Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joseph Farah's thin skin shows up yet again in his Sept. 12 WorldNetDaily column, in which he rants that an obscure blog has committed a "blood libel" against him:
A blog called “Peacock Panache” posted a diatribe called “The Trump Administration: A Confederacy of Dunces,” by Sheila Kennedy. It sought to discredit executive branch officials through a tactic the left used to detest – “guilt by association.” When liberals and leftists were linked in the past to Communists and socialists, they doth protest such connections as “McCarthyite” smears.
But the left has fully embraced the tactic and raised it to an art form.
What caught my eye about this particular piece was the attempted smear of John Kenneth Bush, Trump’s nominee for the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals. One of his grave offenses was that his wife purportedly called slavery and abortion two of America’s greatest tragedies. I don’t know if the accusation is true or not, but … what’s wrong with that? Bush’s second offense, according to the post, was: “He consistently cited WorldNetDaily, an extremist publication known for peddling conspiracy theories and white nationalism, including the lie that Obama was not born in the United States.”
Meet the SPLC’s “white nationalist conspiracy spin cycle.”
Since I, as the founder of WND, openly detest white supremacy and all forms of racism, this lie struck a nerve. So, I dashed off a demand for retraction and public apology from Tim Peacock, the managing editor of Peacock Panache.
I explained that WND has never and would never promote “white nationalism” and that his blog’s claim is an outrageous and actionable lie – and clearly defamatory.
But, of course, the little Peacock knows better than me, my friends, my family members, my employees about my reputation and integrity as a Christian who believes all people are created in the image of God.
And how does he know better?
His authority is the SPLC, which sees me and WND as instruments of hatred and evil personified.
He also cites the objective folks at Media Matters to prove WND is a tool of white supremacists.
It’s a blood libel, but not beneath political activists who, without a shred of decency or humanity, don’t mind putting targets on the backs of people just because they have differences of opinion.
Farah is crying some massive crocodile tears here. He and his website spent the entire Obama administration putting targets on the backs of people just because they have differences of opinion.
But notice what else he does here: He attacks the sources of the allegations against him and WND without ever denying the allegations. The SPLC link details how WND gave a forum to race-baiting, black-mob-obsessed author Colin Flaherty, who gained popularlity in white-nationalist circles with his WND work.
The Media Matters link, meanwhile, documents how white-nationalist radio host James Edwards said he worked with WND to promote a highly dubious birther claim by Tim Adams while Edwards was broadcasting from a convention of the white-nationalist Council of Conservative Citizens (WND never explained what Adams was doing there in the first place).
Farah doesn't deny that Flaherty is a white nationalist -- though it had to cut him loose after his obsession jeopardized its Google ad revenue --nor does he deny that WND worked with a white nationalist radio host to get Adams place on his show at a white nationalist group's conference.
It doesn't matter how much Farah rants that the blog's allegations are an "actionable lie" and a "blood libel" and threatens to silence it, since Farah never disproves the claims. And it doesn't matter how much Farah insists that he's not a white supremacist, since his website undeniably tried to profit from it. If he really put his principles where his business is, WND would never have published anything by Flaherty or teamed with Adams.
It's even more laughable that Farah is making an appeal to his own "reputation and integrity as a Christian who believes all people are created in the image of God," when he's an unrepentant liar.
Farah finally rants: "At what point does SPLC bear moral, financial and legal responsibility for such acts of defamation and terrorism?" This from the editor of a "news" organization that's cited in the manifesto of mass murder Anders Breivik and whose editorial agenda parallels the white-supremacist obsessions of mass murder Dylann Roof, and has irresponsibly pushed anti-vaccine myths that likely caused people to die unnecessarily.
