{"id":199115,"date":"2023-12-09T17:52:18","date_gmt":"2023-12-09T21:52:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=199115"},"modified":"2023-12-09T17:53:32","modified_gmt":"2023-12-09T21:53:32","slug":"disneys-democratic-political-operative-bob-iger-fully-exposed-after-musk-spat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=199115","title":{"rendered":"

Disney’s ‘Democratic Political Operative’ Bob Iger Fully Exposed After Musk Spat<\/b><\/h2>"},"content":{"rendered":"

With a \u201cGo Fuck Yourself\u201d Musk Finally Gave a Middle Finger to Democratic Party Censors<\/h1>\n

Political operatives and Biden donor Disney’s Bob Iger have run a dirty tricks campaign to harm Musk\u2019s business and he\u2019s had enough.<\/h3>\n

Paul Thacker
\nThe DisInformation Chronicle<\/p>\n

Editors at the New York Post commissioned me to write\u00a0a piece last weekend<\/a>\u00a0explaining how the Democratic Party has been targeting Elon Musk for buying Twitter and taking away their ability to censor critics and label them \u201cdisinformation.\u201d The issue came to a head after Musk vented during an interview when asked about Disney and other companies pulling advertising over alleged antisemitism on his platform.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIf someone is going to try and blackmail me with advertising? Blackmail me with money? Go fuck yoursel<\/strong>f,”\u00a0Elon Musk said<\/a>. Musk repeated the advice with a wave of his hand toward Disney\u2019s Bob Iger, a Musk critic and Biden administration donor and functionary.<\/p>\n

\u201cGo. Fuck. Yourself. Is that clear? Hey, Bob, if you\u2019re in the audience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Within hours of the intervew, dozens of parodies began appearing on X,\u00a0including this one<\/a>. But if you read about the exchange in any media outlet, you would think Musk was coming unhinged, attacking advertisers who support his own company.<\/p>\n

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This is far from reality.<\/strong>\u00a0Democratic operatives including Disney\u2019s Bob Iger have been harassing Musk since he took over Twitter and released company documents showing the government and Democratic Party aligned organizations were censoring Americans. You can read some of my reporting on these Twitter Files\u00a0here<\/a>,\u00a0here<\/a>,\u00a0here<\/a>,\u00a0here<\/a>, and\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After the New York Post\u00a0published my essay<\/a>, I found that Musk had predicted a dirty tricks campaign over a year and a half ago.<\/p>\n

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The tactics being used against Musk are quite simple to understand<\/strong>\u00a0if you know the various figures involved, their backgrounds, and finances. First, Democratic Party attack groups like the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) and Media Matters for America gin up fake studies that accuse Musk of allowing hate, antisemitism, racism (whatever label they feel is effective) to flourish on social media.\u00a0Second, Biden campaign donors like Disney\u2019s Bob Iger express panic and flee X, complaining that they can\u2019t be associated with hate.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The media won\u2019t report on this, but it\u2019s a basic squeeze play once you know the characters involved.<\/p>\n

In recent months, Musk has sued both the Center for Countering Digital Hate and Media Matters for America for making false allegations of hate at X that have driven away advertisers. Both groups claim to be nonpartisan but actually work to attack opponents of Democratic Party policies.<\/p>\n

If you read any story in the press about the CCDH, you would think they\u2019re some lefty nonprofit laboring away to keep the world safe from online hate. A couple headlines just to give you a flavor for this.<\/p>\n

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But as I\u00a0documented in an investigation for Tablet<\/a>, political operatives with the conservative wing of the British Labour Party founded the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) in 2018 to attack people on the Left and Right. The group\u2019s leader, Imran Ahmed, now\u00a0asserts that he is<\/a>\u00a0 \u201cat the forefront of reporting on the hate proliferating on X\/Twitter since Musk completed his takeover in late October 2022.\u201d<\/p>\n

In reality,\u00a0Ahmed is also a former Labour Party political operative who ran CCDH and another Labour Party front group\u00a0to attack the left wing<\/a>\u00a0of his own party<\/strong>\u00a0with vague accusation of hate. While in the UK, Ahmed\u2019s groups helped to run Jeremy Corbyn out of Labour Party leadership and tanked the lefty news site Canary, after starting a boycott of their advertisers.<\/p>\n

Former Canary editor Kerry-Anne Mendoza described Ahmed\u2019s war against her leftist news site as a scorched earth campaign that destroyed their advertising revenue and forced mass layoffs. \u201cThey accuse you of hate,\u201d\u00a0she told me<\/a>. \u201cOur regulator said the opposite, but that was irrelevant.\u201d<\/p>\n

Targeting advertisers seems very similar to Ahmed\u2019s current tactics against Musk, no?<\/p>\n

Since Ahmed moved the group to Washington, DC, in 2021 one of\u00a0CCDH\u2019s main targets<\/a>, aside from X and Elon Musk, has been presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr., who\u00a0leads Biden<\/a>\u00a0among young voters, and is\u00a0suing the administration<\/a>\u00a0over censorship. This should not surprise anyone as\u00a0CCDH\u2019s chairman is Simon Clark<\/a>, a former senior fellow at the Center for American Progress (CAP), a think tank\u00a0founded by John Podesta<\/a>, who chaired Hillary Clinton\u2019s 2016 campaign against Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

