Irony, Thy Name Is WND

WorldNetDaily has an odd habit of publishing articles and columns that complain others are engaging in behaviors that it also freely engages in.

By Terry Krepel
Posted 12/21/2023

For instance: A 2019 issue of WND's sparsely read Whistleblower magazine is titled "MASTERS OF PROJECTION: How today’s Democrats accuse their opponents of the very evil they perpetrate," and it's promoted thusly:

In psychology, projection is just one of many defense mechanisms people unconsciously employ to avoid facing uncomfortable feelings within themselves – by ascribing these unpleasant qualities to another person.

But in today’s political and cultural battles, projection is a tactic of all-out warfare.

The plain truth is, on issue after issue, one side in the raging war over America’s future is literally accusing the other side of the very attitudes, offenses and crimes of which it itself is guilty.

[...]

“After 20 years of producing Whistleblower magazine for WND,” says best-selling author and WND Managing Editor David Kupelian, “this has turned out to be one of my favorite issues. It’s smart, original, and it shines a fresh new light on the vexing political and cultural wars now ravaging our nation. On issues from ‘Russia collusion’ to racism, and from tolerance to voter fraud, we document how the left literally accuses others of their own misdeeds.”

Kupelian and Co. will never admit it, but WND is a major source of projection. To name just a few examples:

• It complained about people likening then-President Trump to Hitler after it spent years likening President Obama to Hitler.
• It lamented that people called for Trump's impeachment while president -- while it lamely pushed to impeach Obama.
• It has fretted over fake news despite being a prolific generator of it.

Kupelian's column on the subject, published at WND on Jan. 27, expanded on the theme, declaring at one point that "The left is so good at projection, it even projects the accusation of projection onto others!" He added as one example: "Members of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign did spread the theory that Obama was born in Kenya and constitutionally ineligible to be president." The 2016 McClatchy article to which Kupelian links to prove this also noted that the one Clinton campaign staff member who spread the story was fired and that a reporter to whom Clinton adviser Sidney Blumenthal fed the claim (he has denied doing so) investigated it and found it to be false.

In other words, it would have died a discredited claim had WND not picked it up and spent the next eight years pushing it. Kupelian is simply seeking retroactive justification for pushing a story he knew or should have known was false for the sole purpose of engaging in the politics of personal destruction against Obama.

Isn't that projection too?

Kupelian also unironically wrote: "There are no rules when you’re battling Hitler, and that’s exactly how the left likes it – no rules. Of course, Trump is not Hitler and the GOP is not fascist, Nazi or evil." Kupelian, Joseph Farah and the rest of WND also like it when there's no rules -- that's why it had no problem tarring Obama with the Hitler slur it now conveniently despises.

The lack of irony continued in an anonymously written WND article a couple weeks later on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi saying that Trump is "projecting his own unruliness" when he attacks his critics. But instead of directly responding to Pelosi, the article turned into a promotion for the magazine, copying liberally from the earlier promo and Kupelian's column.

In attacking liberals for allegedly projecting in their criticisms of Trump, Kupelian and WND are themselves projecting. Now that's irony.

That unironic irony continued into 2023. An anonymously written Feb. 5 WorldNetDaily article stated:

The legacy media in America are cutting their own throats, shooting themselves in the feet and calling for their own termination, according to an analysis by constitutional expert Jonathan Turley.

It's because of the abandonment by leaders in the industry of neutral, or objective, reporting. It's the idea that both sides of a story, or even three sides, should be described, letting readers make their own determinations.

He noted the rise in recent years of "advocacy" journalism, those reports that portray themselves as news but in reality provide only one side, pushing one story line on readers.

"If there is little difference between the mainstream media and alternative media, the public will continue the trend away from the former," he warned. "MSM has the most to lose from this movement, but, as individual editors, it remains popular to yield to advocates in their ranks.

"As media outlets struggle to survive, these media leaders are feverishly sawing at the tree branch upon which they sit," he said.

The irony, of course, is that WND wouldn't know objective journalism if it walked up and slapped Joseph Farah's face.

The really funny part, though, comes in the boilerplate beg at the end of the article for subscriptions to "WND Insider," which touts its "uniquely truthful reporting." Yes, "uniquely truthful" is one way to describe WND's penchant for fake news and conspiracy theories.

