Blowing The Whistle On Bad, Hateful Journalism, Part 4
Whistleblower magazine has always been the playground for the hypocritical partisan obsessions of WorldNetDaily managing editor David Kupelian -- even as far back as 2018 and 2019.
ConWebWatch has been documenting how WorldNetDaily’s sparsely read Whistleblower magazine served as the (relatively small) megaphone for managing editor David Kupelian, who engages in projection and hypocrisy to accuse Democrats of the same exact rhetorical claims he and WND have been promoting for years. This time, we’ll be going back a little further and examining how Kupelian and crew did this in 2018 and 2019.
‘Mass Hysteria’
The July 2018 edition of Whistleblower magazine has the theme of “Mass Hysteria,” and it was promoted thusly:
Americans are living through an era of mass hysteria, in which Democrat politicians, entertainment celebrities and media pundits daily compare the president of the United States to Adolf Hitler and his supporters to Nazis, fascists and white supremacists.
[…]
After all, if Donald Trump actually were another Hitler, virtually no form of “resistance” would be morally off-limits in the heroic quest to save the world from another Holocaust. Indeed, all-out resistance would become a moral imperative.
Thus it is that Americans daily witness the surreal spectacles of leftwing mobs in action – of White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump aide Steven Miller and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen all being harassed by frenzied, screaming mobs while trying to eat dinner in various Washington, D.C.-area restaurants (in Sanders’ case, actually being ejected from the premises). Florida’s pro-Trump Attorney General Pam Bondi is similarly abused and chased out of a Tampa movie theater (ironically there to see the new Mr. Rogers documentary, “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”). All the while, Rep. Maxine Waters hysterically urges angry Trump-haters to ambush the president’s staffers everywhere, Obama CIA chief John Brennan accuses Trump of treason, Rep. Steve Cohen calls for a military coup to oust the president, antifa members openly brag to video journalists that they would “murder” the president if he showed up at their rally, actor Peter Fonda tweets “We should rip Barron Trump from his mother’s arms and put him in a cage with pedophiles,” MSNBC contributor Jill Wine-Banks compares the president’s meeting with Vladimir Putin to Pearl Harbor, the Cuban Missile Crisis and Kristallnacht, while another MSNBC pundit, Donny Deutsch, thunders on-air that every single Trump voter in America is – quote – a “Nazi.”
This is textbook mass hysteria, approaching that which led to the Salem witch trials.
In reality, Hitler murdered 11 million people, while Trump has murdered none, so obviously Trump is not Hitler.
This is all projection, of course. President Obama never murdered a single person, let alone 11 million people, but that didn’t keep WND from spending eight years likening Obama to Hitler, and it certainly never worried about the “mass hysteria” it might cause in doing so.
And as far as accusing Trump of treason goes, WND did that on a regular basis. For example:
In a 2012 WND column, headlined “Impeach Obama for treason,” Tom Tancredo demanded that “Congress must consider removing Barack Obama for giving aid and comfort to America’s enemies – and that is treason against the United States.”
WND columnist Larry Klayman ranted in another 2012 column: “Our so-called president must not only be quickly removed from office by all legal means, but he must also be prosecuted for treason. If the Justice Department or a military tribunal won’t act, then the “citizen’s grand jury,” which the Supreme Court has acknowledged exists in principle in the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, must now be taken out of the legal closet to indict Obama for these treasonous acts.”
In 2013, WND columnist Erik Rush argued that Obama was guilty of treason, adding that “In most countries, including the United States of America, there remain provisions for the execution of those convicted of treason.”
In 2015, Matt Barber wrote of Obama: “Just a few short decades ago this anti-American Marxist would not only have been accused of treason, he would have been tried for it.”
WND managing editor David Kupelian repeated much of this in an Aug. 30 column, including the part about how Donny Deutsch said “that every single Trump voter in America is – quote – a ‘Nazi.'” (That’s not quite what he said.) But Kupelian seems to have forgotten how he denigrated people who voted for Trump. Here’s his description of them following the 2012 election:
As a nation – and I’m speaking now of the voting majority, not all of us, obviously – we have squandered the priceless inheritance of our forefathers. We have wandered off into a far country and wasted our substance on immorality and profligate spending. We mock the faith of our fathers. We ignore the Constitution they bequeathed to us. We spit on the moral code they gave us, on which America and Western Civilization were founded. Our wealth – once the natural reward of the mighty engines of industry and innovation that thrive in a free country – is largely an illusion today, based on debt.
