Rush Limbaugh Wonders if New Zealand Massacre Is False Flag by Leftist to Make Right-Wingers Look Bad
Media Matters, which listens to Rush Limbaugh so that I don’t have to, pulled a bit from Rush’s show today in which the talk radio host suggests that the New Zealand shooter might be a leftist posing as a right-winger to make Donald Trump and the entire conservative movement look bad.
That this is a completely predictable reaction from Limbaugh does not make it any less depressing. But Limbaugh’s role in life is to help the right disclaim any and all responsibility for its dangerous rhetoric on a host of issues, including immigration, from Trump on down.
Limbaugh seizes on the Trump angle right from the beginning, telling his audience that “the manifesto includes the claim from the terrorist shooter that he’s not a conservative, that he’s not a Christian, that he identifies as an eco-fascist, and he adds that he disagrees with Trump on politics. This is an amazing list of things to put in your manifesto. It indicates an awareness of how media is going to tend to report this.”
Putting in a list of reasons justifying a terrorist act is the very point of a manifesto, so there is nothing “amazing” about this. As for Trump, the manifesto’s author says that while he does not see the president as “a policy maker and leader,” he does view him as “a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose.”
This is followed by some complaints that the media has manufactured a narrative of more right-wing terrorism existing in America than any other kind. In truth, this is not so much a narrative as it is a fact backed up by data.
This is followed by some complaints about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez criticizing the National Rifle Association, complete with pronouncing the congresswoman’s name with a phony Hispanic accent. (Ocasio-Cortez has no such accent.)
Then we get to the heart of the issue, as Limbaugh notes, “there’s an ongoing theory that the shooter himself may in fact be a leftist who writes the manifesto and then goes out and performs the deed purposely to smear his political enemies.”
Who is having this debate is left unstated.
Limbaugh continues, “The left is this insane, they are this crazy. And then if that’s exactly what the guy is trying to do then he’s hit a home run, because right there on Fox News: “Shooter is an admitted white nationalist who hates immigrants.”
Either Limbaugh thinks Fox News is now a leftist organization, or he is mad at the network for falling for the false flag that is the shooter’s manifesto.
Listen to the entire clip at the top of the post, via Media Matters.
