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Ever since comic actor Jay Johnston participated in the January 6th riots, his former comedy compatriots have kept relatively quiet. Bob’s Burgers co-star Kristen Schaal stopped the pretending on a recent episode of David Cross’s Senses Working Overtime podcast, asking the Mr. Show star about his old castmate: “What about Jay Johnston? Are you going to see him?”

She took a long sip of her coffee and batted her eyes, knowing she’d just thrown a grenade into the room.

Cross didn’t even know hooking up with Johnston was a possibility. “Oh, he’s out of prison?” Schaal scoffed — as far as she knew, Johnston never set foot in a jail cell.

If that was true, Cross observed, “What a lucky traitor.” But he had no intention of seeing his old Mr. Show partner. “I don’t even know where Jay is,” he confessed. “I don’t know...

It’s Sunday night and Lance Johnston, a 23-year-old content creator, is smiling and posing in front of a giant TikTok logo. Johnston was one of the first political content creators on the app in its early days, and amassed a six-figure following in 2020 by posting conservative commentary. After his videos ran afoul of TikTok’s community guidelines, however, he was banned and forced to pursue another career. “Every person I knew on political TikTok got banned,” he says. “It was very upsetting.”

Now, however, he’s back and creating content full-time again.

Many great investigative pieces have been written about Vice, the publication that had a spectacular rise as well as an explosive collapse, culminating in the mass layoffs of hundreds of employees earlier this year and subsequent attempts by those like co-founder Shane Smith to save it. Eddie Huang’s documentary, “Vice Is Broke,” is not going to be one of them.

This is something that the director, a former employee and host for the company who says he had to fight to receive full compensation for the work he did, would likely agree with. Early on in his documentary, Huang makes clear that he isn’t interested in following conventions of the form by relying on the familiar pattern of cutting to talking heads and recountings of what happened.

Instead, he sits down with a collection of former employees one-by-one to talk with them in extended interviews about their experiences...

Eddie Huang came to both bury and praise Vice at the opening night of the Toronto Film Festival on Thursday.

The author, chef and former host of the bankrupt media company’s show, “Huang’s World,” was on hand with his new documentary “Vice Is Broke.” The film serves as both an ode to Vice’s anarchic spirit and the generations of aggressive, barrier-pushing, break-shit journalists and filmmakers it employed, as well as a darker look at the greed and questionable ethics that helped send it into Chapter 11. And Huang, who says he got an NDA he had signed waived in return for unpaid residuals, made it clear that Vice, or what’s left of it, isn’t too happy with what he made.

“Their lawyers are still trying to fight us on this film,” Huang said during a question-and-answer session following the documentary’s premiere at TIFF Lightbox Cinema. He added that Shane Smith,...

The title of Eddie Huang’s new documentary says it all: “Vice Is Broke.” The media company that defined counterculture sensibilities filed for bankruptcy in 2023. And Huang — the multitalented author, on-camera personality, and documentarian — began his new film with a grievance.

First, Huang says in an interview, he had a personal falling-out with controversial Vice executive Shane Smith, the face of the brand and the mastermind of the company’s scaling-up beyond what was sustainable. (Huang declines to go into the nature of the offense.) Then, he noticed that he was owed money for his on-camera work for Vice, including the TV series “Huang’s World,” in which he traveled and experienced other cultures in the style of his role model and late friend, Anthony Bourdain.

“I had been asking for an accounting since 2018,” Huang says. “They kicked the can down the road and never paid me my residuals. The bankruptcy...

“Bob’s Burgers” alum Jay Johnston won’t be slinging animated pizzas anymore.

The voice actor and star who also appeared in “Anchorman” has pled guilty to the felony charge of civil disorder after interfering with police officers during the January 6, 2021 insurrection. Johnston faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison; he will be sentenced by U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols on October 7.

Johnston previously voiced “Bob’s Burgers” villain Jimmy Pesto on the beloved Fox series. His character appeared in 43 episodes across 11 seasons, with Johnston’s final voice acting airing in Season 11 episode “The Bridge Over Troubled Rudy” on May 2, 2021.

