Let's Talk About Left-Wing Quackery

Just as guilty.

Someone said something funny on Twitter last week.

“It’s very weird posting here and then going elsewhere on the internet,” remarked Center for New Liberalism co-founder Jeremiah Johnson. “Outside of like Truth Social, this is the only social media network with a large pro-ICE contingent. This is a 95/5 issue on Insta, TikTok, Reddit, Twitch, YouTube, etc., everywhere but here. … The morons trapped in Elon’s bubble have no idea how bad this is for them.”

It’s true: there are precious few dissenting opinions on social media platforms with ruthlessly enforced speech codes and overzealous moderators who blacklist anyone to the right of Karl Marx.

More to the point, Johnson’s critique of Twitter is a timely reminder that the left is not, in fact, immune from having its worldview algorithmically narrowed, insulated, and ideologically curated.

Right-wing bubbles are a reality, yes, but let’s also take a hard look at the seldom-discussed left-wing echo chambers, where outright lies and fabricated narratives similarly grow and metastasize into larger, more dangerous “truths.”

For all the talk about the right-wing information ecosystem, there’s remarkably little daylight between the communities that inspired the 2016 Comet Ping Pong incident and the communities that encourage lethal resistance to the “trans genocide.” The chief distinction is that left-wing crankery is often justified and defended by the mainstream institutions that are supposed to serve as a sanity check on such things — institutions that would swiftly condemn similar nonsense if it came from the right.

But if you believe the one is dangerous, consistency requires you hold the same for the other.

Let’s speak honestly, then, about the dangers of partisan insularity, starting first with those communities where it became widely accepted as a “fact” that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin inspired the 2011 Tucson, Ariz., mass shooting, in which a mentally disturbed man killed six people and wounded 13 others, including then-Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-Ariz.).

There is no truth to this claim. There never was. It’s mostly an invention of former New York Times columnist Paul Krugman’s award-winning brain.

Yet this myth became so normalized within certain ideological circles that the Times casually repeated it in a 2017 editorial. Palin sued the paper for defamation. She lost — it is nearly impossible for a public figure to win such a case in the U.S. — but what the Times published was still clearly false.

Scratch a normie Democrat or radical left-winger, and you’ll likely find a collection of “facts” that are actually urban legends, outright lies, carefully crafted agitprop, or some weird combination of all three.

The right is responsible for nearly all political violence since at least 2015!

Sure, it is – provided you ignore that the numbers supporting this claim have been manipulated to include prison gangs and prison gang-related violence in the “right-wing” column; no other group is held similarly responsible for either type of violence.

There’s a genocide in Gaza!

Brutal, yes. “Genocide”? No. Israel has nuclear weapons. If it wanted to erase Palestine from the map—say, from the river to the sea—it would choose a faster and more cost-effective method than grueling urban warfare. If anything, Israel’s commitment to a years-long urban war, while certainly deadly for civilians, supports its claim that its only goal is to target members of Hamas, the terrorist group that started the war in the first place when it massacred Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, 2023.

Democratic Minnesota state Senator John Hoffman and the late Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman are victims of right-wing extremism!

Sure, if you ignore that the alleged gunman, Vance Boelter, is obviously unwell and that there’s no political coherence to his actions. His hit list targeted only Democrats, but he also had a stash of anti-President Trump “No Kings” flyers in his car. Boelter also claims Democratic Minnesota Governor Tim Walz ordered him to kill the lawmakers and that he had been secretly “trained by U.S. Military people off the books starting in college.”

We’re a long way away from “Sic Semper Tyrannis.”

Or, more recently: The late Renée Good of Minnesota was just driving home after dropping her children off at school when she was shot and “murdered” by ICE agents!

Not quite.

The late Alex Pretti, a gentle male nurse, was peacefully protesting ICE deportations, directing traffic, and providing aid and comfort when he was “murdered” by federal agents! He was, as Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said, “doing activities that are at the core of what it means to be American.”

Again, not quite.

Video evidence clearly shows both Good and Pretti obstructing immigration enforcement officers in the performance of their duties. The killings – even if completely unjustified – were not targeted “murders” of casual, hapless bystanders.

This isn’t a defense or justification for what happened in Minnesota. We’ll leave that to the lawyers (if the cases ever reach them). Rather, it’s to remind you that what passes for “fact” today might actually be a myth or a complete fabrication, and that you, the audience, must keep alert for blatant attempts by both the right and the left to emotionally manipulate you on behalf of political interests.

Women earn less compared to men for the same work because of systemic sexism!

Inner-city schools fail because they lack proper funding!

“Hands up! Don’t shoot!”

Let’s finish by remembering the left-wing falsehoods that sprang up following the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. (Loony toon right-wing podcasters aren’t the only ones guilty of slandering him in death.)

Immediately after his murder, online activists circulated fake quotes attributed to Kirk, some of which are blatantly racist, along with the blunt suggestion that he deserved to die for saying such hateful things. These fabrications have since been accepted as “truth” among the more committed left-wing activists.

Former Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah lost her job specifically for sharing these fake quotes and for saying that the 31-year-old father of two deserved little sympathy because of his alleged hatred of black people.

More recently, nearly five months after Kirk’s death, former MSNOW host Tiffany Cross claimed that he was murdered by someone who “espoused very right-wing extremism,” a complete fabrication that began as wild speculation by a Boston College professor and has now become an article of faith in left-leaning communities.

Kirk’s alleged killer, Tyler Robinson, confessed in a series of texts to his transgender lover that he felt compelled to murder Kirk because of the late activist’s views on transgenderism. Robinson, a furry fetishist, also said that he wanted to stop the spread of Kirk’s “hate.”

These are just a few examples of the left-wing echo chamber problem. I could continue, but you get the point.

Let’s talk about the online right’s fragile relationship with reality, sure, but let’s also talk about the left’s. Not for any tit-for-tat reason, but because the bullets are flying in both directions.

Remember, a man murdered two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, D.C., last year, allegedly telling responding officers that he “did it for Gaza.”

He was probably upset about all the “genocide.”

A version of this article was originally published in the Hill on Feb. 2, 2026.