Bolton Chairs an Actual Fake News Publisher Infamous for Spreading ...

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Bolton Chairs an Actual Fake News Publisher Infamous for Spreading Anti-Muslim Hate



Bolton wears many hats. He serves as a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, as a contributor to Fox News, and controls a Super PAC that used money from the billionaire Mercer family to help elect congressional Republicans.

But one role that has received relatively little scrutiny is his work as chair of the Gatestone Institute, a nonprofit that focuses largely on publishing original commentary and news related to the threat Islam poses to Western society. He has served in that role since 2013. (Bolton did not respond to an email seeking comment.)

A steady drum beat of vitriol is visible on the Gatestone site on almost any given day.

Just this week, the Gatestone Institute published stories claiming that the “mostly Muslim male migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East” in Germany are fueling a “migrant rape crisis” and that “Muslim mass-rape gangs” are transforming the United Kingdom into “an Islamist Colony.”

The website routinely portrays Muslim migrants and refugees as an existential threat to Europe and the United States, claiming that immigrants bring “highly infectious diseases,” genital mutilation practices, and terror to any nation that accepts them. The site spent years sharply criticizing the Obama administration for having a “traditional Muslim bias” against Christians.

The lurid headlines, which are translated into multiple languages and distributed widely through Gatestone’s social media page and its partners in the conservative media, are rarely supported by the evidence.

Take the story this week about the migrant rape crisis in Germany. Penned by Gatestone “senior fellow” Soeren Kern, the piece lists recent rapes and sexual assaults in Berlin and other cities and attributes the crimes all to Muslim immigrants even though the story simultaneously concedes elsewhere that the identities of the attackers have not been revealed by German police.

Similar far-fetched tales about the threat posed by Muslim migrants in Europe have been debunked. Last year, Gatestone claimed that officials in Germany were seizing homes to be provided to “hundreds of thousands of migrants from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.” The racially tinged article wasn’t remotely true. German media noted that under Hamburg’s strict housing laws, a single house in the city was placed into temporary trusteeship after it remained vacant. “Refugees did not play a role in the district’s decision,” noted Correctiv, a local watchdog group.

The fact-checking website Snopes has found multiple viral false stories originating with Gatestone. For instance, the site claimed falsely that London, called “Londonistan” in the piece, 423 mosques were built “on the sad ruins of English Christianity,” as 500 churches closed. But the story cherry-picked the data to ignore hundreds of newly opened churches.



https://theintercept.com/2018/03/23/gatestone-institute-john-bolton-chairs-an-actual-fake-news-publisher-infamous-for-spreading-anti-muslim-hate/