Wall St. Journal Publishes Op-Eds From VDARE Freak & Claims Ignorance
The space between conservative thought and tinfoil-hat Nazi batshittery is paper-thin these days. The Wall St. Journal’s editorial pages have always been strident, but never totally neo-Nazi propaganda.
Marcus Epstein, who worked for former Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo and founded a nativist political club with white nationalist Richard Spencer, has written more than a dozen opinion pieces for the Journal, the Hill, Forbes, US News and World Report, and the National Review over the past two years. His pieces, which mainly focus on the regulation of the technology industry, were published under the byline “Mark Epstein.”
In six different pieces for the Journal, Epstein is identified as an “antitrust attorney and freelance writer” and addresses topics including the supposed threat to conservative speech posed by Google and Facebook, and the ways regulation and antitrust might be used to ensure “viewpoint neutrality” and consumer protection, respectively. They make no mention of his past, which includes contributions to the white nationalist site VDare and charges that he assaulted a black woman, after racially abusing her, in 2007. (In 2008 in District of Columbia Superior Court, Epstein entered an Alford plea — a plea in which the defendant accepts the consequences of a guilty verdict without admitting guilt — after which the charges were dropped.)
These guys really, really like pushing the White Fear button. Hard. Often.
Every single event is seen through the lens of “Is there some way we can spin this to prove that white people are under assault from Brown People?”
Viz:
I wish I could say that this kind of thing was an aberration, but it’s really, really not.
The publication of Epstein’s pieces is the latest instance of the far-right, hyper-nationalist fringe becoming part of the mainstream conservative movement over the last decade. The Journal, which ran a piece from Epstein titled “Antitrust, Free Speech and Google” earlier this month, declined to say if it looked into his history before publishing his work.