DiddyGate Memes, Candace Moves the Overton Window
The People's News for the People's Coin 3/27-4/2
Hey everyone,
This news digest covers the following stories from the past week:
1. DiddyGate takes over the memesphere
2. Candace Owens moves the Overton Window
Don’t miss videos, memes, and news bites at the end!
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DiddyGate
DiddyGate has become the biggest story on social media, and is showing no signs of slowing down.
At some point in March, public opinion reached a tipping point and it became open season on Diddy.
What used to be a forbidden topic has suddenly become a subject of open discussion everywhere.
Leading the charge has been Diddy’s nemesis 50 Cent.
50 has been nursing a decades-long vendetta against Diddy that included several public proclamations of his degeneracy.
After biding his time for years, 50 is making his move to topple Diddy’s empire.
He’s doing so by deploying a combination of memes, videos, and shitposts on social media to thoroughly roast Diddy in the court of public opinion.
He’s also using his wealth to advance the public investigation. In an intriguing development, 50 offered “top dollar” for anyone willing to sell him Diddy’s blackmail tapes.
The story’s internet-to-mainstream crossover hit a new milestone this week when Joe Rogan discussed the scandal with comedians Joey Diaz and Donnell Rawlings.
Rogan functions as sort of the CNN of the Internet: his talking about a subject cements it firmly in the public consciousness as newsworthy and relevant.
As the saga has grown, Diddy memes have become an everyday feature on 𝕏.
For the most part, Elon has avoided engaging the subject in detail.
However, his interactions with a handful of Diddy memes show he is very much aware of what’s happening.
DiddyGate is a juicy story in its own right, but also holds larger significance for a couple of reasons.
For several years running, mainstream media has portrayed sexual blackmail rings within the entertainment industry are a “right-wing conspiracy.”
Perpetrators like Weinstein and Epstein were depicted as solo bad actors rather than manifestations of broader institutional rot.
However, the Diddy scandal is yet more evidence that sexual blackmail is endemic to Hollywood, part-and-parcel of its entire business model.
At this point, the media has so thoroughly stigmatized conservatives for pointing out the obvious that it will be difficult to backtrack and give the appearance of performing any sort of empirical or objective investigation.
In place of legacy media, citizen journalists and influencers have been pushing the story forward.
One possible direction the citizen investigation could turn next is Jay-Z, who is widely speculated to be on-deck for Diddy-like exposure.
Jay-Z has been closely connected to Diddy for a while. In a series of posts last week, 50 Cent called out Jay-Z and suggested he had gone into hiding
On the Internet, Jay-Z has long endured guilt-by-association for his relationship with ultra-sketchy performance artist Marina Abramovic.
Abramovic, who currently serves as an ambassador to rebuild Ukraine’s education system, has been linked to “spirit cooking” and satanism, usually performed under the cover of performance art.
The evidence connecting Jay-Z and Abromovic is admittedly light: the main thing that gets tossed around is a short video clip of them performing some sort of music ceremony together.
Still, this week, video clips of people talking about Jay-Z’s alleged misdeeds racked up millions of views on 𝕏.
Another major offshoot of the Diddy story has been his relationship to the Royal Family.
Connections to royals have a strange pattern of turning up any time Hollywood pedophilia is uncovered. Last week, several outlets reported about Prince Harry’s relationship to Diddy.
This week, the online spotlight focused on Sir Lucian Grainge, one of the accomplices named in Rodney Jones’s lawsuit against Diddy.
Grainge is the CEO of Universal Music Group. Billboard Magazine named him “the most powerful person in the music business” for the 2010s decade.
Rodney Jones’s lawsuit accuses Grainge of covertly delivering “vast sums of cash” to Diddy to fund sex-trafficking ventures.
Grainge has received numerous honors from the British crown, including being knighted by Prince William in 2016.
Finally, conservative mainstream media has broached the Diddy story by focusing on his extensive connections to the Democratic Party, which included campaigning for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Joe Biden
The only network covering the scandal with any degree of thoroughness is Fox News, which is largely recycling claims unearthed on social media and podcasts.
For now, the best place to get unfiltered coverage of the Diddy scandal is 𝕏, which offers a combination primary source testimony, historical footage, the best of mainstream media reporting, and of course memes.
Here are a handful of other Diddy-related news items that trended this week.
LeBron James: "Ain’t no party like a Diddy party”
Jesse Watters segment on Diddy “freak offs”
Wired Magazine: a private data leak shows the paths taken by several visitors to Jeffrey Epstein’s private island
Suge Knight: Diddy and Clive Davis were lovers
Suge Knight to Diddy: “I’ll tell you what, Puffy, your life is in danger ’cause you know the secrets, who’s involved in that little secret room you guys are participating in. They gonna get you if they can.”
