Home (6.1) HuffPost’s hate speech

(6.1) HuffPost’s hate speech

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This page contains a sampling of the hate speech that HuffPost employs against a variety of groups, and individuals within them. Contained within most sections are links to many more case studies in that particular realm.

For the purposes of this report, we researched the various definitions of “hate speech,” and submit that this the following definition is a rational standard against which to consider the contents of this page, and our broader report:

Expressions that vilify, dehumanize and/or incite hatred or violence against a person or group of people, based on their race, ethnicity, religion, national origin, sexual or political orientation, occupation, or other attribute they share with the broader group.

See the rationale for our construction of this definition here, including the fact that HuffPost defines it in a very similar way.

Examples of HuffPost’s hate speech & incitement

(1) Against American police officers

(2) Against the U.S. military and intelligence communities

(3) Against Republicans and conservatives

(4) Against white people

(5) Against Jews, Israel, and its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu

(6) Against supporters of the Second Amendment, and the right of personal self-defense

(1) Examples of HuffPost’s hate speech against American police officers

Summary: Since 2014, America has witnessed a rash of hate and violence against our police officers, almost invariably those who have committed no offense, and are not under investigation.

HuffPost has played a major role in helping to spread this hate against our law enforcement officers, based on lies and egregious distortions, as the following five case studies demonstrate.  They are excerpted from the following resource page, which presents twelve additional, similar case studies:

Examples of HuffPost inciting hate against police officers — then ignoring hate crimes against them

Note that as the second part of this resource page’s title states, HuffPost also almost invariably ignores the violence and threats against police officers that it helps to incite, or, at best, dehumanizes and downplays the victims and incidents.  And in two cases, it has even whitewashed and evoked sympathy for their attackers.

(1.1) December 2014: “Can The Cops Be Stopped Before They Kill Again?”

(1.2) September 2014: “Caught on tape: Cops gun down man at WalMart”

(1.3) December 2014:  “How to get away with murder”

(1.4) March 2016: HuffPost published a front-page editorial that falsely claimed that local police took Dylan Roof, who murdered nine black church members in South Carolina, to Burger King for dinner after the shooting, as a symbol of American racism

(1.5) December 2014: “Rabbis Arrested After Reciting Kaddish For Eric Garner”

(1.1) December 2014: “Can The Cops Be Stopped Before They Kill Again?”

On December 6, 2014 HuffPost positioned this inflammatory editorial screed, not on the left margin, where its opinion pieces go — but rather as a “news” item.

Note that this headline incites hatred against and smears all American police officers, not the miniscule minority that are accused of wrongdoing — often without evidence, or in spite of contrary evidence.

Can The Cops Be Stopped Before They Kill Again?

How could any reasonable person view this as anything other than a call for direct action, if not violence, against police officers, everywhere?  Note that this headline appeared near the beginning of a wave of anti-police violence — the vast majority of which HuffPost either completely ignored, or downplayed.

Given the fact that HuffPost claims it is read by tens of millions of Americans each month, particularly from the radical left, can there be any doubt that it played a role in helping to incite hatred against all police officers, in all states, regardless of whether they had done anything wrong or not?

(1.2) September 2014: “Caught on tape: Cops gun down man at WalMart”

On September 24, 2014 HuffPost published this story as its incendiary splash headline, insinuating that police officers just ran into a Wal-Mart and gunned down a (black) man, for no reason:

HuffPost knew the truth – but failed to even hint at it in the headline. In reality, as its own version of the story (and a more responsible one in the Washington Post) showed:
  • Police officers responded to a call that a man was walking around the store with a rifle, pointing it at people
  • The officers ordered the gunman, John Crawford III, to drop the rifle, but he refused to do so, after which they shot him

Then, on July 11, 2017, HuffPost followed up with this item, regarding the same incident, near the top of its front page:

Notice that once again, HuffPost made no mention of why the police officer shot what is described and depicted as merely a (black) “Walmart shopper.”  That headline brought the reader to this story page:

Ohio Cop Who Fatally Shot Walmart Shopper John Crawford III Won’t Be Charged; The Justice Department said it can’t prove the officer violated the slain man’s civil rights, by Sebastian Murdock, Huffington Post, July 11, 2017.  Excerpt (from opening):

An Ohio police officer who fatally shot a black Walmart shopper holding an air rifle did not violate federal civil rights laws, the Justice Department said Tuesday.

Beavercreek Police Officer Sean Williams, already cleared in a criminal investigation of the August 2014 shooting death of John Crawford III, will not be charged with any federal offenses, officials said in announcing the conclusion of their investigation.

“This investigation revealed that the evidence is insufficient to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Officer Williams violated federal civil rights laws,” the Justice Department and U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District Ohio said in a statement. The offices “will not pursue federal criminal civil rights charges against Officer Williams.”

Crawford’s family has been notified of the decision, the statement said.

Crawford, 22, picked up a pellet gun while shopping in the Walmart toy section, prompting a 911 call from a customer who wrongly reported he was loading a rifle and pointing it at children.

Store surveillance video showed Crawford casually walking around the store with the toy gun in one hand while talking on his cell phone. A short time later, Crawford is seen being fatally shot by Williams.

HuffPost knew, or should have known, that this headline was also egregiously deceptive, as it included none of the above facts in the headline, or sub-head, or anywhere near them.  Instead, one has to travel to the sixth and seventh paragraphs to discover even its partially-correct version of the story.

It is also worth noting that HuffPost decided to pull this stunt for a second time, only six days after a New York City police officer was murdered by a man who posted anti-police rants on social media — that, upon close analysis, mimic HuffPost’s incendiary half-truths and lies about them.

(1.3) December 2014: “How to get away with murder”

On December 4, 2014, HuffPost ran this story as a “news” headline – an overt accusation that police officers “murdered” Eric Garner and other supposedly innocent people, and got away with it.

Attorney Ben Shapiro demolished HuffPost’s incendiary lie –

Huffington Post: Cops ‘Get Away With Murder’, by Ben Shapiro, Breitbart.com, December 4, 2014. Excerpt:

First off, whatever you think of the case of Eric Garner, it would be extraordinarily difficult to sustain a murder finding against him. To murder someone, you must have intent to murder; not only isn’t that present in the Garner video, there is no evidence of such intent. As former prosecutor Andy McCarthy put it at National Review today, “Officer Pantaleo plainly did not intend to kill Mr. Garner; he applied force he judged necessary to take Garner down to the ground so Garner could be cuffed. That this ended up killing Garner was unexpected and tragic, not intentional or willful.”

Second, only the most cynically exploitative journalistic outlet would lump together the cases of Eric Garner and Michael Brown. Brown robbed a convenience store, then attacked a police officer, attempted to take his gun, then charged the officer before being shot. Garner yelled at officers and waved his arms about before he was put in a submission hold by an officer and died of a suffocation brought on by combination of heart disease and asthma, not directly by the hold itself.

Third, the Huffington Post suggests that all officers “get away with murder. That conveniently ignores another police shooting today with a very different outcome: in South Carolina, a grand jury indicted a white police chief for shooting a 54-year-old unarmed black man. But that wouldn’t flatter the pattern Huffington Post attempted to build of uncaring white juries everywhere excusing police aggression against black folks. That would also explain why the Huffington Post suggested that the shooters of Grant and Zongo and Stanley-Jones “got away with murder,” when in fact, Grant’s shooter, Officer Johannes Mehserle, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter; Zongo’s shooter, Officer Bryan Conroy, was convicted of criminally negligent homicide; and Stanley-Jones’ shooter, Officer Joseph Weekly, was indicted on involuntary manslaughter and reckless endangerment with a gun (two trials ended in mistrial).

(1.4) March 2016: HuffPost published a front-page editorial that falsely claimed that local police took Dylan Roof, who murdered nine black church members in South Carolina, to Burger King for dinner after the shooting, as a symbol of American racism

On March 23, 2016, HuffPost published the following editorial mid-way down its front page:

The editorial incited racist hatred against, and mocked Otto Warmbier, the American college student whom North Korea accused of trying to steal a propaganda poster, and sentenced him to fifteen years of hard labor. See SaveTheWest’s analysis here.

In the same article, HuffPost also smeared the Shelby, NC police department with a provable lie, that could only be designed to further incite racist hatred against American police officers.

