's guilty in spite of what a civil jury decided.
That said, these defendants are indeed scum.
Why is this the hill you choose to die on? Arguing that Trump has only been found civilly liable for rape, not crininally liable?
A civil jury decided that it IS proven that Trump sexually assaulted Carroll. It's their decision to make, and neither you nor I has the authority to say they were wrong.
All of the people defamed here are either not public people and/or nowhere near the profile their defamer had and Included very specific allegations. Lies about public people and/or non specific allegations will continue unabated.
I read it differently than Kevin.
The authoritarians are consistently raising stakes, escalating. I see no evidence that fines are discouraging anything - maybe some folks with something to lose are more careful on the margin, but it isn't stopping leadership or rando crazies.
They're a cult, and their leader is demented coffin stuffing who is willing to burn the world down over his mental problems. To put it mildly, they don't respond normally to civil suits.
Pingback: Update on the end of right-wing terrorism – Kevin Drum