David Codrea first reported on Michael Bloomberg’s next move in cyberspace:
Anti-gun billionaire Michael Bloomberg will be expanding his influence over managed information about guns the public is exposed to when he launches a propaganda effort masked as news in June, a Friday Capital report notes. The announcement of two principals setting the tone and cranking out the propaganda is instructive on what we can expect.
James Burnett, formerly of The New Republic and New York Magazine will be bringing his established “progressive” flair to the helm as editorial director. Jennifer Mascia, who worked on the strictly one-sided Gun Report for The New York Times, is also “attached prominently to the Everytown news project.”
Ah. The truth comes out about Jennifer. Recall I had said the following about her credentials.
Tommy Gnosis is someone named Jennifer Mascia, who has her own web site. In fact, she was one of the authors of the now defunct “The Gun Report” for the New York Times. Recall that report? That awful, hideous, dreary rundown of shootings every day? As if all we have to do is remove those awful guns from society and sin goes away because evil is located in things rather than the heart of man (a noted neo-Platonic and stoic view).
Anyway, I did an IP trace and found that the address was owned by Bloomberg. It makes sense, since I also found out that she works for Bloomberg via Everytown For Gun Safety. Her Disqus account is active, and features snark, misdirects, sarcasm, insults, and most of all, prose designed to demoralize and demonstrate the complete impotence of whatever group she is berating at the moment. The prose is designed to cause depression and dejection.
Here is the lesson. Bloomberg is paying her to visit web sites – particularly gun rights web sites – and spread discontent and dejection.
Nope, said she in the comments.
Hi Herschel,
I am not paid to comment here, or anywhere, nor have I ever been. There is no “tactic.” I have never worked for a political organization or a nonprofit, only media companies, and before that, restaurants. No one at Everytown knows I comment here. I actually don’t work with the advocacy arm of Everytown. The news site will be staffed with journalists, not lobbyists. We have zero to do with elections or phone banks. We won’t be working with Everytown staffers.
Her Disqus account was by “Tommy Gnosis.” I outed her and she posted as “Guest.” She responded that she isn’t paid to comment anywhere. There is no “tactic.” She claimed no relationship at all to Bloomberg. Now we find out that her use of an IP address that pointed back to Bloomberg was no coincidence. She is indeed trafficking in propaganda, and she is in the employ of Bloomberg. Let’s continue with Codrea’s second article on Bloomberg’s next move.
“Tommy Gnosis is someone named Jennifer Mascia,” Herschel Smith at The Captain’s Journal posted in March. He was describing someone who, under cover of anonymity, “visits web sites — particularly gun rights web sites — and spreads discontent and dejection.”
That’s consistent with the “elaborate subterfuge” technique for “infiltrating and disrupting alternative media online” used by those with an agenda. Per Canadian research, such “Internet trolls aren’t just mean — they’re sadists and psychopaths.”
That would also seem consistent with the control-all megalomaniac who hired her, in a company-he-keeps kind of way. Mascia is one of two paid flacks “attached prominently to the Everytown news project,” an experiment in virtual Astroturf that billionaire Michael Bloomberg will be rolling out this summer.
David then goes on to explore her past as daughter of a mob hit man.
What drives Mascia is anybody’s guess, but chances are her father having been an underworld killer with multiple hits under his belt had an influence. That probably comes as a surprise to many gun rights advocates, unaware that Al Jazeera told its readers “America’s best hope for tracking gun deaths is a mob enforcer’s daughter,” and Bloomberg’s Moms Demand Action gushed on social media that her story was “Amazing.”
Readers who have been with me a while may recall that commenters pushed Jennifer around a bit when she visited this web site. In fact, my readers drove her completely off of Disqus, as my oldest son Josh remarked to me. But don’t feel sorry for her. David notes that:
At this point, though, good people would still feel a degree of sympathy. After all, Mascia had no control over who her parents were or what they did. Their defects and failings were not her fault.
The problem is, she’s chosen to become part of an effort to make the rest of us defenseless against sociopath predators like her father, and enablers who help them kill, like her mother. She knows full well no “law” proposed by her billionaire patron would have any effect on stopping diseased animals like John Mascia from working his sick will on more victims.
David is right on target. I said to Josh that “You absolutely must remember that she is the kind of person who would send the SWAT team to forcibly take your guns.” And that’s the point after all. Despite any sympathetic feelings you might have for such people, it isn’t that they want peace for all men. Jennifer knows that we will never voluntarily give up our guns. She knows that it will take a bloody civil war to try to disarm us. She doesn’t care. She supports violence if it is perpetrated by the state. Just like Bloomberg, if it’s her folks with the guns, she’s okay. She is only in favor of disarming certain people, and readers should realize that you are among that group of “certain people.”
As for pushing Jennifer around, I’ve made clear that if you want to come in this back yard and run with the big dogs, you’d better be prepared for some rough business. And as for Jennifer herself, you weren’t entirely honest with us, were you?
David Codrea’s First Article
David Codrea’s Second Article