The Daily Beast reported at the time that Johnston was “banned” from the series after it was revealed he was part of the Jan. 6 riots. Johnston’s former “Bob’s Burgers” co-star Tim Heidecker tweeted that he had “fully confirmed through reliable sources” that Johnston was in the videos circulated...

Twitter lead client partner Alex Martinez had already gone on a handful of dates with Bobby Harr when, over drinks at a cute French restaurant on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Martinez found himself venting about Elon Musk’s acquisition of the social media platform. Musk’s attitude toward disinformation concerned him. “People don’t know how to make a rational decision if you don’t put out correct things that are supposed to be out in the public,” he told Harr. And Martinez found Musk himself off-putting. “You’re literally special needs,...

Pour out a Pabst Blue Ribbon for Vice News. The 2000-era counterculture heyday is now truly over. Welcome back to the age of corporate media hegemony; the algorithm is waiting to curate some content for you. Vice’s goal to take over the world fell a little short.

The ubiquitous online-news media and lifestyle branding company, one that brought us classics featuring lurid stories about designer drugs and ridiculous characters like General Butt Naked, is inching closer to the grave.

Estimated to be worth nearly $6 billion at one point (Usd) the one-stop hipster destination is destined for news Valhalla alongside the likes of other once incredible news outlets like ID Magazine and Spy. Who? Exactly. News media is fickle, and so is pop culture. Vice tried to balance both the journalism and the influencer aspect of their business model, and for a while, did so quite well.

But now the...

After weeks of speculation, Vice Media filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Monday to smooth a sale of the company.

In a statement, Vice listed both assets and liabilities in the range of more than $500 million to as much as $1 billion in a Chapter 11 petition filed in a New York court. Bloomberg reports that Fortress Credit Corp. ranked among the biggest secured creditors, with claims totaling about $475 million.

The company added that a consortium that includes Fortress, Soros Fund Management and Monroe Capital has agreed to purchase the group for $225 million, including all assets and taking on all liabilities. Vice expects to complete the sale process in the next two to three months.

In the face of a weak advertising market and a turbulent economy, Vice, like fellow digital media darlings BuzzFeed and Vox Media, has struggled to manage costs and grow revenues.

Filing for bankruptcy is an epic fall from...

Vice Media Group, the swashbuckling, youth-skewing digital media brand, is preparing to file for bankruptcy.

The company, which was valued at $5.7 billion in 2017, is considering the move after struggling to find a buyer, according to reports.

It comes after a tumultuous start to the year for the company, which saw Nancy Dubuc exit after five years, replaced by Bruce Dixon and Hozefa Lokhandwala, as well as the departure of Global President of News & Entertainment Jesse Angelo to launch his own production company.

Last week, the company underwent the latest in a series of layoffs, streamlining its news division and canceling its signature show in Vice News Tonight.

“Vice Media Group has been engaged in a comprehensive evaluation of strategic alternatives and planning,” Vice said in a statement to the New York Times, which broke the news. “The company, its board and stakeholders continue to be focused on finding the best path for the company.

David Choe, the star of Netflix’s new hit series “Beef,” is an artist and an actor. But his performance in the series isn’t what has people talking — it’s an admission he made back in 2014 detailing how he sexually assaulted a masseuse, which he later said he made up and called “bad storytelling.” Critics have labeled him a rapist and have called for a boycott of the show.

Here’s everything to know about David Choe.

Who is David Choe?

Born in Los Angeles on April 21, 1976, Choe spent most of his upbringing raised by his Korean immigrant parents in the Koreatown neighborhood. During his teens, he became a spray paint artist, which ultimately led to his full-scale career as a painter, mural artist and art creative. After a short stint attending California College of the Arts and Crafts in Oakland, he went on to self-publish a graphic novel called “Slow Jams,...

Donald Trump is leveling criticism at Jewish leaders for not expressing enough “loyalty” towards him in the wake of his dinner with two antisemitic Holocaust deniers at his Mar-a-Lago home.

“Jewish Leaders forgot that I was the best, by far, President for Israel,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Friday. “They should be ashamed of themselves. This lack of loyalty to their greatest friends and allies is why large numbers in Congress, and so many others, have stopped giving support to Israel.”

