NJ.com projects "extremes" to silence dissent. Here's why.
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum....” - Noam Chomsky
This quote used to be a warning.
Now it’s a playbook.
NJ.Com’s Project Extreme is a cautionary tale about the lengths journalism now goes to to limit the spectrum of debate. It’s also part of an orchestrated attempt to calcify consensus thinking.
“Extremism” is the weapon du jour to round everyone back into a limited discourse that allows status quo beneficiaries to play it safe and remain within the realms of state sanctioned “virtue.” It has been co-opted as a trigger word designed to disparage and dismiss anyone who dares to question the distorted values that political parties on either side prop up as social justice, equity, inclusion, democracy and freedom.
As the scapegoat for American discord, “extremism” is readily equated to hate, toxicity, division, conspi racy theories and just being unreasonable overall. Putting issues under the extremism umbrella and conflating them with hate is a cheap and easy way of shutting down conversations and preventing any legitimate criticism of government agencies, political candidates, policies, agendas, legislators and institutions.
Take a look at the latest example of how the legitimate concerns of some citizens are manipulated and reduced to “extremism” in New Jersey.
This story is part of Project Extreme, a yearlong examination into the rise of extremism in New Jersey and its permeation into everyday life across the state. The project is supported in part by a grant from The John Farmer Memorial Journalism Fund.
American flags and Trump signs hung on off-white walls. A fluorescent yellow placard, bearing a rhinoceros silhouette, leaned against the lectern. It read, “Please stop feeding the RINOS” — Republicans In Name Only.
An unsettling buffet of conspiracy and grievance followed.
Democrats are grooming your children, speakers told the audience of 40 or so, seated in mismatched metal folding chairs.
The 2020 election was stolen.
Liberals will do it again in November if you don’t serve as poll monitors.
Then a polished man in a fashionable blue suit and black-rimmed glasses strolled to the front of the spacious room. The keynote speaker apologized for being tired that March evening in Shamong before launching into his fundamental issue.
Migrants.
…The event — billed as a “Hands Off My Ballot” rally open to the public — was hosted by two influential organizations: the America First Republicans of New Jersey and the New Jersey Project.
These grassroots groups are part of a loose confederation of far-right influencers that have somehow found an audience in New Jersey, long viewed as a left-leaning bastion of pragmatic politics. And they’ve done it largely using hate speech, bigotry and discord.
They are engineering outrage, weaponizing cultural issues, and sowing division and distrust, NJ Advance Media has found in a nine-month investigation of the Garden State’s burgeoning ultraconservative movement. These influencers are wielding conspiracy theories and intolerance while mainstreaming extremism by hijacking conventional political issues.
…They are increasingly operating out in the open in New Jersey, despite their corrosive language, looking nothing like the people most would associate with conventional notions of extremism...
Projecting Extremism?
Project Extreme makes more sense when you think of the word “project” as a verb. From Merriam Webster:
to attribute (one's own ideas, feelings, or characteristics) to other people or to objects
“a nation is an entity on which one can project many of the worst of one's instincts” —The Times Literary Supplement (London)
The article reads far more like a template for hate and toxicity than an antidote for it. A common formula, it relies on the assumption that reasonable positions on the welfare of children, election integrity, January 6, inclusion, public health, environmental issues, immigration and individual freedom have already been decided by consensus and are necessary “for the greater good.” Anyone who challenges these positions is therefore a threat to the greater good.
But this first requires an exploration into how this consensus came about.
NJ.com didn’t have to spend a year doing this investigation. They ended up right where they started after spending months following the same groups they disparaged all along, confirming their own bias and coming to the conclusion that “we were right. those people are dangerous.”
The ultraconservative wing is a “dark cloud” hovering over the state GOP, a high-ranking Republican operative who runs campaigns told NJ Advance Media. Its hateful rhetoric is viewed as a necessary evil that party officials refuse to confront out of fear of losing support in the Trump era.
