Fake news website ZeroHedge leads the pack in anti-military, anti-Veteran smears and propaganda under the guise of reporting the "news," deploying an army of trolls and hackers to attack American patriots
AGENCIES
06/16/2018
ZeroHedge, an online website has been umasked as an anti-American, anti-military propaganda machine specialising in bogus economic "advice" and "Doom Porn." It has a long history of hacked accounts and fake posters utilising the latest troll tactics on anyone they deem to be a threat.
ZeroHedge’s true purpose is not totally clear up front, in part because its management obscures the names of all writers using the pseudonym “Tyler Durden”, and in part because it’s acted in a couple different manners.
It was originally founded in 2009 in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis to promote economic conspiracies about the crisis and the idea that the best result is a more complete economic failure so that a new, more pure capitalism could emerge in its wake.
The particular form of capitalism it promotes is called Austrian School Economics. It espouses ideas similar to Randian philosophy in that it promotes an economic vision based around the unfettered choices of individuals, rather than systemic effects generally accepted by modern empirical modeling. Some of its elements are now folded into modern economics, much of it has been discredited.
The men behind the "finance blog"have been unmasked after one former blogger with the site revealed the identity of his employers.
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"Fight Club" has an infamous reputation for losing money for investors that have followed their bogus advice and that of their economic "articles" |
Lokey, 32, says the other men behind the site are 37-year-old Daniel Ivandjiiski, a Bulgarian former hedge fund analyst, and Tim Backshall, a 45-year-old credit derivatives strategist. Lokey claims to have worked for Zero Hedge for more than a year.
The identity of the bloggers running Zero Hedge has long been the subject of speculation in the financial community, with Ivandjiiski often cited as the likely source of much of the site's content. As early as 2009, speculation that Ivandjiiski could be behind the blog appeared in US media, with a New York Post article titled "BLOGGER MAY HAVE A PAST" speculating that he was in fact behind Zero Hedge.
Ivandjiiski worked in a hedge fund before being kicked out of the securities industry during the height of the financial crisis in 2008 for insider trading, the report says.
Backshall declined to comment to Bloomberg on the matter, while Ivandjiiski confirmed that the three men were the only ones on Zero Hedge's payroll in the past year.
Secrecy at Zero Hedge is helped by the fact that all reports on the site are filed under the byline Tyler Durden, taken from one of the protagonists of the cult movie "Fight Club."
The Durden byline reflects the character's bleak outlook on the world, which is thought to be shared by the men behind Zero Hedge. Played by Brad Pitt, he despises the financial system and consumerism, frequently spouting lines like: "Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy s--- we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place."
That bleak, anticonsumerist approach is not true, Lokey told Bloomberg in an email. "What you are reading at Zero Hedge is nonsense," he said. "And you shouldn't support it. Two guys who live a lifestyle you only dream of are pretending to speak for you."
Since the Bloomberg post was published,
Zero Hedge has posted a rebuttal to the article, alleging that much of what Lokey says is in fact untrue, and that Lokey is "an emotionally unstable, psychologically troubled alcoholic with a drug dealer past, as per his own disclosures."
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