Tag Archive for: media bias

The Left’s Plan to Sabotage Talk Radio and Local News

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For its nearly universal control over the news-industrial complex, the Left has failed to penetrate the one and only media format dominated by conservatives: talk radio. Despite repeated liberal incursions into the medium, from Mario Cuomo to Tom Daschle to Air America, the Left cannot make a showing. Now, the Left has launched a series of deceptive websites and bought up talk radio outlets — apparently in hopes that, where persuasion failed, cold hard cash may prevail.

Enter George Soros — and his bank account.

“Over the last two years, Soros Fund Management, the firm founded by the billionaire investor and now controlled by the Open Society Foundations, has become an increasingly key player in the oldest electronic mass media: radio,” reported Semafor.com.

Two months ago, the business arm of the Soros empire bought out Audacy, giving it control of more than 230 radio stations and innumerable podcasts. The fund now openly discusses taking over Cumulus Media, which owned and operated 403 radio stations across 85 markets in the United States last year, according to its website.

Soros facilitated the buy-out of 18 Univision radio stations by a consortium of Obama and Clinton known as The Latino Media Network for $60 million, cash. When Vice Media faced bankruptcy in 2019, Soros provided part of the $250 million in debt relief that kept it afloat.

“Soros specifically funneled at least $131,111,250 between 2016 and 2020 into 253 journalism and activist media groups worldwide to spread his radical leftist ideas on abortion, Marxist economics, anti-Americanism, defunding the police, environmental extremism and LGBT fanaticism,” reported the Media Research Center in a three-part exposé. Some $103 million of the $131 million went directly to media outlets, including $2 million to Wikipedia — which, despite its dependably left-leaning bias, poses as an impartial encyclopedia.

Donor-driven deception seems to be a recurring theme for the Soros media takeover, as numerous beneficiaries disguise left-wing political advocacy in the form of “local news” websites.

Among the practitioners of this art is Tara McGowan, a Democratic political operative who worked for the 2012 Obama-Biden reelection campaign and for the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign’s primary super PAC, Priorities USA Action. (To give you a flavor, a 2012 Priorities USA ad falsely charged Utah Republican Mitt Romney with causing a woman to die of cancer.) After Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump, McGowan got concerned, writing in a 2019 memo that the “Democratic Party, long reliant on television and radio, is losing the media war.” To fill the gap, she created Courier Newsroom, owned by another McGowan organization, Good Information Inc. Courier’s media outlets use apolitical news stories with local content to deliver Democratic diatribes. “The goal was to get persuadable voters engaged with unassuming content, then feed them political persuasion content, using underwriters who would pay Courier to come up with the content,” a former Courier employee revealed.

George Soros is one of those underwriters. So, too, is Planned Parenthood. The nation’s leading abortion franchise gave McGowan’s faux news media empire a quarter of a million dollars in the 2021-2022 fiscal year alone. Yet McGowan did not disclose either contributor, which one investigator noted “cannot be traced through public records until years after the fact.”

Courier also has another revolving door with the Biden administration: McGowan has visited the Biden White House 20 times, according to a review of White House visitor logs carried out by Fox News. (More about them later.) One visit produced an exclusive interview with Biden — but the rest seem to have influenced Courier’s journalism in other ways. McGowan met with Patrick Stevenson, Biden’s senior advisor for digital strategy, raising questions about whether McGowan coordinated its media activities with the administration. (That would be old hat. A 2016 email from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign manager outlined a strategy of illegal “coordination of some ads with Priorities” USA.)

The Left followed the same blueprint in the 2022 midterm elections. Last time, the misleading media strategy worked through The American Independent, the grotesquely misnamed company then led by Media Matters founder David Brock. The group, now branding itself “TAI News,” hosts “local” websites in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, as well as Montana, where incumbent Democratic Senator Jon Tester faces a difficult reelection race. “It’s been widely reported that where local news outlets shut down, dis- and misinformation grows,” said Jessica McCreight, then TAI’s executive editor, in 2022. “To combat this challenge, The American Independent has expanded to bring readers local, fact-based news and information on topics and issues that impact their communities.”

TAI used McGowan’s model of writing local news to sell its political product. For instance, the Pennsylvania Independent’s story “Pennsylvania is home to the world’s mushroom capital” sits alongside headlines slamming alleged GOP “health care cuts” and touting Biden’s “clean energy investments in Pennsylvania farms.” Yet the state websites carry dizzyingly repetitive content for an operation purportedly dedicated to local news. Each site carries the same national news stories, usually as the lead. Very little original local content takes place: As of this writing, the Wisconsin website has the same story, with the same graphic, side-by-side as the lead story in both the Politics and Economy sections.

TAI News also shares McGowan’s troubles with the truth and ties to partisan hacks. TAI’s current president, Joe Conason, wrote a baseless 1992 article claiming that President George H.W. Bush had an affair with longtime aide Jennifer Fitzgerald, and a 2003 book titled “Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth.” TAI’s former president, Matt Fuehrmeyer, had been a senior aide at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC).

Ownership and management of media matters. Look at Fox News since Rupert Murdoch stepped back from day-to-day affairs, leaving its direction to his children. As part of its 2022 Pride Month coverage, Fox News Channel carried a news story celebrating a child’s gender transition. Last April, FNC fired its top-rated host, Tucker Carlson, days after he delivered a revival-themed address to The Heritage Foundation. While Fox News still has outstanding hosts and guests, its retreat from social issues mirrors the views of management.

This seeming minutiae impacts citizens’ ability to make a difference for Christ in the public square. Since information fuels and directs action, intelligence is a vital asset of spiritual warfare. The world’s greatest calamity occurred when our first parents acted on erroneous information (Genesis 3:5). On the other hand, God asks rhetorically whether His people know of His power to cast aside kingdoms that violate His laws by asking, “Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning?” (Isaiah 40:21).

The anti-life crowd believes it can hide its venomous viewpoint in objective-looking news sites. If you do not know the bias and ownership of your “local” media site, why not read — and promote — news outlets like this one that share your Christian worldview? We will never sell out to shadowy leftist billionaires. We have already been bought with a price (I Corinthians 7:23).

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Lawmakers, FBI Director Warn of CCP’s Vast Cyberwarfare Campaign

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

What Do RFK Jr. and Ronna McDaniel Have in Common? Cancel Culture

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After several commentators on MSNBC displayed public outrage on Monday and Tuesday about their employer, NBC, hiring former Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel to be a paid contributor, NBC abruptly fired her after less than one week on the job.

MSNBC hosts claimed that McDaniel was an “election denier” because she initially questioned the outcome of the 2020 elections. Yet McDaniel said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday that President Biden won the 2020 election “fair and square” and that he’s “the legitimate president.”

However, that didn’t stop MSNBC hosts on Monday from piling attacks on McDaniel and insisting that their employer fire her immediately so that she could not share their “sacred airwaves” as “one of us,” a “badge-carrying employee of NBC News.”

Rachel Maddow said, “And so I want to associate myself with all my colleagues at MSNBC and NBC News who have voiced loud and principled objections to our company for putting on the payroll someone who hasn’t just attacked us as journalists, but someone who is part of an ongoing project to get rid of our system of government. Someone who is still trying to convince Americans that this election stuff doesn’t really work. That this last election wasn’t a real result. That American elections are fraudulent.”

As a result of this immense internal pressure, NBC caved to its employees — many of whom are biased former Democratic operatives. McDaniel herself did not find out that she was fired by NBC executives directly, but by hearing about it in the news.

This decision reveals what many already knew: the mainstream media has a deep left-wing bias, and they have no tolerance for those that disagree with them.

The new chairman of the RNC, Michael Whatley, discussed this on Wednesday’s “Washington Watch” with Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. “[… The legacy media] really, truly wants to make sure that their viewers are only getting one side of any given debate, which is really unfortunate. You know, when the American voters are informed voters, they make better decisions.”

Sadly, McDaniel’s firing reflects a deeper problem that has spread throughout our country: cancel culture. Just ask presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. who has continuously been canceled by the Democratic Party and social media. Both have tried to delegitimize Kennedy because he disagrees with the Left’s base about how to address issues such as mandatory COVID-19 vaccines, open borders, the Israeli-Hamas war, and environmental policies.

And although Kennedy still holds liberal positions on many issues, the Democratic Party would not tolerate dissent from their base or even allow him to debate Joe Biden during the Democratic primary race. This ultimately led Kennedy to leave the party and become an Independent candidate.

Democrats and Republicans alike used to care deeply about free speech and defend that right — even for those they disagree with. After all, free speech is a fundamental right protected by our Constitution’s First Amendment and essential to a functioning democratic republic. However, more Democrats are realizing that the base of their party has dropped their belief in the freedom of speech. Because now, if you’re like RFK Jr. and you disagree with the socialist wing of the Democratic Party or if you are a conservative Republican like Ronna McDaniel, they believe you do not have a right to express your thoughts on television or debate your point of view in a presidential debate. Such silencing of opposing views is dangerous not only because it disregards political leaders, but it can lead to a disregard for voters.

As Whatley explained, “When you think about where the Left is coming from — and I don’t even say Democrats, I say the Left — where they’re coming [from] is they want to dismantle the family. They want to dismantle America. What they want to do is make everybody dependent on the government for everything,” he argued. “They want to really kind of take this country down a road where the American people do not want to go. And a key component for them is to be able to stifle that debate and put their message out.”

This is why it is essential for Americans to teach accurate history and civics and make sure we are using reliable news sources. As Tony Perkins pointed out on “Washington Watch” Monday, “We all come at this with different perspectives. In fact, up until about 15 years ago, it’s what made America strong: we came together, we had different views, but we would arrive at a consensus. Why? Because we had conversations. …This is what is so dangerous about the Left,” he pointed out. “They want to shut down our conversations. They want to silence. They want to cancel any voice that runs counter to theirs. Ultimately, they’re going to silence you. That’s why we can’t let them.”

