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Tag: right wing media
Bridge Accident Conspiracy Theories Highlight Right-Wing Madness

Bridge Accident Conspiracy Theories Highlight Right-Wing Madness

Early in the morning on March 26, the container ship Dali crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, destroying the bridge and killing six construction workers. Investigations are ongoing, but authorities said early on that there was no sign that the collision was intentional. However, in the alternate universe of right-wing media, there’s no such thing as accidents.

In the days after the bridge collapse, many in right-wing media quickly embraced absurd conspiracy theories to explain what happened, blaming a “probable” cyberattack, the beginning of World War III, terrorism, the “New World Order,” and the “wide-open border.” Other conservative commentators morphed the tragedy into another casualty of corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion training, or “DEI” — the latest byword, following “woke” and “critical race theory,” for right-wing anger at people of color.

“They should’ve hired a more diverse workforce,” mocked one right-wing pundit, while others called the disaster “DEITANIC,” or claimed it was an inevitable consequence of immigration: “Invite the Third World, become the Third World.”

“DEI equals die, that’s what people need to understand,” announced Trump ally Laura Loomer, while Newsmax guest Victor Davis Hanson claimed, “we’re not hiring necessarily the best people.” DEI came up in the comments of several Republican politicians discussing the disaster, as well.

The unspoken conclusion of these baseless DEI complaints is that only white people can be competent in their jobs.

“They really want to say the N-word,” said Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott, who is Black, in response to social media posts calling him a “DEI mayor.”

Earlier this year, right-wing media similarly scapegoated racial diversity in response to a series of in-flight incidents with Boeing aircraft, a company that has faced extensive criticism and federal investigations of its safety culture. Invoking right-wing complaints about DEI, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk said, “If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified.’”

Now, conservative media are dismissing the obvious explanation for the Baltimore bridge collapse — a likely accident — in favor of asinine conspiracy theories about some of their favorite talking points.

“When trust is repeatedly broken,” complained Fox’s Laura Ingraham, defending the conspiracy theories, “it shouldn't surprise anyone that during a crisis, our leaders' explanations and assurances, as much as we want them, sometimes don't carry much weight.”

The preening about “trust,” from a conspiracy theorist herself, to defend the impossibly wide array of conspiracy theories about the Baltimore bridge collapse underscores the intellectual bankruptcy of right-wing media.

“The problem is that we have a D.C. establishment that has been wrong or misleading on issue after issue,” Ingraham continued, citing “the lab leak theory” about the origins of COVID-19, CDC guidance on masks, and school closures during the pandemic alongside vague insinuations about Hunter Biden's laptop and references to a Chinese spy balloon.

“Like all conspiracy theories,” said Donald Trump Jr., “they turn out to be right, you know, in the future.”

Given the countless conspiracy theories conservative outlets have pushed over the decades — the “Clinton body count,” birtherism, “Pizzagate,” the “great replacement,” and 2020 election misinformation, to name a very few — it’s little wonder that right-wing media explained yet another tragedy with a bunch of bullshit. Why let an opportunity to spread more noxious conspiracy theories go to waste when those theories are foundational to the right-wing media worldview?

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Online 'Manosphere' Influencers Embrace Hitler And Nazism

Online 'Manosphere' Influencers Embrace Hitler And Nazism

Right-wing “manosphere” influencers including Sneako, Jon Zherka, and Myron Gaines are embracing Nazism and defending Adolf Hitler online. These influencers — who have large followings across multiple platforms — have histories of making antisemitic comments and pushing conspiracy theories about Jewish people, but their pro-Hitler and Nazism commentary marks an escalation.

Over the past year, these three figures have praised and defended Hitler, done the Nazi Seig Heil salute while streaming, and refused to disavow Nazism.

These influencers are part of the manosphere, an online community of right-wing websites, bloggers, and personalities cultivating a worldview based on conservative and regressive gender politics repackaged for the internet age.

While purporting to provide dating, financial, and lifestyle advice to men, some manosphere figures are aligning themselves with far-right personalities. Their online presence can serve as a gateway to push audiences further to the right toward more dangerous ideologies, as they often use other topics that interest young men — like weightlifting, video games, and boxing — to draw viewers in before diving into extremist content and misogyny.

Figures in this group often push extremism and antisemitism while blaming women for myriad societal woes and treating them as an inferior sex. Rhetoric from these influencers can sometimes be overtly cruel and promote hitting, degrading, and shaming women.

