(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Sen. Josh Hawley has written Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas about his department’s controversial “Targeted Violence & Terrorism Prevention Grant Program,” which has dispersed millions of dollars to groups actively opposing conservatives and right-wing dissidents.
Hawley’s letter Thursday specifically asked about a $700,000 DHS grant to the University of Rhode Island’s Media Education Lab to create “counter-propaganda.” According to Hawley, that grant is being used, among other things, to address “propaganda and misinformation concerning topics including immigration, racial justice, the coronavirus, and vaccination.”
The Rhode Island Lab also plans to use funds to create “counter-propaganda,” said Hawley, who cited a Daily Wire article about the grant.
Hawley also mentioned a grant $352,109 DHS grant to the University of Dayton to fight “domestic violence extremism and hate movements.” The Media Research Center revealed last year that the University of Dayton used this grant to flag groups such as The Heritage Foundation, Fox News, Christian Broadcasting Network, the National Rifle Association and the Republican National Committee—marking these organizations as potential gateways to Nazism and other odious beliefs.
MRC also noted that the seminar included a University of Cincinnati Research Fellow Michael Loadenthal, who is “a self-proclaimed member of Antifa whose Twitter feed is rife with posts celebrating acts of left-wing violence—often against police officers.”
“This is an outrageous use of federal funds and abuse of power,” Hawley wrote. “All these funds should be clawed back by the federal government immediately, and anyone involved in making this grant should be fired.”
Hawley’s letter didn’t mention a recent scoop from Headline USA about the DHS funding a study that links popular social media personalities Andrew Tate, Pearl Davis and other “Manosphere” influencers to domestic terrorism.
Indeed, in 2022 the DHS gave $659,327 to fund Diverting Hate, a group of students and academics who were studying “incels,” or “involuntary celibates”—a term used to describe young men who can’t attract romantic partners.
Apparently, Diverting Hate thinks that the social media “Manosphere”—a network of online influencers who promote masculinity and criticize feminism—is contributing to the incel terrorism threat.
In a report published in September and recently discovered by online researcher BX, Diverting Hate made the case that Manosphere influencers Tate, Davis and others are promoting views that lead to terrorism. Tate is the controversial online personality who promotes a course called “Hustlers University” to young men, while Davis is a woman in her mid-20s who recently took Twitter by storm with her anti-feminist views.
Additionally, Headline USA has reported how the DHS funded an organization that classified the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting as anti-government terrorism—a finding so dubious that it’s not even supported by the ADL, which debunked the notion that the Las Vegas attack was related to right-wing politics in any way.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
