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Wednesday Morning Rant

Contemptuous Lies

"Journalists" are the lowest form of life. They are people who are the "salt of the earth" in the sense that they're the salt tilled into farmland to destroy it as a barbarian horde withdraws. The most insulting thing that the trolls of the Press complex do is vomit out limitless column-inches telling their readers that red is green, that up is down and that your lying eyes and passing familiarity with the obvious is the real disinformation.

There was a splendid example of this a couple of years ago, when Trump was on the campaign trail. In the wake of the stories coming out Springfield, OH and Trump mentioning it in the debate that ultimately led to Biden's withdrawal, the Press response was as consistent as it was obviously absurd. The BBC provides this example, but it could have come from any of them:

During ABC's presidential debate, Trump said: "In Springfield, they are eating the dogs. The people that came in, they are eating the cats. They're eating – they are eating the pets of the people that live there."
But city officials have told BBC Verify there have been "no credible reports" that this has actually happened.

The officials said it isn't happening, you say? Well, that's good enough for me!

They did no reporting. They asked no real people in Springfield. They didn't send a "journalist" to go to migrant areas of Springfield and talk to the natives. They picked up the phone, got the official Party line from the local officials, printed it uncritically and asserted that anyone claiming otherwise was spreading disinformation from Trump and his villainous allies. This trip down memory lane is just to set the stage, because this is such a common Press tactic that it has become almost invisible. The progression is always the same:
1. There is a newsworthy event, or an event that becomes newsworthy due to wider circumstances
2. Somebody makes a believable assertion that throws the Party's policies into question, or there is something so obviously wrong that the normals can easily infer that something's up
3. The Press interviews Party officials or other apparatchiks who say that the thing isn't what it looks like
4. The Press breathlessly reports that it's not what you think, and you're subscribing to disinformative conspiracy theories if you disagree

It's happening again, in a big way, courtesy of the debacle in Ceuta. The events there are so obviously coordinated and so rapid that precisely nobody who has looked at the situation said, "well, that sure looks spontaneous and organic." Whatever is going on Cueta, it clearly isn't happening in a vacuum - so the press does what it does. The Party line is that no Spanish policy could be involved, that no EU policy could be involved, that no NGOs can be involved, that this whole thing is normal and natural and you're some kind of lunatic who got rooked by baseless conspiracy theories if you question it. The AP has a lovely fact check:

CLAIM: Spain’s move to legalize the status of immigrants caused the rush.

THE FACTS: Spain’s government is carrying out an amnesty for immigrants without residency permits who could prove they had been living in the country for at least five months and arrived before Jan. 1, 2026. Over 1 million people applied before the window closed at the end of last month.

So they did grant amnesty - but that doesn't apply to these guys because they came too recently. Nobody said that these guys would get amnesty because of the law change - but the AP certainly can't discuss how amnesty inevitably leads to more migration or sets the stage for additional violations of the border. Ignore the problem. Just say it's not a thing.

CLAIM: A misconstrued Spanish court ruling is to blame.

THE FACTS: Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has pushed the argument that a recent ruling by Spain’s Supreme Court had been intentionally misconstrued by migrant smugglers to convince thousands of people to cross the border by swimming around the border fence.
That court ruling said migrants arriving by sea could not be summarily deported without due process, unlike those who cross by land or climb the border fence because they had not crossed a physical barrier.
...
"The departures were promoted in a certain way. At first, people were hearing that the border was open, and then everyone started referring to the Spanish court decision. That contributed to the crossings," said Achraf Maimouni, a human-rights activist.

So the ruling was construed as saying it said exactly what it said, but the problem is that people noticed that the ruling said what it said. Amazing! AP "debunked" this one by verifying it. Top-notch work.

CLAIM: Those who crossed will end up in mainland Europe.

THE FACTS: The Ceuta crossings have led to political leaders in Italy, France and other EU nations to take measures that appear aimed at stopping people from entering their countries. Premier Giorgia Meloni threatened to suspend Italy’s open-border Schengen agreement with Spain even though Italy doesn’t share a border with Spain and receives many more migrants crossing the Mediterranean than Spain. French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said France would also strengthen border checks with Spain.

This one is amazing. "This claim is absolutely true - but because it's true, some other European countries are on the brink of destroying the treaty basis for the entire European Union, so it now isn't true." That's one hell of a take. I'd love it if this spells the beginning of the end of the EU, but claiming that countries abrogating Schengen because of the risks associated with Schengen means that Schengen presents no risks is such a baffling conclusion that only a genuine retard - a Press-grade retard - could come up with it.

This tactic has long since become absurd. People see what's happening and know that something's rotten and talk about it, so the Press comes marching in to interview some officials or NGO types and then claim that none of this is what it so obviously is. A group of prominent liars asks another group of prominent liars a question and then uncritically publishes the deceitful response while liberally filling in the blanks however they please - and then have the temerity to lament the loss of institutional trust. It s not difficult to explain the latter, as this level of contemptuous and deceitful stupidity is so common and so normal that it has become transparent to the point of tedium.