Sneako

  • Right-wing streamer Sneako (real name Nico Kenn De Balinthazy) is a manosphere influencer and associate of pro-Hitler rapper Ye (formerly Kanye West). He has been described as “a cheap imitation” of misogynist, media personality, and alleged human trafficker Andrew Tate.

Sneako is also an associate of white supremacist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes. He spoke at one of Fuentes’ antisemitic rallies. He is banned on TikTok and YouTube and has promoted the abuse of women.

Sneako recently interviewed Nevada Lt. Gov. Stavros Anthony at an event for former President Donald Trump. Several attendees also pointed out that Sneako is one of Fuentes’ associates.

On several occasions, Sneako has praised, defended, and embraced Adolf Hitler and Nazism.


While probing a German woman about her sex life in a stream uploaded to X, Sneako made antisemitic comments and said he wanted to do the fascist Roman salute “so bad.”


“How about we role play,” Sneako said. “I’ll be the Nazi and I’ll shove you in the oven like a dirty Jew.”

  • On X (formerly Twitter), Sneako posted a picture of Hitler and wrote, “this nigga had aura.”
  • During a livestream on the right-wing video hosting platform Rumble, Sneako said that “the Nazis had drip” and that the swastika is “aesthetically pleasing.”
  • While livestreaming with influencer Adin Ross, Sneako refused to call Hitler evil.
  • Sneako wrote on X that people should not “bash” Hitler for killing Jewish people and wished him a happy birthday.

Jon Zherka & Myron Gaines

Zherka instructed a group of women to do a Nazi Sieg Heil during a livestream and say “heil Hitler.”

  • In a bizarre livestream video posted to Reddit, Zherka melted down after finding out a woman he was hanging out with is Jewish. “You rule the world and all the banking,” he said to the woman while pretending to hit her.

After the woman said “I don’t like Hitler,” Zherka asked, “The fuck is wrong with you?” He later added, “I’ll regret this, dude.”

Zherka ended the livestream by saying “Hitler was a good guy.”

  • Zherka again did the Nazi Sieg Heil alongside Fuentes and manosphere influencer Myron Gaines (real name Amrou Fudl) during a livestream. Gaines then pretended to be Hitler’s ghost.

Antifeminist influencer Hannah Pearl Davis was also featured on the stream.

  • During a stream with Sneako, Zherka identified himself as a Nazi while attacking a man’s appearance.

“You look like a Nazi that became a Nazi just to fit in,” Zherka said. “Like, you’re not actually one of us.”

  • Gaines previously defended and praised Hitler on his Fresh & Fit After Hours podcast.

“Though he did things that were morally incorrect, he definitely did a bunch of things correct for his country. That’s a fact,” Gaines said.

Influence on young people

  • Reporting shows how easily toxic rhetoric from manosphere influencers can infiltrate the minds of young audiences, even among users as young as 11.

And some of the videos these manosphere influencers share, showing them meeting their fans, demonstrate just how young some of these viewers are.

  • In one clip, young Sneako fans repeat his toxic rhetoric back to him, saying, “Fuck the women,” and, “All gays can die.” He seems to half-jokingly ask the camera, “What have I done?”

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Right-Wing Media

Right-Wing Media Escalate 'Civil War' Threat Over Supreme Court's Border Decision

In response to a recent Supreme Court ruling allowing Border Patrol agents to cut razor wire Texas laid along the border with Mexico, right-wing pundits are claiming the Biden administration has sparked a second American Civil War. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, two members of the court’s conservative block, sided with the three liberal justices in ruling for the federal government.

The issue stems from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s decision to stretch razor wire over dozens of miles along the state’s southern border, a cruel policy that has failed in its stated objective of deterring unauthorized border crossings. The Biden administration opposes the measures, and has ordered the Border Patrol to remove the barriers. The stand-off between Border Patrol and the Texas National Guard escalated earlier this month, with federal officials blaming Abbott for the deaths of a mother and her two children who drowned in the Rio Grande. (Texas authorities dispute this version of events.)

