Conservative activist Gary Swenson of Spicer, MN, has led crusades against transgender students and the like, but a recent Facebook post sharing a meme from America's Last Line Of Defense suggests that there's a limit to his powers of discernment.
His friends' comments also raise questions about critical thinking skills as well--and more.
The America's Last Line Of Defense Facebook page is part of the Christopher Blair network described in the Fake News Codex:
A collection of “satirical” websites that post false and extremely inflammatory articles intended to gain social media shares by gullible conservatives....
Most recently, Blair was profiled in the Boston Globe's One of the country’s biggest publishers of fake news says he did it for our own good:
Fact-checking organizations like Snopes and PolitiFact have labeled Blair one of the Web’s most notorious creators of fake news. Hidden behind his Internet persona, “Busta Troll,” he has for several years pumped out geysers of newsy-looking posts for an audience eager to believe them, with headlines like “College Prank Kills 2 — Malia Obama a ‘Prime Suspect’ ” and “Emma Gonzales attacks a 2nd Amendment supporter’s truck at a March for Our Lives rally.”
His headlines often pinball across the Internet, propelled by thousands of shares and “likes,” generating advertising revenue for Blair in the process — and bringing a chorus of critics who accuse him of fanning the flames of a divided country for personal gain.
He doesn’t deny that he intentionally fools people. But Blair says he does so for an unusual reason — because he’s a hard-core Democrat, a “liberal troll” with a mission of undercutting the far right. His work, he says, is satire, meant to expose what he views as the bigotry and hypocrisy of those willing to accept his inflammatory fictions as truth. And he claims that it is working, that he — with the aid of an army of about 100 other liberal trolls — has actually helped stanch the tide of fake news online. . . .
Polifact reported in 2017 that If you're fooled by fake news, this man probably wrote it
The post that fooled Swenson & what his friends said about it
So what Blair post captured Swenson's fancy? It's this meme:
Snopes deems the meme "false" in Did Malia Obama Say White People Will Be 'Blended Out'?,adding:
There is, of course, no record or report anywhere other than this single Facebook post of Malia Obama’s having said such a thing. And it would be preposterous for Malia Obama (or anyone else) to suggest that such a huge demographic shift will take place in the space of only ten years (i.e., by the time Malia turns 30 in the year 2028).
Nothing about this meme should be taken seriously anyway, as America’s Last Line of Defense is a well known fake news site, and the “More Info” section of their Facebook page states that “Nothing on this page is real. It is a collection of the satirical whimsies of liberal trolls masquerading as conservatives.”
Well then. Swenson's friends respond with the same gullibility and more. Patricia Harding--the woman whose Facebook posts created consternation in Willmar when City Council member Ron Christianson liked or commented on them--posted the most remarkable response:
That's worthy of John C. Calhoun, but probably not this century--or the last few, for that matter.
Photo: Liberal troll Christopher Blair, from Facebook via Polifact.
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