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‘World Nut Daily’ Set Stage for Cult 45

Right-wing propaganda outlets help conservatives deny reality

Manny Otiko
4 min readApr 10, 2021
During eight years in office, President Barack Obama was dogged by the false rumors about his birthplace. Many of them were spread on World Net Daily, a right-wing conspiracy site. (NASA/Joe Kowsky from Flickr)

My brother worries about my mental health because I spend so much time looking at right-wing media. Viewing right-wing media is like staring at the sun. It can damage your organs. So, I do it through filters such as Right Wing Watch, Media Matters and Mediaite that aggregate this kind of information. But sometimes, you click on a link and get exposed to the full horror of right-wing propaganda.

That’s what I did a few days ago when I clicked on a link that took me to the World Net Daily website. World Net Daily (WND) is notorious for conspiracy-mongering. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, WND’s real goal is “serving up a daily dose of conspiracy theories, apocalyptic alerts and anti-gay rhetoric.”

The birtherism business

During the Obama years, WND made a cottage industry out of birtherism. World Net Daily must have been sad when President Barack Obama left office because he was one of their main drivers of…

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Manny Otiko
Manny Otiko

Written by Manny Otiko

Manny Otiko writes about race, politics and sports. He has been published in Salon and LA Weekly. Follow him at @mannyotiko.bsky.social

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