Hype, Lies, And AI Slop Are *Exactly* What MAGA Wants In LA Protest 'News'
The entire city burned to the ground, the Left just won't admit it.
MAGAworld is not a place for subtlety. Anyone who lacks legal documentation is a criminal, and probably a killer. Airplanes crash because of diversity (so do ships and trains). And every protest is a riot that includes looting and burning on a massive scale, and must be put down forcefully, ideally by the military. (Except for the January 6 insurrection, which was a peaceful tour of the Capitol.)
And if a Democratic senator tries to ask Homeland Paranoia Secretary Kristi Noem a question at a press conference, that too is a riot. Just ask Sen. Alex Padilla (D-California), who was surrounded by toughs and removed from the room where Gestapo Barbie was promising the feds will stay in LA to “liberate the city from the socialist and the burdensome leadership that this governor and this mayor have placed on this country and this city.” You know, like how the Founders wanted.
Padilla wasn’t arrested or detained, at least not yet. But once he was hustled from the room, they forced him to the ground and handcuffed him. Wow, he sure was un-American, interrupting Great Leader’s chosen enforcer like that.
With insurrectionists like Padilla serving in federal office — for now — it’s only natural that MAGAloons are convinced that huge sections of Los Angeles burned to the ground this week, because didn’t George Floyd burn both Minneapolis and Portland to the ground over and over again in 2020? Or at least rightwing media played the same clips of burning buildings over and over again, often weeks after the fires were put out.
It’s the same game now, although this time around the protests — and the fairly limited but still dramatic-for-TV property damage — have been limited to several blocks in downtown LA, around federal buildings, courthouses, police headquarters, as well as on roads, particularly a section of freeway near an immigration detention facility. Heck, so far, we haven’t even seen any police precinct buildings torched by rightwing extremists hoping for a race war. Maybe they’re holding off for now, happy that Trump is deploying the military to back up his deportation Gestapo.
Nonetheless, rightwing media and social media keep repeating the same images from Los Angeles, because with enough repetition, they suggest widespread devastation. Two scenes get much of the attention: 1) rioters throwing chunks of concrete and other detritus on police cars from an overpass (that’s dangerous!), and 2) those five burning Waymo robotaxis, usually with Bad Dudes waving Mexico’s flag and standing atop one of the graffiti-covered hulks (that’s awesome!). Especially the latter images, because flames and foreign invasion!!! Come in here, dear reader, have a montage, we’re gonna go large:
All you need to do is post photos of the same scene from a whole bunch of angles, and obviously the entire city of LA is burning down, and HOW DARE you claim the protests are mostly peaceful? Also, the robotaxis were EVs, so that also proves everyone on The Left is a hypocrite about climate change! No, we won’t try to explain that one.
But with actual riot carnage in short supply, wingnuts have also been going to the well of previous disorders, reposting images from 2020 and even the 1992 riots following the acquittal of the cops who beat Rodney King nearly to death.
And of course, thanks to the very AI programs that I no longer abuse here (sorry), there’s now all sorts of AI slop to add to the mix, like a really cheesy AI video of a “protester” who explains why he’s out on the streets of virtual LA, even though he doesn’t exist: “I don’t know, I was paid to be here, and I just want to destroy stuff,” the computer-generated rioter says. Whether it’s fooling anyone is open to question. Probably some, but the replies on Twitter make clear that even if they recognize the video is fake, Trumpers like it because it expresses the '“truth,” for them: The protests are mostly just paid demonstrators performing for the cameras anyway, because Donald Trump is perfect and nobody really disagrees with him.
But the AI LA protesters aren’t only a bunch of fakes, paid chaos agents who believe in nothing. They are simultaneously very real and dangerous, and so ubiquitous that they’re destroying most of Los Angeles, which is IN FLAMES as zombie hordes come for YOU (while the Moon prepares to crash to Earth, too):
We also found a similar header image to another Rumble video, which weirdly warned viewers not to believe everything they see on social media. You know, like this header image on the video, depicting the entire city on fire as a blobby AI helicopter hovers above the chaos.
