He went from 300,000 to more than 2.2 million subscribers on X (formerly Twitter). Since the October 7 Hamas attack against Israel, Jackson Hinkle has become one of the most influential voices on the social network, where he clearly speaks out in favor of Hamas and the Palestinian cause, not hesitating to relay several falsehoods between two authentic videos.
Three weeks after the start of the conflict, the Israeli daily Haaretz is thus obliged to publish a tweet of denial, after the young American falsely asserted that the number of victims of October 7 was 900, that 50% of them were Israeli soldiers, or that the number of people killed by Hamas was less than 100. In his message, Jackson Hinkle does not hesitate to affirm that his source is the Israeli newspaper.
The lie will be five times more seen as the correction message. Jackson Hinkle’s tweet was viewed 5.2 million times, compared to 1.1 million times for the Israeli newspaper’s message.
He celebrated his birthday in Moscow
“The Israeli government lies about everything that happened on October 7,” he said a few weeks later in an interview with RT, a Russian media outlet to which he regularly gives interviews.
It must be said that Jackson Hinkle cultivates his links with Vladimir Putin’s country: he regularly vilifies Volodymyr Zelensky, declares himself a communist and posts memes glorifying Stalin. Engaged to Anna Linnikova, Miss Russia, he celebrated his 24th birthday in September in Moscow, where he spoke to students of the Russian Foreign Ministry.
He breaks through on YouTube, before seeing his channel banned
The California native began activism while he was in high school. He then carried out actions in favor of the environment and spoke out in favor of stricter gun control. He ran unsuccessfully several times in local elections.
Upon leaving high school, he put his skills to the benefit of structures acting in favor of the environment. Barely two years later, in 2020, he launched the show “The dive with Jackson Hinkle” on YouTube, which gave him his first platform on a social network and notoriety beyond California. The following year – depending a post on Medium – he receives Max Blumenthal, creator of a site described by Conspiracy Watch as “a conspiracy machine in the service of Putin”.
The show accumulated views, reaching 300,000 subscribers, before YouTube decided to remove the show’s channel at the beginning of October. Reason given by the tech giant? A “supposed ‘disinformation about Ukraine’,” says Jackson Hinkle. The American has since found refuge on Rumble, a platform which chose to no longer be accessible in France when the government asked it to stop hosting RT and Sputnik, targeted by sanctions.
Jackson Hinkle is also active on Instagram, where he has nearly 400,000 followers. But it was on Elon Musk’s Twitter that he found international notoriety. It went from 300,000 subscribers before the start of the conflict between Israel and Hamas to 2.2 million currently.
With a premium account, he is eligible to be paid by X for the visibility of his tweets – like other premium account holders. Faced with the proliferation of falsehoods published by these accounts which pay to be on the social network, This is the case of several messages published by Jackson Hinckle, in which he relayed misinformation which was corrected by this X moderation system.
A change that does not seem to bother Jackson Hinkle, who encourages his readers to take out a paid subscription to his profile. He also launched an account on Patreon, a site that allows Internet users to make regular donations to content creators, surely hoping to capitalize on his fiery rhetoric.