Last night Twitter was rocked by the allegation that Under Secretary of State Sarah Rogers had conspired to set up Twitter megaposter DataRepublican for some kind of crime.
According to DataRepublican, she was invited to an influencer outreach event on Cuba issues where she was passed government documents by Rogers. The documents, which related to a previously obscure government program designed to tackle international censorship that was transformed by the Biden administration into a tool to censor American rightwingers on the internet, bore markings that indicated they were not for public consumption.
DataRepublican posted part of her text exchange with Rogers about the documents:
It’s pretty obvious that Rogers was trying to give DataRepublican, an independent journalist who had previously been known as friendly to the Trump admin’s efforts to expose Biden era political censorship, an exclusive story that related to her interests. Declassified documents often still have classification markings. There was no reason to assume that a journalist would be punished for publishing this kind of information, in fact it appears to be a standard practice. If anything improper occurred relating to the documents, it would have been Rogers, rather than DataRepublican, who would have been held criminally responsible.
I am almost certain that DataRepublican reached the conclusion she was being set up because she asked Grok a series of leading questions. Why she felt the need to do this is beyond me: Why would the Trump administration be trying to set up a friendly journalist? Why would Rogers behave in such an underhanded way knowing that the set-up would be immediately traced back to her?
DataRepublican spent the entire night attacking Rogers’ character and spreading accusations that were ridiculous on their face. DataRepublican’s account has been boosted by Musk himself in the past, the false accusations got millions of views. The hysteria was spurred on by a chorus of populist rightwing influencers who spawn out of nowhere with hundreds of thousands of followers on Elon Musk’s Twitter.
In the clear light of day, DataRepublican seems to have backed off her allegations somewhat. However, I decided to write this piece because DataRepublican’s most recent statement on the controversy convinced me that she’s going to do this sort of thing again, and that the attempts to make peace here are ultimately harmful.
Does DataRepublican at any point in the statement above admit that she was wrong? No. Does she at any point apologize to Rogers, who was only trying to help her, for accusing her of conspiring to throw her in jail? No. The non-apology reads like it was written by AI. It’s not going to persuade anyone that the original claims weren’t true, which is what would actually repair the damage this incident caused.
Although DataRepublican claimed she was going to delete her original thread, she seems to have very pointedly failed to delete her false accusations and the defective arguments behind them.
Rogers is behaving graciously after DataRepublican backed off and there are a lot of new calls for unity from other figures. I think this is ultimately the wrong approach.
I think everyone takes the wrong approach to these now-constant blowups from rightwing influencers. DataRepublican was offered a friendly gesture from a friendly government official, fundamentally misinterpreted it, made the worst assumptions about its intent, leaked private messages, blasted out ridiculous allegations for hours, and then after these allegations collapsed failed to directly acknowledge wrongdoing (What does “I do regret making it a public spectacle before it was understood, and pulling people I respect into the swirl” even mean?).
DataRepublican’s account is monetized; she actually made money by creating this problem out of thin air.
It’s time to stop accepting this behavior from these people. You don’t need to be mean, you don’t need to have crazy retaliation, you don’t need to write someone off forever, but when people do things like this you need to stop treating them like they’re still on the team. No, we can’t all just get along: If you act like this, you’re going to have to do it somewhere else.
Have any of the influencers who spread the obviously fake claim that the Trump admin was abandoning efforts to deport Temporary Protective Status recipients admitted that what they said was not true? No, they moved on to the next lie and the next lie after that.
The problem is that when push comes to shove, most people on the Right have learned to just tolerate intolerable behavior. I no longer blame the big figures who do this stuff, I blame the people who should know better but continue to reward these characters with money, access, collaboration, and support. Where do our biggest problems come from? Such people let them in the front door again and again and again. It has to stop. These networks need to not exist.
I’ve probably written too much about the constant demoralization campaign occurring in online spaces. There’s big money going in and out of it and no reason to stop. I decided to not reactivate my Twitter account because I didn’t think there was much else to say.
The people who need to will either get it or they won’t. Pretending like there’s still meaningful discourse occurring gives what’s happening now way too much credit. We don’t need these figures to fix our problems. In fact, if we want any hope of success, we need everyone to move beyond them and onto something else.
The admin needs to just ignore the online right completely, zero value in these people
DR is literally retarded. Why would you sperg out on twitter before doing a cursory internet search about your 1st Amendment rights?
Too many people on the right have raped souls.