[…]
Remember, America’s problem is not Barack Obama. Our problem is that half of our population, after watching a lying, supremely demagogic president methodically unravel America for four excruciating years, could see fit to elect him a second time. Our problem is that millions of us think it’s perfectly fine to rip apart innocent children before they’re born, and to steal from those who work hard and “redistribute” their goods to others. Our problem is that millions of us think it’s wonderful and proper for men to marry men and women to marry women and to persecute those who rightly point out that this is both immoral and mad.
Our problem is that millions of us – and more to the point, virtually the entirety of government, academia, popular culture and “mainstream media” – embrace the most absurd, preposterous and destructive lies as though they were great and enlightened truths.
Millions of people living in American today are, quite literally, madly in love with lies, deception and selfishness.
Kupelian does manage to avoid calling Obama voters Nazis, but he certainly goes up to that line by finding almost every other derogatory term in the thesaurus.
Once again, WND is complaining that other people are doing to Trump what it did to Obama. The hypocrisy is staggering.
‘Masters of Projection’
The January 2019 issue of Whistleblower was titled “MASTERS OF PROJECTION: How today’s Democrats accuse their opponents of the very evil they perpetrate,” and it was promoted thusly:
In psychology, projection is just one of many defense mechanisms people unconsciously employ to avoid facing uncomfortable feelings within themselves – by ascribing these unpleasant qualities to another person.
But in today’s political and cultural battles, projection is a tactic of all-out warfare.
The plain truth is, on issue after issue, one side in the raging war over America’s future is literally accusing the other side of the very attitudes, offenses and crimes of which it itself is guilty.
[…]
“After 20 years of producing Whistleblower magazine for WND,” says best-selling author and WND Managing Editor David Kupelian, “this has turned out to be one of my favorite issues. It’s smart, original, and it shines a fresh new light on the vexing political and cultural wars now ravaging our nation. On issues from ‘Russia collusion’ to racism, and from tolerance to voter fraud, we document how the left literally accuses others of their own misdeeds.”
Kupelian and Co. will never admit it, but WND is a major source of projection. To name just a few examples:
It has complained about people likening President Trump to Hitler after it spent years likening President Obama to Hitler.
It has lamented that people have called for Trump’s impeachment — while it lamely pushed to impeach Obama.
It has fretted over fake news despite being a prolific generator of it.
Kupelian’s column for the issue expanded on the theme, declaring at one point that “The left is so good at projection, it even projects the accusation of projection onto others!” He added as one example: “Members of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign did spread the theory that Obama was born in Kenya and constitutionally ineligible to be president.” The 2016 McClatchy article to which Kupelian links to prove this also notes that the one Clinton campaign staffer who spread the story was fired and that a reporter to whom Clinton adviser Sidney Blumenthal fed the claim (he has denied doing so) investigated it and found it to be false.
In other words, it would have died a discredited claim had WND not picked it up and spent the next eight years pushing it. Kupelian is simply seeking retroactive justification for pushing a story he knew or should have known was false for the sole purpose of engaging in the politics of personal destruction against Obama.
Isn’t that projection too?
Kupelian also unironically wrote: “There are no rules when you’re battling Hitler, and that’s exactly how the left likes it – no rules. Of course, Trump is not Hitler and the GOP is not fascist, Nazi or evil.” Kupelian, Joseph Farah and the rest of WND also likes it when there’s no rules — that’s why it had no problem tarring Obama with the Hitler slur it now conveniently despises.
The lack of irony continued in an anonymously written Feb. 7 WND article on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi saying that Trump is “projecting his own unruliness” when he attacks his critics. But instead of directly responding to Pelosi, the article turns into a promotion for the magazine, copying liberally from the earlier promo and Kupelian’s column.
In attacking liberals for allegedly projecting in their criticisms of Trump, Kupelian and WND are themselves projecting. Now that’s irony.