It’s a “coalition of the willing,” said Jon Lewis, an extremism expert at George Washington University.
…“These guys all sit in the same cesspool. There's never more than one or two degrees of separation,” Lewis said.
So according to someone with significant skin in the GOP establishment game, people critical of the GOP are a dark cloud.
And here’s the bio of quoted “extremism expert”.
Jon Lewis is a Research Fellow at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, where he studies domestic terrorism, with a specialization in the evolution of white supremacist and anti-government movements in the United States and federal responses to the threat.
Project Extreme has a lens. And it’s sponsored.
I’d like to invite you to look through a different lens. Mine. (currently sponsored by 9 paid Substack subscribers - thank you! - $592 in annualized revenue)
Another Look at “the Cesspool” and NJ’s “Toxic Influencers”
Apparently I’ve spent some time in the cesspool. Perhaps I’m considered part of it, because I know some of these folks. I have had some meaningful conversations with a few of these “influencers” and have learned some interesting things from them. I have attended rallies and events that they have spoken at or attended. And a couple of them have showed up to listen to my concerns… and then done something about them.
We don’t agree on everything, but we’ve worked together in various capacities, mostly in the realm of medical freedom and parental rights.
Lee Mack of Concerned Citizens of New Jersey helped me organize the launch of Children’s Health Defense’s New Jersey Chapter and donated the use of their church space to host the VAXXED III bus when it came to document the vaccine injury and COVID hospital protocol stories of New Jerseyans. Lee barely knew me when I asked him for support, but he gave his time and resources willingly and recruited volunteers to help at the events. I know him to be sensitive, sweet-natured and someone who loves being engaged in a supportive community.
I know former Senator and gubernatorial candidate Ed Durr , aka Ed the Trucker, through his support of parental rights. We testified together in opposition to NJ’s S1188, a bill that lowers the age at which minors can consent to behavioral health care treatment to 14. (You can read more about that here.) From that testimony:
It doesn’t get any simpler than this: the parents/guardians should always be involved in all decisions made about their children and their welfare…This has been an ongoing attempt to separate the parent from the child. These bills have decided that we, the parents, are the enemy, that we are bad for the children – the complete opposite of what is true in most families.
Similarly, radio talk show host and fellow gubernatorial candidate Bill Spadea has met with many health freedom advocates and concerned parents to address concerns about government overreach in the lives of New Jersey families.
As Union County Republican Chairman, Carlos Santos works tirelessly to empower and engage NJ’s disenfranchised Republicans, particularly within working class communities. Carlos regularly hosts free community events and goes door-to-door in some of Union County’s most disaffected areas. Another supporter of parental rights and medical freedom and a unifier in general.
While Kent admits that “Santos didn’t spout conspiracy theories or white nationalist rhetoric,” his problem with Santos is that he “doesn’t want to allow inconvenient ties to get in the way of the coalitions he’s trying to build.” (emphasis mine)
His goal is to forge a base in solidly blue Union County. He’s assembled fledgling support in Elizabeth and Linden where none existed and is growing others in Hillside, Rahway and Roselle, he (Santos) says.
"I'm more worried about building the party, growing, winning elections on a local level and just giving Republicans a voice again, especially in the underserved Republican areas,” he said.
Rooting out “inconvenient ties” is the crux of Kent’s pursuit in Project Extreme. Using Kent’s logic, if you’re at the same rally or cooperate in any capacity, you’re complicit in the “hate.” But this is precisely the kind of thinking that keeps people isolated in their groupthink. People like Santos, Mack and others on Kent’s list have built communities around shared values and goals, despite MANY differences. Their work has been an effective way of overcoming those differences and creating deeper understanding between diverse communities.
I spoke briefly with NJ Project’s Nik Stouffer to get her reaction, since she was named in Kent’s article. She was frustrated by Project Extreme’s attempt to conflate and malign so many disparate groups and feels the script has been flipped.
