How the Left’s Online Meme Machine Helped Create a Murder Myth in Texas

Posted on | April 15, 2013 | 42 Comments

MSNBC’s Martin Bashir interviews SPLC’s Mark Potok, April 1

Officials in Kaufman County, Texas, have arrested Eric Lyle Williams, a former justice of the peace, who is expected to be charged with the murder of three people — a crime to which MSNBC’s Chris Matthews devoted an eight-minute segment of his April 3 show, portraying the murders as the work of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang.

How did this happen? On Sunday night, March 31, Kevin Krause of the Dallas Morning News filed a story that reported this:

The killing of the Kaufman County district attorney and his wife is likely to turn up the heat on the notorious Aryan Brotherhood of Texas prison gang.
Suspicion already had fallen on the Aryan Brotherhood after Assistant District Attorney Mark Hasse was gunned down Jan. 31 near the Kaufman County Courthouse.
Now, with the slaying of District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife, Cynthia, at their home near Forney, law enforcement sources say authorities will pursue any possible connections between the cases and the violent white supremacist gang. . . .
An official with the U.S. Marshals Service recently said in a widely circulated email that the Aryan Brotherhood was the focus of its investigation into Hasse’s death.

So this was an actual suspicion, and we don’t yet know the name of the official who sent this “widely circulated email,” but that’s OK: You can contact Kevin Krause on Twitter and ask him to follow up, to figure out why taxpayer resources were wasted chasing that wild goose.

Let’s talk about the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has amassed a $256 million bankroll through constant fear-mongering since 1971:

[The SPLC] has transformed itself into an all-purpose antihate crusader, labeling 1,007 different organizations across America at last count as “anti-gay,” “white nationalist,” “anti-Muslim,” “anti-immigrant,” or just plain hateful (one SPLC category is “general hate”). The SPLC put the FRC on its list of “anti-gay” organizations in 2010, and the SPLC’s “Hate Map” page, whose banner displays men in Nazi-style helmets giving Sieg Heil salutes, lists the [Family Research Council] among 14 hate groups headquartered in the District of Columbia.

Ask Anna Maria Hoffman what it was like that day last year when SPLC-inspired terrorist Floyd Corkins came to kill her and her friends. And then ask yourself, “Why did it take more than two months after the murder of Mark Haase for officials to arrest Eric Williams? Why was Williams left free for 10 weeks — during which Mike and Cynthia McLelland were also murdered — while investigators reportedly chased a wild-goose theory about the Aryan Brotherhood?”

On Jan. 31, the day after Haase was killed, Mark Potok posted a 1,300-word article entitled, “Texas Prosecutor ‘Involved’ in Aryan Brotherhood Investigation is Slain.” And on April 1, the Monday after the McLellands were murdered, Potok appeared on Martin Bashir’s MSNBC show:

BASHIR: “Speculation has quickly turned toward white supremacists. . . . Is this gang solely based on racial hatred? And how do you think they might be linked to these killings?”
POTOK: “Well, like most of these race-based prison gangs, they are fundamentally a criminal enterprise. . . .”

Now, I raise the subject of this interview for a specific reason. On Sunday night, March 31, when Kevin Krause filed his report at the Dallas Morning News, this was the headline:

Texas prison gang to get scrutiny
in double slaying, sources say

At 4 p.m. the next day, Aviv Shen posted an article at Think Progress with this headline:

The White Supremacist Group That May
Be Targeting Law Enforcement For Revenge

Notice a difference in those two headlines? Shen’s Think Progress article cited — you guessed, didn’t you? — Mark Potok’s Jan. 31 article, and Potok appeared that same day on Bashir’s MSNBC program which airs daily . . . at 4 p.m. ET. These coincidences are just so amazing, eh?

And within minutes of the publication of this Think Progress article, the story was picked up by other liberals online:

White supremacist group possibly
involved in slaying of Texas DA
— Emma Margolin, 4:36 p.m. ET

Aryan Brotherhood Of Texas Believed
To Be Behind DA Killings
— Alan Colmes, 4:51 p.m. ET

So by 5:10 p.m. ET, this was the Memeorandum thread:

If the latest news out of Kaufman County, Texas, is to be believed, this whole theory about “white supremacists” was entirely wrong — a complete waste of time, a misdirection from the actual culprit:

The day after the bodies of Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife were found, an anonymous email went to county officials threatening another attack if the writer’s demands were not met.
Law enforcement authorities have since traced the threat to the personal computer of Eric Williams, a former justice of the peace who is now the prime suspect in the slayings. He is expected to be charged with capital murder as early as Tuesday, law enforcement authorities said Sunday.
Authorities on Saturday found numerous weapons inside a Seagoville storage unit linked to Williams as well as a car similar to the one seen leaving the McLellands’ neighborhood on the morning of the Easter weekend slayings.
“It’s a very good feeling when the pieces start to fall into place,” one law enforcement official said Sunday.

