By Adam Johnson
New York Times reporter Yamiche
Alcindor (6/14/17)
started with a false premise and patched together a dodgy piece of innuendo and
guilt-by-association in order to place the blame for a shooting in Virginia on
“the most ardent supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders.”
We learned in the wake of an
attack on Monday that left five injured, including Republican House Whip Steve
Scalise, that the shooter, James T. Hodgkinson (who was subsequently killed by
police), had been a Sanders campaign volunteer, and that his social media
featured pictures of the Vermont senator and his brand of progressive,
anti-Republican language. This was enough for Alcindor to build a piece based
on the premise that Sanders’ “movement” had been somehow responsible for the
attacks, and was thus “tested” by them.
From the beginning, Alcindor
framed the shooting as essentially tied to the Sanders campaign by virtue of
Hodgkinson’s political sensibilities:
The most ardent supporters of
Senator Bernie Sanders have long been outspoken about their anger toward
Republicans—and in some cases toward Democrats. Their idol, the senator from
Vermont, has called President Trump a “demagogue” and said recently that he was
“perhaps the worst and most dangerous president in the history of our country.”
Now, in Mr. Sanders’ world,
his fans have something concrete to grapple with: James T. Hodgkinson, a former
volunteer for Mr. Sanders’ presidential campaign, is suspected of opening fire
on Republican lawmakers practicing baseball in Alexandria, Va.
Sanders’ supporters are
positioned as crazed religious adherents, with an “idol” rather than a
political leader. These “fans,” the article continues, “now…have something
concrete to grapple with”—apparently in contrast to the non-concrete claims of
Sanders that Trump is a dangerous demagogue.
The sleaziest section, and one
that solicited the most online outrage,
uncritically echoed the conventional wisdom that Sanders fans were uniquely
menacing and aggressive:
To be sure, supporters of Mr.
Trump, as well as Mr. Trump himself, have assailed opponents and the news
media.
But long before the shooting
on Wednesday, some of Mr. Sanders’ supporters had earned a belligerent
reputation for their criticism of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party and
others who they believed disagreed with their ideas. Sanders fans, sometimes
referred to derogatorily as “Bernie Bros” or “Bernie Bots,” at times harassed
reporters covering Mr. Sanders and flooded social media with angry posts
directed at the “corporate media,” a term often used by the senator.
The suspect in the shooting in
Virginia put a new spotlight on the rage buried in some corners of the
progressive left.
Alcindor insists Sanders
supporters had “earned a belligerent reputation” without examining whether or
not this claim was supported by any empirical data whatsoever. (One
study found Clinton and Trump fans to be far more aggressive than Sanders
backers online, but let’s not let facts get in the way of a good narrative.)
Who’s pushing the term “Bernie
Bros”? Is the image being presented of a seething cauldron of leftist hate at
all fair—especially relative to the other candidates? It’s not examined. They
are “sometimes referred” to that way—and that’s enough to prop up collective
responsibility for the actions of one disturbed man among Sanders’ tens of
millions of followers and partisans.
The literal “to be sure”
paragraph, ostensibly acknowledging that Trump and his supporters have
“assailed opponents and the news media,” actually serves to equate those
assaults—which are quite
literal—with the “belligerent reputation” of Sanders supporters. Never mind
that you’ll never find Sanders urging supporters to “kick the crap out of”
protesters, as Trump has (Slate, 3/15/16),
or reminiscing about how “I love the old days” when “they’d be carried out on a
stretcher, folks.”
The first Sanders supporter to
be heard from in the Times piece is former Ohio state senator Nina Turner, who
agrees with the article’s premise that “both sides need to look in the mirror,”
and warns that “we have to decide what kind of language we are going to use in
our political discourse.” (One gets the sense that “corporate media,” cited as
a sign of “Bernie Bro” belligerence, is the kind of phrase Alcindor wants to
see stricken from the discourse.)
Alcindor does quote Daily News
columnist and Black Lives Matter supporter Shaun King saying it “doesn’t make
sense” to blame all Sanders supporters for one individual’s actions, though
he’s not given a chance to develop the idea.
It’s not until paragraph 22 of
the article that a meaningful rebuke of its premise is presented. National Nurses
United union head RoseAnn DeMoro ends the article, telling Alcindor that it’s a
“‘boldface lie’ to connect the shooting to Mr. Sanders’s push for opposing Mr.
Trump’s proposals.” The New York Times here plays the “both sides” game to
perfection, promoting the premise that Sanders laid the ground for radical
leftist violence in the headline and lede, while tossing in a counter-argument
at the very end.