Feamongering

Larry Tomczak began his Feb. 28 column this way:

Red alert! We must not be naïve "evanjellyfish" allowing false narratives, skewed polls and supposedly "scientific" data to mislead us anymore. It's time to expose deceptive propaganda the same way Russian dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn did in his 1974 manifesto "Live Not by Lies."

We are regularly facing nonstop narratives intended to frighten and form us into malleable foot soldiers marching in lockstep to the Pied Piper progressives.

In the 1947 book "Nuremberg Diaries," we're told how Hermann Göring, the Nazi architect of Germany's police state, said that "people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders by telling them they're being exposed to danger."

But later in his column, under the subhead "Expose/Expunge," did a bunch of fearmongering:

"Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them" (Eph. 5:11).

"All that's required for tyranny to gain a foothold is for people of conscience to remain silent." –Thomas Jefferson

Who are some of the people and entities that need to be called out for deceiving Americans and actively working to promote radical progressive initiatives to topple traditional America?

• Big government
• Big media
• Big tech
• Big globalist elites (World Health Organization, World Economic Forum)
• Big academia
• Big-name celebrities
• Big companies

They've been used as mouthpieces for malevolent forces trying to convince millions, especially young people, that America is racist and systemically evil; our Founders and heroes were racists whose statues must be torn down; capitalism is bad and based on greed; the time has come for the Constitution to be rewritten, the Electoral College should be abolished and voter ID be outlawed; life does not begin at conception; our criminal justice system is corrupt and must be replaced, recognizing offenders as victims needing counseling, no bail and release from oppressive prisons; police departments have to be defunded; Critical Race Theory and LGBTQ propaganda must be taught in schools; "Death with Dignity" (physician assisted suicide) must be recognized as a basic human right; millennials aren't proud to be Americans; the traditional family and religious values are being discarded; the 2020 election had minimal irregularities; Black and Hispanic Americans believe the U.S. is inherently racist and do not trust whites; religion is rapidly losing its place in America.

Tomczak didn't explain why his fearmongering is somehow pure while everyone else's is evil, instead, he played the religion card: "Here's the deal: We are at a tipping point for a major revival and Third Great Awakening!"

Groupthink and spreading hate

Michael Master began his Feb. 22 column this way:

How many times in history has the cult-like obsession, groupthink, prevailing view derided the real truth? The world is flat. HIV/AIDS is a heterosexual disease. Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone gunman. The Viet Cong fired on a U.S. ship in the Gulf of Tonkin. Affirmative action would fix race disparities. Educational achievement disparities are a function of race-based discrimination. The Constitution maintains that abortion is a woman's right. Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Inflation that started in early 2021 was temporary. High oil prices from restrictions on oil production and massive government spending did not cause inflation. COVID came from monkeys at a wet market. Shutdowns and masks and vaccines would stop the spread of COVID. Increased trade with our enemies would secure world peace (Bretton Woods). Equal rights and equal opportunity means equal results.

Despite denoun cng groupthink, Master then spouted right-wing groupthink on things like climate change ("these cultists continue their assault on one of the most important assets of America: oil, to the destruction of the U.S. economy"), purported election fraud ("How did the U.S. go from voting on the second Tuesday of November to all these other practices that are ripe for abuse? How?"), critical race theory and "wokeism," which he misspelled ("How did those experts not see how those theories were divisive, destructive, incomplete and wrong? Because they did not want to see it"), China ("Because globalist U.S. investors and companies made horrible decisions to invest in China, Americans are suffering from it"), and immigration ("What happens when the growth to any population is dependent on immigration and the offspring of those immigrants? Destruction of the incumbent culture").

Apparently feeling like he could outdo this bit of irony, Master wrote in his March 14 column:

It is my observation that some people love to hate. Need to hate. Want to hate. They are locked into those teenage years of hatred. Hate their parents. Hate their siblings. Hate their classmates. Hate their country. Hate their gender. Hate the other gender. Hate life. Hate getting up in the morning (especially without caffeine from Starbucks). Hate their lots in life. Hate those that have better lives than theirs.

They look for reasons and targets to justify their hatred.

