The Conservative Tavern Facebook page has over 185,000 fans (the FB site was formed in August, 2014, by the way). It also has a website whose front page doesn’t even have content, just placeholder copy:
This morning the page posted a piece with no attribution or links about the “dangers” of those “illegals” coming in to the United States.
The first part of the post? This image:
The second part of the post? This “exposé:”
Ok, we could just pick the piece apart factually, but it is so much easier to let the folks at Conservative Tavern know that such an “exposé” has been floating around the Internet since at least 2007. Here is a link to the first time we think this “exposé” was published:
But wait, it gets better. Go to Frosty’s page and you will see links to “Overpopulation” and this quote from Frosty himself: “Overpopulation in the United States will become THE single greatest issue facing Americans in the 21st century. We either solve it proactively or nature will solve it brutally for us via water shortages, energy crisis, air pollution, gridlock, species extinction and worse.”
But wait, there’s more. Google “Mexican’s vistor lament” and you will see the same post recycled and regurgitated since 2007. Google “Tina Griego Rocky Mountain News” and while you will get a link or two about Griego (who writes at The Washington Post now), the vast majority of the links are the one about the “illegals.”
In fact, even when you Google Griego’s original column link, what do you think shows up? All the duplicate posts that have been circulating online and in private forums for years. (By the way, there is no online record Griego’s column that we could find.)
And guess where a of those “facts” are coming from? Lou Dobbs. From 2006. You know Lou Dobbs, right? Oh yeah and a 2004 report from the Center for Immigration Studies? You know CIS, too, yes?
So here we are in 2014 and conservative Facebook sites are pretty much trying to pull a fast one on everyone, using xenophobic lies from over 10 years ago to demean the immigration debate and justify people’s fears with “facts.”
If it weren’t so funny, it would be scary. But like they say, if you keep cutting and pasting a lie for years on the Internet, some people will believe it.
As for Conservative Tavern? Step up you hater game, guys. It’s pretty rookie right now.
