With a weekend full of legitimate news stories like the Olympics or immigration reform, Fox Nation reserved the top spot on their web page to post a blatant lie: “NAACP Requires Marchers Protesting Voter ID Law To Show Photo ID.”
One of the favorite tactics of propagandists is to expose alleged hypocrisy on the part of their foes. And when they can’t find any actual hypocrisy, the more unscrupulous among them will simply invent some. That’s the case with this article on Fox Nation. Sourcing the information from the Daily Caller, a right-wing webloid run by Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson, the article states flatly that…
“North Carolinians marching to protest voter-ID laws must present a valid photo ID to participate in an NAACP-hosted protest against voter-ID laws in Raleigh on Saturday.”
The evidence of what would be an embarrassing misstep is a tweet by a conservative blogger that showed a portion of a flyer promoting the protest. The flyer had a list of “do’s and don’t’s” for the marchers. One of the “do’s” said to “bring a photo identification (driver’s license, passport or other valid photo ID) with you and keep it on your person at all times.” So there you have it. Except that what you have is something completely different than what the headline and story alleged.
There was absolutely no requirement by the NAACP, or anyone else, that a photo ID be shown in order to participate in the march. No one would be checking for them, and no one would be refused without one. The Fox Nationalists apparently can’t tell the difference between a requirement and a suggestion. The advice to carry a valid ID is one that is commonly given to people who participate in public protests. Occasionally such events encounter police interventions, and having your ID handy can smooth the process. That is the only reason that the flyer recommended that participants carry an ID. It was in no way a prerequisite for participating.
Even if there were a requirement to have an ID for the protest, there still wouldn’t have been any hypocrisy. Conservatives like to make irrelevant analogies when defending their voter suppression plans. They point to the need to show an ID when boarding a plane or buying alcohol. However, flying and drinking are not in the same category as voting, which is regarded as right and a duty in our democracy. Any attempt to depress turnout, particularly in a way that is so transparently prejudicial, is undemocratic.
What’s more, the incidence of fraudulent voting is practically nil, so they are proposing to disenfranchise thousands of citizens in order to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. But that’s how they operate. And they don’t care any more about fair elections than they do about honestly representing the facts in a story like this one.
FYI: The “Moral Mondays” protest march, that Fox was so brazenly lying about, drew upwards of 80,000 people – in North Carolina!It was the largest civil rights march in the South since 1965.
Voter ID to combat voter fraud. That’s passing a law based on a lie to help one party accomplish political victory. That’s one of the very few slippery slopes that I would accept as existing; one party’s doing it, not the other. One party says the problem exists let alone must be fought, the other doesn’t. The party championing it only starts acknowledging the existence of the non-existent problem and measures to ‘fight it’, after consecutive political defeat. A party using their positions in government to create laws, BASED ON A LIE OF A NON-EXISTENT PROBLEM, to help them entrench themselves and otherwise acquire more party positions of power? Their base would be bombing buildings and assassinating people if the left pulled this blatantly transparent bullshit! They talk about tyrrany and nazism in the American left? WHAT THE FUCK, THEN, IS THIS SHIT? Gerrymandering, voter suppression, citizens united, net neutrality; they shoved us down that zero-friction, 89 degree slope years ago. Abuse of power to help them keep and acquire more power, and the left are tyrants because they want to tax the richest 3% more and because they want the populace to have access to modern medecine? Oh but clearly, the left is the enemy….clearly.
The voter-suppression schemes are an affront to our democratic way of life. I hope Colin Powell is right when he said it would backfire on the republicans. I think we saw a little of that in 2012 but I’m fearful of apathy in 2014 like we saw in 2010 and if that happens, things will get much worse.