For his part, Gov. Abbott pledged that Texas will “continue to deploy this razor wire to repel illegal immigration.” Although it may appear that Abbott is in direct defiance of the Supreme Court, the American Immigration Council’s Aaron Reichlin-Melnick explained that the ruling overturned an “order saying Border Patrol COULDN’T remove Texas razor wire to process migrants. It didn’t affirmatively rule that the Border Patrol COULD remove Texas razor wire.” Or, as the New Republic's Matt Ford put it, the Supreme Court “lifted an injunction” on the Department of Homeland Security, so there's “nothing in this case for Texas to obey or defy at the moment.”

This simmering confrontation is the new backdrop for an old story. During election years, conservative media outlets generally ramp up their attacks on immigrants. Separately, over the last year, conservatives have become increasingly comfortable calling for, threatening, or warning about a coming civil war in the country. Responses to the recent court ruling have married these two trends.

As the news broke on January 22, conservative YouTube streamer Tim Pool said it “looks like a Fort Sumter-esque type scenario,” referencing the first battle of the Civil War, adding that “it does feel like it could be escalating to this federal versus state conflict.”

That evening, former Fox News star Tucker Carlson posted on X (formerly Twitter), asking: “Where are the men of Texas? Why aren’t they protecting their state and the nation?”

The same night, Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) wrote that “the feds are staging a civil war, and Texas should stand their ground.”

Then on January 23, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon appeared to favorably reference that post, saying “as Clay Higgins said” there is “kind of a civil war between the federal government and the state of Texas.”

Hours later, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk fantasized about Gov. Abbott openly defying the court’s ruling at the barrel of a gun.

“So someone says right here, ‘Charlie, what would happen if Texas ignores the ruling? Will the government go to war with Texas?’” he asked.

“The federal government would come in, and some people would say, ‘Well, that's the seeds of a civil war.’ Is that what you want? Where does this end?” Kirk added moments later. “By the way, I'm all on board.”

“If we had an actual governor of Texas that was willing — 100% defy this,” Kirk continued, before advising Abbott on the logistics.

“If you're going to defy, here's how it works: press conference flanked by your most loyal Texas Rangers. ‘I am ignoring the Supreme Court's decision,’” Kirk said, adopting Abbott’s point of view. “‘I will enforce the border of Texas. If you're going to arrest me, you have to go through the Texas Rangers.’”

“If we had more governors on the border, it would be even more powerful,” he added, implicitly invoking the Confederacy. “Get every red state on board. Fly in every Republican governor.”

On Wednesday afternoon Abbott issued a statement invoking “Texas’s constitutional authority to defend and protect itself,” which he claimed is “the supreme law of the land.” Throughout the day, at least nine governors backed Abbott on X, even if they fell short of Kirk’s demand that they travel to the border. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte, Utah Gov. Spencer J. Cox, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp all posted their support for Texas, as did Speaker of the House Mike Johnson.

In the same episode, Kirk told his audience that they had “better buy weapons,” and “have a lot of guns at your disposal.”

That afternoon, The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh echoed Kirk. “Red state governors will need to ignore the Supreme Court and do what needs to be done to protect their citizens and the border,” Walsh said. He later added, “The last civil war was unimaginable until it wasn't.”

In the early evening, Bannon returned to the topic with guest Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). “That Supreme Court decision that was made has now put the federal government at war with the state of Texas,” Greene said.

“If they fund a war in Ukraine when Zelensky is raising the white flag, asking for peace talks in Switzerland, and they weaken our border policy while the federal government is at war with Texas, that is truly, possibly the start of a civil war in this country,” she added.

Blaze TV’s Steve Deace also invoked the memory of the Civil War. “Basically, the Supreme Court has told Texas your choices are: be invaded or secede,” Deace said.

On January 25, Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade adopted the same framing on Fox & Friends.

“It feels like almost like a soft civil war,” Kilmeade said. “You’ve got all the Republicans saying, ‘Can we secure our borders?’ the Democrats saying, ‘I want this to go away’ and blaming Republicans, the President against the governor of Texas — the most independent state in the union. I mean, this is getting a little crazy.”

Fox News sounded little different than the fringe. “This is a constitutional crisis,” said conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, in a video titled: “Supreme Court Decision Provokes Civil War in Texas.”

The story was the same in the right-wing blogosphere, too, with conservative news site PJ Media asking, “Is Joe Biden Mounting a Civil War at the Border?”

Conservative influencer Jordan Peterson posted: “So is it the case that @TheDemocrats are truly ready to go to war with Texas?”