Trump, having dined with Ye and Nick Fuentes, attacks...

Today, Ye, fka Kanye West, did something he hasn’t done much in 2022 in the midst of trying to rewrite history on Nazis — he released a song. The controversial artist, who has come under fire for the toxic work conditions at his Yeezy empire, uploaded a two-minute song entitled “Someday We’ll All Be Free” on his Instagram. Ye also allowed new friend Alex Jones to release the song on his InfoWars platform. The Instagram caption for the song reads, “Censori overload The variable epitope library from the antigen promotes...

In the wake of Kanye West’s horrific media tour spouting love for Hitler, denying the Holocaust, and preaching naked antisemitism, many far-right members of the GOP are scrubbing their social media feeds of past praise for the rapper. A notable exception to that trend is Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) who has preserved her praise of the artist now known as Ye.

The Republican Party has little celebrity outside of hoary rockers like Ted Nugent, Kid Rock, and Lee Greenwood, so it wasn’t surprising when GOP figures hyped Ye...

Threats of escalating violence caused Pennsylvania State University to cancel a speaking event Monday co-hosted by Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes.

University administration previously denounced the event that was sponsored by a recognized student organization, Uncensored America, and was planned to feature McInnes and Alex Stein a comedian and BlazeTV contributor.

University officials decided to allow the “politically provocative comedy night” to take place in the interest of free speech.

“We must continue to uphold the right to free speech — even speech we find abhorrent — because Penn State fully supports the fundamental right of free speech,” the University said. “These two speakers and others like them are provocateurs, who intentionally use derogatory and hateful language to stir passions and widen divisions among us.”

Uncensored America was founded in 2020 by Trump field organizer Sean Semanko while he was attending Penn State University. The organization’s mission is to fight for free...

Penn State pulled the plug on a speaking event hosted by far-right Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes less than an hour before it was set to take place on Monday, citing a “threat of escalating violence.” Administrators admonished McInnes’ allies for instigating unrest, but it multiple statements also slammed the students protesting, some of whom were pepper sprayed on their own campus.

Students had been calling for the event’s cancellation for weeks, citing McInnes and the Proud Boys’ history of provocation and violence. The Southern Poverty Law Center have...

It almost seemed like they came out of nowhere: burly, bearded white men in their forties in tactical vests, streaming in and out of the Capitol shouting expletives and violent threats targeted at government officials. In the first few days after the terrifying events of Jan. 6, 2021, many Americans watched the footage from the attempted insurrection with horror, wondering how it could possibly have happened or who could have orchestrated the attacks on the Capitol. Those in the anti-fascist community, however, as well as journalists on the ground covering the events leading up to Jan.

The factions of far-right militants in America can seem a jumble of militiamen and revolutionaries, neo-fascists and white supremacists. While they all share a love of guns and a loathing of liberalism, not all militant groups share the same tactics, aims, or trigger points. How do you differentiate an Oath Keeper militant from a Proud Boy brawler or a Boogaloo Boi from the Patriot Front? We’ve got you covered.

Below, a survey of some of the most dangerous groups on the right, the objectives they pursue, what makes them unique — and why they fight.

Over 70 episodes of the Joe Rogan Experience were quietly removed from Spotify Friday, adding yet another development in the ongoing debate over whether the streaming giant is responsible for monitoring misinformation and harmful content posted to its platform.

Among the episodes removed include interviews with Amy Schumer, Marc Maron, Bill Burr, Andy Dick, Tool frontman Maynard J. Keenan and Iliza Shlesinger.

It’s unclear why the episodes in question were pulled, and representatives for Rogan and Spotify did not respond to Rolling Stone‘s requests for comments. However, eagle-eyed fans...

Sophie Dawson’s cannibal drama “Headhunter” and Jingyi Shao’s basketball story “Chang Can Dunk” earned the top spots on the 2020 edition of The Black List.

“Headhunter” follows a cannibal who chooses his victims based on their Instagram clout, but he finds his routine shaken by a man who wants to be eaten. “Chang Can Dunk” centers on an Asian American teen and basketball fan who wants to be able to dunk. He soon learns much more about himself, his friends and his family.