In summary, HuffPost falsely claimed that the police officers put Roof, a white supremacist, into a bulletproof vest and took him to dinner at Burger King — after it arrested him for murdering nine black church parishoners:

North Korea Proves Your White Male Privilege Is Not Universal, by La Sha, Huffington Post, March 23, 2016.  Excerpt:

When you can watch a white man who entered a theatre and killed a dozen people come out unscathed, you start to believe you’re invincible. When you see a white man taken to Burger King in a bulletproof vest after he killed nine people in a church, you learn that the world will always protect you.

The writer’s link goes to this article at HuffPost, which claimed, accurately, that the Shelby, NC police bought food from Burger King for Roof — but it never put him in a bulletproof vest and took him to the restaurant.

HuffPost based its article on (and linked to) one in the Charlotte Observer, which reported the story accurately:

Shelby police chief describes arrest of Charleston shooting suspect, by Andrew Dunn, Mark Washburn and Michael Gordon, Charlotte Observer, June 19, 2015.  Excerpt:

In Shelby, the FBI handled Roof’s initial questioning, Ledford said. Shelby police’s lone conversation with the mass-murder suspect was about food. Earlier in the day, Roof had bought water and chips at a south Charlotte gas station. Now he was hungry. Police bought him food from a nearby Burger King, Ledford said.

Thus, HuffPost knew the reality at the time it published this article on its front page — yet it chose instead to project this incendiary lie about the Shelby, NC police department to be spread to the world, as being a racist department, and representative of racist police departments all across America.

SaveTheWest.com reached out to Shelby, NC Chief of Police Jeffrey Ledford on June 22, 2017, to ask him if what is in HuffPost’s editorial is accurate.  Here is his official response:

“In response to your question: ‘Did police officers with the Shelby Police Department put Dylan Roof in a bulletproof vest, and bring him to Burger King for a meal, after he was arrested?’ That is absolutely not true.  Roof was never taken to any restaurant to eat.  He was provided food while in our custody, which is our obligation to do, to meet the needs of the prisoner. On that day, we actually provided lunch from Burger King (we use different food sources, Burger King being only one of them) for several people, who were at our headquarters, one of whom was Roof.  No food is held on site, so all food is brought in from outside sources, depending on when it is needed.  Just as it was on this day.”

Yet as of June 22, 2017, HuffPost’s incendiary, false, racist allegation is still published:

(1.5) December 2014: “Rabbis Arrested After Reciting Kaddish For Eric Garner”

For two consecutive days, on December 6 and 7, 2014, HuffPost ran this inflammatory allegation as a “news” headline on its front page, alleging that rabbis were arrested after saying a prayer (kaddish) for Eric Garner:

Is that really what happened? Were these rabbis really arrested just for saying a prayer?  Of course not.

As HuffPost knew, these rabbis were standing in a busy New York street intersection, and refused to move when ordered to by police. HuffPost’s original “news” story, however, mentioned none of that.

(The fact that HuffPost attempted to whitewash what really happened concerning these rabbis is laughable, given its pathological incitement of hatred against Jews and Israel. Who can forget its lie-filled “news” story, that Mitt Romney was chased away from a wedding by a “pack of Jews”?)

(2) Examples of HuffPost’s hate speech against the U.S. military and intelligence communities

Summary: For many years, HuffPost has been inciting global hatred against the U.S. military, in ways that it knows, or should know, could only serve to help advance Islamist terror groups’ information warfare objectives.  Specifically, It has constructed incendiary headlines that accused members of the US military of perpetrating horrific crimes that it knew, or should have known, were completely untrue, unprovable, or were being depicted in an egregiously decontextualized fashion.

The six case studies are excerpted from the following resource page, which presents fourteen additional ones:

Examples of HuffPost’s propaganda jihad against the U.S. military – and for America’s enemies

Note that as the second part of this resource page’s title indicates, while HuffPost consistently vilifies the U.S. military, it does the exact opposite for America’s enemies.  Specifically, as documented in more than 25 case studies on the above page, HuffPost dehumanizes U.S. soldiers, undermines the U.S. military,  whitewashes America’s enemies, and ignores Islamist terrorist arrests on U.S. soil.

(2.1) April 2010: HuffPost used a debunked, selectively-edited WikiLeaks video as the basis of a front page splash headline, to falsely claim that American soldiers engaged in “collateral murder”

(2.2) December 2014: HuffPost used decontextualized imagery in a deliberate effort to smear all U.S. soldiers and intelligence personnel as torturing sadists, to support a hyper-partisan Senate report

(2.3) October 2010: HuffPost constructed an incendiary splash front page headline that it knew was falsely accusing the U.S. military of “torturing, abusing and murdering” Iraqi detainees

(2.4) June 2016: HuffPost published an editorial that falsely claimed the U.S. military “uses drones that indiscriminately take innocent lives around the world” — and left it on a top page for nine straight days

(2.5) July 2014: HuffPost constructed a front page headline that falsely depicted a U.S. military drone strike as killing 11 civilians, when it knew at the time that only terrorists were targeted, and killed

(2.6) May 2009: HuffPost gave top coverage to a false allegation, sourced from Al Jazeera, that the U.S. military was giving soldiers Christian bibles, and instructing them to “hunt” and convert Afghanistani Muslims — then rewrote and buried the corrected story

(2.1) April 2010: HuffPost used a debunked, selectively-edited WikiLeaks video as the basis of a front page splash headline, to falsely claim that American soldiers engaged in “Collateral Murder”

The following is adapted from a detailed blog article at Huff-Watch, and complemented by original STW research.

On April 5, 2010, HuffPost published the following as its front page splash headline:

Its original article made shocking allegations against the U.S. military:

WikiLeaks VIDEO Exposes 2007 ‘Collateral Murder’ In Iraq, by By Dan Froomkin, Huffington Post, April 5, 2010. Excerpt:

Calling it a case of “collateral murder,” the WikiLeaks Web site today released harrowing video of a U.S. Army Apache helicopter in Baghdad in 2007 repeatedly opening fire on a group of men that included a Reuters photographer and his driver — and then on a van that stopped to rescue one of the wounded men.

None of the members of the group were taking hostile action, contrary to the Pentagon’s initial cover story; they were milling about on a street corner. One man was evidently carrying a gun, though that was and is hardly an uncommon occurrence in Baghdad.

Reporters working for WikiLeaks determined that the driver of the van was a good Samaritan on his way to take his small children to a tutoring session. He was killed and his two children were badly injured.

But are the incendiary allegations in HuffPost’s headline true?  No.  HuffPost’s editors would have known this, had they ordered the “journalist” who wrote this story (more on this later) to do the most basic of fact-checking, and verified that it was accurate, before publishing this blistering, libelous assault on American soldiers.

Specifically:

  • The “men” on the video had been firing at the U.S. military moments earlier, and were still carrying their RPG launchers and machine guns — as the video showed.
  • The Reuters employee was not wearing the required “PRESS” vest or helmet, or any indication that he was not one of the terrorists whom the U.S. military engaged.
  • It completely ignored the fact that CENTCOM had already investigated this incident — three years earlier — and concluded:

“The AWT accurately assessed that the criteria to find and terminate the threat to friendly forces were met in accordance with the law of armed conflict and rules of engagement.”

See: INVESTIGATION INTO CIVILIAN CASUALTIES RESULTING FROM AN ENGAGEMENT ON 12JULY2007 IN THE NEW BAGHDAD DISTRICT OF BAGHDAD, IRAQ, by U.S. Central Command, July 17, 2007.

  • WikiLeaks had selectively edited this video in such a way as to depict the terrorists only as “men,” while omitting their attack, moments earlier, on U.S. soldiers.

These facts were documented and exposed in enormous detail in a number of websites, both before and after HuffPost published its headline:

‘Collateral Murder’ in Baghdad Anything But, by Bill Roggio, The Weekly Standard, April 5, 2010. Excerpt:

Wikileaks, the website devoted to publishing classified documents on the Internet, made a splash today with a video claiming to show that the U.S. military “murdered” a Reuters cameraman and other Iraqi “civilians” in Baghdad on July 12, 2007. But a careful watching of the video shows that the U.S. helicopter gun crews that attacked a group of armed men in the then Mahdi Army stronghold of New Baghdad was anything but “Collateral Murder,” as Wikileaks describes the incident.

Cleverly-edited video becomes anti-Military infomercial for world’s dumbest blogger and his traditional posse of useful idiots, by Doug Ross, DirectorBlue.com, April 6, 2010.

April 06, 2010: Case Closed: Weapons Clearly Seen on Video of Reuters Reporters Killed in Iraq, by Jawa Report, April 6, 2010.