AUTHOR

Kathy Athearn

RELATED ARTICLE: Roger Stone on RFK Jr.’s VP choice: What you need to know about Nicole Shanahan

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

A ‘Bloodbath’ of Journalistic Ethics

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The legacy media got caught over the weekend twisting President Donald Trump’s use of the mundane economic phrase “bloodbath” into an instigation of violence — an act of yellow journalism that one media expert told The Washington Stand will only “further damage their credibility as self-appointed guardians of democracy and truth.”

Speaking at a Dayton rally to endorse Ohio Republican Senate candidate Bernie Moreno, President Trump warned Ohio voters that China hopes to destroy the U.S. auto market during a second Biden term — something he plans to stop by imposing robust tariffs against the Beijing electric vehicle market. He addressed his remarked specifically “to China” concerning “those big monster car manufacturing plants that you’re building in Mexico right now.” China’s largest electric vehicle producer, BYD, plans to expand into the U.S. automobile market by opening manufacturing plants in Mexico. China has funneled many of its products into the U.S. through China, as the U.S. removed all tariffs with Mexico when it adopted NAFTA in 1993.

“If you’re listening, President Xi,” if you think “you’re going to get that, you’re going to not hire Americans, and you’re going to sell the cars to us? No. We’re going to put a 100% tariff on every single car that comes across the line, and you’re not going to be able to sell those cars if I get elected. Now if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole — that’s gonna be the least of it.”

The term “bloodbath” is regularly used in the financial sector to describe an industrial contraction. The Merriam-Webster dictionary lists one of the definitions of “bloodbath” as “a major economic disaster.” They held special resonance in Ohio, home to 86,000 auto manufacturing jobs, the third largest auto-producing state in the nation behind Michigan and Indiana. Ohio has lost 276,474 manufacturing jobs, many to Mexico or China, between the adoption of NAFTA in 1993 and 2018, according to Public Citizen. Business Insider noted last December that China’s aggressive expansion into the Mexican auto market “is alarming U.S. officials.”

Democratic campaign operatives pounced on Trump’s use of the term “bloodbath” to insinuate he wanted to foment a blood-drenched revolution if he lost the election. The same operatives have said he will foment a blood-drenched revolution if he is elected. The Biden campaign promptly wrenched the president’s remarks out of context to create a digital campaign ad titled “Bloodbath,” which recycles other erroneous statements, such as falsely claiming Trump praised rioters at the Charlottesville and January 6 D.C. riots.

The legacy media followed the Democratic Party’s lead, producing such headlines as:

  • CBS News: “In Ohio campaign rally, Trump says there will be a ‘bloodbath’ if he loses November election.”
  • NBC News:“Trump says there will be a ‘bloodbath’ if he loses the election.”
  • Politico: “Trump says country faces ‘bloodbath’ if Biden wins in November.”
  • Rolling Stone: “Trump Says There Will Be a ‘Bloodbath’ and Elections Will End if He Isn’t Reelected.”
  • New York Times: “Trump Defends His Warning of a ‘Blood Bath for the Country.’”

“It’s hard to avoid that the so-called objective media uses a lot of the same language in their Trump stories as Biden-Harris press releases, in addition to quoting the Biden-Harris press releases,” Tim Graham, executive editor of the Media Research Center, told The Washington Stand. MRC has long documented the bias, misinformation, and political collusion the legacy media provide to secular-progressive causes in general and the Democratic Party in particular.

The headlines alone may mislead an untold number of individuals. Only 41% of people read beyond a headline, according to a 2014 study from the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the American Press Institute.

Even well-informed sources inside the Beltway sometimes fall under the sway of legacy media misinformation. “I didn’t realize this until I went to do the research: It’s a conversation about Chinese automakers trying to use Mexico to get cars into the United States,” admitted former Trump chief-of-staff Mick Mulvaney on “NewsNation Prime” Sunday.

In some cases, the reporters have walked through the revolving door between politics and journalism, serving in partisan roles in the Democratic Party before taking on the mantle of putatively neutral (and certainly well-compensated) journalists on major networks. On ABC’s “Good Morning America” Monday, former Clinton aide and Democratic campaign operative George Stephanopoulos told his viewers that President Trump had delivered an “incendiary speech … warning of a bloodbath for the country if he’s defeated.” At NBC’s “Today,” Trump’s remarks were reported by another individual connected to a Democratic administration: Laura Jarrett, the daughter of President Barack Obama’s most intimate adviser, Valerie Jarrett.

Experts warn that cherry-picking words and phrases, and placing them into a false context, is the antithesis of journalism. “If you’ve stripped enough context away, any piece of truth can become a piece of misinformation,” said Jaime Settle of the College of William & Mary in NPR article attacking The Daily Wire.

When former Vice President Mike Pence went on “Face the Nation” Sunday to announce he would not endorse President Donald Trump in the general election, he thanked host Margaret Brennan for playing the full clip of Trump speaking about the Chinese auto manufacturing sector. “I want to commend you for putting that into context,” said Pence.

Some media talking heads seemed to cling to the left-wing, anti-Trump narrative despite the facts. Kristen Welker, host of NBC’s “Meet the Press” and moderator of the 2020 presidential debate, asked Senator Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a Republican who voted to impeach Trump, “Even in the context of talking about the auto industry, does it cross a line for you?”

Others simply encouraged journalists to ignore the context and use any word or phrase as a cudgel against the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Ana Marie Cox of The New Republic confessed on MSNBC, “We can’t look at what he is saying and think, ‘Oh, well, we’re going to be accurate for this. We’re going to say he was referring to the auto industry.’” Media Research Center journalist Jorge Bonilla said Cox appeared “the most forthright” by admitting the left-leaning media willfully ignored accuracy in order to demonize the 45th president.

The legacy media have a long history of twisting, seizing, and pouncing on Republicans, especially Trump, said his colleague at the media watchdog MRC. “The bloodbath freakout is just the latest in a long string of freakouts stretching back to 2015,” Graham told TWS.

He believes President “Trump has a freakout strategy: He goads the press into wild overreactions that further damage their credibility as self-appointed guardians of democracy and truth.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Trump ‘Bloodbath’ Hoax Shows Just How Pathetic The Media Has Become

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

VIDEOS: ‘The Great Setup’ Parts 1 & 2 with Dr. David Martin

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Each detail he mentions in the timeline, this site remembers well.

This is recommended by Conservative Tree House.

The Great Setup With Dr. David Martin Full Part 1

Part 2.

ABOUT DR. DAVID MARTIN

Dr. David Martin is the founder and owner of the company M-CAM International which has provided research and corporate advisory services to over 160 countries and he has personally served as an advisor to the World Bank and many governments. Dr Martin first came to the attention of the world when he featured in the August 2020 documentary by Mikki Willis called Planandemic Indoctornation.

EDITORS NOTE: This Vlad Tepes Blog column with videos posted by Eeyore is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

What Business Do Christians Have Being Journalists?

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Collin Hansen, a Christian journalist, once wrote that “there’s significant overlap between” journalism and Christianity, because both “teach by distilling complicated concepts about how the world works. Both herald news, good and bad.” But he added that one “might not know about the overlap between these callings because journalists and preachers generally don’t like each other.”

Of course, it’s no wonder why. Journalists aren’t famous for their good, trustworthy reputations. Rather, they’re more commonly infamous for their willingness to lie and twist the narrative to accommodate their biases. We scan headlines and notice that left- and right-wing outlets may cover the same news yet tell completely different stories. How do we know who and what to trust?

More importantly, what business does a Christian have in a field notorious for misconduct?

Growing up, I didn’t pay much attention to politics. Partly because I lacked an interest in it, and partly because I saw how it stirred up immense controversy. I didn’t see the point of engaging in what seemed like a constant societal migraine. But here I am, a Christian reporter with my gaze particularly fixed on the political arena. So, what changed? It’s simple.

I used to tell people, “The only political opinions I have are what’s addressed in the Bible.” And while it’s largely still the case, there’s a much different meaning behind that statement now. Back then, if I said that, I was primarily referring to matters of abortion, gender, and marriage — areas I firmly believe Scripture makes abundantly clear. But what changed between then and now is that I see more clearly how the Bible touches on far more than those three significant areas. Indeed, the more I study Scripture (and observe the political landscape), the more I see just how much the Bible applies to nearly everything.

It was during my internship at Family Research Council, shortly after attending Bible college, when this became blatant. Evidently, there are a vast number of political topics to consider when claiming the Bible “nearly” applies to “everything.” But I’ve had the privilege of writing for The Washington Stand about immigration, debanking, socialism, abortion, economics, LGBT activism, education, social media, mental health, and more, and for every single topic, a biblical worldview has applied. Moreover, in each topic, a Christian voice was not only relevant, but needed.

God is not just “some” truth you can choose to adopt in personal and isolated areas of convenience. No, He is the ultimate Truth as it pertains to all things, regardless of how we feel. The truth of God is “the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). It’s completely detached from the roller coaster of human trends and finite perspectives. As such, Christians have an advantage to journalism secular journalists don’t. Christian journalists know objective truth, and it has set us free (John 8:32). And its Christian journalists who then take God and His word into the messy battleground of secular journalism to serve as salt and light to a world in desperate need of it. And really, all Christians who engage in politics are called to do this, too.

I had a conversation with a friend the other day about how hopeless it can feel standing for biblical truth in the public square when it seems to have no impact. And yet, for this very reason, I don’t find it coincidental Galatians 6:9 frequently comes to mind, which says, “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” And really, this is what Christian journalists are called to take on.

I believe it’s a strong and reasonable temptation to give up when swimming against the current — particularly in an ocean as restless as politics. But what I believe Galatians 6:9 is meant to remind us of is that we don’t give up because, while we may not always be able to see how our efforts make a difference, we serve a God who said, “Before they call I will answer; while they are still speaking I will hear” (Isaiah 65:24). And Jesus said in John 5:17, “My Father is always working, and so am I.”

Feeling like God isn’t working is no reason to give up. Instead, we never have reason to give up because we trust, in His sovereignty, He is working.

