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Rightwing demonization of Parkland students - Printable Version

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Rightwing demonization of Parkland students - Magical Realist - Mar 30, 2018

Not that conspiracy theories are anything new with the alt right. But these particular ones sink to a whole new level for even them, attacking the outspoken students in any way they can to distract from their message. This is the kind of shit we can expect from the alt right gun nuts, since character assassination seems to be their only line of defense for their insane positions.

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/rage-on-the-parkland-teens-exposes-the-rights-ideological-exhaustion/

"Hours after bullet casings hit the floors of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School during a mass shooting last month, right-wing media entered the first phases of what would end up being a sustained abhorrent smear campaign aimed at teenage survivors-turned-activists.

Since 17 people were murdered in the Parkland, Florida, school on that Valentine’s Day, a handful of students have organized nationwide student walkouts and massive rallies that have brought out hundreds of thousands of people across the United States who support common sense gun control measures. These teens carry with them two powerful things: heart-wrenching personal testimony and gun reform proposals that Americans overwhelmingly support.

As public support for gun reform measures has grown, right-wing media figures have stooped remarkably low in their desperation to stunt the undeniably effective wave of public outcry the Parkland teenagers have unleashed. Since the March for Our Lives rally last weekend, right-wing media outlets abandoned their long-held facade of a moral high ground and descended to repulsive lows to besmirch the young activists—a display that is hard to interpret as anything other than a sign of ideological desperation.

For example, conservative pundit and radio host Ben Shaprio and his staffers at The Daily Wire have wrestled with various rationales that could justify attacking Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg. First, Shapiro suggested that because Hogg was speaking in the public sphere, that he was worthy of legitimate “criticism.” Yet, much of that “criticism” has come in the form of smears and efforts to cast Hogg as an ignorant bully unworthy of consideration.

As Paul Blest at Splinter pointed out, The Daily Wire has attempted to smear Hogg all week by insinuating that Hogg shouldn’t be taken seriously because he said a swear word, he admitted to skipping class for television appearances, and he used the phrase “revolution” to describe progress on gun control. The site eventually warned that Hogg will be trying to undo voter identification laws next.

Then, The Daily Wire ran an article about Hogg being turned down by colleges he had applied to.

Using the link from The Daily Wire, Fox News host Laura Ingraham mocked Hogg for not being accepted into the colleges he applied to and only apologized after Hogg asked people to contact Ingraham’s advertisers, who in turn began fleeing her program. Hogg said he would only accept Ingraham’s apology if she denounced the ways Fox News has treated him and the other survivors of the mass shooting at his high school.

In response, Shapiro said that Hogg should issue an apology for “the level of viciousness” he had displayed when criticizing Republicans’ inaction on gun violence and said Hogg should get used to criticism, particularly when that criticism is “justified.” Shapiro even dedicated a large portion of his show yesterday to explain why he didn’t believe that Hogg possessed the “moral impotence” to call for advertisers to boycott Ingraham’s show.

Similarly, an article published at The Federalist defended Ingraham’s “petty, childish, and mean-spirited” jab at Hogg by urging readers to “stop pretending” that Hogg is “the beacon of moral authority.”

Also this week, conservative site Red State ran a story that insinuated that Hogg was not actually at school during the shooting. The story was later retracted in full and updated to include the fact that video exists of Hogg hiding in a closet during the shooting (which would have been easily found with an iota of research). The author of the piece later issued a lengthy apology.

And they didn’t just take aim at Hogg; Right-wing media also attempted to discredit Emma Gonzalez.

Gonzalez was targeted by right-wing figures, including Rep. Steve King of Iowa, for wearing a jacket with a Cuban flag patch sewn on it—González’s father fled Fidel Castro’s regime in Cuba—during her speech at the March for Our Lives rally in Washington, D.C., last weekend.

Other right-wing media, including The American Spectator and radio host Steven Crowder, attempted to project blame for the shooting onto Gonzalez by falsely claiming that Gonzalez had admitted to bullying the shooter earlier. On social media, countless right-wing accounts shared doctored images that depict Gonzalez tearing apart a copy of the U.S. Constitution.

And as the establishment Republicans at National Review called Gonzalez and Hogg “teenage demagogues,” fringe figures at outlets such as The Gateway Pundit and Infowars repeatedly compared the teens to Hitler Youth.

