I’d been surprised at the vehemence of Representative Ilhan Omar’s (D-MN) probable opponent in the 2020 elections, Daniella Stella, who is reported to have lost her Twitter account permanently due to this:
Twitter permanently banned Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Republican opponent on Friday after she accused the Minnesota congresswoman of treason and wrote on the platform that Omar should be hanged.
Danielle Stella, a candidate hoping to challenge Omar for her Minnesota seat in the 2020 election, tweeted earlier this week, “If it is proven @IlhanMN passed sensitive info to Iran, she should be tried for #treason and hanged.”
The post that followed included a crude drawing of a body hanging from gallows with a link to a right-wing website on her belief that Omar should be hanged if a conspiracy that Omar provided sensitive intelligence to Qatar and Iran were true. [NBC News]
And then she’s all sweetness and light and reasonable when she gets bounced:
“Breathe, think this through, logically. To clarify, I said, ‘If it is proven ____ passed sensitive info to Iran, she should be tried for #treason and hanged,’ Stella wrote on Facebook, leaving a blank space where Omar’s Twitter handle had been. “Treason is the only thing mentioned in the constitution for the death penalty, punishable by hanging or firing squad. I believe all involved should be thoroughly investigated. I did not threaten anyone.”
Mmmmmmm. Never mind the picture of the gallows, eh? Still, unless she was really taking a deep drag of the conspiracy toke, it didn’t entirely make sense.
Then I decided to read Lawfare’s take on the strategy behind the writing of the Schiff report, aka the House Intel’s report on its investigation of Trump for the purposes of impeachment. This is important:
It might seem strange that the Democratic members of the Intelligence Committee wouldn’t take the opportunity to definitively rebut all these conspiracy theories. But doing so is a complicated proposition. One of [the two authors of this article, Jurecic and Schulz] has written about the “cycle of distraction” created by House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member (then Chairman) Devin Nunes’s efforts to raise questions over alleged abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) process in the context of the Russia investigation. What was true then is true now: Nunes and his colleagues’ arguments are more about generating distrust and confusion than they are about exonerating the president or proving wrongdoing by his enemies. Focusing on debunking a specific claim risks playing into this dynamic by giving the falsehood additional attention that prolongs its lifespan in the news cycle.
What’s more, a debunking can also add to the confusion it seeks to clear: In order to explain why the CrowdStrike conspiracy theory is false, one needs to explain CrowdStrike, the Russian (not Ukrainian) national origin of the company’s co-founder, Dmitri Alperovitch. One also needs to explain the nature of a physical versus a cloud-based server. And by the end of this process, the conversation has moved far from the core story about the president’s abuses of power in Ukraine. For House Democrats, there’s a risk that the long-winded explanation necessary to debunk the nonsense could lead members of the public to tune out impeachment because it’s “too complicated.”
There are other risks, too. Research suggests that the more a claim is repeated, the more likely people are to believe it, even in the context of a debunking.
Which brings it all together: Republican Stella, whether on her own initiative or on orders from on high, is just injecting a meme into the media ocean while playing li’l miss innocent.
It’s not exactly an honorable approach to campaigning, and the fact that Omar’s seat is considered quite safe should be an inducement for Stella to be more circumspect, not less – although during the Republican primary for the Jeff Sessions’ Senatorial seats one of the eventually failed Republican candidates, Rep Mo Brooks, was accused of being a Pelosi ally and a supporter of the Islamic State.
Restrained in their rhetoric, they are not.
My inclination, if I was on Twitter, would be to take Stella’s Tweet, change all the occurrences of Omar to Stella, and repost it. If she squawks, ask her why her ass is burning when she proclaimed such innocence before.
And then maybe extend it to other far-right GOPers. Just for giggles.
