One morning last week I was perusing my Facebook feed will sipping my Earl Grey tea. An article linked by one of my friends looked familiar to me. I clicked on it and it looked quite similar to this one. This article of mine deals with Mr. Bloomberg and his Everytown.org’s methods of tallying gun crime. This other article looked very similar. While Mr. Bloomberg’s campaign against guns is well known and methods easily discerned, this article seemed more than coincidental convergence to me. From there, I started to investigate.
From Wikipedia.org:
In espionage parlance, a cut-out is a mutually trusted intermediary, method or channel of communication, facilitating the exchange of information between agents. Cutouts usually only know the source and destination of the information to be transmitted, but are unaware of the identities of any other persons involved in the espionage process. Thus, a captured cutout cannot be used to identify members of an espionage cell.
The first thing I noticed was that the main content of this article was created by a third party. The third party in this case was Charles C. Johnson. The media citation was his Twitter account. But Douglas, people cite Twitter all the time, though? It happens, but in this case the Twitter user is also a Daily Caller author. If his discovery was original content, why did he not write about himself? What better way to dodge the plagiarism charge then to quote Twitter, thereby deflecting the blame to “unsubstantiated tweets” for the lookalike articles.. I wondered if this dude could have ripped ROK and then used Twitter to launder the concept.
After using Google to further my investigation, I found there are quite a few articles using the same exact Charles Johnson tweets with quite similar lead ins. They also were published chronologically close to each other. This could indicate collaboration in the effort.
From Bob Owens of http://bearingarms.com:
The claims were quickly echoed—uncritically, and without even a cursory attempt at fact-checking—by reporters and editors from news outlets that should have know better. Shannon Watts of Mom’s Demand and Erika Soto Lamb of Everytown might have gotten away with their outlandish claims… except that journalist Charles C. Johnson started looking at the underlying data for their claims, and posted what he found on Twitter in real-time as he found it. As he did so, the blatant deception from Bloomberg’s gun control harpies quickly fell apart.
From Erika Johnsen of http://hotair.com
Here’s the Washington Post‘s version, too. Any school shooting is an unacceptable tragedy for which we should be looking for practical, effective solutions, and an average of more than one school shooting every week is all the more eye-poppingly horrifying. It sounds like we have an outright epidemic on our hands — but, have there really been 74 “school shootings” in just eighteen months? Charles C. Johnsen, a.k.a. @ChuckCJohnson on the Twitters, took a closer look at the various crimes that Everytown has been lumping into its list, and unsurprisingly, quite a few are undeserving of the designation of a “school shooting.” Here’s a sampling of some of his research:
From Jason Howerton of http://www.theblaze.com
Journalist Charles C. Johnson dug deeper into Everytown’s data on Tuesday and published his findings on Twitter. He also criticized the fact that the group classified violent disputes and gang-related violence as “school shootings.”
I decided to tweet at the author of one of the lookalike articles with the smallest twitter presence. It is shown at the top. She has not acknowledge the accusation
.
What could it mean if these conservative media outlets are cribbing ROK content? It could mean they have no creativity or analysis of their own. It could mean they are trying to co op and control any traditionalist narrative. It could even mean they are trying to become what they rail against, arbiters of a monopolized political narrative.
In conclusion, it could possibly be an honest coincidence. The fact that my accusations have been ignored indicate otherwise. Maybe they truly want to just replace the current media courtiers to the system with themselves. What I do know though: I will be watching people like this closely in the future.
Read Also: Fact Checking Emotional Propaganda
Am I missing something here? It seems to me that Charles C. Johnson did do his own original work in actually finding links to news stories to show that these incidents were not “school shootings” in the commonly understood sense, but rather ordinary gang and domestic dispute shootings. What you did was hypothesize that this was the case, based on the total body count, but Johnson actually found the relevant news articles. Seems different enough to me.
That having been said, Charles C. Johnson is indeed a tradcon loon, just maybe not a plagiarist this time. He is also not to be confused with Charles Johnson (no C.) the blogger of Little Green Footballs.
Is there no quality control whatsoever any more on RoK? WTF is this?