‘Age of the Hoax’
The March 2019 issue of Whistleblower was themed “AGE OF THE HOAX: How the progressive left creates, promotes and celebrates fake crimes.” It apparently argues that Jussie Smollett’s alleged hate-crime hoax isn’t “any different from what today’s hard-left Democratic Party does every day from morning until night.” WND managing editor David Kupelian went on to complain that “we are expected to embrace their favorite hoaxes – ‘the world will end in 12 years’ – as existential threats, while obviously real crises – like the radically intensifying invasion across our southern border – they mock as ‘hoaxes’ and ‘manufactured crises.'”
Ironic, since WND was the perpetrator of two of the biggest political hoaxes in recent years: the Obama birther hoax and and the Seth Rich hoax. WND has never apologized for the lies it spread about Obama, nor about the fact that it knew or should have known that its Seth Rich conspiracy theory was bogus even as it continued to spread it. WND bigwigs like Kupelian and Joseph Farah demanded that we embrace these hoaxes that, if they actually cared about truth and honesty, they knew were false.
But we know they don’t. And that brings us to another bit of irony: One of the contributors to this particular issue of Whistleblower is Dinesh D’Souza, who is best known these days for spreading false claims about history, then getting repeatedly dunked on by actual historians like Kevin Kruse who actually know what they’re talking about.
Refusal to address that gaping hole in WND’s logic doesn’t help to rebuild its long-lost credibility, which is a big reason WND is in perpetual financial trouble.
‘Hating Men’
The theme of the April 2019 edition of Whistleblower magazine was “HATING MEN,” and David Kupelian has posted his lead essay. After cherry-picking a few examples of male-bashing feminists, he ponders: “Question: How can intelligent, educated adults in 2019 America, where women are freer and better off than in any country or at any time in history, possibly be consumed with such unbridled hatred for an entire group that comprises fully half of the population? Especially when that half of the population has fought all of our wars, cleared all of our wilderness, invented everything, constructed our civilization, and protected and sacrificed itself for women and children from day one.”
Kupelian’s answer: Hating men is the same thing as hating God, because if you’re not of the proper Judeo-Christian mindset, you’re a Marxist. No, really:
For Western nations rapidly transitioning into post-Christian societies, two opposite worldviews now openly war with each other. One is the traditional Judeo-Christian, biblical, patriarchal “prism” and the other is based on Marxist notions of radical equality.
The Bible – and the historical, cultural, moral and spiritual worldview it illuminates and champions – is utterly patriarchal. God is neither our Mother nor a genderless cosmic being, but our heavenly Father. God the Father created the first man, Adam; then out of Adam He created Eve. Almost all the Old Testament prophets were men. Jesus Christ was a man, as were all His disciples and apostles. Down through the centuries, the vast majority of Jewish and Christian religious leaders, from popes and priests to evangelists, rabbis and ministers, have been men. So, for that matter, have the vast majority of national political leaders.
Why? Is it, as alleged by those sworn to “tear down the patriarchy,” simply because men take advantage of their greater size, strength and aggressiveness to oppress women by bullying them into submission? Or is there a higher, indeed transcendent, principle – a divine order – evident in the overwhelmingly dominant leadership role men have exercised throughout human history?
In the Judeo-Christian worldview, just as God causes electrons to orbit around atomic nuclei and planets to orbit around suns so everything doesn’t crash into everything else and quickly descend into smoldering chaos, He also ordains a certain order to life on earth – to prevent much the same chaotic outcome.
[…]
Competing against this traditional worldview, which for centuries admirably served as the basis for a stable and prosperous America, is today’s essentially godless cult of radical equality. Seen through this prism, every race, religion, ideology, culture, ethical system and sexual/gender orientation, no matter how bizarre, immoral or insane, is as valid and worthwhile as every other (well, except for Christianity, conservatives, Republicans, men and white people in general). At the core of this worldview, there is no God, no divine moral law, no higher purpose of life binding us all together; there is only power and glory for the individual and tribe. And since there’s no ultimate meaning to anything, there can be no real differences between the sexes, other than those we ourselves decree.
Thus, everything Americans of previous generations thought was solid and real, even the most basic biology, is now considered merely the result of “social constructs” overseen by society’s oppressor class. So, for example, whether there are two genders as we once believed, or 24 or 48 (Facebook currently offers 71 gender choices, but a more recent online list includes 112), we are living in a time when every person is encouraged to pursue his, her or zir own “truth.”
