{"id":3695,"date":"2020-01-08T18:10:59","date_gmt":"2020-01-08T22:10:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=3695"},"modified":"2020-01-08T18:13:44","modified_gmt":"2020-01-08T22:13:44","slug":"even-the-msm-is-disseminating-the-pete-is-cia-meme-that-was-started-by-sotn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=3695","title":{"rendered":"Even the MSM is disseminating the \u201cPete Is CIA\u201d<\/i><\/b> meme that was started by SOTN"},"content":{"rendered":"

Far-Left Internet Thinks Mayor Pete Is a Secret Agent<\/em><\/strong><\/h1>\n

<\/p>\n

The \u201cPete Is CIA\u201d meme crystallizes a pervasive feeling about Buttigieg: that he, like the broken world we live in, was crafted by institutions that can no longer be trusted.<\/h3>\n

Scott Bixby
\nNational Reporter<\/p>\n

\"\"

Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast \/ Photos Getty<\/p><\/div>\n

The world is on fire. But for an increasingly vocal segment of extremely online politicos, there is a greater geopolitical concern hanging over the election: the fear that Pete Buttigieg is secretly an asset, officer, or agent of the Central Intelligence Agency.<\/p>\n

The conspiracy theory that Buttigieg is a CIA plant has been congealing in the internet\u2019s fever swamps for as long as profiles of the young candidate have fixated on a biography that, to the conspiracy-minded, seems almost suspiciously clean\u2014the perceived threats of neoliberal imperialists and the \u201cdeep state\u201d converging in the unlikely form of a dweebish Midwestern mayor.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s one of the many intelligence community operators working in government,\u201d Steve Poikonen, host of the YouTube vlog series\u00a0Slow News Day<\/em>, said confidently in\u00a0an April episode<\/a>\u00a0titled \u201cPete Buttigieg: CIA Democrat?\u201d In a 13-minute video delineating the conspiracy theory, Poikonen breaks down what he sees as Buttigieg\u2019s Harvard-to-Oxford educational pipeline, his service as a Navy Intelligence officer in Afghanistan after a stint at McKinsey & Co., his fellowship at the Truman National Security Project, and the more than 200 national security and intelligence figures who have endorsed his candidacy, including the former head of the National Clandestine Service and the agency\u2019s former deputy director.<\/p>\n

These, Poikonen told The Daily Beast, all amount to evidence that he\u2019s a perfect tool of the intelligence community.<\/p>\n

\u201cPut together, a picture forms of an elite-educated, multi-language-speaking employee of the CIA\u2019s consulting firm who currently serves as an intelligence officer in the naval reserves,\u201d Poikonen told The Daily Beast. \u201cIf you created a CIA asset in a lab, you\u2019d wind up with Pete Buttigieg.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pointing to Buttigieg\u2019s \u201cmesmerizing, hypnotic blue eyes\u201d as an obvious tell, Poikonen alleges that the candidate even confessed to having \u201cbotched\u201d an interview with the intelligence agency during a 2017 interview on campaign strategist David Axelrod\u2019s podcast, which, he says, is actually proof that he passed the interview. Such mental gymnastics are emblematic of the tinfoil-hat YouTube genre. (The Daily Beast reviewed\u00a0the podcast in question<\/a>\u00a0and found no such confession; upon listening to the podcast again, Poikonen told The Daily Beast that \u201ceither I heard wrong, or it was edited. Both are possible.\u201d)<\/p>\n

But the theory, once restricted to the parts of the internet convinced that pop singer Katy Perry is actually child murder victim JonBen\u00e9t Ramsey, has begun appearing in more mainstream channels. Left-wing political writers, podcasters and netizens are increasingly latching on to the meme that Buttigieg is a spy, an intelligence asset, or a Freemason to further the criticism that the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, is not what he seems.<\/p>\n

Last weekend, the popular campaign-themed podcast\u00a0Worst Year Ever<\/em>\u00a0dropped an entire episode<\/a>\u00a0about Buttigieg under the lawyer-friendly title, \u201cIs Pete Buttigieg a C.I.A. Agent?\u201d Over the course of the 73-minute episode, hosts Robert Evans, Katy Stoll, and Cody Johnston vacillated between rundowns of more mainstream left-wing critiques of Buttigieg\u2019s candidacy\u2014his unpopularity among black voters<\/a>,\u00a0his popularity among Silicon Valley tech tycoons<\/a>,\u00a0the whole wine cave episode<\/a>\u2014and semi-humorous suppositions that Buttigieg is a CIA asset that grew less tongue-in-cheek as the episode went on.<\/p>\n

\u201cConspiracy theory thinking is like a disease that is doing incalculable damage to the body politic, and like I hate jumping into stuff like that, but it\u2019s so fucking sketchy!\u201d Evans exclaims at one point. \u201cIt\u2019s so hard to not sound like\u2014to not\u00a0be<\/em>, in fact\u2014a conspiracy theorist when you talk about this guy, but there\u2019s so much of it that screams fucking spooks.\u201d<\/p>\n

