Public allowance for the legitimacy of white supremacists gets a little help from weasel-wordsmithing New York Times authors, editors, and headline writers:
Car Hits Crowd After White Nationalist Rally in Charlottesville Ends in Violence
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and BRIAN M. ROSENTHAL, AUG. 12, 2017, New York Times
Oh golly gee, did the car drive itself? What, was it an innocent matter of someone trying to park a ‘90s-vintage Audi? Or did the driver’s foot slip and get stuck for a block and a half forward as well as back in reverse, at speed? So tragic, so blameless. What could’ve been done?
“White nationalists supremacists”—there, fixed that for you. Now you’re all ready to go off to work and face the big bad world. You can do it, I’m pulling for you!
White nationalists [ed.: supremacists] had long planned a demonstration over the city’s decision to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee. But the rally quickly exploded into racial taunting, shoving and outright brawling, prompting the governor to declare a state of emergency and the National Guard to join the police in clearing the area.
Wow, it’s as if the anti-racists made racist taunts too. Those un-self-aware naifs, where do they get off standing for everyone and not just their own kind?
And just how did all that fighting and the state of emergency come about? I’m sure it had nothing to do with the police standing back and just letting people beat and seriously injure each other, thus leaving an anarchic zone for people to commit crimes in public in broad daylight, ‘cause hey, they seem to want it. Who could’ve foreseen it would get so bad?
Sure, people on both sides were violent. It’s not up to us to determine who attacked whom or who defended themselves from whom. What good could come out of that kind of blame game? Let’s just call it even.
The president came under criticism from some who said he had not responded strongly enough against racism
Oh those unreasonable, never-satisfied “some!” Never mind that Teh Donald refused to directly condemn racists for their views or their violence, that he instead lumped racists and anti-racists together as “many sides.” I mean, who’s to say what objective reality is, anyway? Not us, the “paper of record,” nmm mmm.
After all, there are “many sides” to the story of a neo-Nazi, neo-Confederate, white supremacist hate rally and the inclusive, leftist, progressive, socialist, and (yes, they were also there) antifa counter-demonstration.
For sustained, erudite media criticism, also read Adam H. Johnson at FAIR and on Twitter.