West Michigan Far Right Watch for the week of November 20 – 28: Apologists for Enbridge, unsourced science, and those who still don’t concede the election results

Welcome to the next installment of West Michigan Far Right Watch, where we keep tabs on the far right in this area and provide a summary of what they are up to and what kind of messages they are promoting in this community. As a matter of clarification, when we say the Far Right, we mean those in the streets who fight to defend White Supremacy, those who promote far right ideology, an those with political and economic power.

We have three examples for this installment. First, is the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. While the Mackinac Center is base in Midland, they have strong ties to West Michigan, with millions in funding from the DeVos family an current Mackinac Center board members, Richard Haworth and J.C. Huizenga, both part of the local power structure. 

The Mackinac Center posted an article on November 24, condemning Gov. Whitmer’s decision to shut down the Enbridge Line 5. The arguments are what one would expect from an organization that acts as an apologist for capitalism. It will be very interesting to see what happens with battle over Line 5 in the coming months an what impact it will have on Enbridge’s Line 5 tunnel proposal.

Our second example for this week’s Far Right Watch, comes to us from the Great Lakes Education Project (GLEP), the Betsy DeVos-created and funded entity, which seeks to undermine public education in Michigan. On November 23rd, GLEP posted a brief statement from their Executive director making claims that science-base research shows that schools are not a spreader of COVID. 

First, the GLEP leader doesn’t provide any sourcing of this supposed science-based evidence, plus the other examples of creative solutions are all from Europe. It’s bad enough that they do not source their claims, but they fail to acknowledge that the US response to the COVID crisis has been uniquely disastrous and criminal, compared to what most of the rest of the world has one.

Our third, and last example, comes to us from the American Patriot Council, with their latest video featuring “founding father” Ryan Kelley making a speech on November 20th in front of the State Capitol in Lansing. Kelley’s speech is not only filled with slogans and buzz words, it is intellectually insulting and analytically embarrassing. The American Patriot Council still doesn’t accept the results of the election and dreams of 4 more years of Trump.