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HuffPost SA incitement – draft

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By Jon Sutz, Editor, SaveTheWest.com

March 11, 2018

Summary

  • Over the last year, South Africa has been whipped up into a frenzy of racist, anti-white hatred and violence, including assault, rape and murder.
  • On February 27, 2018, the South African parliament voted to begin seizing white-owned land, without compensation, to give it to black people. The legislator who sponsored this policy, a Marxist revolutionary, recently urged his followers, on video, to engage in the mass murder of whites.
  • Twice within the last eleven months. HuffPost’s South Africa edition has been ordered by the local regulatory agency to publicly apologize for its publication of materials that incited racist hatred, based on fake news.  After the first incident, which also included incitement of racist violence, HuffPost’s SA executive editor was reportedly forced to resign.
  • Rather than being isolated incidents, HuffPost has been engaging in a long-term pattern of racist bias and incitement in its flagship US edition, which, through social media, it spreads to its reported 200 million monthly readers around the world.
  • HuffPost’s advertisers are both enabling and profiting from its racist behavior, and its contribution to the escalating racist hatred and violence occurring in South Africa.

Content

(1) Background: Marxist-driven racist hatred and violence erupted in South Africa throughout 2017; Racist legislation passed on February 27, 2018 to confiscate white-owned property, without compensation, sponsored by politician who now threatens genocide of white people

(2) HuffPost’s South Africa edition has been exposed and punished twice since April 2017 for inciting racist hatred and violence, based on fake news

(3) HuffPost has completely ignored the racist violence occurring in South Africa, the property confiscation legislation, and the violence-inciting politician who sponsored it

(4) HuffPost’s larger effort to incite racist hatred and violence in America and beyond

(5) HuffPost’s repeated public insistence that it does not engage in unethical behavior

(6) Some of the mainstream advertisers who financially enable, and profit from HuffPost’s racist incitement — and how to contact them

(7) How to contact HuffPost’s management


(1) Background: Marxist-driven racist hatred and violence erupted in South Africa throughout 2017; Racist legislation passed on February 27, 2018 to confiscate white-owned property, without compensation, sponsored by politician who now threatens genocide of white people


Starting in early 2017, news emerged of escalating, savage violence being both incited and perpetrated against white South Africans, particularly those who own and operate farms.

An image of an elderly farm attack victim uploaded to Facebook (News.24.au)

‘Bury them alive!’: White South Africans fear for their future as horrific farm attacks escalate nearly every day, horrific acts of rape, torture and murder are carried out on a community under siege, by Frank Chung, News.com.au, March 25, 2017. Excerpt (caution: explicit content):

LAST month, British woman Sue Howarth and her husband Robert Lynn were woken at 2am by three men breaking into a window of their remote farm in Dullstroom, a small town in the northeast of South Africa, about 240km from the nearest capital city.

The couple, who had lived in the area for 20 years, were tied up, stabbed, and tortured with a blowtorch for several hours. The masked men stuffed a plastic bag down Mrs Howarth’s throat, and attempted to strangle her husband with a bag around his neck.

The couple were bundled into their own truck, still in their pyjamas, and driven to a roadside where they were shot. Mrs Howarth, 64, a former pharmaceutical company executive, was shot twice in the head. Mr Lynn, 66, was shot in the neck.

Miraculously he survived, and managed to flag down a passer-by early on Sunday morning. Mrs Howarth, who police said was “unrecognisable” from her injuries, had multiple skull fractures, gunshot wounds and “horrific” burns to her breasts.


And from Agency Press-France (AFP), via a local South African news bureau, The Citizen:

Crosses are planted on a hillside at the White Cross Monument, in Ysterberg, near Langebaan, South Africa, each one marking a white farmer who has been killed in a farm murder.

Farm murders rock SA, by Philippe Alfroy, AFP (via citizen.co.za), December 26, 2017. Excerpt:

Tzaneen – “They beat him with a pole… and you could hear the bones breaking,” said Debbie Turner as she recounted her husband’s murder in a slow, defiant voice.

She refuses to talk about him in the past tense and sleeps with a photo of him close by.

“I miss him so terribly – it’s just so hard,” she said, sitting in front of the frail care unit that has been her home since the attack at their farm.

Robert “Oki” Turner, 66, was beaten to death before her eyes six months ago on their isolated stretch of mountain land in Limpopo.

He was one of the latest victims of a long campaign of violence against the country’s farmers, who are largely white. […]

“Until about four or five years ago, we were very open. We didn’t have a key for our house. We would go away and nothing would have happened,” she said.

But then the extreme violence that had long afflicted major cities engulfed rural areas like theirs.

Break-ins, hostage takings and killings became common, with attackers often making off with just a few hundred rand, a mobile phone or a hunting rifle.


An excerpt of a video documentary by independent journalist Laura Southern, interviewing “Jeanine,” whose father was murdered on his farm


March 18, 2018: Facebook video shows white man being dragged out of home and beaten by cheering black mob

Caution: Graphic violence.

 

Racial hatred in South Africa: Mob surrounds house, white man is beaten.

Posted by Devorah Bat Yah on Sunday, March 18, 2018


March 19, 2018: “Farmers in South Africa say they are being attacked, raped and killed – but it’s being ignored”

On March 19, 2018, The Independent (UK) published this article on Facebook:


Clicking on that link led to this story page; excerpts:

White farmers in South Africa claim they are being targeted in a series of brutal attacks over land that are being overlooked by police and implicitly encouraged by the country’s parliament.

Activist groups promoting the rights of white people in the country claim there have been 90 recorded attacks in 2018 so far, with one farmer murdered every five days on average.