2 Corinthians 4:4 says that “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” But don’t you see? Journalism is such a wonderful opportunity for Christians to put the light of the gospel back into the public square. We will be criticized and rejected for it, but we will also be glorifying God.

Hansen articulated it well when he shared why Christian journalism matters:

“Journalists that would serve the church will fulfill a catechetical calling. We are teachers who help other Christians understand a world created by God but corrupted by sin. Our investigative work reflects the biblical reality that we live in … [a] time when our ‘adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour’ (1 Peter 5:8). We expose the sin that imperils believers so that they might be prepared to defend themselves in the power of the Holy Spirit.

“Yet, we also live in … [a] time when the Father is working in glorious ways to spread the saving knowledge of His Son, Jesus Christ. This is good news, and journalists have been called to tell it. With a little help from preachers, we just might be able to encourage the church with a new, more edifying approach to media.”

As corrupt and abused as it may be, I don’t believe the realm of media, reporting, and journalism is worth abandoning. Like everything in this fallen world, its frustrating nature is not one we should shy away from. Rather, it should be a wake-up call to what Christians are meant to do in the first place. That is, to proclaim the truth.

Earlier, I said I am a Christian reporter with my gaze fixed on politics. And while that is true as it pertains to what I write about, behind it all is a gaze fixed on Christ. And so, as a Christian journalist, I shall repeat the words of Psalm 146:2, in that “I will praise the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God while I have my being.”

AUTHOR

Sarah Holliday

Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

4 Biblical Ways to ‘Counter the Deception’ Rampant in Modern Media

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“Even the AP is acknowledging that there is deception” in modern media, said Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, host of “Washington Watch,” on Wednesday. Perkins referenced an Associated Press headline published on January 31, which read, “Grave peril of digital conspiracy theories: ‘What happens when no one believes anything anymore?’” That’s “a very profound question,” said Perkins, but he added that the AP failed to “get to the real problem and the source or the solution.”

The nearly 3,000-word article “focused on bloggers and others using the internet” to spread or adopt conspiracy theories, said Perkins. With a predictable skew toward right-fringe conspiracy theories, the article featured everything from QAnon and 2020 election claims, to government complicity in the Maui wildfires and the Sandy Hook school shooting.

On one hand, technology is a tool that cuts both ways, Perkins acknowledged. “Today’s technology … has benefits such as allowing you to watch or listen to ‘Washington Watch’ on a device you carry in your pocket. It also allows the false prophets to amplify their message with what today we might call conspiracy theories or fake news,” he said. David Closson, director of FRC’s Center for Biblical Worldview concurred. “Someone can fire something off on social media and it can make it around the world … before there’s even a chance to do a fact check.”

On the other hand, “the legacy media is a part of this problem,” Perkins argued. “The reason [people are] susceptible” to conspiracy theories is “because [the legacy media] were the first ones that rejected truth and therefore set the stage for these conspiracy theories to prosper.” As the media becomes less trustworthy, they are shocked to find a corresponding decrease in people trusting the media.

“The media and journalists of all stripes really have had such a casual relationship with the truth,” agreed Closson, “or worse, … even suppressed legitimate news.” On some networks like CNN, he said he can’t even trust “the premise of some of their arguments when [in] the previous segment, you know, they’re using preferred pronouns.” At The New York Times, staffers complained internally that an article on detransitioners created “a hostile work environment for the queer people who work here.” Readers will surely recall their own encounters with mainstream media outlets choosing narrative over news.

People eschewing the legacy media for alternate sources of information represents an existential crisis to those outlets, and they have responded accordingly. Last month, a Washington Post analyst known for favoring false narratives over true ones concluded that ordinary Americans shouldn’t do their own research. Ironically, the study he relied upon actually demonstrated that the cottage industry of fact-checking has become so subjective that fact-checkers agree on what is disinformation less than half the time.

The AP article, which extended a multi-part series on the rising threat of conspiracy theories, noted with alarm that the increase in conspiracy theories corresponds to a decrease in authority, institutions, and the mainstream media. “And even when they fail to convince people,” they wrote, “the conspiracy theories embraced by these groups contribute to mounting distrust of authorities and democratic institutions, causing people to reject reliable sources of information while encouraging division and suspicion.”

“When you have a breakdown in authority … especially in media, … you sow the seeds on fertile ground for these conspiracy theories to thrive,” Closson warned. He pointed to a 2023 Gallup poll which, for 11 out of 16 public institutions they asked about, found “the lowest level of confidence that [the public has] had in 40 years.”

“We live in a time when people simply don’t trust institutions,” said Closson. “Nor should they, given where we are,” Perkins argued. “When you have people denying the revealed truth that is so fundamental — male and female, the institution of marriage … these people are not worthy to be trusted or followed.”

Closson pointed out that conspiracy theories and misinformation have been around for a long time, “really since the beginning of time,” beginning with the serpent in the garden. “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” the serpent said to Eve (Genesis 3:1). There, the serpent challenged the truth of God’s Word, “sowing doubt, sowing confusion,” said Closson, and Adam and Eve swallowed the lie. “Ever since then, we’ve lived in some sort of a post-truth world.”

However, Closson added, conspiracy theories seem to be gaining more traction now because of America’s culture-wide rejection of truth. “Even in our churches, we’re not immune from these things,” he lamented. He cited research FRC commissioned in 2023 that found “48% of regular church goers say that they don’t believe in absolute moral truth, … a basic tenet of a biblical worldview.”

“Deception comes when we depart from truth,” Perkins responded. He cited Paul’s warning to the Thessalonians about the age of lawlessness, which would bring “all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Thessalonians 2:9-12). “We should take that as an indication that these latter days are going to be filled with deception,” said Perkins.

Perkins and Closson identified four ways that Christians should respond to the epidemic of deception poisoning America’s media, public discourse, and even the church. In a refreshing contrast to America’s prevailing buffet of lies, they served up courses of hearty, wholesome truth — all of which were grounded in God’s infallible Word.

1. Don’t Be Led Astray

The Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24-25) opened with Jesus’s disciples asking him to teach them about “the sign of your coming and of the end of the age” (Matthew 24:3). Jesus answered, “See that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and they will lead many astray” (Matthew 24:4-5). Paul, having learned from Jesus, later issued similar instructions to the Thessalonians, “Let no one deceive you in any way” (2 Thessalonians 2:3). In other words, the latter times would feature many anti-Christ deceivers peddling counterfeit gospels, and Jesus wanted his followers to be on their guard.

These instructions from our Lord were the “first words out of his mouth,” Perkins noted, after quoting the passage. “You see, Jesus warns his followers to be on guard against deception and those who will peddle deception. … So, repeatedly he says, ‘Don’t be deceived.’”

Jesus had already warned his followers against deception. “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves,” said Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 7:15). Closson quoted these words and added that Jesus gave “a litmus test” by which to recognize false teachers: “You will recognize them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:16). He endorsed applying this litmus test to “the people reporting the news. Let’s recognize them by their fruit.”

In a culture of confusion and lies, Christian, don’t be led astray by false teachers.

2. Don’t Be Alarmed

Jesus proceeded to instruct his disciples, “See that you are not alarmed” (Matthew 24:6). Jesus foretold wars, calamities, persecutions — intense trials that could throw Christians off-balance. Nevertheless, Jesus instructed his followers that these things must happen, preparing them beforehand to remember that God is sovereign over all things.

Paul repeated this instruction, too. “Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we ask you, brothers, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by a spirit or a spoken word, or a letter seeming to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come” (2 Thessalonians 2:1-2).

“We should not be surprised,” said Perkins, who quoted from Matthew 24. “Jesus warned us over and over … that this was going to occur.”

3. Return to the Truth

Christians must also “go back to the truth,” as an antidote to the epidemic of deception, said Closson. “We need to stand on God’s word …, which is our ultimate source of truth” (see John 17:17). “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17).

“We should put our confidence in that which does not change,” Perkins agreed. He added, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever [Hebrews 13:8]. The Word of God does not change.” Jesus also said this on the Mount of Olives, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”

Perkins applied this truth to the moments in which we’re tempted to believe a lie, especially one that questions God’s Word (“Did God really say?”). Our response, he said, should be, “‘Well, wait a minute. Let me check. Let me go back to the source.’ … You go back to the source. That’s how you counter the deception.”

Perkins argued that American Christians should use their access to the source of truth to counter the deception of the evil one in the public square. “We have the ability, here in the United States, to use the freedoms that we still have to advocate for others. We have the ability to expose these things that are occurring in the end times that Jesus warned about,” he said. “He said they were coming, I think, to prepare us so that we could stand against the evil.” Invoking Matthew 24:12, “Because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold,” Perkins urged, “We have to act on legitimate information we have, so that we can be the salt and light that allows the gospel to go forth.”

4. Use Discernment

Countering error with truth is not always simple, which is “why we need discernment,” said Closson, “today more than we have ever needed it.” When Jesus first sent his disciples out into the world, he told them to “be wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16), he quoted. Additionally, Jesus quoted the greatest commandment in the law, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37).

Using discernment is easier said than done, but Perkins and Closson discussed several helpful tips for evaluating the news:

A. Pause and Pray

“The first step that I would take when I see something on the social media or the news, is just take a pause,” said Closson. “There’s the impulse that we like to know everything at once. In a social media age, we’re used to getting our news instantaneously. And so I think we need to slow down. We need to pray.”

“You don’t have to be the first one to pass [a news article] on,” Perkins concurred. Because here’s what happens when you do that. Most of these [conspiracy theories] are exposed within time. If you’re associated with that, you lose credibility among your friends.”

So, counseled Perkins, “Resist this temptation to forward it on or to post it or embrace it. … Pray over it. Just have discernment.”

B. Read Critically

Second, “Don’t believe anything you see just because you see it in print,” said Closson. Perkins put the same concept in different words, “Be careful what you read online. Be careful about just forwarding something on” without considering first if it’s true.

As part of this step, Christians should compare what they read in the news to what the Bible says, Perkins advised.

