When The Right Is Wrong
The American right hates propaganda. We LOATHE it because we have seen what it has done to great countries and civilizations over the past century and the impact it has on us all. But for some odd reason, over the past three weeks, some groups on the right felt like the only way to get across a simple message to the world was to share blatant falsehoods.
Conservative media had all eyes pointed to southern Nevada for nearly three weeks over a land dispute between a 67-year-old rancher and multiple federal bureaucracies. Cliven Bundy had refused to pay grazing fees to the federal government under the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934. He had since been to court numerous times, where in 2013 a US District court ruled that, “Bundy has produced no valid law or specific facts raising a genuine issue of fact regarding federal ownership or management of public lands in Nevada, or that his cattle have not trespassed on the New Trespass Lands.”
Not only did the US District court rule against Bundy, but the court ordered that the rancher remove all trespassing cattle 45 days after the July 9th ruling by Reagan appointee, Lloyd D. George. So by the time that the April standoff started, over 8 months had passed; vastly exceeding the 45 day limit set by the US District court.
One of the first journalists to cover the standoff was TheBlaze’s Becket Adams. ”[Conservatives] assumed the feds were out of line and that something tyrannical was happening,” says Adams. ”It wasn’t exactly the feds marching the Marines into a man’s private property; it was the National Park Service trying to get some cattle off their property after 21 years and various threats from a rancher.”
The right, early on in this story, started to push false narratives that involved “black helicopters” and “snipers” surrounding the Bundy’s farm simply because members of the family claimed that there were military operations. On Friday, a meme was published and put on social media that depicted what some claimed was the situation on the ground in Nevada during the standoff.
Propaganda from Bundy Ranch
It was awful for conservatives to blindly push such outlandish photos and narratives. While conservatives want justice for the four men who died in Benghazi, Libya, this is the worst possible thing we can do to them. We are reducing them to any slight conservatives have against the federal government.
Soon, twitter user @matthops82 came out with a researched photo of the meme in question debunking the photos as fakes.