Reporters often demonize grassroots movements for opposing political extremism, particularly regarding the impact of COVID-19 policies on children. The mandates, lockdowns, and mask requirements have significantly harmed a generation, disrupting three critical school years. This extremism is responsible for a delay in development, a youth mental health pandemic, and setbacks in education. Parents have risen up to fix these problems only to be shot down by these types of paid political operatives pretending to be journalists.
These grassroots movements are growing because parents are becoming more informed. Collaborative efforts demonstrate a growing need to prevent more unintended consequences of the rules and laws that have impacted their children. This isn’t extremism. It’s an urgency to be heard by representatives and government agencies with some dangerous blind spots.
Here’s how Kent characterizes Stouffer’s work:
Nicole Stouffer, co-founder of the New Jersey Project, a parental rights group named an anti-government organization by the Southern Poverty Law Center…
Stouffer and her New Jersey Project, a group “protecting childhood for our children” against “tyranny … by the state,” started with a parents’ rights Facebook group, NJ Schools.
The group has advocated for banning certain school library books — often involving LGBTQ+ themes. Stouffer has publicly said she’s not opposed to gay rights or the LGBTQ+ community, yet has likened being transgender to mental illness on her Substack. (emphasis mine)
From Stouffer’s offending Substack:
Instead of a comprehensive approach to properly diagnosing each child’s particular issue and getting the mental, emotional and educational help needed, so many of these children, like Chloe Cole, who was later diagnosed with autism, are either coached by professionals and/or indoctrinated by social media influencers into believing all their troubles and hardships are due to their transgenderism. They are then fast-tracked into the gender-affirming care leviathan where they are drugged, maimed and mutilated. Had Chloe’s mental health issues, autism, and trauma from sexual assault been treated properly by a mental health professional, Chloe Cole would have a healthy, normal body today. Instead, she has been left physically and emotionally scarred and permanently disfigured.
I recommend reading her post in its entirety so you can decide who’s being extreme - the legislators who are trying to keep parents out of the loop while legally protected doctors, teachers, social workers, guidance counselors and librarians expose minors to graphic content and gender ideology and promote life-altering medical protocols/surgeries OR parents who want a voice in the conversation.
While you’re at it, you may want to take a look at the Southern Law Policy Center’s Hate Map, where you’ll find other “hate groups” like Moms for Liberty, John Birch Society, National Constitutional Coalition of Patriotic Americans, New Jersey Parents Involved in Education, and United Patriots of America.
Are you seeing a pattern?
Tellingly, the Hate Map includes what it deems “antigovernment groups” on its hate map, which ultimately links dissent to hate. (It reminds me of how the CDC lumps pneumonia deaths in with flu death to inflate the numbers and amplify flu fears.)
To the man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail
Especially when we keep funding the use of hammers.
The search for hate and extremism is a well-funded pursuit. And people tend to find what they’re paid to look for.
Since 2020, the TVTP Grant Program has provided nearly $90 million across five funding cycles via 178 awards, training 38,250 people, and reaching 28,308,418 people across 41 states and the District of Columbia.
The proliferation of funding, much of which goes into university research programs, feeds a pursuit of enemy-seeking which ultimately changes our culture. And not in a good way. This is not a cultivation of understanding, but a warping of it.
For context, here’s the Institute of Strategic Dialogue’s angle on Hurricane Helene:
The US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and public officials have faced a deluge of antisemitic hate and threats in the wake of Hurricane Helene, as mis- and disinformation about the government response has spread at scale across mainstream social media platforms, in particular X. The situation exemplifies a wider trend: increasingly, a broad collection of conspiracy groups, extremist movements, political and commercial interests, and at times hostile states, coalesce around crises to further their agendas through online falsehoods, division and hate. They exploit social media moderation failures, gaming their algorithmic systems, and often produce dangerous real-world effects.