There is no official data supporting the idea that white farmers are more likely to be victims of attacks in South Africa, and the government strongly denies white people are being deliberately targeted and says farm murders are part of South Africa’s wider violent crime problem.

But the sheer brutality of the reported attacks – and the growing anger of a community in South Africa that believes it is being persecuted – are increasingly raising concerns.

Hannetjie Ludik, 56, lives on a farm near the city of Pretoria. She wanted to waive her right to anonymity for this story.  Four days before Christmas last year, she and her husband woke up after they heard noises in the night.

“We found three men in our house armed with guns, they got in the back door with a crowbar,” she said. “They started walking through our house taking all of our food.

“One man took 2,500 rand (roughly £1,500) and kissed me on the cheek and said thank you. Another man with a balaclava came back and tied my husband’s hands and feet and threw a blanket over him and showed me to go with him – I knew what would happen next.

“Outside the house he said to me that he wanted sex, he took his gun and said that he will shoot me if I refused. I decided to live for my children and grandchildren and said that he must do what he wanted to. 

“Then he raped me, and I thought it was over. Then the next man came in and raped me and then the third man did the same.”

Hannetjie Ludik
This campaign of terror, violence has been incited and justified by Julius Malema, a Marxist revolutionary in South Africa’s parliament, who now threatens genocide of white people, after winning a vote to begin “legally” confiscated white people’s property, without compensation

This campaign of racist hate, incitement and violence escalated throughout 2017.  Then, on February 28, 2018 the Daily Mail (UK) reported that the day before, South Africa’s parliament enacted legislation — introduced by Julius Malema, a violence-inciting Marxist revolutionary — to begin confiscating white-owned land, without compensation, with a tacit threat of widespread murder:

‘We are not calling for the slaughter of white people – at least for now’: South African parliament votes to sieze white-owned land as experts warn of violent repercussions, by Ben Hill, Daily Mail (UK), February 28, 2018.

White South African farmers will be removed from their land after a landslide vote in parliament.

The country’s constitution is now likely to be amended to allow for the confiscation of white-owned land without compensation, following a motion brought by radical Marxist opposition leader Julius Malema.

It passed by 241 votes for to 83 against after a vote on Tuesday, and the policy was a key factor in new president Cyril Ramaphosa’s platform after he took over from Jacob Zuma in February.

Mr Malema said the time for ‘reconciliation is over’. ‘Now is the time for justice,’ News24 reported.

‘We must ensure that we restore the dignity of our people without compensating the criminals who stole our land.’

Below is a video of Malema on March 4, 2018, openly advocating the mass murder of white people:

In response, British conservative Katie Hopkins published the following video on March 5, 2018, in which she profiled some of the victims of Malema’s violence and incitement, and predicted where this is all likely heading:

See more of Hopkins’ efforts to advance civility and peace in South Africa, here.


Western news media and a major economic think tank gave clear indication of how dangerous the situation now is in South Africa, and based on identical precedents, the tragedy to which it is headed

Several examples, starting with Newsweek, which HuffPost regularly cites, when their views are aligned:

Thousands Sign Petition Asking Trump to Let White Farmers in South Africa Migrate to U.S. After Country Votes to Force Them Off Land, by Chantal Da Silva, Newsweek, March 1, 2018. Excerpt:

More than 12,000 people have signed a petition asking President Donald Trump to let white people in South Africa emigrate to the U.S. amid a vote by the country’s parliament favoring a motion that could see South Africa’s constitution amended to allow for land to be stripped from owners without any compensation.

The motion, which will still need the approval of the South African Parliament’s Constitutional Review Committee before an amendment can even be drafted, has once again stoked fears among the country’s white farmers of a violent and disastrous land redistribution akin to that which crippled Zimbabwe in the 2000s.

The online petition calls on Trump to “take the steps necessary to initiate an emergency immigration plan allowing white Boers to come to the United States.” Boer is the term used to describe South Africans of Dutch, German or Huguenot descent, who are also commonly referred to as Afrikaners.

In October last year, thousands of predominantly white protesters took to the streets throughout South Africa to protest a string of deadly attacks in rural areas of the country. (David Harrison/AFP/Getty, via Newsweek)

And from the Wall St. Journal, a relevant history lesson:

South Africa’s Economic Peril; Land expropriation produces misery wherever it is tried, by The Editorial Board, Wall St. Journal, March 1, 2018. Excerpt (remainder behind paywall):

No country ever became rich through its government’s seizure of private property (exhibit A: the Soviet Union), but politicians in South Africa want to give it another go.

That’s the disheartening news from Cape Town this week, where the National Assembly voted 241-83 on Tuesday to start a process to amend the constitution and allow land expropriation without compensation. A parliamentary committee will review the motion and report by Aug. 30.

And from the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE):

South Africa’s Land Seizure is Classic Populism; The government seizing private property never ends well, by Daniel J. Mitchell, Foundation for Economic Education, March 10, 2018. Excerpt:

Let’s look today at property rights. And I’m motivated to address this issue because of some horrifying news from South Africa. The Wall Street Journal opined on the issue on March 1. […]

When I saw the headline and read the opening paragraph, my initial instinct was, “so what?” After all, the whites probably stole the land from the blacks in the first place.

But then I found out that issue already has been handled.

Post-apartheid, the government bought land and offered compensation to South Africans whose property had been forcibly seized after 1913. Many of those claims are now settled… According to a 2016 Institute of Race Relations survey, less than 1% of South Africans think land is one of the country’s “serious unresolved problems.” Unemployment, public services, housing and crime rank far higher.

