The Federalist is coming down hard on fake news and quack remedies, and they can’t even be consistent about it. On the one hand, the coronavirus is a fake epidemic; on the other, the “specter of euthanasia” is raising it’s head, it’s a world-wide threat, it’s the world’s “biggest stress test since WWII”. On the third hand, it’s also full of puff pieces about how American free enterprise will beat it, and “How Grandmother’s Gargling Remedy Could Help Abate The Wuhan Flu”. (Yeah, they always call it the “Wuhan Flu”, because it wouldn’t be The Federalist without implicit racism.) It’s a disinformation site.
It’s as bad as Alex Jones, and deserves the same fate, scorn and contempt.
Thanks for diving down that rabbit hole so the rest of us don’t have to.
By this do you mean something like, “they are coming down on the side of promoting fake news and quack remedies”?
I usually think of “coming down hard on something” as criticizing it vociferously.
The FeDerpalist is quite familiar to anyone who has been on the front lines of the climate wars. So obtuse, they can only be drawn on a sphere!
Cue the libertarians (both the ACLU and the LP types) to lecture us about how free speech and freedom of the press applies to liars, that people are rational and can discern fact from falsehood or that they even have the right to believe what they want to no matter how false, that this is “dangerous,” etc., etc., blah blah blah.
For better news in the world of right-wing asshattery, Alex Jones lost his latest court battle over Sandy Hook and he’s now liable for $150,000 in legal fees.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/alex-jones-loses-another-sandy-hook-court-battle-must-now-pay-150000-in-court-costs_n_5e7cf82dc5b6cb9dc19cadf0?ri18n=true
It’s been pointed out that there’s not much reason for the Federalist to be so aggressively secretive about their funding if it were merely “wack-ass right wing billionaire” – being known as on the payroll of the Mercers or the Kochs wouldn’t really hurt them – and so it’s got to be a source that would make them look very bad indeed, like a hostile state actor. There’s a plausible argument that it’s probably Saudia Arabia, given their buys in the American media market (remember the National Enquirer’s parent printing a vanity magazine?) and the Federalist’s early coverage of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder.
@1
seconded!
nice to see that their vainer of serious rationality is wearing thin.
It would be nice if all these think tanks and opinion promoting groups would have to divulge their funding,
I am not all that comfortable with secret societies and under the table funding, not sure if they are wholly compatible with representative democracy. though people have been persecuted in the past for their political beliefs. Groups and organizations that function as a respectable front and allow those who are the major support hide in anonymity because it would show negatively on them to be seen as promoting false and distorted information and on their positions, well that is a little different I think.
uncle frogy
It’s also thoroughly TERFist. In case there’s anyone reading who still doesn’t get that “gender critical feminism” is just reactionary conservatism in drag.
Get this: when non-racist authors write ssomething for them about coronavirus or COVID-19, the Federalist is actually editing their articles without their consent to call it the more racist “Wuhan flu”. https://twitter.com/KFILE/status/1243560668806238210