HuffPost misrepresents GOP congressman’s remark as call for violence

September 1, 2021

By Accuracy in Media Staff

HuffPost distorts a recent remark from Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) in a new article

“Cawthorn repeated former President Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was ‘rigged’ and warned that it would result in violence,” the author says about the “far-right lawmaker.” 

“The things that we are wanting to fight for, it doesn’t matter if our votes don’t count,” Cawthorn said at the Macon County GOP headquarters in Franklin, North Carolina, on Sunday. “Because, you know, if our election systems continue to be rigged and continue to be stolen, then it’s going to lead to one place — and it’s bloodshed.”

“And I will tell you, as much as I’m willing to defend our liberty at all costs, there’s nothing that I would dread doing more than having to pick up arms against a fellow American,” he said. “And the way that we can have recourse against that is if we all passionately demand that we have election security in all 50 states.”

Cawthorn wasn’t calling for violence or “bloodshed.” On the contrary, he cautioned against it by advocating election integrity. 

HuffPost then links Cawthorn’s comments to “domestic extremism” and domestic terrorism, the fight against which investigative journalist Gleen Greenwald has called a “second War on Terror.”

It’s “designed to essentially criminalize any oppositional ideology to the ruling class,” he said. “There is literally nothing that could be more dangerous, and it’s not fearmongering or alarmism to say it.”

President Joe Biden’s administration has politicized the potential of domestic terrorism. The data does not support “white supremacist” terrorism being the “most lethal terrorist threat” to the United States, contrary to what Biden told Congress last April.

A March 2021 report from the intelligence community recognized “an elevated threat” from domestic violent extremists regardless of political affiliation.

The Biden administration clearly uses domestic security as a political tool, like the rest of Greenwald’s “ruling class.”

“There is a ruling class elite that is extremely comfortable with the establishment wings of both parties … [that] they fund equally because those are the people who serve their agenda,” he said. “Then there’s a whole other huge group of people at whose expense they rule in. Some of them consider themselves on the Left, and some consider themselves on the Right and it’s time to break down those barriers.”

This isn’t the first time HuffPost has demonized white males on the Right like Cawthorn. “Most Of America’s Terrorists Are White, And Not Muslim,” a 2017 HuffPost headline read. The same article cited a source who called right-wing terrorists “mostly men” and “almost purely white.” 

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