What’s actually happening is hard-core leftist populism. And it may turn South Africa into another Zimbabwe. […]

wrote back in 2014 about South African economic policy and shared data about the nation’s EFW score. I was worried about the trend, and I’m now even more pessimistic. […]

[I]f the South African constitution is changed and land expropriation is allowed, it’s a foregone conclusion that the country will suffer a precipitous fall in the rankings.

PICS: Chaos as Joburg properties hijacked, by Anna Cox, IOL (South Africa), March 13, 2018.

Johannesburg – Property hijackings have rocked Orange Grove and Upper Hough- ton, with residents placing the blame for the chaos on the Johannesburg Property Company (JPC). The property grabs have led to riots in the area every night during the past three weeks, by locals claiming they were promised the houses now being rented to foreigners.

About 20 houses in Orange Grove were broken into and the tenants physically evicted.

The group claimed the city’s property company was causing tension in these areas by “allowing” the hijacking of the properties, thereby encouraging xenophobia.

Protesters have been toyi-toying and burning tyres and mattresses in Louis Botha Avenue, on the corner of 12th Street, and have also threatened to target foreign businesses.

It’s alleged that the ANC is behind the protests. The party has acknowledged that its community members were involved but said the “new” tenants should now be regularised and should pay for services.

As documented in Section 3, however, HuffPost has featured none of these news items; in fact, the last item it published regarding Malema and South Africa was on January 14, 2018 — and it was to depict him as a sort of “social justice warrior,” justifying one, lower-level act of violence, that was triggered by an offensive store advertisement.


(2) HuffPost’s South Africa edition has been exposed and punished twice since April 2017 for inciting racist hatred and violence, based on fake news


Background and influence of HuffPost

The Huffington Post, or ‘HuffPost,’ went online in May 2005.  Its founder and editor-in-chief (until August 2016), Arianna Huffington, along with its top executives, have repeatedly claimed that HuffPost is a completely objective, nonpartisan “newspaper,” that “has in place rigorous editorial policies and standards to ensure that we maintain the highest level of journalistic integrity.”

HuffPost claims it “reaches nearly 200 million people around the globe each month,” an estimated 80 million of whom reside within America, making it “the largest news site in the U.S.” One traffic analysis site claims that with its fifteen international editions, HuffPost is now the #1 most-popular political website in the world. It is owned by AOL, which in turn is owned by Verizon.


November 2016: HuffPost and a local partner launched its South Africa edition

Until November 2016, HuffPost had built a network of 16 editions around the world.  Then, on November 21, 2016, HuffPost and Media24, which describes itself as “South Africa’s biggest digital media publisher,” announced their launch of HuffPost South Africa:

HuffPost and Media24 announce launch of HuffPost South Africa, Press release, November 21, 2016. Excerpt:

The Huffington Post, in partnership with Media24, today launched The Huffington Post South Africa (www.huffingtonpost.co.za), the brand’s first sub-Saharan edition. HuffPost South Africa will provide a platform for local voices and communities, while delivering a mix of local and international news, politics, lifestyle and entertainment for South Africans.

The partnership combines the strengths of The Huffington Post, a leading global source of breaking news, videos, features, entertainment and the opinions and conversations of a highly engaged global community, with Media24, South Africa’s biggest digital media publisher with more than 16 million monthly unique visitors across all sites.

“South Africa’s rich and politically engaged history has demonstrated a strong desire for people to have a place to express their voice and opinions,” The Huffington Post CEO Jared Grusd says. “Having been born there, I’m especially proud to say that HuffPost is now that destination. We hope our platform can help people lead better lives, make more informed choices and build stronger communities.”


Soon after, HuffPost’s pattern of inciting racist hatred and violence elsewhere took root in its South Africa edition, and it was publicly exposed and humiliated twice in seven months

Contrary to HuffPost’s alleged journalistic principles, standards and practices, as documented in Section 3, it has been inciting racist hatred and violence in its U.S. edition, and others around the world, for years.

In April 2017, six months after its launch, HuffPost South Africa was exposed for inciting racist hatred and violence, forced to publicly apologize by the S.A. Press Ombudsman, and its executive editor was reportedly forced to resign.  Seven months later, in November 2017, HuffPost South Africa was again exposed for inciting racist hatred and violence, as well as publishing fake news, and was again ordered to publicly apologize for its actions.

(2.1) April 2017: HuffPost South Africa edition published, and defended, an editorial that contained a plethora of lies to justify hate, discrimination and violence against white people throughout the world; After it was forced to publicly apologize, its executive editor was reportedly forced to resign

(2.2) November 2017: HuffPost South Africa was again ordered to publicly apologize for publishing racist incitement, based on lies


(2.1) April 2017: HuffPost South Africa edition published, and defended, an editorial that contained a plethora of lies to justify hate, discrimination and violence against white people throughout the world; After it was forced to publicly apologize, its executive editor was reportedly forced to resign

On April 13, 2017, HuffPost published this headline on the front page of its South Africa edition:

Clicking on that headline brought the reader to this story page — allegedly written by a “MA Philosophy Student”:

Could It Be Time To Deny White Men The Franchise?, by Shelley Garland, Huffington Post, April 13, 2017. Excerpts:

It is time to wrestle control of the world back from white males, and the first step will be a temporary restriction of the franchise to them. […]

Some of the biggest blows to the progressive cause in the past year have often been due to the votes of white men. If white men were not allowed to vote, it is unlikely that the United Kingdom would be leaving the European Union, it is unlikely that Donald Trump would now be the President of the United States, and it is unlikely that the Democratic Alliance would now be governing four of South Africa’s biggest cities.