We were especially impressed by this humble Rumble bumble, which uses a mix of stock footage and AI images to tell us that the media is “gaslighting” us about the reality of what’s happening in LA.
Hilariously, many of the same people congratulating the guy who posted the fake AI video posted, as proof that LA is full of paid protesters, images of a June 5 Craigslist ad that claimed someone was “Looking for the toughest badasses in the city (los angeles)” and “Seeking extremely tough, brave men for new crew I'm building.” See? The rioters were all paid! Except of course the ad was posted by an online prank show, so the hosts could call people who answered and make fun of them, haha! That’s been followed by videos of at least two different guys on TikTok claiming they were paid to protest against ICE, or at least offered money to do so. The latter guy was, inevitably, retweeted by Elon Musk with a “Hmm.” See? You don’t need AI to create a hoax!
As Politico notes, other AI videos play heavily on confirmation bias, showing people throwing Molotov cocktails while insisting they’re peacefully protesting, or announcing that they’re looting a department store to help stop ICE from deporting people. Gosh, liberals are terrible, and these videos prove it — even when people see they’re fake. “Real” video, or deceptive framing, or completely made up: It almost doesn’t seem to matter, because as long as you’re pumping out something that strokes rage and reminds you that you can’t stand those people, it’ll get an audience.
These misleading AI videos are the perfect medium for our rage-bait driven society, where people willingly interact with content deliberately created to upset them. It’s the reality of tribalism in 2025: Anger generates clicks, and clicks spread the word.
That makes these L.A. protest AI videos a sobering look into the future of our politics: one where those radicalized by rage-bait live in an impenetrable echo chamber that seems real because of a proliferation of fake scenes.
Or a proliferation of the same real scenes over and over, like the multi-screen chaos of the “News Break” intro in RoboCop, with volcanoes, plane crashes, riots, and the Challenger explosion on an endless loop. But instead of three seconds, it’s forever. The world is a scary place, stay with your people and buy more guns.
Finally, all that AI glop reminded us of a simpler time, a still-insane but hand-crafted time, when the NRA made a post-Katrina comic book in 2006 to warn the world about George Soros and Hillary Clinton and all the very bad brown people who want to take your guns away and burn down civilization, and we remembered this illustration of why good white families need to be heavily armed. (It’s sort of The Walking Dead crossed with The Turner Diaries.) Not much has changed since then, huh?
Our only hope is that the hairy-legged radfem environmentalist chick and her animal terrorist friends — Murder Wolf, Rampage Cow, Looter Pig, Antifa Chicken, Vexatious Lobster, and Bomb Owl — will come to save us.
Goddamn it, in MY day the rightwing loonies had a sense of style.
OPEN THREAD.
[OC Register / LAT / WaPo (2020) / Guardian / Politico / NYT / Politifact]
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Just one more sleepy till I am out of here. Tomorrow is Escape From New York, call me Snake. If Adrienne Barbeau wants to come along I am not saying no. Hey Cleveland, I'm almost there, are you ready for me?
Okay, I've been told ppl are wondering how my recovery is going. I talked to my surgeon again today (who did not actually surgery me, he decided it's not necessary but was monitoring bc it was borderline and wanted to know if things weren't healing properly without surgery).
The shoulder is on course for healing on its own. This is the most thorough and important update so far (in part because it has been longer since my last visit to the surgeon) and in part because it's been 45 days and this is a key turning point. He says that I'm looking exactly like I should. It doesn't feel great and I still can't do much, but all my current pains and problems are no more than would be expected during normal healing from my injury, so it's all good news.
He didn't even chastise me for not using the sling. Says that if I'm not bumping into ppl & things (like at a demonstration/march or whatever) that I'm absolutely at a point where I can ditch the thing. Yay!
Hope everyone else is doing fine. How are our Los Angeles Wonketteers?