In the same discourse, Jesus predicted, “For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. … Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. … And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray” (Matthew 24:7, 9, 11).

“When you hear those things happening,” we know that “the Scripture says, ‘Yeah, those things are going to happen,’” said Perkins. “So, we can say, ‘Well, all right, this lines up with what Jesus said was going to be happening. Let’s go the next step and validate and verify the source.’”

C. Corroborate Information

“It’s always good to corroborate. If you see something on social media, don’t just assume it’s true,” Closson said. “Don’t forward the email to a friend. Don’t forward the post, but corroborate it. Go to some valid news organizations.”

Closson recommended Family Research Council’s own news organization, The Washington Stand, noting that it has “a whole team of reporters” dedicated to “coming at [the news] from a biblical worldview.” This means that they are “trying to connect it to Scripture, trying to connect it to facts, objective truth, things that are reportable, things that can be verified.”

Perkins suggested a “rule of thumb” that “anything you see that is detached from a specific, reliable news or organizational site like The Washington Stand, … don’t trust it if it’s not connected to a site that it can be verified.”

One way to find reliable news is to “get as close to the source as you can,” said Perkins. “That’s why we bring you the actual news makers. We go right to the source. We’re not, you know, reporting on what someone else said.” That’s one reason why social media is an unreliable place to peruse the news; it’s far removed from the source.

D. Be Honest

Everyone is liable to make mistakes. This is even easier in a rapidly changing news environment, where first reports often turn out to be wrong, misleading, or at least lacking critical information. The question is, how do we respond when we make mistakes?

Perkins exhorted “Washington Watch” listeners to be honest. “I do my very best to make sure that everything we say here is validated and it’s true,” he said. “And, if we do get something wrong, I’m going to take ownership of that, and I’m going to correct it when we find out.”

“So,” Closson summarized, “prayer, discernment, corroborating objectivity — all of these things, I think, ought to mark a Christian as they take in, read, understand, and share the news.” Christians should speak the truth in love, which means we should not be led astray or alarmed, but stand firm on the Word of God, the only infallible source of truth. To accurately handle the Word of truth amid a culture of deception, Christians must navigate with all discernment, never losing sight of him who is “the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Only 3.4% of Journalists Are Republican: Study

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A survey has found that only 3.4% of American journalists identify as Republican, compared to 36.4% who identify as Democrat and 51.7% as Independent. The survey also indicated a steep decline in the number of Republican journalists over the last several decades, which has coincided with record high levels of Americans saying they do not trust the media.

The Syracuse University study was first conducted in 1971 and was repeated roughly every 10 years thereafter. The first survey found that 25.7% of journalists said they were Republican. In 1982, the number plunged to 18.8%, and in 1992 it further fell to 16.4%. In 2002, the number of Republican journalists increased slightly to 18%. But by 2013, the number nosedived to 7.1%, and even this low number was cut in half by 2022 at 3.4%.

Notably, the massive decline in journalists who identify as Republican has occurred even while the number of Americans who say they are Republican has remained relatively consistent. From 2004 until now, Gallup has found that roughly 30% of Americans consider themselves Republican, with roughly the same number identifying as Democrats and around 40% saying they are Independent.

The marked decline in Republican journalists comes as a record number of Americans say they don’t trust the media. Last October, Gallup found that a record high 39% of Americans say they have no trust in the media. A few months prior, a Rasmussen Reports poll found that 58% of voters think that “bias in the news media is getting worse,” with only 13% saying the issue is “getting better.” The poll also found a stark difference between the views of Republicans and Democrats, with 68% of GOP voters saying that bias is worsening, while only 42% of Democrats saying the same.

The American public’s trust of the media has in fact reached such a low level that at least half say that national news organizations are intentionally attempting to mislead, according to a Gallup/Knight Foundation poll released last February.

“I think it’s difficult to say that most people in the media are intentionally trying to deceive, but it’s understandable why people feel that way,” Jared Bridges, editor-in-chief of The Washington Stand, told TWS. “I’m sure there are outliers who are trying to deceive. But I think that the worldview that most journalists are steeped in sets them up to begin on faulty foundations.”

Meanwhile, the personal political leanings of staff at some media outlets that have historically been conservative appear to be affecting their content. In October, it was reported that between 2015 and 2022, nine staff members at Christianity Today made 73 political donations that all went to Democrats. Commentators have observed that CT, which was founded by Billy Graham in 1956, has been moving in a leftward direction for a number of years. “The fact that modern CT staff have financially supported pro-abortion, pro-sexual perversion candidates does not surprise me at all,” Tom Ascol, who serves as president of Founders Ministries, told The Daily Wire. “The magazine long ago lost its biblical moorings and has been under the influence of progressives and leftists for years. It’s tragic. And it’s a reminder to evangelicals that institutions that faithful Christians build are always in danger of drifting left.”

As for the obvious lopsided Democratic affiliations of journalists in the mainstream media, Bridges contended that the imbalance is bound to have far-reaching ramifications for public trust and even-handedness in reporting.

“So you have thousands of reporters working in a journalistic house built upon sand that shifts with whichever cultural wind is blowing the strongest,” he emphasized. “A lack of Republican (and presumably conservative) journalists certainly plays a part in an atmosphere of distrust, and when you have an institution that has no room for an alternate worldview, it’s a recipe for one-sided bias.”

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

You Can’t Have Your Theocracy and Eat It Too

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“Ah, thank God for Salon, the voice of reason,” said no one ever, and former “senior White House correspondent for Playboy” Brian Karem’s latest article there is demonstrative of why.

In a piece published Thursday and subtly, tastefully entitled “MAGA and Christian nationalism: Bigger threat to America than Hamas could ever be,” Karem argues that so-called Christian nationalists (by which his fustian smear piece makes clear he means any devout Christian elected to public office) pose a greater threat to the U.S. than Islamist terrorists like Hamas — you remember them, the little ragtag band who attacked Israel last month and slaughtered over 1,400 Israelis in a single day and have been torturing hostages every day since. No, Hamas is nothing more than a Middle Eastern bogeyman, Karem would have you believe. The real threat to the American way of life is that devious religion founded on the principle of self-sacrificial love: Christianity.

In an interesting rhetorical choice, Karem chooses to begin his argument by noting that “the FBI issued a warning that the chance of staged terrorist attacks in the United States has grown since the war began in Gaza.” He further mocks Fox News’s White House correspondent Peter Doocy for asking national security officials if they’ve considered the possibility of a terrorist entering the U.S. via the nation’s wide-open southern border. “Obviously they have,” write Karem, “or the FBI wouldn’t have issued the warning.”

For a few paragraphs, Karem does some adroit fund-the-war-in-Ukraine cheerleading, somehow manages to praise Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) for betraying his voter base and shipping American tax dollars overseas, and speculate whether or not Senators Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) or Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) are “fans” of Russian president Vladimir Putin — all of this amidst a smattering of pop culture references of which I’m sure Karem is proud, and equally sure he shouldn’t be.

Then he reaches the crux of his argument: “While the world burns, Johnson and the MAGA wing of the Republican Party … seem determined to convert the U.S. into a theocracy run by people who will thump you with the Bible, but haven’t read much of it.” This coming from the former White House correspondent for Playboy.

“Lord, how they love to preach fire and brimstone. But the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes? Forget it,” Karem opines. “Not a chance. They’ve embraced only the Old Testament angry God and the apocalyptic parts of Revelation brought on by ergot poisoning.” Most devout Christians are no doubt familiar with this age-old approach: the admitted non-believer who doesn’t read his Bible cherry-picks a handful of Scripture passages that, taken out of context, he thinks prove his point, and proceeds to berate the Christian for failing to live up to his arbitrary standard of Christianity based on an English translation of an out-of-context Bible verse, or two, if he’s feeling particularly cocky.

Karem would do well to remember that the Beatitudes include “Blessed are the pure in heart” (Matthew 5:8) and “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you for my sake” (Matthew 5:11), which is exactly what the leftist-dominated media, including Salon, has been doing to Mike Johnson, ridiculing him for his Christian faith, his fidelity to his wife, and even his adoption of an African-American teenager.

In classic anti-Christian form, Karem disregards roughly 2,000 years’ worth of theological scholarship, debate, and clarification to roughly cite a Bible verse and implicitly declare himself a knowledgeable arbiter of all things Christian. He claims that Johnson and his MAGA ilk “want no separation of church and state. They want an isolationist country surrounded by walls and dedicated to the proposition that the First Amendment guarantees them the right to worship any way they want — while forcing the rest of us to worship the way they choose.” He adds that “modern Republicans seem hellbent on returning to the Middle Ages, driven there by the first Christian nationalist House speaker.”

Of course, Christians do support the First Amendment. It’s the legal mechanism that protects our right to worship the Triune God and to live so we that might be more and more like Him, in the hopes of one day being united wholly with Him in Heaven. While Karem rightly notes that the U.S. Constitution forbids “respecting an establishment of religion,” he wrongly interprets this to mean a “separation of church and state.”

The leftist’s or progressive’s notion of the constitutional amendment guaranteeing freedom of religion seems to demand that lawmakers leave their religious beliefs — which, for the devoutly religious, are the very core of their being and the moral fabric upon which they base their every decision — at the door of the statehouse or capitol building. At no point anywhere in the U.S. Constitution is this explicated or even implied. If it were, a substantial sum of religious Americans of all creeds would be barred from public service, leaving the running of the nation to those with, essentially, no beliefs beyond the merely material world.

As the great author C.S. Lewis elegantly elucidated in his book “The Abolition of Man,” those who do not profess some kind of eternal or religious belief essentially have no beliefs, and therefore have no basis for forming value judgments. It is the eternal, the immutable which is the standard against which all things are measured, which serves as the source of value itself. Without such a belief, there can be no deciding this policy or that is “good” for the nation or “bad” for the country because there is no basis for declaring anything “good” or “bad.” Lewis, of course, explains the concept far more authoritatively and far more intelligently than I, and as I’m sure there would be some copyright issue with quoting the entirety of his book here, I strongly recommend you read (or re-read) it.

