Fake News from the Border

The defense of "our democracy" requires plenty of disinformation

Her’s what the Biden Administration’s idea of border security looks like

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The truth, said Winston Churchill, must sometimes be accompanied by a bodyguard of lies. American progressives in their wisdom and virtue have perverted this truism for the modern age: Their defense of “our democracy” requires a mighty phalanx of lies. The defeat of the Ogre Trump and his mega-mooga-MAGA minions is too important an objective to be entrusted to the truth.

Governor Greg Abbot of Texas is prominent in the demonology of the comrades. Intersectionality cuts no ice in his case: The fact that Abbot sits in a wheelchair excuses his fascist evil no more than Dr. Goebbels’ clubfoot excused his. Abbot’s a Republican, after all, and therefore a fascist. So when he deployed the stormtroopers of the Texas Army National Guard to the US-Mexican border to carry out a pogrom against the saintly migrants who seek refuge in America from climate change and transphobia, he was furiously denounced.

Abbot’s horrifying disregard of human rights culminated in tragedy. But Let Professor Heather Cox Richardson tell the tale. Here’s how she described Abbot’s crime against humanity in her Letters from an American Substack newsletter:

Last night a woman and two children drowned in the Rio Grande that marks the border between the U.S. and Mexico near Eagle Pass, Texas.

U.S. Border Patrol agents knew that a group of six migrants were in distress in the river but could not try to save them, as they normally would, because troops from the Texas National Guard and the Texas Military Department prevented the Border Patrol agents from entering the area where they were struggling: Shelby Park, a 47-acre public park that offers access to a frequently traveled part of the river and is a place where Border Patrol agents often encounter migrants crossing the border illegally.

This sad tale of woe was embraced by Democrats and progressives as a gift from on high. One very big reason why the American people have turned against President Joe Biden is his dereliction of duty regarding border security. Illegal immigrants from here, there, and everywhere are pouring into America in droves, and the Biden Administration is doing nothing to stop them. The situation has gotten so bad that even the Democratic mayors and governors of so-called sanctuary cities and states like Chicago and New York are sounding the alarm. Apparently, they never expected to be taken quite so readily at their word. But suddenly down in Texas there was a mega-mooga-MAGA Republican governor with migrant blood on his hands!

From the point of view of Democrats and progressives, the story had a lot going for it—except the truth.

For it simply wasn’t true that Abbot’s jackbooted thugs prevented Border Patrol agents from saving the drowning migrants. What actually happened was this: On the night of Friday, January 12, a Mexican official notified the Border Patrol that three migrants had drowned while attempting to cross the Rio Grande. No one on the US side of the border—not the Texas ARNG, not the Border Patrol—saw this happen or even knew about it until Mexico reported it. The US Department of Justice admitted as much in a “supplemental memorandum” filed with the US Supreme Court.

It might be thought that after an earlier fake news fiasco—the frenzy over racist Border Patrol agents on horseback viciously whipping BIPOC migrants—the tale of the drowned migrants would have been treated with caution. But from the political point of view, it was just too good to check. Representative Henry Cuellar, Democrat of Texas, wasted no time in pinning the blame on Abbot and the Guard. And of course, the media jumped on the story. Anything to distract attention from the awkward reality that the border crisis traces back to our incompetent president’s ridiculous policies.

We hear a lot from the comrades about the precious gift of “our democracy” and the importance of preserving it. But the lies deemed necessary to conduct that defense just keep piling up. And when a phony-baloney story like this one comes along, I’m remined of tale—the apocryphal tale—of the US Army officer in Vietnam who said that “It was necessary to destroy the village in order to save it.” Progressives seem determined to defend democracy until there’s nothing left of it.

But fake news, disinformation, propaganda, ideological fairy tales, and plain old lies may constitute the appropriate defense of democracy as it’s defined by postmodern progressivism. That definition boils down to the claim that what is not progressive is fascist. And when you’re “defending our democracy” by “fighting fascism,” anything goes. Right…?