Ben Garrison



Ben Garrison draws thought provoking, "politically incorrect" cartoons Hopefully you're starting to see why conservative comedy is hard, if not impossible. Like every time you're mocking things from the dumb side, Ben Garrison's comedy options were limited to calling everyone a liar, arguing how evil things are fine, or meekly insulting the other guys. None of those are very funny, and the best-case scenario is that they distract your audience from the premise of your own joke. I don't think there's a saying about how all great comics are unquestioning of their great leader, but if there was, Ben would make it his Twitter bio. Benjamin “Ben” Garrison is an American far-right editorial cartoonist and QAnon conspiracy theorist from Montana whose stated goal is "to help raise awareness of the drift toward tyranny" by advocating that we sprint towards tyranny and helpfully labeling everything in his drawings. He is a self-described libertarian, although his cartoons tend to contain a strong authoritarian paleoconservative and alt-right streak as well. While his work demonstrates numerous conspiracy theories and much pseudoscience, it also reveals that he is a very skilled and talented illustrator; his comics are commonly featured on far-right websites.

He is basically the real life version of The Onion's fictional Stan Kelly.

Since 2018, his wife Tina has occasionally also been drawing cartoons with a "TinaToon" signature. One of her comics was retweeted by Donald Trump.

On January 8, 2021, he was banned from Twitter along with several other far-right figures (including Trump himself) for incitement of violence during the attempted coup.

Politics
In keeping with his vulgar libertarian ideals, of the 2016 United States presidential candidates (on the right, of course), he has said that Rand Paul was the "perfect candidate", although since Paul's departure, Garrison fanatically threw in for Donald Trump.

As with all political cartoonists, it is very easy to tell whom Garrison is sympathetic towards in his cartoons, as they will likely be the only ones who aren't drawn really really ugly. Donald Trump in particular is unsurprisingly depicted very positively — bold, handsome, even bulky (!) — in many of his illustrations.

His cartoons lack any sort of subtlety, exemplified by the excessive labeling. According to Garrison's Law: The more labels you have, the more effective your cartoon is.

In short, he is a fervent Trump supporter.

Gallery of crankery
In his cartoons and on his blog, Garrison has expressed strong opposition to climate change action, Islam, political correctness, social justice warriors, neoconservatism, gun control, and the Federal Reserve; basically, enough to give three in a row on any given crank magnetism bingo card.

Anti-vaccination movement


Oh, and as for the GMOs? Well, we either trust 156 Nobel Laureates (as of 2020) or Alex Jones and his chiropractic "doctor" Bohdi Radbod.

In the 2019, Ben cranked out this whopper:

This is the kind of insane crap which pushes Ben over the line of being garishly pro-Trump to promoting ideas which are dangerous to public health. He created this cartoon immediately after anti-vaxxers in Washington state caused a deadly measles outbreak, and right before a 6-year-old boy in Oregon was hospitalized with a horrendous case of tetanus because his parents are anti-vaxxers.

Perform a cursory Google search to find out what happens when people don't get vaccinated if you don't mind losing your lunch.

Climate change denialism
Basically Gore's Law in action with a dash of red-baiting for good measure. For an in-depth look into Gore's flawed "Ice Free by 2014" claim and why its veracity is irrelevant to the existence/importance of climate change, see the analysis by Snopes. In line with most global warming denialists, Garrison also portrays the hockey-stick graph as fraudulent, likely in reference to Ross McKitrick and Steve McIntyre's multiple attempts at discrediting it. These, of course, have all been thoroughly debunked.

Much like Stefan Molyneux, Garrison's hardcore libertarianism lends him to believing that most forms of taxation and government intervention is a precursor to socialism. He believes that climate change is being used to perpetuate "worldwide communism", and regularly blames the Sun, thinking that he will avoid being labeled a denier.

For some strange reason, Ben has also come to think that the Fukushima nuclear meltdown is actually humanity's greatest ecological challenge, despite timely cleanup and generally good forecasts for the area in light of the event.

Insane conspiracy theories
On the request of alt-right twitter personality Mike Cernovich, Garrison made a cartoon portraying George Soros as a puppet of the Rothschild banking family, resorting to the old anti-Semitic canard of Jews as the puppet-masters behind world events. This is not the limit of his conspiracy nuttery. He thinks the UN is controlled by the "Satanic Illuminati." He thinks Greta Thunberg is a puppet of Soros, who wants to usher in global socialism. And he's responsible for this whale of a quote:

If conservative free speech is gone, one wonders how Ben is able to continue inflicting these cartoons on us.