Back to Karem’s postulation that Christian nationalism is a bigger threat to America than Islamist terrorists. Citing Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a rabid abortion advocate whom Karem classifies as “a constitutional scholar,” the Salon columnist quips, “The framers taught us that the biggest threat to religious freedom comes from theocrats who try to establish their own sect over everyone else.” Karem adds, “None of that matters to the Republicans. They revel in their own chicanery. They despise free thought and independence…” Nevermind that the vast majority of censorship efforts come from the Left, never mind that the preponderance of America’s founders were Bible-believing Christians, nevermind that “free thought and independence” in America were pioneered by those who put their faith in Someone other than the president or their local congressmen, nevermind that God Himself is the source (and, indeed, summit) of freedom and independence.

If Christian conservatives seem “hellbent on returning to the Middle Ages,” then Karem (and many a leftist like him) is “hellbent” on proliferating a self-defeating argument. Anti-Christian leftists deride “theocracy,” while simultaneously insisting that Christians aren’t being properly Christian. Leftists jettison the bulk of the Christian moral code and stick to the platitude “Be nice to people,” which Christ notably never uttered. Leftists fear a Christian “theocracy,” but also try to tell Christians we’re doing theocracy wrong. Which one is it, Mr. Karem? Is Christianity a violent, threatening, oppressive religion that cannot be tolerated openly in the public square? Or is it a peaceful belief proclaiming niceness and tolerance to all men? It can’t be both.

And let the record reflect that at no point does Karem address how Christian nationalists might launch an attack on America that slaughters over 1,400 in a single day, nor which book of the Bible condones taking and torturing hostages, nor indeed where in Scripture Christ promised his disciples any number of virgin-afterlife-brides in exchange for suicide bombings. At the end of the day, Hamas and other Islamist terrorist organizations pose an infinitely greater threat to America than devout Christians striving for the good of the nation.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Israel Screens Raw, Unseen Hamas Footage for Reporters to Understand ‘What We’re Fighting For’

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You didn’t have to be in the roomful of international journalists to understand the sheer horror of what they saw. For all of the grisly, stomach-turning images posted online, nothing compared to the 43 minutes of torture screened for reporters on an Israeli military base Monday. Afterward, many, including Breitbart’s Senior Editor-at-Large Joel Pollack, could only lean against a wall and weep. Replaying the victims’ terrified screams in his mind, he writes, “There is no moment of redemption in the footage. We do not see the end, when the good guys arrive and save the victims.” The only comfort, Pollack admits, “is the knowledge that the footage, at least, was retrieved from the terrorists after they were killed or captured.”

Like so many Israelis, government official Eylon Levy is appalled his country has to prove that terrorists brutalized innocent Jews when the evidence lies in morgues across the country. “I can’t believe we as a country are having to do this,” he shook his head, “… [but] we are witnessing a Holocaust denial-like phenomenon evolving in real time as people are casting doubt on the magnitude of the atrocities that Hamas committed against our people and, in fact, recorded in order to glorify that violence.”

With just pen and paper, dozens of journalists sat frozen through the raw and agonizing scenes from October 7 — videos Levy called “gruesome and as yet unseen.” Pollack was ready to quit 17 minutes in. “Make it stop,” he heard a reporter whisper, as others openly cried. In one of the most heart-wrenching moments, a boy whose father was just butchered by Hamas sobs, “Why am I alive?” — a haunting echo Pollack couldn’t shake.

In stunned silence, reporters filed out of the room to retrieve their laptops, phones, and other electronic devices they weren’t allowed to bring in. Pollack kept replaying the moment two sons became fatherless in front of their very eyes, one wailing, “Daddy, Daddy.” The killings were savage enough to make one journalist heave. It was, as The Atlantic’s Graeme Wood wrote, “pure, predatory sadism … an eagerness to kill nearly matched by eagerness to disfigure the bodies of the victims.”

Incredibly, Pollack pointed out, what these reporters witnessed is “just a small part of what the IDF still possesses.” And while Major General Mickey Edelstein admitted the government has evidence of brutal rape, “we cannot share it,” he told them somberly.

Still, the question that lingered in everyone’s minds was Defense Forces Spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari’s: “Why does a person take a GoPro [to such an attack]?” he asked the press later. “Because he’s proud of what he does.”

As difficult as the decision was to play the footage for reporters, Hagari believes it was important, because “we want to understand, ourselves, what we are fighting for.” It is their duty, he said, to build a “collective memory,” so that when Israel is challenged, it can point back to these atrocities.

Already, the global pressure is on to back off the ground invasion that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been preparing. “Israel’s the only country that has a stopwatch on it when it needs to defend itself,” CBN News’s Chris Mitchell warned from the ground.

But, as Chuck Holton reported from Israel on Friday’s “Washington Watch,” the fighting “really has not stopped in the last two weeks.” “It’s not like they just attacked on October 7th and then nothing’s happened since then. The Hamas terrorists and Hezbollah terrorists have been attacking Israel nonstop every day since then.”

While so many international outlets are focused on the Palestinian casualties, Holton explained that the Israel’s enemies are actively shelling innocent people. “There was just a massive rocket attack in Ashdod and Ashkelon out on the coast — and that’s quite a ways from Gaza. So they are still firing rockets and they’re firing them out of civilian areas.”

In talking to IDF soldiers, Holton says that every one of them agrees that there is only one option at this point, “and that is to go in and to absolutely demolish and dismantle the entire organization of Hamas.” Of course, Hamas “is working very hard to hide behind the civilian populace, to weaponize the civilians against Israel and the West, and to weaponize whatever aid comes in there so that they can continue to fight.”

As to whether the ground campaign is imminent, “that is one of the most closely guarded secrets,” the freelance correspondent told guest host and former Congressman Jody Hice. “But I’ll just say this. This is going to be a massive, absolutely massive, combined arms operation on the scale of the Shock and Awe campaign into Iraq in 2003. We’re talking about up to a half a million troops that will likely be engaged in combat before too long — and this is not planned over a course of years or even months. This is going from a standing start just two weeks ago. The logistics alone behind this kind of an operation are absolutely mind-boggling.”

As to why more boots aren’t already on the ground in Gaza, Holton explained, “You’re talking about having to coordinate all the moving parts of aviation and armor and artillery and infantry and signal and intelligence — and figure out what targets to hit and figure out who’s supposed to hit them and figure out how they’re not going to shoot each other in the process. This is an absolutely unbelievable undertaking that they’re about to do. And they realize that the more time they spend preparing, the less time they’ll have to spend fighting.”

In the meantime, fears of an even bigger conflict are spreading with the news that China is sending six warships to the Middle East. In the U.S., Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is prepping the troops for possible deployment. “What we’re seeing is a prospect of a significant escalation of attacks on our troops and our people throughout the region. We’re going to do what’s necessary to make sure that our troops are in that position and they were protected and that we have the ability to respond,” he said over the weekend, adding, “We won’t hesitate to take the appropriate action.”

“If any group or any country is looking to widen this conflict and take advantage of this very unfortunate situation that we see. Our advice is don’t,” Austin warned. “We maintain the right to defend ourselves…” If that happens, Secretary of Antony Blinken echoed, “we’re ready for it.”

For now, Israelis struggle to cope — not just with the nightmare of such enormous loss, but with the world’s perception that they are somehow to blame. “I can tell you that we are already used to it, unfortunately,” Idan Rakovsky said regretfully. Still, “seeing the coverage outside of Israel is very, very hard,” he admitted.

Maybe what Pollack and others saw will help change minds. But even if it doesn’t, “At the end of the day, we know it’s a war between the light and the darkness,” the former IDF soldier insisted. “And we know that life will prevail — even though people might say differently.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Perkins, Leaders Call Believers to Pray and Stand for Israel ‘Until We See Victory’

RELATED VIDEO: The full Shin Bet interrogation of Hamas terrorists who invaded Israel on October 7th.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Michigan State Police Discovered Widespread 2020 Voter Fraud & Turned Over Evidence to FBI—Who Apparently Did Nothing

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Last evening a gentleman informed me that he believes the claims of 2020 Election Fraud were preposterous and “made-up.” Merely a conspiracy theory and Trump being a “poor sport” in losing. After two and a half years of diligent, very slow but steady and emotionally painstaking work proving otherwise, there are still those who choose to live in their self-made “comfortably numb” bubble. I think their predecessors on the Titanic were similar as they were told to leave their staterooms, prepare to board life boats and evacuate the ship. Dressed in high fashion expensive clothing, and growling at the inconvenience these similarly “comfortably numb” remained in their self-made bubbles of opinion even as they were escorted onto the main deck and saw the iceberg mountain the ship had struck which led to the giant ship already tilting downward having taken on mammoth amounts of water. They were far more interested in what would be on the breakfast menu then the reality before them.

Evidence be damned…similar to the “I’m content in my comfortable world of Marxist philosophy and/or sufficient money capable of snuffing out noise and distractions not to my taste” predecessors, the self-absorbed non critical thinkers of today just cannot be bothered examining evidence, their minds are already set or dulled or both! Furthermore their life-styles have not been terribly altered…yet! With less funds and positions of comfort a large number of the younger generation who have been indoctrinated via the school and college systems are, likewise, simply not able to critically think their way through the mounting evidence of planned deterioration our country is experiencing.

A preponderant number of elected officials in public office and candidates seeking such positions have conveniently loss what our founders established and demonstrated in their own lives – Service above Self. It is no longer relevant to place God and Country above or before self when seeking or holding public office. Self-made agendas leading to higher positions is the game. Defending the principles and foundational beliefs of our exceptional nation are no longer proper; or worse, they are racist or some other derogatory term. America may not die from bullets or bombs but be destroyed from within by those who have chosen to alter and abolish our country to serve their own means, their own agendas, their own pride and prejudice. America may very likely survive from patriots, even a remnant, who in their heart believe and are willing to stand, be counted, terribly abused and slandered defending the principles and foundational beliefs of our exceptional nation. Members of the Michigan State Police are such an example.

