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The legacy media love to tub-thump themselves as the “curated media”, and tout their laughably-named “fact-checkers”. The vanity is, of course, that the legacy media are somehow the last word in factual reporting and accuracy. But, as anyone knows who’s ever been the subject of a legacy media hit-job, or a hyena-like pile-on by legacy media hacks, facts and accuracy run a distant second to “narrative”. All that matters to the legacy media is knowing who their heroes and who their villains are, and hammering home the “narrative”.
Robert Spencer, the founder of Jihad Watch, is very much a legacy media villain. Spencer might be an authority on radical Islam and have best-selling books that were listed as FBI training materials, but the very fact that he criticises the legacy media’s pet religion ensures that their narrative demonises him at every turn.
And what better way to blacken his name than by continually, and falsely, conflating him with an actual neo-Nazi?
The New York Times and Norway’s Aftenposten are both respected pillars of “journalism,” but neither would know the facts if they came up to them and yelled “Extry! Extry! Read all about it!” Just ask former U.S. President Robert Nixon and the celebrated atheist Robert Dawkins.
Oh wait, did I get those names wrong? Don’t ask Aftenposten or the Times. They certainly won’t know. The ignorant, ill-informed and inattentive frequently confuse me with the white supremacist neo-Nazi Richard Spencer, but for major establishment media sources to do it bespeaks a carelessness with the facts that doesn’t speak well of their other coverage.
The Times’ claims to factual accuracy have been frankly a joke since at least the 1930s when they uncritically printed the breathless lies of pro-Stalinist propagandist Lincoln Steffens.
“Ti ting du må vite for å forstå Sverige,” by Bjarne Riiser Gundersen, Aftenposten, August 9, 2019…That is: “Ten things you need to know to understand Sweden”:
“Fascist Robert Spencer, who founded the Alt-Right movement in the United States, today describes Sweden as “the most alt-right state in Europe” and works closely with Swedish allies. This background is necessary to understand the culture of the Swedish debate in the 2000s.”
Absolutely none of that is true.
I did not found the alt-right movement (and have nothing to do with it), I’m not a fascist, and I never said Sweden was “the most alt-right state in Europe.” The bumbling Bjarne Riiser Gundersen has mixed me up with the white supremacist neo-Nazi Richard Spencer.
Meanwhile, there is this: “The global machine behind the rise of far-right nationalism,” by Jo Becker, New York Times, August 10, 2019:
Leaked video showed two Sweden Democrat MPs and the party’s candidate for attorney general hurling racist slurs at a comedian of Kurdish descent, then threatening a drunken witness with iron pipes. Under Akesson and Karlsson, the party has hosted American white nationalist Richard Spencer.
Again, this is just so much horse-puckey.
Searching around, I found several articles in which Richard Spencer and the Sweden Democrats are both discussed, but none of them say Richard Spencer ever spoke for the Sweden Democrats. If he ever did, no one seems to have noticed or remembered, which is extremely unlikely given the media’s hostility to the Sweden Democrats. However, around 2010 or 2011 I spoke for them in Stockholm, not about “white nationalism,” to which I do not adhere, but about the threat of jihad violence and Sharia oppression of women and others.
But, hey, at least the “curated media” admit when they get it wrong, unlike the wicked “fake news” of us in the new media.
Oh, wait…
So far both the New York Times and Aftenposten have ignored requests for a correction. Journalism, they call it.
jihadwatch.org/2019/08/robert-spencer-richard-spencer-and-journalistic-standards-in-2019