Case Closed on ‘Collateral Murder’, American Power, April 6, 2010.

HuffPost never updated its story to include any of these articles that so thoroughly debunked Wikileaks’ allegations, which it made its own via this incendiary headline – in contrast to the advertising pitch for HuffPost by AOL (its parent company), that claims that it:

“covers the world’s stories from every viewpoint”

HuffPost gave cult-like, daily publicity to Stephen Colbert’s show and proclamations — but ignored his debunking of Assange’s libels against the U.S. military

On April 12, 2010, WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange appeared on Stephen Colbert’s TV show, “The Colbert Report,” one week after the “Collateral Murder” smear was published.  And although Colbert is a notoriously left-leaning media figure, he tore into Assange for the obvious errors and incitement contained in his attack on the U.S. military:

Video: Colbert smacks down Wikileaks founder over “Collateral Murder” video, by Ed Morrissey, HotAir.com, April 13, 2010.

For many years, HuffPost has obsessively reported on its front page the most pedestrian occurrences involving Colbert, when it suits its subversive agenda.  In fact, it featured nine “news” stories about Colbert’s antics on its front page just between March 30 and April 9, 2010:

4/9: Colbert’s Version Of The Tiger Woods Commercial (VIDEO)

4/7: Colbert’s Science Catfight (VIDEO): ‘Isn’t Climate Just Made Up Of Thousands Of Little Weathers?’

4/7: Stephen Colbert On The Scrabble Controversy (VIDEO)

4/6: Dean Kamen On Colbert Report: Segway Inventor Has New Device For Injured Troops (VIDEO)

4/2: Colbert Uses His iPad To Slice Vegetables (VIDEO)

4/1: Boulder Peeps Trial Gets The Colbert Treatment Again (VIDEO)

3/31: Colbert Stunned To Hear That Ricky Martin Is Gay (VIDEO)

3/30: Simon Johnson Explains ‘Too Big To Fail’ On The ‘Colbert Report’ (VIDEO)

3/30: Stephen Colbert Uses ‘Ten Plagues’ Finger Puppets To Reenact Passover (VIDEO)

Yet curiously, HuffPost never shared with its readers Colbert’s demolition of Assange’s lies about the “Collateral Murder” smear, nor did it updates its story page to include it.  Presumably, it ignored this video in order to continue deceiving its readers into believing that its horrifically libelous assault on the U.S. military was true. (A deceptive practice that HuffPost has recently been employing in order to help legitimize fake anti-Muslim hate crimes.)

Further, even after HuffPost’s editors and executives and editors knew, or should have known, that this malicious libel against the U.S. military was debunked, it kept the “journalist” who wrote it, Dan Froomkin, on its payroll for the next four years, until December 2014.

About the “journalist” whom HuffPost paid to write this “story”

Soon after he was fired by the Washington Post in 2009, HuffPost hired “journalist” Dan Froomkin. This acquisition was pretty much only celebrated by Salon.com, the notorious terrorist-whitewashing, U.S. military libeling, pedophile-whitewashing, subversive far-left propaganda site.  And Froomkin has continued in his peddling of hate and conspiracies disguised as “journalism,” as was recently exposed by NewsBusters and the Lawfare Blog.

But HuffPost wasn’t done enabling Froomkin to continue waging his propaganda jihad against the U.S. military.  See the next article (1.3).

(2.2) December 2014: HuffPost used decontextualized imagery in a deliberate effort to smear all U.S. soldiers and intelligence personnel as torturing sadists, to support a hyper-partisan Senate report

On December 8 and 9, 2014, HuffPost published two splash headlines, relating to a report on allegations of torture by Senate Democrats, that was so biased and hyper-partisan that even one Democratic Senator, Sen. Bob Kerrey, blasted it in the national news media.  In both instances, however, HuffPost sought to prop up this report, through two means of deliberately, maliciously deceiving and inciting its global readership:

  • It only featured stories that supported the report, in the most shocking terms imaginable
  • It sought out and used two completely unrelated images to use as splash headlines, to complement these stories, in a naked effort to whip up global hatred against the U.S. military and intelligence communities — not against the handful who were accused of wrongdoing, but against each branch, in total

(1) This headline appeared on HuffPost’s front page at 11:00pm on December 8:

The first thing to notice is that that picture of one of the American soldiers who was accused and convicted by the U.S. government of committing criminal acts against detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, Lynndie England.

What occurred at Abu Grhaib was neither sanctioned nor known by U.S. officials, until these pictures emerged.  HuffPost, being one of the largest “news” organizations in America, knew or should have known this fact — but disregarded it, apparently in an intent to deceive its readers, and incite uniform hatred against all U.S. soldiers, in America and beyond.  It is only upon the foundation of that knowledge that one can begin to understand the further deception and incitement in which HuffPost engaged.

Clicking on that headline brought the reader to this story page:

Bush Officials Step Up To Blast Torture Report Before It’s Out, by Akbar Shahid Ahmed, The Huffington Post, December 8, 2014.

Note that the words “Abu Ghraib” appear nowhere in this article, further validating HuffPost’s passive admittance of its deception.

(2) This headline appeared on HuffPost’s front page at 11:00pm on December 9:

One glance at this shock headline and image, depicting an ancient, sadistic torture chamber, is sufficient to confirm the depth of HuffPost’s malice towards the U.S. military and intelligence communities.  Not against specific personnel who were accused and/or convicted of wrongdoing, but against these communities of volunteers, as a whole.

Clicking on that headline brought the reader to this story page:

TORTURE TUESDAY: With CIA Torture Report Set For Controversial Release, Washington Braces For Fallout, by Ali Watkins and Jennifer Bendery, The Huffington Post, December 9, 2014.

In both of these cases, HuffPost clearly knew exactly what it was doing, and how it was betraying even the loosest pretense of the objective journalism that it has repeatedly told the public it is practicing, since it debuted nearly ten years earlier.

(2.3) October 2010: HuffPost constructed an incendiary splash front page headline that it knew was falsely accusing the U.S. military of “torturing, abusing and murdering” Iraqi detainees

The following is adapted from a detailed blog article at Huff-Watch.

On October 23, 2010, HuffPost published the following as its front page splash headline:

A hint that HuffPost knew, or should have known it was lying: It (falsely) accused U.S. soldiers of “torture, abuse and murder” – but the soldiers in its photo are not wearing U.S. military uniforms.

The reality, as HuffPost knew at the time it published this story, was that U.S. soldiers had not done any of the things its shock, libelous headline alleged. Rather, it was Iraqi soldiers and police officers who are alleged to have done these things, while U.S. soldiers either ignored these abuses (assuming they were even aware of them).

How do we know these things? And how do we know that HuffPost knew them, at the time it wrote this headline, as well? Because before HuffPost published this headline, other, more responsible news organizations, including the AP, NBC, BBC told the actual story:

Iraq war leaks: No US investigation of many abuses, by the AP (via Salon), October 22, 2010: Excerpt:

U.S. forces often failed to follow up on credible evidence that Iraqi forces mistreated, tortured and killed their captives in the battle against a violent insurgency, according to accounts contained in what was purportedly the largest leak of secret information in U.S. history. The documents are among nearly 400,000 released Friday by the WikiLeaks website in defiance of Pentagon insistence that the action puts the lives of U.S. troops and their coalition partners at risk. Although the documents appear to be authentic, their origin could not be independently confirmed, and WikiLeaks declined to offer any details about them.

NYT: U.S. documents detail horrific abuse by Iraq’s army, police, by MSNBC, October 22, 2010.

US forces ‘ignored Iraq torture’, by the BBC, October 22, 2010. Excerpt:

The biggest leak of military records in US history, released by Wikileaks, shows commanders did not investigate torture by the Iraqi authorities.

Even the notorious Al Jazeera told the story straight:

US turned blind eye to torture, by Gregg Carlstrom, Al Jazeera, October 22, 2010. Excerpt:

Leaked documents on Iraq war contain thousands of allegations of abuse, but a Pentagon order told troops to ignore them.

HuffPost’s own story page proves it knew the reality of the situation — but chose to construct this false, incendiary, libelous headline against U.S. soldiers instead

The opening of HuffPost’s “story”

TORTURE, ABUSE, MURDER: WikiLeaks’ Iraq War Logs: U.S. Troops Abused Prisoners Until At Least 2009, by Marcus Baram, Huffington Post, October 22, 2010. Excerpt:

Despite a vigorous attempt by the Pentagon to stop WikiLeaks from releasing 400,000 pages of classified military documents about the Iraq War, the group has gone ahead with its latest document dump. Most shockingly, the documents allegedly show that US troops abused prisoners for years even after the Abu Ghraib scandal and that the US ignored systemic abuse, rape and even murder by Iraqi police and soldiers, according to several news reports.

