“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” — John 8:32
After the shootings in Dayton, OH, and El Paso, TX, the rhetoric from the political Left has become increasingly brazen, particularly regarding the distortion of the truth. This is particularly the case with the mainstream media (MSM) and the Democratic political machine. “Distorting” the truth is when assertions made contain a kernel of truth, but surround that kernel with false conclusions and blatant inaccuracies in order to distort the truth’s meaning. As Nazi propaganda minister Paul Joseph Goebbels stated, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it”. Compare this remark to Nancy Pelosi’s video about smear campaigns, and suddenly the news seems more like Orwellian Newspeak. The words that should reveal truth instead cover it, and well-repeated lie assumes the equivalency of Gospel truth.
As one example, increasingly inaccurate distortions of the truth about mass shooters are now ubiquitous. Since the El Paso and Dayton shootings, the MSM and the Democratic party have repeatedly asserted that mass shooters are almost entirely comprised of “white supremacists” motivated by “white extremist ideology.” They sometimes caveat with “or almost all” or “virtually all”, but they insidiously imply that mass shooters are predominantly white nationalists, and that they are part of a larger “white nationalist” terrorist threat. This distortion grows with each report, and drives calls for the FBI to focus its resources toward domestic white supremacist terror above all other threats facing the nation, including Islamist threats, which killed over 3,000 people on 9-11. These assertions are not only contrafactual, but also stigmatize one gender and race, particularly conservatives within that group; these assertions also inspire and motivate the violence of groups like BLM and Antifa, who justify their behavior as “activism” against purported white violence.
However, the facts about mass shooters belies a far different story. Contrary to claims that most mass shooters are white, of the mass shooters in recent decades, only 54% were white. While this percentage may seem inordinately high, it actually constitutes an underrepresentation in relation to the total white population, which is about 62%. Moreover, these numbers account for public mass shootings, which only constitute 15% of all homicides. In numbers were taken of all violent shootings, whites comprised a miniscule fraction of the white percentage in America. Contrary to media reports of exclusively-white violence, the San Bernardino and Orlando mass shooters were Muslims of Asian/Middle Eastern descent, the Virginia Tech shooter was of Asian descent, and the Virginia Beach shooter was African-American. These are but a few of the deviations from the ‘orthodox’ narrative.
From the evidence available, not only are white shooters less of a threat (based on percentages of racial groups related to their representation in crime perpetration within the nation), but white mass shooters are most often not white supremacists. While the shooter in El Paso wrote a manifesto in which he justified his attacks using anti-immigrant motives (he also made pro-environment and anti-corporation/capitalism sentiments), his was a deviant case among mass shooters in the US. The deadliest shooting in modern history, the Las Vegas shooting, was targeted against whites at a country music concert, and was clearly not the result of white supremacist ideology. Furthermore, many of the recent shooters have identified with the Democratic Party and Liberal causes; the shooter in Dayton was an avowed Elizabeth Warren supporter. The only clear connection among shooters concerns the role of fatherhood: the majority of mass shooters were males raised in broken households, often without fathers. If the objective facts about mass shooters were reported, we might conceive of an effort to encourage intact, traditional families as one means of combating shootings. Instead, these shootings have become ideological fodder for political panhandling.
Similar in case and ideologically-driven conclusions are attempts to label Trump a racist. When Trump spoke about parts of Baltimore being “rat” infested, the Left went into overdrive ; CNN, MSNBC, and others accused Trump of making racist statements about African-Americans, conveniently ignoring Trump’s statement that New Hampshire (98% white) was “a drug-infested den” due to the opioid epidemic. Apparently, calling problems what they are is . . . a problem. Contrary to MSM editorials, Baltimore is indeed rat-infested; the city receives funds to handle the problem, with mixed results. But, if rats were not enough, other examples of Trump’s ‘racist’ tendencies quickly followed. In a closed door meeting with Congressional leaders, some Democratic politicians claimed President Trump called Haiti and parts of Africa a derogatory term. Trump and the Congressional Republicans at the meeting denied those allegations. Regardless of the disputed accounts, the Left not only presented the Democratic allegations as fact, but then exaggerated and repeated them to validate a larger narrative of Trump as a racist. Many have also vociferously repudiated an Edison poll, which found that Trump won more of the minority vote in 2020 than any Republican candidate had won since Richard Nixon in 1960.
Trump won higher minority votes in 2016 and increased those numbers in 2020, in spite of the Left’s claims of his insensitivity and xenophobia. When Donald Trump announced his candidacy, for example, he said that he believed Mexico was not sending “its best” over the border illegally; he claimed that many were likely rapists and other criminals, though he believed some were fine people. Contrary to multiple media reports. Trump did not say that all Mexicans in America or Mexico were criminals, nor that America should stop or limit legal immigration from Mexico. His statement solely addressed those illegally crossing the southern border, and the danger he believed they may pose to America. Many can disagree with Trump’s statement about those illegally crossing the southern border. The danger emerges not with disagreement, but with the attempts to distort the truth. To quote Flannery O’ Connor, “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.” Truth shapes narrative–not the reverse.
It’s time we demand that truth from those reporting the news. It’s time to fit the news that’s fit to print, rather than “the news that fits.” For the American republic is predicated upon the people of America learning the truth, which then drives public discourse, decision-making, and voting. As Christ exhorts us: “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free”. It’s time we heeded Christ’s words and legislatively reprimand the media to do the same.
Bill Connor, is an Orangeburg, S.C. attorney, Army Infantry Colonel and author of the book “Articles from War.”
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