The stormtroopers in the left’s assault of free speech and diversity of opinion are the so-called “fact-checkers.” These are not-very-bright failed journalists who have congregated in organizations under the “Internation Fact Check Network” (yes, these clowns now have their own trade organization) and exist solely to patrol the internet and make stupid, self-beclowning evaluations of anything that doesn’t follow the progressive narrative.
Without a doubt, one of the most ridiculous operations in the fact check grift can be found at Snopes.com. At one time, Snopes filled an interesting space on the internet. Back in the days of AOL dial-up modem connections, Snopes would run to earth the multitude of fake, if amusing, stories that sprang up in that environment. With the advent of the Trump administration, Snopes branched out into being a partisan hitman for the left.
They have found that AOC’s claim that she was in personal danger on January 6 was not true but reporting it as not true was “mostly false.” They’ve gone to extraordinary lengths to declare as false the various critiques of the maladministration of US COVID response by Dr. Anthony Fauci. They covered for Joey SoftServe rudely checking his watch during the return of bodies of US service members from Afghanistan. And who can forget this classic fact check: CODE RED: Joe Biden: “My Butt’s Been Wiped” is “Unproven” According to Snopes? The list goes on and on, but the pièce de résistance was Snopes’s vendetta against the parody site BabylonBee.com. Snopes writers stalked the pages of Babylon Bee, picking unmistakable parody stories (see Snopes Just Fact Checked Babylon Bee Again and This Time It Crossed the Line).
Here are some of the Snopes stories we have covered.
Now they are at it again.
On Monday, the story broke in several outlets that the Biden Department of Health and Human Services was giving grants to organizations to provide safe, effective, and sanitary crack pipes to drug users (You Can’t Make This Up. Biden’s HHS to Fund Crack Pipes, Needles, and “Harm Reduction” Vending Machines), This had the difficult-to-achieve effect of making the Biden White House look more ridiculous and incompetent than it might be. That is a high bar to get across. So the staff of Snopes sprang into action.
In February 2022, right-leaning outlets reported breathlessly that the Biden administration had plans to fund the distribution of crack pipes in order to advance the cause of racial equity.
For example, on Feb. 7, JustTheNews.com published an article with the headline “Biden administration funding crack pipe distribution, saying it’s needed for racial equity.”
For its part, ChicksOnTheRight.com went with the headline “Biden Admin Spending $30M To Give Crack Pipes, Drug Kits To Addicts For ‘Advancing Racial Equity’” and wrote:
The Biden Administration is going to spend $30 million taxpayer dollars on free crack pipes and drug use kits for minority demographic drug addicts, in an effort to support Biden’s executive order on “advancing racial equity.” I wish I were joking. I really do. But I just couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.
Meanwhile, The Blaze wrote:
The Biden administration will soon fund the distribution of crack pipes to drug addicts in underserved communities for the purpose of “advancing racial equity,” the Washington Free Beacon reported.
Collectively, these articles gave readers a grossly misleading and reductive presentation of what was a real substance abuse harm reduction grant overseen by the Biden administration in early 2022. We are issuing a rating of “Mostly False.”
The so-called “fact check” goes on to point out that there is much more than crack pipes:
It’s important to note that safe smoking kits typically consist of several other items, including: a rubber mouthpieces for glass pipes, in order to prevent burns and cuts; brass screens, in order to filter out potentially harmful contaminants or debris; as well as disinfectant wipes.
Wow, how did people get this so wrong?
Seriously, though, this critique by Snopes is so dishonest that it beggars the imagination.
None of the articles claimed or even implied that crack pipes were the only thing included in the program. For instance, the JustTheNews link that Snopes calls out says:
The $30 million is to be allocated over the next three years, $10 million each year, for the Harm Reduction Program Grant, which is designed “to support community-based overdose prevention programs, syringe services programs, and other harm reduction services.”
Snopes managed to ignore this because it would not fit with their role as narrative police, and they seem immune to the irony of them ruling an article “mostly false” for including the same information as the fact check.
Most people might reasonably think that the government subsidizing crack pipes is ridiculous is good news judgment. However, Snopes seems to believe that if you write a story highlighting what Snopes would prefer you ignore, that makes the story false. It doesn’t. Really.