The evangelical propaganda behind the January 6th terrorist attack
Photos and footage from the Capitol siege on January 6 show Trump’s insurrectionist thugs taking out their white-hot rage on the media. They smashed cameras. They physically and verbally attacked reporters. And they scrawled “MURDER THE MEDIA” on the door of the Capitol.
The New York Times documented the attacks on journalists that day, including how a crazed mob destroyed Associated Press TV equipment and fashioned a noose from a camera cord and hung it from a tree. But where does all this rage toward the media come from?
Evangelical leaders share much of the blame, having fueled this hostility for decades by continually telling their followers that mainstream media is lying to them. And despite the terrifying scenes at the Capitol, they continue to do so.
Ron Boehme, who in 1979 founded Youth With A Mission’s Washington, D.C. “base” at the controversial 133 C Street, S.E., continued to pour gasoline on the fire this week by branding the U.S. media “the New American Pravda,” referring to the state propaganda newspaper that was run by the old Soviet Union.
“You can no longer trust the [New York] Times, [the Washington] Post, Reuters, AP, CBS, NBC, ABC, MSNBC, CNN, Google, Facebook, or your local channel or paper,” Boehme wrote in a January 26 blog post. “In important areas of knowledge, you are being fed continual propaganda.”
According to Boehme, mainstream media can’t be trusted because Washington power brokers dictate to editors what the news agenda should be for the day—which is, of course, complete B.S.
Instead of newspapers, Boehme encourages his followers to read publications like the Epoch Times, the radical right-wing online publication responsible for flooding Facebook with pro-Trump conspiracy theories about the “Deep State” during the 2020 election.
He also recommends watching disgraced former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, whose long history of sexual harassment got him fired and cost the network $45 million in settlements. But Boehme says Bill-O can be trusted because he’s “a God-fearing Catholic with a biblical worldview (as opposed to Joe Biden).”
Interestingly, the first comment on Boehme’s post came from none other than Doug Burleigh, head of the secretive Family Foundation, and who was a central figure in the infiltration of the National Prayer Breakfast by Russian spy Mariia Butina.
“I’m with you Ron,” Burleigh said. “I watch [O’Reilly’s] No Spin nightly and Epoch Times. We are in a pitched battle for truth. All the mainstream media are lost souls parroting their talking points.”
An intriguing side note: both Boehme and Burleigh were evangelical youth group leaders in Tacoma, Washington in the 1970s, so they’ve been corrupting minds for decades.