In\u00a0the tradition of presidential candidates<\/a>\u00a0who have been\u00a0asked to disavow<\/a>\u00a0even\u00a0the most facially absurd<\/a>\u00a0conspiracy theories about them\u2014including a smear that implicated him in a\u00a0debunked sexual assault<\/a>\u2014Buttigieg last month denied in an interview with\u00a0The Atlantic<\/em>\u00a0that he was in the CIA. The rumor had become increasingly visible as his campaign fought a protracted battle with McKinsey & Co. to release\u00a0the list of his former clients<\/a>\u00a0during his employment at the management consulting firm.<\/p>\n

Rival presidential campaigns did their part to foment suspicion about Buttigieg\u2019s professional background, encouraging reporters to pursue the idea that a 2008 trip to Somaliland with a college buddy may have been under the auspices of either McKinsey & Co. or some other firm under contract with a foreign government. Those candidates have since dropped out, and Somaliland was nowhere to find on Buttigieg\u2019s client list, but the conspiracy theories remain, some stretching to ludicrous,\u00a0David Ickes-ian<\/a>\u00a0extremes.<\/p>\n

\u201cY\u2019all, who\u2019s Pete Buttigieg, really?\u201d Poikonen, who pronounces the former mayor\u2019s surname \u201cBooteggegg,\u201d asks his viewers.<\/p>\n

Poikonen\u2019s commenters are ready with answers.<\/p>\n

\u201cButtigieg has CIA ties for sure,\u201d one responds. \u201cI know this for a fact because I worked beside the CIA in a similar capacity. Buttigieg = Knights of Malta.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another commenter, after declaring that the war in Afghanistan is, in reality, \u201ca gigantic opium growing operation,\u201d purports that Buttigieg was a CIA officer tasked with bringing heroin into the United States for unspecified purposes. \u201cThis is how corrupt the US govt actually is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of the growing enthusiasm for the \u201cPete is CIA\u201d meme is clearly just for lulz\u2014one TeamBlind commenter responded to a post alleging that Buttigieg is a Langley plant by pointing to the adorably cringey\u00a0\u201cHigh Hopes\u201d dance choreography<\/a>\u00a0as proof that his campaign is in possession of \u201cCIA-grade brainwashing tech<\/a>.\u201d But even the most blatantly facetious mock-conspiracy theory can take root in real ways: In February 2016, Public Policy Polling found that\u00a0one in 10 Florida voters<\/a>\u00a0said they believed that Sen. Ted Cruz was the Zodiac Killer. (Another 28 percent said that they couldn\u2019t be sure either way.)<\/p>\n

Similar to that meme, which articulated the fact that lots of people found (find, even!) Cruz to be serial-killer creepy, the \u201cPete Is CIA\u201d meme crystallizes a more pervasive feeling about Buttigieg: that he, like the broken world we live in, was crafted by institutions that can no longer be trusted; therefore,\u00a0he<\/em>\u00a0can\u2019t be trusted.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like he was grown in a laboratory for the purposes of the perpetuation of empire,\u201d said Samuel D. Finkelstein, a political activist, writer, and student at Seton Hall Law School who has written about Buttigieg being\u00a0\u201cthe spooks\u2019 choice\u201d<\/a>\u00a0for left-wing online publication The Grayzone. \u201cObviously, there\u2019s no evidence solidly that we can point to say, \u2018oh yeah, Mayor Pete is an asset of the CIA.\u2019 That\u2019s not a claim that I would make publicly. But that said, if the CIA were to have a presidential candidate, it would look a lot like Mayor Pete.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finkelstein, whose work Poikonen cited to The Daily Beast as a good starting place for the theory, said that Buttigieg comes across as a model member of \u201cThe Blob,\u201d a nickname for the informal permanent bureaucracy that forms America\u2019s intelligence and foreign policy apparatus.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose people, you know, they\u2019re there for decades,\u201d Finkelstein said. \u201cThey outlast presidential administrations, and they\u2019re really the ones operating the machinery, so to speak.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe argument that he is a spy doesn\u2019t need to be made literally for it to be essentially true,\u201d said David Covucci, politics editor of The Daily Dot, who\u00a0authored a piece<\/a>\u00a0expressing mock-skepticism of Buttigieg\u2019s claim that he\u2019s not in the CIA. In Covucci\u2019s view, saying \u201cPete is CIA\u201d isn\u2019t dissimilar from saying that Sen. Kamala Harris was a \u201ccop\u201d\u2014both, he said, are just cruder or more conspiratorial ways to articulate a deeper suspicion about the candidate.<\/p>\n

\u201cButtigieg-is-CIA is the same meme,\u201d Covucci told The Daily Beast. \u201cHe\u2019s a potential president who people can see would utilize drone strikes conducted without oversight, would campaign on ending the AUMF and then get into office and backtrack, and who would side with the intelligence community over watchdog groups when it comes to things like civilian casualties and the efficacy of the War on Terror. I think that\u2019s much more important to consider than whether he literally is an agent of Langley.\u201d<\/p>\n

Buttigieg, for the record, has called for an \u201cend to endless war<\/a>,\u201d and has sharply criticized President Donald Trump\u2019s decision to order a strike that killed Iran\u2019s top military official last week.<\/p>\n