HuffPost then twisted the knife in U.S. soldiers’ backs, by inserting material into this “news” article that blindly repeated a previously-debunked allegation about an incident in which they were accused of “murdering” Iraqis from a helicopter gunship (see detail in Section 1.2).

HuffPost’s libel against American soldiers incited a deluge of hate-filled user comments — all of which were approved and published by its human moderators

Below is a sampling of the user comments that were incited by this libel, which only appeared on HuffPost because its human moderators reviewed, approved and decided to publish them:

“Honor the troops, respect the troops, on and on. I am sick of it. They are just mercenaries…”

“Are the American people finally starting to realize that the military are the bad guys? […] It amazes me that so many people still don’t see the truth about the hyenas that while they look like people, are actually intra-species predators that prey upon the real humans.”

“The main reason the U.S. (went to war in Iraq) was because of you’ve guessed it – ISRAEL. That’s right, since the U.S. is remote controlled by Israel, all important military, political and economic decisions are made by Israel.”

“If this illegal war had not been conceived by the Neocons, along with our supposed friend, that Apartheid theocracy…”

(2.4) June 2016: HuffPost published an editorial that falsely claimed the U.S. military “uses drones that indiscriminately take innocent lives around the world” — and left it on a top page for nine straight days

June 6, 2016 was the 72nd anniversary of the D-Day invasion.  HuffPost completely ignored this fact, and the amazing feat that the U.S. military accomplished on that day.  The only item that appeared on HuffPost’s front page concerning D-Day on June 6 was a story that alleged Trump used a mis-dated photo about it in a speech.

As if that weren’t bad enough, HuffPost published an editorial near the top of its World page that contained this incendiary libel against the U.S. military, and its civilian overseers (screencap):

After all, wouldn’t purchasing any American product be an endorsement of a government which uses drones that indiscriminately take innocent lives around the world? Or is that okay, because women are allowed to drive in the US?

HuffPost knew, or should have known:

  • That this is an egregiously false accusation; that every branch of the U.S. military exercises enormous caution before it fires any weapon, especially drones, to ensure that no civilians are harmed, or as few as possible to achieve the mission.

To add insult to injury, HuffPost left this libelous screed published on its World page for nine straight days, from June 6 through June 14.

(2.5) HuffPost constructed a front page headline that falsely depicted a U.S. military drone strike as killing 11 civilians, when it knew at the time that only terrorists were targeted, and killed

This was the second incident of its kind in two weeks that HuffPost perpetrated, that mimicked Al Qaeda’s lie that the U.S. negligently targets and kills civilians in drone strikes.  And in both incidents, HuffPost later removed its “stories” from its archive.  See the first incident here.

On July 19, 2014, HuffPost published this headline on its front page:

Did the U.S. military really kill (murder) eleven Pakistani civilians, as this HuffPost headline suggests?

No.  As the very first line in HuffPost’s own story (screencap), sourced from the AP, proved:

US Drone Strike In Pakistan Kills 11, by Riaz Khan, AP (via Huffington Post), July 19, 2014. Excerpt:

A U.S. drone fired several missiles at a sprawling compound in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal region bordering Afghanistan on Saturday, killing eleven militants, two Pakistani intelligence officials said.

The officials said the strike happened in Datta Khel, a town in North Waziristan, where the Pakistani military has been carrying out a major offensive against militants since last month. They said most of the slain men were members of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, an umbrella group encompassing militant organizations across the tribal areas.

So once again, HuffPost deliberately manipulated its readers into hating the U.S. military based on a false headline, that it knew was false when it posted this “story.”

But unlike the July 10 incident, in Section 1.12, HuffPost gave this “story” at least three straight days of top coverage, as these screencaps prove – taken on July 19 and 21, 2014 (see date stamp on lower right):

July 19, 2014:

July 21, 2014:

And as in Section 1.12, apparently someone called HuffPost out on this atrocity of incitement against the U.S. military– because as of March 2, 2017, the storypage is now blank:

(2.6) May 2009: HuffPost gave top coverage to a false allegation, sourced from Al Jazeera, that the U.S. military was giving soldiers Christian bibles, and instructing them to “hunt” and convert Afghanistani Muslims — then rewrote and buried the corrected story

The following is adapted from a detailed blog article at Huff-Watch.

On May 4, 2009, HuffPost published this shock “news” story as its front page splash headline; the following is a link to the original story — captured by Google Cache (*HuffPost rewrote the story, but did not re-post it on its front page; see below):

US Soldiers in Afghanistan Told to “Hunt People for Jesus… So We Get Them into the Kingdom” (Video), by Jeremy Scahill, Huffington Post, May 4, 2009. Opening paragraphs:

Military officials at Bagram are caught on tape urging US soldiers to evangelize in the Muslim country.

New video evidence has surfaced showing that US military forces in Afghanistan have been instructed by the military’s top chaplain in the country to “hunt people for Jesus” as they spread Christianity to the overwhelmingly Muslim population. Soldiers also have imported bibles translated into Pashto and Dari, the two dominant languages of Afghanistan. What’s more, the center of this evangelical operation is at the huge US base at Bagram, one of the main sites used by the US military to torture and indefinitely detain prisoners.

In a video obtained by Al Jazeera and broadcast Monday, Lieutenant-Colonel Gary Hensley, the chief of the US military chaplains in Afghanistan, is seen telling soldiers that as followers of Jesus Christ, they all have a responsibility “to be witnesses for him.”

Analysis: Is this really what happened?  Were American soldiers really instructed to convert Afghanistani Muslims to Christianity?

No.  As Huff-Watch documented:

Aside from the fact that HuffPost apparently has no problem relying on terrorist–celebrating “news” networks for its source material, there are a just a few little problems with the perception that this inflammatory headline insinuated (some of which were included in the article, others that developed over the next few days):

  • No bibles were distributed to Afghans — and none of our soldiers proselytized in Afghanistan
  • The bibles in question were sent by a single U.S. church to a single soldier in Afghanistan — they were not provided by the U.S. military
  • The U.S. military intervened before any proselytizing could happen; proselytizing is strictly against our military policy, which was enforced to the letter
  • The story created new, incendiary misperceptions as to what our military is actually doing in Afghanistan, while downplaying or ignoring how vigilant it actually is to not offend local sensitivities
  • The story is more than a year old (acknowledged deep in the article)

UPDATE: All of the above was confirmed in a follow-up article several days later at… al-Jazeera. Furthermore, the story details how some soldiers who considered distributing these bibles to Afghanistanis have been reprimanded. Thus far, HuffPost has not published this information… which would be sort of difficult anyway, being that it doesn’t have a “Corrections” feature, as (responsible) print newspapers do.

HuffPost later rewrote and re-dated the article, but did not publish it on its front page.  This is proven by its current version of the “story,” which it falsely claims was written by another “journalist”:

Soldiers In Afghanistan Given Bibles, Told To “Hunt People For Jesus” (VIDEO), by Ryan Grim, Huffington Post, June 4, 2009. Opening paragraphs:

A U.S. church raised money to send Bibles, printed in the Pashtu and Dari languages, to American soldiers stationed in Afghanistan, a report on Al Jazeera documented Sunday night.

It is against military rules to proselytize — a regulation one of the soldiers filmed by the network readily acknowledged. “You cannot proselytize, but you can give gifts,” says the soldier. It is a crime in Afghanistan to attempt to convert anyone from Islam to any other religion. “I also want to praise God because my church collected some money to get Bibles for Afghanistan. They came and sent the money out.” The footage is said to be roughly a year old.

The Al Jazeera report also shows a military preacher urging army parishioners to “hunt people for Jesus.”

Here is a screencap of the “new” version of this article, at this link:

Given the severity of this deception, and the extremely inflammatory nature of the false accusation to which it gave top coverage:

  • Why did HuffPost not publish all of these corrections in new article, to alert its readers that they had been misled — and to exonerate the U.S. military?
  • Why did HuffPost not apologize to all American soldiers, for falsely helping to advance Al Qaeda’s and the Taliban’s false narrative, that the U.S. military is comprised of “crusaders for Christ”?  (Which it again falsely accused the U.S. military of doing, eighteen months later, in Section 1.10)

We submit that the answer to these questions is that if HuffPost were to do these things, it would undermine its “propaganda jihad” against the U.S. military, which at this point was just getting started.

