The Guardian channels Alex Jones
Shades of Sandy Hook in their coverage of the Wi Spa
The Guardian, which recently asked its readers how they recognise misinformation and protect themselves against ‘fake news’, has published a piece on the Wi Spa protests that would not have looked out of place in Pink News, or on Alex Jones’ InfoWars.
To recap: Last month Wi Spa customer Cubana Angel posted a viral video to social media from inside the Los Angeles spa in which she told a front desk employee that a man had exposed his penis in a female-only steam room to women and girls - only to be told that there was nothing staff could do because the man claimed to be transgender.
Protests followed a few days later, which attracted counter-protests by Antifa, which resulted in individuals who do not believe that men should be in women’s and girls’ changing rooms being violently attacked by people who do.
This weekend, more protests took place, and The Guardian sent reporter Lois Beckett to cover it. In a tweet, Beckett, seemingly in a bid to discredit the protesters who don’t want males flashing at young girls, described them as ‘right-wing anti-pedophile protesters’, a startling and revealing phrase that did not make the final cut in The Guardian piece.
The article is co-written by Sam Levin. Sam was the lead name on this 2018 Guardian editorial which claimed that a recent Guardian comment that ‘feminists are entitled to question whether [self ID] could adversely affect other women’ was ‘transphobic’, and that ‘cis women’s intolerance should not be a legitimate reason for limiting the rights of trans women … our journalism should be grounded in the principle that trans women are women’.
Despite being an article about a protest, it doesn’t, at any point, mention that the whole thing was triggered by a man exposing his penis to women and girls. The entire narrative is that ‘anti-trans protesters’ are simply targeting a spa because it has a ‘trans-inclusive policy’. The only reference to what actually happened last month is the statement: ‘an alleged incident in which a customer filmed herself complaining about a trans woman in the women’s area of the spa.’
Worse, The Guardian, which has published numerous articles in recent years on the dangers of not believing women when they report sexually abusive men, as well as commentary on why society must listen to people of colour, gave credence to a conspiracy theory that the original Wi Spa complaint, by a woman of colour, was a lie.
The claim is absurd. Not only does the full video show other women confirming that Angel’s account is true, but even those disagreeing with her at the spa do not dispute that it had happened. There have also been other complaints about men flashing at women and girls at Wi Spa and other spas in Los Angeles going back at least three years, and the conspiracy theory is simply based on (an anonymous report that) the police don’t know who the man in the spa was.
The article describes those campaigning to protect children as ‘far right protesters … [who] chanted baseless claims about paedophilia’, and that they are evidence of the ‘convergence of anti-trans activism with other strains of far-right activism.’ In fact, the article mentions the ‘far right’ six times, with the only evidence given being: ‘Many demonstrators chanted “Save our children,” a slogan taken up by QAnon conspiracy theorists.’
(Reminder: The original Instagram video revealed that the man exposed his penis to a nine-year-old girl, and it has since emerged that a mother complained that her six year old daughter was flashed at at the same spa.)
While The Guardian ignores most stories of trans-identified males attacking women, it did cover the case of Karen White - and yet the piece baldly states that suggestions that trans-inclusive policies endanger ‘cis’ women are ‘false’. Again, no evidence is given to support this claim, and notice that female spaces and women’s shelters are in scare quotes.
There have also been several reports of individuals being attacked by trans rights activists at both this latest protest and the previous one, but none of these receive any mention. In fact, it is implied that the only victims of the latest violence were Antifa, because the police shot rubber bullets at some activists, and of the earlier protest it just says there were ‘violent clashes’, without stating who was behind the violence.
Still, the Alex Jones-style tactics are having the desired effect, with celebrities like Patrica Arquette amplifying them to her half a million followers. Luckily, those who were there are fighting back against the disinformation campaign.
As the former deputy foreign editor of The Daily Telegraph wrote of the piece: ‘A masterclass in dishonest journalism from the Observer [the name The Guardian uses on Sundays], shaming a liberal beacon. Selective to the point of open distortion, it aims solely to tar feminists as far-right bigots. Any trainee writing this would be failed. As a journalist, I'm incensed.’
Bennet Kelley, the eyewitness who spoke up to say he saw it happen and it's no hoax, is a decidedly left-wing political columnist. If there's anyone that sources like the Guardian and Slate are going to have a hard time smearing as a right-wing hoaxer, it's a writer whose career has been built on criticizing the Republican Right. Which is probably why they're all just completely ignoring him and his statements.
Posted as LornCal:
The evidence is piling up and the usual suspects are silent. The Scottish government has been especially silent, although there is no indication that they have changed tack. I really don't know what it's going to take to make these people see what is happening.
It's terrible to say it, but they seem to be happy - yes, happy, ecstatic almost - to see women and children being physically and mentally harmed for the sake of paraphiliacs and fetishists whose surfeit of porn and the subversion of reality that predominates, has turned their brains to mush.
The propensity of some human beings to turn a blind eye to horrendous abuses in order to service their sex drive, and the equally repugnant propensity of some women to be willing and goggle-eyed handmaids to these men, has resulted in their being used a foot soldiers for global capitalist predatory behaviours we have not been privy to before but is not prevalent because of the advent of the dark side of the internet.