Beyond Buttigieg\u2019s r\u00e9sum\u00e9, two pieces of supposed evidence have been the most consistently proposed, both by the satirical and the serious proponents of the \u201cPete is CIA\u201d meme, to be the most damning: his 2008 trip to Somaliland with a college buddy that was later highlighted in\u00a0a letter to the editor<\/a>\u00a0in the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>; and Buttigieg\u2019s campaign\u2019s contracts with a private security company.<\/p>\n

On the\u00a0Worst Year Ever<\/em>\u00a0episode, co-host Cody Johnston describes the company, listed in FEC filings as the Virginia-based\u00a0Patriot Group International<\/a>, as \u201ca Blackrock-style private mercenary group,\u201d with\u00a0extensive military contracts<\/a>\u00a0and connections with the intelligence community. The Buttigieg campaign has paid the firm more than half a million dollars for security services to the firm this campaign cycle,\u00a0according to those filings<\/a>, which Johnston remarked was \u201cvery odd\u201d\u2014 particularly since Patriot Group International\u2019s founder declared in 2016 that the company was out of the political protection game after an incident involving a PGI agent who\u00a0broke the foot<\/a>\u00a0of a Ron Paul supporter who was heckling Newt Gingrich.<\/p>\n

\u201cPresidential campaigns don\u2019t hire mercenaries for crowd control,\u201d co-host Robert Evans added in response.<\/p>\n

The Daily Beast found, however, that the theory that Buttigieg is funnelling campaign dollars to a military contractor is rooted in a case of mistaken corporate identity. According to Patriot Group International\u2019s general counsel, the company \u201chas never provided any services to Pete for America or Pete Buttigieg, period, full stop.\u201d<\/p>\n

The actual company contracted by Buttigieg\u2019s campaign:\u00a0Patriot Group International Inc.<\/a>, an eponymous \u201cboutique security services company\u201d that provides event security, protective services, security consulting and background checks.<\/p>\n

Patriot Group International\u2019s general counsel told The Daily Beast that they have sent the company a cease-and-desist letter demanding that it change its name, and has informed the Buttigieg campaign that its FEC filings should be corrected to name the correct security contractor.<\/p>\n

Regardless of its falsehood, the security contractor rumor is one of the most popular items in the burgeoning \u201cPete is CIA\u201d misinformation economy. Manipulated images on Twitter are retweet engines: one purports to show that Buttigieg\u00a0copy-pasted<\/a>\u00a0Sen. Marco Rubio\u2019s (R-FL) statement condemning Nicol\u00e1s Maduro\u2019s hijacking of the Venezuelan National Assembly; another that the same statement was\u00a0tweeted by the CIA<\/a>. The latter image was crafted by Finkelstein, who called the viral tweet a joke. For those jealous of QAnon gear, you can buy a T-shirt that\u00a0superimposes \u201cCIA\u201d over Buttigieg\u2019s campaign logo<\/a>\u00a0for $20.50.<\/p>\n

Buttigieg\u2019s Somaliland trip, which prompted a letter penned by Buttigieg and longtime friend Nathaniel Myers calling for the international recognition of Somaliland as a sovereign state, has a benign explanation, according to the campaign.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe hate to break the news to Twitter, but no, Pete was not in the CIA,\u201d said Chris Meagher, the Buttigieg campaign\u2019s national press secretary. \u201cAs for the Somaliland trip, it was not related to his work anywhere. Pete visited a friend while his friend was living in Ethiopia, and the two visited as curious tourists.\u201d<\/p>\n

That conspiracy theory, as all seem to do, has been\u00a0floated by white supremacist blogs<\/a>, as well as by critics who note that Myers is now a senior transition adviser at USAID\u2019s Office of Transition Initiatives\u2014which, \u201cPete is CIA\u201d advocates eagerly point out, has a long history of meddling in the domestic affairs of foreign countries in the service of encouraging democratic reforms.<\/p>\n

Why an intelligence agent with presidential aspirations would draw attention to their work by writing about it in the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0remains an open question. (Is it really that bizarre to imagine that a person who taught himself Norwegian to read the untranslated works of Erlend Loe would make a pitstop in Somaliland midway through a larger vacation? Does Buttigieg really seem like the Myrtle Beach type?)<\/p>\n

Even the most humdrum explanations for the two most frequently cited pillars of the \u201cPete is CIA\u201d meme, though, might not be enough to shake the candidate\u2019s most suspicious critics.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really don\u2019t think that there\u2019s all that much they could do to shake that sense of general distrust that people have of him and his background,\u201d Finkelstein told The Daily Beast. For him, and many others who see in Buttigieg a poster child for institutions that people have good reason to distrust, \u201cit\u2019s what he\u2019s selling himself on.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHis core brand proposition is, \u2018I am the Harvard-Oxford-McKinsey guy,\u2019\u201d Finkelstein said. \u201cIt would be hard for him to shake that.\u201d<\/p>\n

___
\nhttps:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/far-left-internet-thinks-mayor-pete-buttigieg-is-a-secret-agent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Far-Left Internet Thinks Mayor Pete Is a Secret Agent<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3695\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}