The pieces might have fallen into place earlier — Mark Haase’s murder might have been solved, and Williams arrested before McLelland was killed — if law enforcement hadn’t wasted time chasing the “white supremacist” wild goose, when the D.A. himself tried to tell them who murdered Mark Haase:

County Judge Bruce Wood said Sunday that McLelland repeatedly told him that McLelland believed Williams was behind Hasse’s slaying. The first time was in the emergency room in the hours after Hasse was shot down by a mysterious gunman dressed in black.
“He was distraught,” Wood said. “He very pointedly said to me, ‘I know who did this.’ I said, ‘Well, who, Mike?’ He said, ‘Well, Eric Williams.’”
McLelland, who worked for years as a diagnostic psychologist, described Williams as “a narcissistic psychopath” during that conversation and others. Wood said McLelland never elaborated on why he thought Williams was involved.
On March 27, Wood said he met with McLelland in the county judge’s office. “I said, ‘Are you still convinced that it’s Eric Williams?’” Wood recalled. “He said, ‘Absolutely.’”

Mike McLelland was shot dead four days later, which gave Mark Potok a chance to go on MSNBC, but I guarantee you that Martin Bashir and Chris Matthews won’t say another word about this crime now that we know the truth. Because they don’t give a damn about truth.

Category: Crime, Media Bias

Comments

42 Responses to “How the Left’s Online Meme Machine Helped Create a Murder Myth in Texas”

Biff Ludwig
April 15th, 2013 @ 1:18 am

So what is the relationship between Eric Williams, Chris Matthews, and Martin Bashir? Should they be tried for obstruction? Accomplice? Just asking questions like a good liberal would!
M. Thompson
April 15th, 2013 @ 1:26 am

Never let the truth get in the way of spreading the message that nefarious ‘hate groups’ are out to destroy America (and the progressive project).
Evi L. Bloggerlady
April 15th, 2013 @ 2:07 am

Is Martin Bashir making a monkey out of himself again?
MrPaulRevere
April 15th, 2013 @ 2:22 am

Outstanding analysis and writing Stacy. I thought Charlotte Allen’s article at TWS was really first rate and an excellent summation on the purpose and history of the nefarious SPLC.
MSNBC: The Network America Turns to for Irresponsible Speculation About News : The Other McCain
April 15th, 2013 @ 2:35 am

[…] Meanwhile, I’ve added a new post: How the Left’s Online Meme Machine Helped Create a Murder Myth in Texas […]
Quartermaster
April 15th, 2013 @ 6:27 am

They’ve long been known as the $PLC.
Susan Harms
April 15th, 2013 @ 7:05 am

so why did the US Atty prosecuting 34 Aryan Bro. bail after the McClelland slayings? And why was the guy executed by LEO in Bowie Texas after the CO slayings?
DavidD
April 15th, 2013 @ 7:06 am

” ‘POTOK: “Well, like most of these race-based prison gangs, they are fundamentally a criminal enterprise. . . .” ‘ ”

The cynic in me says that it’s likely that the crimes of the white supremacist Aryan Brotherhood are dwarfed by those of black race-based prison gangs–but Potok and Matthews will never talk about that, will they?
JeffWeimer
April 15th, 2013 @ 7:23 am

About the first, perhaps he wasn’t privy to the McClelland’s information and all this media attention spooked him. As for the second, you’ll have to elaborate – who was “executed by LEO”?
Lisa Graas
April 15th, 2013 @ 7:56 am

Good work, Stacy.
So, It Wasn’t White Supremecists That Killed Those Prosecutors In Texas | The Lonely Conservative
April 15th, 2013 @ 8:19 am

[…] While the media was ignorning the “local crime story” of the murder trial of Dr. Kermit Gosness, they were all over the story of the murdered prosecutors down in Texas. The aspect of the story they were focused on was the suspicion that white supremecists were the culprits. Now that that angle hasn’t panned out, expect the coverage to cease immediately. […]
AngelaTC
April 15th, 2013 @ 9:02 am

For all we know, the police leaked the Aryan Brotherhood story as a diversion so the real criminal wouldn’t get spooked and run.
TC_LeatherPenguin
April 15th, 2013 @ 9:41 am

“Making”? Bashir’s been a sleaze merchant for quite some time. He made his bones in the US with his “documentary” about Michael Jackson, but he’d been a tabloidy hack longer before that.
The PJ Tatler » Did the Southern Poverty Law Center Misdirect Media, Law Enforcement in the Texas DA Murders?
April 15th, 2013 @ 9:47 am

