Reading the Right Wing Script for Grifting the 2022 Midterm

Punks For Progress

“Go to your classes, wear the mask in the door, sit down, pull the mask off and sit there and say, ‘I’m ready for school’!”

~ Joey Gilbert, 2022 candidate for Governor of Nevada

If the gaggle of freaks and monsters that gathered as potential candidates in response to the failed recall attempt of California Governor Gavin Newsom is any indicator as to what to expect from the upcoming midterm election, we are clearly in for one of the most dangerously clownish election cycles in American history. 

This coming phenomenon probably best anticipated by radio “personality” Larry Elder and his Gubernatorial campaign calls for reparations for, not the descendants of enslaved human beings, but the scumbags that brutally enslaved them. This, of course, came on the heels of him celebrating the murder of Trayvon Martin as he opined over having Trayvon’s murderer as a potential neighbor.  

NEW: Larry Elder defended the murder of Trayvon Martin and said he WOULD want Trayvon’s murderer living in his own neighborhood in an interview unearthed by @RzstProgramming. pic.twitter.com/H3xp77beDI

— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) September 12, 2021

Significantly, a foundation of his platform, (er, grift), was to fear-monger against the covid vaccine and mask mandates. Most alarmingly – but in keeping with the dominant growing Right-Wing trend – he would target children with his dangerous and deadly QAnon-adjacent talking points. 

Despite the best and most monstrously heartless efforts of creeps like Elder, we now know – and it was clear ahead of time from polling – that Gavin Newsom was not recalled.

But no modern Right Wing grift for office would be complete, it seems, without claiming ahead of time that your monumental loss was due to some imaginary “rigging” process as opposed to you being deeply unpopular. And, in keeping, the website went up only two days before the election itself, asking for people to support the effort to uncover, you guessed it, the “facts” behind who exactly “rigged the election”, or some half-cocked variation thereof.  

                Sound familiar?

This is the socio-political climate in which we live. The post Trump era, (or pre-Trump Return, depending on your reading of the 2024 tea leaves). We aren’t so naïve as to frame this current, deeply polarized social stratum – as separated by hints of socio-political reality verses absolute wakka-doodlery – as being primarily the fault of one D Trump. He was of course only the culmination of generations of effort by the most-foul among the Capitalist Ruling Class. But, it’s clear to anyone actually watching that he did successfully serve to exacerbate an already destructive and deeply stratified environment, while boisterously laying out the how-to road map for any and all grimy hucksters to follow.

Whether we like it or not, and we most assuredly shouldn’t, we are living in a timeline that has carved out a string of unhinged and clearly very dangerous talking points that any new sociopathic bigoted grifter can memorize and then regurgitate as a platform for political office.

At least for the foreseeable future, politically speaking, all across this nation we will be forced to experience in horror what Greg Graffen calls “The Alt-Right Post-Light Endarkenment Order” grabbing national media stages, headlines and massive on-line platforms to spew their unhinged hate talk to an increasingly more mainstreamed Right-Wing audience.

If the sheer number of freakish creatures that responded to the California recall is any indicator, it shows that the Right is not just ready but making very purposeful and seriously motivated moves towards what will ultimately be a historic win ratio in 2022 (not to mention setting them up for another in 2024).

That is to say that the Dems are barely even whispering about preparation for the midterm elections, whilst every antivaxx snake-oiler that took notes from the Trump machine is on fire and itching to regurgitate their right-wing media bubble talking points as they gloat like superior intellects by dint of their one afternoon crash course in… well, whatever… on, let’s be real, Facebook.   

Case in point: this repugnant racist waste of oxygen right here.

Meet Tina Forte, what the Right-Wing Terrorist zeitgeist puked up in order to laughingly challenge Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for the Bronx seat in the upcoming midterm. One part January 6^th Insurrectionist, one part Q-anon Kool-Aider, all parts Nazi grifter.   

17/#IamTinaForte Jan 6 on restricted ground as Capitol is attacked. Filmer (#IamJenRemauro?):"This is what happens when you storm the Capitol!". TF:"That's right! This is what happens!" Filmer:"They break down the fuckn barriers." TF:"We came with Scott's flag and shit happened!" pic.twitter.com/8rpcM2erfz

— Opal Katz (@DianthaSol) August 25, 2021

Here’s Nazi Karen from the Bronx block openly showing her revulsion for the halls, processes and history of the governmental system she assumes to inhabit and represent – right along-side her very thuggish looking companion with the obvious Nazi tattoos. Note the glee with which she celebrates her racist, fascist, brainwashed disdain for the very institution she wants to get “likes” and “clicks” by running for: 

But, if you were at all curious as to how she might fare in terms of women’s rights issues, well here she is allowing a couple of seriously foul misogynists to grossly ogle and objectify her while she giggles gladly and spews utterly detached from reality conspiracy theories related to the covid vaccine.

Most notably she asserts: “They’re shoving something in there, the chip, the Covid, there’s something up there!” And, she of course made the verifiably spurious claim that the test for Covid itself… is what causes Covid. Which of course, beyond having no basis in any form of verifiable reality, does not explain the millions of negative covid tests taken every single day, but she wouldn’t let that get in the way of her hits on Instagram, er, run for office!