But in reality, without the Living God overshadowing people in their relationships with one another, it doesn’t ultimately matter whether we have a patriarchal culture (Muslim culture is oppressively and abusively “patriarchal”), or a revolutionary matriarchy with a radical feminist queen at the top, or some dreamed-up totalitarian nightmare regime of enforced radical equality. The result will be the same: ever-evolving anxiety, conflict, loss of freedom, madness, violence and slavery. One of our founding fathers, William Penn, put it perfectly: “If man is not governed by God, he will be ruled by tyrants.”
Truth is, what we’re really beholding in today’s growing condemnation of men – not of the Harvey Weinsteins of the world, but disdain toward men in general – is primal rage and rebellion against God and the divine laws, order and values He so wisely has provided for our eternal benefit.
That framing is, of course, cartoonish. Kupelian must describe those he despises in the most radical, denigrating terms he can think of as part of a mysterious, monolithic “left” — while depicting his own right-wing views as being the only possible correct viewpoint. It’s that stark binary viewpoint that has doomed WND, and his insistence on sticking with it despite flailing to keep his job alive shows he has learned nothing from the years of trying to keep WND alive (or from his heart attack).
‘The New Barbarians’
The May 2019 issue of Whistleblower is about “The New Barbarism,” which claims to argue that “in every meaningful way, today’s far left, which has already taken over – one might even say ‘raided and devoured’ – the Democratic Party, is now dragging America down a barbaric road to ruin.”
The lead essay by Kupelian is yet another example of his liberal-bashing claptrap, and the errors start with the very first paragraph: “‘Socialism or barbarism!’ That’s the classic Marxist theme, the title of many far-left books, and the stark existential choice posed by socialists of all stripes: Either adopt our enlightened way – or sink into barbarism.” It’s actually the title of one book, not “many.” But exaggeration is the order of the day for Kupelian; he goes on to suggest that today’s liberals are barely different from the murderous regimes of Mao Zedong and Pol Pot.
Kupelian then claimed that among the “institutions targeted for destruction” by liberals is “American history,” adding: “Everyone has watched in amazement over the last several years as activists on the left have waged an ongoing campaign to eliminate America’s historical memory, starting with toppling Civil War statues across the country.” As he has before, Kupelian is confusing the winning and losing sides in the Civil War. Nobody’s tearing down monuments to the winners of the Civil War — it’s only those honoring the Confederacy, the side that fought a war against the United States and lost.
Kuupelian also complained that “The Democrats have never accepted the election of Donald Trump as president – as demonstrated by the incredibly damaging Russia collusion hoax, which in reality has constituted a full-fledged attempted coup d’etat.” Kupelian seems to have forgotten that his boss, Joseph Farah, never accepted the election of Barack Obama as president — we can presume he never has either — and that he helped Farah attempt a coup d’etat by relentlessly pushing the birther hoax.
Kupelian also ranted about “the Islam problem,” huffing, “Islam, by its very nature, and as history proves again and again, tends not to assimilate but to conquer. It’s politically incorrect in the extreme to say so, but ‘barbarian invasion’ is what Islam has specialized in for most of the last 14 centuries.”
Kupelian still hasn’t figured out that kneejerk, factually dubious, right-wing ranting like this is one key reason WND is going down the tubes.
‘The Lawless Ones’
Kupelian’s column “The Lawless Ones” — part of the September 2019 Whistleblower theme issue — portrayed Trump as the victim of purported lawlessness instead of the perpetrator — is filled with ranting about “the left” and how its alleged “full-on assault on the very laws – moral, legal, economic and scientific – that govern and protect every aspect of our lives is transforming America right before our eyes.”
Kupelian engages in the usual right-wing claptrap, complaining that President Trump is facing an “attempted coup d’etat with the ‘Trump-Ukraine collusion hoax.'” Of course, Kupelian would never concede that if impeachment is a “coup d’etat,” the impeachment of President Clinton was by definition also a coup attempt. He also wrote:
Democrats violate the laws of economics continuously, scheming to spend not just more money than America has, but more than the world has. The Green New Deal proposed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, which every Democratic presidential candidate has signed on to, could cost as much as $93 trillion – about $600,000 per American household – says a study co-authored by the former director of the Congressional Budget Office.