Cat Wilkins’ high-school comedy script “Two-Faced” was fourth on the list. Taraji P. Henson will make her feature directorial debut on the Bron Studios pic, in addition to producing and starring in the movie. “Two-Faced” follows Joy, a Black high school senior whose chance of attending the college of her dreams is threatened by her wildly popular and charismatic school principal after she confronts him with evidence of his racist past.

“The Mandalorian” star Gina Carano has stirred both pushback and support from “Star Wars” and Disney fans alike on social media after posting a number of controversial tweets, including about mask-wearing and hypothetical voter fraud. The actress, who plays Cara Dune in the Disney+ series, was also previously accused of mocking trans pronouns on social media. See some of the tweets below.

The #FireGinaCarano hashtag began picking up steam last week, but has continued to build momentum after Disney+ dropped the “Chapter 12” episode of “The Mandalorian” on Friday, in which Carano stars. But at the same time, #StandWithGinaCarano has also begun trending on Twitter in response from fans who feel the plea to cast Carano out of the show is another example of censorship, and cancel culture gone too far.

“It’s amazing how the #FireGinaCarano folks, don’t even see that their cancelation campaigns only verify many of the things she’s fighting against,...

“White Noise” director Daniel Lombroso’s interest in the alt-right started in 2016, five months before Donald’s Trump’s election. Working as a reporter for The Atlantic magazine, he spent three years in the field, starting his research on Reddit and 4chan before gaining the trust of three of the movement’s brightest stars: Richard Spencer, organizer of the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville; social media personality Mike Cernovich; and Canadian activist Lauren Southern.

“It was a slow process,” says Lombroso. “People had this idea that Trump had radical supporters, but no one had defined it. I was 23 years old at the time and I saw people my age [that were] really energized by this candidate that no one expected to win. I started with the profile of Richard Spencer and caught a room full of people doing Nazi salutes [at a conference in Washington], which went viral. It clarified that it was fundamentally a white nationalism movement.

Half a decade ago, the ascendance of the alt-right was about as plausible as the election of Donald Trump, and we all know how that worked out. Like the 2016 election, director Daniel Lombroso’s provocative alt-right portrait “White Noise” isn’t all that surprising, but that doesn’t lessen the terror within. In capturing the racist trifecta of alt-right pundits Mike Cernovich, Laura Southern, and Richard Spencer, the documentary shows how they became emboldened by celebrity stature, and comes so close to letting them run the show it risks trumpeting their cause. Fortunately, it doesn’t take the most discerning bullshit detector to realize that “White Noise” has been engineered to expose a fundamental danger to whatever moral fabric America has left.

However, for the lucky few who somehow avoided any of this movie’s subjects and their small armies of white nationalist devotees, “White Noise” provides a handy primer...

Asked to condemn white supremacists on Tuesday night, President Trump instead named a militant white supremacist group and issued a call to arms.

Moderator Chris Wallace asked Donald Trump if he was willing to “condemn white supremacists and militia groups.” He referenced cities such as Kenosha and Portland, hotbeds of civil unrest where much of the violence been initiated by far-right extremists and militia members.

At first, Trump appeared to be receptive to condemning far-right extremists, but when pressed by Sen. Joe Biden and Wallace, he didn’t exactly do that:

Are you willing,...

Glenn Beck-founded media company, The Blaze, is set to shut down its cable channel by the end of 2019, but will maintain its digital properties — including video-on-demand services, website and radio presences — according to The Hollywood Reporter,

THR cited sources who blamed contracts with distributors that prevent some TV to be posted online, which has been detrimental for the digitally-based company.

Also Read: Conservative News Sites TheBlaze, Washington Examiner See Big Traffic Gains as Breitbart Fades and ThinkProgress Dies

Representatives for The Blaze did not immediately return requests for comment from TheWrap, but Blaze Media CEO Tyler Cardon is quoted by THR saying, “Yes, we’ve sent notices of non-renewal to our cable partners, whose support we’ve appreciated over the years.

“Given our record growth this year on our direct-to-consumer Svod business, podcasts, various web properties and other digital distribution channels, it has become a conflict to continue programming a traditional,...