[…] McLelland, his wife Cynthia, and prosecutor Mark Hasse, triggered national coverage. As R.S. McCain notes, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews ran an 8-minute segment on the killings on April 3, detailing the […]
OldmanRick
April 15th, 2013 @ 9:55 am

The SPLC(Socialist, Progressive Libelous Community) is a Marxist group and should be declared a terrorist organization.
Dan Collins
April 15th, 2013 @ 9:57 am

Dan Collins liked this on Facebook.
Rob Crawford
April 15th, 2013 @ 11:03 am

Didya read the article?
We Palmer
April 15th, 2013 @ 11:10 am

Lets face it campers, the real meme behind the response to EVERY act of violence that occurs in this land is:this: WHITE GUYS WITH GUNS ARE THE REASON FOR VIOLENCE IN AMERICA.

Hence the public solution is: NO MORE WHITE GUYS, NO MORE GUNS … NO MORE VIOLENCE.
Dai Alanye
April 15th, 2013 @ 11:14 am

Please be more specific in order to help us shoot holes in your ideas.
Dusty Thompson
April 15th, 2013 @ 11:44 am

These IDIOTS are America’s enemy not our friends…
K-Bob
April 15th, 2013 @ 12:19 pm

After Fort Hood, Fast and Furious, Benghazi and all the support for murdering babies born alive in botched abortions, clearly these “compassionate” leftists have proven once again that massacre is just another tool to use to grasp at power.

Like Jesse Jackson showing up days later wearing a phony shirt supposedly caked in Martin Luther King Jr’s blood, the real question ought to be: is there any blood Matthews won’t roll in for a chance to sell his vicious slander?
Evi L. Bloggerlady
April 15th, 2013 @ 12:31 pm

I totally agree. The operative word is “again.”
Barracuda Bob
April 15th, 2013 @ 12:41 pm

What’s the definition again?…Doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results?

Certainly not calling anyone crazy, but expecting any of the MSM outlets to change path and report truths is, insane.

They toss out what they perceive as truth as long as it fits their ideology and hope that it sticks. Unfortunately, it usually does and why it does is due to a simple fact. The viewers of networks like MSNBC have the intelligence quotient of gnats….stupid gnats at that. I’m assuming there is a population of smart gnats out there somewhere, but I can’t prove it as most gnats I come in contact with are smushed into an unrecognizable goo.
Good Grief… Former Justice of Peace Arrested for Texas Murders – Not Aryan Brotherhood Members | Politifreak - Political Blogs and News
April 15th, 2013 @ 12:46 pm

[…] The Other McCain reported on the media misconduct: […]
‘White supremacist’ narrative collapses in Texas DA murder case | Twitchy
April 15th, 2013 @ 2:12 pm

[…] The Other McCain, “How the Left’s Online Meme Machine Helped Create a Murder Myth in Texas“ […]
‘White supremacist’ narrative collapses in Texas DA murder case
April 15th, 2013 @ 2:58 pm

[…] The Other McCain, “How the Left’s Online Meme Machine Helped Create a Murder Myth in Texas“ […]
MichaelAdams
April 15th, 2013 @ 8:02 pm

Please note, the usual suspects in the Boston Bombing are white supremacists, even after the first Saudi national is apprehended.
helix b.
April 15th, 2013 @ 9:06 pm

Add Geraldo Rivera to the list of asshats who repeated this garbage on air. It was during his radio program last Tuesday.
ChandlersGhost
April 15th, 2013 @ 9:26 pm

This is kind of like a reverse Gosnell with the media.
nickshaw
April 15th, 2013 @ 9:40 pm

Excellent work, Bob (and Smitty). Of course, the general public will never hear this back story of finger pointing by the liberal / progressives.
Like you say, Bashir and Tingles will never mention it again ( though it seems odd that they talked about it in the first place. PMSNBC doesn’t do stories about “local” crime, they said when asked about coverage of Kermit Gosnell) and the odious Potok will keep the file open under “right wing hate” at the SPLC.
The LSM, in general, and PMSNBC in particular, go out of their way to link the “right” to any sensational crime as long as the suspected perp is not black. Then it’s ignored (wouldn’t want to damage the narrative!)
Even today, with the Boston bombing, on CNN al Qaeda and right wing terrorist groups are practically linked as the perps!
It’s enough to drive a man to prove them right!
(you know I’m just kidding!!!)
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April 15th, 2013 @ 10:16 pm

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April 16th, 2013 @ 1:01 am

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April 16th, 2013 @ 1:16 am

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April 16th, 2013 @ 1:20 am

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April 16th, 2013 @ 4:26 am

[…] some point it would be nice to have his retraction on his last Right Wing Conspiracy Smear, before he belies up to the bar to fill his snout with a double-shot of the next […]
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April 16th, 2013 @ 11:28 am

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April 17th, 2013 @ 11:00 am

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