Why Did a Small Gathering of White Nationalists Warrant Front-Page Coverage?

donaldtrump_6The Wall Street Journal‘s Jason Riley, who said after the first debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton that the former did nothing to help his standing with women and minority voters, recently wrote that Democrats, not Republicans, are obsessed with race.

Since when does a weekend gathering of “nearly 275” white nationalists in a country of more than 320 million people warrant front-page coverage in major newspapers? Since the election of Donald Trump, apparently.

The same media outlets that insisted Mr. Trump wouldn’t beat Hillary Clinton have spent the past two weeks misleading the public about why he did. Breathless coverage of a neo-Nazi sideshow in the nation’s capital—where antiracism protesters almost outnumbered attendees, according to the Washington Post—helps liberals illustrate their preferred “basket of deplorables” explanation for Mrs. Clinton’s loss.

A reporter for the Daily Caller noted that the National Policy Institute, a white nationalist group, received three times more media coverage (their leader Richard Spencer, particularly) than four years of March for Life events.

President-elect Trump won because white Americans who voted for Obama switched allegiance and voted for Trump earlier this month, and the reason wasn’t bigotry.

Part of Mr. Trump’s strategy was to turn out lots of Republicans who stayed home in 2012, but the president-elect appears to have won white voters by a margin similar to that of Mr. Romney. However, Mr. Trump was able to muster an Electoral College majority by taking advantage of lax support for Mrs. Clinton in the metro areas of large, consequential states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. That the Democratic nominee failed to speak to the concerns of Obama voters is not the fault of the alt-right.

Democratic primary loser Sen. Bernie Sanders said that Trump appealed to former Obama voters in a way Clinton hadn’t. But mainstream media, leftist to the core, frames stories in a way to support their biases.

Group identity is a doctrine and group grievances are to be nurtured and exploited politically no matter the damage to civil discourse. It’s the type of thinking that allows the left to be outraged that the likes of Steve Bannon have Mr. Trump’s ear, and indifferent that the likes of Al Sharpton have had Mr. Obama’s.

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore – Wikimedia Commons

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2 comments

  1. Riley is in bed with the progressive liberals and dances to what ever tune they happen to play. He is not a journalist, merely a propagandist.

    • I see Riley as clearly a, non controversial, say what’s safe to say, establishment Republican who most of all fears relevancy.