Opinion: How the party of Lincoln became the party of Alex Jones
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
At a news conference held in the hours after the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, a man asked then-Gov. Deval Patrick whether the attacks had been carried out by the US government as part of a plot to clamp down on civil liberties. The governor, who had spent the day scrambling to respond to the crisis and begin coordinating the search for the perpetrators, dismissed the question with a quick "no."
© Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images TOPSHOT - Supporters of US President Donald Trump gather across from the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, in Washington, DC. - Demonstrators breeched security and entered the Capitol as Congress debated the a 2020 presidential election Electoral Vote Certification.
The man who asked whether the horrific bombing was "another false flag staged attacks" was Dan Bidondi, a radio host for Alex Jones's InfoWars. At the time, InfoWars was considered a far-right crackpot site with little relevance to US politics, the Westboro Baptist Church of right-wing media: seizing on people's worst moments of grief and pain to thrust their own obscene, inhumane politics into the spotlight.
While Jones still remains on the fringes of US politics, the InfoWars approach has since then become part of the mainstream right. In the two months since the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol, conservatives in media and Congress have sought to rewrite the events of the day. As new reports from the New York Times and Washington Post show, much of the right has embraced the conspiracy theory that the insurrection was a false-flag event, an effort by undercover anti-fascists to smear and discredit the Trump administration and the movement that supports it. While that is not remotely true, it has quickly become an article of faith, evidence that the InfoWars-ification of the right is nearly complete.
The efforts to propagate a false narrative of January 6 began even as the insurrection was still in process. As I wrote at the time, Todd Herman, the guest host for the Rush Limbaugh Show, immediately began processing news of the violence and disorder as evidence that leftists had infiltrated the crowd. "It's probably not Trump supporters who would do that," he told his audience. "Antifa, BLM, that's what they do."
A few hours later on the floor of the House, Rep. Matt Gaetz repeated the lie that some of the rioters were "masquerading as Trump supporters and in fact, were members of the violent terrorist group Antifa." In testimony on Tuesday, FBI Director Christopher Wray underscored that the Antifa conspiracy was false, telling the Senate Judiciary Committee, "We have not, to date, seen any evidence of anarchist violence extremists or people subscribing to Antifa in connection to the 6th."
Though a number of conservatives (including high-profile ones like Sen. Mitch McConnell) reject the false-flag conspiracy, it has been trumpeted by enough well-known figures -- from Reps. Paul Gosar and Mo Brooks to Fox News's Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity -- that half of Republicans in a January survey said that Antifa activists were responsible for the Capitol insurrection, even though almost every single one of the nearly 300 rioters who have been arrested are open Trump supporters. The Oregon Republican Party recently passed a resolution stating, "The violence at the Capitol was a 'false flag' operation designed to discredit Republican Trump, his supporters, and all conservative Republicans."
The idea of false flag conspiracies, once isolated to InfoWars broadcasts and internet message boards, has been creeping into the Republican mainstream over the past several years. They began to break through in 2018, when someone began sending bombs to prominent Democratic leaders, including Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton and Eric Holder. Jacob Wohl, who runs the conspiracy and hoax site Gateway Pundit, tweeted out that the stories about the bombs "are false flags, carefully planned for the midterms."
That conspiracy quickly filtered out on Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter, and then Fox News and talk radio. Lou Dobbs, the pro-Trump host on Fox Business, tweeted (and deleted), "Fake News—Fake Bombs. Who could possibly benefit by so much fakery?" Geraldo Rivera and guests on "Fox & Friends" also repeated the false flag conspiracy on air.
Conspiracies have long been part of right-wing politics: That Franklin Roosevelt knew in advance about the Pearl Harbor attack but did nothing so he could drag the US into World War II; That Dwight Eisenhower was a "conscious, dedicated agent of the Communist Conspiracy."; Lyndon Johnson conspired to have John Kennedy assassinated.; Bill and Hillary Clinton killed their friend, Vince Foster. Each of these utterly false conspiracies had their adherents in the right-wing media of their era, in books like "The Final Secret of Pearl Harbor" and "A Texan Looks at Lyndon" to the magazines and radio hosts and even the Wall Street Journal editorial page who pushed the Foster lie in the 1990s.