All the while some figures, such as pro-Trump social media pundit Mike Cernovich and columnist Matt Walsh have resigned from the drama and suggested disengaging with the Parkland teen activists altogether. Matt Walsh writes:

'So, here’s an idea: let’s stop giving him the attention. For his own sake. For our sake. For the sake of sanity and reason. Who cares about the kid’s college application status? Why was Ingraham commenting on it in the first place? Who cares what he says? Who cares what he does? It only matters because we’ve made it matter. David Hogg has no actual power. He does have influence, but that’s only because he’s become a mascot for gun rights. And why is he a mascot? Partly because the liberal media selected him for that position, and partly because conservatives have heaped a ton of negative attention upon him, causing the Left to rally around him.'

Right-wing media have used the same predictable playbook for decades to downplay the frequent role that high-power, semi-automatic rifles often play in mass shootings, while at the same time working to advance legislation that makes such weapons easier for people to acquire.

But that playbook, made evident in desperate efforts to delegitimize teenagers who lived through a school shooting, has been played out. The talking points of yesteryear have lost their place in the national dialogue and those who have used a revisionist history of the Second Amendment to protect easy access to weapons of war are flailing to remain heard."


RE: Rightwing demonization of Parkland students - Magical Realist - Mar 31, 2018

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/laura-ingraham-fox-news-week-off_us_5abf5a5ee4b0a47437ab37c4


"(Reuters) - Fox News show host Laura Ingraham announced on her show late Friday that she is taking next week off, after almost a dozen advertisers dropped her show after the conservative pundit mocked a teenage survivor of the Florida school massacre on Twitter.

Eleven companies so far have pulled their ads after a pushback by Parkland student David Hogg, 17, who called for a boycott of her advertisers.

Hogg took aim at the host’s show, “Ingraham Angle”, after she taunted him on Twitter on Wednesday, accusing him of whining about being rejected by four colleges to which he had applied.

Hogg is a survivor of the Feb. 14 mass shooting that killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in the Parkland suburb of Fort Lauderdale. He and other classmates have become the faces of a new youth-led movement calling for tighter restrictions on firearms.

Hogg tweeted a list of a dozen companies that advertise on “The Ingraham Angle” and urged his supporters to demand that they cancel their ads.

On Thursday, Ingraham tweeted an apology “in the spirit of Holy Week,” saying she was sorry for any hurt or upset she had caused Hogg or any of the “brave victims” of Parkland.

But her apology did not stop companies from departing.

The companies announcing that they are cancelling their ads are: Nutrish, the pet food line created by celebrity chef Rachael Ray, travel website TripAdvisor Inc, online home furnishings seller Wayfair Inc, the world’s largest packaged food company, Nestle SA, online streaming service Hulu, travel website Expedia Group Inc and online personal shopping service Stitch Fix.

According to CBS News, four other companies joined the list Friday: the home office supply store Office Depot, the dieting company Jenny Craig, the Atlantis, Paradise Island resort and Johnson & Johnson which produces pharmaceuticals as well as consumer products such as Band-Aids, Neutrogena beauty products and Tylenol.

Hogg wrote on Twitter that an apology just to mollify advertisers was insufficient. Ingraham’s show runs on Fox News, part of Rupert Murdoch’s Twenty-First Century Fox Inc. A Fox News representative was not immediately available for comment."


RE: Rightwing demonization of Parkland students - Magical Realist - Apr 1, 2018

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObX8KYJEj_c


RE: Rightwing demonization of Parkland students - RainbowUnicorn - Apr 1, 2018

they employed marketing companies to direct market individuals with propoganda to swing their votes...
should not really be surprised by them trying to victim shame child victims of mass homicides.


RE: Rightwing demonization of Parkland students - Syne - Apr 1, 2018

https://www.scivillage.com/thread-5100.html


RE: Rightwing demonization of Parkland students - RainbowUnicorn - Apr 1, 2018

(Apr 1, 2018 07:50 AM)RainbowUnicorn Wrote: they employed marketing companies to direct market individuals with propoganda to swing their votes...
should not really be surprised by them trying to victim shame child victims of mass homicides.

the noise from the right has been clear & conformist.
thier opinion is that school children should have no voice.

that is a little rich considering they also want to try school children as adults at any chance they get and they do not support giving medical cover
or sexual education to those very same school children.

such a moral catastrophy they are.

the icing on the cake is the narcissist right wingers who need to attack school children and try and steal their public attention away from them.
its quite messed up on soo many levels.