If white men no longer had the vote, the progressive cause would be strengthened. It would not be necessary to deny white men indefinitely – the denial of the vote to white men for 20 years (just less than a generation) would go some way to seeing a decline in the influence of reactionary and neo-liberal ideology in the world. The influence of reckless white males were one of the primary reasons that led to the Great Recession which began in 2008. This would also strike a blow against toxic white masculinity, one that is long needed. […]

This redistribution of the world’s wealth is long overdue, and it is not just South Africa where white males own a disproportionate amount of wealth.[…]

Over the past 500 years colonialism, slavery, and various aggressive wars and genocides, have been due to the actions of white men. Redistributing some of their assets will go some way to paying the historical debt that they owe society.

The fascistic thrust of this editorial aside, it is factually wrong, and thus, as HuffPost knew or should have known, it could only serve to incite more racial hatred, based on lies.


Dr. Thomas Sowell as a key debunker of the hateful lies upon which this editorial screed was based

As the black economist and social commentator Dr. Thomas Sowell revealed in his life-long study of slavery, while white people, and white Americans in particular, had a role in slavery, they inherited it — and did the most to end it. Further, as Dr. Sowell revealed in his book, “Black Rednecks and White Liberals”, it was not white men, but rather, black Africans, Muslims and Arabs who have played the dominant role in the bulk of the slave trade for the past five hundred years — as they do to this day. Here is a key excerpt from the audio version of Dr. Sowell’s book:

There is no shortage of easily-accessible, thoroughly-documented research to validate and expand upon the facts that Dr. Sowell cites. Here are but a few examples:

African Military Slaves in the Muslim Middle East | The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed, by Jere L. Bacharach, Ph.D., BlackPast.org.

The persistence of history; Islamic State’s revival of slavery, extreme though it is, finds disquieting echoes across the Arab world, The Economist, August 22, 2015.

African chiefs urged to apologise for slave trade; Nigerian civil rights group says tribal leaders’ ancestors sold people to slavers and should say sorry like US and Britain, by David Smith, The Guardian (UK), November 18, 2009.

HuffPost is one of the world’s most-read websites, and its senior executives have repeatedly claimed that it is a purely objective, nonpartisan, professional “news” organization, that does not allow any kind of hate speech.  A sampling of these public statements:

  • “The Huffington Post has in place rigorous editorial policies and standards… to ensure that we maintain the highest level of journalistic integrity.”
  • “We embrace journalistic values like accuracy, fact checking, and correct punctuation and grammar.”
  • “If you’re looking for the usual flame-throwing, name-calling, and simplistic attack dog rhetoric … don’t bother coming to the Huffington Post.”
  • “[At HuffPost] there are guidelines that have to be followed — and they include a prohibition on conspiracy theories or inflammatory claims […] what the great historian Richard Hofstadter called ‘the paranoid style in American politics,’ which he defined as angry minds that traffic in ‘heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy,’ and that see ‘the fate of conspiracy in apocalyptic terms… always manning the barricades of civilization’.”
  • “[W]e are increasingly seen as an Internet newspaper, not positioned ideologically in terms of how we cover the news.”
  • “There is an objective reality, and it is the media’s job to present it unequivocally.”

See the sources of these quotes, and more, at:

HuffPost’s repeated public claims of nonpartisan, professional journalistic principles

Yet as we’re about to see, all of the above quotes are all lies — and HuffPost’s publication of this racist, lie-filled editorial screed was just one of the climaxes of HuffPost’s betrayals of its readers, and advertisers.


April 17, 2017: HuffPost SA heavily promoted, defended and profited from this article — then removed it, but not because of its racism, lies or incitement

On April 16, 2017, Heat St. (now defunct) broke the story that this article was written by a person who doesn’t exist, as an experiment to see if HuffPost would run it, on the speculation that it catered to the “nonpartisan newspaper’s” desire to incite racial hatred, Marxist redistribution schemes, and to do so via deception and easily-disproved lies:

Gullible Huffington Post Falls for Hoax Article Calling for White Men to be Stripped of Voting Rights, by Ian Miles Cheong, HeatSt.com, April 16, 2017. Excerpt:

Huffington Post’s South African editors were initially pleased with the reception of Garland’s article. On Saturday night, HuffPostSA editor Sipho Hlongwane bragged that the article had received plenty of traffic while making a tongue-in-cheek complaint about his corrections inbox.

HuffPost’s editor, bragging about how much traffic this hate article was generating — meaning, profits for the site.

After the piece went viral on social media due to coverage from right-leaning Twitter and Facebook personalities […] HuffPostSA editor Verashni Pillay wrote an article (archived post) defending its publication. She highlighted examples of complaints sent to the website, and blamed readers for having a poor understanding of the “pretty standard feminist theory” Shelley used.

Then, following the extensive backlash, Huffington Post deleted the article, replacing it with a meek apology and a claim that they were unable to confirm that Shelley Garland was a real person. They even had to hilariously clarify that they are in favor of universal voting enfranchisement.

A person claiming to be Shelley Garland has since reached out to Cliff Central, with evidence of the original pitch email she had sent to Huffington Post. “Shelley” says she received the website’s content guidelines, which her piece certainly does not adhere to despite the site’s decision to post it.