A sampling of the user comments that HuffPost published in reaction to this libelous article

Below is a small sampling of the hateful user comments that were incited by this libel, which only appeared on HuffPost because its human moderators reviewed, approved and decided to publish them:

“They should be executed”

“The only good Christian evangalical soldier is a dead Christian evangalical soldier! And to all the out there, if you see anyone who is passing the B!ble to your children, I say, take em out! You have my permission.”

“This is ridiculous. Go there to do your job. Which is to kill people. Not convert them.”

“Well, that is perfectly typical isn’t it? hate and kill for jezis! sounds like a routine day to me.”

“Spreading “democracy” and “Christianity” at the tip of an M-16; it’s kinda’ like trying to spread healthy living while force-feeding someone excrement.”

“it could be worse they could try to convert them all to judaism you know, to help Israel achieve its greater Israel goal. I mean the US fights all its wars for Israel’ benefit… might as well recruit for them too.. huh?”

See many more hateful user comments, incited by HuffPost’s libel, at the bottom of the page here.

(3) Examples of HuffPost’s hate speech against Republicans and conservatives

Summary: Contrary to HuffPost’s repeated claims, since it debuted in 2005, that it is a completely nonpartisan “news” organization, the evidence shows that it  has been on a hyper-partisan “jihad” against Republicans and conservatives ever since.  The following 4-minute video provides an overview of the reality:

The following case studies are among dozens that exist, that stretch back to HuffPost’s earliest days, that demonstrate its relentless efforts to carry out its actual agenda — as was discovered in a recent lawsuit:

“to use the potential of the Internet to… re-organize the Democratic Party from the outside in, not the inside out…  [and] to serve the Democratic Party”

Integral to this agenda was another: to effectively wage a “journalistic jihad” of hate speech, based on incendiary, provable lies and egregious distortions, against anyone to the right of center in American politics, both individually and collectively.

(3.1) April 2017: HuffPost used a previously-debunked smear against one of America’s most fervent supporters of Israel and the Jewish people as being among a “Nazi problem” within the GOP

(3.2) 2013-2015: HuffPost repeatedly advanced the lie that Republicans who opposed President Obama’s Iran nuclear deal were “warmongers,” who wanted the U.S. to go to war

(3.3) April 2017: HuffPost smeared the FCC chairman as a “sucker” who is trying to enact an Internet policy with which it disagrees; Two weeks later, after it justified the stalking of Republicans, organized members of the alt-left, with histories of violence, began harassing his neighbors

(3.4) April 2008: HuffPost gave top coverage to a discredited rumor that Sen. John McCain called his wife, Cindy, a “c*nt”

(3.5) August 2008: HuffPost called Cindy McCain “a dick”

(3.6) November 2016: People who voted for Trump are Nazis

(3.7) November 2017: HuffPost “journalist” congratulated Sen. McCain’s family on their upcoming inheritance, after his death

(3.1) April 2017: HuffPost used a previously-debunked smear against one of America’s most fervent supporters of Israel and the Jewish people as being among a “Nazi problem” within the GOP

On April 12, 2017, HuffPost published this as its front page splash headline:

That shock headline led to this story page:

The GOP Has A Nazi Problem, by Paul Blumenthal, Huffington Post, April 12, 2017. Excerpt:

President Donald Trump continues to employ national security aide Sebastian Gorka despite a parade of evidence tying the counterterrorism adviser to Nazi-linked symbols, far-right politics and anti-Semitic political parties.

But Gorka, who was born in Britain to Hungarian parents in 1970, is far from the first Republican official with these sorts of ties. Throughout the second half of the 20th century, as Eastern Europeans who had fought the Soviet Union — many as part of explicitly Nazi or fascist-aligned groups — immigrated to the U.S., GOP officeholders sought their support.

At the time HuffPost published this “news” story, it knew, or should have known the following:

  • That Dr. Gorka has been one of the most outspoken defenders of Israel and Jews in America, and before that, in England.
  • That this allegation, which originated in a libelous, February 2017 screed in the far-left Jewish Daily Forward, had been repeatedly, substantively debunked in major U.S. media over the previous six weeks — including by Jewish organizations with whom Dr. Gorka has been affiliated.  The following are twelve such articles that obliterated the Forward’s smear, starting with pieces in The Hill and Forbes magazine.  They are presented in chronological order:

EU commissioner defends Trump aide against ‘false’ attacks, by Tibor Navracsics, The Hill, February 27, 2017.

Journalists Beware: Your War On Sebastian Gorka Is Only Hurting You, by Richard Miniter, Forbes, February 28, 2017.

In Hungary, Sebastian Gorka Fought and Tried to Undermine the Anti-Semitism of the Far-Right,
By David Reaboi, PJ Media, February 28, 2017.

Tale of Trump Adviser’s Alleged Nazi Ties Unravels; by Liel Leibovitz, The Tablet, March 16, 2017.

Latest Left-Wing Smear Against Sebastian Gorka Unravels, by Debra Heine, PJ Media, March 16, 2017.

ZOA: FORWARD’S Campaign Calling Trump Aide Gorka Anti-Semitic is a Lie – Gorka is Friend of Jews/Israel, Zionist Organization of America press release, March 17, 2017.

The ‘Forward’ is dead wrong, Gorka is a defender of Israel, Jews, by Bruce Abramson and Jeff Ballabon, The Jerusalem Post, March 17, 2017.

I Denounce the Shameful Slanders Against Sebastian Gorka, Friend of Israel, by David P. Goldman, PJ Media, March 17, 2017.

Sebastian Gorka: A True Friend to Israel and the Jewish People, by Sarah N. Stern, The Algemeiner, March 21, 2017. (Note: Stern is founder and president of the Endowment for Middle East Truth, a pro-Israel think tank.)

Anatomy of a Libel: The Forward Deploys the Weapons of Personal Destruction, by Bruce Abramson and Jeff Ballabon, The Jewish Press, March 22, 2017.

Gorka’s Opponents Owe Huge Apology for Distorting His Record, by Bruce Abramson and Jeff Ballabon, NewsMax, March 22, 2017.

The Latest Attack On Gorka Is Another Piece Of Shoddy Journalism, by David Harsanyi, The Federalist, April 4, 2017.

HuffPost apparently commissioned the one-of-a-kind swastika lapel pin depicted in its shock headline to be created, or Photoshopped, as if it were in wide use among Republicans, and proudly, publicly displayed

Further, it should be noted that HuffPost apparently commissioned the lapel pin depicted in its shock headline, showing an American flag and a Nazi flag unified in one metal object, to be made, or photo-manipulated, specifically for this smear article.  We base this allegation on the fact that a June 18, 2017 Google search of “lapel pin Nazi flag American flag” returned zero relevant results.  We also tried various other search strings, and encountered similar results: nothing.

The bottom line is, that pin apparently does not exist, is not for sale, and no member of the GOP has ever been photographed wearing it.  This image is, apparently, a completely fictitious creation, to advance HuffPost chronic incitement of hatred against anyone to its political right.

The irony: HuffPost is, itself, the West’s largest online inciter of hate against Israel and Jews

Lastly, HuffPost never retracted or apologized for its top-of-the-front-page smear against Dr. Gorka.  Which is grimly ironic, due to the fact that, by virtue of its immense reach and influence, HuffPost itself is the Western world’s largest online inciter of hatred against Israel and Jews:

(3.2) 2013-2015: HuffPost repeatedly advanced the lie that Republicans who opposed President Obama’s Iran nuclear deal were “warmongers,” who wanted the U.S. to go to war

The following is excerpted from a major SaveTheWest.com report, “The Rhodes To HuffPost”: The Huffington Post’s use of lies, deception, bias and anti-Semitic incitement in order to help “sell” the Iran deal”

One of the core false “narratives” conjured up by White House Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes and his colleagues, both inside and outside of the White House propaganda “war room” he created, was to falsely claim that anyone who criticized or opposed the Iranian nuclear deal was doing so only because they wanted America to go to war with Iran.

For example, a recent expose’ revealed a secret, internal 2011 memo by the far-left Ploughshares Fund, that confirmed the fact that this narrative was a “messaging strategy,” completely unmoored from reality:

“On a messaging note, it would be best to describe them as ‘pro-war,’ and leave it to them to back off that characterization of their position,” they wrote.