Honestly, I stopped reading after the 1st paragraph
there ought to have been more digging out to see if this was the case
I think R.O.K. should explore the topic of involentary celibacy.
There are some people who say it’s impossible to be an “incel”
just like it’s impossible not to find a job if you REALLY want too.
A person may not utalize P.U.A. but they CAN get sex from a female
if they REALLY wanted to. Do you agree? Is involentary celibacy
real? Or ,is it just a case of immature men insisting that reality conform
to their desires like Eliot Rodgers?
Involuntarily celibacy is as real as women who withhold sex in their own marriages. Like Tiger Wood’s wife. If he didn’t get some trim elsewhere he would have been the world’s first billionaire sports-icon incel.
I exaggerate for comic effect or course, but you get the point.
Too many married men are incels. Hugh Grant had supermodel Elizabeth Hurley at home….. but he must have REALLY WANTED it, so he went out and got a $40 BJ from Mavin Hagler in a wig – because Liz wasn’t putting the polish on it anymore.
Well if the option to pay to fuck a whore exists and you refuse to take it, then you are not, by definition, involuntarily celibate.
Which is presumably where the argument that it’s impossible to be incel comes from.
Maybe it’s a sign that conservative media takes what you say seriously, and doesn’t want to link you in order to avoid ostracism. A great example of this is George Will’s article on campus rape myth, most of it echoes the points talked about on ROK, but he lost syndication on a few newspapers because of it.
I never read anything by Douglas… it like reading the Art of Manliness. Go write for them faggot
But STRICTLY SPEAKING sex can be attained by simple
transaction in the same way that a person can get a job pumping
gas or driving a taxicab. These are NOT glamorous jobs, but they
CAN be attained.
So just as ANYBODY above the insane or retarded stage can get a
job. Anyone who can scrape enough money together, and risk an
STD, COULD get sex. Therefore, there is no such thing as an “incel.”
There’s NO similarity between the 2 articles posted. Both deal with lies and mis-allegations by anti-gun folks, but that’s it. WTF is this, indeed.
Someone needs to get a life.
Blogging is Web Logging Recycled. “grecycling”
BIGMedia steals all the time
From A List bloggers who
Steal from B List Bloggers who
Steal from C List bloggers who…
All explained before:
Hierarchy of Blogging 2 http://wp.me/p2kmGE-jQ
This article is libelous and totally bullshit I don’t write for the Daily Caller. I loved the article on Asians.
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/41793_Daily_Caller_Hack_Charles_C._Johnson_Now_Attacking_47_Videographer_Scott_Prouty
Lol
So sue these bastards!!! Sue them for all they’ve got! LOL! You suck, CHuckie
Identifying false flags and retaining gun rights is more important than your articles, Douglas. Suck a dick.
There are no false flags so you suck a dick. Actually both this article and you suck a dick.
Remember the Maine & Gulf of Tonkin have been officially revealed as falsehoods that got us into war. Just have to wait 50+ years for declassification
Journalists, the media, and Lena Dunham have been cribbing ideas and articles from Heartiste for a few years already. Since this site is closely linked to the Chateau, it’s no surprise they would start to steal from RoK.
Return of Kings is an independent blog that doesn’t bow down to any single person, or political group. Rok is therefore not afraid to say what needs to be said. That’s why you can find a diverse readership commenting on this site. You’ll find libertarians, MGTOW, feminists, conservatives, neo-nazis, and Anonymous, arguing over the ideas presented in the site’s articles.
All the people from these groups are forced to parrot the party line, but RoK is the one place where they don’t have to restrict their thinking. They open themselves up to the idea, then they take credit for it, lest they shamefully admit they are avid readers of RoK.
did chuck hurt your widdew feewings?
Fucking wah.
who the fuck is charles johnson, this site might need to control the article quality more. Vancouver is banning the word he and she to young kids and men are being assumed pedophiles in australia and this is the best you can come up with. I know everyone makes mistakes so I don’t want to bash the author, but go back to the drawing board and produce a high quality article, I am sure you can do it.
With millions of people on the web similarities are inevitable.