As it turned out, the author who wrote the piece and submitted it to HuffPost was a male, and stands for none of the lies, distortions or incitement that the article contained. He pitched the piece to HuffPost on the speculation that the “objective” newspaper might be eager to publish it — and he was right, as he explained in a detailed email to a South African website:

Ideological Imperatives Trump Editorial Integrity, by Cliff Notes (The Renegade Report), April 16, 2017. Excerpt:

Recently the Huffington Post published a blog post (which has gone viral) by Shelley Garland, an MA philosophy student and self-styled activist and feminist, on whether it is time to deny white men around the globe the vote, and at the same time redistribute their assets globally. There was some speculation on social media that Garland, who claims to not be a fan of South Africa’s ‘rainbow politics’ and is thinking of ways to smash the patriarchy, was not real. Those who thought that Garland is not real were correct. For she is a pseudonym used by myself, a white South African male, to show that one can write absurd racist and sexist hogwash, as long as the target is the right one.

I have had the idea for some time. Breathless meditations on ‘angry white men’ or earnest letters addressed to ‘white people’ seem to be more common than spelling or grammatical errors in The New Age. It seemed to me that one could write any kind of collectivist tripe, as long as the target was white men, and I decided to put this theory to the test and the idea of writing a piece about depriving white men around the globe of the franchise was born.

Armed with a heavily photoshopped picture I found on the Internet and some ridiculous phrases beloved of those on the less sensible left, I set to work. […] Huffington Post […] published the piece as a blog, which has now gone viral. The piece was accepted without question by the Huffington Post even though – as others have pointed out on social media and elsewhere – the piece is riddled with factual errors, logical fallacies, and is not something that an MA student could possibly write (apologies to philosophy students, one of my best friends is a philosopher, but it was the first humanities discipline that popped into my head when I was creating Shelley).

Huffington Post did not fact check any of my ludicrous claims in the article, nor, as far as I can tell, was the piece edited. After the piece was published I saw that I had entered one of the hyperlinks wrong for one of my ‘sources,’ and this had clearly not been checked. […]

A further indictment on the Huffington Post is the fact that its editor, Verashni Pillay, then took it upon herself to defend the total garbage that I had written.

More at:

HuffPost SA: Bonfire of the reputations; Media24 to investigate how inflammatory race hoax was published by the site, Politicsweb.co.za, April 17, 2017.

Huffington Post Gets Duped By White Guy Posing as Feminist, by Jon Miltimore, Intellectual Takeout, April 18, 2017.


April 17: CEO of HuffPost South Africa’s co-parent company: “Our ‘journalistic’ systems failed; this is a sad day for journalism”

As reported by the South African Human Rights Commission:

Huffington Post SA blog calling for white men to be disenfranchised a ‘sad day for journalism’‚ says Media24 boss, by the South African Human Rights Commission, April 17, 2017. Excerpt:

Media24 has launched an investigation following its publication of the controversial blog “Could It Be Time To Deny White Men The Franchise?” on Huffington Post South Africa.

The blog was posted on April 13 but removed from the publication’s website on April 15‚ after it could not “confirm the veracity of the source”‚ a Media24 statement said. “This has been hugely damaging not only to the Huffington Post South Africa brand but also to Media24. Responsible journalism is at the heart of what we do; it’s the currency we trade in. In an era of fake news‚ I know only too well that our editors spend an inordinate amount of time checking the veracity of information before they publish. When our systems fail‚ we’re not just alarmed‚ we’re outraged. This is a sad day for journalism‚” said Media24 CEO Esmaré Weideman. […]

The blog “went viral” according to a response piece by Huffington Post South Africa editor-in-chief Verashni Pillay.

Sipho Hlongwane‚ the Blogs Editor at Huffington Post SA‚ tweeted about the amount of traffic Garland’s blog had received. Pillay’s article and Hlongwane’s tweet were both later deleted.


April 18, 2017: An anonymous critic produced a 15-minute video analysis of this episode.

See the video here.  Caution: Strong language and vulgarity.

[Note: SaveTheWest is neither affiliated with, knows the identity of, nor endorses this video, but only includes it here because it contains relevant information to this incident.]


April 22-23, 2017: HuffPost SA was scolded by both its parent company, and the South Africa journalism ombudsman, and forced to publicly apologize — and the executive editor who published, defended and bragged about the post was reportedly forced to resign

From the South Africa Herald, in back-t0-back articles on April 22 and 23, 2017:

HuffPost SA found guilty of hate speech over blog on white men, by Bobby Jordan, HeraldLive, April 22, 2017. Excerpt:

A blog calling for white men to be disenfranchised‚ published by news website The Huffington Post SA‚ was discriminatory and constituted hate speech‚ press ombudsman Johan Retief found on Saturday. […]

“Let me be short and sweet: If disenfranchisement of anybody (whether white males or black females for that matter) is not discriminatory‚ the meaning of discrimination should be redefined‚” Retief wrote in a hard-hitting 14-page finding. […]

“I do not believe for one moment that such discriminatory and denigratory opinions can be described as being in the public interest – especially given this country’s history of its struggle for liberation.

“To disenfranchise a section of the population once again would indeed represent a huge step backwards – one that may have some serious unforeseen consequences.” […]

Retief’s ruling means the publication must also publish an unreserved apology which points out that the published text was malicious‚ inaccurate‚ against the public interest‚ discriminatory and denigratory‚ amounted to hate speech‚ and “impaired the dignity of reputation of many people”.

And on April 23, HuffPost South Africa’s executive editor resigned:

HuffPost SA editor Verashni Pillay resigns after damning ombud ruling, by TMG Digital and Bobby Jordaan, HeraldLive, April 23, 2017. Excerpt:

Huffington Post SA Editor Verashni Pillay has resigned following a scathing ruling by the press ombudsman and severe criticism over the publication of a blog which called for white men to lose their voting rights.

