A lunatic Chaplin imitator and his greatest fans Nazism |
First as tragedy |
Then as farce |
The European Union Times is a "news" site that presents utter neo-Nazi bollocks.
It certainly looks the part. It has lots of mainstream advertising served by ContextWeb, it's got a nice WordPress theme, and its articles on Barack Obama have been widely linked by Tea Party blogs,[citation needed] presumably pleased to find a news site that supports some of their views. All standard for a libertarian or Republican newssite.
Upon closer inspection, however, it is little more than a regurgitator of news stories that paint blacks, Hispanics, and Jews in a bad light. Beyond that, it is a particularly unpleasant far-right blog with the information standards of InfoWars. The reporting is, without exception, shockingly unprofessional.
Examples of xenophobic, anti-Semitic and racist bias abound. Note, for example, how many article titles unnecessarily point out the ethnicity of people accused of carrying out crimes.[1][2][3] Note also the sheer amount of articles relating to Israel or Jewish people in general.[4][5] More bias? Here, have a load of nonsensical Obama bashing.[6][7][8]
In addition to the raging xenophobia, the European Union Times strays deeply into tinfoil hat territory. For example, it regularly re-publishes the hilarious "reports" of "Sorcha Faal", which means that it is either subscribed (i.e., paying) for the Sorcha Faal feed, or close to the original source. If you see a headline that is really "out there" (for example, US Earthquake Weapon Test Fails Again, Destroys New Zealand City[9]), scroll to the bottom and have a look at the "Source" link. If it points to whatdoesitmean.com, it's the handwork of "Sorcha". (That article also contains a massive research fail — it quotes the Russian Space Forces command (VKS) as its source, but the link "VKS" leads to the site of a Russian industrial company, VKS.ru!) The EUTimes has also re-published material from Pravda Online, another site dedicated to conspiracy theories, such as a 2010 article about alien spaceships attacking Earth in 2012.[10] It's unclear if they actually believe this stuff or they just think that their readers are gullible morons.
For a supposedly Europe-centric or European Union-centric news site, it is interesting to see how many of the stories have absolutely nothing to do with Europe, let alone the European Union, but instead report on American matters (see aforementioned Obama conspiracy pandering). If the title wasn't enough, the site's About section offers no concrete information at all.[11] No staff list, no address, no history, nothing. What it does do is claim that this shitbubble of a site is "an international newspaper based in Europe [emphasis added] with operational branches in America and Canada". The domain name is in fact not registered in Europe, but through a domain proxy service in Panama.[12]
With all of the above taken into consideration, the political affiliation (and indeed geographical location) of the site's creators is perhaps not surprising.[13] Oh, and they happily 'quote' David Duke.[14]