As conservative media became more powerful, right-wing politicians began to amplify their conspiracies. But false-flag conspiracies remained on the fringes, in part because conservatives had other ways to distance themselves from right-wing violence. After the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, blame fell on outlets like "The Rush Limbaugh Show" for stoking an atmosphere of violence. Limbaugh shot back that it was liberals like Clinton "calling those people involved in legitimate political dialogue 'extremists'" that led to political violence. But he did not blame the left for the bombing itself. That idea -- that the US government had bombed the building -- was limited to far-right and white supremacist message boards.
Over the past decade, the landscape has begun to change. As right-wing media outlets have become the de facto messaging arm of the Republican Party, politicians have increasingly learned to speak their language, even as those outlets move further and further right. And the rise of Trump played an important role as well, demonstrating that there was no political price to be paid for spreading conspiracies -- demonstrating, in fact, that it could be a viable path to the presidency. So it should come as no surprise that politicians eyeing a political future in the party would embrace the conspiracies fueling its base, even if it means transforming the Party of Lincoln into the Party of Alex Jones.
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But the Party of Lincoln surely doesn't agree with Alex Jones - in fact it the GOP wanted to become a party of principle and integrity again it would agree with this....
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Nazi stages! Cop killed by Fire extinguisher! Right wing instigators caused all the violence at the BLM riots last summer!
that’s just some of the conspiracy driven nonsense that the left has covered this site in Just the last few days.
physician, heal thyself.
There is no element of liberal of "left" media that so constantly spreads absurd conspiracy theories to its audience. Rachel Maddow is not Alex Jones or even Tucker Carlson no matter how desperately you wish her to be. Keep trying to roll that boulder up the mountain.
Where do the majority of liberals get the belief that cops shoot 1,000 unarmed black men a year, if not liberal media?
Right or wrong, that it not a conspiracy theory.
It's 1000% wrong. It's not a question. And the majority of liberals believe something so absurd because they believe in a widely promoted conspiracy on the left about cops going around and routinely shooting blacks for no reason.
Were you paying attention during the "Russian collusion" conspiracy? Because Maddow made and promoted all sorts of crazed allegations.
Your endless defense of the indefensible speaks for itself. . . .
Also, your projection, denial, deflection, and whataboutism . . . .
Do you believe in Nazi stages? Cops being killed by fire extinguishers?
Cops being killed by fire extinguishers?
It was first reported, in the immediate aftermath of the violence, that Sicknick had been struck on the head with a fire extinguisher by rioters inside the Capitol, a wound that ostensibly led to his death a day later.
“He ended up with a clot on the brain,” his father, Charles Sicknick, told Reuters . “If they had operated on him, he would’ve become a vegetable.”
During Tuesday’s hearing, Iowa GOP Sen. Charles Grassley began by asking Wray whether an exact cause of Sicknick’s death was known and whether there was a homicide investigation open.
Wray’s response was clearly carefully worded.
“There is an ongoing investigation into his death. I have to be careful at this stage, because it’s ongoing, not to get out in front of it, but I certainly understand and respect and appreciate the keen interest in what happened to him,” he said, according to a transcript .
“After all, he was here protecting all of you. And as soon as our information that we can appropriately share, we want to be able to do that. But at the moment, the investigation is still ongoing.”
Did that mean investigators have not determined a cause of death? Grassley asked.
“That means we can’t yet disclose a cause of death at this stage,” Wray responded.
S o based upon this week's testimony from Wray, we have to hold off on the cause of death. Fire extinguisher or not.
Apparently, early reports didn't go very far in any search for the truth:
Yes, the "fire extinguisher" version has been debunked for a month.
