It’s fascinating with each new day to check in on the Memeorandum news aggregator page, which faithfully reflects what’s trending in the mainstream media. For months, the top trend — which is displayed with numerous links at the top of the webpage — has usually been something derogatory (and as often as not something false) about Donald Trump, or someone connected to Trump.
Today is no different. Today’s trending media kerfuffle seems to be the report that Neil Gorsuch, when he was a high school student at Georgetown Prep in Bethesda, founded the “Fascism Forever Club.”
The Daily Mail claims this scoop as an EXCLUSIVE, and opens its report all out of breath:
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Supreme Court Justice nominee Neil Gorsuch founded and led a student group called the ‘Fascism Forever Club’ at his elite high school, DailyMail.com can reveal.
The club was set up to rally against the ‘left-wing tendencies’ of his professors while attending a Jesuit all-boys preparatory high school near Washington D.C.
The name may be inconvenient for a Supreme Court nominee facing a tough confirmation battle. However it also shows the depth of Gorscuch’s right-wing credentials – and his penchant for mischief while attending his exclusive prep school in the 1980s.
My, my, my. The report goes on to present more damning evidence, including our shameful feature image, in which Gorsuch poses with William F. Buckley, Jr.’s 1959 book Up from Liberalism, described darkly by Daily Mail as “a key text of the conservative movement.” Daily Mail also feels compelled to point out that Gorsuch is “kicking back in a chair in a button-down shirt and tie” for this interlude with the Buckley book, which in tone and superfluity is rather like pointing out that Michelangelo’s David is “standing unclothed, looking to his left, with a sling over his shoulder.”
Now, full disclosure. I, too, read Up from Liberalism in high school (although never, to the best of my recollection, kicking back in a chair in a button-down shirt and tie. In fact, I’m quite certain about the button-down shirt and tie part, as I have never worn such an ensemble in my life).
So judge as you will, moving forward here. Daily Mail develops its case against Gorsuch — and I promise you, this is not an Onion parody:
The yearbook described the ‘Fascism Forever Club’ as an anti-faculty student group that battled against the ‘liberal’ views of the school administration.
‘In political circles, our tireless President Gorsuch’s “Fascism Forever Club” happily jerked its knees against the increasingly “left-wing” tendencies of the faculty,’ said the yearbook.
It is not the only example of Gorsuch’s early conservative political views. One yearbook photo showed the high school senior kicking back in a chair in a button-down shirt and tie while reading William F. Buckley’s 1959 book ‘Up from Liberalism’, a key text of the conservative movement.
Another photo shows Gorsuch leaning over a railing with his tie undone while sticking his tongue out at the camera.
Aha! Caught in the act! I believe leaning over a railing with your tie undone while sticking your tongue out at the camera is a classic secret sign of early conservative political views. The only thing more nefarious may be that Freemason hand signal that everyone from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Tony Blair to Laura Bush is supposed to have flashed in public at one time or another, reportedly as a way of communicating with the Illuminati mothership.
I am happy to be able to report that the “Fascism Forever Club” business is a load of bull. It was a load of bull at the time: a running joke — not an actual club — during Neil Gorsuch’s career as a prepster with the Jesuits. This has been confirmed by multiple sources, including a teacher, Steve Ochs, who was the faculty adviser for the student government at Georgetown Prep. (Gorsuch was student body president as a senior.)
John Sexton has the fully documented skinny at Hot Air; here’s his money quote from Ochs, speaking to America Magazine:
It was “a total joke,” said Steve Ochs, a history teacher at Georgetown Prep who was the student government advisor during Mr. Gorsuch’s junior and senior years at the Bethesda, Md., school.
“There was no club at a Jesuit school about young fascists,” he told America. “The students would create fictitious clubs; they would have fictitious activities. They were all inside jokes on their senior pages.”
It seems like some little voice would have to tell you — if you were a person of common sense — that nobody would found a “fascism” club in an American prep school in the 1980s and brag about it in a yearbook.
But our friends on the left can’t seem to tell reality from fevered fiction today. Either that, or they’re willing to make complete fools of themselves retailing rank nonsense that takes no more than five minutes to debunk. I have to wonder if they understand the extent to which they are foreclosing their own future. If they do stumble onto definitively damning information about a Trump official or nominee now, who’s going to believe them?
