The Media Research Center appears to have been on the prowl for a target to attack — and it found one in Politico reporter Heidi Przybyla, for committing the offense of wrongspeak about right-wingers by pointing out that Christian nationalists believe their rights come from God. Nicholas Fondacaro kicked things off in a Feb. 23 post filled with condescending lecturing:
Someone failed their high school civics class! Or at least that’s the impression Politico’s democracy investigator, Heidi Przybyla left during an appearance on MSNBC’s All In Thursday night. According to the reporter who’s supposedly brushed up on American governance, if you understood that your rights as a human came from a higher power, it made up part of a dangerous “extremist element” in American politics. She even rhetorically scoffed that people don’t believe we get our rights from Congress.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” was arguably the most well-known line from the Declaration of Independence, which set down why the colonies were starting a revolution. But that fact seemed to be ignored or unknown to Przybyla as she lashed out at the political right.
[…]Przybyla warned that the only people who believed in the idea of Natural Law and actively pushed the notion was the “extremist element” of “Christian Nationalism.” “[T]hey believe that our rights as Americans and as all human beings do not come from any earthly authority. They don’t come from Congress, they don’t come from the Supreme Court, they come from God,” she scoffed, flaunting her ignorance of Christian teachings in general.
She did note that Natural Law was “a pillar of Catholicism” and has “been used for good in social justice campaigns. Martin Luther King evoked it in talking about civil rights.” But seemed to play the gender card while also dismissing Natural Law. “The problem from that is that they are determining, man – men – it is men, are determining what God is telling them,” she decried.
Well, Heidi, allow us at NewsBusters to give you a little lesson about Natural Law. As noted above, Natural Law was a driving force behind the founding of America. Thomas Jefferson also wrote in the Declaration of Independence: “…the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
[…]The flailing continued on Thursday as Przybyla took to X to defend herself, doubling down on the false idea that only Christian nationalists believed our rights come from God. “While there are different wings of Christian Nationalism, they are bound by their belief that our rights come from God,” she proclaimed. She also asserted that the so-called Christian nationalists were trying to apply Natural Law to their “man-made policy agenda” like “banning abortion.”
Clearly, Politico’s democracy investigator needs to get a clue.
Over the next few days, the MRC and other right-wing organizations decided they were going to make an example out of Przybyla for failing to be conservative correct. Kathryn Eiler detailed the attack on her in a Feb. 29 post:
Last week on MSNBC’s All In, Politico investigative correspondent Heidi Przybyla publicly displayed her lack of knowledge of the American Founding by stating that Natural Law did not originate from a higher power. Clearly ignoring essentially every founding document of the U.S. Additionally, she falsely assumed that Christian Nationalists were the only subset of Christianity that derived their belief in Natural Rights from a Creator. This spectacular picture of ignorance prompted the presidents of the Family Research Center and the Catholic Vote to send a response letter to Politico demanding an apology from both Przybyla and the news outlet itself.
NewsBusters’ associate editor, Nicholas Fondacaro, covered this story last week, notably reporting how embarrassing it was that Politico’s “democracy investigator” couldn’t seem to recall that the most popular founding document declaring Natural Rights asserts in its second paragraph: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…”
[…]It is indeed bold of Przybyla to admit that she didn’t know anything about the connection between Christianity and America’s founding. Yet it was even bolder to claim that Christian Nationalists were the only Christians whose faith influences their perception of politics, and to also assume that other Christian groups who weren’t “extremists” would agree with her false reports.
Both Presidents of these Christian, conservative organizations were extremely concerned with the potential violence against Judeo-Christian groups as a result of Przybyla’s inaccuracy. “Comments like Ms. Przybyla’s can and often do have life and death consequences for faith communities,” they wrote, citing the statistics of increasing attacks against places of worship:
[…]The last paragraph of the letter called for an apology from Przybyla and Politico to the religious communities they have offended, reemphasizing that “Rhetoric like Ms. Przybyla’s, which demonizes religious groups, is profoundly dangerous. It can motivate disturbed individuals who may be predisposed to commit violence against faith communities.”
Eiler avoided the issue of the FRC so aggressively demonizing Przybyla for her wrongspeak, possibly motivating disturbed individuals to commit violence against her.
Fondacaro returned for a March 1 post ranting that Przybyla wasn’t apologizing profusely enough for his satisfaction, laughably — and dangerously — describing her conservative incorrectness as “HATE” in the headline of his post and “anti-Christian” in the post itself:
A week ago, Politico’s so-called democracy investigator Heidi Przybyla flaunted her stone-cold civics illiteracy and anti-Christian bigotry when she suggested that anyone who believed that our rights came from God was a dangerous “extremist” and “Christian Nationalist.” But following overwhelming condemnation, Przybyla published a non-apology on Thursday in which she blamed “clumsy words” for how her hate was “interpreted.”
“Every person’s spiritual motivations are entitled to respect. Once these motivations take them onto the stage of politics and lawmaking that will affect the lives of fellow citizens, however, they will be treated the same as any other political actor,” she proclaimed. “That means they can expect journalistic scrutiny. They can expect fair and well-reported coverage of their political aims and the tactics used to advance them.”
