WASHINGTON POST MAGAZINE GIVES NAZI-ADJACENT DEMAGOGUE AMPLE OPPORTUNITY TO LIE

The Washington Post Magazine has decided that Sebastian Gorka -- the Nazi-linked ex-Trump staffer who's now a talk-radio and cable demagogue -- was worthy of a soft, friendly feature interview. It starts out only mildly objectionable -- Gorka's first answer, to a question about his parents' emigration to Britain, starts as a story of oppression and then degenerates into a sort of wingnut Mad Lib.

If you’re the child of parents who suffered as children under a Nazi regime and fascist occupation, and as grown-ups your parents were then persecuted and imprisoned, my father tortured and imprisoned by the [Hungarian] communist dictatorship, it gives you an understanding that perhaps some Americans who are born here don’t have as deeply, and it’s the words of the great Ronald Reagan, that the loss of liberty, the extinction of liberty is always but one generation away. I realized that Reagan was right, that America is the shining city on the hill, and it’s the only nation in the history of mankind that was founded not as an accident of ethnicity or royal dynasty but was founded on the principle of individual liberty and freedom based upon the unalienable rights that we are granted by our creator. For me it was a love affair with what America stands for.

But soon we arrive at this:

Statistics show that more domestic attacks in the last decade have been committed by suspects inspired by ideologies associated with the right than by suspects inspired by radical Islamism, or by hatred coming from the left. Do you think we strike the right balance in our national vigilance?

I think if you read the article we posted about the falsification of data on white supremacist attacks in the United States at our website, there’s a sevenfold greater likelihood of you being attacked by a jihadi terrorist than by somebody from the right. I find the fact that all of these studies seem to measure the statistics the day after 9/11 — just happen to leave out the 3,000 people killed on that day — is so telling.

The link goes to Gorka's homepage, but the article he's citing compares apples and oranges. The article chides "the left-wing Anti-Defamation League" (ha!) for issuing

a report claiming that white supremacists “and other far-right extremists” were responsible for 59% of deaths in terror attacks in the United States in the year 2017. They noticeably keep their definition of “far-right” deliberately vague, later admitting that deaths caused exclusively by white supremacists made up just 52% (18 out of 34) of 2017’s terrorist fatalities.

The report added that this made 2017 the fifth-deadliest year of terrorist violence in the United States since 1970 – yet it isn’t difficult to guess the ideology responsible for the other four years that outrank 2017, which is probably why the ADL deliberately ignores the vast preponderance of jihadi attacks.

The ADL doesn't ignore jihadi attacks -- in fact, it acknowledges that the most deadly attack in 2017 was a jihadist vehicular attack on a bike path in Manhattan that killed eight people. Nevertheless, right-wing violence (which can include anti-government violence that isn't overtly white nationalist) is the leading cause of death by domestic terrorists year in and year out. (The 9/11 terrorists weren't domestic terrorists.) In fact, the percentage of domestic terror deaths caused by right-wingers was higher over the 2008-2017 period -- 71% -- than it was in 2017 alone.

And then there's this:

Who’s going to win the Democratic presidential nomination, and which of the Dems do you think would have the best chance against President Trump?

I think Joe Biden is probably going to be attacked even more viciously by the radical base, so Biden is going to be in trouble very soon as another old, rich white guy. I think if you look at the expression in her eyes, the glint in her eyes, the person who wants it the most, the person who’s probably going to fight the hardest, is Kamala Harris. So I think it’s maybe a toss-up between those two. When it comes to who’s going to be most effective against the president: none of them. I mean, when you’re running on a campaign of post-birth abortion, higher taxes, open borders, sanctuary and benefits for illegal aliens, voting rights for murderers and terrorists, I think none of the standing politicians on the left have a snowball’s chance.

Democrats don't support "post-birth abortion," as is made abundantly clear by this fact-check in ... The Washington Post. Nor do they support "open borders." Supporting what is in effect ordinary end-of-life care for terminally ill newborns, with the option of substituting palliative care for medical interventions that won't meaningfully extend life or contribute to its quality, is not the same as supporting "post-birth abortion." Supporting DACA and reasonable accommodations of migrants fleeing oppression is not the same as supporting "open borders."

But the Post Magazine just let Gorka lie like this -- no corrections, no footnotes. (Similar interviews in The New York Times Magazine have footnotes.) This is journalistic malpractice.