Cassandra MacDonald
BornCassandra Fairbanks
(1985-03-11) March 11, 1985[1][2]
United States
OccupationOnline journalist
NationalityAmerican
Years active2014–present

Cassandra MacDonald (born Cassandra Fairbanks; March 11, 1985) is an American journalist and activist. As a journalist, she has worked for the Russian state-owned[3] international news agency Sputnik (2015–2017), far-right[8][15] American conspiracy theory[19] websites Big League Politics (2017) and The Gateway Pundit (since 2017), as well as Timcast (since 2021).

A one-time supporter of Bernie Sanders, MacDonald has received attention for her political transformation to a supporter of Donald Trump. As an activist, she is best known for "Find the Dancing Man," her 2015 social media campaign against fat shaming, and for helping to organize the DeploraBall in Washington, D.C., to celebrate the 2017 inauguration of President Donald Trump.[20] In 2020, MacDonald submitted evidence to the legal team defending WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in his London extradition hearing.

Early life

Cassandra MacDonald grew up in a small town in central Massachusetts, an hour from Boston.[21] She is of Puerto Rican descent on her mother's side, and claims to have roots in Catalonia. After high school, she enrolled at the University of Massachusetts Amherst to study physics, but dropped out after a few months. Moving to California, she attended the Los Angeles Recording School and became a sound engineer.[21] In that capacity, she traveled the country,[22] working for bands in what Cosmopolitan calls "the Warped Tour vein."[21]

Activism

MacDonald's activism began with Greenpeace environmentalism, followed by animal rights protests at SeaWorld and circuses. In 2013, she took part in the hacktivist collective Anonymous and helped run a popular Anonymous Twitter account.[21] By then living in Pittsburgh, she traveled to Ohio and helped organize the outcry over the Steubenville High School rape case.[2] In 2015, MacDonald spent several months with Black Lives Matter in Ferguson, Missouri, amid civil unrest stemming from the 2014 fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer.[23]

Social media

In 2015, photos posted on the anonymous chat board 4chan[21] created what the BBC called one of the year's "biggest internet sensations"[24] by showing an obese, 47-year-old Englishman dancing exuberantly at a concert. "Spotted this specimen trying to dance the other week," the caption read. "He stopped when he saw us laughing."[25] Incensed at the fat shaming, MacDonald launched a social media campaign to "Find the Dancing Man".[26] With a friend, MacDonald created a GoFundMe account to locate the man and fly him to Los Angeles for a celebrity-packed party with 1,000 guests[27] at Avalon Hollywood, one of L.A.'s hottest clubs. The viral campaign raised $70,000 for anti-bullying and positive body image charities in the U.S. and UK.[28]

Shift to right

In 2016, MacDonald "underwent something of a political transformation," according to BBC News.[24] Having begun the year as a supporter of Hillary Clinton's main rival within the Democratic Party, Vermont U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, MacDonald was by fall rallying her 70K Twitter followers to support Donald Trump.[24] In an October 2016 episode of BBC Television's Panorama, MacDonald said, "I'm going to be voting for Donald Trump. I think that Hillary Clinton is a terribly dangerous person."[29]

Cosmopolitan subsequently named her a leader in the defiant Deplorable movement,[21] alluding to a campaign speech by Hillary Clinton. In January 2017, MacDonald was one of the organizers of the DeploraBall, an unofficial inaugural ball at Washington's National Press Club to celebrate Trump's victory.[20]

In January 2020, she was named as a witness and her communications were subpoenaed in the defamation lawsuit between NPR and Ed Butowsky over reporting and conspiracy theories about the murder of Seth Rich.[30] In February 2020, MacDonald attended the America First Political Action Conference, meeting with author Michelle Malkin and white supremacist Nick Fuentes.[31]

In 2020, MacDonald claimed that trespassers set upon her house during on the night of May 31, pounding on windows, detonating fireworks directed towards her residence, and shooting firearms; she blamed Antifa for the incident. A supporter set up a GoFundMe campaign to help with moving costs, which accrued over $24,000.[32] Right wing watch published a report contradicting MacDonald's claims, citing "conversations with eight of Fairbanks' nearby neighbors," "nonexistent coverage in local press," and a report obtained from the Metropolitan Police Department—all of which corroborated only the claim that fireworks were detonated approximately 100 feet away and no gunshots were fired.[33]

Writing career

MacDonald's writing career began in 2014 as an outgrowth of her activism. At the Free Thought Project, she reported mostly about police brutality.[34][21] In 2015 she wrote for PINAC News, continuing to chronicle controversial policing around the United States.[35] That summer, she live streamed her own arrest while covering anti-police brutality protests on Interstate 70 in St. Louis.[36]

