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Excerpt:
Last Friday, Democratic press secretary turned MSNBC host, Jen Psaki had on former FBI director James Comey to talk about his new book, a fictional story that centered on a right-wing influencer who directed his followers to commit violence. Psaki used biased questions and responses to validate Comey’s outrageous claims that right-wing podcasters were like Islam extremists and were “white supremacist adjacent,” not just in his book, but in real life.
Psaki asks the question:
I think you’ve told me, you enjoy writing fiction. It — it’s fiction, but it centers around a right-wing influencer who directs his followers to commit violence. Which feels, it’s not exactly topical in this moment, but it feels like something we’ve been talking about for several years. What — what inspired you? Is there a specific moment or person that inspired you to write about that storyline?
This prompted Comey to suggest that right-wing podcasters were using the internet to reach and radicalize young men in a way akin to ISIS:
I’m trying to write stuff that grips people, but is also real. And this is a threat we’ve been dealing with since the Islamic State came on the scene in 2014 and was using the internet to reach troubled people and move them to violence. Well, that threat has now gotten much larger because podcasts are everywhere, and it’s a tool in white identity extremism trying to motivate young men. Especially to move towards violence because they’re being replaced, they’re being attacked, America is under assault. This is a real feature of the FBI’s work, and so I thought it would make an — a good setting for a crime novel.