Two members of the far-right organization the Proud Boys were sentenced to four years in prison on Tuesday for attacking four counter-protesters at a 2018 New York City event.

Last summer, Maxwell Hare and John Kinsman were found guilty in New York State Supreme Court of attempted gang assault, attempted assault, and riot. The two were accused of attacking four anti-fascist counter-protesters at an event at New York City’s Metropolitan Club, where Gavin McInnes, the founder of the Proud Boys, was slated to speak.

Although Hare and Kinsman argued during...

Two members of the far-right extremist group the Proud Boys were convicted of attempted gang assault, attempted assault, and riot for their part in a fight with anti-fascist protestors in New York City last October, The New York Times reports.

Maxwell Hare and John Kinsman were accused of beating four antifa protestors reportedly tied outside the Metropolitan Republican Club in New York City last October, following a speech by founder Gavin McInnes (McInnes resigned from the group last year). Hare and Kinsman both claimed they were acting in self defense,...

In the weeks leading up to the August 17th Proud Boys rally in Portland, Oregon, many were unsure what to expect. Local law enforcement officials and many counter-protesters were concerned about the prospect of increased violence at the rally, particularly in light of a high-profile incident last June featuring right-wing journalist and provocateur Andy Ngo. Increasingly violent rhetoric from members of the organization, particularly from organizer Joe Biggs, also fueled fears that the rally would result in violence.

On Saturday, however, more than 1,000 anti-fascist activists showed up at the rally...

Over the past year, the extremist, far-right group the Proud Boys has undergone what appears to have been a dramatic implosion. Gavin McInnes, the group’s bombastic, ironically mustachioed founder (and the co-founder of Vice magazine), resigned late last year. More recently, the group was one of the targets of social media platforms’ efforts to combat hate speech; mainstream sites like YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook banned a number of Proud Boys-related accounts, thus significantly curbing its ability to attract new recruits. The embarrassing leak of a sloppily redacted Proud Boys charter,...

Bubba the Love Sponge is a Florida-based shock jock radio DJ best known for filming Hulk Hogan having sex with his wife. Naturally, he’s found his way back into the news now that Donald Trump is in office. As it turns out, Bubba had a longstanding relationship with unofficial presidential adviser Tucker Carlson, who called into his show for an hour a week from 2006 to 2011. Media Matters combed through some of these calls and found a trove of disturbing comments that shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone...

Although Tucker Carlson dismissed criticism of defending statutory rape in tapes unearthed by Media Matter, saying his incendiary comments were made “more than a decade ago,” Monday, The Daily Beast resurfaced a video interview showing the Fox News host making similar arguments as recently as 2015.

“I’m for treating women differently from the way we treat men,” Carlson told Gavin McInnes, founder of the Proud Boys, during a podcast interview. “I’m not for playing along at all.”

Carlson argued that there was a difference between statutory rapes committed by men and those committed by women.

Also Read: Tucker Carlson Refuses to Apologize for 'Naughty' Past Comments About Statutory Rape, 'C-ty' Women

“It’s not even in the same universe, actually,” he told McInnes. “There are lots of things you have to play along with in life, and I understand society demands compromises… But there is a limit beyond which I can’t pretend anymore.

Far-right commentator and Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes is suing the Southern Poverty Law Center for unspecified damages, claiming that the civil rights organization destroyed his reputation and cost him business opportunities by designating his pro-Trump men’s club as a hate group. Filed on February 4th in Alabama, the lawsuit accuses the Splc of publishing “false, damaging and defamatory statements” about McInnes, taking “concerted, obsessive and malicious actions” to “deplatform” him from Facebook, Twitter and PayPal, and engaging in “tortious interference with his economic opportunities … [and] contractual relationships.”

McInnes, 48, was...

Vice Media co-founder Gavin McInnes filed legal suit against the Southern Poverty Law Center (Splc) on Monday, accusing the organization of “defamation and other tortious acts resulting in reputational and economic damages,” according to a press release.

McInnes left Vice in 2008 over creative differences with fellow co-founders Shane Smith and Suroosh Alvi. The company did not immediately respond to request for comment from TheWrap.

