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December 7, 2017 11:13 am - NewsBehavingBadly.com

Memo to big media: do your due diligence, and never, ever trust a racist troll.

MSNBC had fired Sam Seder from his contributor role on the network after racist provocateur Mike Cernovich dug up and tendentiously misinterpreted a 2009 tweet to gin up a faux outrage campaign. After a significant backlash, MSNBC has now reversed course and offered Seder his gig back.

Seder didn’t even using the fraudster’s name in his statement to the press.

“I appreciate MSNBC’s thoughtful reconsideration and willingness to understand the cynical motives of those who intentionally misrepresented my tweet for their own toxic, political purposes,” Seder said in a statement to The Intercept. “We are experiencing an important and long overdue moment of empowerment for the victims of sexual assault and of reckoning for their perpetrators. I’m proud that MSNBC and its staff have set a clear example of the need to get it right.”

I’ll let Spocko, one of our favorite tweeps and a writer over at Crooks and Liars, explain what had happened.

On December 4th MSNBC management caved to a handful of alt-right people and twitterbots and fired Sam Seder based on an obvious satirical tweet from 2009. Seder is the host of the progressive podcast Majority Report, and MSNBC contributor.

Here is a video from Seder, explaining what happened, who is behind it and how they plan to respond.

On Monday’s show Sam educated the audience about the instigator, Mike Cernovich, how he relentlessly pushed the “alt-right”-fueled “Pizzagate” conspiracy, his criminal history, and joked about how to pronounce his name.

Seder showed the Periscope video of Cernovich congratulating himself and his followers for duping MSNBC. Seder used the video as an opportunity for further mocking and used the attack to strengthen his support in the progressive community and raise funds. This is a smart response.

Here’s a little more on Cernovich:

Mr. Cernovich is a blogger, author of books, YouTube personality and filmmaker with a far-right social media following [translation: American Neo-Nazis eat up what he feeds them]. Much of his online persona is driven by two mottos: “conflict is attention” and “attention is influence.”

He told The New Yorker, “I use trolling tactics to build my brand.

Before this week, he was perhaps best known for promoting false claims that Hillary Clinton was part of a pedophile ring located in the basement of a pizzeria. He describes himself as an “American nationalist” [translation: racist White supremacist] and has been involved in shaping alt-right messages on social media, according to The New Yorker.

He has long been criticized for his argument that date rape is a liberal fiction [translation: he is pushing a prime “Men’s Rights” trope]. In a blog post published last October, he called it a “harmful concept for men and women” that leads to false rape accusations.

D.B. Hirsch
D.B. Hirsch is a political activist, news junkie, and retired ad copy writer and spin doctor. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.