News24 reported the former Mail and Guardian head submitted her resignation on Saturday and it was accepted by head of 24.com Andreij Horn.

“With immediate effect‚ Ferial Haffajee‚ The Huffington Post SA’s editor-at-large‚ and Pieter du Toit‚ the site’s deputy editor‚ will take over the editorial management of the site until we have appointed a new editor‚” the news site reported.

Pillay’s resignation follows a ruling by press ombudsman Johan Retief which found that a blog which called for white men to be disenfranchised‚ published by the website‚ was discriminatory and constituted hate speech.

And from QZ.com, on April 24:

A fake HuffPo blog about white male privilege cost its non-white female South Africa editor her job, by Lynsey Chutel, QZ.com, April 24, 2017. Excerpt:

[T]he post’s flawed analysis and erroneous facts—such as that white South Africans own 90% of South Africa’s land—raised the suspicions of local journalists, who over the course of a few days managed to uncover that its purported author, Shelley Garland, a grad student majoring in philosophy, did not exist, and that the piece had in fact been penned by a white man called Marius Roodt.[…]

Within hours of the ruling, the Huffington Post apologized and Pillay resigned.


ADDENDUM: HuffPost identified the writer behind the piece it published, physically confronted him at his workplace — after which he quickly resign from his job

On Wednesday, April 19, 2017, HuffPost South Africa published the following article as its splash headline, hours after its “reporters” confronted him, at his place of employment, from which he resigned — the same day:

Revealed: Here is Shelley Garland… And Why He Did It, by Pieter du Toit, Ferial Haffajee and Pontsho Mabena, HuffPost South Africa, April 19, 2017. Excerpt:

“Yes, it was me.”

These were the first words Marius Roodt (37), a researcher at the Centre for Development and Enterprise (CDE), a prestigious think-tank in Parktown, Johannesburg, said when he was confronted with a profile picture of one Shelley Garland on Wednesday afternoon.

Garland was the pseudonym Roodt used to deceive Huffington Post South Africa last week when it published his blog under the headline Could It Be Time To Deny White Men The Franchise? The blog led to a public outcry, after which it was taken down. HuffPost SA published the blog without verifying the author’s identity or the veracity of the claims made in the piece.

Roodt resigned from the CDE on Wednesday afternoon. It was accepted by the CDE’s director, Ann Bernstein.

“Should I get a lawyer or anything?” Roodt asked HuffPost reporters in a conference room at the CDE, before explaining his motivation for writing a blog making an incendiary proposal using inaccurate statistics.

He was identified after the email address was digitally traced back to him and his identity was confirmed with facial recognition technology.

Several special things to notice about this article:

  • The bulk of the article is putting Roodt on the defensive, for the outlandish claims he made in his article — instead of the fact that HuffPost, which claims it “has in place rigorous editorial policies and standards to ensure that we maintain the highest level of journalistic integrity,” and “embraces journalistic values like accuracy and fact checking” chose to publish the article, as-is — which was exactly the purpose of his test.
  • Notice that HuffPost did not call Roodt on the phone, which would have enabled him to be interviewed for actions he took on his own time, with his own computer, completely independent of his employer. Instead, it confronted him in person, at his employer’s facility.
  • The subtle message that HuffPost South Africa sent, given its massive influence in local politics, was: “We are going to retaliate against you for what we did, by publicly confronting you at your place of employment, for something you did on your personal time.”
  • And to Roodt’s employer, HuffPost SA’s acts sent a less-subtle message: “If he doesn’t resign (and you don’t fire him), we will publicize (via this story) that he still works for you, that you didn’t fire him upon becoming aware of what he did in a personal capacity. Thus, some of the South Africans who are already seething with racist rage, whom we have helped to incite with this article, will know that he still works here. Good luck with that.”

For those who don’t know, HuffPost’s flagship U.S. edition has relentlessly engaged in bullying tactics, telling others what to do — including to arrest a law enforcement officer whom it knew, or should have known, was innocent of the incendiary propaganda that it had a big role in spreading. One example:

On August 18, 2014, HuffPost published this as its front-page splash headline:

The headline urged someone to arrest Officer Darren Wilson, the Ferguson, MO police officer whom Michael Brown had attacked.  Keep in mind that at the time HuffPost published this headline, it knew (or should have known) that all of the available evidence showed that Officer Wilson was telling the truth — and that the narrative that had been spun around Michael Brown was a lie.


On August 1, 2017, The Media Online (SA) published a follow-up account of HuffPost’s confrontation of Roodt at his place of employment, the fallout of the scandal, and the internal excuse-making that obfuscated the “objective” newspaper’s responsibility for it:

The inside story of the Shelley Garland scandal, by Glenda Nevillon, The Media Online (South Africa), August 1, 2017. Excerpt:

Just over three months ago, what was supposed to be a slow-moving Easter weekend was disrupted by a contentious blog published by the Huffington Post that had white men seething, not just in South Africa but also around the world. The Shelley Garland scandal erupted across media, social and otherwise, leaving a trail of devastation in its wake. […]

“[W]e had to produce 30 pieces of unique content a day with just three junior reporters. This meant we were relying on unpaid blogs and aggregations to meet the target. So Sipho was spending his work hours reporting and having to do his job as blogs editor at night. […]

But Ferial Haffajee, editor at large at the Huffington Post SA, denies the staff was overstretched. “As a former weekly editor, I am constantly in awe of our young reporters who do so much more with so much less. The HuffPost SA requirements are pretty standard for this new world [of digital publishing]. They include material from wires, from all the HuffPost international editions, from a morning writer who is on contract to provide a selection of daily news for early risers and from News24,” she says, adding that their targets are “not onerous given all these ready-made wonderful services to tap”.