“I, Gavin McInnes, formerly of every job I’ve ever had, am announcing, as of today, a lawsuit against the Splc. They have harassed me, my family, and my friends to a level of tortious interference that goes well into sabotage,” the right-wing talk show host said in a statement, accompanying the suit.

Also Read: Vice Media to Lay Off 10 Percent of Staff in Company Restructuring

“The Splc has gone from a noble institution genuinely dedicated to eradicating hate to a hate group in and of...

Nathan Phillips, the Native American tribal elder who was involved in a tense standoff with Covington Catholic High School students on Friday, said he wasn’t a fan of Nicholas Sandmann’s statements or his “Today” show interview, telling the program that it all appeared fake.

Sandmann and Phillips were the central players in a standoff at the Lincoln Memorial, video of which sent much of social media into a fury over the weekend.

“What did you think about [Sandmann’s] words … and his version of this encounter?” host Savannah Guthrie asked Phillips.

Also Read: YouTube Reinstates Gavin McInnes Just Days After Ban: 'I'm Back, It Won't Last'

“Coached and written up for him, insincerity, lack of responsibility, those are the words I came up with — but then I went to go pray about it and then I woke up, woke up with this forgiving heart, I forgive him.” Phillips said.

Elsewhere in the interview he said,...

2018 was hard for a lot of media folks, but particularly so for this rogues’ gallery. For some, it was MeToo, for others, industry headwinds were too much. And for more still, disgrace and ignominy came after just saying the wrong thing.

Les Moonves: Once celebrated for his leadership of CBS, Moonves faced multiple allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct for which he was ultimately fired. CBS said in December that they would seek to deny him a roughly $120 million severance package.

Laura Ingraham: Long a divisive figure even on the right, the Fox News host might have avoided the losers column were it not for a sponsor boycott launched against her by Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg in March. Months later, advertisers are still wary of appearing on the program.

Michael Ferro/Tronc: The leadership of Michael Ferro has now made Tronc synonymous with mismanagement. In addition to leaving...

Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes said he regrets many of his past remarks and accepts at least some amount of responsibility after being banned by multiple social media platforms in recent months.

“I do bear … responsibility,” McInnes told ABC reporter Paula Faris during an interview with “Nightline.” “I’m not guilt free in this. There’s culpability there. I shouldn’t have said, you know, violence solves everything or something like that without making the context clear and I regret saying things like that.”

McInnes made clear that he was not apologizing, but punted on whether he would take back any of his past rhetoric if he could.

Also Read: Tucker Carlson Poses With Members of 'Hate Group' Proud Boys in Fox News Green Room

On Monday, YouTube banned McInnes, who is also a co-founder of Vice Media. He has also been booted from Facebook and Twitter for terms-of-service violations...

BlazeTV has dropped a number of their most explosive hosts after the company was formed last week by a merger between Glenn Beck’s TheBlaze and Mark Levin’s Crtv.

Since the unification of the media properties, far-right commentator and Vice Media co-founder Gavin McInnes and conservative publisher Michelle Malkin have both severed tied with the company — with very little explanation.

“Blaze Media no longer has a relationship with Gavin McInnes, and per company policy, cannot comment on personnel matters,” the company announced in a weekend tweet. Only days before, Malkin herself also made it official, saying she wished the company well.

Also Read: Facebook Bans Right-Wing Group the Proud Boys and Founder Gavin McInnes

“I am so proud of the investigative journalism I did for #Crtv — so many heroes, so many compelling stories. I will not be continuing with the company, but wish my colleagues all the best,” she...

No one is losing their job at Vice Media right now, but no one is getting one either.

Facing some serious bottom line realities, the semi-saucy brand co-founded by Shane Smith has instituted a hiring freeze and will also cut back staff through a process of attrition, Deadline has confirmed.

Kicked off about a month ago by CEO Nancy Dubuc, we hear the plan aims to reduce staffing among the about 3,000 current employees by 10%-15% over the next year. Another part of Dubuc’s plan to strengthen Vice’s finances, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, is to trim the number of sites the company operates and fosters. That would, for instance, involve taking several music sites and putting them under the umbrella of the recognized Noisey banner to streamline content and traffic.