His ultimate cause of death and whether a crime was committed is still to be determined. But Sicknick was not beaten to death with a fire extinguisher, or anything else. Yet the idea that Sicknick was beaten to death by a fire extinguisher is still prevalent on the left, because it was irresponsibly reported in the immediate aftermath of the riot.
End results Sean...... one police officer is dead and 134 reported injured during the capitol riot. A riot of Trump supporters trying to stop congress from executing it's constitutional obligations.
Blue lives didn't matter to Trump or his supporter then now did it?
As long as you apply your "end results" analysis to all those police killed and the hundreds injured by the left, then that's fine. But you never do.
Considering your advocacy for attacking innocent cops over the summer, that's a bold card for you to play isn't it? Back then you had no problem advocating that cops get hurt, because some cops, somewhere, are guilty of wrongdoing. But now the political points are scored by "caring" about injured police, I see.
But I'm curious why you think pointing out the lies about how Sicknick died somehow equates to "not caring about Blue lives." Lying about his death for "political points" doesn't show much respect for blue lives, does it?
The left has been very quick to exploit Sicknick's death from unknown causes while ignoring the officers killed by left wing violence. Let's be honest, you only care about Sicknick as a tool to exploit. You certainly never mention the officers murdered in Dallas, for instance.
Sicknick's death is a tragedy. And all those who committed any violent acts should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. It's a shame that standard isn't uniformly applied, where just today the DA in Portland dropped a number of felonies against violent protestors.
That Sicknick's death is tragedy doesn't make it okay to lie about how it happened for political advantage. The completely false "beaten to death by a fire extinguisher" narrative that's been promoted incessantly by the left and even used during Trump's impeachment trial sure is a lot more poignant than dying from a stroke that can't be causally connected to the riot, isn't it?
His family doesn't has been adamant that they don't want his death exploited. It's shameful to see a fake narrative take hold so the left can "score points" by sensationalizing his death.
And you're still trying to equate demonstrations and riots related to stopping the summary executions at the hands of police to the riots who's goal was to interrupt election certification in order for Trump to stay in office against the will of the people.
So lets be honest here.... you're only using last summer's demonstrations and riots to deflect from the true enemies of the US Constitution.... Trump and his supporters.
That's all he's got, all he's ever had, deflection, projection, whataboutism, lies . . . .
Riots are riots.
The idea that that throwing bricks and shooting at police in the name of "racial justice" is okay, but it's beyond the pale to attack them over a perceived attempt to steal an election is nonsense.
First, one officer died whose death might have been caused by the rioters. That's all that can be said. To claim "officers" died because of the riot is false. To claim he was beaten to death is false. Facts matter. That's why we distinguish morally and criminally between intentionally beating someone to death, an accidental death and dying of natural causes. I'm surprised that needs to be spelled out.
There is no evidence a police officer was beaten to death by the mob at the capital riot. Claiming he was is the definition of a fake narrative.
And if even if that were true, that's still more than you've ever brought to the table..
How long are you going to stalk me with this tripe? It's better than you trying to argue something on your own, but it's still sad to watch. Stalking is bad, stalking while acting like a bot is worse.
And that is the actionable statement right there...... And just who is it that was and is still driving "The Big Lie" about the stolen election.
Who is driving the big lie that officers murder a thousand plus black people every year?
And that's why we love you Sean..... You never answer the obvious root cause question because you know better than to saw off the limb you've crawled out on.
I'm sure you fit right in with the QAnon faithful.
Only a small subset of far left wackos believe all the lies and propaganda made up by liberals about Republicans.
you could go to the far right websites and see for yourself, but i doubt you have that much curiosity
I doubt it would be curiosity but a deep desire for confirmation bias that gets most on the right to seek out the conspiracy theories and lies about liberals and Democrats.
"Far right" is subjective. I doubt Greg could find one he'd consider far right. But maybe he can give examples of some to us.
How The Party Of Lincoln Became The Party Of Alex Jones?
It was easy ... all too easy, the mantra was never to be questioned else blasphemy would always be the answer.