(ANTIMEDIA) The term “fake news” has dominated the internet conversation for the past year. With the rise of social media, it has become easy for individuals to make money by duping the public into believing just about anything. In the 2016 election, fake news on the right pushed hysterical articles declaring Hillary Clinton a satanist while the left churned out bullshit about Trump. On both sides of the aisle, “fake news” is rather similar — stories contain a grain of truth packaged with a sensationalized headline in the hopes of prodding prospective readers into a click.
With the rise of the new media, just about anybody can paint themselves as a journalist. Infowars is one “new media” site that has gained a massive following. The face behind Infowars, Alex Jones, is a grade-A conspiracy theorist. But if Jones is the coach, he has a number of star players on his team, including Paul Joseph Watson and, formerly, Joe Biggs. Biggs has gained a massive following on social media, and only last month he declared he’d “stumbled upon a pedo ring.”
The ring Biggs claims to have stumbled upon is termed “Heart Progress,” and Biggs isn’t the only alt-right social media personality to have noticed the group. Twitter user Levi Smith also blasted out a condemnation of the group.
The slippery slope is real. It won’t be long until our society celebrates and embraces this degeneracy as part of the new “normal”. pic.twitter.com/uNI9j6X1PL
— Levi Smith (@LeviSmithUSA) May 6, 2017
At first glance, “Heart Progress” appears to be a handful of people advocating for what they call “pedosexual rights.” Essentially, they believe pedophilia is a natural sexual outlet and should not be vilified. “Heart Progress” has a Google community with around 90 members.
A number of alt-right conspiracy sites, including “PuppetStringNews.com,” “ChicksOnTheRight.com,” and “FireAndreaMitchell.com” have run articles about the group. On the surface, “Heart Progress” appears to be the alt-right’s wet dream — a group of pedophiles declaring that liberal values vindicate their perversion. Unfortunately for Biggs, Smith, and the alt-right media, “Heart Progress” is not a real group. In fact, it’s not even a well-crafted front for a real group.
All the accounts associated with the group point to a website, NickMartinezOfficial.com, as the “homepage” for their movement, and they rarely post original material. This is the typical behavior of a troll or bot. The site’s background features a pride flag with the motto “Equality and Understanding for All” and even links out to a PayPal account to “support Heart Progress.” Nick’s website features the types of articles you might expect to find on a left-leaning site; pieces like “Le Pen has Lost, France has Won” and “The Rise of Antisemitism Must Be Put To an End.” However, there are also disturbing articles like “‘Children Can’t Consent’: Invalid Argument.”
It doesn’t take much work to discover that NickMartinezOfficial.com is abhorrently unofficial. Scroll back a few pages and you’ll find right-leaning articles like “Mythbusting International Gun Control” and “The Truth About Western Decline; Diversity, Equality and Democracy.” The contact listed for the webmaster is actually nick@newmediacentral.net
NewMediaCentral.net is an alt-right website running articles like “Democrats Are Full of Hate” and “Anti-Fa Thugs Get Taste of Own Medicine at Berkeley Free Speech Rally.” The site even has a weekly podcast.
The IP addresses behind NewMediaCentral.net seemed to ping around a bit between California and Texas. Interestingly, the site once pinged us to Walnut Creek Business Park in Austin, Texas. InfoWars is also based out of an industrial park in Austin, Texas, though Jones and his crew are rather guarded about where exactly they film.
The “Heart Progress” saga represents a new future in “fake news.” Rather than inventing conspiracy theories about politicians, these trolls appear to have built the news themselves. They have put together a few shoddy bots and a Google community, linked it to a website, and put it online for the world to see. The right Twitter handles and Facebook profiles like Smith and Biggs got wind of “Heart Progress,” and in no time there were articles on websites that cater to the far-right, and the group was being taken as a real thing on Reddit and 4chan.
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