After two and a half years of diligent, very slow and emotionally painstaking work, there are remnant patriots across our Land still fighting the good fight. Fighting to prove the 2020 Election (2022 Election as well) was a diabolical deception, corrupted financially and otherwise, fraud, even a conspiracy to destroy the basic gift our founders presented to us if we would only hold on to it; the gift of free and unencumbered elections. Look at the link below to see still more evidence presented by the Michigan State Police, and purportedly covered-up by the FBI. For those comfortably numb in their bubble simply move on nothing to see, nothing to learn. But if you consider yourself a remnant patriot like our brothers and sisters in the colonies of 1775, hunker down and continue to fight for the life of this country.

Michigan State Police Discover Widespread 2020 Voter Fraud and Turn Over Evidence to FBI – Who Apparently Did Nothing

 | Sundance

Stunning discovery being shared by Gateway Pundit about a network of massive ballot fraud and voter registration fraud in Michigan as a result of a city clerk notifying local police.  The investigation uncovered a multi-state voter registration operation and the details within the state police report are quite remarkable.

(Gateway Pundit) […] On October 8, 2020. only one month before the 2020 general election, Muskegon, MI City Clerk Ann Meisch noticed a black female (whose name was redacted from the police report), dropping off between 8,000-10,000 completed voter registration applications at the city clerk’s office.

The Muskegon Police Department was contacted and asked to investigate. On 10/21/20 First Lieutenant Mike Anderson was contacted by Tom Fabus, Chief of Investigations for Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s Office. According to the MI State Police report, Mr. Fabus asked for Michigan State Police assistance with a joint investigation of alleged voter fraud being conducted by the Muskegon Police Department and the AG.   An investigative task force was formed, and an investigation was initiated. (read more)

Read more.

©2023. Lyle J. Rapacki. Ph.D. All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel Confirms 10K Voter Registrations Delivered to Muskegon Clerk in October 2020 Were FRAUDULENT

It Was All Arranged and Controlled to Achieve a Desired Overall Effect to Undermine the MAGA Movement

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The truth always comes out. We reported from day one of the Democrat’s J6 Special Committee that this was nothing more than a Soviet style show trial to discredit their political opponents.

The J6 Committee members had access to all of the footage of what happened on January 6th, 2020 in the U.S. Capitol building.

Rather than tell the truth they created the myth that the MAGA movement was made up of “insurrectionists.”

Because of the J6 lies two women died and many patriots have been wrongfully imprisoned.

In an article titled Tucker Carlson Outlines Review of Capitol Hill J6 CCTV Tapes and Publicizes Footage  Sundance reports,

As promised, Fox News host Tucker Carlson began publicizing the closed-circuit TV footage from Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021.  In the introduction to the footage, Mr Carlson outlines the process and limitations that his producers encountered.

Tucker Carlson states no one from the House of Representatives placed any restrictions on the footage as reviewed. Additionally, Carlson notes that no one at Fox News leadership had any input into the review that his team undertook.  As he describes, much of the 40,000 hours of footage was innocuous, empty rooms with CCTV camera footage showing very little.  However, the footage that did show events, does not support the “violent insurrectionist” narrative as promoted by the J6 committee.

WATCH:

Here is another lie that was created from whole cloth by the J6 Committee and then broadcast by the White House, legacy media and social media platforms. It involved the death of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick.

On January 6th, 2023 in an NPR article titled Trump and two rioters are sued over the death of Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick Juliana Kim reported,

The longtime partner of a U.S. Capitol Police officer who died following the Jan. 6. insurrection has sued former President Donald Trump and two rioters for wrongful death.

Sandra Garza, who is representing the estate of Brian Sicknick, claims her partner’s death was “a direct and foreseeable consequence” of Trump’s words that day. She also assigns liability to Julian Elie Khater and George Pierre Tanios, two men accused of assaulting Sicknick with chemical spray during the breach.

The lawsuit, filed on Thursday in the U.S. District Court in Washington, came a day before the second anniversary of the attack. The suit seeks at least $10 million in damages from each of the defendants.

WATCH:

Officer Sicknick died of a heart attack. Not from any injuries or actions of those who were allowed in by the Capitol Police on January 6th, 2021.

There were also Antifa members dressed up as MAGA patriots at the J6 rally in Washington, D.C.

Watch:

The Bottom Line

The Democrats have since 2016 worked every angle to discredit the MAGA movement in general and President Donald J. Trump in particular. Their efforts began with the false Russia collusion gambit, which has been proven false and made up by the FBI. This was followed by the quid pro quo myth which lead to the impeachment proceedings against President Trump.

The fact is that colluding with Russia and Ukraine and all now know quid pro quo activities involved the Biden family and Democrats.

It now obvious that the traitors in our government form all parties are bent towards lying, cheating and, yes, stealing elections.

QUESTION: How will the traitors steal the Presidential Election in 2024?

ANSWER: Using all proven means available.

We listed the traitor “Dirty Dozen” strategies to steal the 2024 Presidential Election:

