Source: Bigstock

Now, some people wonder why “mainstream journalists” continue to give so much exposure to the Daily Stormer website. Well, here’s why: No responsible journalist would ever publicly call John Schnatter a Nazi (no legal department would allow it, because a lie like that is actionable). So these “journalists” use Stormer to do an end run around that problem. NBC, Newsweek, Yahoo News, Huffington Post, and many others ran stories about how the Daily Stormer approvingly proclaimed Schnatter a “Nazi” because of his NFL comments. See what they did there? “Hey, we’re not calling him a Nazi; we’re just reporting what the Stormer called him! They called him a Nazi; we’re just covering it.” In one of the worst cases of outright journalistic malpractice I’ve ever seen, Newsweek ran a piece (also posted on the Yahoo News home page) by pseudo-journalist Cristina Maza in which the featured photo was a picture of a Papa John’s pizza on which the pepperonis had been arranged like a swastika. Featured under the pizza were the words “Sieg Heil Pizza.”

But you see, Maza didn’t create that photo! She just plucked a meme from a site full of anonymous nobodies and gave it international exposure. She’s just “reporting the controversy”…a controversy that no one in the world would be aware of if she hadn’t decided it was a legitimate journalistic move to use a Nazi site for source material.

The first line of her piece? “Neo-Nazis and white supremacists have always been distasteful, but now it turns out their taste in pizza is terrible, too.” Because that’s not opinion at all. That’s “reporting.”

Huffington Post hack Luke O’Brien devoted 688 words to the story, describing Schnatter’s disagreement with the NFL in these terms: “Papa John’s was punishing the NFL for not cracking down on black dissent.” So now Schnatter’s totally noninflammatory statement about resolving the anthem issue “to the satisfaction of all parties” has become “We want to punish you for not cracking down on black dissent.” O’Brien went on to quote the Stormer’s Adrian Sol as though he were a respected political commentator.

I hate the SPLC with a passion, but I’d actually root for them if they started going after reporters and editors who pull this kind of crap. Of course, the fact that they’re not doing that starkly illustrates the organization’s blatant dishonesty. They’re fine with Nazi websites being given that kind of publicity. Hell, it pays the bills.

The Resistance has certainly been effective in this case. Schnatter had to step down as CEO, and, as Bloomberg pointed out last week, Papa John’s International Inc. stock “declined as much as 4.3 percent to $56.71, the biggest intraday drop since Dec. 6. Shares of the pizza chain have lost about a third of their value this year, putting them on course for the first annual decline since 2008.” That’s going to lead to store closings and job losses. And who’ll suffer? The regular folks, many of whom are minorities, who have to depend on those kinds of jobs to earn a bare living.

But they have to suffer, because they’re collaborators. They wear the uniform of Papa John’s. They’re fair game, legit targets, enemy combatants. As Ted Rall said, “they had it coming…they’re traitors.”

So are we all. Any of us who either supported Trump, or (as in my case) didn’t support him but who are nevertheless willing to give him a chance, those of us who happen to share a couple of Trump’s opinions, or even those of us who don’t care about politics and spend our time making pizzas. One is either with the Resistance or against it.

We all have it coming.