Anti-semitic lies versus the boots of truth

At a time when the Democratic Party has not yet universally condemned the heinous Oct. 7 Hamas attack on innocent Jewish women, children and citizens without reservation, it takes a lot of chutzpah on their behalf to accuse anyone of being “anti-semitic.”

And yet, that is exactly what Democrats have done with North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson. They have called him the “Anti-Semitic GOP nominee for Governor Who Likes to Quote Hitler!” based on statements they and their friends in the news media have deliberately distorted and politicized.

“Rumour, than whom no other evil thing is faster,” wrote the Roman poet Virgil in “The Aeneid” two decades before the birth of Christ. “Fama, malum qua non aliud velocius ullum.”

How fast did it take a false “rumour” to get around the known world back then ― a year; a decade; a century? Lies and rumors circumnavigate the world in a nanosecond today. No one in the mainstream media who fans the flames to push them out ever corrects them ― because by then, it is too late.

Jonathan Swift, an Anglo-Irish political writer in 1710, amplified what Virgil observed two millennia previous:

“Besides, as the vilest Writer has his Readers, so the greatest Liar has his Believers; and it often happens, that if a Lie be believ’d only for an Hour, it has done its Work, and there is no farther occasion for it. Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men come to be undeceiv’d, it is too late; the Jest is over, and the Tale has had its Effect…”

Not to be outdone, British preacher C.H. Spurgeon simplified the work of deceit in his 1855 sermon, “Joseph Attacked by the Archers”:

“If you want truth to go round the world you must hire an express train to pull it; but if you want a lie to go round the world, it will fly; it is as light as a feather, and a breath will carry it. It is well said in the old Proverb, ‘A lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on.’”

The following are two statements from a Facebook post and a speech by Robinson. Sentences in italics are the next lines which were selectively left out to make him look like a fascist dictator, which he is not.

The first is from his speech at the Moms for Liberty Conference in Philadelphia in July 2023:

“Here’s the thing. Whether you’re talking about Adolf Hitler, whether you’re talking about Chairman Mao, whether you’re talking about Stalin, whether you’re talking about Pol Pot, whether you’re talking about Castro in Cuba, or whether you’re talking about a dozen other despots all around the globe, it is time for us to get back and start reading some of those quotes.”

“It’s time for us to start teaching our children about the dirty, despicable, awful things that those communist and socialist despots did in our history.”

He is right. Children need to learn how murderous Hitler, Stalin and Mao were so they don’t fall in love with the promises of undiluted socialism which can turn into communism overnight.

The fact-checkers at Reuters news service in London ― of course, not from a North Carolina news source ― were one of the very few to point out the selective editing of Robinson’s speech. It did not matter ― left-wing political types ran with the “Robinson quotes Hitler!” trope on social media which persists today.

The second is from one of Robinson’s Facebook posts in March 2018:

“The center and leftist leaning Weimar Republic put heavy gun ownership restrictions on German citizens long before the Nazis took power. This foolishness about Hitler disarming MILLIONS of Jews and then marching them off to concentration camps is a bunch of hogwash.

Repeating that hogwash makes the conservative argument against the current attempts by liberal Marxists to push Unconstitutional gun control measures in the Nation look FOOLISH.

The “hogwash” to which Robinson was referring was not implying the Holocaust never occurred as his detractors say. He was admonishing a conservative in a gun rights forum to stop saying Hitler disarmed the Jews since the Weimer Republic under the Kaiser instituted very strict gun control laws for every citizen starting in 1928 long before Hitler seized control in 1933. The argument he was trying to make, perhaps in an inartful way, was that the Weimar Republic set the conditions where a murderous megalomaniac such as Hitler could take control since the German citizenry was not able to defend itself from Nazi oppression, including the 6 million Jews who were later exterminated.

Which is the same sort of thinking behind the Second Amendment when it was added to the Constitution in 1791 by our American founders.

Political hacks love to jump on quotes by candidates from the other side they wish to destroy, humiliate and defeat ― that is part of the blood sport of politics and pretty much expected. But before you get all wrung-out worrying about AI distorting the news, worry more about supposedly self-described “independent, unbiased” journalists doing the same thing behind a facade of objectivity.