NBC News has a reporter on the “disinformation” beat, and he is really really good at his job.
Every time he puts pen to paper, hands to keyboard, or eyes to camera he spews out a steady stream of disinformation, misinformation, and dystopian fantasy. He describes himself as on the “dystopia beat,” so I guess that makes sense. He creates a dystopia and reports on his fantasy world.
After the horrific mass shooting at the Colorado Springs gay club Collins helped lead the charge in hanging the responsibility for the shooting on anyone and everyone who opposes transgender ideology. Matt Walsh, Christopher Rufo, that guy over there who opposes people with penises showering with his daughter in school–all of them and more metaphorically pulled the trigger themselves due to their hate speech.
Collins, you see, is not that into speech if he disagrees with it. Saying something he doesn’t like is dystopian, and he is on the dystopia beat.
seamless transition from "he was inspired by the right wing" to "he is a victim of right wing bullying." no hesitation whatsoever.
also, note the info cited in pic #2 and #3 was available ("thoroughly documented") when #1 was tweeted. an actual reporter would have looked first. pic.twitter.com/5obPRL9wMA
— T. Becket Adams (@BecketAdams) November 23, 2022
Before much was known about the killer, Ben Collins went on MSNBC–and, ironically, he was described as the expert on the “dark corners of the Internet” so that if anybody could find out the truth, he could. Collins went on to describe how conservatives inspired the hate, and that critics of drag queen story hours inspire this sort of violence.
He completely missed that the guy had actually been bullied online for being gay. Or, perhaps, it didn’t fit his narrative so he left it out.
"Who are we afflicting here if not the people who are grieving by not standing with them?"— @oneunderscore__ on how a rise in online anti-LGBT rhetoric has real-life impacts, as seen in the mass shooting at a Colorado Springs nightclub https://t.co/7KRK8Cd6fH
— Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) November 22, 2022
He completely missed the story, dystopian expert that he is. It turns out to be far more complicated, but inconvenient to his carefully crafted messaging. The fact that he was literally certifiably insane is irrelevant as well. He is a Matt Walsh/Chris Rufo guy, certainly.
Now the shooter claims to be “non-binary,” a rather bizarre and perhaps false claim, or perhaps true. But of course we have no idea, because…we actually know very little. As Ed wrote earlier today the story is young, the facts are scarce on the ground, and the claims made here could be a bid for sympathy. Or whatever. Who knows? I don’t. Neither do the pundits placing blame everywhere but the guy who pulled the trigger.
That killer, by the way, was a “known wolf.” If I wanted to blame a third party, it would be the prosecutors who shrugged after a kidnapping and bomb threat. Oh well, irrelevant, because lenient prosecutors are good guys.
But the transgender claims left Collins with a couple problems: first, as a good Leftist he is not allowed to question others’ identity, so obviously the shooter is nonbinary; and second, if the guy is non-binary then the original “right wingers did this” narrative is shot. Temporarily, at least. Gotta fix that problem pronto.
Holy shit. Look at this. Just look at this. He went from Tucker Carlson obsessive fanboy scrolling LibsOfTikTok to actually a bullied victim by the online right in literally one day. Look at this guy. Just look at him go. An NBC News senior reporter. https://t.co/hi1QM6CUGa
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) November 23, 2022
So Collins has a new answer to this: right wingers BULLIED him, causing the shooting. They didn’t inspire him to do it, but broke his spirit with bullying leading him to this tragic moment. It isn’t exactly Matt Walsh and Christopher Rufo, but these other guys who are just like them who did the deed.
I am not kidding. He pivoted within seconds of the news, “discovering” years-old posts on some obscure website nobody has heard of where some jerks bullied the guy for…being gay, it appears. Now I don’t know if he is gay or not, transgender or not, but I know that this complicates the story a lot, and violates the Narrative™.
The Colorado Springs suspect was 15 when they requested a name change to Nick Brink.
Brink was subject to a "particularly vicious bout of online harassment," and had one YouTube video, a profanity-laden cartoon dubbed “Asian homosexual gets molested."https://t.co/zJoX6kv4Z0
— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) November 23, 2022
So now the the MAGA killer is now a killer because of MAGA hating him. OK, I guess. You can run with that. There was no MAGA or Matt Walsh back then, but run with it. You do you.
Except…how do you explain going on for days about how the MAGA folks egged him on to do this? Hasn’t the story being told turned 180 degrees? Does that even matter? Does reversing yourself mid-rant hurt your credibility?
Apparently not. Because the actual point of the word salad is to indict conservatives, not inform anybody of anything. Certainly not facts, because there are too few to know much of value yet. None of us knows much, and every such story changes for days and weeks before a clear picture emerges. Collins has a clear picture because his story is Right Wing Bad, all the time.
This is Orwellian doublespeak at its finest. The elements of the story change constantly, but the point remains the same: direct your at hate those people. Hate them with a passion. It doesn’t matter why, except that they are hateful. Facts change? Still hate them.
In a normal universe Collins would get fired for being so completely wrong. But in the view of his employers, he wasn’t wrong at all. Because getting the facts right is not the point; the point is attacking conservatives. He got that right, so all good.
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