WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah loves to try and steal reflected glory from others, from claiming he marched with Martin Luther King to having thought up the “Left Behind” books. His latest attempt comes in his Aug. 17 column:
When President Trump again Tuesday denounced not only the Klan, the neo-Nazis, the white supremacists and the plain old racists who were clearly guilty of violence, thuggery, instigating mayhem and, possibly, even murder in Charlottesville, Virginia, he also point out accurately and – and this point – even courageously that there was, indeed, another side to this story.
He called that side the “alt-left.”
At least one network even credited him with coining the term, even though I used it a year ago. I even defined it — and other sites are crediting me with it.
This, despite the fact that the “alt-left” is not an actual thing. As Emma Grey Ellis explains at Wired:
Ultimately, the intent seems to be to frame alt-left as the opposite of alt-right and create a false equivalence between groups on the far ends of the right and left. But here’s the thing: No left-wing group has ever called itself the alt-left. And the groups smeared by the alt-left label don’t include anything like the heinousness of overt white supremacism that has increasingly defined the alt-right.
It’s a blanket term some right-wing media commentators and white nationalists have taken to throwing over groups they disagree with, like the umbrella of “fake news” they use to describe stories they disagree with. Doing so manages to both minimize the ugliness of the alt-right and vastly overstate the actions and intentions of leftist groups.
In other words, Farah is trying to take credit for naming something that doesn’t exist. He seems a little desperate for some kind — any kind — of legacy.