Excerpt from: The Secret History of the Iran-Deal ‘Echo Chamber’, by Eli Lake, Bloomberg News, May 24, 2016.

This entire narrative, concocted two years before the Iran deal began taking form, was a lie, as HuffPost’s editors knew or should have known before it engaged in this scorched-Earth campaign of hatred, lies and attacks. As documented in Section 1 of this report’s Resources page, there were literally dozens of substantive, well-documented reasons why critics were opposing the deal. A sampling:

  • Throughout the “negotiations” over the deal, Iran’s top leaders repeatedly led public chants of “Death To America!”

Despite these facts, as this slide show demonstrates, HuffPost repeatedly published splash headlines that publicized the lie that anyone who criticized or opposed the deal wanted war with Iran:

HuffPost’s approach to lying about, and attacking both Republican and Democratic critics of the deal is notable in itself, due to the fact that it routinely ignores or whitewashes Democrats who engage in the same behavior for which it excoriates Republicans. When it came to helping Rhodes et al to “sell” the Iran deal, however, HuffPost also began smearing any Democrat who dared to criticize or oppose it.

Even the second-most senior Democrat in the House of Representatives, Steny Hoyer (D-MD), publicly castigated this smear campaign against critics of the deal, starting soon after it began, January 2014:

Hoyer: W.H. aide ‘irresponsible’, by Ginger Gibson, Politico, January 14, 2014.

“There have been some that have suggested in the White House that those folks were more interested in war than they were in the resolution by peaceful means. I think that is absolutely untrue, [an] irresponsible assertion, and ought to be clarified and retracted by those who have made it within the administration,” Hoyer (D-Md.) told reporters Tuesday morning. “Nobody believes, as far as I know, that going to war with Iran is anything but a dangerous objective that none of us would seek.”

And in 2015, Hoyer, along with Republican colleagues in Congress, again blasted this pattern of lying about the motives of critics of the Iran deal:

Obama’s Iran Deal-or-War Warning Attracts Bipartisan Criticism, by Kathleen Miller and Calev Ben-David, Bloomberg, August 6, 2015.

President Barack Obama’s warning that the Iran nuclear deal comes down to a choice “between diplomacy or some form of war” drew criticism from both the Senate’s Republican leader and the House’s No. 2 Democrat. […] Representative Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the second-ranking Democrat in the House, said the tone was counterproductive. “Characterizing people who may be in opposition to the agreement as wanting to go to war as an alternative, I’m not comfortable with that, and I wish the White House wouldn’t do that,” Hoyer, who is leading a visit of 22 Democratic House members to Israel this week, said in an interview in Jerusalem on Thursday. “I don’t think the alternatives are going to war, and I’ve indicated that” to the White House.

HuffPost published none of these objections, from Hoyer or any other member of Congress – in contrast to the advertising pitch for HuffPost by AOL (its parent company), that claims that it:

“covers the world’s stories from every viewpoint”

(3.3) April 2017: HuffPost smeared the FCC chairman as a “sucker” who is trying to enact an Internet policy with which it disagrees; Two weeks later, after it justified the stalking of Republicans, organized members of the alt-left, with histories of violence, began harassing his neighbors

On April 27, 2017, HuffPost published this hate article as its splash headline, to smear the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai, calling him — a man of color — a “sucker,” whom it accused of trying to “torch” the Internet policy that it supports (while claiming to be completely nonpartisan):

Ten days later, on May 10, 2017, HuffPost published on its front page an editorial by its “Queer Voices Editor-at-Large,” Michelangelo Signorile, that justified stalking and harassing Republicans

From the Daily Wire:

HuffPo Editor Threatens Members Of GOP, by Hank Berrien, May 12, 2017. Excerpt:

Michelangelo Signorile, the editor-at-large of HuffPost’s “Queer Voices” section, decided he would threaten members of the GOP. In an article titled “To Save America We Must Stop Being Polite And Immediately Start Raising Hell,” Signorile urged his audience to “turn up the heat on elected officials.”

What did he mean by “turn up the heat?” This:

They should be hounded by protestors everywhere, especially in public — in restaurants, in shopping centers, in their districts, and yes, on the public property outside their homes and apartments, in Washington and back in their home states. Paul Ryan, the House Speaker, should not be able to attend any function, eat in public, or enjoy dinner at home without hearing people expressing how his actions are harming their lives and their families’ lives in terrible ways.

The Daily Wire continued:

Signorile is only fanning the flames of an already-burning fire; Tom Garrett, a GOP member of the Freedom Caucus, revealed his wife was already getting death threats such as, “This is how we’re going to kill your wife.”

On May 14, four days later, an organized group of notorious, violent radical leftists targeted Pai’s home and neighborhood

Alt-Left Targets Ajit Pai; Members of violent protest groups organize events in FCC chairman’s neighborhood, by Elizabeth Harrington, Washington Free Beacon, May 15, 2017. Excerpts:

Members of the alt-left with a history of participating in violent protests are targeting the neighborhood of the Federal Communications Commission chairman Ajit Pai.

The organizers, connected to DisruptJ20 and Code Pink, said they are “taking the fight to Pai’s front door,” leaving leaflets on the doors in Pai’s neighborhood last weekend to protest changes to the Obama administration net neutrality policy.

On Sunday, the activists will again target Pai’s neighborhood, this time with a “vigil to save the Internet.”

“Join us this Sunday for a #SaveTheInternet #NetNeutrality vigil outside of FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s house,” a Facebook event organized by “Protect Our Internet” reads. […]

The campaign is an attempt to intimidate and embarrass Pai for his plans to reverse the Obama administration’s net neutrality rules, which gave the government more regulatory power over internet service providers.

Kevin Zeese is a PopularResistance.org contributor, who several years ago organized a blockade of former FCC chairman Tom Wheeler’s house to demand net neutrality rules, which the Obama administration later adopted.

PopularResistance.org is a network of leftist activists in the D.C. area who have been involved in violent protests with the antifa, DisruptJ20, and Code Pink. […]

Members of the “well-organized” group were “armed with hammers and crowbars” at the inauguration protest. Storefront windows were smashed and a limousine, which was owned by a Muslim immigrant, was set on fire. Over 271 protesters were arrested and 6 police officers were injured.

DisruptJ20 activists were also revealed on an undercover video released by Project Veritas to be planning to attack the “DeploraBall” inauguration party with butyric acid, which led to the arrest of one of the group’s activists for conspiracy to commit assault.

(3.4) April 2008: HuffPost gave top coverage to a discredited rumor that Sen. John McCain called his wife, Cindy, a “c*nt”

Throughout 2007-2008, HuffPost consistently ran pro-Obama propaganda, while attacking his rivals with scorching hate posts, often based on lies and egregious distortions, as documented here and here.  It did this despite its insistence that it is an absolutely nonpartisan, professional “news” organization,

Then, on April 7, 2008, as Sen. John McCain was close to winning the Republican nomination for the presidency, HuffPost published this splash headline appeared on its front page:

Clicking on that news headline brought the reader to this page. Note the other “news” story to which HuffPost was giving top promotion, at the upper right:

“Report: McCain’s Temper Flare-Up, Called Wife A C*nt”

Clicking on that headline, in turn, brought the reader to this page:

Report: McCain’s Profane Tirade At His Wife, by Nick Juliano, Raw Story, Huffington Post,  April 7, 2008. Excerpt:

Three reporters from Arizona, on the condition of anonymity, also let me in on another incident involving McCain’s intemperateness. In his 1992 Senate bid, McCain was joined on the campaign trail by his wife, Cindy, as well as campaign aide Doug Cole and consultant Wes Gullett. At one point, Cindy playfully twirled McCain’s hair and said, “You’re getting a little thin up there.” McCain’s face reddened, and he responded, “At least I don’t plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt.”

The next day, April 9, as reported in U.S. News & World Report, Sen. McCain and his campaign vehemently denied this accusation, and claimed it was pure fiction, driven by partisan hacks:

The McCain campaign has furiously denied the reports, calling them “fabrications” and “trash.” McCain, asked during an appearance today on Fox News whether the alleged Renzi incident was true, replied, “No.” Campaign spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker told U.S. News that both stories are “untrue and driven by partisan interests and blind sources.”

In the same USN&WR article, Nico Pitney, a HuffPost “editor,” justified its publication of this completely unsubstantiated, vicious rumor:

[Pitney] told U.S. News that “we noted in our report on the book that the story was anonymously sourced; we wanted our readers to be aware of that […] As with any such reporting—whether it’s in the New York Times, a Bob Woodward book, or an account from Cliff Schecter — people have to consider the information critically and make up their own minds,” he said.

