Ken Cuccinelli Cites Right-Wing Activists to Justify Authoritarian Violence – By Jared Holt (Right Wing Watch) / July 21 2020
Acting Deputy Homeland Security Secretary Ken Cuccinelli is helping coordinate the federal law enforcement agents unleashing a wave of authoritarian violence against anti-racism protesters in Portland, Oregon, and has been justifying his department’s actions by citing pundits and personalities notorious for their connections to far-right movements.
Since the police killing of George Floyd, right-wing activists and politicians, including President Donald Trump who sent the federal agents, have tried to blame mass civil unrest on their favorite boogeyman: anti-fascist activists. The right-wing figures and outlets Cuccinelli has cited on his official Twitter account, @HomelandKen, have well-documented histories of stretching facts to portray anti-fascist activists as an imminent terrorist threat and to justify law enforcement’s use of force against protesters in cities led by Democrats. Those sources, which include Andy Ngo, Breitbart News, and reporters from The Daily Caller, have also sought to smear journalists reporting facts that contradict their hyperpartisan misinformation by claiming that those reporters are sympathetic to anti-fascists and therefore aligned with domestic radicals.
Among Cuccinelli’s favorite sources to justify actions against protesters is new media star Ngo, who BuzzFeed News reporter Joe Bernstein noted last year rose to fame by building “an incendiary political narrative out of a narrow selection of facts.” Bernstein wrote of Ngo, “He proceeds from a worldview and seeks to confirm it, without asking to what degree his coverage becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
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