Clicks and likes and retweets; “look at me, look at me”; “donate to my website by clicking here!” These are what motivate the current crop of angered zombie-like Right-Wingers with sights on national and local power. Which, of course, brings us to the self-disgraced focus of our study.

Purple Meathead Hopes to Bring His Brand of Disgrace and Humiliating Treason to the Silver State!

Joey Gilbert: failed amateur boxer, ambulance/hits-on-Instagram chaser, and current contender for Governor of Nevada in the 2022 election cycle truly encapsulates all of the necessary points of grift. Yet he also manages to bring his very own unique brand of twacked-on-wrong pharmaceutical combinations to the mix. 

Where do we even start with Nevada’s very own self-appointed crusader for the unhinged targeting of children? Well, it seems his participation in the January 6^th Right Wing Insurrection is as good a place as any.

Those who follow closely the aftermath of that fascist temper tantrum on Capitol Hill will most likely be well aware of the twitter account known as “Capital Hunters” (or, at least they should be). This account has committed itself to, and done a fairly exhaustive job of, identifying and naming all those that partook in that violent failed coup attempt.

In keeping, they had tentatively named one participant in the attack as “Purple Meathead” (based on his purple scarf worn the day of the insurrection), until he could be properly identified. With the help and collaboration of the folks from AntiFash Reno (who were also very helpful with the research compiled for this piece) and others, Purple Meathead was ultimately positively identified as none other than Nevada’s very own self-obsessed attorney, Joey Gilbert.

After assisting in the tearing down of barriers at the Capital Building, Joey could be seen begging like a sad puppy for the unanswered attention of Alex Jones – “ALEX!!! OvEr HeRe, AleX!!!” – displaying clearly that what motivates Gilbert is a want to be his own “playa with a platform”; to “get in the fight” for self-promotion at the expense of anyone else, just like his pretend daddy Jones.

Purple “Meathead”, you said? No doubt you meant to say Purple Meth-head instead!

                Be aware that Gilbert isn’t just some toadie out here looking to lick a few followers off of the boot of Alex Jones whilst clearly participating in the tearing down of barriers on January 6^th. No, he is also, as alluded to numerous times above, a failed athlete. His failure punctuated by an alarming propensity for the ingestion of, not just the ‘roids that would and did end his athletic career, but he was also mixing them with some straight-up wypipo meth concoctions, and a few other various brands of skittles – what ESPN referred to as “polypharmacy” – thrown in for twisted good measure as well.

One does not just wake up one day and then ingest such a complicated, jam-packed cocktail of various drugs all at once. No, the kind of test that came back positive for Gilbert is emblematic of a habit that can only be built over a very long and committed period of time. Gilbert had to nurture his demons of addiction for an extended duration to have even survived the otherwise deadly cocktail present in his system at the time of testing cited above.

Now, to be perfectly clear, we at Punks For Progress take no issue whatsoever with people indulging any drugs that they as adults choose to ingest responsibly. Get lit, good people, who are we to judge? But with that said, and while it’s generally well known that under the conditions of White Supremacist Imperialist Capitalism that a heroin junkie will likely steal their best friend’s last 20 bucks for a fix, it should also be well understood that your average meth-head tweeker will not only steal that same last 20 bucks, they will indeed then proceed to help their victim look for it afterwards.  

We found no record of Gilbert seeking any rehabilitation services at any time after he was caught with numerous drugs, including but not limited to meth in his system, when he tried to cheat his way through the failed end to his athletic career.  

But…

Despite Gilbert’s absolute lack of proper training and education in relation to chemistry or pharmaceutical use in any credible way, shape or form, and despite him bringing utter disgrace to the end of his otherwise at-best locally famous boxing career via his self-prescribed intake of numerous harmful and illicit drugs, he still thinks he should take it upon himself to suggest what he deems to be a “safe” regimen of drug intake for you the public at large to consume:

Only now he’s a self-styled “expert” on so-called COVID treatment. And, as should come as little surprise, all of his diagnosis are as unhinged and dangerous as was his choice to imbibe massive deadly drug-cocktails during his days as an amateur boxer. Little has changed, as he clearly hopes to monetize his drug induced delusions of pharmaceutical scientific grandeur at the expense, and via the exploitation of, Nevada voters and their children.

So, this is the time in the piece where we have to talk about “Blood Libel”

                Before we dive into this next section, we want to make abundantly clear that while there are clear comparisons that can be made between the history of what motivated the trope of the Blood Libel and what is currently motivating the 2021/2022 crop of terrorist grifters, it cannot ever be overstated the gruesome and horrific nature of an actual Blood Libel trope and its incalculably violent and destructive impact on the world’s Jews and their communities over literal centuries.

What also shouldn’t be ignored, though, is the fact that both the progenitors of the historic Blood Libel trope and this current crop of fascist grifters respectively intend to use the vulnerability of children as a scapegoat to fear monger support from unsuspecting voters and to distract from their own lack of tangible policy or from the actual destruction wrought by the policies they do in fact adhere to and advance. But, again, while comparisons can be made, and we will make them, the amount of horror and destruction that has been wrought on the Jewish community over centuries as a direct result of the trope of the so-called Blood Libel can be equally compared to few if any occurrence in history, either past or present.   