Then, a blogger looked into the “journalist” who is cited in HuffPost’s “report” as the source of this “story,” and exposed him as a partisan hack and conspiracy theorist, with no credibility.

HuffPost never published Sen. McCain’s denials — or any indication as to the credibility of its “source.”  As a result, anyone who got their news only from HuffPost would be left with no alternative but to assume that: (a) the McCain campaign had never responded to the vicious allegations that it published against him, (b) the allegation against Sen. McCain is true.

HuffPost’s relentless attacks on Sen. and Cindy McCain continued unabated, until Sen. Obama won the presidency.  One “highlight” of this smear campaign occurred four months later, on August 10, 2008 when, as documented here, HuffPost called Cindy McCain “a dick” on its front page. 

HuffPost was well-rewarded for its shilling for Sen. Obama: Less than one month after the election:

  • HuffPost received $15 million in urgently-needed venture capital
  • After strenuously denying for a year that HuffPost had become, as Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign alleged, “a conveyor belt of pro-Obama propaganda,” Arianna Huffington publicly admitted:

“I only text three people – my two teenage children and Barack Obama.”

  • Huffington was invited to “testify” before the Senate on “the future of journalism”
  • HuffPost was given preferential access to the Obama White House, and became a member of the White House Correspondents’ Association

And in June 2009, Nico Pitney received his reward: being personally called on by President Obama in a press conference, in what later was later reported by Politico and the Washington Post to be “a pre-coordinated stunt.”

(3.5) August 2008: HuffPost called Cindy McCain “a dick”

On November 9, 2007, Arianna Huffington announced the debut of a new HuffPost feature, “Dickipedia,” which she said “looks just like Wikipedia, but it’s about the world’s biggest dicks” (screencap).  In reality, this was part of HuffPost’s ongoing effort to dedicated to mocking, smearing and humiliating anyone with whom this allegedly “nonpartisan news” organization disagreed.  “Dickipedia” was later taken down, after AOL purchased HuffPost and wanted to clean up the site (to some degree).

On August 10, 2008, HuffPost published this “news” story on its front page:

Cindy McCain Is A Dick, Huffington Post, August 10, 2008. Excerpt:

Cindy Lou Hensley McCain (born Cindy Lou Hensley on May 20, 1954) is the wife of U.S. Senator, ill-fated presidential candidate, elderly curmudgeon, and dick John McCain. She, herself, is a multi-millionaire, pill-popper—a combination sometimes referred to as a “pillionaire”—and an excellent example of why people should stop after one facelift, two max. She is also a dick.

As a potential though seriously long shot First Lady, anything and everything about Cindy McCain was seized upon and exaggerated by the media. Like her hideously plastic appearance. And the period of her life she spent zonked out on Percocet. And that she obviously has a fetish for old balls.

McCain is chair of Hensley & Co., one of the largest Anheuser-Busch beer distributors in the nation. Essentially, this makes her a legalized drug kingpin. Of course, better that than ketchup czar, but still.

Cindy McCain wishes she were Michelle Obama so bad, it gives her sweater bullets just thinking about it.

Although HuffPost later removed this “news” item, it is still retrievable through the Internet Archive, here (see bottom of page for attribution to HuffPost) — and, momentarily, on HuffPost itself, here.

(3.6) November 2016: People who voted for Trump are Nazis

Continuing on the theme from Case Study 3.1, of making up stories about Republicans and conservatives being Nazis, HuffPost published this item as its splash headline on November 12, 2016:

Who perpetrated this vandalism?  HuffPost didn’t know — as its own story confirmed.  Was it the work of white supremacists.  Or, was it the work of the same fraudsters who had been perpetrating the dozens of fake anti-black and fake anti-Muslim hate crimes in recent months and years?

SaveTheWest.com has documented 46 such incidents, in which the hate crime was proven to have never take place (false reports), or it was actually perpetrated by the complainant, or one within the group that was allegedly targeted (eg a black church that had been defaced with pro-Trump, racist graffiti — which was perpetrated by a black member of the church):

Fake anti-Black hate crimes (23 incidents)

Fake anti-Muslim hate crimes roster (23 incidents)

These questions are directly relevant, because as SaveTheWest.com also documented:

  • HuffPost only publishes reports of the original allegations on its front page; when they are confirmed to be fake hate crimes, they disappear
  • HuffPost has also gone to great lengths to falsely legitimize fake hate crimes on its front page, one of which was based on nothing but a Facebook post, yet which was published in thousands of other “news” sites and blogs around the world; HuffPost never apologized for it or published a new story on its front page to correct the record

The bottom line is that HuffPost took one picture, that may have been legitimate, or yet another fake hate crime, and gave it top coverage as if it were legitimate, in order to smear the 62 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump as all being white supremacist Nazis.

See more examples of HuffPost’s domestic and global incitement of racial hatred in Section 4.

(3.7) November 2017: HuffPost “journalist” congratulated Sen. McCain’s family on their upcoming inheritance, after his death

Background: On November 30, 2017, Sen. John McCain indicated he would vote for the tax reform bill that was being considered in the Senate.  As part of the bill, which would significantly lower middle-class taxes, and remove millions of the poor from the tax rolls, the government would double the estate amount that is exempt from taxation, from $5.5 million to $11 million.

In regards to Sen. McCain’s personal situation, as Fox News reported:

[Sen. McCain] is undergoing treatment for brain cancer. McCain, a 2008 presidential nominee, revealed in July he was diagnosed with glioblastoma, a particularly aggressive type of tumor. More than 12,000 people are diagnosed with glioblastoma, the American Brain Tumor Association reported.

“The prognosis is very, very serious,” McCain said on CBS’ “60 Minutes” in late September.

This incident: In response to news that Sen. McCain decided to support the tax reform bill, one of HuffPost’s senior “journalists,” Ashley Feinberg, posted this Tweet:

“Congratulations to John McCain’s wife and children on their upcoming tax-free inheritance”

After significant push-back on conservative sites (most of whose writers are fierce critics of Sen. McCain), Feinberg issued a half-hearted apology and removed the Tweet.

(4) Examples of HuffPost’s hate speech against white people

This report contains a separate section that presents some of the dozens of examples of  HuffPost’s racist bias and incitement:

(6.3) HuffPost’s racist bias and incitement, which contains 14 excerpts from…

Examples of HuffPost inciting racial hatred (36 case studies)

Some “highlights” of HuffPost’s racist hate speech, excerpted from the above pages:

  • HuffPost headline: “It’s pretty clear who ruined America: white people” (source)

10nov16-nordstrom-white-people-ruined-america-callout

  • HuffPost editorial: “Let’s be honest, white people are the problem here” (source)
  • HuffPost claimed laws should be enacted throughout the world to stop white men from voting, worldwide, and their wealth stolen and redistributed; Its executive editor was reportedly forced to resign after widespread condemnations of this incitement to hate and violence (source)
  • HuffPost claimed white people conspire to “steal elections” (source)
  • HuffPost gave top, sustained coverage to a “report” that falsely claimed white conservatives are responsible for the vast majority of terrorism in America (source)

(5) Examples of HuffPost’s hate speech against Jews, Israel, and its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu

This report contains a separate section that presents some of the dozens of examples of  HuffPost’s anti-Semitic bias and incitement:

Examples of HuffPost’s incitement of hatred against Jews and Israel: 12 case studies, excerpted from…

(6.4) HuffPost’s anti-Semitic bias and incitement (41 case studies)

Some “highlights” of HuffPost’s incitement of hate against Jews, Israel and Netanyahu, from the above pages:

  • Headline: “Fucking dick the fat Jew” (source)
    .
  • Falsely claiming that “Israeli troops kill Palestinians, harvest organs” (source)
  • Perpetuating the proven lie that Netanyahu accepted Congress’s invitation to address it, about the Iran nuclear deal, before President Obama had been notified (source)
  • Falsely claiming that Israel “just wanted to kill as many people as possible” during its defensive actions against Hamas (source)
  • Posting on its two Arabic editions a story claiming that a Jewish woman murdered the Prophet Muhammad — then refusing (a) to even respond to letters of complaint from the ADL, or (b) to take the article down (source)
  • Falsely claiming that “Israeli jets strike Gaza as leaders convene peace talks” (source)

(6) Examples of HuffPost’s hate speech against supporters of the Second Amendment, and the right of personal self-defense