Considering only 41 percent of
people read
past the headline, and only 11
percent of Americans are likely to finish an article, it’s still reassuring
to know some readers will stick around long enough to see meaningful pushback.
Well before then, Fox News
contributor and pro-Trump flack Harlan Hill would offer up some of the more
cynical comments of the piece:
Harlan Hill, a political
consultant based in New York who supports Mr. Trump, said people should not
blame Mr. Sanders personally, but he said the senator’s description of the
president as “dangerous” illustrated the “apocalyptic terms” and “melodrama”
that have created a combustible political atmosphere.
“It is a passive justification
for the kind of violence we saw,” Mr. Hill said. “If you don’t believe that,
and you’re just casually using these words, then you should accept the
consequence of those words because you are empowering the people that follow
you to take whatever sort of action that they deem necessary to avert what is
being described to them as a potential genocidal leader.”
So calling the president
“dangerous”—when he’s actively tried to ban
Muslims from the US, deported
immigrants at record rates, pulled
the US out of the world’s only meaningful anti-climate change agreement, worked
to take health care from millions, and ratcheted up tensions with Iran
and North
Korea—is “passive justification for the kind of violence” carried out on
Monday? Alcindor allows this self-serving and patently absurd premise to go
unchallenged, as a paid advocate for Trump eagerly uses the tragedy to paint
his side as the real victim of political extremism, rather than its No. 1
champion.
The innuendo and
guilt-by-association only got worse from there:
On Tuesday, Mr. Hodgkinson posted
a cartoon on Facebook explaining “How does a bill work?” “That’s an easy one,
Billy,” the cartoon reads. “Corporations write the bill and then bribe Congress
until it becomes law.”
“That’s Exactly How It
Works….” Mr. Hodgkinson wrote.
That is not far from Mr.
Sanders’ own message. On Saturday, during a conference in Chicago filled with
Sanders supporters, he thundered, “Today in the White House, we have perhaps
the worst and most dangerous president in the history of our country,” to
cheers from thousands. “And we also have, not to be forgotten, extreme
right-wing leadership in the US House and the US Senate.”
See, the killer vaguely
acknowledged the obvious reality that corporations influence legislation, and
on Saturday Senator Sanders said something mean about Trump. It’s all
connected.
Left unmentioned in the piece
were two entirely relevant pieces of context that would mitigate the burden of
responsibility for Sen. Sanders and provide alternative theories of the crime.
The first is Hodgkinson’s history of domestic violence—a common
factor in most mass shootings (CounterSpin, 6/17/16).
“Mass shooting experts say
past violent conduct and access to weapons, not specific ideology, are biggest
risk factors,” said Alex
Yablon of The Trace, a website dedicated to gun violence in the United States.
The second—and perhaps most
salient, given the tone of the piece—was Hodgkinson’s obsession with President
Trump as a pro-Russian “traitor.” His Facebook was filled with content calling
Trump a “traitor,” including
a petition insisting “Trump Has Destroyed Our Democracy” and “It’s Time to
Destroy Trump & Co.”
Since Hodgkinson’s political
leanings are being probed as somehow responsible for the shootings, it’s
curious why the New York Times decided to highlight his pro-Sanders stance and
not his obsession with Trump as treasonous pro-Russian agent—an accusation that
Sanders has not aggressively pressed and, indeed, has sometimes been on the receiving
end of. Why “Attack Tests Movement Sanders Founded” and not “Attack Test
Democrats’ Trump-as-Russian-Agent Inquiry”? Why note Hodgkinson’s support for
Sanders but not
his love for Rachel Maddow, more than half of whose show, one
study found, is dedicated to the Russia/Trump story?
The answer is that the former
is easy—and convenient—to smear, whereas the latter implicates a whole host of
powerful institutions: the Democratic leadership, most major media and, above
all, the New York Times itself, which has published,
and thus legitimized, the most extreme and irresponsible fringe of the
Russia/Trump dot-connectors in the form of Louise Mensch (FAIR.org, 3/31/17).
Of course, neither Sanders nor
Trump-as-Russian-agent media personalities are responsible for what Hodgkinson
did Monday, but it’s notable that only one is being blamed. Sanders unleashing
crazed “Bernie Bros” is a simple narrative that reinforces existing,
media-flattering narratives, whereas the latter is far messier, and would
require the New York Times to examine its own role. Guess which one we’ll be
getting nonstop coverage of in the coming days?
No comments:
Post a Comment