                So, with that all said, what exactly is Blood Libel? The Anti-Defamation League describes it as follows:

Now, clearly, Gilbert and his kind aren’t out here openly saying that Jews are murdering children, but they are definitely out here targeting children as scapegoats to generate fear in voters. We feel we would have been remiss in ignoring what is, arguably, a clear descendent of the Blood Libel trope.

In this recent article from This is Reno, Gilbert is featured in what will ultimately become a clear pattern of dangerously targeting, with wanton disregard for the literal health and safety of…  local children. A theme that will remain central to his grift for Governor, as we will see further on below.

Let’s be clear, Gilbert is not exuding the qualities of some imaginative machine of volition or new ideas when he indulges in the insipid scapegoating of children, he has just done a fairly decent job of reading Fascist Terrorist twitter/Instagram and has internalized the script. A script, it seems, that has even more highly established and calculating derivations beyond social media:

Who Gilbert wishes he could get down with!

                Regardless of so many of his behaviors and messaging bumping up so uncomfortably close to classical Neo Nazi tropes and narratives, Gilbert still may not be some actual bold, outspoken, self-professed Neo Nazi or White Nationalist screaming about a literal blood libel. But, aside from a twitter account infested with scare-tactics about school children highlighted by unsubstantiated and deadly COVID misinformation, it’s also crawling with retweets from an actual outspoken White Nationalist, Jack Posobiec. 

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Gilbert’s daily-twitter-driver is featured here in a medley of tweets not so sneakily celebrating the 14 words (“we must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children”), whilst invoking the numeric value of “Heil Hitler” (“H” being the eighth letter of the alphabet “HH/88”), hence 1488 – every Nazi’s favorite little “code” number:

This is the sick, hardly even pretending to not be a Nazi, drug-addled soup of self-serving hate and disinformation that Gilbert has chosen to swim in. And he’s got it all! The paranoid fear mongering towards, indignant ignorance to, and outright abandonment of… verifiable science; the self-obsessed, by any means necessary drive for a larger platform and more followers; maintain at least one degree of separation from an actual outspoken Nazi, or in some cases just actually go ahead and be one yourself; and, most importantly for 2022, be the self-appointed yet horrendously unqualified protector of the health and well-being of children, while loudly advocating for unsubstantiated “medical” policies that will verifiably harm those same children… all for the clicks! All for the hits! All for the Grift! All for the self, and all at the literal potential expense of the rest of us.

                Last month Punks For Progress attended an anti-vaxx, right-wing terrorist rally hosted by Gilbert, in what is known as “Believe Plaza” in Downtown Reno – the favorite site of numerous BLM, Women’s Rights and Indigenous Rights rallies attended by, in some cases, thousands of people. The barely one hundred or so attendees of Gilbert’s over-glorified livestream may have seen what he was espousing as harmless, even benign, if not maybe a little “heroic”. But do they know the mountain of verifiable context provided above? Do they know the pattern of grift that Joey has latched onto, as exemplified by his bullet point similarities to other grifters like Larry Elder, Jack Posobiec, Tina Forte and others?

We took the time to include within the following video credible sources to debunk each and every claim made by Gilbert at that rally, but knowing what you know now, it should be clear just how many levels of foul he is willing to reach in search of re-capturing the otherwise failed glory of his own disgraced days gone by.

Joey Gibson Anti Mask Rally

                Does Joey have a chance in Casino Hell of winning in 2022? Little if none. Same can probably be said for Tina Forte, and we already know what a monumental loser Larry Elder was. But that’s not the point. They don’t have to win their respective elections, and neither do the countless people just like them in local and national elections all over the country. Two very significant, yet justifiably terrifying inevitabilities will be central to this grift and will cause incalculable harm to vulnerable communities throughout the nation regardless of whether these sociopathic fascists secure the wins or not. 

                First, and foremost, this nation is going to be inundated with gargantuan propaganda campaigns funded by historic fortunes dedicated to espousing all of the same talking points repeated above by Gilbert, Elders, Forte et al. Be prepared, fam, because if you thought that the bigoted media barrage during 2016/2020 was gnarly and destructive to overall societal cohesion, well they didn’t have two attempts at it under their belts like they do this time around. They have studied their praxis, what there is of it, and learned what works for their target demographic and what doesn’t. And, if past is prologue, this will have the intended effect of:

                Secondly, this barrage of targeted and focused billionaire funded right wing stochastic terrorist propaganda will only embolden and help to galvanize various right-wing street level brown shirt-esque gangs and militias. Those very same Proud Boys and Boogaloo groups that are currently in a seeming perpetual state of infighting and recalibration, will find that singular focus once again once they begin to imbibe that daily deadly stream of billionaire funded propaganda built on the same foundations already being driven over by grifters and failures like Joey Gilbert and his sociopathic ilk.

…which won’t hurt Trump in 2024 at all.