Picture a society like the teenage girl in Beetlejuice that stays that way as adults... never grows up... happy hating. Trapped. Constantly blaming others for their own failures. How many adults are trapped in their hatreds like that?

Has Master forgotten who publishes his column? WND is dripping with hatred toward anyone who's not as far-right as it is. If you're a Democrat, LGBT or, worse, both, WND hates you.

But just as he doesn't see right-wing groupthink, Master doesn't see right-wing hate. As far as he's concerned (for the purposes of his fantastical narrative, anyway), the only haters are on the left:

Democrats/liberals/Marxists figured out how to tap that need, want, desire to hate. They provided the reasons and targets. Critical Race Theory. Jan 6. Russia hoax. WOKE. Hate Reagan. Hate W Bush. Hate Trump. Hate FOX. Hate conservatives. Hate Christianity. Hate diversity of thought. Hate white men.

Hatred is addictive. A drug. Based on envy, coveting. The more that you hate, the more that you need to hate, the more that can be found to justify even more hatred.

So Democrats/liberals/Marxists organized hate teams, envy teams. BLM. Antifa. Climate activists. Feminists. Transgenders. Secularists. Abortion protectors. Socialists. Cancel culture. LBGTQ. SEIU. NEA. The UN. All of them designed to covet something, to hate someone.

Hatred is a great motivator that is stifling America. It taints vision. Taints vision to the point that truth is stifled. Fake news is accepted. Cheating is justified. Lies are accepted. Election fraud is ignored. The glass is always half empty, never half full. And “the end justifies the means” is the only rule that matters (Alinsky).

Again, Master appears to have never read the website that publishes him -- WND not only accepts fake news, it happily publishes fake news, including the lie that there was election fraud.

What's Master's solution to all this hate that mysteriously appears on only one side of the political ledger? Force people to think like he does, apparently:

Do you want to help make America great again? Well, a sure way to help make America great again is to stop rewarding hatred. Help Americans grow up into adults. Make people responsible for their own actions.

• No deficits (is our federal government listening?).
• No forgiveness for student loans.
• No more affirmative action.
• No more soft on crime.
• No one exempt from paying income taxes (not the filthy rich and not the dirt poor).
• No one exempt from serving the country (a draft where everyone must serve in some way for 18 months at 18 years old).
• No more violations to our Bill of Rights.
• No more violations to our Constitution.
• No more appeasing hatred.

And then reward merit, merit, merit. Teach our children that if you want more, then produce more, produce what others want to buy from you, do what others are willing to pay you to do, and be some form of positive added value. Support our Constitution, Capitalism, and Christianity.

Master seems to have forgotten that WND has failed as a capitalist endeavor -- and, thus, as a machine of hatred -- and is now subsisting on donations.

Misinformation

An April 4 column by David Lightsey complaining about the spread of misinformation started out strong:

The rampant misinformation and deception that dominate the culture – resulting in advice, guidance and national leadership no more helpful than a wet roll of toilet paper – can be attributed to seven things, which have catapulted us into the abys of stupidity.

After citing things like "Declining religious affiliation," "Hummingbird attention spans," "Declining lack of critical thinking and reasoning skills and the growth of illiteracy" and "One's worldview" as reasons -- suggesting he might get to the point -- he then lost the thread again by complaining that right-wing Christianity wasn't being enforced on people:

Since public education completely opposes a biblical worldview, and less than 6% of purported Christian schools in America teach a biblical worldview, one should only expect the disastrous results we see in America and around the world today. All the issues we see before us, such as gay marriage, abortion, pedophilia, racism, gender issues, euthanasia, etc. are not the main problem, but symptoms of the main problem, which is a secular worldview – man's word over Scripture, God's Word, which clearly defines these issues, or symptoms. So, if the foundation of your thinking is wrong, then any actions undertaken, our cultural symptoms, are going to be wrong as well.

The irony is that WND is run by hardcore Christians who have spread more falsehoods and misinformation than any news organization run by secular people -- which tells us that proclaiming to be a committed Christian is no guarantee of being interested in the truth. Not that Lightsey made any mention of WND's lengthy record of dishonesty, of course.

Fake news

Joseph Farah started his July 5 column lamenting the current state of the news business:

What's become of the news business is a catastrophe. That includes newspapers and online sources of news.