Accordingly, the once in-your-face brand started by Smith, Gavin McInnes and Suroosh Alvi in Montreal in...

The Proud Boys, a far-right collective started by onetime Vice Media co-founder Gavin McInnes, have been banned from Facebook and Instagram in an effort to crack down on hate groups.

While the group’s violent objectives have long been clear, the move to block them from social media follows the arrest of several members of the group in connection with a brawl in New York City earlier this month. Social media has been a critical way for the group to organize and recruit members. Twitter had banned McInnes from its service earlier in the year.

The ban comes at a particularly sensitive moment for social media giants, which have found themselves in the center of a socio-political storm. The massacre last weekend at a Pittsburgh synagogue followed a flurry of anti-Semitic posts by the shooter on the fledgling network Gab. Conspiracy theories linking Jews to the Sept. 11 attacks have circulated widely on Instagram,...

The New York Times responded to critics Thursday by defending a profile of far-right activist Gavin McInnes that ran in the paper earlier this week.

“We are always open to criticism, which helps us do better work. In this case, we disagree with the main points of criticism. Our story is an unflinching look at Gavin McInnes that directly addresses his racist, sexist and xenophobic comments as well as violence perpetrated by a group he actively leads,” a spokesperson told TheWrap.

“Some critics have suggested that the subject of this story should not receive any attention. The Times’ mission is to explain what is happening in the world. McInnes and his group were at the center of a news event that gained significant attention last week — a brawl outside a prominent Republican club in Manhattan. It’s our duty to delve into what occurred, and who was involved,” the statement continued.

Oct 18, 2018

Community, Mark Zuckerberg, the Hubble Space Telescope, and more in today's daily Link Tank!

Here are the best 25 episodes of the sitcom Community.

Facebook shareholders have pushed to remove Mark Zuckerberg as Chairman. 

Spotify Premium now has endless radio and streamlined navigation. 

The New York Times has earned strong criticism for its article on far-right activist Gavin McInnes. 

Virgin Hyperloop One's first ever feasibility study promised huge economic benefits to the U.S. 

New research suggests that the world's oldest fossils aren't actually fossils. 

Here's how the Hubble Space Telescope helped the fight against breast cancer. ...

Oct 18, 2018

Community, Mark Zuckerberg, the Hubble Space Telescope, and more in today's daily Link Tank!

Here are the best 25 episodes of the sitcom Community.

Facebook shareholders have pushed to remove Mark Zuckerberg as Chairman. 

Spotify Premium now has endless radio and streamlined navigation. 

The New York Times has earned strong criticism for its article on far-right activist Gavin McInnes. 

Virgin Hyperloop One's first ever feasibility study promised huge economic benefits to the U.S. 

New research suggests that the world's oldest fossils aren't actually fossils. 

Here's how the Hubble Space Telescope helped the fight against breast cancer. ...

On Friday, October 12th, following a speech by Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes at the Metropolitan Republican Club in New York City, members of the far-right men’s group violently beat three apparent protestors, reports Buzzfeed News. According to the Daily Beast, the NYPD has enough evidence to charge nine members of the right-wing group, as well as three protesters, with rioting, assault, and/or attempted assault.

According to a local photojournalist, Shay Horse, who filmed a widely circulated video of the incident, approximately 30 members of the group participated in the alleged assault,...

Iac-owned video hosting service Vimeo removed two accounts belonging to Infowars.com for violating its terms of service over the weekend. This latest removal means that Infowars and its founder Alex Jones have now been kicked off three video hosting services.

The removal comes after Infowars had uploaded a number of videos this past Friday that had previously been removed from other sites and services. Infowars was also using Vimeo to stream its live programming. Business Insider was first to report the removal.

Alex Jones and Infowars have been on the defensive ever since Apple removed the show from its podcast directory a little over a week ago. Facebook and YouTube followed suit soon after, deleting channels and pages associated with the site. Spotify, Stitcher and others also removed the site’s podcasts from their services.

Infowars is known to peddle in untrue conspiracy theories, with Jones among other...