In summary, more than three months after this exposure of HuffPost’s willingness to spread easily-provable lies to incite racist hatred and violence in South Africa, it was still making excuses for its actions, and trying to blame it on a workload issue, rather than the racist ideology and bias that it injects into so much of its content, both locally and in its U.S. flagship edition — as we’ll see in Section 4.


(2.2) November 2017: November 2017: HuffPost South Africa was again ordered to publicly apologize for publishing racist incitement, based on lies

On November 23, 2017, SA Promo Magazine reported:

Huffington Post SA in – another – fake news scandal; South Africa’s version of the Huffington Post – run by News24 – stumbles from one disaster to the next, by Jeanine Walker, SA Promo Magazine, November 25, 2017.

This time around the Press Ombudsman found that Huffington Post South Africa should apologise to AfriForum in public after publishing fake news, which comes down to a serious contravention of the press code of ethics and conduct in South Africa.

It follows the publication of an article by Pieter du Toit, editor of Huffington Post South Africa on 30 July this year entitled Morake: A victim of South Africa’s “Bell Pottinger” – Solidarity and AfriForum thrive on ethnic mobilisation and false narratives. Now they have a popular radio presenter in their sights on Huffington Post South Africa. […]

Du Toit – claimed in an article that:

  • AfriForum “employed subtle and polished, but racially divisive tactics to get their message across”;
  • AfriForum spear-headed a boycott action against the restaurant group Spur “after a white man was banned from returning to the restaurant when he had been filmed abusing a black woman”; and
  • AfriForum spear-headed a campaign against the new Director of the Afrikaanse Taal- en Kultuurvereniging (ATKV) “because she wanted to build bridges between Afrikaans and other languages”.

The Press Ombudsman found that Du Toit indeed had the right to express his opinions, but that there were no grounds to attribute to AfriForum certain allegations as fact. Huffington Post South Africa must publish an apology to AfriForum on their website. […]

Ernst Roets, Deputy CEO of AfriForum, says that the promotion of freedom of speech and press freedom remains a core priority for AfriForum.

“It seems, however, that Du Toit has exchanged his role as journalist for the role of an Anti-AfriForum activist. Du Toit has the right to his own opinions, but to publish fake news to further his own agenda amounts to a contravention of the press code and something that should be addressed with the necessary concern. We therefore see the Ombudsman’s ruling as a victory for press freedom.”

Read the full ruling at:

AfriForum vs. Huffington Post SA; Ruling by the Press Ombud, Thursday, November 23, 2017.

Although not as clear-cut a case of inciting racist hatred and violence as in Case Study 2.1, HuffPost was judged to have once again ignored essential facts and journalistic standards in order to spread its race-based propaganda — in the growing tinderbox of South Africa — while continuing to insist it is a professional “news” organization.

As we’ll see in Section 4, however, what HuffPost has done in South Africa is just a microcosm of its larger efforts to incite racist hatred and violence, on a global scale, both through its acts and omissions.

First, though, as we’ll see in Section 3, while HuffPost was busy inciting this hate and violence, it completely ignored the racist legislation that passed on South African parliament on February 27 2018, and violence-inciting politician who sponsored it.


(3) HuffPost has completely ignored the racist violence occurring in South Africa, the property confiscation legislation, and the violence-inciting politician who sponsored it

Continued from Section 1

Given the depth to which HuffPost South Africa went to spread fake news and stir up racist hatred in the region, and its claim that its mission is to ” “, one might think that its flagship U.S. edition would at least mention the violence that is being inflicted on innocent victims in South Africa, the February 27, 2018 vote to begin “legally” stripping them of their property, and who has been inciting both.

One would be very wrong, because as this section documents, HuffPost has completely ignored all of it.

A March 19, 2018 search using the string “South Africa vote confiscate white property” returned zero relevant results:

Note 1: The second story listed above is one from May 2014.

Note 2: Nissan appears to be endorsing and legitimizing HuffPost’s suppression of news concerning the racist hate and violence in South Africa, which it helped to incite.  Do its senior executives know what their shareholder money is really being used to facilitate?  You might ask them, here.

Similarly, a March 10, 2018 search using the string “Sue Howarth Robert Lynn South Africa” (the victims profiled here) returned zero results:

Note that it appears Dodge is endorsing and legitimizing HuffPost’s suppression of news concerning the victims racist hate and violence in South Africa, which it helped to incite.  Which is extra notable, given that HuffPost’s executive editor publicly claimed, in April 2017:

“We’ve got a new mission ― to tell the stories of people who have been left out of the conversation.”

Left unmentioned in her statement was that if those “people” are white victims of mass violence, because of the color of their skin, they will indeed be “left out of the conversation.”

Further, a March 10, 2018 search using the string “Julius Malema,” the Marxist revolutionary who was behind the vote to confiscate white property, and who has been inciting his followers to commit mass, genocidal murder of white people, shows that HuffPost has featured no stories about him that relate to these issues:

Note that it appears Northwestern University is endorsing and legitimizing HuffPost’s suppression of news concerning the racist hate and violence in South Africa, which it helped to incite.

See the JPG of the full search page here.

The first story listed in the above search appeared on HuffPost’s front page on January 14, 2018, and described black South Africans violently attacking a popular clothing store, H&M, because of an allegedly racist advertisement.  HuffPost’s only citation of Malema was to quote his justification for the violence against the store — and his reference to the rioters as “fighters”:

EFF leader Julius Malema defended the protests and warned there would be more to come in a speech on Saturday.