Also in 2015, MacDonald was hired as a reporter for the Russian state-funded international news agency Sputnik, and moved to Washington, D.C., for the position.[21] In early 2016, while still with Sputnik, MacDonald also wrote 10 bylined articles for Teen Vogue.[37] While working for Sputnik, MacDonald was often a target of conspiracy theories by Louise Mensch; MacDonald filed a complaint with the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center against Mensch for cyber stalking and harassment.[38]

In April 2017, MacDonald and Mike Cernovich posed for a photo behind the lectern in the White House briefing room, each making an OK gesture at the camera. According to Britain's The Independent, this "sparked outcry on social media" because the hand sign can symbolize white power. MacDonald denied the gesture was racist, citing her partial Puerto Rican ancestry (her mother is from San Juan).[39] After journalist Emma Roller tweeted the photo, which she captioned "just two people doing a white power hand gesture in the White House," MacDonald sued in federal court alleging defamation.[40] A year later, the court found that MacDonald failed to show that Roller posted the image with actual malice.[41]

Upon leaving Sputnik, MacDonald spent April–November 2017 as a senior reporter at Big League Politics.[40] In December 2017, MacDonald became the Washington bureau chief for The Gateway Pundit.[42]

In 2021, American citizen journalist Tim Pool hired Fairbanks to run his website.[43]

WikiLeaks

In October 2017, MacDonald wrote a story for Big League Politics about Julian Assange.[44] In January 2020, National Public Radio subpoenaed MacDonald seeking documents and electronically stored information relating to her conversations with Assange, among others, including journalists. The subpoena was part of a defamation lawsuit against NPR by Texas money manager Ed Butowsky. MacDonald's attorney responded that since the subpoena requested work product protected under the District of Columbia's reporter shield law, "no documents or other things will be produced pursuant to the subpoena."[45]

On February 24, 2020, Politico reported that MacDonald had submitted evidence to the legal team defending Assange in his London extradition hearing.[46] The evidence consists of screenshots and recorded phone calls spanning October 2018 – September 2019 that MacDonald had with Arthur Schwartz, identified by The New York Times as a "conservative consultant who is a friend and informal adviser to Donald Trump Jr.".[47]

On February 27, 2020, The Daily Dot reported that MacDonald posted audio of a September 2019 phone call from Schwartz to her in which he stated that Ambassador Grenell "took orders from the president" in brokering Assange's arrest.[48]

On September 21, 2020, MacDonald's written statement was read in a London court during extradition proceedings against Assange. She recounted receiving advanced details from Schwartz about U.S. plans to charge Assange in connection with the Manning leaks. The barrister representing the U.S. government questioned the partiality of MacDonald, an acknowledged WikiLeaks supporter, and argued that "the truth of what Ms. Fairbanks was told by Arthur Schwartz was not in her knowledge." MacDonald also said when Schwartz phoned her in October 2018 after she posted an interview with Assange's mother in a group chat that included Schwartz and others close to Trump, he "was extremely angry" and alluded to her nine-year-old child, "which I perceived as an intimidation tactic." MacDonald said he repeatedly told her to stop advocating for WikiLeaks and Assange, saying a pardon would not happen. She added that besides informing Assange of all this during her January 2019 visit with him, "I also met with Chelsea Manning in person and told her that I feared they might come after her again."[49]

Chelsea Manning

MacDonald sent Chelsea Manning personal letters while Manning was in prison. After Manning's release, she and MacDonald were on opposing sides in a protest in the Bay Area, though they later met over coffee to converse. In January 2018, MacDonald provided a complimentary ticket and VIP wristband for Chelsea Manning to attend "A Night for Freedom" gala for Trump supporters.[50]