[…]It took Przybyla eight paragraphs to finally address the reason she was writing the article. “Due to some clumsy words, I was interpreted by some people as making arguments that are quite different from what I believe,” she wrote.
Despite outlets like NewsBusters posting her anti-Christian comments in their entirety, she blamed select “activists” for taking her words out of “context”:
[…]“Christianity is a religion. Christian Nationalism is a political movement. As I said on air, there is a big difference between the two,” she finally admitted in paragraph 10. “Reporters have a responsibility to use words and convey meaning with precision, and I am sorry I fell short of this in my appearance. Among the passages that caused confusion was my attempt to draw a distinction between Christians and the small set of these people who advocate Christian Nationalism.”
She went on to describe how her critics were right in pointing out that America’s Founders did believe in Natural Law and that our rights did come from a higher power above mankind and their presence in the Declaration of Independence; and separately, talked about the ideology of Christian Nationalism. She closed with lines from President Abraham Lincoln about God being invoked by both sides in the Civil War.
This non-apology came hours after the Family Research Center and the Catholic Vote sent a letter to Politico demanding an apology from both it and Przybyla. The organizations pressed the fact that religious institutions in America have seen an increase in violence being carried out against them and that Przybyla’s words could contribute to it.
Fondacaro, meanwhile, apparently had no problem using inflammatory language that could contribute to violence being carried out against Przybyla.
After a March 2 clip post by Geoffrey Dickens citing Przybyla as an example of “The leftist media really have no clue about the founding principles that made America great,” Fondacaro wrote a March 5 post featuring the FRC’s latest attacks on her (bizarrely calling it “hate” again):
On Tuesday, the Family Research Council rolled out a new effort to pressure left-wing Politico into apologizing for the anti-Christian hate their democracy investigator Heidi Przybyla spewed when she smeared all Christians as dangerous “extremist[s]” for believing that our rights come from God. In a letter to supporters, FRC president Tony Perkins slammed Przybyla’s non-apology article and announced a new campaign of mobile billboards to be stationed around Politico offices.
“In response to our letter and public pressure, Pryzbyla released an article defending herself by saying that her statements were taken out of context: ‘Due to some clumsy words, I was interpreted by some people as making arguments that are quite different from what I believe,’” Perkins wrote. “That’s hardly an apology. Christians deserve more from Politico than to be accused of ‘misinterpreting’ what the journalist clearly said.”
Perkins announced the “FRC is taking action. Starting today, FRC is running mobile billboards around Politico’s offices in New York and Washington, D.C., demanding Politico stop their attack on religious freedom in America, which allows us to support and vote for candidates based upon our Christian faith.”
Images of the mobile billboards provided to Town Hall’s Spencer Brown showed direct shots at Przybyla’s infamous comments on MSNBC’s All In. “Declaration of Independence for Dummies,” one billboard read, “…they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…” “Politico: Demonizing Christian voters. Attacking religious freedom,” said another.
[…]“Make no mistake: It’s all connected. The Left’s coordinated use of ‘Christian nationalism’ and the rise in hostility against houses of worship. It’s an intimidation game designed to silence Christians and suppress our votes,” Perkins added in an accompanying FRC press release about the campaign.
Well, it is kinda connected and it is intimidation — just not in the way Perkins and Fondacaro want you to believe. Peter Montgomery of Right Wing Watch pointed out that what the FRC is doing — with the MRC’s encouragement — is a “smear campaign” designed to “intimidate reporters and editors by threatening that they will be accused of anti-Christian bias if they cover the increasingly aggressive Christian nationalist movement.” After pointing out that numerous right-wing politicians, including “former and likely future Trump officials,” have explicitly embraced Christian nationalism as a motivation and a priority, Montgomery called out the false conflation happening here:
Contrary to the Family Research Council’s smears, criticizing Christian nationalism is not the same as attacking Christianity. Indeed, many Christians reject Christian nationalism as a distortion of their faith and a threat to democracy, as evidenced by the existence of Christians Against Christian Nationalism and the number of Christian leaders who appear in “God & Country,” a new documentary about Christian nationalism.
Scholars have documented that people who hold strong Christian nationalist beliefs are more likely than other Americans to support authoritarianism and embrace the idea that political violence may be necessary to move the country in the right direction. Christian nationalism played a significant role in motivating and mobilizing the crowds that attacked the U.S. Capitol to keep Trump in power after his 2020 defeat. Millions of conservative Christians have been told over and over again that God had anointed Trump to lead America back to God, and have been urged to wage “spiritual warfare” against the Trump’s “demonic” opponents.
It is worth noting here that Family Research Council officials—and many other religious-right leaders—were involved in multiple ways in Trump’s efforts to hold onto power after his defeat. Journalists and public officials should refuse to be intimidated by religious-right leaders using intimidation tactics to insulate their movement from urgently needed scrutiny.
Oddly, for all of Fondacaro days of anger in making Przybyla a right-wing target and tacitly encouraging violence against her, he hasn’t written about the manufactured controversy since. Did someone at the MRC decide that Fondacaro’s vicious hatred went too far — or did someone realize the game was exposed and that such blatant intimidation of reporters over things that basically true isn’t a good look, even among right-wingers who get paid to do just that?
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