We’ve already detailed the hot mess of hot takes WorldNetDaily columnists have offered following the events in Charlottesville, Va. WND’s “news” side — which is really just opinion written in inverted-pyramid style — did exactly what you’d expect when its fellow right-wingers get caught in bad behavior: deflect and spin conspiracy theories.
An Aug. 15 article by Chelsea Schilling touted Rush Limbaugh’s insistence that “both ‘reactionary fringe groups’ – neo-Nazis and Antifa – are actually extreme leftists and are not aligned with Republicans at all.” Schilling goes on to tie efforts to remove Confederate monuments to George Soros, because everything WND doesn’t like can be blamed on Soros, apparently.
In another article, Schilling is just asking (and conspiracy-mongering) regarding Jason Kessler:
The organizer of the violent rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, was until recently a Barack Obama supporter and was also a member of the leftist radical Occupy Wall Street Movement, according to a report from a hard-left activist group.
The details from his recent past have many in the blogosphere and on social media asking: Is the Charlottesville rally organizer really a left-wing plant?
Garth Kant, meanwhile, continues the whataboutism:
Leftists claim they are fighting hate and violence, and they cite the deadly protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, as a prime example.
But the evidence indicates the left is actually spreading hate and violence.
Those are the conclusions of writers for two prominent left-leaning news outlets, the BBC and the Atlantic.
Their articles describe in detail how the taste for violence is seeping from the fringe left into its mainstream.
As he has before, Kant continued his audition to work at the Trump White House press shop, touting how “Trump had stated a demonstrable truth, recorded by cameras, that there was violence from both sides. But, for some reason, that assertion enraged the press, which responded by trying to portray the president as defending the Nazis.
Kant went conspiracy-mongering too, asserting that “There is evidence that reason is quite literally being removed from American academia, and that it is increasingly seen as racist by academics.”
Liam Clancy complained about Republicans who allegedly “defend[ed]” the “violent left” by pointing out that they were attacking neo-Nazis.
And Greg Corombos promotes an interview with a “black leader” — actually, just a guy from the tiny black-conservative group Project 21 — getting all conspiratorial about the alleged failure of the police to stop violence in Charlottesville.