While right-wing media figures fantasize about a new civil war, their rhetoric has real implications for immigration policy. They are stoking xenophobia and nativism, and endorsing cruel policies that are already injuring and killing some of the most vulnerable people in the world.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Ron DeSantis

How Right-Wing Media Hyped Ron DeSantis -- And Then Trashed Him

Several Republican governors responded to the campaign by Donald Trump and his right-wing media allies to undermine the credibility of the 2020 election by signing bills making it more difficult to vote. But Florida’s Ron DeSantis stood out from the pack thanks to the unique venue for his May 2021 signing ceremony: a live, exclusive appearance in front of a cheering crowd of supporters on Fox & Friends, the Fox News morning show beloved by the former president.

DeSantis’ rise to political prominence shows how a canny politician attuned to the right-wing press can use its power to become a plausible presidential contender. But the collapse of his presidential campaign, which came to an end when he endorsed Trump on Sunday before the New Hampshire primary, demonstrates the limitations of such a strategy given the right-wing media imperative to support Trump.

DeSantis first won the governorship in 2018 by running a “Fox first campaign.” When he announced his candidacy — on Fox & Friends, naturally —- he was an undistinguished House backbencher in his third term facing an uphill climb in the GOP primary against a candidate who already held statewide office and had locked up the support of the state’s party establishment. DeSantis countered those advantages by staying in front of Florida’s GOP voters on their favorite right-wing TV channels. He made more than 100 appearances on Fox News and Fox Business — winning Trump’s endorsement with his on-air defenses of the then-president from the Russia probe — and touted his support from Fox hosts Mark Levin and Sean Hannity, the latter of whom appeared with him on the campaign trail.

As governor, DeSantis became a star in the right-wing media by fixating on its obsessions and using state power to cudgel its foes. He first drew plaudits for his lax handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, which mimicked the response from Fox hosts and other influential figures downplaying the danger posed by the virus. And after the right responded to Trump’s defeat by refocusing its ire on “critical race theory” and other examples of “wokeness,” DeSantis made those topics the linchpin of his policy agenda. While Fox hosts bemoaned “groomer” public school educators and “woke” universities and entertainment companies, DeSantis signed laws weaponizing his base against the state’s teachers, put right-wing ideologues in command of one of its colleges, and went to war with Disney.

DeSantis’ popularity with Fox hosts and other influential figures in right-wing media made him seem like a plausible contender for president, particularly after his 2022 reelection. He benefited from the support of Rupert Murdoch, who hoped to move past Trump after the horrors of January 6, and anti-anti-Trump figures at outlets like The Daily Wire and National Review, who preferred that Trump not return as the GOP’s presidential nominee. DeSantis sought to stoke that support by giving privileged access to right-wing influencers while freezing out the mainstream press.

But DeSantis’ disastrous presidential announcement — an interview with Elon Musk in a glitchy Twitter Spaces, followed by a Q&A with the right-wing media influencers in attendance that focused on their picayune concerns — was somehow the campaign’s high-water mark. The various accounts of his campaign’s demise point to a slew of reasons he never caught on with Republican voters, but two factors point to the limitations of his right-wing media-focused strategy.

First, DeSantis garnered support from the right-wing press and their audiences by focusing on their grievances and obsessions. But those focuses did not help him grow national support, either because they were no longer major forward-looking political issues, like pandemic response, or because they were niche concerns that were alien to normal people, like his self-identification as a general in the “war on woke.”

Second, Fox’s stars — the most influential in the right-wing media constellation — might like DeSantis, but they are dependent on Trump and his supporters, who make up their audiences. They never broke with the former president; the cult of personality they built for him made it virtually impossible for his rivals to gain traction; and once federal and state prosecutors began indicting Trump on various charges, their ongoing support was crucial in securing his unassailable position. And they did not come to DeSantis’ aid when he came under fire from Trump — even on ludicrous claims, such as Trump’s attempt to brand DeSantis as a “groomer.” Before the first GOP primary votes had been cast, Fox hosts were already preparing a return to their role as Trump’s personal propaganda outlet.

DeSantis spent the final days of his campaign complaining that Fox hadn’t been willing to take on Trump, and drawing attention to one of the few avenues for criticizing him the network hadn’t preempted — the former president’s role in ensuring the development of COVID-19 vaccines. It was a fitting conclusion for a presidential bid that rose and fell on its relationship with the right-wing media.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.