Twitter suspended the accounts of Vice Magazine co-founder Gavin McInnes and his far-right Proud Boys group Friday afternoon. The suspension came ahead of this weekend’s “Unite the Right” rally in Washington, D.C.

The accounts were shut down for violating the company’s policies prohibiting violent extremist groups, Twitter said in a statement to BuzzFeed News, which was first to report the suspension.

McInnes co-founded Vice Magazine with Vice Media’s current executive chairman Shane Smith in 1994, but left the company in 2008. He went on to found the Proud Boys in 2016.

The group and its members self-identify as “Western chauvinists,” and McInnes has in the past publicly distanced himself from white supremacists. However, Proud Boys regularly take part in far-right events, where members have been observed participating in violence against counter-demonstrators. Before its suspension Friday, the official Twitter account of the organization featured a cover photo of a Proud Boy punching a counter-protester.

“Raise your hand if you’ve ever posted anything online to quote unquote own the libs,” President Trump’s Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley recently asked a crowd of high schoolers. Most of the teens in the audience raised their hands, then exploded into uproarious applause. “I know that it’s fun and that it can feel good,” Haley continued, “But step back and think about what you’re accomplishing when you do this — are you persuading anyone? Who are you persuading?”

It would be ironic for a Trump...

A single, persistent question hangs over Adam Bhala Lough’s “Alt-Right: Age of Rage,” a blunt new documentary that chronicles how America’s white nationalists crawled out of the sewers during the first year of the Trump administration. And the question is this: Do we really need to watch a movie about these assholes?

The most striking moments of Lough’s scattershot new film address that question head-on, weighing — to use terms borrowed from one of the talking heads — the policy of quarantine vs. the policy of inoculation. In other words, does talking about neo-Nazis help expose the flimsy hatred that fuels their ideologies, or does giving oxygen to toxic firebrands like Richard Spencer and Milo Yiannopoulos only make them stronger? The mere fact that “Age of Rage” was shot, and that it possesses the baseline self-awareness required to reflect on its value, is enough to suggest that Lough believes in the former.

Gavin McInnes is not pulling anyone's leg — or so he wants the world to believe. The writer, comedian, co-founder of Vice Media and conservative media pundit ruffled feathers last week with his most recent Fox News appearances, during which he called women "less ambitious" than men and said women earn less "because they choose to." "Women would rather go to their daughter's piano recital than stay all night at work working on a proposal because they're less ambitious," McInnes said on Hannity. He called the wage gap nature's way of saying that women would be "happier"

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With Sundance in the rear view mirror and Berlin just around the corner, another huge festival that’s now very much in mind is the 2015 South By Southwest Film Festival (SXSW 2015), to be held in Austin, Texas, this March. And this year, the lineup looks no less eclectic than in any previous year for the festival.

SXSW 2015 will see the debut of two big-studio comedies (Paul Feig’s Spy, starring Melissa McCarthy; and Etan Cohen’s Get Hard, starring Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart), some red-hot documentaries (none more so than Alex Gibney’s Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine) and a vast array of smaller indie titles. Intriguingly, Judd Apatow’s Amy Schumer vehicle Trainwreck will be screened as a work-in-progress.

Elsewhere, Alex Garland’s well-received Ex Machina will be making an appearance, as will Ryan Gosling’s much-maligned Lost River. And curiously, there will be a...

South by Southwest, the multi-faceted film, music and technology festival held annually in Austin, TX will feature such upcoming films as Paul Feig’s Spy, David Gordon Green’s Manglehorn, Alex Gibney’s documentary Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine, and Ondi Timoner’s Russell Brand profile Brand: A Second Coming as headliners in this year’s film festival lineup.

SXSW runs from March 13 to 21 in Austin and is now in its 22nd year. Variety has details of the 145 films and 100 world premieres bowing at this year’s festival. Brand, as previously reported, will be the festival’s opening night film.

Other notable titles on the list are the Will Ferrell/Kevin Hart comedy Get Hard, a rough cut of Judd Apatow’s Trainwreck, the directorial debut of 28 Days Later screenwriter Alex Garland, Ex Machina, and a new comedy by Michael Showalter, Hello, My Name is Doris.

On the small screen,...