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Ahmed does not disclose CCDH\u2019s funding, but I found that 75% of it comes from dark money sources. Some of this money may be coming out of Hollywood\u2014Bob Iger\u2019s home base. One of the board members on\u00a0CCDH\u2019s tax records<\/a>\u00a0is\u00a0talent agent Aleen Keshishian<\/a>, who reps actor Mark Ruffalo, an Ahmed ally in his crusade against Musk.<\/p>\n

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After I tweeted a series of Twitter Files on Imran Ahmed\u2019s work with the old Twitter to censor people,\u00a0Musk responded<\/a>,\u00a0\u201cAnyone know who is supporting this rat?\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0A month later, Musk sued CCDH for \u201cfaulty reports<\/a>\u201d that were driving away advertisers. \u201cCCDH\u2019s scare campaign to global advertisers \u2026 is an attempt to stifle freedom of speech on the X platform.\u201d<\/p>\n

Media Matters has a similar political history, but you won\u2019t find many media outlets explaining this to readers. Instead, reporters often ignore Media Matters\u2019 Democratic Party ties or choose to describe them as a \u201cwatchdog.\u201d<\/p>\n

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When CNN wrote a dismissive article on Musk\u2019s lawsuit, they even described one of Media Mattes\u2019 employees as a \u201csenior investigative reporter<\/a>.\u201d One of the media experts CNN quoted to downplay the lawsuit is Joan Donovan, one of the many academic \u201cmisinformation researchers\u201d who have popped up in recent years to argue in favor of social media censorship.<\/p>\n

Again, reality is rather different from what you might read.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The New York Times reported in 2004 that Democratic political operative David Brock\u00a0created the group in 2004<\/a>\u00a0with help from the Center for American Progress. The paper later noted that Media Matters served as part of Hillary Clinton\u2019s 2016 election \u201coutrage machine<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

After Clinton\u2019s loss, Brock freaked and released\u00a0a 49-page memo marked \u201cprivate and confidential\u201d<\/a>\u00a0that explained how Media Matters was being retooled to move into the digital space and\u00a0attack \u201cmisinformation<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

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But when Biden beat Trump, the Media Matters political machine pivoted to harangue Musk and Twitter,\u00a0criticizing him, in one example, for helping Stanford Professor Jay Bhattacharya<\/a>\u00a0look into the Twitter Files to see why he had been placed on a \u201cblacklist.\u201d<\/p>\n

After I published Twitter Files showing that the company had\u00a0provided privileged access<\/a>\u00a0to lefty reporter Taylor Lorenz, who had gotten Dr. Bhattacharya banned,\u00a0Media Matters jumped<\/a>\u00a0to downplay the documents.<\/p>\n

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Media Matters\u00a0has also harangued Musk<\/a>\u00a0for retweeting news about immigration problems at the southern border, for example. But as border issues\u00a0have overwhelmed the Biden administration<\/a>, Media Matters has ceased raising this election issue as a preferred attack.<\/p>\n

After Media Matters\u00a0published a flimsy report<\/a>\u00a0a few weeks back that alleged Nazi content ran on X alongside advertisements from major corporations\u2014claims which caused multiple advertisers to freeze spending\u2014Musk immediately sued the group. \u201cAs the most prominent online platform dedicated to hosting free speech, X and its predecessor Twitter have long been the target of Media Matters,\u201d\u00a0reads the lawsuit<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In case you think Disney\u2019s Bob Iger is absolved of political guilt, take a gander at his partisan bona fides.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the final months of the 2020 election, CNBC reported that Iger was one of Biden\u2019s largest donors, giving $250K to his campaign. Even\u00a0before Biden had been<\/a>\u00a0sworn in as President, Iger then began angling for a position in his administration\u2014possibly as ambassador to China.<\/p>\n

This last summer Iger claimed that he did not want to get involved in \u201cculture wars\u201d\u00a0before hiring a loyal Biden aide<\/a>\u00a0to run Disney\u2019s crisis communications and deal with \u2026 culture wars.<\/p>\n

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Iger remains a critical\u00a0donor for Biden\u2019s reelection<\/a>, according to New York Magazine.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Disney now faces renewed\u00a0calls for a boycott<\/a>\u00a0by Musk\u2019s legion of online supporters. But you don\u2019t need to love, hate, or be indifferent about the guy to be concerned. I am, however, eternally grateful that Musk gave me and other reporters access to Twitter\u2019s internal company documents, something no other CEO has ever done in the history of our democracy.<\/p>\n

And what worries me as I watch this unfold: if a political party\u2014either Democrat or Republican\u2014can target the richest, most powerful man in the country because he doesn\u2019t support all their policies, who might be next? Isn\u2019t that what\u2019s important?<\/p>\n

___
\nhttps:\/\/disinformationchronicle.substack.com\/p\/with-a-go-fuck-yourself-musk-finally<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With a \u201cGo Fuck Yourself\u201d Musk Finally Gave a Middle Finger to Democratic Party Censors Political operatives and Biden donor Disney’s Bob Iger have run a dirty tricks campaign to harm Musk\u2019s business and he\u2019s had enough.<\/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-199115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=199115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=199115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=199115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=199115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}