Report: Amid lawsuits, right-wing site continues to push false election claims

The Gateway Pundit, currently being sued over false election claims, has doubled down on conspiracy theories about the presidential election, according to a new analysis. Meanwhile, white supremacists continue to flee Telegram, the communications platform, after its founder and CEO was arrested in France last month. And a report claims TikTok is sowing racist tropes about Haitian immigrants to millions of people.

It’s the week in extremism.

Gateway Pundit still spreading election falsities

A new report from analysts Advance Democracy, Inc., provided exclusively to USA TODAY, finds that the conservative news website the Gateway Pundit has doubled down in its spreading of false claims about the presidential election. That’s despite the site facing two lawsuits over false claims about the 2020 election.

• ADI found that from  Jan. 1 to Aug. 31 the Gateway Pundit published at least 128 articles containing keywords about fraud or election workers. The articles focused on tropes including that the Democratic party is working with election officials to steal the 2024 presidential election and is allowing non-citizens to vote. Examples included articles with headlines like “PAY ATTENTION: Democrats Just Revealed How They Will Steal the 2024 Election — In Three Easy Steps.”

• The website is currently facing a defamation suit filed by a former voting software executive, who accuses the campaign of former president Donald Trump and multiple conservative media outlets of spreading “false and baseless claims.”

• The site was also sued in 2021 by two election workers, who claim the site and its owners “knowingly published false stories about them that instigated a relentless campaign of harassment and threats.”

• The claims made in recent stories often led to threats of violence, ADI found. The analysts monitored responses to the articles after they were posted on the site and on social media and found calls for civil war and calls for violence against Democratic lawmakers and election workers.

“We are living in an incredibly polarizing and divisive political climate, and the threats of political violence we are tracking are significant and serious,” ADI President Daniel J. Jones told USA TODAY. “Our research details how calls for violence from the right can be traced back to false information being promoted by The Gateway Pundit.”

A request for comment to the Gateway Pundit was not immediately returned.

White supremacists spooked on Telegram app

White supremacists and neo-Nazis showed a surge of panic on the social media platform Telegram following a key policy change, according to a new report from ProPublica and FRONTLINE. Some called to abandon Telegram after CEO Pavel Durov announced the app would begin sharing identifying information of users who violate its policies with law enforcement.

• It’s not the first time extremists have been spooked on Telegram. As USA TODAY reported last month, the app’s extreme right-wing users were roiled by Durov’s arrest in France on charges in a wide range of crimes –  related to Telegram’s alleged complicity in allowing users to trade in child pornography, drugs and money laundering.

• The ProPublica/FRONTLINE analysis found the news that the app would cooperate with law enforcement caused fresh consternation. “Shut It Down,” the report says one person posted in a white supremacist chat on Tuesday.

• Durov’s arrest was followed by the arrest earlier this month of two leaders of a group federal prosecutors called the Terrorgram Collective. The Justice Department accused the men of soliciting hate crimes, soliciting the murder of federal officials and conspiring to provide material support to terrorists, using the Telegram platform.

Report: TikTok spreads Springfield pets claims

Racist tropes about the Haitian immigrant community, stemming from comments made by GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, are spreading to millions of people on TikTok, according to a new analysis from liberal watchdog group Media Matters for America.

• Trump and Vance have both pushed the false claim that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, have been killing and eating household pets.

• According to Media Matters, users on TikTok searching for details about Springfield, Ohio, and Haitian immigrants “are being served blatant misinformation by the platform. The high view count to low follower ratio on the videos also suggests that TikTok’s ‘For You’ page algorithm is propelling this content.”

• The report lists several offensive and conspiracy laden videos that immediately appeared when a researcher searched for terms such as “Haitians in Springfield.”

Statistic of the week: 63 percent

That’s how much hate crimes against Jewish people in America increased from 2022 to 2023, according to the FBI.

While the FBI statistics are notoriously inaccurate, the bureau tallied a record number of 1,832 single-bias anti-Jewish hate crime incidents in 2023, the highest number ever recorded.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Gateway Pundit election claims continue amid lawsuits, report finds