(6.1) February 2018: HuffPost devoted a splash headline to one Florida teenager who called the National Rifle Association “a terrorist organization” — while it consistently ignores or whitewashes actual Islamist terrorist organizations on U.S. soil, and beyond

(6.2) February 2018: HuffPost published a splash headline that claimed there has been “one school shooting every 60 hours” in 2018, when it knew or should have known this was a false claim — as the Washington Post documented hours later — as a means of smearing those who support the Second Amendment

(6.1) February 2018: HuffPost devoted a splash headline to one Florida teenager who called the National Rifle Association “a terrorist organization” — while it consistently ignores or whitewashes actual Islamist terrorist organizations on U.S. soil, and beyond

On February 16, 2018, three days after the mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, FL, HuffPost published one of the most inflammatory headlines it ever featured, near the top of its front page — in which a teenager in Florida held up a sign that read, “NRA IS A TERRORIST ORGANIZATION”:

The next day, February 17, HuffPost elevated this to its splash headline:

The special significance, and insidiousness of HuffPost’s decision to elevate this teenager’s incendiary allegation, against a civic organization with zero ties whatsoever to the Parkland, FL high school murders, is that:

(1) In the wake of Islamist terror attacks on U.S. soil and beyond, HuffPost consistently refuses to acknowledge the ties to actual terrorist organizations, or terror-inciting imams (and viciously attacks anyone who proves these links, as “Islamophobes,” “racists” and “bigots”).  SaveTheWest has documented more than 50 case studies of this journalistic corruption on this page.

(2) Furthermore, even after it was irrefutably documented that the Pulse nightclub massacre was perpetrated by a devout Muslim, two months after a foreign imam was able to give a sermon in an Orlando mosque in which he claimed that Muslims must murder gays, “out of compassion,” HuffPost not only never reported this, it ran a headline that read, in part, “Religion had nothing to do with it,” and an editorial that blamed “Christian bigotry” for the killings.  This is but one of dozens of example of how HuffPost consistently undermines and endangers the LGBT community, by refusing to highlight and document relevant connections, as documented, as documented here:

Examples of HuffPost ignoring Islamist hate and incitement against members of the LGBT community (11 case studies)

(3) HuffPost also does the exact same thing in regards to the Jewish community of North America; despite a nearly a dozen cases of radical imams being caught — on video — preaching in mosques that Muslims have a holy obligation to attack and murder Jews, HuffPost has never reported a single incident.  Examples include:

(25) February 2017, Montreal, CA: Imam caught on video vilifying and inciting violence against Jews

(26) February 2017, Toronto, CA: Mosque apologizes for imam who openly preached that Jews should be murdered

(27) February 2017, Toronto, CA: Ryerson University fires teaching assistant who incited violence against Jews during prayer

(31) March 2017, Montreal, CA: Imam caught on video calling for Jews to be killed during sermon

(48) July 2017, Toronto, Canada: Legal complaint filed re imam who openly called for “elimination of Jews and Israel”

(49) July 2017, Davis, CA: Imam captured on video during sermon at Islamic center, calling for the murder of all Jews, everywhere

(50) July 2017, Riverside, CA: Imam captured on video during sermon at an Islamic center — which was attended by jihadists who murdered 14 in San Bernadino in 2015 — calling on Muslims to wage jihad against Jews, to help Allah destroy them

On a related note, as an outgrowth of HuffPost’s long-term pattern of anti-Semitic bias and incitement, HuffPost also consistently ignores terrorist acts and hate crimes perpetrated against Jews, by Muslims and others groups that fall into groups that it protects from exposure, at all costs.  SaveTheWest has documented more than 100 case studies of HuffPost’s protective bias in this regard, on the following pages:

Examples of HuffPost ignoring anti-Semitic hate incidents in America in 2016-2018 (86 case studies)

Examples of HuffPost ignoring anti-Semitic hate incidents in America in 2014-2015 (19 case studies)

Another act of HuffPost’s endemic anti-Semitic bias and incident, that bears striking resemblance to this FL teenager’s sign, was so raw and demonstrably irrational that the legendary Simon Wiesenthal Center publicly blasted HuffPost for “taking the art of lying to new depths”.  Specifically, it gave front-page splash headline coverage to a statement by lone Palestinian, containing thoroughly-debunked anti-Semitic lies and incitement, which could only result in the global spread of anti-Semitic hatred and bias.  This was but one of more than a dozen incidents of HuffPost effectively acting as a free PR service for Islamist terrorist organizations, which SaveTheWest thoroughly documented on this page:

Wiesenthal Center: Huffington Post Headline on Gaza ‘Takes Art of Lying to New Depths’, by Joshua Levitt, The Algemeiner, July 24, 2014.

SWC Cooper - takes art of lying to new levels

This is why HuffPost isolating and giving top coverage to such a headline as that above, when there is absolutely no basis whatsoever in its allegation, is so insidious.

(6.2) February 2018: HuffPost published a splash headline that claimed there has been “one school shooting every 60 hours” in 2018, when it knew or should have known this was a false claim — as the Washington Post documented hours later — as a means of smearing those who support the Second Amendment

On February 15, 2018, HuffPost published the following splash headline, as demonstrated in this full-page screencap by the Wayback Machine (Internet Archive) taken at 3:44pm:

Clicking on that headline brought the reader to this “story” page:

We’re Averaging One School Shooting Every 60 Hours In 2018; Wednesday’s shooting at a Florida high school is the 18th school shooting of the year, by Lydia O’Connor, Huffington Post, February 15, 2018.

There was just one problem with this shock headline: it was completely untrue, conjured up by a notorious anti-gun propaganda group.

The Daily Wire, a conservative website run by attorney Ben Shapiro, debunked this bogus claim within hours of it first appearing, on February 14 — an entire day before HuffPost ran its “story”:

Media Push The Claim There Have Been 18 School Shootings In 2018. Here Are The Facts, by Hank Berrien, Daily Wire, February 14, 2018. Excerpt:

In the wake of the horrific school shooting on Wednesday at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in South Florida, various news outlets, seemingly trying to convince the public that an astronomical number of school shootings have occurred in 2018, promulgated the claim that the Wednesday shooting was the 18th school shooting since January 1, 2018, by running with that narrative at the top of their articles.

But that narrative was gleaned from the anti-gun group Everytown for Gun Safety. Here are some facts, in order to separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to the facts…

Then, within hours of HuffPost’s headline, the Washington Post also blasted this claim, and exposed the insidious lies upon which it was built:

No, there haven’t been 18 school shootings in 2018. That number is flat wrong, by John Woodrow Cox and Steven Rich, Washington Post, February 15, 2018. Excerpt:

It is a horrifying statistic. And it is wrong.

The figure originated with Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit group, co-founded by Michael Bloomberg, that works to prevent gun violence and is most famous for its running tally of school shootings.  […]

Everytown has long inflated its total by including incidents of gunfire that are not really school shootings. Take, for example, what it counted as the year’s first: On the afternoon of Jan. 3, a 31-year-old man who had parked outside a Michigan elementary school called police to say he was armed and suicidal. Several hours later, he killed himself. The school, however, had been closed for seven months. There were no teachers. There were no students.

Also listed on the organization’s site is an incident from Jan. 20, when at 1 a.m. a man was shot at a sorority event on the campus of Wake Forest University. A week later, as a basketball game was being played at a Michigan high school, someone fired several rounds from a gun in the parking lot. No one was injured, and it was past 8 p.m., well after classes had ended for the day, but Everytown still labeled it a school shooting.

Within hours, HuffPost completely removed this false story from its front page

As this screencap of HuffPost’s front page from 10:48pm on February 15 shows, by this time — seven hours after it published its splash headline claiming there has been one school shooting every 60 hours — HuffPost had completely removed the story from its front page.

What HuffPost did not do, however, was to explain to its readers how it had misled them, and what steps it would be taking in the future to ensure something like this can never happen again.

This was one of several acts of false reporting that HuffPost engaged in after the Parkland, FL school shooting, to advance its anti-gun, racist agenda

If this were an isolated incident, or an “accident,” as HuffPost has often claimed in the past when it is caught doing something for which it is later embarrassed, this was one of multiple incidents in which it deliberately misled its readers after the school shooting in Parkland, FL, to advance its anti-gun, racist agenda.

Another incident is documented here:

(3.22) 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 it had already been debunked, was based on completely unproven allegations, and his targeted victims were apparently were all white

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