Sunday, May 28, 2017

Spinning the Portland Stabbings

On Friday, Jeremy Christian started ranting at a pair of Muslim women on a train.  Several men attempted to intervene, at which point Christian stabbed them, killing two and injuring one.  This story in the Washington Post offers a lot of added information that was first filtered through other sources.  For example, The Portland Mercury states that he was a "known right wing extremist and white supremacist."  Right-wing?  Are they saying he is a Republican?  That is the implication.  Of course, there is also a picture of him giving a Nazi salute and Nazis are invariably described as right wing despite being National Socialists.  Reading further, some information about Christian's Facebook page - provided by the notorious Southern Poverty Law Center - exposes him as a racist, white supremacist who hails Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, as a hero and a patriot.  However, SPLC fails to reveal that the Facebook page shows Christian was a supporter of Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein, a couple of Socialists.  Huh.  I'm sure that was unintentional.
 
On Twitter, Jill Stein complained that this was a "tragedy in Trump's America."  If she only read the Washington Post, her conclusion that Christian is a Trump supporter is not unreasonable.  However, another post that the SLPC didn't provide declared Christian's opposition to pipelines (presumably Keystone XL and Dakota Access) and the prison/military industrial complex, both popular left-wing views.  As for white supremacists, the KKK was founded by Democrats.

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