>> What happened to the woman who runs Libs of TikTok her life being destroyed,
was not the work of Taylor Lorenz, the fearless journalist who cries on TV from a PTSD, no.
It was a foreign intelligence operation designed to silence
and intimidate an American citizen, wait, is that legal?
Did the Biden administration have any role in this particular intel op,
why is the German government trying to shut down an American twitter account
posting about American teachers? And since she was the willing recipient of this information
from a foreign government designed to destroy an American citizen. Why hasn't Taylor Lorenz
at the very least, registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, FARA?
>> Okay, so there's a lot going on there, we are familiar at this point with the fact
that the average Tucker Carlson viewer frequently drools while watching it,
I thought it was advanced age. Perhaps it's because they've been reduced into
a stupor from the sheer volume, the detachment, the misinformation coming at him.
So, Taylor Lorenz is a reporter for the Washington post, who did a
profile recently on, the person behind Libs of TikTok, which we'll get into. She did that
for The Washington Post about someone who is indisputably newsworthy. That
person's life has not been destroyed by the fact that their name is now known.
Tucker Carlson of course does not describe how her life has been destroyed,
simply states it, because if he were to be honest about what he's covering.
Journalist for The Washington Post reveals the person behind an incredibly politically
influential social media account, well that's hardly going to freak people out Adriane.
So instead it's the German government and the Biden administration, who are apparently involved.
And would have to be involved, for a journalist to identify person behind a TikTok account,
I suppose, or a Twitter account, it's madness, and we're gonna give you all the details. But Adriane,
have you been following this story as it's been developing throughout the week?
>> Okay, so I've seen inklings of this story throughout the week, and I was just completely
and totally ready to dismiss it in part. Because I know that Tucker Carlson has gone at Taylor
Lorenz before and doxed her ruined her life. And so, it really was disheartening to see that
her name was still in his mouth, and also it just seemed like she was doing her job as a journalist.
So it's really disheartening and sad to see that this is really still what's going on,
when it comes to Fox News and it's nonsense. >> Exactly, so here there's a lot of things
that we need to fight back against in this. One of the most core ones though,
is the accusations that Taylor Lorenz has doxed this individual.
So of course the right would prefer that we live in a world where words mean whatever we want,
fake news had a specific meaning, but it was inconvenient for the right. So they just
define it as whatever they want, legitimate news becomes fake news, words have no true meaning.
I don't live in that world, I live in a world where facts matter,
doxing involves very specific identifiable information, that can lead someone to the
home or workplace of an individual. And generally, although this is more of a
connotation than a delimitation, it is sending someone to do that, it is a threatening stance.
Identifying a newsworthy person is not doxing, and I think that the right actually gets this
Adriane. Because for about one day, they were content to simply say that she had doxed the
Libs of TikTok person. The strike back was, it's not doxing to just say who a person is,
now they've decided, instead of just using the word inaccurately, we're going to flat out lie.
And so you can find any number of tweets that will say, Taylor Lorenz revealed the home
address of this person. And the only way that you can do that and get away with it,
is if you assume probably rightly. That not a single one of the right wingers reading
your tweet, will actually read the article and see that nothing like that occurred.
They're making highly specific easily verifiable or debunkable claims
about that article, that simply do not hold any water, there was no doxing. A person with hundreds
and hundreds of thousands of followers, who is in direct contact with Republican politicians.
Who has helped to set the culture war agenda for the right, for going on a year now.
That has already resulted in multiple pieces of legislation, which are literally stripping
away people's rights on a daily basis, is the definition of a newsworthy topic, okay? And the
person, their identity being revealed, not their workplace, not their home, not leading anyone to
them, is not doxing that, it's simply journalism, and that is why the right is freaking out.
They want people like Libs of TikTok to be able to dwell in anonymity, in this weird gray zone
where they will keep saying it's not newsworthy. But the only reason they're invested,
is because of how much they care about this. They love the ability of Libs of TikTok,
to get millions of conservatives fired up every day.
To go after individual teachers, individual trans people,
doing far more doxing in the process than anything that Taylor Lorenz did. I apologize,
I obviously have a lot of thoughts about this Adriane, but I want to give you a chance.
>> Yeah, no, I can tell and I completely understand why, and something I would add to that.
Is that what the right wants to do, is essentially say the left is doing
the exact same thing we're doing. So they're misusing this term dox, to try to attribute
to Taylor Lorenz, and some of the sick and twisted things that they've done. And to be able to say,
everybody's doing it and they're just as bad as us, when that is very much not the case at all.
It just really shows you that these individuals have
no intent on doing right or doing anything honorable, but instead they will conflate,
misuse. They will do everything they can to to try to put people in precarious positions,
or to misrepresent the truth. >> Exactly yeah, and look,
I'm glad that Taylor Lorenz is defending herself, when you get to some of the other defenders.
She used this meme to point out the most basic reporting practices,
right wing media, is this doxing 100%? Tucker Carlson knows he doesn't care,
his guests, including by the way, Glenn Greenwald. Who as, literally nobody didn't
think that he was going to be brought on Tucker Carlson, to defend Libs of TikTok.
Whose sole purpose is to get millions and millions of Americans, to define their politics entirely.
By hatred, for the LGBTQ community, goes on there,
pretends he doesn't understand any of this. He doesn't understand what doxing is despite
his past with doxing sources for the intercept. He doesn't understand any of this,
and he's just happy to help the right defend this account, this lives of TikTok account.
And look, if you're not familiar with lives of TikTok, basically what they do is they go on
social media. They'll take like a teacher saying something very benign, maybe a teacher identifying
that they are personally gay. They will then lie about the content of it in captions, and then
spread it to try to get their followers to harass these teachers or individuals, to get them fired.
It is the definition of whatever council culture
is supposed to be as presented by the right, that is what
this is. And it really plays into something we've been talking about for some time here,
it is how you mechanically, through technology, go about producing the canonization of politics.
Where all politics is not about resources, it's not about economics, not about crises.
It is about getting every single person, to just get involved in regular people's lives.
And I've also talked about the fact that a lot of past decades, over the past century or so.
There's been a lot of predictions about how exactly you produce like a fascist dystopia.
And in a lot of those portrayals, what they do is, they produce a population that are sheep.
And we have seen very clearly that that's not how you do it,
you produce a population that are piranha. And every day you just toss a little nugget of meat
into the water, and you see them shred it, and that is what they're doing.
And Libs of TikTok is one of the main tools for that, identifying regular people, a teacher from
some city in Illinois. A trans athlete from Texas, and then pointing it out to millions of people
through the power of social media is saying, go get them. That is what your mania is about today,
you're going to take this person down, you're going to ruin actually ruin their lives.
Libs of TikTok is perfectly fine, they're going to be incredibly wealthy by the end of this,
what do you know? They announced that they've got a sub stack too,
the circle of grift continues. >> And one thing also too that I find to be rather
perplexing, I don't know how you'd say it, but the fact that when they put her name out there.
That can expose her to potential lawsuits, this individual who's running Libs of TikTok,
and so now that she's been identified. It kind of takes a little bit of that veil away,
and sets her up for potential accountability. Whether it's a defamation lawsuit,
or if that individual is well aware that their followers are taking that information
and using it to harass the person, that's the subject of their TikTok.
Then that individual now can go to the source, there might be various laws available to them.
To seek to right the wrong that's been created by Libs of TikTok, and that's something that
is somewhat redeeming in this situation. But like you said, the right is angry about that,
because they want this individual to be able to operate under the cloak of anonymity.
As opposed to have to defend yourself, and actually
face potential consequences for your actions.