There’s an “extremism” problem in Texas and the Texas Tribune wants you to know about it. And whose authority do they cite to make this claim? The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which began as an opposition group to antisemitic organizations and has since jumped headlong into progressive orthodoxy.
The Tribune’s “democracy and extremism” reporter — who authored the article titled “Extremists have turned Texas into a hotbed for hate, report finds” — writes, “Texas continues to be a hotbed for extremism and antisemitism, driven by the heavy presence of white supremacist and anti-LGBTQ+ groups that are headquartered or active in the state.”
Source? A spurious report from the ADL.
The author adds, “The report follows years of warnings that extremist groups have been emboldened by the Republican Party and its amplification of things such as ‘great replacement theory,’ a white supremacist conspiracy theory that claims there is an intentional, Jewish-driven effort to destroy white people through immigration, interracial marriage[,] and the LGBTQ+ community.”
He rattles off various stats purporting to prove his thesis about Texas and its supposed “hotbed for extremism,” stats from a report to which he cannot even bother to link in the article.
Among them is the stat of more than 500 reported hate crimes in Texas in the year 2021. Nowhere mentioned in the article is the fact that many supposed “hate crimes” are later proven to be hoaxes, something tracked by fakehatecrimes.org — which compiles reported instances of disproven hate crimes.
This entire report from an agenda-driven organization is nonsense, and certainly not newsworthy.
This reporter is known for other top hits such as “Jewish Texans see surge in antisemitism as a precursor to fascism” and “Texas led nation in white supremacist propaganda in 2022, report finds.”
Of course the Tribune’s extremism beat only flows in one direction, politically: rightward. Look at his article directory, not one article about extremism by those on the left side of the political aisle.
Are we to believe that simply doesn’t exist?! Hogwash.
What about a sitting member of the Texas Legislature, state Rep. Penny Morales Shaw (D-Houston) who has ties to the Houston chapter of the Communist Party USA? That’s not worth digging into for the “extremism” beat?
Or how about the Texas A&M professor who is apparently “disgusted” with those running the university, calling them “pathetic, small little people holding onto their Texan whiteness and their bags of oil money”?
Or maybe the El Paso ISD teacher who forbade her class to use the term “pedophiles” to describe…pedophiles…and instead to use the term “Minor Attracted Persons”?
None of this is notable extremism in the eyes of the Tribune, apparently!
At The Texan, we’ve covered all of those stories. But not because we have an “extremism” reporter looking for sensational headlines by those who happen to be left of center, politically, but because those are stories that actually impact your children — whichever side of the political aisle you’re on.
Unlike the Tribune, The Texan doesn’t seek out random crazies larping about bygone eras.
It’s amazing that in the Tribune’s recent round of layoffs, this particular “beat” wasn’t among those nixed to help balance their books. But here we are, watching this “extremism reporting” continue on in only one direction, like most of the rest of that publication.