Over the weekend, following the attack in Quebec City, where two Muslims of Moroccan descent shot up a mosque, The Daily Beast published a fake news article falsely claiming that my friend Davis Aurini and myself were “white supremacists” who were responsible for the shooting. They based this on a troll Tweet from self-described parody account @ReutersBRK claiming that “Davis M.J. Aurine” and “Mathieu Fornier” were the perpetrators of the attack, including pictures of the two of us. The Daily Beast has since pulled the article, but you can read an archive here.
This fake news story shows what liars the mainstream media are.
While my friends and I found the whole incident amusing, the fact that it even happened to begin with shows how bankrupt the mainstream media is. A ten-second Google search would have disproved the Tweet’s claims about Aurini and me. Not only did The Daily Beast get both our names wrong, they weren’t aware that I’ve been living in Budapest, Hungary since the beginning of the year, even though it’s public knowledge that I’m based in Europe. I haven’t visited Quebec City in nearly a decade and haven’t been to Canada period in nearly six years.
The fact that The Daily Beast jumped to accuse Aurini and me of being the attackers shows their left-wing, anti-white agenda. Their use of the “white supremacist” slur shows that they were eager to pin the attack on the alt-right and President Donald Trump’s policies fighting Islamic terrorism. Indeed, when the Quebecois police revealed that the attackers were Muslims, the media deliberately dragged their feet on reporting their names in order to cover up the truth.
To make matters worse, there’s evidence that John Green, the author of The Daily Beast’s article, knew who we were when he falsely accused us of being the attackers. At roughly the same time he published the story, Green posted on Twitter and Facebook that “Aurine is a popular alt-right, anti-feminism, Trump-supporting YouTuber with 15,000 subscribers.”
@stillgray @Aurini @johngreen shared this shit on Twitter and Facebook too. pic.twitter.com/1Kfv0zm92s
— William Rhoades (@lordsyphilitis) January 30, 2017
In other words, Green researched us long enough to find out who we were, yet he either didn’t research enough to figure out that we were not the attackers, or he willfully libeled us. As of this writing, no one from The Daily Beast has contacted me for comment or even to offer an apology.
We may have grounds to sue The Daily Beast for their fake news story.
A number of friends have been urging Aurini and I to sue The Daily Beast for defamation and endangerment. While they pulled their story down quickly, not only did they falsely accuse us of being mass murderers, they exposed us and our loved ones to potential retaliatory violence from Muslims and/or leftists. Given that the media has been egging on attacks against NPI director Richard Spencer and other alt-right figures they smear as “Nazis,” the risk that Aurini and me could have been violently assaulted (if I were still in the U.S.) is very high.
Although I now live in Europe, my family, which has been targeted by far-left antifa (anti-fascist) thugs in the past, could have easily become a target for harassment and violence. As someone who has been falsely accused of a serious crime in the past (I was falsely accused of rape by the spurned ex-boyfriend of a girl I was involved with), I know the damage that fake news stories can do.
Additionally, because Aurini is Canadian, he has even more grounds to sue then I do over The Daily Beast’s lie that we are “white supremacist[s].” As an American citizen, my freedom of speech is protected by the Constitution, but being a “white supremacist” is an arrestable offense in Canada due to hate speech laws.
A close lawyer friend has told me that we have a case against The Daily Beast. I am currently weighing my legal options and deciding how to proceed.
Given the potential cost, I will need help pursuing any possible legal remedies against The Daily Beast.
If you can, I would greatly appreciate it if you could donate. Any amount will make it easier for me to exercise my legal options. You can donate via the following methods:
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Thank you for your readership and support. If you’re new to my blog and work, thanks for stopping by.
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The post Official Statement on the Daily Beast’s Fake News Story Accusing Me of Attacking the Quebec City Mosque appeared first on Matt Forney.