A Washington Post article: "Leaker of U.S. secret documents worked on military base, friend says." [that's my unpaywalled gift link] Subtitle: "THE DISCORD LEAKS | The online group that received hundreds of pages of classified material included foreigners, members tell The Post." Shane Harris and Samuel Oakford. April 12, 2023.
Here's the article's lede:
"The man behind a massive leak of U.S. government secrets that has exposed spying on allies, revealed the grim prospects for Ukraine’s war with Russia and ignited diplomatic fires for the White House is a young, charismatic gun enthusiast who shared highly classified documents with a group of far-flung acquaintances searching for companionship amid the isolation of the pandemic."
Regarding that article, Jeff Sharlet says today:
"The leaker, according to one of his sect of devout Christian teens. This is what I call in THE UNDERTOW an 'innocence cult” of the Right, an implicitly misogynist conflation of strength & purity, God & guns, + the bastardized gnostic gospel of the Trumpocene, secrets & codes.' ... Remember when OK GOP Sen. Jim Inhofe anticipated shape of things to come w/ mantra “God, gays, guns”? (Long time ago. Prescient proto-fascist.) Ukraine leak is result of such theology, trickle down American fundamentalism, ascending imaginary peaks of conspiracism. ... I’m against antifascists throwing “grooming” back at fascists. Term itself can be moral panic weapon. But here—adult gathers depressed teens in secret meetings to rule by aesthetic of “fitness,” violence, & piety in service of criminal expression of his ego—what to call that? ... [there is] a fundamental white supremacist conspiracy theory, designed to seduce 'normies' by convincing them that hate crimes are really government plots." — see the Twitter thread by Jeff Sharlet, 13 Apr 2023
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