Diddy’s drug mule Brandon Paul arrested
Woman: Diddy shot me in the face
Celebrities talking about their experience at Diddy parties
What do you think: have we reached peak Diddy, or is the story just getting started?
Candace Expands the Overton Window
Candace Owens is gone from the Daily Wire, but the aftershock from her firing is still reverberating across the online media landscape.
Last Thursday, a report claimed four Daily Wire employees said that Owens was fired for using the allegedly anti-Semitic phrase “Christ is King.” According to the report, the decision to fire her was explained to the rest of Daily Wire staff at an impromptu town hall meeting.
The same day as the report, Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro spoke with Dave Rubin about the firing.
Shapiro argued that Candace’s firing did not constitute censorship, but stemmed from a difference of opinion about the Daily Wire’s Overton Window of acceptable speech. He characterized the difference as “a non-meeting of the minds” between DW and Owens, but did not elaborate on exactly what the disagreement was.
On Friday, Candace posted an editorial from Israel National News in which writer Elliot Resnick argued the people accusing her of anti-Semitism had adopted an “evil eye” perspective “that interprets everything in the worst possible light”:
Racism, sexism, transphobia… Liberals never allow for the possibility that an innocent explanation may account for someone’s words or opinion. They always assume nefarious intent.
Right-wing Jews have long decried this “evil eye” perspective – and rightfully so. And yet, in the last few years, many of these Jews – the very same one who can’t stand when liberals call Donald Trump, and every other conservative, racist – have been cavalierly calling people they dislike anti-Semites.
They would hate it if someone called them a racist based on something they said about blacks 10 years ago (and how many of us haven’t uttered a statement that, out of context, could be considered racist?). They would hate it even more if that person then called on their boss to fire them. But they have no problem acting in the very same manner when the offense is anti-Semitism rather than racism.
Ironically, Resnick’s argument echoes Shapiro’s own past comments about a “conspiratorial victimhood cult” that “now infuses pretty much every side of the political aisle”—comments which now read like a self-confession.
The same day, an old post of Shapiro’s circulated in which he (in retrospect ironically) appeared in front of a DW billboard declaring Candace “Uncancelable.”
Saturday, Owens called out Shapiro for breaking an agreement not to speak about her separation with DW in public.
In another post, she floated the idea of going on Joe Rogan to give her side of the story.
Recently, Rogan suggested Israel’s war was as an act of “genocide”, his strongest characterization of the conflict to date.
As circumstance would have it ,Candace’s suggestion that Israel may be committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza kicked off the feud between her and Shapiro way back in November.
As the DW-Candace breakup played out, a larger and related battle over the meaning of antisemitism began.
On Wednesday, Texas governor Greg Abbott issued a state-wide Executive Order ordering all colleges “to establish appropriate punishments for antisemitic rhetoric on college and university campuses, ensure that policies that address the sharp rise of antisemitic acts are enforced, and include the definition of antisemitism in free speech policies.”
Abbott’s order was criticized by Daily Wire columnist Matt Walsh as un-American. Similarly, Glenn Greenwald held up the order as an example of conservative hypocrisy.
The case against Abbot’s proclamation is fairly straightforward: the order is exactly the kind of Orwellian tightening of restrictions on speech the right has been complaining about for years.
For example, if a slogan like “from the river to the sea” is deemed to be anti-semitic—as has been suggested in Congress—it’s worth asking what is an acceptable phrase for college students to chant to express opposition to Israel’s war? Is all non-violent opposition to the war (/genocide) now considered anti-semitic hate speech?
As pro-Israel conservatives try to clamp down on speech, America First conservatives are busting the doors of what can be said about Israel.
Over the weekend, the comic duo the Hodge Twins released a ridiculously spicy segment about cancel culture, Zionism.
The segment is way out on the bleeding edge of the Overton Window, and it’s a testament to 𝕏’s commitment to free speech that it was not taken down.
The new debate around antisemitism on the right is wild.
On one end of the spectrum, white politicians who’d been crusading against leftist censorship as recently as a few months ago are using executive power to ratchet up draconian speech codes around anti-semitism.
At the other end of the spectrum, a handful of black conservatives are leading the charge to make it acceptable to criticize Zionism, Israel, and Jewish supremacy—in other words, to demolish the last bastion of cancel culture.
