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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?

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.

Wouldn't shock me if this was some sort of Fetlife stuff that she was prettymuch explicitly into that somehow snowballed into media attention. Atleast I don't think somebody completely off the street is gonna go to a body modification 'artist' in their rolodex.

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.