RE: Rightwing demonization of Parkland students - Magical Realist - Apr 1, 2018

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/josh-bernstein-suspects-that-david-hogg-had-something-to-do-with-the-stoneman-shooting/

"Right-wing commentator Josh Bernstein posted a video yesterday in which he speculated that David Hogg, a student who survived the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, last month and who has become a leading activist for gun reform, “had something to do with the Stoneman shooting” and was possibly even “affiliated in some way” with the shooter, Nikolas Cruz.

“David Hogg is an opportunist,” Bernstein said. “He is not a victim. He has used this tragedy to make a name for himself. He is exploiting this shooting in order to make a name for himself. In fact, I bet that his speech [at the March for Our Lives rally] was probably written by Michael Bloomberg himself or maybe someone at CNN … or, who knows, maybe even a Hollywood producer or writer or director.”

“This kid, David Hogg, is not concerned about gun safety,” Bernstein continued. “He is concerned about pushing an agenda and making a name for himself. And, to be quite frank, I honestly wonder if this kid had something to do with the Stoneman shooting.”

Bernstein went on to assert that “it seems very odd” that Hogg would have documented the event on his phone while hiding in a closet during the shooting.

“Give me a break,” he said. “It seems very odd. My gut tells me that this kid was either warned beforehand—knew he wasn’t going to be shot, knew he wasn’t going to be targeted—or was affiliated in some way with Nikolas Cruz.”


RE: Rightwing demonization of Parkland students - Magical Realist - Apr 2, 2018

http://fox8.com/2018/03/31/parkland-students-demand-apology-after-ted-nugent-says-teens-attacking-nra-have-no-soul/

"Rocker Ted Nugent says the Florida students calling for gun control have “no soul” and are “mushy brained children.”

The 69-year-old made the comments Friday while defending the National Rifle Association as a guest on the Joe Pags show, a nationally syndicated conservative radio program.

Nugent, a longtime member of the NRA’s board of directors, said survivors of the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School are wrong to blame the NRA and its members for mass shootings.

“These poor children, I’m afraid to say, it hurts me to say, but the evidence is irrefutable: They have no soul,” Nugent said. He added that the gun control measures the students support amount to “spiritual suicide” and “will cause more death and mayhem.”

A representative for Nugent did not respond to a request for comment on Saturday.


“If only he saw all the tears. If only he had to look into the eyes I’ve looked into. If only he saw what this did to all of us,” junior Cameron Kasky said on Twitter. “And here the NRA is, receiving more fear-based donations than ever. Talk about ‘no soul.’ This guy better apologize. Seriously.”


RE: Rightwing demonization of Parkland students - Magical Realist - Apr 3, 2018

"On Feb. 20, Ben Kelly emailed a Tampa Bay Times reporter, unsolicited, with a then-shocking statement about Hogg and González. “Both kids in the picture are not students here but actors that travel to various crisis when they happen,” he said in the email.


When the Times asked for evidence supporting his claim, Kelly sent an email, still from his official government account, linking to a conspiracy video showing Hogg in a news clip in California as evidence he was a crisis actor. “There is a clip on you tube that shows Mr. Hogg out in California,” Kelly wrote. “(I guess he transferred?)”

Harrison told a reporter that Kelly should not have sent the email. He then said he placed Kelly on leave and that Kelly shared the statement “without my knowledge.” Kelly was then fired by state House Speaker Richard Corcoran.

The day before, on his personal Twitter account, according to the Times, Kelly liked a tweet calling González a “brown bald lesbian girl.”

Leslie Gibson, Republican Candidate for the Maine State House

Just over two weeks ago, when Gibson was running unopposed for the seat, he said in a since-deleted tweet that “There is nothing about this skinhead lesbian that impresses me and there is nothing that she has to say unless you’re a frothing at the mouth moonbat.” The tweet was referring to González, who is openly bisexual and who has a buzz cut. He also called Hogg a “moron” and a “baldfaced liar.”

In the outrage that ensued, some state legislators condemned his comments, and Hogg took to Twitter to ask people to run against Gibson. Two challengers surfaced just days later, and Gibson withdrew from the race. “I am walking away with my head held high,” he said."----- https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/03/the-insults-pro-gun-people-use-against-parkland-students-david-hogg-and-emma-gonzalez.html


RE: Rightwing demonization of Parkland students - Ben the Donkey - Apr 3, 2018

If you live in a society governed by hyperbole and rhetoric, then expect hyperbole and rhetoric.
The bullshit continues and grows because you buy into it - one side or the other. Does your solution consist entirely of demonising the demonisers? Where do you think that leads? To an improvement in the situation?
All you're doing here is buying in for more of the same. Propagating the problem.