References

  1. ↑ Fairbanks MacDonald, Cassandra. "Profile". Facebook. Retrieved February 25, 2020.
  2. 1 2 Graves, Ginny (June 6, 2013). "Attention Rapists: You've Met Your Match". Glamour. Retrieved February 25, 2020.
  3. ↑ Romanova, Tatiana; David, Maxine (July 25, 2021). The Routledge Handbook of EU-Russia Relations: Structures, Actors, Issues. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-351-00624-8. Retrieved March 1, 2022 – via Google Books. Because of the centralisation of statue authority and greater state influence over the media in Russia as compared to the EU, it is relatively easy for Moscow to project a coherent and unified interpretation of events. For Russia, an important vehicle is the state-owned Sputnik and associated RIA Novosti media and news outlets, as well as the RT news and internet channel, which, besides the Russian version, is broadcast in English, French, German, Spanish and Arabic.
  4. ↑ Moser, Bob (Fall 2019). "Interference 2020". Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved February 7, 2021.
  5. ↑ Zadrozny, Brandy; Collins, Ben (August 27, 2018). "Secret message board drives 'pizzagate'-style harassment campaign of small businesses". NBC News. Retrieved February 24, 2020.
  6. ↑ Gabriel, Trip; Grynbaum, Michael M. (February 4, 2019). "With Northam Picture, Obscure Publication Plays Big Role in Virginia Politics". The New York Times. Retrieved February 24, 2020.
  7. ↑ Ortiz, Jorge L. (February 7, 2019). "Blackface, assault allegations: How Virginia's political crisis unfolded". USA Today. Retrieved February 7, 2021.
  8. ↑ [4][5][6][7]
  9. ↑ Krafft, P. M.; Donovan, Joan (March 3, 2020). "Disinformation by Design: The Use of Evidence Collages and Platform Filtering in a Media Manipulation Campaign". Political Communication. Routledge. 37 (2): 194–214. doi:10.1080/10584609.2019.1686094.
  10. 1 2 Wiggins, Bradley E (August 1, 2020). "Boogaloo and Civil War 2: Memetic antagonism in expressions of covert activism". New Media & Society. SAGE Publishing. 23 (11): 11. doi:10.1177/1461444820945317. S2CID 225356084.
  11. ↑ Conroy, Meredith (March 2018). "Strength, Stamina, and Sexism in the 2016 Presidential Race". Politics & Gender. Cambridge University Press. 14 (1): 116–121. doi:10.1017/S1743923X17000642. S2CID 149955515.
  12. ↑ Salter, Michael (September 2019). "Online Justice in the Circuit of Capital: #MeToo, Marketization and the Deformation of Sexual Ethics". In Fileborn, Bianca; Loney-Howes, Rachel (eds.). #MeToo and the Politics of Social Change. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 317–334. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-15213-0_20. ISBN 978-3-030-15213-0. S2CID 203437591. Retrieved October 10, 2020 – via ResearchGate.
  13. ↑ Tani, Maxwell (October 2, 2017). "Fake news about the Las Vegas shooting spread wildly on Facebook, Google, and Twitter". Business Insider. Archived from the original on October 7, 2017. Retrieved October 7, 2017. The 4chan board posts were quickly picked up and magnified by The Gateway Pundit, a far-right website...
  14. ↑ Darcy, Oliver; Gold, Hadas (February 15, 2018). "Far-right says FBI, distracted by Russia probe, missed warning signs in Florida shooting". CNN Money. Retrieved February 15, 2018. The Gateway Pundit, a far-right website known for peddling misinformation and conspiracy theories...
  15. ↑ [9][10][11][12][13][14]
  16. ↑ Faris, Robert M.; Roberts, Hal; Etling, Bruce; Bourassa, Nikki; Zuckerman, Ethan; Benkler, Yochai (August 2017). "Partisanship, Propaganda, and Disinformation: Online Media and the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election". Berkman Klein Center Research Publication 6. Harvard University: Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society: 15, 17–18, 44, 60, 63. ISSN 3375-9251. Retrieved October 10, 2020.
  17. ↑ Gabriel, Trip; Grynbaum, Michael M. (February 4, 2019). "With Northam Picture, Obscure Publication Plays Big Role in Virginia Politics". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved January 7, 2020.
  18. ↑ Goforth, Claire (November 13, 2020). "MAGA star who predicted 50-state Trump victory says he's single because of feminism". The Daily Dot. Like many of his cohorts, Pool makes his bread by spouting an endless font of right-wing talking points and conspiracy theories...
  19. ↑ [10][16][17][18]
  20. 1 2 Marantz, Andrew (January 30, 2017). "Trump Supporters at the DeploraBall". The New Yorker. Retrieved February 25, 2020.
  21. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Nelson, Rebecca (May 18, 2017). "Cassandra Fairbanks Loved Bernie Sanders. Now She's a Donald Trump Superfan". Cosmopolitan. Retrieved February 25, 2020.