The entire episode is a good example of how the public conversation evolves through a back-and-forth process.
In November, in a mega-viral post, Candace Owens suggested Israel was committing genocide. There was a strong negative response from Zionists across the political spectrum that ultimately resulted in her being fired.
However, in the bigger picture, her cancellation failed.
The act of censorship has drawn significantly more attention to the debate about Zionist influence in American media and politics than ever before.
People are now asking what immense power resides in Israel’s lobby that it is capable of policing acceptable speech among America’s most popular media influencers.
Ultimately, the episode underscores the importance of having at least one free speech platform.
This is precisely the conversation the ADL didn’t want people having when it organized an advertising boycott of Twitter last year. Now, though, the cat is out of the bag.
What do you think: Has cancel culture infiltrated conservative politics, or are we witnessing censorship’s last gasp?
Top Videos
1. Grounding is real
2. Regenderative agriculture can save the world
3. Jordan Peterson debates vaccines with Destiny and discusses the odds of having two transgender children in the same family. Jonathan Haidt argues transgenderism is social contagion. Bill Maher’s viral Covid rant
4. Elon highlighted a clip claiming the NY Times has become a far-left activist paper
5 .Tulsi Gabbard: "I am sounding the alarm on how the Democrat elites specifically are doing all they can to undermine our fundamental freedoms which is really what this election is all about...If they are allowed to stay in power they will run around this country saying, 'The voters gave us a mandate to continue the work that we are doing' which will escalate this spiral towards a more oppressed, less free, less safe, less secure society."
6. Ye on the political agenda for black entertainers
7. Viral video on what happened to young men
8. You don’t believe in any conspiracy theories?
9. Politician from Guyana talks about renewable energy agenda
Dogey Treats: News Bites
Elon’s businesses
𝕏 is in discussions to hire former CBS journalist Catherine Herridge.
Elon said Grok version 2 is in training
US Politics
Publicly available data showed skyrocketing numbers of voters registering without photo ID in three swing states: Arizona, Texas, and Pennsylvania. Elon said the data is “extremely concerning.” Combined, the three states showed over two million new voters without IDs.
Clips of RFK Jr’s VP pick Nicole Shannahan circulated of her talking about media and childhood chronic disease. RFK Jr is still being denied secret service protection from Biden administation. He posted a petition calling on the Biden Administration to drop charges against whistleblower Edward Snowden. Comments from his interview with CNN about Trump and Biden went viral on Tuesday.
Jon Stewart, who expressed support for New York’s record fine against Donald Trump for inflating the value of his real estate, overvalued his NY home by more than 800%.
The New York State government started its free debit card program for illegal immigrants. Several viral videos showed violent crime against women failing to be enforced in New York.
Edward Snowden posted article about the FBI investigating people for their social media posts supporting Palestine.
Elon and David Sacks had a long exchange about the US’s disastrous support for Ukraine’s Summer counteroffensive
Elon said of Georgia’s administration of the 2020 Presidential election, “The most charitable interpretation is that they ran an incompetent election and made significant errors in vote counting.”
Glenn Greenwald offered a rebuttal of a viral 60 Minutes segment on Havana Syndrome.
Easter/Transgender Visibility day
A massive controversy erupted over the weekend based on the news that the White House declared Easter Sunday to be Transgender Visibility Day. Critics of the decision pointed out the White House also banned religious designs from Easter egg art contest Defenders of the decision argued that March 31st has been a Transgender holiday for several years. Trump called on the Biden Administration to apologize to Christians, for many of whom transgenderism is seen as a direct repudiation of divine creation and a celebration of the Satanic transgender deity Baphomet. Biden seemed to play into the controversy by posting about Transgender Visibility Day three times alongside a lukewarm post about Easter. Ian Carroll argued the decision was designed to provoke a reaction from conservatives. Elon said the decision seemed “uneccesarily divisive” and asked why no religious symbols were allowed at the White House.
Global Politics
Russia said the terrorists who committed the attack in Moscow received a significant amount of cash and cryptocurrency from Ukraine.
SBF was sentenced to 25 years in jail. Elon weighed in on his parents’ attempt to exonerate him and the dropping of campaign finance charges.
Israel bombed an Iranian embassy in Syria. It also killed seven aid workers in Gaza—including one American—in an airstrike.
Misc
Ice Cube confirmed that Big3 basketball planned to offer Caitlin Clark $5M to play in the league.
Blackrock CEO Larry Fink said the Bitcoin ETF= “is the fastest growing ETF in the history of ETFs.”
Memes of the Week
Elon’s Memes
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