John Hawkins

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Not the pioneer of the African slave trade,Wikipedia though we can see how you would be confused.

It’s generally considered over-the-top to compare modern liberals with communists, but that’s because it’s painful to accept such a harsh truth about fellow Americans, not because they aren’t nearly identical.
—John Hawkins[1]

John Hawkins is a batshit-crazy wingnut who runs the website Right Wing News and regularly contributes articles to the radical right side of the clogosphere. He likes to make listicles of "facts" that cater to his fringy audience who, in turn, adore him for being politically incorrect. He writes columns for both Townhall.com and PJ Media, and has made a name for himself as the poor man's Erick Erickson if you thought that was even possible.

Lists[edit]

Perhaps the best way to discredit Hawkins is to simply quote just one of the lists he's made.[2]

"1) "People who want to change sexes should be treated by a psychologist, not deformed through surgery, given hormone treatments, and falsely told that they can change sexes."

"8) Most liberals aren't patriotic and they don't love their country."

"9) Our soldiers should make every effort to avoid civilian casualties, but when it comes right down to it, the life of an American soldier should be treated as more important than the life of a foreign civilian."

"11) The only practical way to make peace between the Israelis and Palestinians is for the Israelis to transfer the Palestinians and take their land."

"19) If you have good character, you should feel ashamed of taking food stamps, taking welfare, or being on a school lunch program."

Yes, you read that right, a school lunch program.

"20) We would be much better off as a nation if most of the immigrants to this country were well educated people from nations in Europe that shared our Western values as opposed to our current policy which brings in mostly less educated people from Third World nations."

Because well-to-do immigrants would do the backbreaking labor that keeps our economy going.

In his list "25 Reasons To Dislike Liberals" he gives us some more delicious quotes because there is so much strawman everywhere.[3]

"2) Because the closest thing to Sodom and Gomorrah in the modern world is San Francisco and Berkeley."

"3) Whether you're talking about cop killers, terrorists, radical Islamists or dictators, all you have to do is say, "I hate America," and liberals start to sympathize with you."

"4) Liberals are actually bothered by people who do love America. On the rare occasion when you do see a liberal waving a flag, look for a camera."

"5) The same people who voted Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama into office think they're smarter than tradition, the Founding Fathers and God Himself."

"11) The dumbest, most close-minded and mean spirited people in all of politics are inevitably liberals who are convinced they're brilliant, open-minded and compassionate because they call themselves liberals."

"18) Liberals have been big supporters of slavery, Indian massacres, the KKK, eugenics, fascism, communism and Jim Crow laws. Then, down the road, after liberals finally join everyone else, they try to claim that conservatives still support all the practices that we fought liberals on from the beginning."

Like most wingnuts, Hawkins thinks that the Republican Party was always conservative and the Democratic Party was always liberal. Calling them commie sympathizers is the oddest accusation, since liberals like Franklin D. Roosevelt and Hubert Humphrey were thought of as the hawks during World War II and the early stages of the Cold War (before the rise of the New Left), while the Old Right of the 1940s and '50s, led by the likes of Robert A. Taft, was more isolationist and opposed confronting the Nazis or the Soviets.

"19) Liberals think black Americans are inferior to whites, which is why the worst, most crime-ridden places to live in America are inevitably run by liberals. That's acceptable to liberals because they don't think black Americans deserve any better."

"25) Even "liberal Christians" are generally supportive of other liberals who attack Christianity, which is why "liberal Christians" is in quotes."

As ridiculous as it may seem, these lists make wingnuts fawn over Hawkins despite (or maybe because of) their intellectual laziness, despite the fact that one could make a true statement just by repeating Hawkins's lists, but switching the words "liberal" and "conservative". Many of them believe he is pushing true Christian values. As if that's not enough, he also pushes global warming denialism,[4] claiming that "Liberal luddites who hate capitalism and industry have spent billions to spread global warming propaganda, despite the fact that it looks more like a fraud, a scam, and a hustle every year."[5] Not surprisingly, he's also pretty sexist and once claimed that no woman deserves to be regarded as among the greatest Americans because no woman has ever made a great contribution to this country's history.[6]

Hypocrisy[edit]

Despite Hawkins' self-proclaimed dislike for liberals because he thinks they play the "race card" and/or the "victim", Hawkins himself got in trouble when he sent out a tweet saying "a white woman voting for Barack Obama is like a black woman voting for the KKK".[7] Hawkins is also great at playing the victim, believing that homeschooled kids are better off because liberals indoctrinate students at public schools.

Stopped clock[edit]

To give credit where it is due, in a 2007 article for Human Events, Hawkins did push back against the North American Union conspiracy theory advocated by WorldNetDaily writer Jerome Corsi: "Sure, lots of people saw planes hit the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, but let's ignore that and talk about the temperature that steel melts at and the size of the hole in the building at the Pentagon. That’s how [conspiracy theorists] trick people in missing the big picture."[8]

See also[edit]

  • Gish Gallop
  • Jonanism
  • Wingnut welfare: He's arguably one of the best examples out there. The only other job he could get from writing half-assed lists that may repeat past claims (ie. liberals aren't patriotic,[9] the Democrats used to support the KKK[10][11]) with usually little to no evidence to back them up would be as a bad self help writer.

References[edit]