The BEDROCK of Hate and the Shaping of Narrative
Consider Bedrock, which sets out to “Catalyze innovative projects to address hate-animating narratives.”
On it’s website it states: Our goal is to supercharge the field of HFV prevention.
That’s hate-fueled violence.
Bedrock’s Board and organizational leadership consists of four former directors of White House Policy Council and Bedrock President Ryan Greer. From Greer’s bio:
Prior to joining Bedrock, Ryan served in public policy, community engagement, and violent extremism prevention roles, including most recently as National Security Director and Chief of Staff for the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) Government Relations, Advocacy, and Community Engagement (GRACE) team. Prior to his GRACE team role, he served as Director for Program Assessment and Strategy at ADL, leading innovative counter-extremism activities for the ADL Programs Division.
Previously, Ryan served as a consultant for several terrorism prevention clients. He also served in government, as a Senior Advisor for community partnerships and terrorism prevention at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, as a counterterrorism Policy Advisor and also as a Program Officer at the U.S. Department of State, as a Special Assistant for the White House National Security Council, and on staff for two Members of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Then check out their partners. If you spend a few minutes clicking on any of these organization websites, you will find yourself in a virtual echo chamber.
And when organizations like Bedrock, Jigsaw, University of Oslo’s Center for Research on Extremism (C-REX), Institute for Strategic Dialogue , American Association of State Colleges and Universities and Homeland Security partner up to support universities, you get projects like PERIL:
The Polarization & Extremism Research & Innovation Lab (PERIL) is an applied research lab at American University’s School of Public Affairs preventing radicalization to violent extremism by strengthening community resilience… Our work supports individuals and communities to reject propaganda and extremist content, as well as empower them to intervene and interrupt early radicalization.
… where again, we see the “mainstreaming of hate” tagline.
PERIL and the Southern Law Poverty Center have teamed up to create The Parents & Caregivers Guide to Online Youth Radicalization, which “provides tangible steps to counter the threat of online radicalization, including information on new risks, how to recognize warning signs, and how to get help and engage a radicalized child or young adult,” and Building Networks & Addressing Harm: A Community Guide to Online Youth Radicalization, which “provides readers actionable steps to support those who have been targeted by hate-fueled acts…offers adults information and practical lessons about how to help young people resist the manipulative rhetoric and the supremacist narratives they encounter online and off…”
It’s important to consider the partner organizations that support this work, which then bleeds back into the realms of education, journalism, advocacy and policy-making.
Through partnering with these organizations, PERIL has broadened its scope of research and increased media literacy stateside and abroad.
Inconvenient (Financial) Ties That Bind
Project Extreme’s yearlong examination into the rise of extremism in New Jersey wasn’t an exercise in curiosity. It was supported by a grant from The John Farmer Memorial Journalism Fund. So was The Oregonian’s yearlong investigation Publishing Prejudice.
This important, yearlong investigation was funded in part by the John Farmer Memorial Journalism Fund that supports work operating at the nexus of local and national news.
The fund, which donated $30,000 toward the project, is named for John Farmer, the late New Jersey Star-Ledger columnist and editorial page editor. The Star-Ledger is among the newspapers owned by The Oregonian/OregonLive’s parent company, Advance Local.
This kind of funded coverage appears to be at least partly attributable to the rise in “journalism philanthropy.”
A new study conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago in partnership with Media Impact Funders and The Lenfest Institute for Journalism that examines the role of philanthropy in American journalism found strong growth in support for nonprofit news over the past five years, an increase in funding to for-profit newsrooms, and a growing focus on communities of color. At the same time, the study reveals the need for more newsrooms to disclose donors and adopt clear conflict-of-interest policies to protect editorial independence and public trust.
…“We’re seeing more and more foundations that haven’t historically supported journalism move into the sector,” said Vince Stehle, MIF’s executive director. “But equally important, we are seeing many other foundations that have supported journalism with modest grants in past years doubling down and increasing their commitments in order to protect democracy and civic engagement in their communities.”
