NYT: “Elliott Kline is a rising white supremacist leader. But our investigation found that his personal narrative — like much of these groups’ messaging — is built on deception.”
That Elliott Kline would so extensively cooperate with this profile while knowing his claims about service in Iraq were a lie is interesting.
Covering white supremacists poses difficult challenges for Times journalists. Are we simply providing a platform for them to recruit followers and spread hate? Are we casting a sympathetic light on people who should only be condemned?
We believe that reporting on racism, anti-Semitism, and the people and groups who espouse them is a crucial responsibility for journalists today.
By investigating an emerging leader in a growing extremist movement, we hope to offer Times readers and viewers a deeper understanding of the people and forces behind these groups.
I had pictured the phone call going a lot of different ways, but I hadn’t quite prepared for this.
I thought he might swear at me and then hang up. Maybe he would try to turn the conversation around, attacking me and the credibility of The New York Times. Or maybe he would become contrite and emotional, and finally answer some real questions. But I never thought he would just deny it.
As a reporter and video producer, I had been following Elliott Kline, a.k.a. Eli Mosley, for almost five months at this point. He played a key role in organizing the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., where a 32-year-old woman, Heather Heyer, was killed and about 20 others were wounded when a white nationalist drove his car through a crowd of counterprotesters.
Eli was in his mid-20s, from a middle-class suburban home, and he had led an unremarkable life, up until the Charlottesville rally launched him forward within the ranks of the loosely organized white-nationalist movement. He rose from a self-described “anonymous Twitter troll” to head of one of the largest groups in the so-called alt-right….
Like many of his peers, Eli was already using an invented name (Eli Mosley was inspired by the British fascist leader Oswald Mosley). So why not make up a few autobiographical details, especially ones to boost his reputation?
The movement itself also relies on falsehoods. It includes Holocaust deniers and pseudo-intellectuals who spout unsubstantiated theories about the science behind racial difference. In order to reach mainstream Americans, white supremacists have learned to cloak their racism in disorienting terms like “white identity politics.”
Deception is baked into the alt-right, so Eli Mosley is a perfect match for the movement.
In other words, with exceptions, the New York Times will only cover the Alt Right in ways that make it look bad.
