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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025

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So, is everyone ready for the Republican Jussie Smollet?

A NJ Republican psychopath appears to have hired some kind of fetish artist to scar her body as part of an elaborate hoax to fake an attack by rabid Democrats

We're using the NYPost here, I figure it is more reliable where Republican hoaxes are concerned.

A former New Jersey GOP aide allegedly paid a fetish artist to carve dozens of cuts in her skin and had a pal scrawl “Trump Whore” on her stomach in order to claim that she was the victim of a politically motivated violent attack, according to shocking new court documents. Natalie Greene, 26, was arrested Wednesday and charged with concocting the violent bogus ambush at Egg Harbor Township Nature Reserve on July 23, the US Attorney’s Office for New Jersey announced. Prosecutors said the accused fraudster claimed three gun-wielding men approached her and a friend on the trail around 10:30 p.m. before threatening to shoot her and hitting her in the head. The suspect said the fictitious attackers then hogtied her with black zip ties, held her down while slashing her face and body, and etched anti-Trump slurs onto her stomach and back because she worked for a Republican, the complaint said.

I was riding my bike past that nature preserve around then. I wasn't attacked by any Antifa. Go figure.

Two days before the alleged phony assault, Greene drove to Pennsylvania and paid a body modification artist she found on Instagram $500 to deliberately carve gruesome wounds into her face, neck, chest, back, and shoulders with a scalpel, the court documents alleged.

On the day of the alleged staged attack, Greene’s accomplice frantically called police, claiming she had been singled out by name and violently assaulted, according to the complaint. Officers found the accused con artist in a wooded area just off the trail, hands and feet bound together, her shirt pulled over her head, and the words “TRUMP WHORE” and “Van Drew is a racist” scribbled in black marker on her horrifically scarred body, as she screamed that one of her attackers had a gun. Horrific photos in the complaint show Greene with deep, grisly cuts on her body and face.

Prosecutors said Greene was taken to a hospital, where she and her accomplice gave police conflicting accounts of what happened and provided faulty descriptions of the phantom assailants. Black zip ties and duct tape were also found in Greene’s Maserati the night of the disturbing alleged scheme, and federal officials said her unidentified sidekick searched “zip ties near me” on their phone two days earlier and went to a Ventnor Dollar General to pick them up.

Lol Rutgers Law.

The young Ms. Greene's motive in this is pretty unclear. She was at one time a staffer for a NJ representative, presumably from Cape May county. But so far no one is reporting really extreme kind of politics. Cape May County Republican is practically the definition of "boat owner" Republican. It's a red tribe area in the way that any wealthy white area with lots of retiree fisherman and a few small farms would be. But it's not militia country or something. It's not somewhere full of conspiracy nuts, at least it wasn't.

Have we just cracked this much? I'm a little unclear on what kind of body modification is in the offing here exactly, is that stuff semi-permanent? That's HORRIFYING. Is it that worth it to hurt the other team? False flags all seem to be so poorly executed that they don't achieve anything for the "team" attempting them.

I'm unclear on whether this story fell apart so quickly that it was never reported as actually occurring, or if the story was suppressed because of the "wrong team" associations. I never heard anything about it until I heard she was being charged for false reporting. The cover-up appears to have been so thin and weak that it fell apart almost immediately. I haven't even seen much reporting on the Jussie Smollett of it all. Is this kind of insantity so routine it doesn't even break through to the front pages anymore?

While I did think of you guys in a Running Dad way (but in one of the many variations where he's running toward instead of away from something) when I first saw this story on the interwebs and had a comment in the works, it's perhaps in somewhat of a orthogonal direction than what @RoyGBivensAction suggested.

If the allegations are true with regard to her committing a Smollett, and that this is not some sort of weird hoax or whatever: this could serve as a cautionary tale for the online right when it comes to trusting thots, given how hard the online right has been simping for figures like Sydney Sweeney lately and how there's an entire ecosystem of supposedly rightwing e-girls whose characters, surprise surprise, appear not to be too different from e-girls as a whole.

Two days before the alleged phony assault, Greene drove to Pennsylvania and paid a body modification artist she found on Instagram $500 to deliberately carve gruesome wounds into her face, neck, chest, back, and shoulders with a scalpel, the court documents alleged.

Wow, can't believe she crossed state lines. There's also some joke in there about how chicks will leave you on read while they do things like drive across states to pay someone $500 to carve up their skin, get tied up and beat up.

Local residents in Greene’s hometown were horrified when they heard about the story.

At the end of the day we’re talking about a 25-year-old girl, a beautiful girl, whose politics aren’t supposed to reach that level of extreme,” Fiona Tierney, 49, told The Post.

“Now she’s got to spend the rest of her life with these scars to remind her of what she did. What, she’s going to the beach wearing a bathing suit with all that on display? She’d never live this down. What kind of a future is that?”

It's always a shame when a more than "WOULD"able chick chooses to scribble upon her skin. I also found amusing the implicit admission that doing things like prancing around in a bikini is a central aspect of a young woman's lifestyle. And indeed, "25-year-old girl": #Fightfor35.

“While Natalie is no longer associated with the congressman’s government office, our thoughts and prayers are with her and hope she’s getting the care she needs,” Van Drew’s office told the outlet.

Damn, that's cold—vicente_del_bosque.gif. I can't help but imagine Van Drew as the Wojak with the seething mask in front, but grinning behind it. Most people have never heard of you, but now you've suddenly made national news because a young former female employee got your name scrawled on her body.

#Fightfor35.

Nah, 'girl' is any woman 15 years younger than the speaker. The same way my 70-year-old relatives talk about a 50-year-old as 'such a nice young man'.

