Down the Discreditation Rabbit Hole

Down the Discreditation Rabbit Hole

Over the past few days an elaborate new on-line narrative has been gaining traction. It proposes that the death of George Floyd was a staged incident. Another claim is that Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer who arrested George Floyd is not the person currently in police custody and that the police officer seen in the images is, rather, the actor Benjamin Ray Bailey.

Derek Chauvin vs. Benjamin Ray Bailey
Image 1
: Sample content misidentifying Derek Chauvin as the actor Benjamin Ray Bailey

One likely explanation for why this story is being circulated is that it’s part of a disinformation campaign similar to those of the  Eric Ciaramella misidentification, Ilhan Omar at an Antifa riot, and Need a Nazi for a project.

Derek Chauvin vs. Benjamin Bailey
Image 2
: The results of various video analytics on the images of Derek Chauvin and Benjamin Ray Bailey

Regardless of the rationale behind this publication, O fellow fish citizens: beware of the bait! Hopefully the following conclusive results will put this little conspiracy to rest.

  1. The Person of Interest 1 F (POI-1 F) identified as Derek Chauvin in the police booking images matched within 99% certainty the image of the uniformed police officer seen in the video kneeling on George Floyd.
  2. POI-1 F matched within 99% certainty the image of POI-2 identified as Derek Chauvin in the police booking images. 
  3. The ear geometry of POI-1 S identified in the police booking images as Derek Chauvin matched the officer in uniform seen kneeling on George Floyd within 97% certainty. 
  4. The height of the officer seen kneeling on George Floyd is ~ 5’-9”.  This did not match the height of Benjamin Ray Bailey who is ~ 6’-6”.
  5. Benjamin Bailey’s image did not match the image of the officer in uniform seen kneeling on George Floyd.
  6. The ear geometry of Benjamin Bailey (OOI-2) did not match the ear geometry of OOI-1 in the image of POI-1 S identified in the police booking images as Derek Chauvin. 

Note on Image Sourcing:
All Derek Chauvin’s images were acquired from the following primary sources. All images were tested for deepfake content and post editing.
Booking photos taken on on May 29, 2020, at the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office
Booking photos taken on May 30, 2020, at the Hennepin County Jail
Booking photos taken on May 31, 2020, at the Oak Park Minnesota Correctional Facility
Minnesota beauty pageant competition footage recorded on June 23, 2018

What is a Discreditation Operation?
Information discreditation is a form of character assassination, Psyop, and black propaganda. It entails the deliberate production and publication of information that is either completely or partially false and the distribution of such misinformation on various on-line or print platforms. Soon after the misinformation starts showing up in derivative works and news feeds, or reaches a certain level of engagement, the fabricator will point out the false information and use it to attack the credibility of the individual(s) who referenced it. The end result is that the false information ends up discrediting the people who shared and used it. Fact checker organizations like Snopes.com and  Factcheck.org, are some of the largest producers of this type of content.

Samples of Discreditation content
Image 3: Example of discreditation content currently in wide circulation

The use of discreditation techniques can be illustrated via some of the QAnon affiliated user content on social media and how its being leveraged to censor conservative political speech. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube permit vile anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, and pro-jihadi materials to circulate widely for months on their platforms (this is despite the fact that they have the AI to instantly intercept and block it). As these materials spread throughout various communities and gain traction, the platforms take note of the users that view it and then censor them on the grounds that they are affiliated with the conspiratorial materials.

As many conservative users have discovered over the past three years, they don’t have to post anything controversial to get banned. Their only crime is that they viewed ‘subversive’ materials (which ironically, is bait produced by US based progressives and anti-Trump Republican circles). Suspiciously, these content distributers continue to operate on these platforms long after the innocent users who just viewed the materials are banned. I’m not a batting man, but if I was, I would place a large wager on the theory that the whole QAnon movement is a another version of the Lincoln Project and that it’s being used as a honeypot to destroy the MAGA movement and build a database of people that will likely be targeted in the near future by the USG as Domestic Violent Extremists.

Russian disinformation operation using QAnon
Image 4
: A profile of an IRA US based influence operations on several QAnon associated social media channels

From Russia with love Image 5: BigTec and Russian Collusion curtesy of the IRA.  Sample content and members of one of several US based ‘progressive’ and Russian propaganda teams taking advantage of the of the widespread QAnon Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube networks. Of interest is the “Putin personality cult” propaganda published by some operators in early-mid 2016, even before the QAnon movement started.