In fact, as we’ve documented, that very former CBO director has admitted the $93 trillion number is bogus and based on assumptions that have nothing to do with the costs of transitioning to carbon-free electricity and transportation. Kupelian then plays his usual game of portraying people like himself to be morally superior to anyone whose views disagree with his own:
Clearly the left, including pretty much the entirety of the Democratic Party’s national leadership and its presidential candidates, is now in outright rebellion against the laws of life itself – legal, moral, economic, religious and scientific.
Why?
Laws created by man – good laws, anyway – are based on largely self-evident moral law, God’s law. Thus we make laws against stealing because it’s wrong to steal, and we have laws against murder because murder is wrong, immoral, predatory and against God’s law. And so on.
[…]
Violating and disregarding the law is not just something the left blindly does, as though it were stumbling into it. Rather, the left’s very identity is tied up in ignoring the law – natural law, God’s law, constitutional law, biological law, sound economics, and all the hard-won lessons of history. The law represents a higher standard than oneself and thus represents restraint. But the left doesn’t acknowledge any higher standard than itself, nor does it tolerate any restraint, borders, limitations or prohibitions on itself – only on you. Lawlessness and rebellion, then, is the core identity of the radical left, which is obsessed with recreating the world in its own divine image and thus, in effect, rewriting the laws of life.
In short, the left is hell-bent on playing God.
Never mind that Kupelian’s idea of morality is to use WND to spread lies and fake news about President Obama and bogus conspiracy theories about Seth Rich (which Kupelian and Co. still won’t admit are bogus). And he wants you to think that he’s a better person than you for doing so.
‘Green New Steal’
Kupelian’s article for the current issue of WorldNetDaily’s sparsely read Whistleblower magazine — with the theme of the Green New Deal being “the Democratic Party’s ultimate coup d’etat” — is a lot of ranting and getting things wrong about climate change.
He tries to discredit the idea of climate science by citing views about the climate from the 19th century, as if education and knowledge about the subject hasn’t changed over the past 125 years. Then he touts non-experts as experts; at one point he devotes several paragraphs to how “Village News Publisher Julie Reeder explained” how “the earth, ironically, is getting greener every day.” But Reeder has no apparent background in environmental science; she runs a small-town newspaper in California.
Kupelian then highlighted:
Indeed, in late September, more than 500 scientists and professionals in climate and related fields signed a letter to the United Nations saying “There is no climate emergency.”
“Climate science,” their declaration reads, “should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific. Scientists should openly address the uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real benefits as well as the imagined costs of adaptation to global warming, and the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of mitigation.”
The scientists added: “There is no statistical evidence that global warming is intensifying hurricanes, floods, droughts and suchlike natural disasters, or making them more frequent. However, CO2-mitigation measures are as damaging as they are costly. For instance, wind turbines kill birds and bats, and palm-oil plantations destroy the biodiversity of the rainforests.”
Since there is no “climate emergency,” they conclude, “there is no cause for panic and alarm. We strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy proposed for 2050.”
But that letter is meaningless. As actual experts point out, few of the signatories are professionals in biology, ecology, or environmental science, and the claims cited in it ranges from being cherry-picked to misleading to just plain wrong.
But telling the truth is not on Kupelian’s agenda — propping up a right-wing narrative is. And a key part of that is attacking the bogeyman that is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Green New Deal she’s championing with a big ol’ WND-style conspiracy theory:
But wait.
What if the Green New Deal is not about remedying the supposed catastrophic effects of climate change? What if it’s all just a ploy, a Trojan horse designed to bring about a full-scale socialist revolution in America?
It turns out, that’s exactly what Ocasio-Cortez’ own former chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti – widely acknowledged as the brains behind the socialist New York congresswoman – revealed during a recent media interview: The real purpose of the Green New Deal is to turn America socialist.
In a story reported by the Washington Post, Chakrabarti stunningly admitted: “The interesting thing about the Green New Deal is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all. Do you guys think of it as a climate thing?” asked Chakrabarti. “Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”
We are beholding one of the greatest hoaxes in world history.
Make no mistake. It may be tempting to dismiss Ocasio-Cortez, whose arrogance is exceeded only by her ignorance. But just beyond this colorful public character with the bright red lipstick is the entire elite globalist left, which for decades has been dreaming and scheming about implementing their precious socialist new world order.
And they think now is finally their time.
But first, they have to get rid of the great disrupter of their plans: President Donald J. Trump.
Spoken like a guy who’s worked at WND for a couple decades.