An article at InfoWars published Friday alleged that racist comments made by scofflaw Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy were unfairly used by the media to discredit him and his supporters.
A writer at the Alex Jones’ conspiracy website argued that video of Bundy was edited to exclude comments that would soften the racist nature of his statements.
"The full clip illustrates how the original New York Times report edited out statements made by Bundy both before and after his supposedly 'racist' remarks, which when taken in their full context actually constitute a pro-minority position," wrote Paul Joseph Watson.
Bundy was shown in the video pontificating about the Watts riots of 1965.
"What I seen is civil disturbance. People are not happy, people is [sic] thinking they did not have their freedom; they didn’t have these things, and they didn’t have them," said Bundy.
"We’ve progressed quite a bit from that day until now, and sure don’t want to go back; we sure don’t want the colored people to go back to that point; we sure don’t want the Mexican people to go back to that point," he said, before launching into his now-infamous rant about black people in the U.S. who "abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never, they never learned how to pick cotton."
Later in the video, Bundy said that "Spanish people" who "come over here against our constitution and cross our borders" aren't so bad because they're hard workers and "have better family structure than most of us white people. When you see those Mexican families, they’re together, they picnic together, they’re spending their time together, and I’ll tell you in my way of thinking they’re awful nice people."
This attitude, in InfoWars.com's eyes, counts as a ringing endorsement of Latino people and their cultures, never mind that "Spanish people" come from Spain, and Spanish-speaking immigrants to the U.S represent a variety of nations and ethnicities.
"While Bundy’s use of terms such as 'negro,' 'colored people' and references to picking cotton are undoubtedly politically incorrect (though not unsurprising for an 80-year-old farmer)," said Watson, "when taken in its full context, his argument is actually anti-racist in that it laments the plight of black families who have been caught in the trap of dependency on government."
Watson also described Bundy's remarks as "vehemently pro-Mexican."
Users of the white supremacist forum Stormfront, a website that has been linked to nearly 100 recent homicides and has deep ties to the “sovereign citizen” movement, have a different view. Racist commenters are expressing their support for Bundy, who became a conservative folk hero thanks to his canonization by Fox News' Sean Hannity and others.
"Cliven Bundy 2016!" wrote one commenter.
"Guess the truth is racist now," said another, while one reader opined that "Everything he said is exactly true. Every [sic] since the negro came to this country the question has been, what shall we do with them?"
Watch InfoWars' video of Bundy's "full, unedited" remarks, embedded below:
