Incredible. I can see only one guilty party revealed by this article: The participation of the New York Times in the destruction of journalism by printing an opinion piece, and a highly illogical and irresponsible one, in the news section of the paper.
And this one is particularly malignant. It attempts to suggest that because there are words and phrases included in the killer’s manifesto that are spoken by conservative media to describe mass, often illegal immigration, then therefore conservative media had a role in the killing.
They don’t say that, but that’s clearly what they are trying to get across.
The speech police in the press, of all places, have decided that if you use strong language, you could be guilty of murder.
This is so dumb I simply can’t believe that five reporters and no doubt numerous editors participated in it. That’s the power of Trump Derangement Syndrome and the media’s hatred of conservatives.
From the New York Times piece:
Tucker Carlson went on his prime-time Fox News show in April last year and told his viewers not to be fooled. The thousands of Central Americans on their way to the United States were “border jumpers,” not refugees, he said. “Will anyone in power do anything to protect America this time,” he asked, “or will leaders sit passively back as the invasion continues?”
When another group approached the border six months later, Ann Coulter, appearing as a guest on Jeanine Pirro’s Fox News show, offered a dispassionately violent suggestion about what could be done to stem the flow of migrants: “You can shoot invaders.”
A few days after, Rush Limbaugh issued a grim prognosis to his millions of radio listeners: If the immigrants from Central America weren’t stopped, the United States would lose its identity. “The objective is to dilute and eventually eliminate or erase what is known as the distinct or unique American culture,” Mr. Limbaugh said, adding: “This is why people call this an invasion.”
There is a striking degree of overlap between the words of right-wing media personalities and the language used by the Texas man who confessed to killing 22 people at a Walmart in El Paso this month. In a 2,300-word screed posted on the website 8chan, the killer wrote that he was “simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion.”
It remains unclear what, or who, ultimately shaped the views of the white, 21-year-old gunman, or whether he was aware of the media commentary. But his post contains numerous references to “invasion” and cultural “replacement” — ideas that, until recently, were relegated to the fringes of the nationalist right.
An extensive New York Times review of popular right-wing media platforms found hundreds of examples of language, ideas and ideologies that overlapped with the mass killer’s written statement — a shared vocabulary of intolerance that stokes fears centered on immigrants of color. The programs, on television and radio, reach an audience of millions.
“It remains unclear what, or who, ultimately shaped the views of the white, 21-year-old gunman, or whether he was aware of the media commentary,” the Times writes. But, well, who the hell cares? Let’s indict Tucker Carlson as a co-conspirator.
These journalists seem to think they have done something scientific. What they have done is garbage.
But all their peers in the liberal mainstream press will think they are wonderful for going after those awful conservatives. That’s no small part of what this is about.
Oh, and BTW, somebody has got to do something about this invasion of illegal immigrants from Mexico.
