On July 22, in an episode of TruNews, a far-right news program, Pastor Rick Wiles announced his plans of producing a new social media platform. He calls his new platform, GodTribe, describing it as a “social media educational, digital platform.” The goal of the latest social media platform is to provide a safe refuge for young men, protecting them from being labeled as “feminine” and from being criticized as racists.
Rick Wiles’ TruNews is known to peddle misinformed news riddled with conspiracy theories. In the same newscast where he announced his plan to establish his new digital platform, the opening statement of the hosts describes politicians as “baby-blood-drinkers.” Host Edward Szall opened the Thursday newscast with, “Our elected officials are obsessed with talking about drinking babies’ blood… seriously.” In the same episode, Szall alluded to a supposed FBI scheme describing the “Federal Bureau of Insurrection” role in the attempted kidnapping of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. None of the suspects of the botched kidnapping, who pleaded guilty, were connected to the FBI.
The pastor’s new social media platform is designed to “serve young men… give young men a place… where they feel safe.” Wiles, who was hospitalized due to covid after calling the pandemic a trans-killing god-sent outbreak, added that he is compelled to create GodTribe because “many young men feel like they have been attacked.” Wiles said that in his time, people did not have to ask what their gender is, “it’s very obvious… okay?” Aside from his anti-LGBTQ tirade, he also mentioned ‘Antichrist forces” that have been undermining American society, calling GodTribe the “antidote.”
Wiles goes on to explain that GodTribe is like a campfire, referring to what most men want to do when camping, “they light a fire, sit around the campfire and talk. So we started a digital campfire.” The conspiracy peddler also perpetrated another severely harmful misinformation, claiming that his digital platform will not be hosted by a server in China, comparing it to a social-audio app called Clubhouse. Wiles claimed that Clubhouse’s servers are in “communist-China” and has been giving personal information to them. Clubhouse, in fact, is blocked in China.
The writer of this article claimed that he might have grown some brain cancer after watching a TruNews episode to write this article accurately.
