#1786: Steve Jalsevac

Steve Jalsevac is co-founder and managing director of LifeSiteNews (LSN), a “news” site pushing the usual wingnut stuff: creationism, anti-gay rhetoric (e.g. praise for the draconian Ugandan anti-gay act, and their Matthew Cullinan Hoffman has argued that anti-gay organizations needto become “nastier”) and climate change denialism (Jalsevac, a Catholic, was none too happy that the Pope weighed in on environmental issues). LSN has also demanded that the Catholic Church excommunicate Democratic politicians (Gerard Nadal), maintained that feminists were to blame for the Costa Concordia disaster (Hilary White), compared gays and lesbians to pagans (David Krayden of the Canadian Centre for Policy Studies), and fervently supported ex-gay ‘reparative’ therapy. Jalsevac has even asked for donations to promote “freedom from the homosexual lifestyle”. That kind.

Some examples:

In 2013 LSN came out heavily in favor of gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli (a fan). In fact, they even claimed that he won the election: “Notice that the map seems to be almost solid red. And yet, Ken Cuccinelli somehow very narrowly lost to his Democrat opponent. To me, something smells about this race,” said Jalsevac. Of course, hat candidates win by numbers of people and that Cuccinelli’s opponent McAuliffe dominated more urban areas just aren’t relevant facts to Jalsevac, who rather “suspect[s] Ken Cuccinelli actually won Virginia, but certain things happened, beyond the betrayal by some Republicans, campaign weaknesses and other reported issues, to ensure that that would not be the official result.” Note that it cannot be because of voter fraud (in that case he couldn’t have used the dominance of redness on the map as evidence); it must have been … who knows: perhaps basic arithmetics is a liberal conspiracy or something. And the fact that the party breakdown of the results in Virginia’s counties in the 2013 gubernatorial election looks very similar to those in the 2012 presidential election? The 2012 election was rigged, too, of course.

Later in 2013 Jalsevac wondered why Obama has “not been booted out of office” and “not been charged” over his handling of the George Zimmerman case (yes) – alleging that Obama led a “failed attempted lynching” of Zimmerman as part of a “lib-leftist generated Latino vs African-American race confrontation” – and the fact that he has “hatefully undermined the entire social and historical foundations of the nation.” Jalsevac apparently found it incomprehensible that Amricans can support him and his “Black baby-killing abortion genocide.” Indeed, it  “seems to me to be a kind of Jim Jones social suicide cult under the hypnotic control of their cult leader,” said Jalsevac. When Rightwingwatch reported on his claims, Jalsevac responded by accusing them of being funded by George Soros. Also, Benghazi.

Diagnosis: Yet another one. The LSN seems to have a certain readership, however, and the readers are probably not only people looking for a laugh over fuming, raging, crazy conspiracy theories. Scary.