In the current political wave of the ongoing culture war, there is good news and there is bad news. The good news is that the Left has run out of new material and is using the same old stuff over and over again. The bad news is that — having used the same old tactics so many times — the Left has honed them to a razor’s edge and uses them with great efficiency. Perhaps nothing better demonstrates this than the lie repeated so often by the liberal media that maintains that mass shootings are all the work of “right-wing” fanatics. It is so patently false that it simply boggles the mind that anyone would claim it or that anyone else would believe it; but the Left — having cultivated that lie to the level of a received truth — pushes it out again and again after (nearly) every mass shooting.
Evidence of the mendacity of that claim is indeed legion. The space of this article does not allow this writer to unpack all of that evidence, but fortunately, it is unnecessary to do so: A look at only the two most recent shootings will easily demonstrate that such shootings are more likely the work of those who have drunk too deeply from the poisoned well of leftist thinking, and not that of “right-wing” fanatics.
In the wake of the most recent mass shootings (as of this writing), which took place over the weekend of August 3 and 4, the liberal media claimed — or at least implied — that the two men who collectively murdered 31 people and injured another 51 were motivated by “right-wing” ideology. As part of the liberal media barrage on that front, the left-leaning Slate claimed in an August 5 headline, “Right-Wingers Are America’s Deadliest Terrorists.” The article’s subhead stated, “After this weekend, right-wing terrorists have killed more people on U.S. soil than jihadis have since 9/11. So why is the government’s focus still on Islamic radicalism?”
In its typical style, Business Insider took the lie even further, claiming in a headline also dated August 5, “All of the extremist killings in the US in 2018 had links to right-wing extremism.” The implication is easy to see: The shootings over the weekend of August 3 and 4 are a continuation of the “trend” from 2018. Ergo, the claim that “Right-Wingers Are America’s Deadliest Terrorists” is true. That, of course, assumes that two things can be demonstrated: First, that exactly zero people were killed in 2018 by anyone influenced by leftist thinking, and second, that the shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, were the work of right-wingers.
If — based on the fraudulent claim that “all of the extremist killings in the US in 2018 had links to right-wing extremism” — one accepts the implication that the “trend” is continuing, it may be reasonable to conclude that “Right-Wingers Are America’s Deadliest Terrorists.” Conversely, if the premise is false, so is the conclusion.
On that note, even the “study” cited by media groups such as Business Insider in claiming that all of the 2018 extremist killings were the work of right-wingers clearly states that that is not the case. In fact, as a January 28 article by Breitbart points out, the “study” — based on limiting the scope of what is considered an “extremist killing” — actually admits “that political ideology was a motive only in a minority of the killings — and, moreover, that the proportion of ‘extremist’ killings attributable to political motives actually declined in 2018,” and that in at least one example — the Parkland school shooting — the “study” concedes that “it is not clear” whether the shooter’s political ideology played any role at all.
To use that flawed and exaggerated “study” — by the far-left Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which really should consider renaming itself considering the lengths to which it goes to defame anyone to the right of Clinton or Pelosi — to propagate the lie that (first) right-wingers are responsible for all of the “extremist” killings in 2018, and (second) that that non-existent trend is continuing, is completely dishonest.
Ignoring that basic logic, other media organizations and outlets have likewise seized upon nearly every mass shooting to paint the shooters as right-wing, conservative, Trump-supporting, racist radicals intent on purging America of foreign blood.
For instance, the New York Times — forever poised to attack the Right — ran article after article claiming that the shooting in El Paso, Texas, was the work of a right-winger under the influence of President Trump and conservative talk-show hosts. While not actually making that claim about the Dayton shooting (for reasons we shall show), the Times bent over backward to imply that was the case.
On August 7, the Times used President Trump’s visit to El Paso in the wake of the shooting there as an opportunity to attack not only the president and his policies regarding illegal immigration, but conservatism in general. Under the headline, “Trump Comes to Console. El Paso Says No Thanks,” the Times’ Simon Romero and Rick Rojas wrote that President Trump’s “racist” rhetoric of painting illegal immigrants as a threat to the nation led to the shooting.
And on August 11, the Times ran a headline claiming “The El Paso Killer Echoed the Incendiary Words of Conservative Media Stars.” The thinly veiled political screed that the Times passed off as an objective article claimed that the Right’s reasonable concern over an invasion of illegal aliens at our southwest border was directly responsible for the carnage of the El Paso shooting.
But is it so? Let us examine those claims, unpacking the most recent two mass killings, since they were the springboard for the media’s claims.
In the wee hours of Sunday, August 4, 2019, 24-year-old Connor Stephen Betts opened fire outside a bar in Dayton, Ohio, killing nine people — including his own sister — and injuring 27 others. Almost as soon as the media attempted to paint Betts as a “right-winger,” the story began to fall apart, as voter registration records and social-media posts showed him to be a registered Democrat who favored the likes of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. He also had ties to Antifa and had posted on social media that he hated Trump and ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and wanted to “kill every fascist.” His friends were quick to defend this murderer against accusations that he was a right-winger. The Dayton Daily News quoted one friend of Betts, Will El-Fakir, as saying that Betts was “definitely not a right-leaning person. His political views definitely leaned to the left.”
Photo credit: AP Images
This article appears in the September 2, 2019, issue of The New American. To download the issue and continue reading this story, or to subscribe, click here.