Wee bit of anti-semitism
The George Soros / Rothschild " puppet" cartoon above created for Cernovich was widely condemned on social media, and by watchdog organizations such as the ADL, for being blatantly anti-semitic, evoking the long-running "Jews control the world" trope. This led to trouble when Trump invited Garrison to a "Social Media Summit" in July 2019. The invitation understandably drew ire from many Jewish groups, leading to Trump eventually revoking the invitation shortly afterwards.

In response to being uninvited, on July 2020, Garrison sued the Anti-Defamation League... for defamation. In the court filing, the ADL is described as not an "anti-hate organization that seeks to stop the defamation of the Jewish people", but as "a tool of the Democratic Party and private corporations, such as Google, to target Trump supporters, members of the Republican Party, and conservatives generally." In the lawsuit, Garrison insists that it is absolutely true that "the Rothschilds controlled Soros and that Soros controlled McMaster" and that Garrison is not anti-Semitic, nuh uh, no way!

The complaint also takes issue with ADL having a Garrison cartoon headline one of their pages, where chairman  was doctored to look like an stereotypical evil Jewish merchant. Although the article apparently originally goofed and wrongly attributed the cartoon to Garrison, from at least July 10, 2019, a caption below the picture was added stating that this was a doctored picture and the original version had no anti-Semitic content Garrison however, in the complaint, ludicrously claims in the lawsuit that the ADL doctored the cartoon, in spite of the fact that the doctored image has been floating around white supremacist forums for a long time.

Vegas massacre


Despite Garrison's claim, gun control is relevant to the massacre because … the shooter had a gun. Making it harder for people to have guns makes it harder for massacres to happen. Instead of actually refuting Hillary's argument, he dismisses her comments as ignorant and moves on. Ironically, the NRA pushed for gun regulations for bump-stock devices after the massacre:

Also, the 762 murders in Chicago in 2016 were individual cases, not from a single mass murderer as was the case for Las Vegas, so this is a ''non sequitur.

Not an argument


The comic supports Stefan Molyneux's signature informal fallacy, "not an argument". It also refers to Molyneux's widely-shared "Untruth About Donald Trump" series produced during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, which despite Garrison's cartoon made questionable use of "logic", "reason", and "evidence".

Islamophobia


Ben Garrison asserts that political correctness is ruining America because we are allowing Muslims in our country.

Garrison clearly sees Muslims as a threat to good ol' America. Garrison would prefer that nationalists be called "patriots".

White genocide


In August 2018, following coverage by Tucker Carlson and even a tweet by Trump himself, Garrison promoted the far-right "white genocide" conspiracy theory, with specific respect to the controversial land disputes in South Africa. He not only gave a full-throated endorsement to the theory that Cyril Ramaphosa and the "communist" African National Congress ruling coalition are behind it all, but that Obama is somehow in on it too.

Ben seriously cited notorious white nationalists Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux as credible sources. Moving on…

...Yeah. Needless to say, this is all complete and utter bullshit.

Pizzagate


Easily the dumbest crap that Ben seriously believes in is the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, and Satanism permeating the federal government to a great extent.

Funniest among this is Garrison's belief that Bill and Hillary Clinton, of all people, could secretly escape to the Middle East and live there in hiding if their purported empire of Satanic pedophilia was revealed.

Garrison has further stated his belief in federal Satanism and pedophile rings, writing in another cartoon's description: "...We are now enduring rampant lies, graft, plunder, pedophilia and satanism at the highest levels of government. And of course, we have endless war." One might also spot John Podesta in a few other of Garrison's 'toons, either sitting atop a slice of pizza titled "Spirit Cooking", as an octopus ensnaring little children, or holding a slice of pizza while part of a supposed criminal lineup. He has also suggested without evidence that Podesta could be the son of Josef Mengele, apparently based on a YouTube video by some like-minded fellow.

Marijuana


A comic that was supposed to be about marijuana legalization somehow has a description that hates on Hillary Clinton:

Free speech


In this comic, Garrison compares far-right "conservatives" being banned from social media platforms to segregation. Garrison claims Sabo was banned from Twitter because of globalists:

Garrison doesn't understand what free speech means and blames conservative silencing on a deep state conspiracy:

Corporations


In this cartoon, supposed "libertarian" Garrison reacted to Alex Jones being banned from multiple social media platforms by railing against corporations.

…Very libertarian-sounding, right? He continues:

Garrison again reaffirmed his stance as a Sandy Hook truther.

Cesar Sayoc


Following attempted mail-bombings of prominent Democrats and liberal public figures by Cesar Sayoc in October 2018, Ben reflexively jumped on the conspiracy theory that the unsuccessful bombing attempts were a false flag operation actually committed by liberals.