I don’t know. This whole world is topsy turvy when I’ve got 20 year old girls calling me “dude” and guys much shorter than me calling me “buddy.” You’d still get a glass cracked on your head if you say that to another man where I’m from. It’s like calling someone “friend” or “homeboy” making quotation marks with both your hands at someone right before you spit at and smack them across the face. That term was always considered insulting in any context. You never call someone that.

‘Dude’? or ‘buddy’?

Reminds me of a Pratchett quote:

He called people ‘friend’. Someone who does that isn’t friendly.

“Dude” is appropriate. Just in proper context and not when a woman calls you it. “Buddy” was always considered an insult where I’m from.

"Nice young man," not a "nice boy". So there's not the same parallel. Also, although just another anecdote, my ~70-year-old relatives would never refer to 50-year-olds as "young."

That being said, when I'm 50 someday I'd be happy to take the free W of being referred to as a "nice young man" or a "nice boy," and possibly ration the memory like a camel.

You may find this video by David Mitchell amusing.

Did anyone actually believe this though? The Smollet case was notable for being so obviously wrong and there being many people who fell for it.

A lot of them are either fooled easily or have never met pathological liars before. The tells were pretty obvious to me. He was mostly caught out on his inconsistencies.

A lot of people think lying is simply a matter of whether or not people volunteer up information or confess their involvement in certain activities. That’s not how they get you most of the time. A long time ago I read an encyclopedia on the tactics of trial lawyers that was written around the first half of the 20th century.

This is how they catch you. The first thing they do is they’ll have you tell your story from beginning to end. Then after some lines of questioning they’ll have you tell the exact same story again, but to start from the middle. Then after they repeat multiple lines of questioning they’ll have you tell the same exact story again, from the end, all the way back to the beginning. And often times you’ll get tripped up, you’ll be caught thinking your way through the web of fabricated details you made up, it becomes very disorienting and incoherent.

Naturally this doesn’t take 100% of the time. Some people just remember things in weird ways. Some people’s natural conversational pattern causes them to misspeak a lot. Some people are naturally more nervous and anxious than others. But it’s effective enough where they rely on this method of interrogation to this very day.

And it’s the same thing where they coax you into conclusions you wouldn’t agree with by describing an activity but avoiding the word that describes it directly. So for instance, if you were accused of “stealing” money, they’ll ask, “Did you ever take property that didn’t belong to you?” Because they know “steal” is an emotional trigger word that raises the alarm bells in the mind of the accused, such that they dodge, resist and avoid it. Same with “kill,” “rape,” “shoot,” “rob,” etc. But if you’re a trained target or are acutely aware of the precise frame of the question, you know what it is they’re asking. If you look at the Nuremberg Trial’s for instance, Herman Goring ran circles around the prosecuting attorney such that they had to appoint a more specialized and seasoned attorney in his case to be able to handle him; because he knew what the word game was that they were playing with him.

False flags all seem to be so poorly executed that they don't achieve anything for the "team" attempting them.

False-flags are like hairpieces, you don’t notice the good ones. This lady and Smolett aren’t political operatives or intelligence agents, they are crazy narcissicists looking for attention. It’s like Münchausen’s syndrome.

Algorithms bubble check: was this on any major commentators radar as a real thing? I didn't see anything about it it until the hoax angle came up.

Everything old is new again: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashley_Todd_mugging_hoax

On October 22, 2008, Todd claimed that she was robbed at knifepoint by a "six-foot-four African American of medium build, dressed in dark clothes wearing shiny shoes" at a Citizens Bank ATM in the Bloomfield neighborhood of Pittsburgh. She also alleged that after the robber saw a McCain bumper sticker on Todd's car, he assaulted her, cut a reversed letter B into her cheek, and told her "you are going to be a Barack supporter."

I'm quite enjoying the idea that 3 tie-dye wearing Deadhead stereotypes zip-tied a random woman, carved wounds into her, and wrote "Trump Whore" on her. That is even less believable than the Smollett situation, which is saying something.

Although, is this finally the counterexample to PJ O'Rourke's claim that no one wants to be tied up and ravished by someone dressed as a liberal? Please get @Sloot in here asap to explain how this was a tactic to get sexual attention.

Do men actually ever do things like this? Smollett is kind of close, but he reads a bit differently to me: he wasn't seriously injured, and he seemed to more be trying to get negotiating leverage for his career than sacrificing himself for the greater benefit of the Cause.

Jussie was also, you know, gay.

Perhaps the male equivalent is a mass shooting.

It's not somewhere full of conspiracy nuts, at least it wasn't.

Eh, if you believe in the Jersey Devil, conspiracies come along with it.

My guess is this woman was probably "known" by the local police who smelled a rat right away. From the story it appears the scars are real and permanent, so she's just moved from the crazy/hot section of the card to just plain crazy. A shame in some ways, though a blessing to those foolish enough not to heed the wisdom about sticking it in the crazy.

Eh, if you believe in the Jersey Devil, conspiracies come along with it.

This sort of chap?

It depends on your explanation for Jersey Devil.

If you think it is unknown, but natural animal that must eat, sleep, poop and die, then you must have explanation why no devil lairs, feces or remains have been found, and conspiracy by authorities who are deliberately hiding the remains is most plausible one.

This is official tinfoil hat explanation for Bigfoot - the feds in black helicopters arrive and seize any sasquatch remains only evidence left are redneck tales told around campfire.

If you see it as literal devil from hell or other supernatural entity, no cooperation of earthly mortal authorities is necessary.