How San Diego incubates white extremism with One America News

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Tweet text:
Jean Guerrero
@jeanguerre
THREAD: My new column @latimes explores the mind of OAN's Pearson Sharp and how OAN fits into San Diego’s long history as a magnet for extremists "who dream of being white heroes at the edge of darkness."

Robert Herring, left and Charles Herring, left, Founders of One America pose for a picture at the Conservative Political Action Conference on March 14, 2013, in Oxon Hill, Maryland. (Photo by Nick Wass/Invision for BFI-Good News Source One America/AP Images)

Column: How San Diego incubates white extremism with One America News
White extremists have long found a home in the diverse border city of San Diego.
latimes.com
9:02 AM · Jul 22, 2021

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-07-22/one-america-news-network-politics-san-diego-trump


The pro-Trump cable propaganda network One America News is headquartered in a sandy-colored building in the San Diego sun.

It doesn’t look like the epicenter of a collective delusion in which Trump remains president, the COVID-19 vaccine is deadly and “illegal aliens” are destroying the country.

But OAN, launched in 2013 by Louisiana-born technology magnate Robert Herring, is the latest chapter in San Diego’s history as a hotbed of white paranoid extremism. The network has become Trump’s favorite Big Lie megaphone about the “stolen” presidential election. In March, Pearson Sharp, one of its star correspondents, said in a report, “There’s still serious doubts about who’s actually president.” In another, he suggested COVID-19 vaccines are causing mass deaths. He has also said “hordes of illegal aliens” are “turning real Americans into second-class citizens,” and called Biden’s immigration policies “nation-killing.”

The diverse border city of San Diego has long been a magnet for white extremists. The Ku Klux Klan arrived a century ago to terrorize Mexicans. In 1980, the KKK’s Tom Metzger won a county district’s Democratic nomination. He lost the primary, but launched White Aryan Resistance, and a cable TV show.

*snip*