“No one should make jokes about the dignity of black people and be left unattended to,” Malema said. “We make no apology about what the fighters did today against H&M. All over South Africa, H&M stores are closed because they called our children baboons.”

The second story was about another piece of legislation — from August 2016.


Contrast HuffPost’s decision to ignore all this racist incitement and violence in South Africa, to how it creates worldwide sympathy for others whom it champions as “victims”

The fact that HuffPost has chosen to ignore all references to Malema’s calls for genocidal violence against white people, and all the beatings, rapes, murders and terror that have been inflicted on victims in South Africa in recent years, by his followers — purely due to the color of the victims’ skin — and instead, depict him as a sort of “social justice warrior,” fits exactly with the model of racist bias and incitement that it has been employing for years, in its U.S. edition.  See the documentation of this fact in Section 4.

Contrast HuffPost’s racist bias, in this regard, to the myriad human and animal “victims” around the world whom it has chosen to champion, often via front-page headlines.  A sampling:


Patrick, the “virgin wombat”

On April 19, 2017, HuffPost featured on its front page an original story that one of its “journalists” wrote, about “Patrick,” an elderly wombat, whom it discovered had tragically died as a virgin.

Patrick, Beloved 32-Year-Old Virgin Wombat, Has Died


Palestinian terrorists


The “homesick American jihadi”

On February 8, 2013, HuffPost published this “news” story on its front page — and left it there for three straight days. Excerpt:

“What I would like though is to have a three day visit to see my mom, dad and sister… I often wonder what this whole experience has done to them,” he writes in the book, adding he misses his daughter whom he abandoned in Egypt as a baby.

“I’d like to make a round of the restaurants and get some Chinese food, some hot (chicken) wings, some Nestle ice cream, some gourmet coffee and a slew of other foods and beverages.”


The grieving Islamist Chechen “strongman,” who was missing his cat

On May 23, 2016, HuffPost published this story on its front page:

Chechen Strongman Issues Instagram Plea To Find His Missing Cat

But who is this “strongman” for whom HuffPost evoked worldwide sympathy?   Ramzan Kadyrov is a notorious Islamist militant and accused war criminal, but who is very savvy when it comes to social media.  Details here.  And who, in March 2017 began rounding up homosexuals and putting them in concentration camps.


“Pussy Riot”

Starting in August 2012, HuffPost began giving a flurry of top coverage to an all-girl Russian punk band, “Pussy Riot,” after they were arrested for barging into a famed orthodox church in Moscow, during services, then singing a vulgar song. HuffPost essentially went apoplectic over the plight of the band, and began a multi-year stream of more than a hundred sympathetic stories about these “victims,” including top-of-the-page splash headlines:

2012-08-17 WPHL Pussyriot convicted TOP STORY 925a

On one day alone, HuffPost had nine separate stories on its World page about Pussy Riot – at the same time.  See this PDF:

2012-08-19 Wphls 1235a – 9 Refs to Pussyriot – Zero Israel by SaveTheWest


(4) HuffPost’s larger effort to incite racist hatred and violence in America and beyond

 

Case studies

RACIST INCITEMENT: “It’s pretty clear who ruined America: white people”

RACIST INCITEMENT: “Let’s be honest, white people are the problem here”

RACIST BIAS AND INCITEMENT: HuffPost published a splash headline that claimed the man who murdered 17 students at a Florida high school was, definitively, a “white supremacist” — even though the rumor upon which it was based had already been debunked, was based on completely unproven allegations, and his targeted victims were apparently were all white

RACIST BIAS: HuffPost gave top coverage to a fake hate crime against a Muslim student — but completely ignored a white student who was beaten nearly to death because of his skin color

RACIST BIAS: HuffPost gave front-page coverage to a Muslim woman who was asked in a restaurant if she has a green card — but completely ignored a U.S. soldier who was beaten nearly to death by a black mob, because of his skin color

RACIST BIAS: HuffPost gave top coverage to a “news” story in which it asked a convicted black rapist, who justified his attack on a white woman on racial grounds, what makes him “cry” — but completely ignored the video of a white man who was dragged out of his car and beaten by a black mob, because of his skin color

RACIST BIAS: HuffPost completely ignored a videotaped speech by Louis Farrakhan, the notoriously racist and anti-Semitic black leader of the Nation of Islam, in which he called for 10,000 of his followers to “rise up” and murder white people — yet it consistently gives top coverage to its smearing and vilifying white Christians who support traditional marriage, and one who voiced opposition to yoga

RACIST INCITEMENT AND BIAS: HuffPost gave top, detailed coverage to those whom it accuses of being white nationalists/anti-Semites who are running for Congress — but completely ignored the fact that top members of the Democratic Party have had long-term relationships with Louis Farrakhan

RACIST INCITEMENT: HuffPost published a front-page headline that claimed white people should “be quiet and know your place”

RACIST BIAS: HuffPost completely ignored a black man who was charged with murdering six white people in Kansas City, and who publicly claimed, “Kill all white people!” — yet consistently gives top, detailed coverage to its false, racist smears against white conservatives

RACIST INCITEMENT: September 2014: “Caught on tape: Cops gun down [black] man at WalMart


(5) HuffPost’s repeated public insistence that it does not engage in unethical behavior

 


(6) Some of the mainstream advertisers who financially enable, and profit from HuffPost’s racist incitement — and how to contact them

 


(7) How to contact HuffPost’s management