Even once Sayoc's identity was revealed and images of his van, plastered with pro-Trump stickers, were released, Garrison doubled down and seriously claimed that "the stickers look too new." He continuously updated the post on his blog with desperate denials from fellow conspiracy theorists, an obviously fake Photoshop of Sayoc's supposed voter registration info showing him as a Democrat, and the hilarious straw-grasping that Stormy Daniels and Sayoc worked at the same nightclub.

Crisis actors


Following a viral incident in late November 2018 in which migrants attempting to cross the US-Mexico border from Tijuana were tear-gassed by the border patrol, Garrison promoted a completely nonsensical conspiracy theory that the entire thing was staged by the "Fake News Media".

So did it happen or not, Garrison? He lends himself a little plausible deniability in promoting this ridiculous theory, while simultaneously reasserting his staunch closed-borders stance on immigration. What's more, he provides no reasoning or evidence for why the "Fake News Media" would stage this event, aside from casual and baseless accusations of Soros funding them. Because of course.

Again, utter bullshit.

4chan
Garrison has been the target of a sustained smear campaign by members of 4chan, who have photoshopped many of his cartoons to combine them with strongly xenophobic, anti-semitic, and racist cartoons, most of which are culled from National Alliance newsletters published in the 1980s, specifically A. Wyatt Mann cartoons, which often feature grotesque caricatures of Jews, gays, and racial minorities. These fake Ben Garrison works still contain Garrison's signature, however thus falsely giving the impression that he holds these views. He may be a crazy right-winger, but he isn't a Nazi or an overt race warrior of the 4chan kind.

Despite some initial pissed off blog posts complaining about the trolls, he seems to have reconciled with 4chan's troll hordes. His more recent cartoons have taken a decidedly alt-right friendly, racist and Islamophobic turn, often portraying Middle Easterners as murderers ready to destroy European culture,   including a cartoon alleging an evil plot by Angela Merkel to replace Europe with foreign countries and implement Sharia Law. It seems as long as you limit your bigotry to Muslims, your image will be totally cleared. Alternatively, the entire smear campaign could be viewed as an earnest attempt by the 4chan troll community to take his early Federal Reserve conspiracy cartoons and boil them down to what they really mean.

Coronavirus
Ben is deeply pseudoskeptical over the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, alleging that the virus is a hoax made by the "Deep State" in order to oppress the people. Or, in his own words:

Garrison has also promoted the discredited conspiracy theory that the pathogen is a bioweapon produced by the Chinese after going on an anti-atheist rant, complete with a potentially libelous misquote of Vermont senator Bernie Sanders.

Later, Garrison changed his tune somewhat, arguing that the virus was, in fact, made by Bill Gates and not the Chinese government. Apparently Gates is a eugenicist who wants to murder people, including by promoting GMO crops. Garrison also for some reason thinks SARS-COV-2 is an influenza virus.

His wife Tina was quite obviously elated when Trump defunded the WHO, claiming it hates America and that China "reaps all the benefits", despite the WHO's efforts at combating Ebola in Africa, among other things. She then demanded the UN be defunded.

On September 27 2021, Garrison reported that he and his wife contracted COVID-19. In an email to, Garrison claimed to be self-medicating with questionable treatments such as ivermectin, beet root juice, and zinc. He continued to maintain bullshit that the COVID-19 vaccines were "free poison", "foul spike protein-producing jabs which are neither safe nor effective". He also claimed that he’d never visit a hospital to treat his COVID-19, due to his fear that hospitals were killing COVID-19 patients for "extra money for Covid death reports, which is necessary to keep fear ramped up".

Abortion
Unsurprisingly, Garrison is hysterically anti-abortion, and believes in conspiracy theories concerning chemtrails, the Georgia Guidestones and a Satanist Illuminati-led NWO planned depopulation, having stated that 5G is a plot to kill people and control their minds, and that fluoridated water is evil.

Endorsement of secession
For someone who claims to love his country and be a patriot, Ben sure enjoys supporting treason and sedition. Here's a post of his with his commentary on a bill that would let Texas leave the union:

Moon landing


Even sillier than Pizzagate, Ben also thinks that the Moon landing was faked by NASA. Specifically, "the CIA lied about" it, "the Van Allen radiation belts", "it was beyond our technical expertise", and "the Deep State had to win against the Ruskies at the time".

In conclusion, you should probably take Ben Garrison about as seriously as any half-sane person does Alex Jones.

Prevalence
Garrison's comics have been shared by the following people and places on the Internet


 * r/The_Donald
 * Pat Buchanan
 * Pat Buchanan
 * Pat Buchanan
 * Pat Buchanan