…But the risk of conflict of interest has grown alongside funding. More funders are financing journalism in areas where they also do policy work (57% vs. 52% eight years ago), and four in 10 outlets take money to do specific reporting suggested by a funder, though that percentage has dropped significantly from 59% eight years ago. (emphasis mine)
So who’s funding Media Impact Funders?
According to its website, Media Impact Funders is “a membership organization that advances the work of a broad range of funders committed to effective use and support of media in the public interest.”
Our members include some of the largest foundations in media funding, local and regional foundations, and individual donors and high-net worth individuals.
You can view the entire list here. Members include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Gates Family Foundation, Blue Shield of California Foundation, Commonwealth Fund, Democracy Fund, New Media Ventures, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, Journalism Funding Partners and The New York Times.
These are the folks who are sponsoring your newsfeeds.
And much of that funding finds it’s way to New Jersey.
New Jersey -- $328,426 – New Jersey PBS is partnering with the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair University and newsrooms across the state to develop a central destination for state government news coverage, which will be augmented by original reporting and a weekly video program produced by the NJ PBS broadcast news team and its digital newsroom, NJ Spotlight News.
MONTCLAIR, NJ – The New Jersey Civic Information Consortium (the Consortium) and the Community Foundation of New Jersey (CFNJ) proudly announce their collaboration to house the New Jersey chapter of the Press Forward initiative. This partnership marks an important step in the advancement of local news and civic engagement across the Garden State.
Press Forward is a national movement to strengthen American democracy by revitalizing local news and information. A coalition of funders is investing more than $500 million to strengthen local newsrooms, close longstanding gaps in journalism coverage, advance public policy that expands access to local news, and scale the infrastructure the sector needs to thrive. (emphasis mine)
You can read more about that coalition and it’s priorities here. And here are their partners:
Initial Press Forward partners are The Archewell Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Community Foundation for the Land of Lincoln, Democracy Fund, Ford Foundation, Mary W. Graham, Glen Nelson Center at American Public Media Group, Heising-Simons Foundation, Henry Luce Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Joyce Foundation, KFF, Knight Foundation, The Lenfest Institute for Journalism, Lumina Foundation, McKnight Foundation, Outrider Foundation, Rita Allen Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Skyline Foundation, and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
The Cultural Impacts of Absolute Thinking
All of this has profound impacts on our cultural climate and how we perceive each other in the “real world.”
“Be reasonable,” the politicians tell us, as they reduce the constituents who ask inconvenient questions and address uncomfortable concerns to cartoonish caricatures.
“When you’re arguing for a behavior that’s for the common good,” he told me, “you may be more successful with the reasonableness frame” — especially when the behavior requires a bit of initial sacrifice on the self-interest front, as a carbon tax does.
This is strategy-driven “journalism” is backed by behavioral science, government agencies, media organizations, educational institutions and “philanthropists”.
It’s the weaponization of funded research:
Media and messaging campaigns don’t aim to heal the divide, but rather to appeal to the 74% of Americans who are frustrated, the 71% who are disappointed, the 61% who are exhausted, the 57% who are disgusted and the 53% who are angry. We’re a target market for ideas that are linked to agendas.
And to find the agendas, you need to follow the money and partnerships.
Absolute thinking in any direction is extreme. And dangerous.
Many of the folks named in NJ.com’s hit piece are there because they have been willing to find common ground with people they disagree with and find ways to work together. Maybe we can learn from them instead of condemning them. Maybe we can temper some of the anger and division by listening to each other.
In the meantime, here’s just a few examples of why some of these “influencers” are willing to enter the “cesspool.”
I want to be your tenth paid subscriber but I’m having a hard time finding the option. Shall I just unsubscribe from the free subscription and start over?
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum....” - Noam Chomsky
^ the essence of 'controlled opposition' ^