This can’t be good news for the anti-war efforts in the U.S.
As part of its initiative to combat fake news, Facebook has partnered with a plethora of fact-checking websites and publications, including PolitiFact, Snopes, and The Washington Post. The social media juggernaut is now collaborating with The Weekly Standard, a neoconservative magazine that used to be managed by William Kristol.
According to Quartz, in establishing a new partnership with the magazine, Facebook is attempting to “appease all sides” by adding a right-wing point of view to its list of fact-checkers. But it’s just a little too convenient that The Weekly Standard is an anti-Trump news and commentary outfit.
It’s also too bad that it has never seen a war that it didn’t like.
The Beginning of a Horrific Friendship
In the fallout of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the media claimed that fake news and conspiracy theories propelled President Donald Trump to the White House and caused Hilary Clinton to lose.
To quash fake news and fight conspiracy theories, users can now flag stories they believe are false. Facebook then proceeds to circulate these flags to its group of fact-checkers, and if they determine that the story is false, Facebook will inform users who try to share the story that the veracity of the reporting has been disputed.
Over the last few months, Facebook has employed the services of fact-checkers, many of which are left-leaning. It is using sources that adhere to the U.S. Poynter Institute’s code of principles, but there has yet to be a conservative source named on the journalism school’s list.
As a way to “appease all sides,” Facebook has tapped The Weekly Standard to be a fact-checker. Before the partnership commences, Poynter will need to confirm if the magazine abides by its code of principles. Some of the factors Poynter includes are how the information is gathered, if it is fact-checked and if the articles contain linked sources. This takes about several weeks to verify.
(Let’s be honest: another aspect is if the source is leftist enough, or hates Trump.)
Quartz quoted one person close to the situation:
“There are legitimate publications that write from a conservative point of view, and they are fact-based.”
The Weekly Standard has yet to comment on the reports. As the website notes, the magazine hired a new fact-checker, which many industry observers say is directly connected to the Facebook partnership.
Will Neocons Rule Facebook?
The Weekly Standard was founded in 1995 by Bill Kristol, who is now editor-at-large and served as the Chief of Staff to former Vice President Dan “Potatoe” Quayle. It has been called “the neocon bible.”
Who is Bill Kristol? He is a typical neoconservative war hawk. Kristol was one of the biggest cheerleaders for the Iraq War, supported the 2006 Lebanon War because it’s “our war too” and editorialized that the military interventions in Muslim nations are not invasions but “liberations.”
Kristol is also a fervent Never Trumper, conceding that he would “prefer the deep state to the Trump state.” Despite some of his recent actions and remarks, Trump was considered the peace candidate throughout the 2016 election, regularly slamming the foreign policy of the last 16 years.
Kristol is like any other prolific neoconservative – Max Boot, Ralph Peters, Paul Wolfowitz, David Frum and Jennifer Rubin. To the minds of neocons, any world leader who does not bow down to the whims of the U.S. government is an enemy of the state, a Literal Hitler who must be toppled at any cost. Kristol and others like him subscribe to military Keynesianism, constant interventions and the overthrow of foreign governments.
What makes matters worse is that the left has converged with neocons. Both sides share something in common: their hatred of President Trump.
Speaking in an interview with Vulture.com early last month, MSNBC anchor Joy Reid admitted that she has become aligned with Boot, Rubin, Frum, and Kristol in the age of Trump. She said:
“One of the most amazing outcomes of the Trump administration is the number of neo-conservatives that are now my friends, and I am aligned with. I found myself agreeing on a panel with Bill Kristol. I agree more with Jennifer Rubin, David Frum, and Max Boot than I do with some people on the far left. I am shocked at the way that Donald Trump has brought people together.”
This past summer, Peters, and Boot went on Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight” and reiterated the war propaganda from the military actions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. At around the same time, CNN Democratic analyst Paul Begala echoed those remarks, championing the next great neocon cause: bombing Russia.
With a straight face, Begala said on national television:
“We were and are under attack by a hostile foreign power, and… we should be debating how many sanctions we should place on Russia or whether we should blow up the KGB, GSU, or GRU.
If I was Trump, I would be mad because it has tainted his victory.”
Neocons want war with Russia because they want Putin gone. The left wants war with Russia because he allegedly hacked the 2016 election to cause a Clinton defeat. Their interests converge, and this spells trouble for the 62% of Americans who get their news from social media.
Should fact-checkers from The Weekly Standard come across an anti-war op-ed, will they deem it to be false? Will anti-war articles penned by The Ron Paul Institute, The Intercept, and Anti-War.com be censored? Will Facebook contribute to the neocon-leftist merger and their desire for war?
Let’s face it: the average American can’t expect a Ron Paul-type of foreign policy in the Trump administration. That said, President Trump seems to be slightly less hawkish than Clinton, neocons, the deep state and today’s leftists, which means (hopefully) fewer U.S.-led occupations of foreign territories.
If all of Facebook’s fact-checkers detest Trump so much, then you can envision the regime changes, the military interventions and the nation-building missions to persist because Mark Zuckerberg’s Ministry of Truth controls the flow of information to the public.
Is The Weekly Standard a source for truth? Let us know in the comments section!
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