  22. ↑ Marantz, Andrew (2020). Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation. Penguin Publishing Group. pp. 49–54. ISBN 978-0-525-52228-7. Retrieved February 17, 2021.
  23. ↑ McKew, Molly (October 3, 2018). "Brett Kavanaugh and the Information Terrorists Trying to Reshape America". Wired. Retrieved February 25, 2020.
  24. ↑ Regan, Helen (May 25, 2015). "The Fat-Shamed 'Dancing Man' Who Became an Internet Sensation Attends a Party in His Honor in L.A." Time. Retrieved June 1, 2020.
  25. ↑ "After Witnessing Cruelty Against Overweight Man, LA Group And Stars Offer To Throw Him A Dance Party". KCBS-TV. March 7, 2015. Retrieved February 25, 2020.
  26. ↑ Todd, Bridget (May 27, 2015). "Man shamed for dancing in public gets star-studded dance party". MSNBC. Retrieved February 26, 2020.
  27. ↑ "Fat-shamed 'Dancing Man' parties in LA". News Corp Australia. May 25, 2015. Retrieved February 26, 2020.
  28. ↑ Paxman, Jeremy (October 21, 2016). "Paxman on Trump v Clinton: Divided America". BBC World News. Retrieved February 25, 2020.
  29. ↑ "Journalist subpoenaed for communications in ongoing defamation suit". U.S. Press Freedom Tracker. December 21, 2021. Retrieved October 15, 2023.
  30. ↑ "Michelle Malkin is Attempting to Normalize White Supremacy". Anti-Defamation League. August 5, 2020. Retrieved December 31, 2023.
  31. ↑ Goforth, Claire (June 17, 2020). "Cassandra Fairbanks says she was attacked by antifa. Cops say it was fireworks down the street". Daily Dot. Retrieved September 25, 2020.
  32. ↑ Holt, Jared (June 17, 2020). "Cassandra Fairbanks Claims Antifa Attacked Her. Police Reports and Neighbors Say Otherwise". Right Wing Watch. Retrieved September 25, 2020.
  33. ↑ Fairbanks, Cassandra (2014–2015). "Cassandra Fairbanks". Free Thought Project. Retrieved February 25, 2020.
  34. ↑ Fairbanks, Cassandra (2015). "Conversations by @cassandrarules". PINAC News. Retrieved February 25, 2020.
  35. ↑ Miller, Carlos (August 10, 2015). "PINAC Reporter Cassandra Fairbanks Live Streams Own Arrest". PINAC News. Retrieved February 25, 2020.
  36. ↑ Fairbanks, Cassandra (January–February 2016). "Cassandra Fairbanks". Teen Vogue. Retrieved February 25, 2020.
  37. ↑ Feldman, Brian (April 11, 2017). "Anti-Trump Twitter-Hero Louise Mensch Has #Resisted Her Way Into Legal Complaint". Intelligencer. Retrieved February 17, 2021.
  38. ↑ Shugerman, Emily (April 29, 2017). "Two members of alt-right accused of making white supremacist hand signs in White House after receiving press passes". The Independent. Retrieved February 25, 2020.
  39. 1 2 Bernstein, Joseph (June 1, 2017). "A Pro-Trump Writer Just Sued A Fusion Reporter For Accusing Her Of Making A "White Supremacist" Gesture". BuzzFeed News. Retrieved February 25, 2020.
  40. ↑ Eakin, Britain (June 7, 2018). "Writer Loses Defamation Claim Over Journalist's Tweet". Courthouse News Service. Retrieved February 25, 2020.
  41. ↑ "Cassandra Fairbanks". LinkedIn. Retrieved February 17, 2021.
  42. ↑ Silverman, Robert (August 1, 2021). "How 'Coward and Phony' Tim Pool Became One of the Biggest Political YouTubers on the Planet". The Daily Beast. Retrieved August 1, 2021.
  43. ↑ Fairbanks, Cassandra (October 25, 2017). "DC WHISPERS Exclusive: Washington Insider tells BLP what President Trump is asking about Seth Rich". Big League Politics. Retrieved February 25, 2020.
  44. ↑ "Journalist subpoenaed for communications in ongoing defamation suit". U.S. Press Freedom Tracker. Freedom of the Press Foundation. March 3, 2020. Retrieved March 3, 2020.
  45. ↑ Bertrand, Natasha (February 24, 2020). "Assange fight draws in Trump's new intel chief". Politico. Retrieved February 26, 2020.
  46. ↑ Vogel, Kenneth P. and Jeremy W. Peters (August 25, 2019). "Trump Allies Target Journalists Over Coverage Deemed Hostile to White House". The New York Times. Retrieved February 26, 2020.
  47. ↑ Goforth, Claire (February 27, 2020). "Far-right blogger claims Trump ordered arrest of Julian Assange". The Daily Dot. Retrieved February 27, 2020.
  48. ↑ Goodwin, Bill (September 21, 2020). "Trump implicated in plans to prosecute Assange over war leaks". Computer Weekly. Retrieved September 21, 2020.
  49. ↑ Burns, Katelyn (January 26, 2018). "Chelsea Manning on Her Alt-Right Partying: I Was a Spy, Not a Racist". The Daily Beast. Retrieved February 25, 2020.

Further reading

  • Marantz, Andrew. Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation. Viking, 2019. ISBN 978-0525522263
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