  1. Dirty Voter Rolls. There are many states where the voter rolls have not been cleansed of dead people, those who have moved out of state and those who vote in more than one state. Christopher Wright in a column titled Stupid Voter Role Tricks wrote, “Election integrity activists are placing renewed emphasis on cleaning up the voter rolls, and here’s why:  no matter what scheme the Democrats come up with to steal elections, at the end of the day they still have to find enough records of voters who haven’t voted to put in enough fake votes to change the results of the election…About 8 percent of the population moves any given year.  That’s a lot of voter records just waiting to be picked.  The more voters on the rolls who are guaranteed not to vote, the easier it is for the Democrats to commit election fraud, plain and simple… Judicial Watch sued Democrat-run New York City and got a settlement requiring the city to remove over 440,000 ineligible names from the voter rolls and to maintain the rolls in the future.  The city had only removed 22 names in the previous six years which is preposterous for a city of five and a half million people…Judicial Watch and another group filed another lawsuit to clean up the rolls in Los Angeles.  The suit concluded successfully with Democrat-controlled L.A. County removing 1.2 million ineligible voters from the rolls.  The County sent notices to 1.6 million inactive voters who had not voted in two successive federal elections.  The County revealed that 643,000 voters stayed on the rolls despite not voting for at least ten years, more inactive voters than anywhere else in the country.  Yet, there they were, just waiting for the Democrats to make it look like they voted.”
  2. Mail-in-Ballots. Mail-in-Ballots came into vogue during the Covid pandemic. Many states, with the help of some like Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, sent out millions of ballots to addresses regardless of that person’s eligibility to vote. The Last Refuge wrote, “Since the advent of ballot centric focus through mail-in and collection drop-off processes, votes have become increasingly less valuable amid the organizers who wish to control election outcomes. As a direct and specific result, ballot distribution, assembly, collection and return has become the key to Democrat party success. The effort to attain votes for candidates is less important than the strategy of collecting ballots.”
  3. Mules. True The Vote found that mail-in-ballot drop boxes were used to change the 2020 election. Mules, people who delivered ballots of a questionable nature were filmed dropping these mail-in-ballots in the dead of night. True The Vote in its video exposé 2000 Mules showed how easy it was to commit election fraud in just five counties in five states that flipped the 2020 election from Trump to Biden.
  4. Ballot Harvesting. William Hamilton in a 2022 article titled Ballot Harvesting: How Democracies Perish wrote, “Judging from so many disputed elections and the resulting court cases, there is ample evidence to doubt the outcomes of the 2020 and 2022 elections. The easiest way to understand the overall strategy of the 2020 election is to read Molly Ball’s general explanation in the February 4, 2021 issue of Time Magazine. An accurate title would be: ‘How the Progs Harvested, Manipulated, and Cast Enough Votes to Win.’ Instead, Molly Ball wrote, ‘The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election.’ You decide. The Prog victory in 2020, such as it was, rested on the usual ineptitude of many Secretaries of State, the usual failures of the U.S. Post Office, improvements in ‘flaps and seals’ technology, the pandemic-induced flood of mail-in ballots, thousands of unmonitored ballot boxes, the advent of computer software and sophisticated printers capable of producing virtually undetectable counterfeit ballots, the hacking of some voting systems, and most importantly the money to train and hire an army of foot soldiers to pillage unprotected ballot boxes, to go door-to-door, to go to senior centers and nursing homes with offers to ‘help’ homeowners and senior citizens understand complex ballot issues and — here’s the key — to allow the harvesters to gain physical possession of millions of ballots.”
  5. Ranked Choice Voting. In ranked-choice voting, voters get to rank their candidates in order of preference. In other words, you can say who your first-choice candidate would be, followed by the next best candidate, and so on down the list. If a candidate receives more than half of the first-choice votes in the election, that candidate wins—exactly as they would in any other election. If there’s no majority winner (for instance, if the first-choice winner would only represent 43% of the total votes) then the race is decided by an “instant runoff.” Whichever candidate has the fewest votes is eliminated; voters who had chosen that candidate as their first choice have their second choice counted instead. This process goes on until a winner representing more than half of the vote emerges. The Bongino Report reported, “What happens when you combine an all-in or “jungle” primary with ranked-choice voting in the general election? Putting the two modern “innovations” on elections together in Alaska produced this absurd result, in which Republicans lost a House seat despite getting 60% of the vote.”
  6. [S]election Code. [S]ELECTION CODE has released video exposé on the 2020 election. According to their website stating, “You’ve heard it said ‘Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.’ What about those who code the vote?” Here is your free download of [S]election code CLICK HERE or copy this link: https://fs-cdn.frankspeech.com/files/vid/SelectionCode.mp4.
  7. Electronic Voting Machines. Those counties with electronic voting machines experienced serious errors in both the 2020 Presidential and the 2022 midterm elections. Dominion and electronic voting machines were, after forensic reviews, found to have either failed to count ballots for a candidate and or flipped the vote from one candidate to another candidate. On November 12, 2022 President Donald J. Trump wrote, “So in Maricopa County (AZ) they’re at it again. Voting Machines in large numbers didn’t work, but only in Republican districts. People were forced to wait for hours, then got exhausted or had other things to do and left the voting lines by the thousands. Even Kari Lake was taken to a Liberal Democrat district in order to vote. Others weren’t so luckily. This is a scam and voter fraud, no different than stuffing the ballot boxes. They stole the Electron (sic) from Blake Masters. Do Election over again!” Christopher Wright wrote, “[T]hey keep telling us these machines don’t have modems and can’t connect to the Internet, but a watchdog group in Wisconsin found this is a complete lie.  Machines used in the 2020 elections were connected to a nongovernmental IP address called WiscNet in three separate elections, including November 3, 2020. “
  8. Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC). In the article ERIC: The Worm That Got Inside Our Elections Christopher Wright wrote, “Grassroots activists continue to raise questions about ERIC, the Electronic Registration Information Center, and authorities are beginning to respond. On the face of things, ERIC is a private organization that helps its 32 member states clean up and maintain their voter rolls.  It compares state voter registration data against motor vehicle licensing information and the Social Security master death file.  Then it tells states which voters are dead, have moved out of state, or are registered to vote in more than one state.  Critics say ERIC is, at root, nothing more than a partisan get-out-the-vote drive for Democrats. Louisiana withdrew from ERIC last month, citing ‘concerns raised by citizens, government watchdog organizations and media reports about potential questionable funding sources and that possibly partisan actors may have access to ERIC network data for political purposes.’ More recently, Alabama left ERIC.  The new Secretary of State said he did not want a private group having access to voter data, including driver’s license numbers, contact information, and partial social security numbers including those of minors. In addition to partisan connections and privacy concerns, critics also say ERIC does a bad job, producing bloated voter rolls in member states.  Florida, for example, is a member of ERIC but has more than 100 percent of all possible citizens of voting age on its rolls.”
  9. Campaign Finance Mules. The Gateway Pundit in an article titled “Campaign Finance Mules” Identified in Georgia Senate Race – Democrat Raphael Warnock Received Over $24 Million from Hundreds of UNEMPLOYED Donors Giving Over 358,000 Donations reported, “They say ‘Follow The Money’. So we did, and found a massive number of “Campaign Finance Mules” making hundreds, even thousands of donations per year. NBC recently reported on the donations received in the Georgia runoff for Senator. Georgia Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock raised $52.2 million for his re-election between Oct. 20 through Nov. 16, more than doubling the fundraising total of his opponent, Republican Herschel Walker. Warnock, the top fundraising federal candidate of the 2022 election cycle by a long-shot, spent $39.2 million over the same period, which almost doubled Walker’s spend too. The incumbent closed the period with $29.7 million banked away. Walker still raised a significant amount over that fundraising period — $20.9 million. His campaign spent $16.5 million and closed with $9.8 million on hand.”
  10. Growing Influence of Non-Profits in U.S. Elections.  in an article titled The Left’s New Scheme That Threatens Free Elections reported, “Like a bad movie sequel, leftwing nonprofits like the Center for Tech and Civil Life (CTCL) are once again pumping millions of dollars in left-wing “dark money” into election offices across the country. Just like they did in 2020, these groups are looking for ways to skew elections and boost liberal turnout in battleground states. But this time, there’s a twist. CTCL and its allies aren’t just doling out eye-popping grants. They are aiming for nothing less than a shadow takeover of election offices. Through their new $80 million program, called the “U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence,” the left is targeting local election offices. The goal: push liberal voting policies and systematically reshape how our elections are run. Voters need only to look to the contentious 2020 election cycle to appreciate the significance of this program. That year, Mark Zuckerberg pledged more than $400 million to support election offices during the pandemic. But he didn’t give the money to election offices directly. Instead, he gave the funds to left-wing nonprofits like CTCL. CTCL then directed these “Zuck Bucks” disproportionately to cities and counties that voted Democratic.”
  11. The Growing Influence of Foreign Actors in U.S. Elections.  in an article titled Chinese Operatives Ran A Massive TikTok Campaign To Help Dems In The Midterm Elections reported, “TikTok accounts operating as voices of Chinese state media promoted messages that appeared to denigrate Republican candidates and favor Democratic ones ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, according to a Forbes investigation. While the Chinese-owned social media app has verbally affirmed the need to crack down on election disinformation and foreign interference, several news-oriented accounts failed to disclose their affiliation with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) state-owned media on the platform, Forbes found. The accounts racked up tens of millions views on posts that covered divisive topics, such as abortion and race, as well as critical clips that mostly targeted Republican candidates ahead of the 2022 midterms. ‘This opens a new dimension for conversation about TikTok,’ Conor Healy, director of government research at surveillance research group IPVM, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. The accounts are managed by MediaLinks TV, which registered as a foreign agent for China with the Treasury Department in 2019 and distributes the U.S. branch of China Central Television (CCTV), CGTN, according to the company’s LinkedIn page. MediaLinks also operates the CCTV and CGTN apps, according to Apple.”
  12. The Legacy Media, Social Media, FBI, CIA, DoD, Et al. Election Propaganda Machine. In a  column titled TWITTER FILES: FBI, CIA, DoD, Et al. Actively Worked With EVERY Social Media Platform to Control and Censor Speech reported, “The files show the FBI acting as doorman to a vast program of social media surveillance and censorship, encompassing agencies across the federal government – from the State Department to the Pentagon to the CIA. The government was in constant contact not just with Twitter but with virtually every major tech firm. We live in a surveillance state.”

Governors must dedicate themselves to their people and empower them to make decisions that are right for themselves, their families and the community. The key word is responsibility. Taking responsibility for one’s actions is key and this ends up in how elections are conducted and their consequences.

“Live free or die” is not just a slogan it’s the truth! Today telling the truth has become a revolutionary act.

Please share this column with your family, friends your elected leaders from school boards, to the City and County Commissions, to your State Legislators to your Governor, to your member of Congress in Washington, D.C. and on your social media sites.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

RELATED VIDEO: Tucker Carlson’s release of new J6 footage proved one thing: the ghost of Stalin has returned.

RELATED ARTICLES:

J6 Video: Q Shaman Told Demonstrators to ‘Go Home’, ‘Remain Peaceful’, ‘We Are Not Antifa’

New, Never Seen J6 Footage Shows January 6th Committee LIED and Ray Epps LIED To Congress

Carlson: Democrats Reviewed Sicknick Video, Lied About Death

RELATED TWEET:

RELATED VIDEO: Ray Epps Hurling GIANT Trump Sign at Police on Jan. 6 But Was Never Arrested Like Several Trump Supporters Who Touched that Same Sign

Italy: A great example of why I take mainstream media coverage of populism with a grain of salt

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The major newspapers seem to believe that the superiority of their political opinions is a self-evident fact that needs no explanation.

There was a time when journalists from respected media outlets like the BBC, the New York Times and the Guardian, at least made a sincere effort to distinguish between reporting the facts and reporting one’s political opinions. But that era is long over. We now live in a world in which journalists blithely dismiss political movements they disagree with as “extreme,” “hard-right,” and “fascistic,” as though the superiority of their own political opinions was a self-evident fact that needed no explanation.

This is perhaps nowhere more clear than in the response of Western mainstream media – in particular media that embrace progressive-leftist positions – to the prospect that Giorgia Meloni will be Italy’s first-ever female prime minister. From the tone of that response, one would think that Meloni was advocating the abolition of democracy, the abrogation of rule of law, or some sort of Putin-style military incursion into neighbouring territories.

Here is a sample of mainstream coverage of Giorgia Meloni’s election:

  • BBC: “Ms Meloni is widely expected to form Italy’s most right-wing government since World War Two. That will alarm much of Europe…”
  • CNN: “Giorgia Meloni claims victory to become Italy’s most far-right prime minister since Mussolini.”
  • El País: “The strong result for the extreme-right obliges the EU to be smart in how it manages its relationship with Meloni.”
  • The Guardian: “Giorgia Meloni is a danger to Italy and the rest of Europe.”
  • New York Times: “The country’s hard turn to the right has sent shock waves across Europe after a period of stability in Italy led by Mario Draghi.”

Meloni, president of the conservative Fratelli d’Italia, or “Brothers of Italy”, party, swept to victory in Italy’s recent elections, and is now poised to become Italy’s first ever female prime minister. She is undoubtedly a controversial figure, and her style can be a bit shrill.

She defends a range of positions that are now viewed with disdain by many Western politicians and journalists, such as the primacy of the natural family, the importance of maintaining a birth-rate above replacement level, the ideal of heterosexual marriage, the sanctity of human life, the value of national identity and culture, the positive value of religion, the opposition to transgender operations for children, and the rejection of illegal immigration.

On the other hand, being a bit shrill or abrasive hardly makes a political leader a threat to democracy or a harbinger of political instability. And let’s not forget that the positions defended by Meloni were perceived as perfectly normal in many parts of the West a few decades ago, so it is hard to see why they would now put her outside the pale of civilisation or make her a serious “threat” to Europe.

The media’s intense hostility to Meloni, and by extension, the popular movement that brought her to power, can be explained by one simple fact: her opinions on “hot button” issues have put her directly at odds with the progressive-leftist movement that now dominates social media, mainstream media, EU bureacracy, and the Biden Administration. And that, for many self-styled progressives, puts her far beyond the moral and political pale.

One does not have to support Italy’s newly elected prime minister or her opinions to understand that mainstream media’s coverage of her is nothing short of reactionary. Progressive-minded journalists seemed unwilling or unable to understand how opinions different to their own could end up resonating with a sufficient number of Italians to propel the leader of a conservative, pro-life party into power.

Indeed, the crude, reactionary coverage of Meloni’s victory was quite reminiscent of the coverage of Trump’s election – a mix of perplexity and indignation at the prospect that a large number of voters might actually hold opinions radically at odds with those of progressive-leftist journalists and politicians. The only explanation that occurred to progressive-leftist analysts, in both cases, was that the voters in question were either ignorant or manipulated.