Interview with Rabbi Abraham Finkelstein
Image 6
: Sample content distributed via a QAnon associated Facebook and YouTube networks. A radio Interview with a Rabbi Abraham Finkelstein (the photo is a repurposed image of an attorney named Kenneth Weinberg). This hoax interview was produced in 2001 by the James Wickstrom. In the interview, the fictitious New York Rabbi admits to murdering between 100K-300K children per year in the US in order to first use their blood to make Passover bread, and then sell their bodies to McDonalds so they can be made into burgers and sausages. This posting has been on YouTube since September 27, 2019. It has been viewed over 227K times and has 2,075 comments. It was taken down shortly after the publication of this post.

*** Update 06/12/2020 ***

Apparently, the current Derek Chauvin conspiracy theory has spawned another conspiracy theory which claims that George Floyd’s fiancé, Courtney Ross, is actually Derek Chauvin. Running the analytics on her verified image shows that the image of Courtney does not match Chauvin on gender, age, nor facial features.

Courtney Ross vs. Derek Chauven
Image 7
: The results of various video analytics comparing the images of Courtney Ross and Derek Chauven

*** Update 09/15/2020 ***

Jason Gelinas and QAnon
Image 8: The mysterious case of Jason Gelinas, a Citigroup tech executive by day and a QAnnon administrator at night and weekends. Gelinas’s progressive linkages, social network, and on-line activity match the early 2017 QAnon style and form. It is likely that the content that Gelinas is aggregating/generating on his Qmap.pub, is either a honeypot or an extension of standard QAnon style Trust Sessions operation.



References
XRVision Sentinel AI Platform – Face recognition, image reconstruction, and object classification

Copyright 2020 Yaacov Apelbaum, All Rights Reserved.

70 thoughts on “Down the Discreditation Rabbit Hole

  1. Thank you, Yaacov! There have been so many lies and it has become hard to trust the media or politicians about much of anything. I have read some of your previous analyses and your work is so impressive and thorough. I truly appreciate your efforts and pray for you to stay safe and active.

    • Yaakov, you have been quiet for an unusually long time during our nation’s most perilous period since World War II. This post was over a month ago. I hope all is well with you and your family. I fantasize that you are working on a fabulous piece exposing one of our nation’s enemies for who they are beyond any shadow of a doubt, or that some virtuous entity has hired you to generate evidence in the the ongoing battle for liberty and the Republic that most are unaware is even going on. But most of all I just hope you and your family are safe in these disturbing times.

  2. Excellent work, Yaacov, although the more interesting part of the story, involves the establishment they both worked for, the owner who went to prison about 17 years ago, a mr sabri, who has some interesting ties to the green part of the red green alliance, so that establishment might not be on the up and up as it were,

  3. conservative treehouse, that brought this aspect of the story to light, as they did with zimmerman eight years ago, the earliest example of weaponized race based lawfare,

    • Thanks for sharing. I didn’t know that Sundance = Conservative Treehouse. I don’t personally know any of these writers, but thy have great content on their site. I’m not entirely sure that this has much to do with race. Seems more like an Red October style insurrection and/or armed rebellion.

  4. Thanks for squashing this meme largely targeting online schizophrenics, and providing a coherent description of how to run a Discreditation Operation. More people need to understand this concept.

    If you have time it would be interesting to run “Courtney Ross”, Floyd’s girlfriend who some claimed looked like Chauven.

    Google image search EZeXcFEWsAg4B3y.jpeg for the meme.

  5. Who killed Seth Rich? After so many years why doesn’t someone ask Julan Assange-download on a thumb drive from a leaker or hack from Russia? Why would Mark Warner try to block information from Assange? How evil were the people involved in Spygate?

    On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 1:09 PM The Illustrated Primer wrote:

    > Yaacov Apelbaum posted: ” Over the past few days an elaborate on-line > narrative has started gaining traction proposing that the killing of George > Floyd was a staged incident. The claim is that Derek Chauvin, the > Minneapolis police officer who killed George Floyd is or could be th” >

  6. This is an amazing analysis of the differences between Ben Bailey and the man in the police photos of ‘Chauvin’ in the lockup and it is pretty evident that they are 2 different people. What you have missed is the comparison between the ‘police officer’ at the scene and Ben Bailey. This will give you a whole different set of data. From the photos you will see in this post below, you will see a few photos showing the comparisons between the ‘police officer’ and ‘Chauvin’ in ear structure; eye placement and ear placement. These are clearly 2 different guys. Similar looking but definitely not the same. So who are these 2 different guys? Mmmm…
    Once you have done a comparison of the ‘police officer’ and Ben Bailey, I think you can probably answer who the ‘police officer’ is…. Looking forward to that data :-)

    https://www.facebook.com/chloe.hunter.1800/posts/757239631713369

    • Thank you for your comment and link, Debbie.

      The images that you referenced show indications that they’ve been altered, so, they can’t be used to establish a baseline or for comparison. The image that I used of the officer at the site came from the original video sequence. That image (with the sunglasses on his forehead) matches the booking image that identifies the person as Derek Chauvin at the three correctional facilities.

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