The goat rodeo that is Mother Jones never lets the facts get in the way of a highly entertaining and bias-fueled story.

Mother Jones staffer attempts to wrestle narrative by furiously twisting its legs.

The outlet most recently demonstrated this with a puzzling story on Brandon Darby, progressive super-activist-turned-conservative FBI informant. Darby committed the cardinal sin of moral awakening and told the po-po that two of his prog-activist friends were making Molotov cocktails for reportedly violent use at the 2008 RNC.

Mother Jones author Josh Harkinson wrings his hands over Darby’s political conversion, completely shrugging off the fact that, oh, I don’t know, two progressives were, according to published materials, planning on blowing stuff up and possibly injuring and/or killing people at a public event.

After flirting with some of the same information for which the NYT is getting sued (defamation and libel; NYT even admitted their error) , Harkinson waits until the end of the piece to drop this nugget in between graphs suggesting entrapment and questioning Darby’s character:

The feds ultimately convicted the pair [Darby’s progressive activist associates] for making the Molotov cocktails, but they didn’t have enough evidence of intent to use them. Crowder, who pleaded guilty rather than risk trial, and a heavier sentence, got two years. McKay, who was offered seven years if he pleaded guilty, opted for a trial, arguing on the stand that Darby told him to make the Molotovs, a claim he recanted after learning that Crowder had given a conflicting account. McKay is now serving out the last of his four years in federal prison.

Wait – so one of them changed their stories after the other’s story didn’t corroborate it? Who cares! GET DARBY. The snitch.

The most insane thing of all about this story is Harkinson’s bizarre comparisons. He fumbles to convey how he wants you to think without admitting his bias, my bold emphasis:

The atmosphere around town was tense, with local and federal police facing off against activists who had descended upon the city. Convinced that anarchists were plotting violent acts, they sought to bust the protesters’ hangouts, sometimes bursting into apartments and houses brandishing assault rifles.

You mean how two individuals mentioned in the article were hauled in after it was discovered, and they were convicted, of making explosives? Yes, I’d say that the FBI was “convinced.”


St. Paul was their first large-scale protest, and when they arrived they were taken aback:Rubber bullets, flash-bang grenades, tumbling tear-gas canisters–to McKay and Crowder, it seemed like an all-out war on democracy. They wanted to fight back, even going so far as to mix up a batch of Molotov cocktails. Just before dawn on the day of Palin’s big coming out, a SWAT team working with federal agents raided their crash pad, seized the Molotovs, and arrested McKay, alleging that he intended to torch a parking lot full of police cars.

There are two narratives existing simultaneously in this article:

  1. Activists were making Molotov cocktails for use at a public event. Two are serving time for it.

  2. Police were needlessly cracking down on protesters ad violating everyone’s rights because they believed that activists were making explosives … it’s just like the Red Scare.

Only one of these narratives can exist. Which is it? Facts don’t support both, which is probably why Harkinson tried to work in a Red Scare reference. I don’t expect someone writing a piece attacking the “snitch” of progressive would-be bombers to get the history right on Joe McCarthy’s record. Thankfully, we have dedicated journalists and scholars who’ve done it instead.

By the way, this is how Harkinson advertised it on Twitter:

Harkinson plays down how in Darby’s case, the FBI was right.

We’ll be watching this narrative.