If journalists report on political elections almost exclusively as ideological cheer-leaders, dismissing opposing opinions as part of a “hard right” agenda that menaces the future of democracy, then they are not doing their jobs. They are not actually attempting to understand social reality as it is, nor are they attempting to empathise, even remotely, with voters who wear “the other shirt.” It becomes impossible for them to understand the motives and points of view of their fellow citizens, and it becomes impossible for them to respect the opinions of citizens who see the world differently from themselves.

When journalists become completely tone-deaf to opinions at odds with progressive-leftist principles, or automatically dismiss such opinions as anathema to liberal democracy, their coverage of political events loses any appearance of impartiality and their work becomes largely irrelevant to a large swathe of the citizenry. Once journalists enter into “campaign” mode, many citizens tune out or treat their pronouncements with a grain of salt.

And rightly so.

This article has been republished with permission from the author’s Substack, The Freedom Blog.

AUTHOR

David Thunder

David Thunder is a researcher and lecturer at the University of Navarra’s Institute for Culture and Society. More by David Thunder

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

‘My Son Hunter’: An imperfect but necessary indictment of media’s corruption

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This satirical film reveals a disturbing truth about modern mainstream journalistic standards.

We all love the literary motif of the unwilling prostitute who, at the end of the story, does virtuous deeds to save herself and others. In Crime and Punishment, Sonya is instrumental in Raskolnikov’s redemption. Director Robert Davi uses the same formula to tell the story of President’s Biden son in My Son Hunter.

Grace struggles to pay for her college tuition, so she is a favourite escort of powerful men. As she encounters Hunter Biden in a world of cocaine, wild sex, and rampant corruption, she offers him a path to redemption — and of course, he rejects it.

Now, Davi is no Dostoevsky — nor does he intend to be. My Son Hunter is first and foremost political satire, all-too-frequently engaging in cheap shots. But it does take a stab at Dostoevskyan psychological profundity, and in that endeavour, it partly succeeds.

The shadow of successful Beau Biden — Hunter’s deceased brother — looms large over Hunter, who struggles to find meaning in life. Very much as Raskolnikov, he comes across as a pathological narcissist who engages in criminal activity as a way to prove to himself that he is so great so as to be above the law.

Overblown

Unfortunately, My Son Hunter often goes overboard and loses effectiveness. I lost count of the number of times Joe Biden sniffs the hair of women in the film. Is that necessary? That portrayal runs the risk of playing into the left-wing narrative that criticisms of the Bidens focus on petty things that can be easily dismissed.

The stakes are high, so a more focused and incisive portrayal was needed. Say what you want about Oliver Stone’s leftist politics and penchant for conspiracy theories, but he surely can strike an opponent in his films — Richard Nixon and George W. Bush being the most notorious cases.

The story of Hunter Biden lends itself to Stone’s sober cinematographic style, but My Son Hunter misses an opportunity, to the extent that it aims for low-hanging fruit. Yes, the Bidens are corrupt, but one is left wondering: can they be that corrupt? While the dialogues between Joe and Hunter are clever and amusing, the perversity defies credibility. Perhaps Davi was deliberately aiming more for Saturday Night Live’s lampooning style all along. If so, the film works at some level, but never entirely.

I would have personally enjoyed a more sober style because there is a far darker theme in the film. My Son Hunter is not about the moral failings of a privileged, corrupt drug addict. It is not even about crony capitalism and globalist elites. The real central theme is the media’s rot.

Media manipulation

Two scenes are particularly frightening. At the beginning of the film, Grace is at a Black Lives Matter protest, and records some of her comrades engaging in violent deeds. A fellow activist says: “You can’t post that video… it will make the protest look bad… Those people are too ignorant to understand complex moral issues. You have to withhold things for their own good. We choose truth over facts.” Grace acquiesces.

Towards the end of the film, Grace summons a journalist to expose Hunter’s corruption. The man tells her: “Even if what you are saying is true, it’s not news. We have the chance to take down a fascist dictator [Trump]… I’m sorry Grace, this one is not for me.” We now know that Twitter and Facebook — with their disturbing algorithms — were not the only ones trying to bury Hunter’s laptop under the sand.

As Mark Zuckerberg recently acknowledged, the FBI itself pressured him to do so, because they did not want the bad Orange Man to win the election — all with the excuse that the whole story was Russian disinformation. Later on, both the Washington Post and the New York Times had to reverse their stance and admit that, in fact, the laptop does contain compromising emails.

Plato infamously recommended telling people the Noble Lie. Very much as the Black Lives Matter activist in this film, Plato believed such lies were for people’s own good, as they were too stupid to understand things. In his seminal study of totalitarianism, Karl Popper persuasively argued that Plato’s plan became a central tenet of totalitarian regimes. That is the real fascism.

While being far from a perfect film, My Son Hunter provides meaningful insight on this issue, and hopefully it might become an important step towards much-needed media accountability in this woke age.

For the time being, we need to be realistic. Don’t hold your breath waiting for Hollywood to make an Oliver Stone-like blockbuster about the corruption and hypocrisy of the Left.

Rather, keep an eye out for low-budget productions like My Son Hunter that are bypassing the Hollywood production and distribution system. These include Uncle Tom I and II, various Christian films, such as Run, Hide, Fight.

They will not be great works of art, but at least they will be something. And from there, the quality of such films may gradually improve, until we again see mainstream studios portraying corrupt politicians from both sides of the political spectrum.

AUTHOR

Gabriel Andrade is a university professor originally from Venezuela. He writes about politics, philosophy, history, religion and psychology. More by Gabriel Andrade

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

VIDEO: Biden’s Inflation Plan Includes Increased Dependency on the State and Marxist Economics

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The Last Refuge reported on Biden’s plan to deal with out of control inflation. According to The Last Refuge,

Depending on income, the Biden administration plans to offset higher prices for Americans by providing the essential services and products they need.  In essence, Democrat-Socialism with a filter of equity in distribution, i.e. “enhanced dependency.”

Remarkably, Stephanopoulos references one of the most insane New York Times op-ed’s ever written around economics [ARTICLE HERE].  Within the reference, the Democrat legislative proposal is for the government to take over the purchasing of essential products like food, fuel, gasoline and medicine.  The government would then distribute those products.  The entire premise is based on some academic leftist theory of economics that is just nuts. It looks nothing like capitalism.

Read more

WATCH:

In this video Transportation Secretary Buttigieg blames profit-seeking oil companies for gas crisis:

Democrats never ever take responsibility for their own policy to totally eliminate fossil fuels in the name of climate change.

Welcome to CPUSA writ large

Biden, his administration and the media are all into Building Back Bigger Government.

Marc Morano reported on a New York Times article written by Culture & lifestyle journalist Annaliese Griffin writing on June 2, 2022. Griffin wrote,

“Inflation has the potential to drive welcome change for the planet if Americans think differently about the way they eat…We could adjust what we eat to save both our pocketbooks and our planet.”

“Climate change has motivated some to eat less resource-intensive meat and more vegetables, grains and legumes, but this movement has not reached the scale necessary to bring needed change — yet… A 2021 study in Nature found that animal products produce greenhouse gases at twice the rate of foods from plants. We should be paying attention to every ton of carbon dioxide that goes into the atmosphere — the same way shoppers are watching the cost of every addition to their grocery carts.” …

“Inflation resulting from the cost of fuel and feed, coupled with supply chain slowdowns, may make meat substitutes more affordable relative to traditional, factory-farmed meats.

… Historically, cost has been a powerful force that has changed Americans’ diets.”

Marc Morano responded to Griffin’s article with,

“The New York Times seems bent on updating Gordon Gekko’s phrase from the 1987 film Wall Street: Chaos, for lack of a better word, is GOOD. Climate activists in academia, the Biden admin. and the media seem to think the more humans suffer, the more the planet will benefit. This is more evidence that economic calamity, debt, inflation, supply chain issues, and skyrocketing meat and energy costs are not the unintended consequences of the climate agenda, but the INTENDED consequences. Chaos conditions the public to accept more centralized control of their lives. Vladimir Lenin reportedly once said, ‘worse is better’ or ‘the worse, the better’ to cheer on chaos and the destruction of the existing order to impose his ideology.”

The Bottom Line

A reader sent us an interesting commentary titled “Price of gas in France” about an art thief who stole a number of masterpieces. Here’s what he sent us:

A thief in Paris planned to steal some paintings from the Louvre. After careful planning, he got past security, stole the paintings, and made it safely to his van. However, he was captured only two blocks away when his van ran out of gas.

When asked how he could mastermind such a crime and then make such an obvious error, he replied, “Monsieur, that is the reason I stole the paintings—.”

Biden’s plan is no better than that of the thief, it is dramatically worse.

Americans are seeing Biden’s policies at the gas station, on store shelves, in the products and services they buy and in their retirement accounts.

It’s all bad, really bad.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

Soviet Era Inspired Agitprop Shows up in Washington, D.C.

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The First Amendment is a beautiful thing. It allows even former Soviet Agitprop artists to show off their wares on the walls of Washington, D.C.

Agitprop refers to an intentional, vigorous promulgation of ideas. The term originated in Soviet Russia where it referred to popular media, such as literature, plays, pamphlets, films, and other art forms, with an explicitly political message in favor of communism.

This is fitting since Joe’s middle name is Beijing.

The Last Refuge reported:

Some brilliant, soviet era inspired agitprop showed up in Washington DC overnight highlighting the agenda of the current Joe Biden administration.

No-one knows who the artist is….

The artwork has a certain familiarity.

AGITPROP POSTER 1

AGITPROP POSTER 2

AGITPROP POSTER 3

AGITPROP POSTER 4

I love great agitprop.  This type of sand is very difficult for the regime to keep sweeping away….

The artist is unidentified for obvious reasons, but it looks like something Oleg would do.

We must agree that it looks like something Red Square would do.

To read more Agitprop by Red Square visit our contributor The Peoples Cube.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.