At WND, back in the heyday of online news, we expected to be a giant piece of the coming media revolution. Well, we lasted a long time. We're in our 26th year of publication. Most of my life has been consumed by this occupation. I won't say that we've made a lot of money. But we're surviving – barely.

What happened? Why is there so little actual news left? Why has the news business become a news desert for most Americans?

The answer is simple: "Fake news" replaced real news. It's a real tragedy.

Farah then served up his own counterfactual defintion of "real news" -- right-wing websites -- and bashed non-right-wing media as being where "fake news" is found:

We often think of "fake news" as that presented on television. Ever since Fox News canceled Tucker Carlson, it effectively joined the "dark side." It joined "fake news." Now, only a few start-ups, such as OAN and Real America's Voice survive outside the establishment bubble. Thank God for them. But the real story of "fake news" is that it's everywhere, in every form of media. Real news, you have to "divine." It's harder to find than hen's teeth.

What's left of real news? When WND arrived on the scene 26 years ago, it stood alone. Since then a few others have materialized – Daily Caller, Breitbart, Gateway Pundit, Daily Wire, Just the News, Revolver and a few others. How many people get their news from these or a handful of others?

America is starved for real news – on television or anywhere. America has become a "news desert."

What about newspapers? They have been going out of business since before the internet came along.

So, who has joined the "fake news" cabal in the last quarter century? Everybody! The Associated Press? It's "fake news." Virtually every news source that's served by the Associated Press is in the tank for that "fake news." If Donald Trump coined the term, ask him who isn't "fake news."

Of course, Farah is the one who's actually spreading fake news. WND has been a veritable fount of fake news for years. Meanwhile, Gateway Pundit is currently being sued by two Georgia election workers for falsely claiming they were committing election fraud. Then Farah himself unironically spread fake news:

It's practically incomparable what happened to my industry. It's a disgrace. A few years ago, we were winning. And then what happened?

There was Drudge. I don't think he was in any way overrated. Matt Drudge was a real person. He doesn't work for the Drudge Report any more. I'm not even sure if he's still alive. But we needed the Drudge Report back in the day. That was the glue that held us together.

But something truly evil happened when Joe Biden was SELECTED. I don't mean elected. I know the difference. He was CHOSEN, not by the majority of Americans in 2020, but by a distinct minority. That's the day that America stopped being America, stopped being a shining city on a hill. Think of how the "fake news" insisted that everyone accepted Biden the pretender – or suffer the consequences.

To be valid, you had to drink the Kool-Aid. You had to accept that elections are never corrupt. Remember?

No legitimate evidence that Donald Trump won the 2020 election has been provided by Farah or anyone else. He followed that with more whining that Google stopped doing business with WND:

That's how Google took over. They became the arbiter of online news. Instantly, they became the enforcer on elections. We at WND got the following notice – unlike anyone had seen before:

"We do not allow content that: makes claims that are demonstrably false and could significantly undermine participation or trust in an electoral or democratic process."

Read each word in context.

Google dropped a huge nuclear bomb on WND by permanently demonetizing us. What possessed them to do it after so many years?

When Google demonetized WND, the world's second-wealthiest company finally told us what they believed in. They believed in (s)elections – like Joe Biden did. For that they throttled our traffic, advertising revenue and search accessibility. In other words, Google tried to drive us completely out of business.

In addition, Google scolded: "We do not allow content that: incites hatred against, promotes discrimination of, or disparages an individual or group on the basis of their race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, age, nationality, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or other characteristic that is associated with systemic discrimination or marginalization." They put it in WRITING!

And last but not least, there was one more thing Google was not allowing: "We do not allow content that: promotes harmful health claims, or relates to a current, major health crisis and contradicts authoritative scientific consensus."

Farah offered no evidence to contradict Google's assessment of WND. As ConWebWatch has pointed out, Google has every right not to do business with a company whose content makes Google look bad. (Farah also failed to mention that Google called WND's content "unreliable" -- you know, fake news.)

Farah concluded by whining: "When did the tough and crazy times in America begin? They followed Joe Biden's immaculate election – lest anyone dare not 'trust in an electoral or democratic process.'" Farah did not explain why he is so determined to spread fake news about the integrity of the electoral process.